Sergent - Legion Int Support and Engineer (Builds towers, repairs buildings, buffs allies)

[Wylker]

Please keep in mind that all numbers are subject to change/balance. Vote on the concept of the hero, not on the specifics of the first draft. Thanks!

I wanted to add a real team support hero that is actually useful. He is part techies (kind of), part dwarven sniper, and part new! Without further ado, I give you:

PS. If any of you creative types can make some icons for me, that'd be stellar

Sergent, The Combat Engineer

A veteran of the long war between humans and beasts, the combat engineer brings vast experience on the battlefield. His major strength is in expanding the human presence on the battlefield, defending his allies and their fortress, and keeping an eye on the beast horde. He can be useful in a fight though, as he carries a high powered, high caliber, long range rifle at the ready and isn't afraid to use it.

Legion Intelligence

Base Attributes:

Str: 25 +3.0
Agi: 16 +1.9
Int: 19 +2.1

Speed: 290
Range: 500

Part of this hero's ability set is inspired by Maliken's ability to change his default attack, so keep in mind he has TWO toggle-able abilities.

Ability 1: Reinforce

With this ability, the combat engineer slings his rifle over his shoulder and breaks out his wrench. In this mode he has no auto attack ability, nor can he use his entrench mode. However, his build times are reduced by 20% for the build skill. As he works at this critical task, he positions himself carefully to avoid being picked off by the enemy.

Toggleable, 1 second channel to swap between normal attack and reinforce mode.

• Channeled ability: The engineer targets any allied structure, and while channeled the building is granted +100 armor
• Costs 80/70/60/50 mana/second
• While reinforcing, the engineer gains +10/+20/+30/+40 armor

Ability 2: Build

The most unique ability of the Combat Engineer, this allows him to build various emplacements around the battlefield.

• Towers have regular building armor and 400/500/600/800 health.
• Towers are immune to magic
• Towers give 25/50/75/100 gold when destroyed and are affected by the invincibility runes when activated.
• Tower construction takes a base time of 10 seconds (channeled)
• Towers cost 200 mana to build (only used when complete)
• Towers can be destroyed at any time via a command, but take 10 seconds to deconstruct
• Whenever a tower can see an opponent, the opponent also gains vision on the tower
  

Mode 1: Build Sentry Tower
The combat engineer builds a tower to help control battlefield intelligence. Starting with a basic emplacement, as the engineer advances in experience he builds true beacons in the wilderness.

• Tower has a vision range of 800/1200/1600/2000 units with true sight (vision is reduced by 20% at night)
• Towers have vision at level 1-2 like a ground ward, and levels 3-4 like a flying unit
• Sentry towers are limited to a total of 1/2/2/3 in existence at one time

Mode 1: Build Shield Tower
The combat engineer uses ancient human technology to construct a technological marvel, a tower that can provide significant defensive bonuses to his allies.

Level 1: +8 armor to all allies in a 300 unit radius
Level 2: +12 armor to all allies in a 340 unit radius
Level 1: +16 armor to all allies in a 380 unit radius
Level 1: +20 armor to all allies in a 420 unit radius

-Only 1 shield tower can exist at a time

Ability 3: Entrench

The combat engineer prepares to hunker down for a fight. He digs an emplacement for his massive rifle and takes aim. Allies can get in the trench for an added bonus as well.

• Entrenching takes 2 seconds of channeling
• Detrenching takes 2 seconds of channeling
• Attack speed increases by 20/30/40/60%
• While entrenched, attacks have a 10/15/20/25% chance to stun for .25/.5/1/1.5 seconds
• Allies that stand within 120 units of the combat engineer while entrenched gain a 15% boost to ranged damage and +5 armor
• The combat engineer gains +5 armor while entrenched
• The entrenched space functions as impassible terrain for 120 units on either side of the engineer, this continues until the engineer un-entrenches or is killed.
  

Ability 4: Set Pitfall (Ultimate)

The combat engineer lays a stealthy, deadly trap for opponents. The trap is carefully concealed and lined with dangerous spikes, rocks, and discarded weapons from the battlefield.

