Extvia
New member
Decided to come back here and just throw this Hero Idea into the mix again since the game has changed a lot since the original time I posted this and I've ended up refining the idea quite a bit.
This is going to be rather long cause I went into actual detail on this cause it's not just some goofy 1950's supernatural phenomena gimmick hero like a lot of the others I see on here.
AIslop image is unfortunately the only image I have for this hero;
Night Owl, a hero standing at only 4 feet tall while looking like a little mini owlbear wielding a suppressed Sniper Rifle. Playing on many mysticism related things pertaining to owls.
Under the mask she is a strange girl of alien-- almost cosmic tendencies. Half-Dwarf and Half-Drow Elf (or whatever Valve ends up calling Dwarves and Drow/Dark Elves in the Deadlock universe-- if they choose anything at all) that excels at arcane engineering. White, long and messy white hair. Sapphire blue eyes. A rather round, youthful face that never really fades as the pointed, angular physical traits of the Drow/Dark Elves get sanded down into the rounded-- almost cute features that she has by the more rugged side of her genes. Her elf-like ears are somewhat short and compact compared to that of pureblooded Elves. Often smells of soot, oil and the forge due to her work. If she's not outright coated in soot at a glance.
She carries herself with an icy, aloof and distant air that sometimes hinges slightly on regalness. But at the same time manages to be relatively amicable. To most she is simply known as The Night Owl. To a select few she is known as Ekyha. She combines the engineering genius of dwarves with the assassin/hunter-centric capabilities that is often seen in Drow/Dark Elves across fiction while giving it a mysticism related theme (namely that of the Owl) that is more 'cosmic' in theme rather than occult. Dwarves and Drow/Dark Elves in this setting in the lore I am kinda painting together here, are implied to be a common pairing since they both absolutely hate wood elves and often bond over how much they hate those 'wimpy leaf-lovers'. And that Ekyha is not the first, nor the last Dwarf/Drow half-breed.
Ultimately however, even if she were to succeed in the Ritual, her story would lead to the fact that not even the Patrons can touch the firmament that the person she is after did and that in turn she must either make a different wish or leave empty-handed. Ekyha in turn would then ask for a way to reach said point all on her own then and in turn she is given a strange pendant with a deep sapphire blue gem with a 4 pointed star emblem in the middle of it and be told by the Patron along the lines of, "This spark is all I can provide. You must find a way to ignite it yourself and find your way on your own with it's power." But she would ultimately accept it, and maybe even actually thank the Patron before moving on.
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Ekyha at first came to the Cursed Apple to learn things. Namely industry-level tech to improve her craft that she inherited from both her mother and her father. As in her words; "Dwarven technology is already absurd by all accounts. But imagine how much more it can be improved with modern day industrial technology and processes. Combine Dwarven and Drow ingenuity with American industry and you get something beyond imagining." As she eventually opened her own Foundry. She would process and sell materials to others, becoming quite popular due to the sheer quality of the metals she would produce and with how well she was able to combine both actual magic and the occult into said works.
Eventually however she would become more and more aware of the issues of this world and began working on certain pet projects. In time she would begin getting involved with the various troubles of the Cursed Apple. Forging a second identity that simply became known as The Night Owl. She keeps the two identities entirely seperate and almost never exposes it to others. Never even so much as taking off her mask when out in the field. She would gradually become a high-profile individual, an Assassin that was as untraceable and silent as the wind itself. The only things ever indicating her presence usually being a body with a bullet impact mark on an adjacent surface seething with magical power.
Unknown to everyone else, this did not entirely happen on it's own. To those within Ekhya's very private social circle, she explains how she was once met by a strange woman. And after a rather long and insightful conversation she had decided that becoming The Night Owl was the direction in life she wanted to take. But she has not seen the woman since said meeting. She has searched high and low, all trails going cold but pointing towards one thing. The woman she met had left these realms. ALL of the known realms to somewhere else entirely beyond even the Astral Gates. And in a slight obsessive compulsion, she wishes to find the woman again and know more about her since clearly there was more to learn from her. To this end, this is why she now takes part in the Ritual.
She believes that she MUST find her again, because she believes she that said encounter with that strange woman was something beyond even that of the Patrons, a being that freely traverses the cosmic webways unlike said 'old gods' and in turn wishes to use said Patrons to find a way to said woman wherever she may be and learn more from her in an aspiration to become more like her-- as she follows the path of the stars and the celestials themselves as guiding keys towards venturing into the truly unknown. As whoever it is she encountered has inspired her to look beyond the earthly things she had been raised to know by her parents and in turn look more towards the stars themselves for the truly un-pioneered.
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Night Owl is a short, stocky girl with a fixation on the cosmic and unknown as she tried to apply the things she has learned about the stars themselves to BOTH of her lines of work. In the case of applying it when she masquerades as "The Night Owl" it comes through in her aesthetic choice of the Owl. A creature that represents arcane knowledge and secrets but is also a profound, silent and unrivaled hunter in the night. Hunting from afar she takes her shots at the enemy, relying on the countless eyes she has placed all across the city to know more than anyone else possibly does and perfect positioning so that she is never caught flat-footed as she gets into position and leaves a trail of perforated bodies in her wake. For as she was once told; "The universe does not care for your morals. It only cares who you stand and fight for. Everything is fair game as long as the objectively innocent are left untouched."
