Magic Series - High Risk/Reward Melee T3/4

[cryogx]

Let it be known that I'm suggesting this on the grounds that it sounds way more fun (and hilarious) than actually necessary for the game, and will focus on just its unique effects and not additional stats. It's a melee item that amplifies the positive and negative extremes of melee-focused playstyles.

Idea:
Increase melee and heavy melee cooldown by +150%. On a successful melee, reduce the current melee's cooldown by ~80% (this puts it at half of its original CD. Example: Heavy Melee goes from a 1 to 2.5 sec CD but resets to .5 sec if it connects.)

(Balance effects, if necessary) If parried, reduce resists by ~30% for 3 seconds. Reduce melee damage against objectives by ??%.

Upgrades from?:
Nothing. You're very committed to the melee build if you're buying this, practicality be damned.

Purpose/Use Cases:
The idea takes from magic series in fighting games, where normal attacks get canceled into other ones (technically in order of light to heavy but eh this idea's close enough), and attack canceling in general is fun to do.

For this item, you sacrifice the ability to bait out someone's parry with heavy melee (permanently, if this item's passive, while active otherwise), for the ability to pummel things twice as fast if the target has either had their parry baited by someone else, is CC'd/committed to another animation, isn't paying attention, or is a neutral entity. Light melee may possibly benefit more than heavy here, but either way: If you get parried, you're even more dead than you were without this item, and if you miss, you may as well not use heavy melee for the rest of a fight if you've got no help.

I'm imagining cases in teamfights or 2v1's where someone pings that an enemy burned their parry, and then the resident melee degenerate says "YES CHEF" , and jumps out of the woodwork to start whaling on them. Mo & Krill ult someone but the Abrams is the real one doing a combo on his target. The melee Paige starts using two books instead of one. You suddenly crumple from hearing 3 quadrillion blows hit you in the back and see a cat running away from your corpse, etc.

Otherwise, pummel neutral camps, slots and objectives faster overall, hence the "Balance effects, if necessary" line up there.

Let me know what you think! I'd be enjoying the hell out of it every game even if everyone starts doing that buffered flying parry into me.

 

[AleksiyFlek$$iy]

This is quite unusual idea for melee.

So, that both a trade-off and reward/risk item. You gain bonuses on successful attacks and not only lose them, but also more on failed hit. I actually see no need to give it those balance effects, because it is already pretty much balanced.

The item is risky to use and required not only skill, but also awareness of the situation and understanding of melee. Because of one failed melee hit, it becomes much less usable. It also makes any movement via Heavy Melee less relevant.

I think that the parry bait still would be possible, but via Light Melee and some mental tension.

I like this item. It may look like a simple straightforward stat trade, but item actually considerably change rules of melee gameplay.

 

[AleksiyFlek$$iy]

Purpose/Use Cases:
The idea takes from magic series in fighting games, where normal attacks get canceled into other ones (technically in order of light to heavy but eh this idea's close enough), and attack canceling in general is fun to do.

I didn't understand this part, while I was reading. Can you explain this context in detail? Maybe some particular examples?

 

[cryogx]

This is quite unusual idea for melee.

So, that both a trade-off and reward/risk item. You gain bonuses on successful attacks and not only lose them, but also more on failed hit. I actually see no need to give it those balance effects, because it is already pretty much balanced.

The item is risky to use and required not only skill, but also awareness of the situation and understanding of melee. Because of one failed melee hit, it becomes much less usable. It also makes any movement via Heavy Melee less relevant.

I think that the parry bait still would be possible, but via Light Melee and some mental tension.

I like this item. It may look like a simple straightforward stat trade, but item actually considerably change rules of melee gameplay.

Thank you for the feedback, and glad you like the idea!

I didn't understand this part, while I was reading. Can you explain this context in detail? Maybe some particular examples?

Sure thing: Basically the fighting mechanic means that when an attack successfully hits, it can be combo'd into another attack very quickly, abruptly canceling the animation of the previous attack to do so. The moves in the combo are overall much faster when done this way, than any one of them done individually. This YT short gives a rundown.

Simplifying this idea for Deadlock, I feel like it'd be fun to have something that uniquely rewards the player for committing to their melees. The "cancel" in this case is a partial cooldown reset, enabling you to combo melees together much faster than normal on successful hits, but with due punishment for missing.

However, an alternate item idea while keeping this theme intact would be the ability to immediately use Heavy melee after landing a hit with Light melee, which is probably simpler to think about and balance overall.