• Build time is 6/4/2 seconds (channeled)
• Build cost is 200/150/100 mana
• Pitfall is invisible to enemies and has an aoe radius of 200/250/300
• 2 seconds after anyone enters the pitfall, it collapses, this stuns for .5 seconds (physical), does 200/300/500 physical damage, and reduces movement speed by 20/40/80% for 5 seconds to all heroes standing in the AOE when it collapses.
• Only 1/2/3 pitfalls may exist at once

Synergy:

The skills of the Combat Engineer are almost purely defensive in nature, thus do not lend to combos or high internal synergy. However they do augment any team by allowing less heroes to defend and causing significant slowdown to a heavy pushing opponent. Team synergy is obvious as adding aoe disables as well as +damage and +armor is a welcome bonus to any lineup.

Versatility:

While Sergent is clearly a support hero, his build can vary quite a bit depending on what you are facing. Heavy push team - go reinforce and entrench. Heavy gank team - build towers as quickly as possible. From an item standpoint his build would probably follow standard team support, either an astrolabe, frostfield plate, barrier idol, etc.

Role:

Sergent's role will be fairly constant in both pro and pub games. He offers very good babysitting type roles as well as another option for map control. His entrench ability will be great for his own survivability. The reinforce ability I think is the most unique ability of the bunch, and his exceptional survivability will hopefully allow him to sit and repair a structure right in the middle of a big fight, giving him a role besides "do damage" or "heal". In addition, his ultimate can be cast in the middle of a fight, giving it some extra versatility over the traditional fire and forget mentality behind techies' stun wards or remote mines.

The important difference between the combat engineer and techies (the inevitable comparison) is that the combat engineer requires enemy attention. If he is making towers indestructible, creating impassible terrain or significantly buffing allies, he can not simply be ignored.





Proposed Staff of the Master Effects:

• Repair: mana cost drops to 70/55/45/40
• Sentry Tower: Towers gain a squad of riflemen that have a 400 range attack on a single target that does 140 damage/second (normal)
• Shield Tower: Adds +10 magic armor bonus for allies
• All Towers: +1 may exist
• Entrench: Cuts channel time in half and adds an additional +5 magic armor for the engineer and allies in range
• Pitfall: +1 pitfall can exist, pitfalls also silence for 2/3/4 seconds

[Wylker]

Changelog:

10/8/09:
-Complete remake on repair skill as "reinforce" skill
-Made towers visible to all opponents in range
-Changed entrench channel times and added impassible terrain suggestion
-Made pitfall trap affect ALL heroes caught in the AOE
-Reduced pitfall stun time to .5 seconds at all levels

[Wylker]

Please pay no attention to the t-down'ers that are too terrified to post any critique, they're just mad I yell at them on IRC. Poor kids =/

[Wylker]

r0mp

[Wylker]

Not a single comment? =/

[NooBSAiBOT1]

Ulti seems pretty OP. what if you combined that with Kraken, Temp. Behemoth. That'd be sick. 5 second stun?!? 500 Magic Dam.?!? 80%(Aracna Slow) to all for 5 Seconds. way way way to op there buddy.

[Wylker]

Ulti seems pretty OP. what if you combined that with Kraken, Temp. Behemoth. That'd be sick. 5 second stun?!? 500 Magic Dam.?!? 80%(Aracna Slow) to all for 5 Seconds. way way way to op there buddy.

I was actually thinking about that today, is the answer to drastically increase build time or change the damage etc?

[P1NGu1]

I like the repair idea but it needs to cost more mana or be nerfed, since towers are very precious.

[Wylker]

I like the repair idea but it needs to cost more mana or be nerfed, since towers are very precious.

Yeah I kind of pulled the repair numbers out of my rear end, as I wasn't sure what would be balanced...

[docterj208]

Skill 1: OP. There is a reason there are no ways to heal towers. If you could, you would have a full tower every time the enemy pushes. I understand the want to repair a tower, but, it just can't be done. The closest thing to fair for this ability would be to not get the engineer to get any bonus armor and greatly increase the armor of the unit being "repaired" but that seems worthless. Sorry, T-down

Skill 2: Costs no mana? No cooldown? I guess that is because of the 10 second channeling time. But honestly, this is a bad idea. Any unit can kill it and it has no defenses. What is the point? T-down

Skill 3: I don't like the channeling. Sniper has 10 more range than this for nothing. Sure, it increases armor and lets you stun. Sniper could stun and do more damage too. Very weak ability. Not to mention that this has almost no synergy with your other abilities except for shield tower which is very situational. Sorry. T-down

Ultimate: Eh, its ok. The way I see it, it is a stun mine which does damage and slows movement speed (afterwards?). No where near as effective as techies with remote mine and stun mine. But you know what I think I may actually figure out what you are going for.