Base Health: 600 (1600 at Max Boons)
Base Move Speed: 6.5
Sprint Speed: 4.5
No movement speed increases via alternate scalings
Only 2 Stamina and in one of the slower 'dash buckets'
Weapon: Nebryss - Sniper Rifle
"A rifle of many meanings and interpretations that ultimately link together and are related to one another. But no matter what interpretation comes to one's mind when seeing Nebryss, there is one universal truth. Nebryss does not produce the usual rapport of a Sniper. It isn’t a 'thunder' or a 'boom.' It is a swift, quiet death. The rifle that removes things from the world at distances where retaliation stops being a concept and is never heard. The only sign that she was ever there being the body she leaves behind."
Base Ammo: 15
Base Bullet Damage: 25 (+1 per boon)
Fire Rate: 1.5 bullets per second
Ideally the rifle would be something like this in terms of general shape but leaning super hard into arcane/high-cosmic aesthetics and design cues like this with a big chonky suppressor on it as it fires out cosmic-trailed sapphire blue energy bolts at high muzzle velocity with a suppressed weapon/energy weapon hybrid firing sound. I unfortunately have no pictures that specifically go that far into it. The choice for it to be a high powered bullpup Sniper Rifle being something to be in line with how small she herself is. A compact weapon is basically mandatory for someone as small as her even if it's still a heavy piece of kit that hits like a truck.
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Innate Traits:
- She is small, standing at only like 4 feet tall flat in-lore. So like Rem, she can crouch into the tunnels like he does. Playing into the whole Sniper thing where she takes safer alternative routes to get around to avoid getting caught rotating rather than leaping/flying over the rooftops like her fellow 'snipers' do. But true to that 'tiny owlbear' motif of her's, her silhouette is bulkier and in turn her 'horizontal hitbox' is wider while her 'vertical hitbox' is shorter.
- Has a hard maximum range of 75 meters. Bullets completely disappear after said range. Sharpshooter takes this up to 100 meters. Does it's minimum damage at 50 meters and is increased by Sharpshooter's 20% range fall-off bonus. She is meant to be a low-mobility, vision-based and hard-hitting Sniper rather than a floaty/flying mid-range Marksman like Vindicta or Grey Talon.
- The lowest possible damage per bullet from range fall-off is 50% damage.
- This weapon CANNOT deal Gun Damage. All Gun Damage-- including from items like Headhunter-- is 100% converted into Spirit Damage on hit. This weapon also cannot "crit" from Headshots and cannot proc Headshot items manually. Only Bathysyne can. Ideally this is kept so that she cannot abuse things like Armor Piercing Rounds. A 50% Spirit Resist shred from a combination of several items is frankly more manageable than a Sniper who still does 50% of their damage from their absolute maximum range with the chance to ignore ALL Bullet Resist.
- Zooming in brings up a sniper scope overlay that outlines enemies as red silhouettes as long as you have direct line of sight over them. You can see said outline through Troopers and things like Guardians and Walkers, but obviously walls keeps you from seeing the enemy. Mostly just so it's easier to see enemies in the absolute MESS that are current patch teamfights. Sharpshooter grants a second magnification toggle much like the AWP from CS. Maybe set up a menu so people can customize their scope reticle when zoomed in with the weapon like they do cursors in CSGO to be as goofy or as practical as they wish it to be. But the default would be a simple CS-like sniper crosshair.
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Ability 1: Astrivane
"Astrivane is a word from back home. What does it mean? Basically it means; 'The stars themselves point the way.' A projectile aligned to the invisible currents between stars — it moves where it must, not where it is aimed."
When toggled on: The next shot you make will ricochet to an infinite number of enemies within a 15 meter range of the impacted target but can only hit each enemy once. This shot is able to proc Eye of the Deep's Discharge on every target it hits if the initial shot rolled a proc. 25 second cooldown. Does 100% of your on-hit damage + Discharge damage (if you proc'd it) to all targets. This ability is set by a Toggle to be Auto-Casted whenever you shoot while it's off cooldown. This Auto-Cast counts as a proper ability cast for items like Spellslinger and Ballistic Enhancement. This enhanced attack counts as an attack reset in an Express Shot-esque way. It cannot be fired without ammo loaded and spends a bullet when it is fired.
1 AP: +10 meter ricochet range
2 AP: Your chance to proc Eye of the Deep is doubled when firing Astrivane
5 AP: -15 second cooldown. Shooting terrain will cause the bullet to ricochet to any nearby enemy targets. But a missed shot has a lower initial target range of only around 10 meters and this missed shot range cannot be expanded at all by any items. After the initial missed shot bounce it has the regular bounce range.
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Ability 2: Oculon
Pull out a slingshot and fire it at a given surface to attach an Oculon onto it. The Oculon is basically an eye shaped eidolon the size of a tennis ball with a glowing blue pupil. This minion will see everything that passes any of it's possible lines of sight in a 50 meter radius and alert you and your team with an automatic "I see X" (but only once every so often per enemy) ping. These eyes are permanent and small but not stealthed and instantly die to any form of damage. (This is to say if you are playing against a Seven and place them near likely combat zones you're gonna see most of them get microwaved every time he ults.) They do not give away their position in any way apart from simply not being stealthed, no sounds or 'you are seen' indicators.
