[COMPLETE]pathfinder

and vindi is the real sniper
gly's idea modified (prolly only slightly) by me

story: same
stats: same

range: 450
movespeed: 310

innate: Markerlight

"A Markerlight is a hand-held that projects a simple beam upon a target, and is used to guide other weapons to it with unearing acuracy."
The target is revealed and and loses 2/3/4/5/6/7 armor. lasts 10 seconds.
A single unit may only have one enemy under the effects of Markerlight; multiple casts on the same unit will reset the duration. Multiple units targeting the same enemy with Markerlight will stack the effects.
range: 700/800/900/1000/1100/1200, 600 aoe. Cooldown: 8/7.5/7/6.5/5/4.5

one: Surpressive Fire

"While their primary job is recon, Pathfinders do find themselves in the midst of a battle. Their job then becomes to lay down surpressive fire to pin down enemies, allowing the rest of the Tau army to decimate them."
Fires a burst of surpressive fire into the enemies in the target aoe, dealing 70/140/210/280 damage, slowing movespeed by 25%, and causing enemies to miss 25/30/35/40% of their attacks.

*same cost/cd as current pulse carbine

two: Sensor Tower

"Specifically in the Tarros Campain Pathfinders have sometimes errected temporary sensor beacons to act as advanced rader towers for their forces"
Constructs an immoblie invisible Sensor Tower at the target location.
The tower has 700/800/900/1000 aoe vision, a 10/14/18/22% Trueshot Aura, the Markerlight ability, and a 400 aoe 3 second trusight.
Maximum of 2/3/4/5 towers. Trueshot Auras dont stack.
Range: melee, cooldown: 30, manacost: 100/140/180/220

three: Silent Hunter

"As advance recon squads, Pathfinders have been trained in the ways of stealth and fieldcraft. While they do not have the equipment of the Stealth Suits, Pathfinders are almost equally able to avoid detection by their enemies."
When within 200/250/300/350 range of trees, the patfhinder becomes semi invisible.
If within 350/300/250/200 range of an enemy hero, the patfhinder is 35% visible and can be targeted.
If attacking, the pathfinder is 25% visible and can be targeted.
If moving, the pathfinder is only 15% visible, and can still be targeted.
If standing still, the patfhinder is 5% visible and cant be targeted.
Using abilties will not reveveal the pathfinder.

ult: Seeker Missle

"Markerlights are often used to pick out targets for seaker missle salvoes from out of sight."
Calls up a salvo of seeker missles to annihilate all targets with the Markerlight debuff. All units with the Markerlight debuff will be hit by one missle per stack of Markerlight. Each missle will deal 200/275/350 damage.
Range: global. Manacost: 170/230/290, Cooldown: 30/27/24 seconds.

how many stacks can u have be4 they stop stacking?

OOC: Seems I've been a little too forthright in my language of late, so I'll turn it down a tad.

The concept is there. I would just make a few minor changes.

For the Markerlight, it should not be spammable. It should be a semi-channeled beam of light that doesn't need direct line of sight and the bonus should only stack if multiple, different sources are placing markerlights. I mean, one markerlight over and over is still just one markerlight.

If for instance, I'm a pathfinder and I see an Ork from 1000 range away behind trees, I would mark it up and be able to move around, but if I attacked or my target got out of range, it would lose the markerlight debuff.

For Photon Grenade, I feel like it needs more bite. It could be a photon grenade blast followed up by a volley of pulse carbine fire, although nothing like what the pulse carbine is now. Simply put, it doesn't do that much damage. xD So it could called "Carbine Barrage" and do the following:

Tosses a grenade at the target location, slowing enemies by 15% and causing them to miss 40/50/60/70% of their attacks for 7 seconds. After which, the Pathfinder fires a volley of pulse carbine fire at the area consisting of 5/6/7/8 shots which do 20/25/30/35 damage per shot in an area.

Well, I'm torn at this point about marker drones and outposts. Both have relevancy.

Marker drones have the following pros and cons:

Pros:

1. Mobility is key, can mark up a single target multiple times very quickly.
   
2. Stick with the Pathfinder at all times and serve as a deterrent to any overly aggressive person who charges in only to get lit up by 5 markerlights.
   
