Spectre:
(vaguely resembling Haze. Tall, skeletal figure with no hair and a sort of weird aura trailing behind her when she moves.)
"Spectre is everywhere at once"
"Spectre vanishes. Spectre moves enemies. Spectre chases enemies. And Spectres haunt enemies."
She is a fast hero by default (meaning without items). Deals less damage than most and also having a somewhat less health than other heroes.
3 Stamina
A light wind-up gun like McGinnis with no movement penalty while shooting and half the damage.
1 - Material Shift: Shoot a fast projectile that either knocks back enemies or pulls them to where player shot from depending on input (knockback or pull distance at minimum slightly weaker than Bebop's uppercut distance but the further you shoot from the further it pulls). Hit enemies have their turn rate decreased for the duration of the knockback or pull. Medium duration cooldown (15s?).
2 - Spectral Sprint: Passive: Move through allies to give you and your ally a movement speed buff for 3 seconds. Move through enemies to cause the opposite effect for enemies. Destroys boxes simply by moving (like Calico / Ava). Active: Temporary movement buff. High cooldown for active.
3 - Haunted: Passive: Reduce spirit resist and cause spirit lifesteal when shooting enemy heroes in the back. Active: Spawn and attach a Spectre to all enemy heroes who then suffer melee damage for several seconds (like Spectre from Dota 2). Allows player to take place of a ghost at will (with buffs). High cooldown.
4 - United Division / Divided Unison / Spectre: Place Spectre at your position if you don't have one yet. Activate to swap bodies with Spectre. Upon switch, receive move speed and (?) resistances. The inactive Spectre in invincible and provides vision to your team.
Switching to a Spectre in the third ability should automatically apply said movement debuff from Spectral Sprint.
There's a lot to unpack about the fourth ability. I think it'd be interesting if the duration it took to swap to your Spectre as well as the cooldown after the swap were dependent on the distance between your current Spectre and the Spectre you're swapping to. Like maybe:
35m distance or less: near instant swap, 9s cooldown. 100m or further: 3s swap duration, 40s cooldown (less than a third of Mirage's Traveler cooldown).
This would enable you to poke at a (preferably singular) target from 2 sides if you are prepared and have a Spectre on both sides of a lane for example. The cooldown is much shorter than Mirage's teleport ability because his is much more flexible as he can directly teleport to any ally and any enemy who is visible on the minimap. Spectre needs more of a plan and use foresight.
Lore ideas:
Manipulative, psychopathic megalomaniac with behavior resembling that of a virus. Originally a to-be-cloned test subject; said experiment went wrong ending up with her receiving this power. Thinks she can outsmart the Patron. Her wish is to capture her Spectres. Actually wants to be able to turn over anyone's body into her Spectre (perhaps wants to become "godlike"). Hates Haze and the OSIC. The OSIC knows her and her plans but deem her too stupid and weak to pull it off. Spectre learned to "get help" from "allies" through manipulation. Likes Seven cause they're on a similar wavelength in terms of being straight up villains. Hates Engineers and Scientists like McGinnis and Dynamo even though she is glad she got these powers now.
(vaguely resembling Haze. Tall, skeletal figure with no hair and a sort of weird aura trailing behind her when she moves.)
"Spectre is everywhere at once"
"Spectre vanishes. Spectre moves enemies. Spectre chases enemies. And Spectres haunt enemies."
This hero's abilities resemble that of Spectre from Dota 2, as well as [URL='https://youtu.be/piInF0he2aU?si=tB7-J0iade1E4SeT']Skopos from Rainbow Six Siege (a rather recent Operator who's wheelchair bound and instead of actually fighting in the game, she remotely controls two robots you can switch between mid combat)[/URL], among others. I imagine her to be a bit more of a supportive hero, providing information and movement speed to her allies.She is a fast hero by default (meaning without items). Deals less damage than most and also having a somewhat less health than other heroes.
3 Stamina
A light wind-up gun like McGinnis with no movement penalty while shooting and half the damage.
1 - Material Shift: Shoot a fast projectile that either knocks back enemies or pulls them to where player shot from depending on input (knockback or pull distance at minimum slightly weaker than Bebop's uppercut distance but the further you shoot from the further it pulls). Hit enemies have their turn rate decreased for the duration of the knockback or pull. Medium duration cooldown (15s?).