If an enemy gets too close (within like 4-5 meters) it will shriek and explode in a disorienting sapphire colored flash of light that flashbangs the enemy that triggered it and reveals them to your entire team through walls for 3 seconds. Making it both a surveillance tool and a non-lethal trap that acts as an alarm. The traps cannot be set above any areas players can go to, so don't try to stick it to the incomplete under-side of the yellow lane bridge or something like that.
If you find yourself getting ganked a lot, you might want to exercise some situational awareness, get on a rooftop and check for the eyes on roofs and on high-walls. The eyes glow a deep blue and while it's not bright, it's still standout enough to notice if you take your eyes off the ground for a minute since there aren't many blue surfaces on the map at all to begin with.
1 AP: +1 charge
2 AP: +1 charge, longer deployment ranges
5 AP: It highlights enemies it has spotted as red outlines through walls for you and teammates to directly see. Outline instantly vanishes the moment the enemy leaves the eye's line of sight.
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Ability 3: Bathysyne
Every shot has a 30% chance to discharge an extra instance of Spirit damage on top of the original fired shot's damage that does damage in a 5 meter radius around the target. This effect can also apply on Split Shot, Ricochet and 'Astrivane'. Eye of the Deep discharges count as Headshots and proc Headshot related items like Headhunter, Spirit Rend and so on. This proc damage is not affected by range fall-off. Base Proc Damage is 40.
1 AP: +25% Fire Rate for yourself for 3 seconds and a 75% movement slow for the target for 0.75 seconds on Proc. Proc Damage is now 60.
2 AP: Proc Damage is now 80 and become immune to the firing penalty for the same amount of time. (Basically her only real movement mechanic, no built in leaps, dashes, teleports, etc. and is her only real innate escape tool-- backpedaling while shooting.)
5 AP: Proc Damage is now 100 and proc chance is boosted to 40%. Fired shots in general have a slight magnetism effect and you have very slight aim assist in close range (but it also gives said slight aim assist at longer ranges while zoomed in too)
(Akin to Halo Infinite cause let's be honest, it'd be needed for a low RPM rifle on a character with ZERO mobility that doesn't have anything like what Vindicta and Grey Talon have available to them to be annoying with. On top of how mobile and BRRRRT-y everyone else is by comparison as well. Grey Talon's form of this is his Rain of Arrows Multishot basically acting as what MAY AS WELL BE an aim assist anyway by being a wide, almost unmissable shot with basically no cooldown once you have Duration + Cooldown. So it's not like this would be particularly out of line. But it's also why this weapon cannot headshot or manually proc Headshot related items. Because said very small aim assist might skew it too much.)
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Ability 4 - Parallaxis
"What's the strongest weapon of a Sniper? Misdirection. And the best way to misdirect? You give the enemy a decoy-- a veritable parallax or illusion-- to blow their entire toolkits on. Making the enemy second guess by having a veritable twin is often all you need."
Pressing 4 will summon a semi-autonomous clone that fires on any jungle monsters or enemy heroes that you do, passively attacks troopers within a 50 meter radius that it can see unless you are crouched, and otherwise loosely roams around close to you. Pressing 4 on an allied or enemy trooper will order it to walk down the nearest lane like a trooper and push said lane and attack any structures it encounters. This clone only deals 25% of your damage and takes 300% damage but benefits from all your item effects like Lifesteal, Ricochet and so on.
Pressing 4 once again will call the clone back to you. Clone has a 30 second cooldown and doesn't begin ticking until the Clone is destroyed. Otherwise the clone is permanent. When used properly this clone can throw off enemy targeting. Like ordering the clone to push down a lane with the team while you sit in cover waiting for the enemy to ideally waste an initiation on the clone since it was pushing alongside your team.
This clone has no range fall-off on it's damage since it only attacks things within a 50 meter radius anyway and already only does a fraction of your own damage. The clone cannot proc Lightning Scroll.
The clone can do many of the things Rem's Helpers can, except it can actually be directly stopped with CC or killing it.
1 AP: Clone's damage taken is reduced from 300% to 200%
2 AP: +10% Clone Damage (from 25% of your own damage up to 35%)
5 AP: If you get knocked down to 25% HP or less, you will enter stealth, have all non-ultimate debuffs purged from you and be flung away from a newly spawned temporary clone that instantly takes your place to fool enemies. Said temporary clone also has their own twin as your permanent clone is converted into a temporary one and effectively recalled back to you as the two temporary twins fight whoever did the damage to you to fool them while kiting away from the direction you got flung into. You will be flung in whatever applicable direction pushes you more towards your own base/nearest allied tower. Said temporary clones only deal 25% damage but only take 100% of damage from enemies.
For 3 seconds you are true stealthed and cannot be seen at all (but can still be hit by random damage), but after those 3 seconds normal stealth rules apply. Said stealth in general lasts 10 seconds. Once the effect is over you can re-summon your permanent clone. Said 'bail out' effect has a 180 second cooldown that cannot be shortened in any way except for Refresher. (The 5 AP upgrade is honestly one of the ones I can definitely be convinced to change if this were to ever be considered in any serious way if people have suggestions that isn't just some generic stat buff.)
