[Hero Concept] Māo 猫

[Tenebrae]

Background:

Few experience death more than once...and of those few, twice will typically suffice. For Māo, not even eight seemed to do the trick...and she wants to know why.

An orphaned Chinese immigrant, her youth was spent as a lowly street urchin often engaged in petty crime. Although not the safest lifestyle in the world, each of her untimely deaths seemed eerily orchestrated and possessed great extravagance in complexity: almost as though the universe itself sought out her demise.

However, these deaths were merely progressively increasing periods of traumatic oblivion with Māo ultimately rising again to continue her mundane life...perhaps a bit more unhinged, but no worse for wear. It wasn't until her eight death, ninth life, that things got truly interesting.

The time in which she spent deceased was significantly longer than those prior, and when she awoke...eight ethereal felines of a magenta hue drifted about her figure: each apparition representing a life lost. Furthermore, it appeared she, herself, had assumed a similar form...albeit physical. Now a petite cat with similarly hued eyes to the vibrancy of her spectral clones, she naturally panicked until discovering an innate mastery over transitioning between such and her prior incarnation, albeit with those new eyes unchanged.

Exploring her new mysterious powers, Māo set off in search of the truth...to both her origins and what she's become.

Appearance:

Human Form:

The human incarnation of Māo appears much as she did prior to this ninth life: a petite young woman of Chinese descent with alabaster skin and a hairstyle similar to that of a disheveled bob-cut. The only deviation from her former lives are magenta cat-like eyes of an almost luminous hue, and perhaps some slightly more prominent canines. Speaking of which, tattooed over her left eye is the Chinese character 猫, meaning cat. This can only be fully appreciated when her eye is closed...and she's taken quite a liking to introducing herself with a cute smile, wink, and providing her name.

Aside from that, Māo's signature garment is a black trench coat modified with a fur collar that matches the breed of her feline form, the Chinese Li Hua.

Cat Form:

When taking on her feline form, Māo becomes an unassuming cat with those unusually-magenta eyes being the only deviant feature. The particular breed in question is the Chinese Li Hua, one of the oldest and most traditional cat breeds in China.

Projectile: (Primary Attack)

To take down adversaries, Māo utilizes the ethereal magenta souls of her past eight lives. These ghostly felines perpetually snake throughout the air around her human form, capable of being compelled towards a target at alarming speeds...wherein they then explode into a plume of spectral energy.

Prudent to note that this provides her enemies with a visual indication of how many attacks she can perform before having to undergo the effort to compel these felines into manifesting anew. This essentially provides Māo with an "eight round magazine."

Items that increase magazine size do NOT increase the number of ghostly cats that Māo possesses. Instead, additional ammo will be in the form of phantom hairballs that are not spat by the phantom felines until compelled by Māo. This means that these items enhance Māo's ability to deceive her enemy on just how much "ammo" she actually has from her initial weakness of that being revealed.

Abilities:

1: Māo

The first ability in which Māo possesses is to take the form of a Chinese Li Hua. Although this greatly reduces her overall health, it significantly increases her speed and stamina. In combination to this, Māo's basic attack is replaced with a pounce that deals bleeding. It's prudent to note that this also affects her hitbox, making her far more difficult to hit with direct damage...but much more susceptible to AOE or snares that reduce her ability to elude direct damage.

2: Mouser

The second ability Māo has is to temporarily transform a victim into a mouse. This drastically reduces their health, greatly increases their speed and stamina, and also reducing their hitbox significantly. Like Māo, their attack is replaced...this time with a bite that deals extremely low damage that you're better off not even using.

If Māo is in her feline form, she can pounce a transformed victim to deal massive damage, and for the entire duration of her victim's mousy transformation...they will leave behind a magenta scent-trail for Māo to follow. Just run, run little mouse...run.

3: Copycat

Māo can transform one of her apparitions into an exact copy of herself...albeit with less damage, reduced health, and ghostly hairballs in place of the felines that Māo uses for her basic attack. This reduces Māo's own basic attack "magazine" size by one, but the clone can be dismissed at any time to bring it back up to eight.

4: Catastrophe (Ultimate)

Automatically transform Māo into a spiritually enhanced variant of her feline form, enveloped in a spectral shield and all eight of those ghostly apparitions taking up position around her. This clowder of cats essentially becomes a floating mobile turret where each of the eight felines bombard the enemy with explosive phantom hairballs, propelled at alarming speed.

Māo can focus fire on a single enemy by holding the left mouse-button on a target...or allow each of them to auto-target at will, prioritizing enemy heroes.

When the ability has concluded, Māo's enhanced form will fade alongside her spiritual counterparts...causing the cat to drop down onto the ground, meaning all the aforementioned weaknesses of her first ability apply and making it likely prudent to flee.

Notes:

1: In the time it took to write this all up, ＳＷＥＧ彼女's Brewmother showed up on the forums. I feel that this further indicates that people would greatly enjoy a character that can turn into a cat, no matter what form that idea takes. It's a cat. We all love cats.

