T3 Spirit Item Idea: "Spirit Fu" - An upgrade from T1 Spirit Strike that opens up more melee play

[Bjackson518]

Hi all, just as a quick aside the games fantastic and I can't wait to see what new stuff comes to it over the coming years!

My item idea was for a T3 Spirit item called "Spirit Fu" (feel free to name this anything better lol)

T3 Spirit - Spirit Fu
$3500 (Components Spirit Strike)

+200 Spirit Shield
+4 Health Regen
+40% Melee Damage

Passive (8s Cooldown)

When you perform a light or heavy melee attack against a hero, Deal extra spirit damage, reduce the targets spirit resist and temporarily prevent their parry.
(8s Duration)

My idea for an item was to have something that builds out of the spirit strike item in the shop as there aren't a wealth of melee items currently in the shop and the effects of the item feel like that match that price range well. This item would allows for more aggressive play with melee as by landing a melee attack on a hero, you open them up to further melee. Highly skilled players will look to parry you when you attempt to melee them in general and this is a great mechanic that I hope this item could spice up a little bit further, for example if a good player you're fighting could parry your heavy melee attack every time this opens up the angle of trying to land a light melee first to open him up for the bigger hit with less risk while still giving the defending player the chance to play around it either by movement or anticipating the light melee attempt and getting a parry on that instead.

I picked the stats based on similar T3 items in the shop and based on the stats that T1 Spirit Strike gives you but it could also buff the "extra spirit damage" stat on the melee attacks or perhaps give a larger spirit resist reduction to the target, hopefully playing well with heroes who get in close to use their abilities. The extra health regen and melee damage could also help players who want to secure trooper souls via melee as it can sometimes be riskier and open you to be poked. Also as a nice little thing thanks to parry's natural cooldown the game already has the UI icons in game to show players their parry is disabled

The people who cooked this game up obviously know a hell of a lot more than I do about design so if the stats aren't fine tuned maybe someone could forge it into something better but I hope if this idea seems wack that at the least maybe it could inspire someone else to come up with something in a similar vein. Thank you!

 

[Jimmyswift]

This is interesting! Exploring melee could give some characters a snappy, combo-mashing alternate playstyle, especially for characters like Pocket who already have a way to get in close.

Your post inspired me to come up with some other melee-related stats items could have. Maybe we could build a little set of a few melee-themed items out of these ideas and yours:
(Please forgive me if they're not written well, I only got access to the game today!)

1. Your heavy melee attacks charge X% quicker.
2. Your heavy melee attack's lunge is X% longer.
3. Using a light melee attack midair causes you to stomp downwards, dealing bonus spirit damage based on fall distance.
4. After using an ability, your next heavy melee attack charges X% faster and deals Y% bonus damage.
5. Your heavy melee attacks have X% increased knockback. At below 50% health, the knockback is further raised to Y%.
6. Enemies struck by your melee attacks have an X% damage vulnerability for Y seconds.
7. While your magazine is empty, your melee attacks deal X% increased damage.
8. After landing a melee attack, you have X% damage resistance for Y seconds.
9. While your Parry is on cooldown, your heavy melee attack deals X% bonus damage and puts your Parry on cooldown.
10. Striking a wall with your heavy melee attack causes you to leap upwards.

I could imagine melee being treated like a special "fifth ability" that starts out basic, but that you can build out and customize by the items you build.
Thank you for sharing!

 

[www.powerrrr]

passive to strong it should disable parry for 2s and have like 15s cd

 

[sam.louro.monteiro]

dont disable parry. i read that nad its a nono.

if they also have a slowing hex or just as much stamina as you, specially abrams that is hard to peel off with 2 movement skills nad immunities he already swats people off faster than they can kill him. heavy melee's are free blocks, gettign hit from the open, or even in a building you can hear is mostly on you but the light melees are really fast you need to predict, which is a huge mind game but if you miss you are at point blank range of abrams cased closed. and your case is closed.

I do play a lot of melee builds and they already do enough damage. the one i use the most is lash using hunters aura bullet shreder lifestrike i can find lethal from the lowest 500 hp, it can easly do 700 after a dive strike knock up where you can't block my heavy. I enjoy the niche and option of melee but i just want to mention that there's a risk of bloating a mechanic to where it just overpowers everything else ( like it has happened where in many games to much healing is a thing and its just stacking it on top of bulky resistence characters and snowballing, from league dota ow and smite as examples that had this). and the game skill expression is mostly shooting (melee auto secures, its free). with melee charge you get 1 light melee and you are going to eat it. their heavy melee goes as far or nearly as a stamina bar. I am sure at higher levels and in the future melee combat and spacing have a different dynamic as people are better at understanding what are the options. but you also dont want make pub stomp characters even more pub stompy

Long story short I am not to keen on making an oppresive style more oppresive. the no disarm is to scary, ence why successful blocking does not put it on cd

 

[www.powerrrr]

dont disable parry. i read that nad its a nono.

if they also have a slowing hex or just as much stamina as you, specially abrams that is hard to peel off with 2 movement skills nad immunities he already swats people off faster than they can kill him. heavy melee's are free blocks, gettign hit from the open, or even in a building you can hear is mostly on you but the light melees are really fast you need to predict, which is a huge mind game but if you miss you are at point blank range of abrams cased closed. and your case is closed.

