Seven Ult Rework - Tesla Coil

[ForestGreen]

THERE WILL BE THINGS I LEFT OUT SO IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS PLEASE ASK

Before I actually explain the reworked ult, I wanted to explain why I want a rework in the first place instead of just advocating to give it some buffs. I play a lot of Seven and over my time with him I've noticed that he has 3 distinct issues that can potentially all be solved via his 4, consisting of his ult being weak, his general reliance on late game strength, and his lack of build variety.

Spoiler: Issues With Seven

Ult: There is A LOT to say about Seven's ult, but to put it simply for the past 2 months or so the ability has been terrible (unless you're a smurf noob stomper), the only real use it has had is for farming, sometimes pit, and early game melee baits. It would not be an exaggeration to say that he had the worst ult in the game, from the 3k power spike up till the endgame. Thankfully the patch on 10/24/24 improved its spread rate by 80% as well as its radius by +5m, which certainly made the ability more usable. That being said, this buff did not fix the main issue at hand, you are a sitting duck while ulting which makes it really easy for people to abuse you with abilities/items and shoot you while peaking around cover. This results in Seven's 4 not being used in fights as an area denial but rather as a burst "area push back" if even that, which in the end makes the ability not have that much impact, especially for an ultimate. There are fixes possible to help his 4, but, and this is entirely subjective, half of Seven's entire thing is becoming an f1 car and although his ult is imo the coolest in the game, standing like a doll in midair is not hype.

Late Game Strength: Seven is much stronger the longer the game goes on, this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone; this primarily stems from his insane ability to flash farm and his synergy with more costly items. However, while Seven is strong in the late-game he is fairly weak in the early and mid games, specifically between the 3k powerspike to ~25k (give or take). I believe this bad presence early on is mostly due to his ult not being up to snuff and not having much impact. Overall, this lack of presence early on and almost obsessive focus on his late game leads to Seven being played very one dimensionally to where he simply does the same thing over and over every game, and although I personally enjoy it, I don't believe it's what's best for the character.

Lack of Varying Builds: Pretty much every single Seven build is the same. There's slight variations, but they all stem from the same general build principle, you build his spirit until you can hold w. You're going melee Seven? trolling, going support Seven? trolling, rushing double stun? mid (rip my beloved). Pretty much every single build is the same and again, although I personally like how Seven builds his kit, I still believe he should have the option to go a different route like literally every single other character in the game, yes including Haze (kinda).

There was a lot more I could say about all three of those points but I just wanted to get my general ideas out of the way, and I didn't want to make it even longer. And so with further ado, here's the rework:



Visual Representation:

Spoiler

Before you go screeching in the replies (assuming this post even gets any), I would first like to explain my reasoning behind this.

- This concept can certainly be tweaked (I battled with a few ideas that I will talk about later), but I wanted to treat this more as a brain"storm" experiment.

- The general idea that I was going for was to give Seven a survivability ability that would also make it so that he could have an option to build his kit differently than he usually does. At least in that regard, I think I succeeded.

How this build works:

- You effectively have 2 different ways to play Seven with this build, you either keep running your opponents down as standard Seven, or you can now go hard support.

- Everyone in your radius effectively has bullet evasion, yes this is very strong.

- As you may have noticed, something weird is going on at the top, the radius has negative spirit scaling, no this is not a typo. My idea behind this was that as you build spirit, this would make it so that you are reducing the radius, thus playing in a more selfish manner, but you could instead forgo some of your offensive power that will primarily come from spirit and lean more into a support role with rescue beam, healing nova, and items of that like.

- Honestly, I'm not sure if negative spirit scaling would really work for Seven, but when I thought of it I liked it so much that I included in this. In all honesty, this kind of scaling would be best baked into a new character's kit, but here we are.

- The reason I added more movement speed to the ult despite Seven already having so much is because of how much of a useful tool it is, esspecially when running people down like a freight train and trying to get to your allies as a support.

- I did consider swapping out the movement speed bonus with movement slow reduction (like from enduring speed), but I figured I liked this better since it would also potentially allow Seven to get out of dodge quicker in certain situations.

