[Hero Concept] Zero, DRAGON BALL Z character with ZEUS ULTI (artwork)

[arcsymus]

Zero

Google Sheet - Zero
Story: Zero is in an effect a patient zero of his own maniacal experiments. In his quest seeking immortality and transcendence beyond the five senses, Zero launched an inquisition merging science with the occult, opening the first of astral gates that connected the mortal plane to spiritual realms. After spending what seemed an eternity trying to find his way back to the mortal plane, he had found himself set back in comparison to the world that had developed without him. Zero’s genius only benefited from this new knowledge, and he made rapid advancements into new fields of study, notably by taking the process of animating objects with an artificial soul known as candelization, and adapting it to restore the flesh of mortal souls. Numbers One through Six failed these experiments; but Seven is the first of these experiments which survived candelization, though the technique had not been perfected.





Appearance: Zero has gray, ashen-colored skin.​

Pitch: Employ deception and mobility as a combat mage. Push enemies and cloak your actions with Cloak Feint, while holding onto Flash Point to psyche out opponents. Land a Hypnotize to disable enemies and draw them in for large area attacks, and finish enemies off wherever they are with global damage.

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Movement: Zero hovers above the ground. He can not slide and can not jump. Instead, holding the jump button increases the elevation that he hovers, to a maximum height. Releasing the jump button causes Zero to drop in elevation. Zero falls slowly while above his maximum altitude, or rises up while below his minimum altitude. Altitude is relative to the ground level beneath him. Zero is able to effectively mount obstacles. Rather than dashing, Zero’s movement speed is increased while holding Shift, draining his stamina gradually.

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Gun: Zero is able to charge up his attack, increasing its size and damage, while also exploding in an area relative to charge duration. After charging for 3 seconds, Zero hits a tipping point and begins charging a spirit based attack that gains significantly in size, damage and explosion radius, at the expense of projectile velocity and Zero’s movement speed.

Mouse1: Fire your base projectile, or fire the projectile that you have charged up. Base projectile is a small orb that moves at a constant, fast velocity. Medium fire rate, low-medium damage, perfect accuracy. High clip capacity.

Mouse2: Hold to charge your projectile attack. Charged up attacks gain several properties. Charged attacks scale in size and damage, and as well cause an explosion around the point of contact that scales to a bigger AoE as the attack is charged. Enemies caught in the explosion take 50% of the attack’s total damage (this damage is non-redundant with collision damage).

There is a tipping point where a charged attack becomes large enough it must be held above Zero’s head. The increase to damage accelerates, while Zero’s movement speed and projectile velocity scale downwards past this tipping point. Attack damage past this point scales with Spirit (retains former damage scaling by bullet damage). Zero can not dash while holding a charge that has crossed this tipping point.

Attacks can only be charged to clip capacity. (Base clip starts with one full-charge capacity.) Zero’s charged attack before hitting the tipping point reaches 300% bullet damage with a 3m radius explosion after 3 seconds. After the tipping point, Zero’s charged attack scales to 300% of Zero’s Spirit, with a 7m radius explosion, after a total of 7 seconds, while Zero’s movement speed and projectile velocity declines to 25%.

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Cloak Feint: Throw your cloak in target direction, creating an opaque moving barrier that stops all projectiles from passing through (and constitutes a wall), damaging enemies (spirit) that it contacts and pushing them back. Cloak Feint can be reactivated to cancel the spell. This cloak appears a lot bigger than on his model, as it grows to size in the first 0.4s of its casting animation.

[Rank 1] Create a slowing aura around the cloak.
[Rank 2] Enemies in the slowing aura can’t dash.
[Rank 3] Enemies in the slowing aura have all movement based skills and items silenced.

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Flash Point: Zero immediately teleports a fixed distance in his facing direction 18 meters. (Warp Stone effect.)

[Rank 1] Reduce cooldown.
[Rank 2] Increase Zero’s movement speed by 50% for 3 seconds after using Flash Point.
[Rank 3] Increase the rate that Zero charges attacks by 50% for 3 seconds after using Flash Point.