2: Māo is not her actual name, but one she adopted upon her ninth life. As one might expect, she also got that tattoo over her eye at this time.

3: When thinking of her personality, characters of a similar nature would be Jinx from LoL, Chiana from Farscape, Kenzi from Lost Girl, etc.

4: Māo believes that this is her final life, meaning she'll stop at nothing to find out the truth behind her condition. Furthermore, the universe appears to have stopped placing her into situations reminiscent of the film franchise "Final Destination." Whether or not this actually is Māo's final life, or if she can even die at all now, is unknown...and she has no intent on finding that out the hard way, canonically.

5: I am not Chinese, just in case I got something wrong.

6: Māo (Click the audio button)

7: Sorry that there's no pretty imagery to tickle your optics, but my artistic talent doesn't reside with humanoids and I don't currently have access to MidJourney. Other AI generation tools are fairly subpar, and then there's a fair share of folk that get a little miffed about such...even when it's just used for a suggestion by a pleb. So, hopefully my provided descriptions can offer you up a decent enough mental image of what I'm trying to present here...

Thank you for taking a look.

 

[arcsymus]

What up. I like the story and character theme quite a lot. I like that she's a shapeshifter. Looks like people have proposed another child to enter into the arena where people are shooting each other with guns.... No, it's okay--there's nothing wrong with you people.

Her ammo mechanic is frivolous, I think. Nothing in her kit suggests that it's important for her enemies to understand how much ammo she has left, and I don't know how compelling of a mechanic it would be even if it were important.

Shapeshifter ability. Not bad, but I think that it's lacking function. I think there needs to be a more compelling reason to shapeshift, other than reducing your hitbox or becoming faster. I want to see this tied into her kit more strongly.

Polymorph enemy into a mouse. It's good. I think there's potential there. It seems like what your kit is going for is this idea that if she transforms herself into a cat, and an enemy into a mouse, that she becomes like a kind of duelist/hunter, which is a good idea, but I think there are ways this could be reflected better in the kit somehow. As it is, it feels like this Polymorph should be more about removing an enemy from combat / crowd control. I don't think it should be used with the intention that your team might be able to focus fire the mouse down due to them having reduced health. In that sense, I wouldn't include an effect that reduces their max health.

I don't know how you can better work in the idea of having her being able to become a hunter / solo kill character, except I think her Cat Transformation would probably work better as an ultimate, that comes with significant combat advantages (via melee strikes).

Third ability, Copycat, really lacks definition. This is a clone that walks with Mao and attacks things that she attacks? Skills that use AI behavior are really touchy, IMO, and beyond that, I don't think the idea really fits for the character. I think if your goal is to use the ability name 'Copycat', there are better ways to do it.

The ultimate has an interesting idea behind it. If I'm understanding it, then you essentially have a buff that targets nearby enemies automatically, which is a good idea on its own. Very reminiscent of Ahri's ability that fires spirits at enemies. Thematically, I think it's okay, but for Deadlock my sentiments tend to lean more towards wanting to see guns.

 

[Tenebrae]

What up. I like the story and character theme quite a lot. I like that she's a shapeshifter. Looks like people have proposed another child to enter into the arena where people are shooting each other with guns.... No, it's okay--there's nothing wrong with you people.

Nay,

I didn't want to pad out the background to the point in which it would be too long for people to read, without visuals. So, I wanted to make it a point that she's grown up as a thief, but she's somewhere in her early 20's by the time she experiences her ninth death. That's why I used "young woman," though I guess it wasn't easily recognized.

Her ammo mechanic is frivolous, I think. Nothing in her kit suggests that it's important for her enemies to understand how much ammo she has left, and I don't know how compelling of a mechanic it would be even if it were important.

I don't think it would be that important, but it's tossed in as an explanation for the total volume of feline apparitions remaining as eight even if her magazine size is increased.

I had to figure out a way for her "magazine size" to grow without the volume of cats increasing, but I suppose they could just allow for each spectral felines to rapidly manifest upon use, until her "magazine" runs out, after which it would take a longer "reloading" animation for her to remanifest them. It would simplify the concept, and I don't disagree that the minor mechanic isn't all that important.

I could see it baiting people in from time to time...but I assume people would ultimately adapt to it, eventually. So yeah, I do agree with you there and the much more simple method seems better suited. Atop that, it also makes the ultimate more surprising...as the hairballs are then restricted to that ability alone.

Shapeshifter ability. Not bad, but I think that it's lacking function. I think there needs to be a more compelling reason to shapeshift, other than reducing your hitbox or becoming faster. I want to see this tied into her kit more strongly.

Hmm...

I'm not sure that would be a good idea. With the way things play out in my head, I suspect that this will be used as an escape tactic and to quickly close in on opponents through a more subtle method...kind of like pseudo-stealth. While I'd certainly LOVE to have more to it all, I suspect that enhancing further would leave her extremely overpowered in the long-run, especially with those who perfected her capabilities with mouser.

