WARDOG - TANK, VIOLENT, TEAMPLAY

[pressnifty]

LORE

In World War 1 the US Military stole Russian Military blueprints for an immortal automaton powered by spirit. With the power to rebuild themselves and fuel their life based on the stolen souls of enemy automatons, these soldiers could fight for ever until only 1 side remained.

Russia and the US deployed these automatons on the battlefield. Russia and the US saw the never-ending conflict and found the automatons not efficient enough for war as both ends led to a perpetual impasse, where neither side would see victory before their leaders had long passed.

Only WARDOG emerged from the giant crater left after the 5-year conflict. WARDOG is plagued by thoughts, memories and feelings that are not his own. Automatons should not dream, yet he sees tapestries of people and places foreign when his mind wanders. WARDOG wishes for the patron's aid to rid himself of these memories and return to the US military as the sole survivor, these images of peace going against his true purpose.

GAMEPLAY SUMMARY

WARDOG plays as a gun carry with the potential to support their team with Clarion Call and tank damage with Ult. Barbed Wire Wall lets you cut off enemy escape, Clarion Call lets you support your team and give a reason for spirit investment. Their passive lets you play a dangerous game of being low on HP giving weapon damage and their ult making them unkillable with potential for a large heal at it expire, enabling you to push the limit and tank damage for maximum damage.

Thank you for reading and I am open to any and all feedback.

GUNS



BARBED WIRE WALL



Notes...
The wall is shaped in such a way that without its T2 upgrade OR Greater Expansion you can jump and mantle over the wall if you can afford to take the DOT. With these upgrades you must expend 1 stamina. With the T1, this ability is intended to drastically slow and cut off enemy escape roots while you close the distance or help allies close the distance.
The ability can also proc melee items as it deals melee damage, letting you spec into a melee build if you please. The T3 makes it into a heavy melee, making crushing fists a potentially good buy.

(The graphic does not show it, but you could recast the ability within a 2s period to remove it. If I revisit this character, I might make the wall curved. If you corner an enemy within the radius of the wall you will have to walk forward into you/your team or climb the wall rather than run to the left and right around the wall. This will also provide some utility in that it can shield you from a larger angle if you stand within the radius of the wall.)

Clarion Call



Notes...
Clarion Call is WARDOG's key utility ability that would feel like wraith's 3. It is meant to be used as a tool during team fights, but can also be used outside of teamfights/during chases to reveal enemy locations on the map. Likely very strong with Heroic Aura to give insane amp's to firerate. Its likely also very strong being paired with Surge of Power.

The spirit resist reduction scales so that with boundless spirit you get roughly +6% spirit resist reduction on enemies. Its spirit resist shred over bullet resist shred because it incentivises using this ability with your team who can output more consistent spirit damage than you can, rather then selfishly to amp your own damage. It's duration also scales with spirit, making investing in spirit to help support your team through clarion call an option if you're behind and can't be a gun carry.

(Range is so high so it can facilitate being a tool to find enemies on the map nearby, though its range might be too powerful in a teamfight as you can buff nearly all allies.)

Soldier’s Grit



Notes...
Soldier's Grit facilitates WARDOG's core gameplay of being a huge damage sponge for your team to empower yourself. T1 helps you with heal after getting low during a fight, while T2 is a spike to help you have a larger health pool so you can have more health while below 50%/25%.

Before T3 the max damage you can have from the passive is 50%. This is equivalent to the weapon damage from point blank. At T3 it's equivalent to the weapon damage given from glass cannon. Without being able to test this character in game it's hard to tell if this amount of weapon amp would be appropriate for the risk of being low on HP.

Having more health means you'll have more HP while activating the passive, meaning building into green items can facilitate increasing your gun damage via procing your passively more safely.

(None of WARDOG's abilities grant them resists.

The Endless War



Notes...
This ability is very similar to old Yamato ult. Being unkillable gives synergy to your passive; by letting you be on low health without risk so you can get your 25% health weapon damage bonus.

Enemies are given the choice to either damage you or ignore you during your ult.
Shooting you will bring your health closer to death so that when the ult ends you're more likely to instantly die. But shooting you increases the duration of your ult.
Not shooting you makes you less likely to die after the ult ends as it can end with you having more health. Not shooting though stops the duration from increasing.
Buying superior duration (which also works with Clarion Call) increases the duration by roughly 2 seconds. This incentivises spirit investment on an otherwise gun focused hero.

