Hero kit concept: Thief

gibnewitems

Active member
Using an ability concept from a previous thread of mine (viewable here)

Goal with this concept was to create a hero concept with a pseudo-ability as their alternative fire (right-click for most heroes). Had this concept down on paper for a long time.

I reused Lash's grapple for the 2nd ability. I think it's by far the most fun ability in the game currently, and I don't even play a lot of lash. Should also make it a hell of a lot easier to add to the game (fat chance)

Primary fire: Basic shotgun. Loads shells one at a time and can be interrupted, similar to Abrams. 6/6 with 0.22 spirit scaling on ammo count.

Secondary: Starts charging the steam gauntlet. Plays an old-fashioned air whistle effect from a train once fully charged. Release to send yourself flying. Distance flown depends on charge time (ranging from less than a dash for a tap to greater than a 2 stamina dash jump for a full charge). 9 second cooldown, reset upon kill.

Vitality stats: Low base HP, low health regen, high movement speed, 3 stamina, -8% innate bullet and spirit resist, spirit scaling on sprint speed.

Abilities:
(1) Rock-it: Throws a brick/rock/glass bottle. That's pretty much it. 8 second cd
Upgrades:
1. Now secures like a melee would
2. +50% travel speed
3. +1 charge and enables ability charges

(2) Grapple: Pull yourself through the air towards a target. Using Grapple also resets your limit of air jumps and dashes.
Upgrades:
1. -19s Cooldown
2. +20m Cast Range and gain +6 weapon damage for 10s
3. +20% fire rate to weapon bonus buff

(3) Smash-and-grab: Activate to leap towards an enemy hero and instantly "borrow" an active item. You can pre-mark which items to steal by clicking the item icon on the player's scorecard (same way you ping items currently. enemies can hear if one of their actives is being marked via an audio cue, but cannot see which active is gonna get stolen). 30s CD (only ticks down with no stolen item in slot, 5s if unsuccessful). This ability is replaced by the stolen active for 6 seconds. This ability can be parried to cancel it's effect.
Upgrades:
1. +25% move speed while carrying a stolen item or soul purse.
2. +1 stamina and 1s unstoppable after activating
3. This ability now steals half of the target's unsecured souls! Wait 15 seconds or kill the target to start securing these souls. Stolen souls appear as a separate purse, right next to your own unsecured souls.

(4) Shine: Activates a quick personal shield that grants invincibility but stops all movement. 25s cooldown. 0.5s duration. Charge based. Cooldown only ticks down while out of combat.
Upgrades:
1. +9 spirit after exiting shine
2. Float and maintain horizontal momentum if cast airborne
3. +1 charge
 
The abilities are fun, but they don't seem to work together too well.
Rock-It is raw damage, but doesn't apply any debuffs, so it's not really useful outside of spirit builds.
Grapple is strong but slightly pointless since the alt-fire already has built in movement and the Thief doesn't really want to be in the air. It might be better if there was a completely different ability here that helped inhibit other enemies, since the Thief seems to be a fast, slippery character.
Smash-and-grab is cool.
Shine acts like a EShift parry, which is fun, although it might be frustrating to fight against since it'd be very rare for the Thief to have it on cooldown once he gets it to 4 charges.

What kind of archetype is the Thief going for? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
 
The abilities are fun, but they don't seem to work together too well.
Rock-It is raw damage, but doesn't apply any debuffs, so it's not really useful outside of spirit builds.
Grapple is strong but slightly pointless since the alt-fire already has built in movement and the Thief doesn't really want to be in the air. It might be better if there was a completely different ability here that helped inhibit other enemies, since the Thief seems to be a fast, slippery character.
Smash-and-grab is cool.
Shine acts like a EShift parry, which is fun, although it might be frustrating to fight against since it'd be very rare for the Thief to have it on cooldown once he gets it to 4 charges.

What kind of archetype is the Thief going for? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
Too, seems like they are going for a spell thief archetype. But for items. This could be both good or bad as some games the other team might not buy any actives. but also might be good because other team didnt buy any actives lol.

that being said I think I agree. Seems like this needs to be a control mage style character themed like a cat burgerler/master heister character. So they need time to plan a head and need to be able to do this.

So the one just being damage seems fine. They will need a damage skill. Its boring though.

Grapple should be an ability that gives you time to set up. First thing that comes to mind is a stealth. Second thing that comes to mind is a long cc. Im leaning towards a CC for the next thing im about to say. (or a grappling hook that lets you spiderman up buildings)

Shine seems fine (lame name Call it Contingency plan) as this could be the thing that the thief needs in order to get off smash and grabs consistently. While stationary, smash and grab should be replaced with a different skill and name it something Heisty (The Setup) where they can target a player and it brings up a menu in the game space that lets you choose one to steal (not sure if stealing an active only is good enough) that you use temporarily after you grab it using smash and grab the item normally.
 
The abilities are fun, but they don't seem to work together too well.
Rock-It is raw damage, but doesn't apply any debuffs, so it's not really useful outside of spirit builds.
Grapple is strong but slightly pointless since the alt-fire already has built in movement and the Thief doesn't really want to be in the air. It might be better if there was a completely different ability here that helped inhibit other enemies, since the Thief seems to be a fast, slippery character.
Smash-and-grab is cool.
Shine acts like a EShift parry, which is fun, although it might be frustrating to fight against since it'd be very rare for the Thief to have it on cooldown once he gets it to 4 charges.