3. Provide an immediate bonus and enable the pathfinder to function capably by himself.
   

Cons:

1. Can be killed, however, and micromanagement is key. Aren't much of a unit without their markerlight and have no other way to attack.
   
2. Can tip opponents off to the presence of the pathfinder, who generally is a soft target.

As for Remote Sensor Towers:

Pros:

1. Are invisible and immobile
   
2. Serve as area denial weapons. If an opponent strolls into an area and sees a markerlight, he'll be hesitant to go further because it could be an ambush by the pathfinder and his team.
   
3. Can have more towers than drones and serve a wider area of effect. Can be set up in enemy territory and perform exceptionally well.
   
4. Provides vision of the area and limited true sight.
   
5. Multiple towers in a single area set up a death trap for unwary foes.
   

Cons:

1. Opponents will seek to destroy these first as they form the base of the Pathfinder's strength.
   
2. Because they don't move, they can't provide markerlight support on the go and create a degree of inflexibility.

Those are just a few of the things I see. If you see anything else, do tell.

For the Third skill, I feel that another skill related to stealth/survivability would be better than creating someone who's just there for movement speed buffs. Perhaps while he's near trees, he gains a degree of transparency and cannot be selected for single target spells, if possible? I mean, you can't hit what you can't see.

For the Skyray Missiles, I feel the damage needs to be buffed a lot. Like 250/300/350 damage per missile per markerlight. I mean, it is a missile that you're hitting people with. And the missiles should come from the base at 522 movement speed, since the skyray tank isn't likely to be near the pathfinder.

Just my thoughts.

i'd give him marker drones, give them invis and force them to stay within a 1k radius of the pathfinder.

the imobilness of the towers are what throws me off.

and markerlight. heh XD your entirely right, but i dont want to make it channeled. cause that would make the pathfinder pretty useless.
howabout this. a low cooldown (like 5), make it last 10 seconds, but only one enemy can be markerlighted by one unit at a time, and stacking it only refreshes the duration, not effects.
this allows it to 'channel' without actually channeling.
and in thise case ill buff the effects.

ult: well, i came up with these numbers based on the assumption that a single unit could markerlight the same unit several times. the damage can be buffed.

and what your suggesting for photon grenade is basically the current pulse rifle + blind >.>

and i dunno, i liked that 3rd skill >.>
but maby some sort of stealth effect... i cant make him not tagetable without doing the same effect as karandras' ult.

how about something like this:
*name*
*fluff about stealthiness*
while within 200/250/300/350 range of trees, the pathfinder becomes partially invisible to his enemies. While moving, the Pathfinder is completly invisible. While stationary, the pathfinder is 15% visible and cant be targeted by attacks or spells. While attacking, the pathfinder is 50% visible and can be targetted by attacks and spells.
Enemies that come within 350/300/250/200 range of the pathfinder will reveal him like he is attacking.

We might need to increase his range to something like 450 in that case, but I like the stealth idea.

As for markerlight, I don't like the fact it doesn't stack, since the TT version allows you to stack the effects for greater effect.

The thing I don't like about drones is that they're vulnerable to AoE skills around the Pathfinder and that they have relatively low autonomy. Sure, you can pump 5 markerlights out in a second then ult for doom, but if you have a limitless amount of towers (Like 10-20ish) you can set up throughout the map, the vision bonus is so much more valuable and you'll essentially make the woods off-limits for low health characters who are being chased, because then they'll get a missile in the face. That's primarily why I favor towers, but we should try both when we have time.

As for photon grenade, I noticed we copied the skill from an already existing Tau hero. >> So we should think of another skill. I like how Vanguard sounds, but I don't fancy the effect, seeing as Pathfinder teams run solo for the most part.

his range is already 450

markerlight can stack, just not from one unit

and drones dont ahve to stick to the pathfinder they just have to stay within 1k aoe of the pathfinder.
thats a pretty decent range

But the ability to control territory is far more important. If you can influence your enemies to not go into certain areas or to go down this path, that's a very powerful tool for chasing and ganking.