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Ideal Build:
Titanic Magazine
Slowing Bullets
Ricochet
Spirit Rend
Headhunter
Spellslinger
Spiritual Overflow
Sharpshooter
Ballistic Enhancement
Leech
Spirit Burn
+ 1 situational of usually things like;
Silencer
Metal Skin
Magic Carpet/Warp Stone
Counterspell/Ethereal Shift
Siphon Bullets
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Potential Interactions:
Night Owl is not a witty, snarky girl. And she's not needlessly hostile either. She's a very deadpan, aloof, focused and battle-centered girl that simply focuses on efficiency and coordination. Any remarks from others are met with a neutral disposition most of the time unless someone is simply being an ass like Billy and often just calls him an "second-hand armchair whiner that's simply mad that the world didn't just give him everything he wanted on a silver platter".
But on the flipside she also finds Vindicta annoying because she just hates 'ideological squawkers'. The world isn't fair and the only way you ever stop it from trampling you is by getting more powerful. This however is most implied in lore but there should be no interactions in the game itself between her and Vindicta/Billy because it should be an implied basis of "We don't talk to each other outside of tactics and callouts, we don't have an argument and I don't have to put bullets into you."
Because at the end of the day she does not care what one's ambition is in this moment. If they fail the ritual she will simply hunt any 'ideological opposition' later. If they succeed in the ritual it won't matter because getting her wish means she won't even be in any of the known realms anymore and in turn none of it will be her problem.
She has no official ties to anybody and she implies everything she might know about a given person is purely from reputation. As would be the same of anyone talking to her, only knowing the rumors of The Night Owl.
- She would likely in a subtle way give herself away as a fellow Engineer by telling McGinnis how she could improve her inventions further.
- She respects both Seven and McGinnis in that their work/moral ethics are a lot like her own but in two seperate bodies. McGinnis somewhat embodies her own morally grey ethics and her work ethic. While Seven represents her constant pursuit to improve her abilities and expand her knowledge along with the ruthlessness when someone decides they want to impede her goals because she herself deems what she believes to be objectively right and since Seven never really harms innocent, unrelated people ON PURPOSE from what I can tell unless they intentionally make themselves an obstacle to him.
- She believes Grey Talon is firmly justified in his anger and that the greatest disrespect one can do for the dead is to let them go unavenged, but she would warn him to know his limits. "You still have someone alive who cares about you. A wife waiting for you back home who you can still spend the rest of the winter years of your life with. Don't hurt her by doing something stupidly suicidal that you have next to no chance of pulling off." And she means this in one of the very rare times she allows any sort of EMOTION to come through as she says it in a very serious tone of voice. Rather than lecturing him like Doorman basically did.
- She doesn't care much for Ixians. Not in a form of hate but a straight up disinterest. They BORE her. She has seen plenty of them back home and none of the ones she has encountered have anything in common with her. And in turn she would have no interactions with people like Abrams or Infernus. At most she would respond to them with; "Lets not do the whole small-talk thing. I'm no good at it anyway. If you wanna talk it can be about tactics so we can secure our wishes from the Patron. Otherwise I ain't interested."
- She despises Warden on a very spiritual level, for he represents a type of 'Order' that she seems to absolutely HATE. "Shut your mouth and keep your eyes forward, puppet. We deal with them, and then I deal with you. We are only allies until they are dead. Then only one of us will be getting their wish from the Patron." Assuming Warden would ever interact with her at all anyway.
- She is on neutral terms with Haze as a fellow Assassin. She deems the OSIC a non-threat to herself but a problem for others that might have to be tackled later if her wish from the Patron falls through. But she does not hold Haze herself accountable for the OSIC's actions and agendas and seperates how she feels about Haze from what she feels of the OSIC. Not that they know who she is anyway underneath the mask. For her mind embodies the phrase; "Your mind is your Castle and Fortress. Nothing enters or leaves save by your will. Any that folly to invade your mind is your prey." as to be expected of a Half-Dwarf with Half Drow/Dark Elf blood in her, a mind as fortified with steel as the mountains of the Dwarves themselves and the mental insulation often needed to survive a backstabbing society like that of Drow/Dark Elves.
- She hates rich snobs like Geist and would simply slap her with a simple “Þegi.” Which as far as I can tell simply means "Be silent." or "Hold your tongue." in old Norse. Reflecting her half-Dwarf lineage.
- When it comes to Drifter there would be an ounce of surprise at the fact that he can actually be civil and ally with people he never met before. She would respond to him with a neutral tone just to reciprocate said relative civility and in some lines she might even give a more satisfying answer to the "What's with the rifle?" line. Where she would answer with "A lot of people here have big egos and want to 'prove themselves'. They're the types that are far more fun to pick apart from a distance as they seethe and rage at getting outdone by positioning and my brains rather than by sheer brawn." Because at the end of the day while she is more 'moral' than someone like him, she's not the least bit squeamish about murder.
