Thomas - A hero who's every ability is an active item slot

.kate

Member
I picked the name of Thomas Edison, but you could call him many other things; Nikola, Albert, or simply "The Inventor"

His gimmick? In place of abilities he has active slots, which all modify the slotted item in different ways.

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So, how would this work?

Whenever you buy an active item, you can drag it over from your active slots into one of your ability slots. That item would then get locked to the corresponding ability (either permanently or for some set amount of time), preventing the player from selling it or moving it to a different slot. The item would still take up an item slot.

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Each ability would modify the item in a different way:

1: Cooldown. The first ability is usually the one that's spammed by most characters, so it would make sense for this slot to have a reduced CD. It can be the base item's cooldown reduced by some amount, with AP reducing it further and potentially making this ability charged at max upgrades. Could be things like Cold Front (focus on dealing damage) or Healing Nova (support-oriented build)

2. Duration. The effects of the slotted item last longer. This is the ability where you would slot the debuff and buff items, such as Slowing Hex, Knockdown, or Heroic Aura. The AP could increase the duration, decrease cooldown, or magnify the status effects of the slotted item.

3. Range. This ability increases the range of the slotted item, giving you the possiblity of a Very Large Alchemical Fire or a lane-wide Silence Wave (that sounds insanely unbalanced but i'm sure you guys could figure this out)

4. Amplified stats. Item put in the Ultimate slot would have a long cooldown (2x-3x the base cooldown of the slotted item), but in turn all of it stats would get amplified. Does the item deal damage? Now it deals 3x the damage compared to a regular active slot. Does the item stun an enemy? Now it stuns them for twice as long. Does the item have range? Well now it has triple the range. The AP could lower the cooldown, further increase the stat amp, improve spirit/boon scaling if the item has it, you get the idea.

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I provided a picture of a Luger with a bunch of thingimajigs drawn over it, with the idea being that it's a single shot pistol with low firerate and high single bullet damage. This character would be incredibly weak in the early game (since he has no abilities till he buys an active item), but potentially increadibly broken late game. Because of that his gun should start out more powerful than that of other characters to get him through the lane, but with much weaker scaling with boons to offset that.

This character would honestly be an absolute nightmare to balance, but it would allow players to engage in some insane item alchemy never seen before and I think that would be hilariously fun and would let people craft absolutely demonic and completely unique builds.

I don't really believe a character like this could come to the game any time soon (this is a silly amount of work to balance a guy like that), but I hope that at least the idea of replacing an ability with active items sticks around and gets used at some point.

thank you for all the hard work mr yoshi i love deadlock :)

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The hero theoretically is cool, but practically could be unplayable. I really like the concept itself, this is completely unusual way to play. You would be able to choose your abilities.

But the game won't let you play normally, cause there's small amount of active items that are not supportive. Most of them give simple buffs/debuffs or utility. Basically, you would have either of gun or support builds. And I think the former would be better choice, since gun build wouldn't require many items to have. The difficulty of support build play would depend completely on your team. If only a game had a way to give self-applied effects of the items to teammates, such as Fleetfoot, Metal Skin, Vampiric Burst/Infuser and etc. ,the situation would be easier.

Early-game would be hell to play, maybe even mid-game. But you said right, late-game could be hell but for enemy team. I would like to see some concrete descriptions of abilities upgrades, especially values and stats. They would decide the balance and effectiveness of the character.

Maybe somewhere in the future, when the game would have more different active items in all tiers, the character would be comfortable to play, but totally not now.
 
I actually came up with a concept similar to this long ago, just never published it since it would kinda suck to play, while also being a nightmare to bal- HOLY MERRY MOTHER OF JOSEPH WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK IS THAT ABILITY KEYBIND?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
 
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