Overall, very bad port of techies. All of this guys abilities are defensive based. You have almost no offensive abilities for the exception of entrench and the shield tower. Both of take large amounts of time to setup. To be honest, if you were going to go shield tower, its more effective as a heal like a mini fountain. Additionally, its more effective for laneing this way. If you want to go the route of sentry towers, then make it like scout's eye or make it similar to Tree's eye. The way it is now is just dumb. Sorry, for that, but it is.

As for your 3rd and 4th skills. These show the only promise. Skill 3, make it take 2 seconds both times. After that, you are more or less good to go. Ultimate, give it a stun or give it a slow, don't let it do both.

Make your first two skills fun to play and your are good to go.

[Terribad]

Tower repairing means it will be very hard to take down your towers if the other team doesn't get 3-5 heroes to push because they will always be full hp, like someone else said.

Sentry towers are amazing. I would buy a portal key and runes of blight, blink to unreachable places and build them there. Easy vision of half of the map right there.

Entrench should make an unpassable line of terrain like behe's fissure (yes this is a buff). Pitfall should affect allies as well. Pitfall is visible to allies obviously.

This hero is already op because of his first 2 skills. Staff of the master bonuses make him hilariously op.

[Wylker]

What about a channeled skill that costs mana that makes towers invuln? Like he can sit on the tower to prevent damage (similar to a rune) but has to be there and costs mana/second.

Also something I left off the sentry towers is that they should be visible if they can see you. Ie, if you are within their sight range, you can see them too (for opponents). Alternatively I was thinking they'd ping all players when built so that everyone would know where they are.

[B4K4157]

A purely defensive hero eh?

Reminds me of techies, and the only people who like techies have no friends.
There's a reason he doesnt appear in DotAs SD.

[Wylker]

Tower repairing means it will be very hard to take down your towers if the other team doesn't get 3-5 heroes to push because they will always be full hp, like someone else said.

Sentry towers are amazing. I would buy a portal key and runes of blight, blink to unreachable places and build them there. Easy vision of half of the map right there.

Entrench should make an unpassable line of terrain like behe's fissure (yes this is a buff). Pitfall should affect allies as well. Pitfall is visible to allies obviously.

This hero is already op because of his first 2 skills. Staff of the master bonuses make him hilariously op.

I like all these ideas, updating him now

[Wylker]

seriously no one likes this concept? =/

[br0wnie]

I think that this is a really good idea, almost everything about it. The only problem with his entrench ability is that it's sort of useless for him, since he is an int and won't have much damage. So when you are toggled to the rifle and using that it won't do much. But it will help allies so I guess it's alright.

I voted yes

[ImHelix]

Who ever played tf2 do reconize the engineer and his wrench-.- and im against cause it encourage turtling

[[Plu]OnesQuared]

Skill 3 seems retarded, you can get savage mace + a charged hammer and ur set to sit and kill, +60% attack speed is ridiculous for the fact that 1.5 stun is possible, altho in dota sniper does have the range increase + the stun, the attack speed is where it could break the character concept. Since sniper has to work for his attack speed much more than this hero without the +60% attack speed, doesn't really matter if u can't move, the opponent cant come at u with that kind of firepower

Sentry and the shield tower seems solid except for the view range, where the flyer range is granted, the forest juke is a great way to escape death to players, with that in mind if u can see through the forest, itll just be nothing in the end when engineer is in play with a good place to set up towers. Also the range of sight is too far, should be normal hero range, without the flyer vision, it will take more skill to build the towers on proper places.

[Chinoman11]

I agree with ImHelix xD
I've also played TF2
Well anyways, thumbs up for this concept...
As I really like it

C Ya around,
Chinoman10.

[[BOOS]MarkMasters]

Imagine having warpcleft and some other items and then entrench for a 60% AS bonus that is hmmhmmhmh approx 4 shots a second, 25% chance to stun 1.5 sec thats....AMG PERMASTUN

+ a hero that boosts towers shouldn't be able....i think in a 5vs5 game that team has a big advantage because their towers can endurance much longer