- She doesn't care about the rest of the cast to remotely comment on them. Not even someone like Ivy. But she wouldn't really have a reason to be hostile with them either.
This is going to be rather long cause I went into actual detail on this cause it's not just some goofy 1950's supernatural phenomena gimmick hero like a lot of the others I see on here.
AIslop image is unfortunately the only image I have for this hero;
Night Owl, a hero standing at only 4 feet tall while looking like a little mini owlbear wielding a suppressed Sniper Rifle. Playing on many mysticism related things pertaining to owls.
Under the mask she is a strange girl of alien-- almost cosmic tendencies. Half-Dwarf and Half-Drow Elf (or whatever Valve ends up calling Dwarves and Drow/Dark Elves in the Deadlock universe-- if they choose anything at all) that excels at arcane engineering. White, long and messy white hair. Sapphire blue eyes. A rather round, youthful face that never really fades as the pointed, angular physical traits of the Drow/Dark Elves get sanded down into the rounded-- almost cute features that she has by the more rugged side of her genes. Her elf-like ears are somewhat short and compact compared to that of pureblooded Elves. Often smells of soot, oil and the forge due to her work. If she's not outright coated in soot at a glance.
She carries herself with an icy, aloof and distant air that sometimes hinges slightly on regalness. But at the same time manages to be relatively amicable. To most she is simply known as The Night Owl. To a select few she is known as Ekyha. She combines the engineering genius of dwarves with the assassin/hunter-centric capabilities that is often seen in Drow/Dark Elves across fiction while giving it a mysticism related theme (namely that of the Owl) that is more 'cosmic' in theme rather than occult. Dwarves and Drow/Dark Elves in this setting in the lore I am kinda painting together here, are implied to be a common pairing since they both absolutely hate wood elves and often bond over how much they hate those 'wimpy leaf-lovers'. And that Ekyha is not the first, nor the last Dwarf/Drow half-breed.
Ultimately however, even if she were to succeed in the Ritual, her story would lead to the fact that not even the Patrons can touch the firmament that the person she is after did and that in turn she must either make a different wish or leave empty-handed. Ekyha in turn would then ask for a way to reach said point all on her own then and in turn she is given a strange pendant with a deep sapphire blue gem with a 4 pointed star emblem in the middle of it and be told by the Patron along the lines of, "This spark is all I can provide. You must find a way to ignite it yourself and find your way on your own with it's power." But she would ultimately accept it, and maybe even actually thank the Patron before moving on.
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Ekyha at first came to the Cursed Apple to learn things. Namely industry-level tech to improve her craft that she inherited from both her mother and her father. As in her words; "Dwarven technology is already absurd by all accounts. But imagine how much more it can be improved with modern day industrial technology and processes. Combine Dwarven and Drow ingenuity with American industry and you get something beyond imagining." As she eventually opened her own Foundry. She would process and sell materials to others, becoming quite popular due to the sheer quality of the metals she would produce and with how well she was able to combine both actual magic and the occult into said works.
Eventually however she would become more and more aware of the issues of this world and began working on certain pet projects. In time she would begin getting involved with the various troubles of the Cursed Apple. Forging a second identity that simply became known as The Night Owl. She keeps the two identities entirely seperate and almost never exposes it to others. Never even so much as taking off her mask when out in the field. She would gradually become a high-profile individual, an Assassin that was as untraceable and silent as the wind itself. The only things ever indicating her presence usually being a body with a bullet impact mark on an adjacent surface seething with magical power.
Unknown to everyone else, this did not entirely happen on it's own. To those within Ekhya's very private social circle, she explains how she was once met by a strange woman. And after a rather long and insightful conversation she had decided that becoming The Night Owl was the direction in life she wanted to take. But she has not seen the woman since said meeting. She has searched high and low, all trails going cold but pointing towards one thing. The woman she met had left these realms. ALL of the known realms to somewhere else entirely beyond even the Astral Gates. And in a slight obsessive compulsion, she wishes to find the woman again and know more about her since clearly there was more to learn from her. To this end, this is why she now takes part in the Ritual.
She believes that she MUST find her again, because she believes she that said encounter with that strange woman was something beyond even that of the Patrons, a being that freely traverses the cosmic webways unlike said 'old gods' and in turn wishes to use said Patrons to find a way to said woman wherever she may be and learn more from her in an aspiration to become more like her-- as she follows the path of the stars and the celestials themselves as guiding keys towards venturing into the truly unknown. As whoever it is she encountered has inspired her to look beyond the earthly things she had been raised to know by her parents and in turn look more towards the stars themselves for the truly un-pioneered.
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Night Owl is a short, stocky girl with a fixation on the cosmic and unknown as she tried to apply the things she has learned about the stars themselves to BOTH of her lines of work. In the case of applying it when she masquerades as "The Night Owl" it comes through in her aesthetic choice of the Owl. A creature that represents arcane knowledge and secrets but is also a profound, silent and unrivaled hunter in the night. Hunting from afar she takes her shots at the enemy, relying on the countless eyes she has placed all across the city to know more than anyone else possibly does and perfect positioning so that she is never caught flat-footed as she gets into position and leaves a trail of perforated bodies in her wake. For as she was once told; "The universe does not care for your morals. It only cares who you stand and fight for. Everything is fair game as long as the objectively innocent are left untouched."