1k AoE isn't quite as good as being able to cover a quarter or half of the map and essentially make it a mine field for units that try and go through. He won't outdps a character, by any means, but if he can make a hero hesitate. Additionally, the vision bonus spread over the map serves his whole team well.

And I'm fine with 1 markerlight per unit. Makes it fair.

yes, but think of the power of unlimited map control.

wards have a gold cost and a duration, snikrot's squigs have a limit.

you cant give the sensor outpost no duration and no limit without making that skill insanly op.
and if you do give them a limit/duration... well then they become a lot less usefull.

Then what limit would you propose? Because even 5-8 outposts is still an impressive amount of control.

I don't think they'd possess a duration, though. That said, how does a limit on the number make it a lot less useful?

And the thing about sensor drones is that they can't be invisible, technically, to be fair. Otherwise, one could keep a whole retinue of 4-5 around the whole game and simply give a 50/60% extra damage debuff on any hero that tries to approach you.

think of snikrot's squigs

the towers would have to have a similar limit to not be powerful, but then how useful are they for their actual role of markerlightning and vision with a limit of like 3-4?

and drones can be invisible give them a long fade time of like 6 seconds, so when they markerlight, they are visible.

There's probably a cost-effective optimal limit to the amount of outposts for the Map, but I haven't tested it with wards. It'd probably be higher than 3 or 4, considering Squigs go up to 6, hence why 8 would be a good top-end estimate.

We can either make Pathfinder a ganker, which is what your suggestion pertains to (Massive placement of Markerlights instantly, with burst damage out the roof) or a support character who is able to influence the battle in other ways besides just markerlight ganking the whole game. With vision, you can map control, and markerlights offer a deterence factor. And I feel Pathfinders fit the latter better, since they're the vanguard and go and scout.

I'm not debating the actual ability of Drones to be invisible. I'm disputing that if they were to be invisible, you're inviting OP situations because you have Doom on steroids which don't show themselves until you're already dead.

fair enough.

and about squigs: your investing 10 skill points to be able to place 6.

mathematically, you get 2.4 towers with 4 skill points.

while squigs do have truesight... your towers arent planning on having truesight are they?

one thing i dont like about the towers is that they *heavily* reduce his mobility/flexability

if he doesnt have a tower there, hes a lot less useful.

hmm... random idea. i dunno.
could the sensor towers function as a 'base' for the drones?
the tower would summon drones (either from a skill, or like the pocket factory skill)
and the drones wouldnt be able to leave a certain(1k?) range of the tower without powering down.
the drones could also follow the pathfinder around, but to a max of 1/1/2/2 drones, or 1/2/2/3...
maybe each tower could support 3 drones or something...
and maby it could have a trueshot aura of some sort

does that help any?

Well, he has his own markerlight as an innate. He won't be positively crippled just because he doesn't have his drones around. He's meant to be a scouting hero.

How'd you get 2.4 towers with 4 skill points. Don't see your math there.

They don't need true sight, if the quantity is there.

They may reduce his mobility/flexibility, but the opposite relationship does not work such. If the towers are placed correctly, the whole team will be able to take advantage of them. And even if he doesn't have a tower in his immediate area, the tower will be providing vision and a markerlight for another hero on his team to potentially use.

And as for drones coming from the towers, I'm not too fond of that. Too many parts to control.

10 points = 6 squigs
4 points = x towers

4/10 = x/6

24/10 = x

2.4 = x

or... 4 is 40% of 10, so do 6*.4, that gives u 2.4

considering towers are about the same as squigs... ish (true sight vs markerlight...) i would give a max of *maby* 4 towers

and actually really thinking about it, does it make sense for stationary buildings to have a workable markerlight?

and the drones from towers is the most inbetween thing there is, imo.
the towers prove the sight, the drones provide the markerlight, it still restricts it to a certain location, and doesnt give the pathfinder a shit-ton of drones to get insta +90% damage.
and really, hes got a one click ult, a passive invis, an aoe target slow... hes not that micro intensive int he first place, and adding the tower+drone wont make him too hard.
and the towers could prolly auto make drones or something...

i dunno.. having him deploy these sensor towers really doesnt fit with me XD

Hmmm. I don't like the combination of the two ideas, though. It distorts the original purpose of the two.

