"Old soldiers never die, but what kind of soldier grows old?"
A decorated witch-officer of the Canadian army goes missing one night, abandoning her post at the cusp of mandatory retirement, making her way to the ritual with a battalion of ghosts marching alongside...
The Deserter is a concept for a long range area denial specialist. Her abilities focus on dealing spirit damage in a wide area, pressuring opponents to dodge her significant but avoidable damage output while setting up teammates to capitalize on the space she creates. Alone, she has trouble defending herself, but with a coordinated team she can both set up and deliver on massive plays, bringing swift victory in any teamfight.
I figured that it'd be difficult to balance exact numbers for damage, cooldown, scaling, etc. while it's just a concept, so I left them out. That said, I'd love to hear what anyone thinks would work for the values.
ABILITIES
Her first ability is her main damage output and most accessible way to harass in lane and put out AOEs in teamfights. It's intended to be flexible: she can try to land direct rifle shots to chip away at opponents with reliable gun damage before pressuring them with spirit damage AOEs, or she can intentionally place the markers on terrain to herd opponents or predict dodges. The ability could also provide some build flexibility; with investment into gun items, boon upgrades could enable hybrid gun/spirit builds that make use of the rifles' better range and damage to pick off opponents with direct shots.
Her second ability is intended to work around her other abilities and cover her weaknesses. As her only ability that can do immediate damage at close range, it can be used to slow down enemies and give her a chance to escape. Offensively, she can use it to hinder enemies before following up with other abilities or to catch opponents trying to break line of sight or escape.
Her third ability, despite its appearance, is more of a persistent AOE than a turret. The intent is to deny a large area from the enemy and funnel them into cover, where they can be bombarded with her other abilities or flanked by her teammates. On the other hand, if opponents choose to ignore the ability or are forced to fight in it by zoning or crowd control, it can output significant damage while easily applying on-damage effects from items to the entire enemy team. The ability doesn't work well on its own however, and a coordinated team can disengage or move out of its frontal cone to take advantage of the downtime.
Her Ultimate, named for the ghosts guiding the shells to their targets, is a high-impact teamfight ability with a global presence. While it has the potential to do impressive damage to a wide area, I imagine most of its value will be in creating space and forcing the other team to give up a position. With the option to cast it at any location in a teammate's line of sight, its strength is in suddenly forcing opponents to decide if their position is secure or important enough to risk the damage, or else try to avoid where they think the shells will land and leave themselves open to a followup from her team. Its long range helps make up for how slow the ability is; she needs time to set it up and ideally a plan for how to make the most of it.
I chose to limit the range to the spectate function both because I like the theming of needing a spotter and because otherwise I feel the splitpush potential would be too strong if she could aim using the map, letting her push any lane from anywhere without requiring a hero present.
CHARACTER AND LORE
The design of the Deserter is based around a WW1 officer, and her abilities are supposed to embody the trench warfare of the period with a witchy/necromantic twist, summoning sentient barbed wire and using ghosts to aim artillery shells that she calls up from the ground like the living dead. The caveat is that I'm not sure if WW1 even happened in the Deadlock universe, so I'm not sure if she's actually experienced in that kind of fighting or else if she represents a disaster that was narrowly avoided. Visually, she's supposed to look ambiguously undead, with slightly ragged clothes contrasting with officerly finery, and an unearthly glow surrounding her.
The core of her backstory so far is that she's close to retirement, feels like she's running out of time, and decides that whatever she wants out of the ritual is more important than the wealth and status she had as a decorated officer. I figure it could go a few ways from there:
- She feels like her potential is being wasted. Considering herself a commander to rival Alexander the Great, she's upset that she's reached retirement without even having the chance to conquer the world.
- Survivor's guilt. She's being haunted by the ghosts of everyone who died under her command, and feels like she's failing them by living out her life in cozy retirement instead of delivering on her promises to lead them to eternal victory.
- Soldier TF2. She loves war, she's good at war, she wants there to be more war because the only thing worse than dying is being retired and bored.
That's what I have so far, let me know if you like it or if there's any suggestions you have to make it better!