- I did not envision this ult zapping all kinds of projectiles including abilities like gray talon's arrow and items such as decay since giving everyone in your radius bullet evasion is already insane enough.

- I believe I should clarify what exactly the third perk would do. At base level the radius has a negative spirit scaling of -0.05, meaning that at a spirit level of 200 the radius would be a total of 0, the ult would only affect you. With the third perk's improved spirit scaling, that -0.05 would instead turn into something like -0.03, meaning you would have a base radius of 4 instead of 0.

- The healing amplification on the third perk is what I am most unsure about in this ability, I figured I could have added a leach effect, healing duplication, something to do with healing based off of bullets zapped, etc. but the perfect answer alluded me for the brief period I spent thinking about it; so I went with the simple filler option in the end, healing amp.

- The main issue that I had with this ult rework is that a support option on Seven would be something coming out of left field, but I figured it could go so well with a sustain focused ability that's also an ultimate and be really fun. If I were to strip the ability of its support option however, I would have most likely given it spirit resist in a perk instead of healing amp as well as taken away the radius.

If you have read this far, thank you, I genuinely appreciate it. Again, if you have any questions, please ask and I will be happy to answer. Reread this and take a shot every single time you see ult or Seven

 

[bloodfrost27]

Genuinely pretty neat idea but i think his current ult fits his design (both visual and gameplay) and personality better

 

[ForestGreen]

Genuinely pretty neat idea but i think his current ult fits his design (both visual and gameplay) and personality better

I don't think it fits well with his gameplay since it locks him in place, but I do agree that it certainly fits his character design, both artistically and personality wise.

 

[photon]

Genuinely pretty neat idea but i think his current ult fits his design (both visual and gameplay) and personality better

current ult is awful and has 0 skill expression

 

[bloodfrost27]

I don't think it fits well with his gameplay since it locks him in place, but I do agree that it certainly fits his character design, both artistically and personality wise.

His whole kit is kind of based around displacing and forcing the opponent to move and his ult definitely does do that

 

[ForestGreen]

His whole kit is kind of based around displacing and forcing the opponent to move and his ult definitely does do that

If you're looking at it from that angle then you're right. However, even if that's true, it doesn't absolve the issue of his ult being utter dog water and not helping to shore up his short comings. No matter how you look at it, an ult that gives him actual survivability would be far, FAR better for him; I haven't talked to a single Seven player that doesn't agree.

 

[apidae xylocopa]

If you're looking at it from that angle then you're right. However, even if that's true, it doesn't absolve the issue of his ult being utter dog water and not helping to shore up his short comings.

I really love your concept but I'm not sure I agree with the concept of "looking it from that angle". The developers seem to have a specific vision in mind for Seven and displacement + crowd control seems to be it. If a character's kit is to be reworked in any way, it should adhere to the intended vision of the character. Again, I love your concept and I completely agree with adding more viable build paths to his kit, but I'm not sure this is the right angle to be approaching it from.

No matter how you look at it, an ult that gives him actual survivability would be far, FAR better for him; I haven't talked to a single Seven player that doesn't agree.

I don't think anyone would disagree with this, but you can envision a rework on any character's ability to supplement their weaknesses and playstyles that aren't focused. It's not a matter of whether or not it'd make the character better.

How this build works:

- You effectively have 2 different ways to play Seven with this build, you either keep running your opponents down as standard Seven, or you can now go hard support.

A Seven that focuses on weapon damage or melee would reap many of the benefits intended for both playstyles. Consider a Seven that uses Torment Pulse, Rapid Recharge, and Bullet Shredder Resist. That's 58 spirit, making his ult a 7m radius. Slot in Improved Reach which adds 20 spirit, making the ult a 6m radius, then being brought up to 7.5 by the 25% while making his slow and stun easier to utilize. Meanwhile, he's running you down with Burst Fire, Escalating Resilience, Active Reload, and Slowing Bullets or a similar build for melee. That's a very high ehp for something that'd be so incredibly obnoxious to play against.

- Everyone in your radius effectively has bullet evasion, yes this is very strong.