And yes, it does make sense for a stationary building to have a workable markerlight if it's a sensor outpost. If you can sense the presence of objects in the distance, what's to say you can't put a markerlight on them?

I'll pose the same question to you: Does it make any sense for towers that are small and narrow to even produce drones the same size as it?

If characters can have lots of health and do lots of damage, what exactly is the problem with pathfinder, whose primary role in TT is to scout and provide support. He's not meant to be a luring character so that a hero can chase and get lit up by 3-4 markerlights. For him, map control is better than any DPS he can do. And I would suggest 6 towers for a limit. Would you rather move the tower skill to his innate and put markerlight as one of his skills?

markerlight should stay innate, and drones can be constructed from smaller parts

and what is the original purpose of the skills gly?

The original purpose of the skill is not to make him someone who does lots of damage.

To this point, we have not had a character whose abilities focus on map control. Snikrot doesn't quite count because his squigs only really take prominence late-game. Both him and Yriel are gank-burst heroes for the most part. Pathfinder is a support hero and his goal is to hold his lane as best he can while setting up the map such that his team has the best advantage.

The Markerlight outposts serve primarily 4 purposes. They provide:

1. Vision
   
2. Armor Reduction
   
3. Catching People with Skyray Missiles
   
4. Area Control: If you can make people not go down a certain way when they're low on health because they know there are markerlights in that area, you can plan your ambushes and ganks much more successfully.

Compared to the drones, whose only purpose really is to reduce armor and see if someone's hiding in the forest 1k distance from you, I think the outposts are more dynamic and a better support feature.

yes, well, the same thing *almost* can be said about drones:

extended vision
armor reduction
more powerful missles

i do agree that outposts work better for the hero do to scouring reasons etc... but they still limit his power to certain extent

but i guess my idea would just do too much >.>

One thing strikes me odd is that pathfinders are used for supressing firepower, not supressing grenades (fluff wise) and also shouldn't Tau troop commanders have access to better equipment such as nades? Anyhow this will probably be fixed over in the future, I'm just saying this to make sure it isn't overlooked.

Now for a nifty idea: Pathie gains one drone per '#?' markerlights, and drones have a small stacking slow, (to fit into the pathfinder supressage) max of '#?' drones.
Drones can either bury themselves into the ground and become infiltrated sentries, and or have a 'kaboom' ability?

i do like the idea of the surpression over the grenade... but it comes down to the same effects really... just different cosmetics

We could cause the grenade burst to slow movement and attack speed, like a normal suppress.

or, slowing ms and blind is pretty much the same effect >.>

hes getting at the 'paths dont really use nades'
where we could just keep the current pulse carbine effect... call it surpression fire... and possible change it up a bit so it isnt just an triggered cluster rockets

Here are my thoughts, having played him in a real game:

The Markerlight innate isn't bad at all, with its armor nuke. It also reveals for a time.
However, because the seeker missiles don't do physical type damage, a lot of that armor loss is wasted unless you have someone trailing nearby who can hit hard quickly. If it could be toggled to create a chance to stun upon a hero's attack, that would make it just as good, or if the two could be combined, even better.

Suppressive Fire is awesome. Low cooldown, a fair amount of damage, and a nice % of blind and ms debuff make it one of his best skills. Plus, since it homes in on units, shots aren't often wasted on things that aren't there.

Sensor Outpost is by and away the toughest part of him to manage. Especially with a few heroes who can detect invisible units, like Farseer and Vindi, the placement and moving around of outposts is paramount to success. One needs to keep the other team guessing where all the outposts are and constantly move them around to adjust to pressure and focus pressure on points.

If Markerlight wasn't so glaring obvious as to where the outposts are, one could have an easier time with detection. And the cooldown isn't too bad, although it could be maybe 5 seconds faster. Fortified armor works well, and the trueshot aura is quite nice, but one has to always form a group with your outposts and lure exceptionally well to maximize damage. Early game, I used them to rune spot, but because it was only top, runes weren't all that important, so I left one at mid and placed a pair of two in each mini lane, slowly moving them back and forth as our team got territory. If two (or more) sensor outposts overlap, can we get a synergistic effect both in the increase of vision, trueshot, and markerlight range?

