[Tau] - Vespid Saboteur

Story: The Tau Empire, after much collaboration with their Vespid allies, decided to form a joint project. They realized that Vespids, despite the strength of their weapon, were not sturdy enough to function well in the Tau mode of combat. With this shortcoming in mind, they sought to train select Vespids in the arts of misdirection, deceit, and trickery as to beguile and fool their enemies. Additional training resulted in expertise in setting traps and snares, which combined with their maneuverability, made the Vespid Saboteur outstanding in its new role. However, it still possesses several tricks in close combat, as many an ork has found out.

Skills:

Stats:
Str: 19 + 1.7
Agi: 17 + 1.2
Int: 25 + 3.2


Innate: Jump Strike Jump
Modeled off of Battlesuit tactics, the saboteur uses its unparalleled maneuverability to strike foes without warning and then jump back to the safety of the shadows. It can also be used as a simple jump to escape from tricky situations. The Saboteur jumps to an area 600/700/800/1000/1200/1500 distance from his current position. If any enemies are in that area, he will rend them for (Strength + Agility) X 0.5/1/1.5/2/2.5/3 and decrease their movement speed by 30/60/90/120/150/180 and jump back to his original starting location. If no enemies are there, he will not jump back and be free to act as he wishes.


Skill 1: Grenade Snare

When leading unwary enemies into a trap, the saboteur always makes sure to set a snare as his prey follows. Utilizing different and sometimes stolen types of grenades, there's always a surprise waiting in store for the unwary. He has a choice of three different types of grenades, which he can switch to at a moment's notice. All grenades take 1 second to infiltrate. Activation range is within 300 range of the snare. Costs 150/170/190/210 mana with a cooldown of 20/16/12/8 seconds.

Photon Grenade:

Spoiler:

Smoke Grenade:

Spoiler:

Skill 2: Neutron Blade

Both Tau and Vespid sought to further modify the unique crystals found in Vespid's atmosphere, after seeing its effectiveness in the Neutron Blaster. However, they realized that the crystals' full potential could be used at close range, where the radiation did not dissipate as much. With these ideas in mind, they created larger, sharper, and more durable crystals which could be placed on the forearms of Vespids heading into battle. Another side effect noticed during trials was the enhanced deadliness of the radiation emenating from the crystal. Passively grants the saboteur an aura that damages all enemies for 1/2/3/4 damage every 0.1 seconds in an AoE of 500 around him. Activates as a close-range melee nuke that does 70/120/170/220 pure damage with a DoT of 5/10/15/20 damage per second for 3/4/5/6 seconds. Cooldown of 30/25/20/15 seconds.

Skill 3: Whirring Mirage

Through the use of Tau technology, the Vespid Saboteur has learned to use his wings in a different way than pure flight. By vibrating its wings at extremely high frequencies, the saboteur creates a rapid temperature gradient in the air upon which light defracts, creating a half-mirage of the vespid's figure. As it takes a great amount of energy, it can only be performed unfrequently, but can create multiple moving illusions of the vespid all of which seem real until they disappear into thin air. When activated, the saboteur will create illusions that move in a straight line every second for 4/6/8/10 seconds. Illusions last for 2/3/4/5 seconds and can be controlled to attack targets while they last, but do no damage and take 250% damage back. Costs 10/15/20/25 mana per second to use.

Ult: Abduction

Sometimes the Tau Empire finds occasions where it would be appropriate to capture persons of importance alive and in a position where the Tau Empire can speak to them alone. Sometimes it would be better to have a person dealt with in a more secretive fashion than open war as well.

To this purpose, they enlist the Saboteurs, who are well trained in the art of using their hindlegs to snatch and carry objects. The stinger of the vespid also proves handy, as it possesses a potent paralyzing poison that prohibits punctual perpetuation of progress for all purposes. The saboteur sneaks up on an unsuspecting hero and jabs them with its stinger, envenoming the target for 125/250/350 damage and slowing for 30% over 20 seconds. At this point, the saboteur graps the target and flies into the air, carrying them for 3/4/5 seconds. When the duration has elasped, the saboteur drops the target on the ground from the air, resulting in a 2 second stun & 75/125/175 damage to the target.