I love the concept but I don't think a support Seven should involve increasing the ehp of allies. The spirit of the character is crowd control, and I think leaning further into that for support is a better way to increase that role's viability. How that could be approached would be a different discussion.

- As you may have noticed, something weird is going on at the top, the radius has negative spirit scaling

I love this idea and I hope it's implemented on anyone at any point, though it's worth pointing out that for casual players this would likely be confusing if it's not implemented on a character whose kit and aesthetics revolve around give and take.

Also, I don't play a ton of Seven nowdays, only really play with or against him. I could have an ignorant perspective as a result and I'm happy to be corrected.

 

[ForestGreen]

I really love your concept but I'm not sure I agree with the concept of "looking it from that angle". The developers seem to have a specific vision in mind for Seven and displacement + crowd control seems to be it. If a character's kit is to be reworked in any way, it should adhere to the intended vision of the character. Again, I love your concept and I completely agree with adding more viable build paths to his kit, but I'm not sure this is the right angle to be approaching it from.

While I do understand and sympathize with where you're coming from, I cannot agree that the developers and designers of this game should limit themselves to previously thought out ideas. Some things will work, some will not, if something is not working (such as Seven's ult), I believe it should be reconsidered and potentially pivoted on in a minor or even major direction. That being said, I can certainly imagine the devs could design a better 4 that still adheres to Seven's theme, even if I personally think that his first 3 abilities already do a good enough job.

I don't think anyone would disagree with this, but you can envision a rework on any character's ability to supplement their weaknesses and playstyles that aren't focused. It's not a matter of whether or not it'd make the character better.

At the end of the day, what matters the most is balance and a character having a flushed out kit. I never put down the idea of having focus for a theme when making an ability/kit, but that particular focus is secondary to having a balanced and workable ability/kit.

A Seven that focuses on weapon damage or melee would reap many of the benefits intended for both playstyles. Consider a Seven that uses Torment Pulse, Rapid Recharge, and Bullet Shredder Resist. That's 58 spirit, making his ult a 7m radius. Slot in Improved Reach which adds 20 spirit, making the ult a 6m radius, then being brought up to 7.5 by the 25% while making his slow and stun easier to utilize. Meanwhile, he's running you down with Burst Fire, Escalating Resilience, Active Reload, and Slowing Bullets or a similar build for melee. That's a very high ehp for something that'd be so incredibly obnoxious to play against.

No Seven build that is focused on weapon damage or melee is realistic (even with double stun), full stop. Also you only listed one ehp based item (Escalating Resilience), how would he have very high ehp out of his ult in that example?

I love the concept but I don't think a support Seven should involve increasing the ehp of allies. The spirit of the character is crowd control, and I think leaning further into that for support is a better way to increase that role's viability. How that could be approached would be a different discussion.

A support Seven that buffed his allies would be reverse crowd control!!!

I love this idea and I hope it's implemented on anyone at any point, though it's worth pointing out that for casual players this would likely be confusing if it's not implemented on a character whose kit and aesthetics revolve around give and take.

Absolutely. My idea was a character with one of those half happy half sad masks, I think that would be cool.

 

[apidae xylocopa]

While I do understand and sympathize with where you're coming from, I cannot agree that the developers and designers of this game should limit themselves to previously thought out ideas.

Letting your game evolve is important so I agree with not limiting yourself to previously thought out ideas on a base level, but it's hard for me to understand why you wouldn't make changes to your characters based on what you intend characters to be. Speaking generally, reworking a character's ability/ies in a way that takes them further from their identity seems like a weak design choice.

That being said, I can certainly imagine the devs could design a better 4 that still adheres to Seven's theme, even if I personally think that his first 3 abilities already do a good enough job.

I definitely understand what you mean by the first 3 abilities doing a good enough job, but I would argue that a character's signature move--their ultimate--should really epitomize the soul of that character. Vindicta with her execute and her themes of violent retribution, Lady Geist with her life swap and themes of parasitism, McGinnis having an artillery barrage in her themes of sieging and big boy weaponry, and so on. It'd be odd for a character who focuses on crowd control in the rest of their kit to suddenly not do that for their signature move.

