Jules, the douchebag sculptor [ Art + Abilities ]

[Diva Dan]

"Jules"​

Build, Destroy, Repeat​

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Lore and Design​

Jules is a college-graduate sculptor and self-labelled "natural talent". Despite soaring through art school and claiming superiority to non-artists, he still didn't feel satisfied. To achieve the perfect form, he sculpted a brand new form for himself and possessed it. Even still, he endlessly tweaks and mods himself to the point of instability. Jules will summon the patron to break his artist's block and achieve the peak form he doesn't even know he wants.

Jules is donned with graffiti made to resemble a statue's version of a full body tattoo, and is wearing a used blue tarp and tool belt to mimic a Roman toga and sash. He wears golden jewelry and glasses, putting a slick twist on the tropes you'd expect on a pretentious classical art enjoyer.

A stone block levitates in front of him, giving him something to pound with his weapon- a hammer and chisel. He strikes the cube repeatedly to launch his bullets until it's gone, where he then pulls a new cube from the ground. His light melee is a quick swipe with his chisel, and his heavy melee is a massive strike with his hammer, like Venator's stake. The parry makes Jules strike a flexing pose.

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Abilities

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Sculpt & Deliver​

Press ability key to channel like Kinetic Carbine. Charged ability. Two options when firing- Let the channel complete to create 3 stone bullets in your hands. Use the fire key to burst fire all 3 bullets forward. During channel- Select a Pillar segment and throw a chunk. Deals the same damage and stats as a Toppled Pillar segment, with additional bonus damage. The segment you pulled from loses HP. ​

1 AP​ +1 Charge​

2 AP​ Can Deliver Troopers​

3 AP​ +2 Stones added to burst attack​

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Pillar​

Spawn a large column composed of 5 stacked layers at your cursor that quickly stack up. This is an obstacle that can be stood on and moves players upward if summoned beneath. Can be climbed with a simple mantle, but when made taller, can take a wall bounce or even stamina. Each segment decays over time and can be destroyed with heavy melees. If used in a small room, it will only generate as many layers as can fit. If you have multiple pillars, the old ones decay faster. ​

1 AP​ Lower Cooldown​

2 AP​ +1 Pillar Segment​

3 AP​ +2 Pillar Segment​

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Topple​

Stomp forward a wave of rubble. Moves slightly slower than dynamo stomp. Deals knockup and spirit burst. The farther the wave moves, the wider the wave becomes. Chunks of rubble are stopped by walls. ​ If the stomp hits a pillar, the pillar will topple forward, sending all segments in the direction of the stomp. Segments deal spirit damage and movement slow on impact with an enemy. Logically, the more segments the pillar has, the more debris that flies forward. ​ Using Topple while on top of a pillar will carry players with the top segment. ​

1 AP​ Longer rubble lifetime​

2 AP​ Toppled Pillars Stun Enemies​

3 AP​ Launching With Topple now Flings Extra Far​

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Flow State​

Puts Jules into a flow state for 6 seconds. Whenever Jules casts a spell, every other spell has it's cooldown refreshed. (Idea being, you cast one spell at a time in any order you want, just not two of the same spell in a row.) Moving on the ground will cause Jules to accelerate significantly faster, making loud stomping sounds and kicking up dust and debris. Use this ability to erect a ton of pillars, throw a bunch of bullshit, or provide lots of area denial with your stomp.

1 AP​ +15% spirit and bullet resistance​

2 AP​ +20% Fire Rate​

3 AP​ +3s duration, Kills extend the duration of Flow State​

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Final Thoughts​

I wanted to design a hero with a strong focus on mix-and-match combos, requiring you to be crafty and play positionally to take full advantage of the kit.

Everything here has multiple use cases- the projectile can be dry-fired or used synergistically with the pillar, which allows you to choose a bullet build or a spirit build. The pillar can be used like a McGinnis wall and provide cover, but with more features at the cost of size- it can be used as an obstacle, can be climbed, and can be used for both movement or area denial when used with topple. The topple can be synergized with the pillar or used on its own, so it's useful even when the other skills are off cooldown. Finally, the ultimate basically enables a way to use and abuse all of your skills like you're playing a sandbox game. You can rapidly dish out combos and bullets, and after the final AP upgrade, you can spam any particular spell you wanted. Rushing the final AP wouldn't be too OP, since it relies on your other skills- spamming little pillars and crappy topples won't mean so much, so it would be fun to see this AP spent toward the end of a build when every ability is at its strongest! To balance the skills outside of the ult, it would make sense for them to all come with decently lengthy cooldowns.

Let me know what you think of the design, both from a gameplay and art standpoint!

(Thank you Tianes for help with designing Jules' hair and stache, as well as coming up with the name!)

 

[Diva Dan]

It seems like for some reason a lot of the text came out light gray making it hard to read on light mode, and I don't have the ability to edit the post anymore in the meantime, you can press this button on the bottom to change to dark mode:

 

[artoriarts]

I really like that ult concept, very fun idea for a combo character

 

[Diva Dan]

thank you!

 

[gibnewitems]

You've made me open this forum up in light mode for the first time in ages. Just for that, I will be downvoting this concept.

The pillar concept seems nice, though. I like that it interacts with sculpt and topple. It's a little rare to see a concept where every ability seems to mesh together.

That said, the ult leaves a little to be desired. You have three abilities that interact with each other in clever ways with a ton of different use cases, and the ultimate is just "spam everything for a few seconds + a little bit of stats once upgraded". I hate using that term, but it's practically just Yamato ult with a dash of p*wercreep.

 

[Diva Dan]

thanks for the compliments on the combos! the idea with the ultimate is that it's less about just spamming one particular spell, and instead forces you to HAVE to cycle between at least 2 spells, encouraging you to use those combos in a quick flurry. Since the spells would all be decently long cooldowns, I figured it would be fun to have a bit of a power trip where you don't have to worry about cooldowns for a small amount of time.

Unlike Yamato, you aren't unstoppable nor do you purge any debuffs/become ilvun, so you're essentially just a totally normal hero besides the cooldowns/AP upgrades, so your strength purely comes from your ability to dish out really fast synergies. With her ult, doing combos is a good idea, but not strictly required- you can technically just spam power slash repeatedly, but with Jules, you'd have to cycle between forced combos like pillar/topple, pillar/sculpt, sculpt dry fire/topple, etc. Since the sculpt has a weapon damage based feature, it means you'll see more gun focused builds than you would on Yamato, and it makes the fire rate AP more meaningful. I'll admit though, the fire rate and resist APs are very similar to her, so I totally understand where the critique comes from!

I think in a fully realized version of this hero, after hypothetical playtesting, the ult would definitely get some more interesting APs. I figure that for a idea like this though, I shouldn't go too insane. I had a completely different ult before this one and it was super power creep, so this is actually the toned down version.