PS: Is this original enough for you, Grass?

yes, yes it is
the duration on the ult is way to long, but looks good so far

Duration for which part of the ult? The DoT? The Snatch?

the snatch

Psst, make comments now. I finished all the skills.

hmm, ok. looks pretty good, but. i have just a few issues

innate needs a new name and damage is too much (or - it sucks (kinda) early, but is way way too powerful late - like (60+80)*3 = 420 damage, and thats just guessing random medium ish numbers - best suggestions for stat based damage, give it a base damage so it doesnt suck early, and make the stat damage less thatn 1.5x so it isnt too powerful late, specially cause your using two stats here)

for grenade trap, either make a way to chose which grenade u use, or get rid of the multiple grenades, it only makes the skills effects too random (which we got in a ~3 page long debate about with kharn )
(if u want to keep the muplitple grenades, possibly a text command?)

for whirring mirage... while i like the concept of an illusion thinger.... the skill itself doesnt work on the hero... (or.. like, at all really in its current way as i understand it) it doesnt provide the 'confusion' of mirror image skills (because it doesnt hide the real hero) it doesnt provide the pushing of some other ilusion skills (mistress) because they deal no damage, the only thing it proveds really is some extra bodies in a push.
(now if the illusion spawned on top of the hero and moved in the same direction that he did, that would work for the confusion factor, and be not so bad... but unless i can figure out a way to make the illusion actually 'split' from the hero, it wont work - and if this is what u mean the skill to do, then sorry, ignore all of what i said above )

and the ults numbers are still too powerful for the drag
(oh, and if u wanted to make him fly, this would be a good place to put it)
something like 2.5/3.25/4 seconds would be good (specially because u have a jump skill) because controlling enemies posisions is the most powerful thing possible

1. How about (Strength + Agility) times 1.5?


2. A text command would be awesome for switching grenade types.

-grenade pho
-grenade smo
-grenade kno
-grenade sta

3. That's what I meant. xD

You know Phantom Lancer's skill where he goes invis and leaves a copy that walks in the same direction as him, right? That's where this skill comes from. Perhaps you could use the trigger from that skill?

It's meant to be a defensive skill as a chaser doesn't know which one is truly real as they're being spawned and running away. It can also be used in an offensive manner to tie up units in combat or to provide multiple images of heroes coming converging at you.

4. I'll keep nerfing the numbers. I did state that he grabs him and flies into the air, although I could change it to a normal drag with the jump ability as an option.

oh, in that case nvm on the wings XD
and phantom lancer does that because he goes invisible with a windwalk, and windwalk removes your pathing. im not 100% sure i can do that with illusions... ill see what giving him the ghost ability does...

and i missed that flying part then nvm sry keeping it flying is fine

Grass, you never elaborated on whether the illusion ability would actually work. xD Will it as written or will it require more changes?

As for my vote, I said yes, but it is not my place to go on and on about what looks good and bad. It's hard to offer constructive criticism to your own work. Any thoughts, everyone?

i wont know untill i test it but im sure removing his collision and all that will work out eventually

i still dont like the multiple grenade types

So ummm... I accidentally closed this poll, but just know, I was going to vote yes XD

I'd like a comment though on which type of grenade alone should I give him? It'll make him easier to play, for one, and reduce the chance of him being terribly OP.

I personally like the knock-out grenade, because Sleep's a powerful feature.

if the effects dont stack, and all grenades trigger at the same time if multiple are there, i would agree with knockout nades... but perhaps *not* have the invulnerablilty? make the enemies wake up if attacked by towers/heroes?
or if they take a certain ammount of damage?

ive never understood why sleeping units cant be attacked >.>

Sleep is only sleep because otherwise it would serve as a really, really long stun. The duration for sleep timers in the original game were 10 seconds+, and that equals death in general if the slept unit wasn't made invulnerable.

Photon Grenades are the most potent of them all, since they disrupt movement controls, so you're literally blind when the screen goes black. I wouldn't mind Stasis either in that regard.

What I don't like is all the grenades going off at once when one is triggered. If you take the time and effort to plan it such that an enemy hero will wander into multiple grenades as he tries to run away, then why not? The effects don't need to stack to be effective.

I mean, if Snikrot plants two mines, one on each side of the map, and one goes off, there's absolutely no reason why the other should.

i mean if you plant 4 mines ontop of eachother, they should all go off yes?

and thinking about it, he doesnt need a hard stun to mesh with his ult... give him blinding photon nades.

Oh, on top. I thought you meant two nades placed in totally opposite areas, not overlapping. But that sounds good, then. Photons would work.

Is anyone going to comment on this? xD

Like analyze it?

doubtful

hes already (mostly) written out, do you just want me to move it to the waiting list?