None of WARDOG's abilities give resists (as apposed to how Yamato and Warden gain resists in ult) to facilitate losing health to facilitate having health low enough to activate passive.

Gaining metal skin helps with shrugging off damage. (Though this may be poorly designed as it means you're less likely to proc the duration increase from damage received. Maybe this 300 damage threshold could account for the damage you would have received if not for resists and metal skin).

Build Ideas

Hybrid...


A build where you put quick silver reload on your wall and can use fleetfoot to engage on enemies in closerange with your shotgun. Arcane surge is used to help enhance clarion call and your ult by increasing duration and giving insane firerate with heroic aura. Cooldown reduction helps you to ult more during fights to help you ult more, while fortitude and colossus give you big health spikes that let you proc your bonus damage passive without being as close to death.

Gun Lifesteal...


More gun focused with Vampiric Burst and Berserker being a large spike in power. Siphon would hypothetically be crazy on this character.

 

[postto]

so for the lore, one of the few things Yoshi leaked about the lore is that both world wars never happened in deadlock, so i'd say it's pretty inacurate, but you could always make a fictional war and transpose your backstory in it


as for abilities

Barbed Wall T2, what do you mean by radius? since it's a wall, i expect it to be a rectangle, and since a radius is relative to a circle, i'm a bit confused, is it wider, taller? also the fact it deals melee damage, do you intend for the wall to be parriable?

for Clarion Call, 40m of radius is enormous, way too broken, like, Dynamo's heals is 15m and Wraith's full auto is 12m, 40m would affect people in the jungle not even near you in any way

Soldier's Grit is pretty alright, though +400hp is a bit high

and Endless War, i find it a bit weird that you gain a charge for another ability on T1? idk how to explain it, basically it makes Barded Wall have 4 upgrades which sounds a bit busted on paper, i'd have to see it in game to make a real opinion though

 

[pressnifty]

so for the lore, one of the few things Yoshi leaked about the lore is that both world wars never happened in deadlock, so i'd say it's pretty inacurate, but you could always make a fictional war and transpose your backstory in it


as for abilities

Barbed Wall T2, what do you mean by radius? since it's a wall, i expect it to be a rectangle, and since a radius is relative to a circle, i'm a bit confused, is it wider, taller? also the fact it deals melee damage, do you intend for the wall to be parriable?

for Clarion Call, 40m of radius is enormous, way too broken, like, Dynamo's heals is 15m and Wraith's full auto is 12m, 40m would affect people in the jungle not even near you in any way

Soldier's Grit is pretty alright, though +400hp is a bit high

and Endless War, i find it a bit weird that you gain a charge for another ability on T1? idk how to explain it, basically it makes Barded Wall have 4 upgrades which sounds a bit busted on paper, i'd have to see it in game to make a real opinion though

Hiya! Thanks for your reply.
I didn't know about the no world war things, that's very interesting! I had an idea of this character coming from the future where a massive world war happened but scrapped it early on. In a remake of this hero I might make his lore be he's from that war and time shenanigans happened relating to the maelstrom that sent him to 1920s NYC.
"Radius" is the wrong word for what I meant, I more so meant 5m is added both horizontally and vertically making it a 10mx10m wall.
Since the wall is initially shot out as a deployed projectile (like hazard from overwatch, lol) I think it would be fun for enemies to be able to anticipate and watch the projectile to time to time the parry for when it lands. Would make for a useful tool for baiting out a melee if they miss time their parry and probably feel really rewarding like how it feels to parry viscous puddle punch.

For Clarion Call I agree the radius is too large for the amount of utility it can provide to teammates. The core idea was for the ability to mostly be a debuff and scouting tool so that meant having a big range to find enemies, so maybe the fire rate bonus to allies could be removed, or the radius could be shrunk to the size of wraith's 3 and the original buffs and scaling could remain.

For The Endless War's T1 it would function like how Billy's Blasted T2 gives him a charge of his Bashdown. So using The Endless War wouldn't give you an extra charge, but would just refresh a charge (if you don't already have all charges available).

Thank you for your feedback! Will be giving Clarion Call a rethink in terms of its range and utility.