Hero Idea: Fleshcraft (Toggable Melee Tank, Mars, Half Life Deathmatch)

[Sarus]

Hero Design: Big guy with a parasite attached to his arm. Think parasyte (manga) or prototype (action game). Or could be a big old occult flesh golem, see Resident Evil's Nemesis, Marvel's Venom, the MAXX, etc etc.

Hero concept: Chunky front-line melee tank, with Mars spear, a unique melee transformation ability, and my favorite, an ability to drop auto-tracking creatures that function very similarly to Dystopia's spider mines or even the beloved Snarks from Half Life Deathmatch. Fleshcraft concept also allows unique visual flair for transformation and the fleshling/snark ability.


Ability 1: Flesh-Scythe
+2 m/s +25% bullet resist 3s transformation time

Transforms your gun into a unique weapon, granting you bonus movespeed and bullet resist. Cannot fire with your gun or use any other abilities than this one. Light melee range is extended and now rakes in all struck enemies towards you. Heavy melee now has damage amplification and knocks back struck enemies. Damage dealt is amplification of your current weapon damage.

1. +1 m/s
2. +10% bullet resist
3. Light melee now roots for 1s, transformation time is now 1s.


Ability concept: Unique toggable transformation ability that temporarily disables the hero's gun and abilities, and changes the way his melee functions. Allows him to function as a displacement tank quite effectively and gives unique melee mechanics. Visually, makes it easier for the enemy to understand what's going on when they see this hero running around with a scythe as well. Transformation time is mostly in place to tone down laning combos so the hero isn't quite as cheesy


Ability 2 - Fleshlings
35s CD 5m tracking

Your symbiote lays a fleshling creature that automatically track nearby enemies, attaching themselves and exploding on contact. Attachment duration time is 0.5s and prevents stamina usage and movement based abilities. The fleshlings prioritize the nearest enemy heroes.

1. +4m to fleshling tracking
2. +1 fleshlings
3. Drains 1 stamina for every successful attachment.
NOTE: much like snarks, the fleshlings would auto explode with no nearby target within 2 seconds or so.

Ability Concept: Inspired by the spider-mines from the source mod dystopia/snarks from half life death match, these auto track all nearby heroes for a short duration. Very useful for sniffing out enemies behind veils, using invis, attempting to hide in juke closets, or simply hiding behind cover. Since Juking is such a big deal in deadlock, I believe there would be room for a unique anti-juking ability, also I just love Snarks and would love to see a thematic successor in a new Valve game

Ability 3 - Harpoon
40s CD

The symbiote transforms into a harpoon cannon, damaging each enemy unit it strikes. The first enemy hero it hits is skewered on the spear, pushing it back. If a skewered hero hits any surface, they will be impaled to it and stunned. Press 3 again to fire, and MOUSE 2 to cancel ability.

1. -10s CD
2. + damage increase
3. Projectile velocity increased, and if one or more enemies are struck in path of spear, they are all knocked back.


Ability concept: Spear of Mars. Pretty simple port, great for initiation, ganking, or disabling a target mid-fight. I actually forgot about Mars when I first wrote this, so I don't think this ability would be out of place at all. Again, the visual theme would come in handy here if they see a big fleshy cannon pointed in their direction.

Ability 4 - God Press
60CD

Charge and then propel yourself forward into the enemy with a mighty lariat. The longer you charge, the faster and further you are propelled. Pushing the enemy into a wall stuns for 1.5s and deals bonus damage. Can be cancelled at any time with MOUSE 3. Drags along both friends and enemies.

1. +damage bonus
2. Wall slam bonus damage increased
3. -20s CD



Ability concept: Inspired by Primal Beast's onslaught and SNK's Rugal. I had originally wanted Primal Beast's Pulverize, but I figured that would just be a power-creep of Mo's ult. Generous hitbox to hopefully snag a hero or two. Chargeable both on the ground and in the air, it would function a bit similarily to Abram's shoulder charge, but much much more satisfying to land. Mother of all initiations.

Default Fire: A default weapon that functions similarly to the Hivehand from Half-Life 1 would be cool and thematic. Auto-tracks a bit if fired towards an enemy hero and cannot headshot at all. For the sake of balance, would also deal less damage than most guns in the game.

 

[Sarus]

updated/completed concept

 

[Chilla9001]

Cool concept, symbiotes are cool. A 3 second transformation time sounds WAY too long, I'd make it half that at least, as for the ability itself, pulling in enemies with a scythe makes sense, pushing them back however is kinda contradictory, symbiotes in fiction can normally change their shape very quickly so what if its a scythe for the basic melee, but when you charge it up it morphs into a blunt weapon (hammer, fist etc...) and then morphs back when the melee's done.

The 3rd ability and Ult seem way too similar, and his ult is kinda just Abram's 2. What if instead of pushing folks along Fleshcraft's path and also pinned folks to walls, it functioned as a charge that starts off as slow but quickly ramps its speed up, and any enemy you come in contact with gets knocked up, with the knock up duration scaling with how fast you're going, now that honestly sounds kinda weak when compared to other ults in the game, so what if you hit a wall after having reach a certain speed, you can bounce off it instead of losing all your momentum, and you'd be allowed 2 bounces per ult before your ult stopped after you hit a wall the third time. You could also have it so that the ult gives them resistances from the front, as well as being unable to be ccd while the ult is active, that way he doesnt get burst down before he even reaches high speeds

 

[Sarus]

Thanks for the feedback

"3s transformation is way too long", I agree, but it occurred to me that an instant transformation time would lead to some cheesy combos during laning phase, I think it'd be kind of lame to make a hero that just instantly wins most 1v1 interactions that early. Since this is all just fan-fiction, I'm not putting much into hard numbers - I just wanted to emphasize there would be a bit of timing involved with this powerful ability.

"pushing them back is contradictory", the hard melee bonus is just meant to channel the Earth Spirit/Mars knock-back abilities and assist with displacement during teamfights, the thing I love about deadlock is that the mechanics allow many ways to channel dota abilities into a kit.

"what if it morphed into a hammer" - sounds great to me!

3rd ability is a longish range projectile skillshot, so I disagree a bit, but the Ult is a souped up shoulder charge, I agree. Case use would be different. Funny that you mentioned knock-up because I did consider just a massive ground pound that knocked everyone up in an AOE ala Tidehunter, but I thought that wouldn't be as much fun. I appreciate your time.