What kind of archetype is the Thief going for? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
The gameplay archetype that I am going for with Thief is a very slippery duelist of some sort, preferably with limited scaling. Grapple and alt-fire are supposed to help it get in, get a pick, and get out. Without grapple or another equally powerful movement tool, Thief would have a hard time trying to start and finish engagements.

I kept rock-it as raw damage since I don't want this hero that could use hex/knockdown/curse freely to have even a small form of built-in cc. Maybe some fire rate slow would be nice as a 5 point upgrade.

Shine is supposed to be low impact for an ult, almost like a basic ability so that snagging a refresher won't be a good idea. If it's too egregious, then I could see the +1 charge upgrade going away and the duration being shrunk further.
 
Heavily disagree. I don't see smash-and-grab working on any archetype without a ton of mobility.
deadlock has a lot of mobility built in. So it can still be based on a control mage archetype but still have the deadlock mobility.

One of the things i said was instead of grapple pulling you to a player, it can be a grappling hook that lets you make a rope to go up walls.
 
A "partial" rework to this old concept. My overall goal with this rework was to take it from just a really neat ability (smash and grab) + 3 placeholders, to an actual hero concept (or at the very least closer to one). To accomplish this, every ability other than Smash-and-Grab has been replaced. Weapon and vitality stats remain unchanged, though those shouldn't be ruled out for changes in the future.

Thief (reworked)

(replaces rock-it)
Dagger
40s Cooldown
Toss forward a dagger that deals damage, ricochets onto 2 nearby targets, and returns to the original target to deal more spirit damage and leave behind a dagger.
You can move to this dagger to pick it up and slash all enemies around yourself in a circle. If a movement ability was used to pick the dagger up, that ability gains a 60% cooldown refund.
  • 30 Damage
  • 75% Damage on bounce
  • 60 Final strike damage (+1.5 x Spirit)
  • 4m Slash Radius
  • 3s Dagger lifetime
  • 8m Ricochet Radius
Tier 1: +2s Dagger lifetime
Tier 2: -15s Cooldown
Tier 3: +30% Movement Ability Cooldown Refund

(replaces grapple)
Blink
15s Cooldown
Blink towards an enemy, dealing spirit damage.
  • 60 Damage (+1.15 x Spirit)
  • 12m Blink Range
Tier 1: -6s Cooldown
Tier 2: +15% Fire Rate for 4s on use
Tier 3: +25% Bonus Ammo on use

(Smash-and-Grab here) (No changes)

(replaces shine)
Nine Lives
0.25s Duration | 5s Cooldown
Activate to gain 1 spirit. Taking damage that brings you down to 5% of your total health or lower while this ability is active grants unstoppable, bonus movement speed, and bonus damage resist.
  • 30% Move Speed
  • 90% Bullet Resist
  • 90% Spirit Resist
  • 190s Cooldown after proc
  • 4s Proc effect duration
Tier 1: +60% Move Speed
Tier 2: +15% max/HP heal after proc
Tier 3: Gain invisibility after proc
 
A "partial" rework to this old concept. My overall goal with this rework was to take it from just a really neat ability (smash and grab) + 3 placeholders, to an actual hero concept (or at the very least closer to one). To accomplish this, every ability other than Smash-and-Grab has been replaced. Weapon and vitality stats remain unchanged, though those shouldn't be ruled out for changes in the future.

Thief (reworked)

(replaces rock-it)
Dagger
40s Cooldown
Toss forward a dagger that deals damage, ricochets onto 2 nearby targets, and returns to the original target to deal more spirit damage and leave behind a dagger.
You can move to this dagger to pick it up and slash all enemies around yourself in a circle. If a movement ability was used to pick the dagger up, that ability gains a 60% cooldown refund.
  • 30 Damage
  • 75% Damage on bounce
  • 60 Final strike damage (+1.5 x Spirit)
  • 4m Slash Radius
  • 3s Dagger lifetime
  • 8m Ricochet Radius
Tier 1: +2s Dagger lifetime
Tier 2: -15s Cooldown
Tier 3: +30% Movement Ability Cooldown Refund

(replaces grapple)
Blink
15s Cooldown
Blink towards an enemy, dealing spirit damage.
  • 60 Damage (+1.15 x Spirit)
  • 12m Blink Range
Tier 1: -6s Cooldown
Tier 2: +15% Fire Rate for 4s on use
Tier 3: +25% Bonus Ammo on use

(Smash-and-Grab here) (No changes)

(replaces shine)
Nine Lives
0.25s Duration | 5s Cooldown
Activate to gain 1 spirit. Taking damage that brings you down to 5% of your total health or lower while this ability is active grants unstoppable, bonus movement speed, and bonus damage resist.
  • 30% Move Speed
  • 90% Bullet Resist
  • 90% Spirit Resist
  • 190s Cooldown after proc
  • 4s Proc effect duration
Tier 1: +60% Move Speed
Tier 2: +15% max/HP heal after proc
Tier 3: Gain invisibility after proc
Im not sure about that ult. 5% hp is so low im not sure it would ever proc. I also dont fully understand. Is it simply a short lived immunity frame ability? whats the idea here?
 
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