I do like the idea of him having a mobile ult to compliment his zoom-zooming. That would be more thematically appropriate. That in addition to a general spark effect at his feet the higher his movement speed is would be quite nice thematically.

At the end of the day, what matters the most is balance and a character having a flushed out kit. I never put down the idea of having focus for a theme when making an ability/kit, but that particular focus is secondary to having a balanced and workable ability/kit.

I'm not sure I agree with this. I'm extremely familiar with fighting games and have a long history in mobas, and bottom of the barrel trash characters always have a more significant pick rate than one would expect due to people gravitating to the soul of characters that speak to them.

I'm going to use League of Legends to demonstrate this point. While I haven't played it in years, I did spend way too much time on it back in the day and it is still wildly popular as a crux of the moba genre.

Pulling stats from op.gg, there have been 249,243,450 games over the period of one month. Of these games, sorting champions by their games played, the median number of played games is 1,227,994. Summing the games played of all champions below that, you get 64,834,822--or 26% of all games--on champions who are distinctly not meta with below median playtime.

However, this is misleading: this does not account for the fact there is a significant portion of the player base who picks characters based on meta. This means that the characters at the top of games played disproportionately represent games played for champions over the median. To contextualize this, we can grab the mean of two different statistics: games played on each hero and difference in games played from the next character on the ranking.

For games played on each character, the total average is 1,483,592; however, this is skewed upwards. The average games played for the top 15 champions is 4,121,058 and the rest is 1,225,017. This shows that the top 15 champions, the meta champions, are disproportionately represented as individuals. Despite this, their total games played is only 61,815,873. I'll revisit this in a moment.

For the average difference of champions' games played compared to the champion one rank higher than them on the ladder is 342,781 for the top 3 champions, 282,011 games for the top 10 champions, and 223,077 for the top 15. The average across the rest of the cast is 17,211. The difference in popularity between champions between each rank is incredibly more gradual compared to the top 15. This, once again, reinforces that there is a population who gravitates to the best character in a patch, having huge drop off from each rank depending on how effective a meta champion is. Once you reach champions who are primarily played by loyalists, the drop off is much more gradual.

Using these two stats, it becomes clear that there is a large population of players who play characters based on how good they are, but they're a minority of the population. Specifically, going off the top 15 champions, they represent 24.8% of games played.

Balance is secondary to what makes a character worthwhile. The majority of players will play who they think looks cool, who has a playstyle they enjoy, who has those things but is viable enough to feel worthwhile, and so on. As of now, Seven is viable enough to be worthwhile. He doesn't need to be further balanced in order to make him a stronger character in terms of design.

No Seven build that is focused on weapon damage or melee is realistic (even with double stun), full stop. Also you only listed one ehp based item (Escalating Resilience), how would he have very high ehp out of his ult in that example?

I didn't mention any vitality items. In any case, at 16k souls (to cover just those items) he would have 1252 base health. If he were to fight someone focusing on weapon damage he'd have 1252*(1+evasion)*(1+resist) ehp, or 2278. That's about the same as a Seven without the ult using Bullet Armor and Sprint Boots--fair items to build for some survivability in additon to weapon/spirit items with ehp for mages, gunners, etc--at the cheapest for 1483*(1.55), or 2298. The new Seven ult would grant him an extra 1750 to spend on damage items in the early-mid game with a mobile ult that doesn't interrupt his weapon damage. That's pretty significant.

A support Seven that buffed his allies would be reverse crowd control!!!

As much as I love this statement, increasing ally survivability would fall under the umbrella of enchanters. Enchanters are a distinct role from disablers because they have significant differences in identities, playstyles, and purpose. Seven having the reworked ult would make his signature move one that's a mix of enchanter and picker with the rest of his kit being disabler and picker.

 

[TokenNoob]

you are a sitting duck while ulting which makes it really easy for people to abuse you with abilities/items and shoot you while peaking around cover.