Base Health: 600 (1600 at Max Boons)
Base Move Speed: 6.5
Sprint Speed: 4.5
No movement speed increases via alternate scalings
Only 2 Stamina and in one of the slower 'dash buckets'
Weapon: Nebryss - Sniper Rifle
"A rifle of many meanings and interpretations that ultimately link together and are related to one another. But no matter what interpretation comes to one's mind when seeing Nebryss, there is one universal truth. Nebryss does not produce the usual rapport of a Sniper. It isn’t a 'thunder' or a 'boom.' It is a swift, quiet death. The rifle that removes things from the world at distances where retaliation stops being a concept and is never heard. The only sign that she was ever there being the body she leaves behind."
Base Ammo: 15
Base Bullet Damage: 25 (+1 per boon)
Fire Rate: 1.5 bullets per second
Ideally the rifle would be something like this in terms of general shape but leaning super hard into arcane/high-cosmic aesthetics and design cues like this with a big chonky suppressor on it as it fires out cosmic-trailed sapphire blue energy bolts at high muzzle velocity with a suppressed weapon/energy weapon hybrid firing sound. I unfortunately have no pictures that specifically go that far into it. The choice for it to be a high powered bullpup Sniper Rifle being something to be in line with how small she herself is. A compact weapon is basically mandatory for someone as small as her even if it's still a heavy piece of kit that hits like a truck.
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Innate Traits:
- She is small, standing at only like 4 feet tall flat in-lore. So like Rem, she can crouch into the tunnels like he does. Playing into the whole Sniper thing where she takes safer alternative routes to get around to avoid getting caught rotating rather than leaping/flying over the rooftops like her fellow 'snipers' do. But true to that 'tiny owlbear' motif of her's, her silhouette is bulkier and in turn her 'horizontal hitbox' is wider while her 'vertical hitbox' is shorter.
- Has a hard maximum range of 75 meters. Bullets completely disappear after said range. Sharpshooter takes this up to 100 meters. Does it's minimum damage at 50 meters and is increased by Sharpshooter's 20% range fall-off bonus. She is meant to be a low-mobility, vision-based and hard-hitting Sniper rather than a floaty/flying mid-range Marksman like Vindicta or Grey Talon.
- The lowest possible damage per bullet from range fall-off is 50% damage.
- This weapon CANNOT deal Gun Damage. All Gun Damage-- including from items like Headhunter-- is 100% converted into Spirit Damage on hit. This weapon also cannot "crit" from Headshots and cannot proc Headshot items manually. Only Bathysyne can. Ideally this is kept so that she cannot abuse things like Armor Piercing Rounds. A 50% Spirit Resist shred from a combination of several items is frankly more manageable than a Sniper who still does 50% of their damage from their absolute maximum range with the chance to ignore ALL Bullet Resist.
- Zooming in brings up a sniper scope overlay that outlines enemies as red silhouettes as long as you have direct line of sight over them. You can see said outline through Troopers and things like Guardians and Walkers, but obviously walls keeps you from seeing the enemy. Mostly just so it's easier to see enemies in the absolute MESS that are current patch teamfights. Sharpshooter grants a second magnification toggle much like the AWP from CS. Maybe set up a menu so people can customize their scope reticle when zoomed in with the weapon like they do cursors in CSGO to be as goofy or as practical as they wish it to be. But the default would be a simple CS-like sniper crosshair.
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Ability 1: Astrivane
"Astrivane is a word from back home. What does it mean? Basically it means; 'The stars themselves point the way.' A projectile aligned to the invisible currents between stars — it moves where it must, not where it is aimed."
When toggled on: The next shot you make will ricochet to an infinite number of enemies within a 15 meter range of the impacted target but can only hit each enemy once. This shot is able to proc Eye of the Deep's Discharge on every target it hits if the initial shot rolled a proc. 25 second cooldown. Does 100% of your on-hit damage + Discharge damage (if you proc'd it) to all targets. This ability is set by a Toggle to be Auto-Casted whenever you shoot while it's off cooldown. This Auto-Cast counts as a proper ability cast for items like Spellslinger and Ballistic Enhancement. This enhanced attack counts as an attack reset in an Express Shot-esque way. It cannot be fired without ammo loaded and spends a bullet when it is fired.
1 AP: +10 meter ricochet range
2 AP: Your chance to proc Eye of the Deep is doubled when firing Astrivane
5 AP: -15 second cooldown. Shooting terrain will cause the bullet to ricochet to any nearby enemy targets. But a missed shot has a lower initial target range of only around 10 meters and this missed shot range cannot be expanded at all by any items. After the initial missed shot bounce it has the regular bounce range.
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Ability 2: Oculon
Pull out a slingshot and fire it at a given surface to attach an Oculon onto it. The Oculon is basically an eye shaped eidolon the size of a tennis ball with a glowing blue pupil. This minion will see everything that passes any of it's possible lines of sight in a 50 meter radius and alert you and your team with an automatic "I see X" (but only once every so often per enemy) ping. These eyes are permanent and small but not stealthed and instantly die to any form of damage. (This is to say if you are playing against a Seven and place them near likely combat zones you're gonna see most of them get microwaved every time he ults.) They do not give away their position in any way apart from simply not being stealthed, no sounds or 'you are seen' indicators.