I do play a lot of melee builds and they already do enough damage. the one i use the most is lash using hunters aura bullet shreder lifestrike i can find lethal from the lowest 500 hp, it can easly do 700 after a dive strike knock up where you can't block my heavy. I enjoy the niche and option of melee but i just want to mention that there's a risk of bloating a mechanic to where it just overpowers everything else ( like it has happened where in many games to much healing is a thing and its just stacking it on top of bulky resistence characters and snowballing, from league dota ow and smite as examples that had this). and the game skill expression is mostly shooting (melee auto secures, its free). with melee charge you get 1 light melee and you are going to eat it. their heavy melee goes as far or nearly as a stamina bar. I am sure at higher levels and in the future melee combat and spacing have a different dynamic as people are better at understanding what are the options. but you also dont want make pub stomp characters even more pub stompy

Long story short I am not to keen on making an oppresive style more oppresive. the no disarm is to scary, ence why successful blocking does not put it on cd

not true with lash, u can parry after ground strike light or heavy. airborne doesnt not prevent from parry usage

 

[sam.louro.monteiro]

not true with lash, u can parry after ground strike light or heavy. airborne doesnt not prevent from parry usage

huh... i went and test it and yeah you're right. why they don't, i don't know. probably just a skill level thing but many do block if I were to try to rawdog a heavy i get free blocked so I thought they didn't, perhaps they just don't try it?

still dont like the block disable

If i have melee charge i know if you block to soon in certain cases i can move around and still connect the hitbox after. like you see people going up and down. levels, saw a mo and krill once that looked like he was saxton hale charge punching

Edit: found something out while testing. not all melee hitboxes are the same. if i heavy hit krill and lash they both hit each other. but if i use infernus, infernus hits 1st. they both beat lash in a punch out but krill still gets hit on lash death but infernus doesn't, most of the time. its not very consistent. also like how for how cocky lash is he loses to even mcginis lmao

 

[GenghisChrist]

As a Viscous enjoyer I do think Spirit Strike being a component for an upgraded version similar to Lifestrike would be really cool for melee builds as there really aren't any explicit melee items outside of the 4 punch items but only one item is Tier 3 and 1 is Tier 2 (Not considering Colossus an 'explicit melee item') it would be nice to have 1 or 2 more for sure. Not throwing any idea onto the ring but just supporting the post. I plan on moving from viscous to Calico when that character comes out so more melee items is in my interest/bias lol

 

[Khanzy]

"Sorry, you didn't guess to parry my light melee so now I get to just spam heavy melee on you for the next 8 seconds".
No thanks.

 

[Sarus]

Anything to do with disabling parry will just tick people off, it's part of the inherent RPS of the melee system to begin with. I had posted another melee upgrade item that was meant to be an upgrade for melee charge - it would allow a 1-2 double hit light melee chain, the idea being that it would let melee people hedge their bets on a less risky attack but would still allow for parries just with a shorter reaction window.

 

[pakshin55]

Hi all, just as a quick aside the games fantastic and I can't wait to see what new stuff comes to it over the coming years!

My item idea was for a T3 Spirit item called "Spirit Fu" (feel free to name this anything better lol)

T3 Spirit - Spirit Fu
$3500 (Components Spirit Strike)

+200 Spirit Shield
+4 Health Regen
+40% Melee Damage

Passive (8s Cooldown)

When you perform a light or heavy melee attack against a hero, Deal extra spirit damage, reduce the targets spirit resist and temporarily prevent their parry.
(8s Duration)

My idea for an item was to have something that builds out of the spirit strike item in the shop as there aren't a wealth of melee items currently in the shop and the effects of the item feel like that match that price range well. This item would allows for more aggressive play with melee as by landing a melee attack on a hero, you open them up to further melee. Highly skilled players will look to parry you when you attempt to melee them in general and this is a great mechanic that I hope this item could spice up a little bit further, for example if a good player you're fighting could parry your heavy melee attack every time this opens up the angle of trying to land a light melee first to open him up for the bigger hit with less risk while still giving the defending player the chance to play around it either by movement or anticipating the light melee attempt and getting a parry on that instead.

I picked the stats based on similar T3 items in the shop and based on the stats that T1 Spirit Strike gives you but it could also buff the "extra spirit damage" stat on the melee attacks or perhaps give a larger spirit resist reduction to the target, hopefully playing well with heroes who get in close to use their abilities. The extra health regen and melee damage could also help players who want to secure trooper souls via melee as it can sometimes be riskier and open you to be poked. Also as a nice little thing thanks to parry's natural cooldown the game already has the UI icons in game to show players their parry is disabled

The people who cooked this game up obviously know a hell of a lot more than I do about design so if the stats aren't fine tuned maybe someone could forge it into something better but I hope if this idea seems wack that at the least maybe it could inspire someone else to come up with something in a similar vein. Thank you!

It should not prevent parry, overall we need more melee gameplay. But it shouldnt scale with spirit, right now it will only make healing spirit skirmishers stronger.