I do believe that's supposed to be his counterplay. Seven's ult does a f*kton of damage over a very large area. Combined with a kit that further emphasizes that f*kton of damage. Enemies need a counterplay for that sh*t. Him being immobile and susceptible to cc while he's ulting is supposed to be the payoff for that massive damage output. Making him mobile and giving him a shield while he's dealing lightning damage, plus giving him an healing amp...? That just seems greedy and unbalanced to me.

 

[ForestGreen]

Letting your game evolve is important so I agree with not limiting yourself to previously thought out ideas on a base level, but it's hard for me to understand why you wouldn't make changes to your characters based on what you intend characters to be. Speaking generally, reworking a character's ability/ies in a way that takes them further from their identity seems like a weak design choice.

You can change your specific intentions, and you can also not be absolutely and utterly rigid in a character's intended theme, just look at Trappers kit.

I definitely understand what you mean by the first 3 abilities doing a good enough job, but I would argue that a character's signature move--their ultimate--should really epitomize the soul of that character. Vindicta with her execute and her themes of violent retribution, Lady Geist with her life swap and themes of parasitism, McGinnis having an artillery barrage in her themes of sieging and big boy weaponry, and so on. It'd be odd for a character who focuses on crowd control in the rest of their kit to suddenly not do that for their signature move.

I do like the idea of him having a mobile ult to compliment his zoom-zooming. That would be more thematically appropriate. That in addition to a general spark effect at his feet the higher his movement speed is would be quite nice thematically.

That's very fair, but an ultimate being stritcly thematically consistent isn't always the case, Bebop being a prime example. The devs can certainly cook up an ult for Seven that still has his theme in mind while venturing out with an open mind, which is basically what I did with the ult I designed, although at a very unpolished level.

I'm not sure I agree with this. I'm extremely familiar with fighting games and have a long history in mobas, and bottom of the barrel trash characters always have a more significant pick rate than one would expect due to people gravitating to the soul of characters that speak to them.

This is the case for pretty much every genre of game with different characters, guns, etc. It's also the case that despite everyone always playing with those fun characters/items, they are also always complaining about them since although they are fun, they are not particularly good, a good example of this was Pathfinder from Apex for the longest time (high pickrate =/= good character). A seemingly fun kit might attract players, but balance determines a lot.

I didn't mention any vitality items. In any case, at 16k souls (to cover just those items) he would have 1252 base health. If he were to fight someone focusing on weapon damage he'd have 1252*(1+evasion)*(1+resist) ehp, or 2278. That's about the same as a Seven without the ult using Bullet Armor and Sprint Boots--fair items to build for some survivability in additon to weapon/spirit items with ehp for mages, gunners, etc--at the cheapest for 1483*(1.55), or 2298. The new Seven ult would grant him an extra 1750 to spend on damage items in the early-mid game with a mobile ult that doesn't interrupt his weapon damage. That's pretty significant.

"How would he have very high ehp out of his ult in that example". That being said, his 4's duration might admittedly be a bit long, then again there's Yamato ult (old and new).

As much as I love this statement, increasing ally survivability would fall under the umbrella of enchanters. Enchanters are a distinct role from disablers because they have significant differences in identities, playstyles, and purpose. Seven having the reworked ult would make his signature move one that's a mix of enchanter and picker with the rest of his kit being disabler and picker.

Genuinely what are you saying, stop bringing old game role logic into this new game that basically killed the jungling role, you're speaking in hieroglyphs.

 

[ForestGreen]

I do believe that's supposed to be his counterplay. Seven's ult does a f*kton of damage over a very large area. Combined with a kit that further emphasizes that f*kton of damage. Enemies need a counterplay for that sh*t. Him being immobile and susceptible to cc while he's ulting is supposed to be the payoff for that massive damage output. Making him mobile and giving him a shield while he's dealing lightning damage, plus giving him an healing amp...? That just seems greedy and unbalanced to me.

The counterplay to Seven ult is moving away or simply to cc him, it should not be to go around a corner and gun him down because he can't do anything about it while he's in ult. On top of that, Seven ult is awful, it does not have "massive damage output", you can face tank it much of the time. Also I literally said I don't think the numbers in my ult are balanced but rather very strong.