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Hypnotize: Project a hypnotizing shape immediately in front of Zero. All enemies looking straight on towards the hypnotizing shape within a medium-large range lose control and move towards the shape, and are subject to a hypnotizing visual effect that inhibits their vision of the screen. Lasts for 1.25 seconds.

[Rank 1] If an enemy hero contacts the hypnotic shape, reduce the cooldown by 35% of its current cooldown.
[Rank 2] Enemy heroes who are affected by the hypnotic shape for any amount of time have all of their cooldowns frozen for 5 seconds.
[Rank 3] Hypnotized enemies receive 25% more damage from all sources.

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Oblivion Dream: Damage all enemies heroes on the map, regardless of range. (Spirit damage)

[Rank 1] Enemies take an additional 5% of their maximum health in damage. (Spirit)
[Rank 2] Reveals enemies struck on the minimap for 5 seconds.
[Rank 3] Enemies below 10% of their maximum health after receiving damage from Oblivion Dream are executed.

 

[arcsymus]

Designer Notes: At this point in my comprehension of Deadlock’s balance, I’m not confident that the numbers I’m producing for this character’s attack are balanced, and as well I am not trying to conceive of particulars to do with base stats or certain scaling factors. Nevertheless, I think I’ve managed to paint a comprehensible picture of what this character’s design is about.

This character is inspired by Dragonball Z, which you can see, as Kamehameha and Spirit Bomb are integrated into Zero’s base attack. I strayed from the norm of character designs with movement and gun, while keeping things tame and simple with Zero’s ability designs. Originally I was intending for his Kamehameha ability to be a generic ability, but I’ve been realizing how much more can be done with basic attacks recently and decided that this would make for an interesting charged attack. I like that his attack scales with spirit for the ‘spirit bomb’ portion of the attack, augmenting the feasibility of spirit builds, which only significantly affect his Zeus ulti in terms of where his power is coming from with his kit.

I’d been considering a few options for how to proceed with the rest of his kit, and the first ability that I stuck with was Cloak Feint, not having much of a goal in mind for this one until I began to conceive of ways that Zero might be able to deceive his enemies by hiding his actions. The way that I’m imagining this play out is that Zero could throw his cloak and either follow up by throwing his spirit bomb behind it (canceling cloak before it strikes), or, by paying close attention to his spacing, he could teleport behind an enemy, and the enemy wouldn’t know which to expect. I’m not sure if there’s really any benefit to hiding it behind his cloak, rather than teleporting, because teleporting seems the more consistent option for delivering a spirit bomb, except that teleporting into the fray makes Zero vulnerable, when he’s supposed to be fragile.

Either way, enemies should be frightened of where to look or else they could be caught by a Hypnotize, which is another way that Zero can use Cloak Feint to deceive his enemies–by following his cloak and casting Hypnotize before ending the feint. I think there are enough interesting possibilities with this character to justify these different elements of his kit, where I’m not worried that something won’t work out well between them.

Choosing to include Zeus ultimate seemed like a pragmatic choice, although it doesn’t explicitly have synergy with the rest of his kit. I see Zero as a magician, which is why I included Hypnotize, and it may seem that Oblivion Dream doesn’t tie into his story, but I see Zero as a generically powerful character, rather than someone who is explicitly a scientist or reanimator, and chose to represent him as thus, which in a sense I believe justifies the omnipotent nature of Oblivion Dream.

I took creative liberties with the story, with his movement and attack, in a way that I hope contributes to the story, or to the foundational mechanics of the game’s design.

 

[arcsymus]

Zero benefits 200% from Movement Speed

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Flash Point: Zero begins charging a teleport (with the same effect as Warp Stone) that starts with a 10 meter range, and extends to a 30 meter range over 3 seconds, before cooling down back from 30 seconds to 10 seconds. If Zero does not activate Flash Point during this time, the cooldown is put on a shortened timer. Zero can perform all actions normally while Flash Point is charging, and capitalizes on the teleport he's charging by reactivating the skill.

[Rank 1] Increase Zero's vertical movement speed (on the space bar) while charging Flash Point.
[Rank 2] Increase Zero’s movement speed by 50% while charging Flash Point.
[Rank 3] Increase the rate that Zero charges attacks by 50% while charging Flash Point.