Mouser is mostly crowd-control for folk who haven't yet mastered her, but it'll likely become an extremely powerful method of execution when people have gotten used to her kit.

Polymorph enemy into a mouse. It's good. I think there's potential there. It seems like what your kit is going for is this idea that if she transforms herself into a cat, and an enemy into a mouse, that she becomes like a kind of duelist/hunter, which is a good idea, but I think there are ways this could be reflected better in the kit somehow. As it is, it feels like this Polymorph should be more about removing an enemy from combat / crowd control. I don't think it should be used with the intention that your team might be able to focus fire the mouse down due to them having reduced health. In that sense, I wouldn't include an effect that reduces their max health.

Yep, exactly!

The idea is that it starts out as a form of crowd-control and then becomes more of a potential execution method for Māo as people become better experienced with her. Your concerns are entirely valid, as what I hope for is that the increased speed and drastically reduced hit-box will make those who've been converted into a mouse much more difficult to target directly, like Māo in her cat form, and ensure that Māo, herself, is the only one really capable of easily turning this into an execution, while she's in her cat-form...as she'll have a speed buff capable of keeping up with said moused enemy and damage bonus on them.

For everyone else, they shouldn't be capable of properly tracking the moused victim to exploit the reduced health. Granted, this idea could fall apart if AOE damage makes it too easy to slay moused victims, but I think that would require testing in-game to see just how often people died via AOE when moused.

If it was a significant issue, then yeah...like you suggest, not reducing their health could work just fine. Māo could just gain an even greater special damage bonus by pouncing a moused victim without their health having to be reduced, and the overall concept would remain unchanged.

I do kind of like the idea of AOE potential, as it allows her to synergize with other heroes a bit...but I also don't want moused victims to, primarily, die from damage sources outside of Māo in her feline form, either. The occasional death to AOE would be fine, but if it was excessive...then yeah, I'd definitely say your tweak is vastly superior.

I don't know how you can better work in the idea of having her being able to become a hunter / solo kill character, except I think her Cat Transformation would probably work better as an ultimate, that comes with significant combat advantages (via melee strikes).

I actually considered that, but I wanted the transformation to be something she can frequently use to give her that sort of "assassin" vibe where she's extremely mobile, difficult to track, and deadly as hell when combined with Mouser. I think that would feel a lot nicer than having the cat form as an ultimate.

Third ability, Copycat, really lacks definition. This is a clone that walks with Mao and attacks things that she attacks? Skills that use AI behavior are really touchy, IMO, and beyond that, I don't think the idea really fits for the character. I think if your goal is to use the ability name 'Copycat', there are better ways to do it.

Yeah, this was actually the last ability I came up with...and it was on a whim while sleep deprived. Initially, I had an ability called caterwaul that was a sort of AOE stun, causing people to stumble in their movements akin to a concussive grenade on PlanetSide 2. However, giving her a stun coupled with her current kit would be ill advised, in terms of individual power...so I scrapped that and tried to think of something else.

What I failed to explain is that the clone stays where you put it, but acts as you would within a radius of that area...meaning it will pretend to be you, basically, in that general location as a method of confusing the enemy into thinking you're in a lane you're no longer at. It's basically a sort of decoy, but with some combative capabilities.

That said, the fact that it uses hairballs, and not actual cats, kind of gives that away and defeats the entire purpose. For it to work properly, it really needs to have the other cats floating about it...and I guess that could, technically, still work and be explained from a "lore" perspective that those "spirit cats" are simply extensions of itself that it's making look like cats and not the actual other seven spiritual felines.

A lot of my qualms revolve around consistently maintaining the eight feline apparitions as just eight feline apparitions, haha. I'm picky. Still...I think that giving the clone false felines, would fix it and make such work as intended...as it would now serve as a proper distraction and decoy.

That's basically the idea though.

You toss it down, it stays within that general area acting like you as the enemy engages and assumes it IS actually you...while you're off going to cause chaos elsewhere. I definitely need to better define that in the OP.

The ultimate has an interesting idea behind it. If I'm understanding it, then you essentially have a buff that targets nearby enemies automatically, which is a good idea on its own. Very reminiscent of Ahri's ability that fires spirits at enemies. Thematically, I think it's okay, but for Deadlock my sentiments tend to lean more towards wanting to see guns.

I'm not entirely sure. To be honest, this is the first game of its nature that I've actually been fairly interested in, haha. I know OF Ahri...but not much, specific.

From what you describe, not entirely?

The eight spirit-cats basically are the guns, firing off spectral hair-balls at the target. So you'll see them...as they'll be in a formation around Māo, herself, as the central feline in the cluster of cats.

That said, thank you very much for the feedback!

Now to edit and tweak the OP a bit...heh.