Overburst

[Ted Jones]

This weapon item is designed to fix a few small holes in the current item options:

1) a very limited selection of orange items that are useful to characters building around spirit later into the game. Warp Stone and Spiritual Overflow come to mind, but it’s slim pickings for spirit heroes past 3000 souls beyond that.

2) for all orange items are weapon items, I don’t think any of them are actually attacks. Spirit items launch curses, but this would be a strictly damage-dealing item that is more in line with the flavor of weapon items.

The item has fairly low initial effect but is designed to scale quite well with spirit power. This allows spirit heroes to maintain some offensive capability later into the game at the cost of using their weapon less.

Channeled abilities are interrupted without stunning enemy heroes, and only after 1) a channel to “charge up” and 2) hitting a skillshot. This provides a resource to deal with uninteractive ultimates (haze, seven, goo) while also giving those heroes a chance to pop unstoppable in response; in this way it’s curse, but much harder to hit, and providing the opportunity for meaningful counterplay.

Overburst

Weapon - 3000 Souls

+7% Spirit Resist

Active (Cooldown 27 Seconds)

Enter a one second channel, during which you can move but are unable to take other actions. Taking another action cancels the channel. The channel is accompanied by distinct visual and auditory cues that can be seen easily by enemy heroes.

After one second, release a rapid projectile in the direction you are facing. The projectile explodes on contact with an object, structure, or enemy hero, dealing damage and interrupting channeled abilities.

After firing the projectile, you are disarmed for 3 seconds.

Damage: 200 + 3*spirit power

Area of impact: 8m + 0.03m * spirit power

Interrupts channeled abilities for heroes damaged by the explosion.

 

[ziz4030]

imo should be a barrage of 5 projectiles

 

[apidae xylocopa]

This weapon item is designed to fix a few small holes in the current item options:

1) a very limited selection of orange items that are useful to characters building around spirit later into the game. Warp Stone and Spiritual Overflow come to mind, but it’s slim pickings for spirit heroes past 3000 souls beyond that.

There are even less options for weapon builds to dip into spirit items. If this weren't the case, flexible characters would become strictly well-rounded characters (which we already see due to a good extent). Ironically, spirit builds have two extremely significant items through orange items with Spiritual Overflow, as you stated, and Crippling Headshot. It's actually kind of ridiculous CH also drops spirit resist.

The item has fairly low initial effect but is designed to scale quite well with spirit power. This allows spirit heroes to maintain some offensive capability later into the game at the cost of using their weapon less.

I don't entirely disagree with this sentiment since for many characters who build spirit, it's very difficult to itemize against spirit resist later on. However, adding more flat damage would only serve to agonize the lives of people who build shields. Also, adding an item that would be so significant towards a character's damage potential would shift focus from a character's kit to their items.

For example, Pocket would be able to use his shroud less offensively. Typically it's a risk/reward of whether or not you save it as an escape or use it as a large finisher/team damager, but this would let you relieve that burden by using this item. Pocket would temporarily lose the ability to shoot, but that's not as problematic mid game or end game.

Less about relieving kit burdens, consider characters like Lady Geist. If Lady Geist builds up stacks on her shards, she doesn't care at all about being disarmed so this is strictly a massive burst option. Shards, swap, burst. Even characters like Vindicta would benefit as counterintuitive as that sounds. Once an enemy is low hp, Vindicta moves in for the execute. She's no longer shooting as much, so becoming disarmed for the sake of aiding in the execution is a very safe tradeoff.

Channeled abilities are interrupted without stunning enemy heroes, and only after 1) a channel to “charge up” and 2) hitting a skillshot. This provides a resource to deal with uninteractive ultimates (haze, seven, goo) while also giving those heroes a chance to pop unstoppable in response; in this way it’s curse, but much harder to hit, and providing the opportunity for meaningful counterplay.

But Unstoppable is very expensive. As a T4, it's an investment over a damage item. Curse comes at the cost of raw damage like Escalating Exposure and Boundless spirit because interrupting these channels removes a large portion of their kit. Currently, you rely on a Curse & kit vs Unstoppable investment scheme with the exception of Knockdown. Knockdown is a good example of how strong a cheap interrupt is. Interrupt flights, Haze and Seven ults, and so on. With how strong this item is, having two cheap interrupts would be very overbearing for certain teams. All of this on top of the fact that many channeled ults have other counters. Haze vs Metal Skin, Seven vs escape items, and so on.

Personally, I think there's more than enough counterplay to channeled ultimates. Adding an item that both interrupts a channel and doing a massive amount of damage would contribute to a fairly oppressive environment for characters like Haze and Seven in addition to providing unfair amounts of burst for characters like Lady Geist.

 

[Ted Jones]

There are even less options for weapon builds to dip into spirit items. If this weren't the case, flexible characters would become strictly well-rounded characters (which we already see due to a good extent). Ironically, spirit builds have two extremely significant items through orange items with Spiritual Overflow, as you stated, and Crippling Headshot. It's actually kind of ridiculous CH also drops spirit resist.



I don't entirely disagree with this sentiment since for many characters who build spirit, it's very difficult to itemize against spirit resist later on. However, adding more flat damage would only serve to agonize the lives of people who build shields. Also, adding an item that would be so significant towards a character's damage potential would shift focus from a character's kit to their items.

For example, Pocket would be able to use his shroud less offensively. Typically it's a risk/reward of whether or not you save it as an escape or use it as a large finisher/team damager, but this would let you relieve that burden by using this item. Pocket would temporarily lose the ability to shoot, but that's not as problematic mid game or end game.

Less about relieving kit burdens, consider characters like Lady Geist. If Lady Geist builds up stacks on her shards, she doesn't care at all about being disarmed so this is strictly a massive burst option. Shards, swap, burst. Even characters like Vindicta would benefit as counterintuitive as that sounds. Once an enemy is low hp, Vindicta moves in for the execute. She's no longer shooting as much, so becoming disarmed for the sake of aiding in the execution is a very safe tradeoff.



But Unstoppable is very expensive. As a T4, it's an investment over a damage item. Curse comes at the cost of raw damage like Escalating Exposure and Boundless spirit because interrupting these channels removes a large portion of their kit. Currently, you rely on a Curse & kit vs Unstoppable investment scheme with the exception of Knockdown. Knockdown is a good example of how strong a cheap interrupt is. Interrupt flights, Haze and Seven ults, and so on. With how strong this item is, having two cheap interrupts would be very overbearing for certain teams. All of this on top of the fact that many channeled ults have other counters. Haze vs Metal Skin, Seven vs escape items, and so on.

Personally, I think there's more than enough counterplay to channeled ultimates. Adding an item that both interrupts a channel and doing a massive amount of damage would contribute to a fairly oppressive environment for characters like Haze and Seven in addition to providing unfair amounts of burst for characters like Lady Geist.