If an enemy gets too close (within like 4-5 meters) it will shriek and explode in a disorienting sapphire colored flash of light that flashbangs the enemy that triggered it and reveals them to your entire team through walls for 3 seconds. Making it both a surveillance tool and a non-lethal trap that acts as an alarm. The traps cannot be set above any areas players can go to, so don't try to stick it to the incomplete under-side of the yellow lane bridge or something like that.
If you find yourself getting ganked a lot, you might want to exercise some situational awareness, get on a rooftop and check for the eyes on roofs and on high-walls. The eyes glow a deep blue and while it's not bright, it's still standout enough to notice if you take your eyes off the ground for a minute since there aren't many blue surfaces on the map at all to begin with.
1 AP: +1 charge
2 AP: +1 charge, longer deployment ranges
5 AP: It highlights enemies it has spotted as red outlines through walls for you and teammates to directly see. Outline instantly vanishes the moment the enemy leaves the eye's line of sight.
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Ability 3: Bathysyne
Every shot has a 30% chance to discharge an extra instance of Spirit damage on top of the original fired shot's damage that does damage in a 5 meter radius around the target. This effect can also apply on Split Shot, Ricochet and 'Astrivane'. Eye of the Deep discharges count as Headshots and proc Headshot related items like Headhunter, Spirit Rend and so on. This proc damage is not affected by range fall-off. Base Proc Damage is 40.
1 AP: +25% Fire Rate for yourself for 3 seconds and a 75% movement slow for the target for 0.75 seconds on Proc. Proc Damage is now 60.
2 AP: Proc Damage is now 80 and become immune to the firing penalty for the same amount of time. (Basically her only real movement mechanic, no built in leaps, dashes, teleports, etc. and is her only real innate escape tool-- backpedaling while shooting.)
5 AP: Proc Damage is now 100 and proc chance is boosted to 40%. Fired shots in general have a slight magnetism effect and you have very slight aim assist in close range (but it also gives said slight aim assist at longer ranges while zoomed in too)
(Akin to Halo Infinite cause let's be honest, it'd be needed for a low RPM rifle on a character with ZERO mobility that doesn't have anything like what Vindicta and Grey Talon have available to them to be annoying with. On top of how mobile and BRRRRT-y everyone else is by comparison as well. Grey Talon's form of this is his Rain of Arrows Multishot basically acting as what MAY AS WELL BE an aim assist anyway by being a wide, almost unmissable shot with basically no cooldown once you have Duration + Cooldown. So it's not like this would be particularly out of line. But it's also why this weapon cannot headshot or manually proc Headshot related items. Because said very small aim assist might skew it too much.)
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Ability 4 - Parallaxis
"What's the strongest weapon of a Sniper? Misdirection. And the best way to misdirect? You give the enemy a decoy-- a veritable parallax or illusion-- to blow their entire toolkits on. Making the enemy second guess by having a veritable twin is often all you need."
Pressing 4 will summon a semi-autonomous clone that fires on any jungle monsters or enemy heroes that you do, passively attacks troopers within a 50 meter radius that it can see unless you are crouched, and otherwise loosely roams around close to you. Pressing 4 on an allied or enemy trooper will order it to walk down the nearest lane like a trooper and push said lane and attack any structures it encounters. This clone only deals 25% of your damage and takes 300% damage but benefits from all your item effects like Lifesteal, Ricochet and so on.
Pressing 4 once again will call the clone back to you. Clone has a 30 second cooldown and doesn't begin ticking until the Clone is destroyed. Otherwise the clone is permanent. When used properly this clone can throw off enemy targeting. Like ordering the clone to push down a lane with the team while you sit in cover waiting for the enemy to ideally waste an initiation on the clone since it was pushing alongside your team.
This clone has no range fall-off on it's damage since it only attacks things within a 50 meter radius anyway and already only does a fraction of your own damage. The clone cannot proc Lightning Scroll.
The clone can do many of the things Rem's Helpers can, except it can actually be directly stopped with CC or killing it.
1 AP: Clone's damage taken is reduced from 300% to 200%
2 AP: +10% Clone Damage (from 25% of your own damage up to 35%)
5 AP: If you get knocked down to 25% HP or less, you will enter stealth, have all non-ultimate debuffs purged from you and be flung away from a newly spawned temporary clone that instantly takes your place to fool enemies. Said temporary clone also has their own twin as your permanent clone is converted into a temporary one and effectively recalled back to you as the two temporary twins fight whoever did the damage to you to fool them while kiting away from the direction you got flung into. You will be flung in whatever applicable direction pushes you more towards your own base/nearest allied tower. Said temporary clones only deal 25% damage but only take 100% of damage from enemies.
For 3 seconds you are true stealthed and cannot be seen at all (but can still be hit by random damage), but after those 3 seconds normal stealth rules apply. Said stealth in general lasts 10 seconds. Once the effect is over you can re-summon your permanent clone. Said 'bail out' effect has a 180 second cooldown that cannot be shortened in any way except for Refresher. (The 5 AP upgrade is honestly one of the ones I can definitely be convinced to change if this were to ever be considered in any serious way if people have suggestions that isn't just some generic stat buff.)