2 - Spectral Sprint: Passive: Move through allies to give you and your ally a movement speed buff for 3 seconds. Move through enemies to cause the opposite effect for enemies. Destroys boxes simply by moving (like Calico / Ava). Active: Temporary movement buff. High cooldown for active.
3 - Haunted: Passive: Reduce spirit resist and cause spirit lifesteal when shooting enemy heroes in the back. Active: Spawn and attach a Spectre to all enemy heroes who then suffer melee damage for several seconds (like Spectre from Dota 2). Allows player to take place of a ghost at will (with buffs). High cooldown.
4 - United Division / Divided Unison / Spectre: Place Spectre at your position if you don't have one yet. Activate to swap bodies with Spectre. Upon switch, receive move speed and (?) resistances. The inactive Spectre in invincible and provides vision to your team.
Switching to a Spectre in the third ability should automatically apply said movement debuff from Spectral Sprint.
There's a lot to unpack about the fourth ability. I think it'd be interesting if the duration it took to swap to your Spectre as well as the cooldown after the swap were dependent on the distance between your current Spectre and the Spectre you're swapping to. Like maybe:
35m distance or less: near instant swap, 9s cooldown. 100m or further: 3s swap duration, 40s cooldown (less than a third of Mirage's Traveler cooldown).
This would enable you to poke at a (preferably singular) target from 2 sides if you are prepared and have a Spectre on both sides of a lane for example. The cooldown is much shorter than Mirage's teleport ability because his is much more flexible as he can directly teleport to any ally and any enemy who is visible on the minimap. Spectre needs more of a plan and use foresight.
Possible upgrades for 4: Tier 2: Upon activation, cause a damaging pull towards the current position of the player and a knockback outwards from the position of the Spectre you're swapping to simultaneously.Tier 3: Grab an ally to transport them to your other Spectre upon activationThe tier 2 to be fair sounds too finnicky to get much use out of and the tier 3 I originally included the ability to grab enemies until I realized that that would mean you could pull someone into your spawn area if you had your Spectre there. So I cut that out.Lore ideas:
Manipulative, psychopathic megalomaniac with behavior resembling that of a virus. Originally a to-be-cloned test subject; said experiment went wrong ending up with her receiving this power. Thinks she can outsmart the Patron. Her wish is to capture her Spectres. Actually wants to be able to turn over anyone's body into her Spectre (perhaps wants to become "godlike"). Hates Haze and the OSIC. The OSIC knows her and her plans but deem her too stupid and weak to pull it off. Spectre learned to "get help" from "allies" through manipulation. Likes Seven cause they're on a similar wavelength in terms of being straight up villains. Hates Engineers and Scientists like McGinnis and Dynamo even though she is glad she got these powers now.
Thought process:I got the idea for this hero after I complained about the diversity of support heroes in Deadlock on a discord. My first idea was the 2 bodies ability of Skopos from R6. I somehow immediately thought of the name "Spectre" as a visual design resembling that of Spectre from Dota 2. Then I remembered the game Spectre Divide where you also control 2 bodies (although those also count as 2 lives, unlike Skopos and this hero idea here). Afterwards I thought of the Dota 2 hero and how their ult could fit into Deadlock. So then I was missing two more abilities. I thought, if you're gonna be essentially teleporting often, I should double down and make this character fast too and then give them abilities or passives that benefit Spectre from outpositioning enemy heroes. That's how I thought of the backstab-like passive in Haunted and the displacement ability from Material Shift. The image on the left is my current wallpaper and comes from Bungie's upcoming (?) game Marathon which probably played a role in how I made up the lore and abilities purely because of the visuals.The lore ideas I think would be very exciting and fresh for a game like Deadlock (the outsmart Patron part especially). Don't or can't know how much it even makes sense with the intended lore of the game.As for the brief hero description sentences, I always look at all the other Deadlock heroes and what their descriptions sound like to not fall out of line. Obviously in this case, it's quite unorthodox. But that's intentional and I believe would fit the game. Only problem might be that my vision for her as a more supportive hero doesn't align with how I introduced her there.