If Markerlight had an autocast toggle and a much, much lower cooldown, it would be much improved because then you could tag a whole crowd of creeps and blow them to kingdom come. I did like what you did with the improved range, as it made a lot of improvement in setting up seeker missile. When he recycles outposts, can we make the mana stone not visible to the other team?

Seeker missile is a rather odd skill. You rely on markerlights to set it off, and if you manage to get 6 markerlights on one person, that's 350*6*.75 for magic reduction = 1575 damage. The danger is that someone can set down wards or reveal all your wards and simply take them down if a hero isn't there to puppy guard them.If the missiles did physical damage, with an amplification of 92% damage with -42 armor, that's 350 * 6 *1.92 = 4032 damage, which is an extremely high ceiling to aim for and extremely unlikely to occur against any form of detection, since they almost obligate the other team to get some form.

Let's tone it down, however, and get 3 missiles and -21 armor. 350 *3 * 1.73 =1817, which is still an extremely large amount of physical damage. Let's say that it's used on a tank who has 20 armor, though. 350 *3 * 1.06 = 1113 damage, which is still a high amount.

It's obvious that making missiles take advantage of armor loss is prohibitively overpowering, so how can we fix pathfinder up and make seeker missiles at least somewhat more effective when the pathfinder is by himself?

One answer I thought of would be to ensure that the Tau tavern has at least 2-3 other heroes who can supply markerlights for Pathfinder to use for seeker missile and his other skills. O'Shaserra is already a hero with marker drones, and the Broadside team also might have them. Since Markerlight is already effective with armor loss, it'll only serve to amplify Pathfinder's impact in race mode and give it more zeus type opportunities to strike dying heroes at the other end of the map.

I didn't get the invis skill, so can't help you there. Ask Ele about it, though.

and the commander hero that whatshisname made also has a marker drone

and as you pointed out, we cant make seeker missles do physical damage. so thats out of the question
markerlight cant really be autocast cause it can only target 1 unit at a time remeber

and yeah, the invis skill needs some work

@glyedit

Innate: Sensor Tower

With each level of the innate, more functions are unlocked.
Level 1: no abilities except the demolish
Level 2: markerlight (-1/2/3/4/5 armor per markerlight)
Level 3: true sight (radius increases, cooldown decreases)
Level 4: trueshot aura (radius increases, % bonus increases)
Level 5: seeker missiles (240/320 pure damage, to make up for magic resistance)
Level 6: Valkyrie's Kiss (Takes command of the remote drone network for a period of time and marks all units in an AoE with a markerlight anywhere the Pathfinder has vision. (global aoe markerlight). Other towers cannot use this skill, but still have access to their own markerlight.

1st Skill:
Tides of War: Pathfinder can swap between a Carbine with a Markerlight and a Rail Rifle.

Carbine's bonuses: Access to Markerlight, Suppressing Fire, Vanguard and Darkstar Warhead.

Rail Rifle bonuses: Access to Rail Rifle, Sharpshooter, Patient Hunter, and Killing Blow (See what I did there?)

2nd Skill:
Suppressing Fire (Active) / Sharpshooter (Passive)

3rd Skill
Vanguard (same)/ Patient Hunter (Active):

Ult
Darkstar Warhead (active):

Using only the Pathfinder's Markerlight, a Darkstar Warhead can be called down from orbit to unleash waves of neutrons that obliterate living matter while leaving physical structures behind.

The Darkstar Warhead hits the spot where the unit was hit with the markerlight and takes 3 seconds to land. There is no notification besides a normal markerlight that the warhead is coming. When it hits the ground, it does impact damage of 150/200/250 and then emits a wave of energy every 5/4/3 seconds in a 400/500/600 AoE area for 20/25/30 seconds. Units hit lose 2/4/6% of their life.

/ Killing Blow (Active)

Attribute Bonus icon:
Markerlight (active) / Rail Rifle (Passive)