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Ideal Build:
Titanic Magazine
Slowing Bullets
Ricochet
Spirit Rend
Headhunter
Spellslinger
Spiritual Overflow
Sharpshooter
Ballistic Enhancement
Leech
Spirit Burn
+ 1 situational of usually things like;
Silencer
Metal Skin
Magic Carpet/Warp Stone
Counterspell/Ethereal Shift
Siphon Bullets
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Potential Interactions:
Night Owl is not a witty, snarky girl. And she's not needlessly hostile either. She's a very deadpan, aloof, focused and battle-centered girl that simply focuses on efficiency and coordination. Any remarks from others are met with a neutral disposition most of the time unless someone is simply being an ass like Billy and often just calls him an "second-hand armchair whiner that's simply mad that the world didn't just give him everything he wanted on a silver platter".
But on the flipside she also finds Vindicta annoying because she just hates 'ideological squawkers'. The world isn't fair and the only way you ever stop it from trampling you is by getting more powerful. This however is most implied in lore but there should be no interactions in the game itself between her and Vindicta/Billy because it should be an implied basis of "We don't talk to each other outside of tactics and callouts, we don't have an argument and I don't have to put bullets into you."
Because at the end of the day she does not care what one's ambition is in this moment. If they fail the ritual she will simply hunt any 'ideological opposition' later. If they succeed in the ritual it won't matter because getting her wish means she won't even be in any of the known realms anymore and in turn none of it will be her problem.
She has no official ties to anybody and she implies everything she might know about a given person is purely from reputation. As would be the same of anyone talking to her, only knowing the rumors of The Night Owl.
- She would likely in a subtle way give herself away as a fellow Engineer by telling McGinnis how she could improve her inventions further.
- She respects both Seven and McGinnis in that their work/moral ethics are a lot like her own but in two seperate bodies. McGinnis somewhat embodies her own morally grey ethics and her work ethic. While Seven represents her constant pursuit to improve her abilities and expand her knowledge along with the ruthlessness when someone decides they want to impede her goals because she herself deems what she believes to be objectively right and since Seven never really harms innocent, unrelated people ON PURPOSE from what I can tell unless they intentionally make themselves an obstacle to him.
- She believes Grey Talon is firmly justified in his anger and that the greatest disrespect one can do for the dead is to let them go unavenged, but she would warn him to know his limits. "You still have someone alive who cares about you. A wife waiting for you back home who you can still spend the rest of the winter years of your life with. Don't hurt her by doing something stupidly suicidal that you have next to no chance of pulling off." And she means this in one of the very rare times she allows any sort of EMOTION to come through as she says it in a very serious tone of voice. Rather than lecturing him like Doorman basically did.
- She doesn't care much for Ixians. Not in a form of hate but a straight up disinterest. They BORE her. She has seen plenty of them back home and none of the ones she has encountered have anything in common with her. And in turn she would have no interactions with people like Abrams or Infernus. At most she would respond to them with; "Lets not do the whole small-talk thing. I'm no good at it anyway. If you wanna talk it can be about tactics so we can secure our wishes from the Patron. Otherwise I ain't interested."
- She despises Warden on a very spiritual level, for he represents a type of 'Order' that she seems to absolutely HATE. "Shut your mouth and keep your eyes forward, puppet. We deal with them, and then I deal with you. We are only allies until they are dead. Then only one of us will be getting their wish from the Patron." Assuming Warden would ever interact with her at all anyway.
- She is on neutral terms with Haze as a fellow Assassin. She deems the OSIC a non-threat to herself but a problem for others that might have to be tackled later if her wish from the Patron falls through. But she does not hold Haze herself accountable for the OSIC's actions and agendas and seperates how she feels about Haze from what she feels of the OSIC. Not that they know who she is anyway underneath the mask. For her mind embodies the phrase; "Your mind is your Castle and Fortress. Nothing enters or leaves save by your will. Any that folly to invade your mind is your prey." as to be expected of a Half-Dwarf with Half Drow/Dark Elf blood in her, a mind as fortified with steel as the mountains of the Dwarves themselves and the mental insulation often needed to survive a backstabbing society like that of Drow/Dark Elves.
- She hates rich snobs like Geist and would simply slap her with a simple “Þegi.” Which as far as I can tell simply means "Be silent." or "Hold your tongue." in old Norse. Reflecting her half-Dwarf lineage.
- When it comes to Drifter there would be an ounce of surprise at the fact that he can actually be civil and ally with people he never met before. She would respond to him with a neutral tone just to reciprocate said relative civility and in some lines she might even give a more satisfying answer to the "What's with the rifle?" line. Where she would answer with "A lot of people here have big egos and want to 'prove themselves'. They're the types that are far more fun to pick apart from a distance as they seethe and rage at getting outdone by positioning and my brains rather than by sheer brawn." Because at the end of the day while she is more 'moral' than someone like him, she's not the least bit squeamish about murder.
- She doesn't care about the rest of the cast to remotely comment on them. Not even someone like Ivy. But she wouldn't really have a reason to be hostile with them either.
