iuyhcdfs
New member
hello. there are many ways this item can go wrong until fully balanced,
but my intention was that if hero matchup or player matchmaking creates a scenario where a someone:
1 dies often in lane
2 cant farm jungle safely
3 does not scale late game or is too behind
they lose lots of agency! and hopefully this can bring some early-mid game relevance back to them.
im going to call outer guardians and walkers "mechs" for the rest of this post.
tentatively, this is a 1600 green item that gives you -30% max health, -2 move speed, +10% leyline travel speed but you can always get hyperline stunned at any time.
comes with an active that targets mechs from up to 30 meters away to assume control, where you will suddenly zoom into the mech with a leyline-esque trail.
when inside the mech:
you can eject manually too. if the mech dies while you are inside, you die.
when manually ejecting or forced out you should just drop down from the head of the mech. the stat penalties from the item should be enough to seal your doom already without team intervention.
once ejected, the item goes on.. a ~40 second cooldown. also, the mech will not accept new pilots for 30 seconds.
this item is effective if:
1 you buy it specifically when they WANT to break your base defenses but are only committing enough heroes to destroy a non-piloted mech (but if they committed elsewhere your gamble does not pay off)
2 a fed enemy is overcommitted to ganking, your team is scouting where they go, and you go to the correct lane to shutdown the gank (similar mindgames to urn dropoff will occur, they could gank the lane you leave instead etc)
3 you are a support who wants to counter a lazy graves ult-and-run-away wave shove by just death-lasering their zombies while your teammates deal with more pressing objectives
addressing griefing concerns:
suppose there is a griefer who will just afk while piloting to try losing the game sooner. to counteract this, piloting and shooting the laser should... just be fun lmao. you should have really nice damage. you will want to shoot. if you go down you go down lasering whoever dunked on you in lane. this is simply a matter of incentives. and if you succeed, woops! you're back in the game!
addressing antifun concerns:
if the numbers are too strong, every lane is going to just pilot their mech and this is a degenerate strategy. hopefully, the punishment for being ejected then killed, and the cooldown being longer than an early game respawn doesn't make that a reality.
competitively, the numbers on this item should only be enough to stabilise an imbalanced 0/5/0 laning phase. this item should NOT make it easy to funnel money safely to your hypercarry in an eternus lobby. that must NEVER become meta.
so tentatively,
a piloted guardian + a teammate should be able to fend off 3 attacking heroes without dying
a piloted guardian + a teammate should still dramatically lose against 4+ attacking heroes
a piloted guardian without support will only stall its inevitable death vs a few waves with 1/2 attacking heroes
hmm. full disclosure, i dont have a partner right now but if i did i wouldn't want them to get this item every game and forget the rest of the game exists (the urn is a great teambuilding exercise and should get more advertisement in the user interface). so hopefully i designed it as such? hahaha
could be a legendary item in street brawl too. but for that version i'd also gift the mech a nonstop bebop ult with a super slow turn rate. hopefully your teammates draft vortex web at the same time! yikes.
but my intention was that if hero matchup or player matchmaking creates a scenario where a someone:
1 dies often in lane
2 cant farm jungle safely
3 does not scale late game or is too behind
they lose lots of agency! and hopefully this can bring some early-mid game relevance back to them.
im going to call outer guardians and walkers "mechs" for the rest of this post.
tentatively, this is a 1600 green item that gives you -30% max health, -2 move speed, +10% leyline travel speed but you can always get hyperline stunned at any time.
comes with an active that targets mechs from up to 30 meters away to assume control, where you will suddenly zoom into the mech with a leyline-esque trail.
when inside the mech:
- the player is not longer targetable but it would be funny if the hero's head is enlarged and sticking out the mech
- you use the same attacks the mechs have (and they are all targeted abilities)
- the mech does double(or more?) damage to everything, but its melee will do 5x damage and have double range (but ejects the pilot if parried)
- the mech takes double(or more?) damage from enemy troopers while piloted
- the mech can move slowly along the friendly leyline area, but when pushing past its starting radius, it will forcibly eject the pilot and walk back if it accumulates x number of attacks from enemy troopers, which is a gamble for the already fragile pilot. during this "walk of shame" the npc mech will not attack but move faster
- the pilot can reduce the counter for the above "walk of shame" each time they kill a trooper with a melee
you can eject manually too. if the mech dies while you are inside, you die.
when manually ejecting or forced out you should just drop down from the head of the mech. the stat penalties from the item should be enough to seal your doom already without team intervention.
once ejected, the item goes on.. a ~40 second cooldown. also, the mech will not accept new pilots for 30 seconds.
this item is effective if:
1 you buy it specifically when they WANT to break your base defenses but are only committing enough heroes to destroy a non-piloted mech (but if they committed elsewhere your gamble does not pay off)
2 a fed enemy is overcommitted to ganking, your team is scouting where they go, and you go to the correct lane to shutdown the gank (similar mindgames to urn dropoff will occur, they could gank the lane you leave instead etc)
3 you are a support who wants to counter a lazy graves ult-and-run-away wave shove by just death-lasering their zombies while your teammates deal with more pressing objectives
addressing griefing concerns:
suppose there is a griefer who will just afk while piloting to try losing the game sooner. to counteract this, piloting and shooting the laser should... just be fun lmao. you should have really nice damage. you will want to shoot. if you go down you go down lasering whoever dunked on you in lane. this is simply a matter of incentives. and if you succeed, woops! you're back in the game!
addressing antifun concerns:
if the numbers are too strong, every lane is going to just pilot their mech and this is a degenerate strategy. hopefully, the punishment for being ejected then killed, and the cooldown being longer than an early game respawn doesn't make that a reality.
competitively, the numbers on this item should only be enough to stabilise an imbalanced 0/5/0 laning phase. this item should NOT make it easy to funnel money safely to your hypercarry in an eternus lobby. that must NEVER become meta.
so tentatively,
a piloted guardian + a teammate should be able to fend off 3 attacking heroes without dying
a piloted guardian + a teammate should still dramatically lose against 4+ attacking heroes
a piloted guardian without support will only stall its inevitable death vs a few waves with 1/2 attacking heroes
hmm. full disclosure, i dont have a partner right now but if i did i wouldn't want them to get this item every game and forget the rest of the game exists (the urn is a great teambuilding exercise and should get more advertisement in the user interface). so hopefully i designed it as such? hahaha
could be a legendary item in street brawl too. but for that version i'd also gift the mech a nonstop bebop ult with a super slow turn rate. hopefully your teammates draft vortex web at the same time! yikes.
