Overwatch Hero Concept: Shield-Busting CC Tank

This week, I wanted to follow up on a previous post of mine where I mention an idea to make a character deal AoE pulsing damage (as opposed to Lúcio’s healing aura). Bear in mind this is just an initial idea for a kit so all numbers are very rough estimates and nothing is absolute. I’ll discuss my thought process, as well as possible alternatives at the end of the post so be sure to check it out!

Primary Fire

Demolition Mortars: The hero’s primary fire would feature it launching bombs in an arc that detonate upon hitting a surface. This would function somewhat similar to Zarya’s alternate fire, but with the catch that these bombs do much less damage to heros (~50 damage per bomb on a direct hit), but deal much more damage against barriers (~160 damage per bomb on a direct hit).

E Ability

Tremors: Toggle-able ability where the hero slows themself but deals moderate pulsing AoE damage in a 10–15 meter radius. 2–3 second cooldown after toggling the ability off.

Shift Ability

Epicenter: The hero slams the ground, knocking all enemies within an ~8 meter radius towards them (Think like Doomfist’s E, but without leaping forward, and the effect is in a full circle). If used while in the air, the hero plummets straight down to slam the ground, causing the same effect, but with the radius increased based off how far the hero fell.

Ultimate

Earthquake: The hero launches an untargetable drill at a ground location. After brief delays, the drill releases 3 pulses of growing concentric rings, each dealing damage and knocking down any enemies caught within for 2.5 seconds. An enemy can only be affected by 1 ring per ultimate cast. A visualization of the ring concept can be found here.

Notes/Thoughts

The hero’s role identity would be best described as a combination of a “Shield buster” and CC-heavy tank. What makes them unique from other tanks however, is a lack of any shielding or healing abilities of their own. Instead, the hero’s durability would be in the form of a large health pool in which a large percentage of the health is actually armor-health. As a (very tentative) first idea, I’d like to see this character have around 600 health with 500 of that health being armor-health. The hero’s lack of survival abilities is made up for by their ability to disrupt multiple enemies in an area while dealing continuous passive damage to them. Futhermore, the hero is able to synergize with their team by either providing AoE CC for others to capitalize on, or they can take advantage of an ally’s CC to land near the enemy and deal large amounts of damage through their Tremors aura and primary fire.

Tremors was the main point from which I wanted to build this hero. From there, for it to be effective, the hero would have to be able to stay near the enemy, thus designing the hero as a tank was the most reasonable choice. Given a tank that deals damage just by being near the enemy, it felt most appropriate for the hero to be lacking in mobility (at least during the pulses) in order to give enemies a means of counterplay. However, this left the hero with the main weakness of not being able to stick near more mobile enemies, thus creating the need for some form of CC, thus Epicenter and Earthquake.

When it comes to theme, I figured that earthshaking would be the best way to represent continuous ticking damage centered around an area. I considered having the hero instead putting out waves of fire or poison, but those tend to imply lingering DoT damage even after the victim has left the area. As I thought of the mechanics for Epicenter and Earthquake, the theme of drills and ground rumbling fit in perfectly, so I decided to stick with it. In terms of who the hero is and where they’re from, I’m admittedly a bit indecisive. One part of me feels that it’d be cool for the hero to be an Australian “Junker” robot made from scrap to cause destruction (possibly a creation of Junkrat’s?). Another part feels that it could be from another country, instead used as a more refined omnic that was originally built for deliberate, calculated demolition. In any case, this post is mostly focused about building a kit of cohesive abilities, so I’m going to leave this part open to interpretation/discussion.

The primary fire was the most difficult aspect to conceptualize, as the focus of this character’s damage and utility is meant to be based around their abilities, although I felt that the hero needed a bit more utility to round out their kit. As I thought more about the possibility of a “demolition” theme, the notion of breaking down placed structures (i.e. shields) felt all too perfect. Considering the prevalence of using demolition charges to decimate buildings, making the primary fire an explosive felt like the most logical choice. From there, it’s mostly just a matter of adding that damage multiplier vs. shields in order to be able to break shields quickly without also dealing too much damage against enemy heroes.

In terms of Tremors’ uptime, I feel that it could work well as being toggle-able with an indefinite duration, or only active for a set amount of time (~6 seconds?). This would need to be tested to get a better idea of which dynamic would feel better.

Regarding the hollow “ring” dynamic of Earthquake, I feel that it’d be worth testing it to instead just have full, growing circles, as hollow rings might be a bit too easy to dodge, especially if they give a warning ahead of time. However, this weakness could also possibly fixed by increasing the width of each ring or having the “warning time” be very brief.