This is my entry for the CDC #11 - Pint-Sized Palooza - #21 by Damian-1581 and i chose Gelbin Mekkatorque as i did originally intend to do him once a long time ago but not as a Gnome on foot or Gyrocopter like the old Blizzard art showed but instead based on his Legion and BfA mechsuit instead so enjoy!, i also wanna thank Who You Expect and Nortin for helping me with a new boxing method for my concepts to make it easier to post for me.
PS. Exploding Sheep is his raid ability only because Chickens were too small, his obsession is chickens not sheep.
He was a super safe choice from a super safe universe. Honestly kinda shocked he isn’t a Hero already since he’s the King of the Gnomes, but your overall design earned you most of the points anyway
Cohesiveness 3/5
While all of his abilities are super fun, I feel like he fits more as an assassin than a bruiser. His current build has no sustain at all as far as I can see. Compare him to the other bruisers such as Leoric, or Thrall.
Thematic 5/5
While I admittedly know a lot less about the King of the Gnomes than I’d like (Horde player here lol) What I do know about him matches perfectly with what’s here! Especially chickens! He loves them chicken.
Interaction 4/5
Electroshock strikes is such a cool concept that I love, but you don’t play off of it at all! It takes 20 basic attacks to get up to the 100% bonus damage, which will go away if he attacks another enemy, so best on structures. All of his other abilities seem like they’d combo into each other pretty well though
Additional Feedback
With his current build and a few tweaks, he’d make a really good assassin, rather than a bruiser. If you like what you got, I’d make the switch
It’d be really cool if you made Electroshock Strikes go into his other basic abilities. For example Spark bots could give a stack of Electroshock strikes every time it hits an enemy, and exploding chicken could also as well! Keep the reset after not getting hit for 1.5 seconds, but don’t limit it to 1 enemy unit. Plate spinning is fun!
He also has 2 models if i recall correctly as well, the Gyrocopter and he on foot models, this was way before Legion mind you so was before he got the awesome mechsuit and even further got his own raid encounter which surprisingly converted well i thought.
Btw Kyyteo as a heads up similar to my last CDC submission alot of those changes occur in the talent tree my friend
Honstly, now feels like as good a time as ever for him to appear. He finally got to do something in the plot after well over a decade of basically doing nothing.
Creativity: 4/5
It’s a safe choice, but I can’t fault the execution. His flow seems fairly safe as well, but again can’t fault it. Definitely seems like he’d be a fun hero to just get in and play.
Thematic: 4/5
From what I can tell, everything fits pretty well. The character matches the theme, and the kit seems to match the character. But I have to agree that the lack of sustain or defenses makes the bruiser tag somewhat questionable.
Cohesion: 4/5
I think my one beef with the kit is that there isn’t a lot of direct ability interaction. They combo into each other well enough, but even in the talents there is very little interaction between abilities.
Interaction: 5/5
Can’t really fault anything here either. Plenty of clear counterplay to make combat interesting for everyone.
Overall: 17/20
I can’t find any big faults with the concept, but it doesn’t seem to stretch any bounds. Which is perfectly fine, not everything needs to. I would say the tooltips could use some cleaning up. For instance, I doubt the damage on Cluck Cluck CLUCK! is per baby chick, but the armor is listed that way. And with Electroshock Amplification, I’m assuming you meant Unstoppable instead of Unbreakable?
“Cracks Fingers” So his self sustain is mostly regen based ontop of armour as i wanted to try something unique but was still unsure of it (so added the Potential Assassin tag), his talents don’t interact as much because it would snowball the effect and i felt it would ruin him
Also i got a weird habit of saying Unbreakable over Unstoppable due to playing Total War Warhammer too much lol.
Overall, there is nothing here I can complain about. While some talents dip a bit into the uncreative category, you have enough of a grasp of how to spice those up for me to not really have any complaints. The basic abilities are all plenty interesting for a character, and while the trait is a bit bland, I think it is unique enough to stay in a concept.
Cohesiveness - 4/5
The kit works together in the purpose of denying an area, almost like a tank. The lack of baseline defenses is slightly problematic for a bruiser, and I don’t really see the character fitting a melee assassin outside of his trait. While his trait did exist within the raid as a raid swap mechanic, I think you should create a more bruiser friendly trait that works with the character more, as the basic attack damage doesn’t really offer Gelbin anything or fit in with his abilities very well. The talent tiers also have some issues with talent bleeding, such as on Tier 6, and the build paths seem a bit constrained while not differentiating the playstyles out enough.
Thematic - 5/5
The character is very much inspired by his raid appearance. While I do find the lack of reference to his other achievements unfortunate, I can’t deny that you captured that representation of the character very well. I wish I could see some more references to what made him the High Tinker to begin with.
Interaction - 4/5
Overall, there are a lot of things I like here in Interaction, with delayed abilities, isolated attack areas, ability to reduce his damage with distancing, and mostly interactive heroics. My issue comes with his second heroic, which should be interactive in theory, but overall becomes problematic. The reliance on vision with with such a short delay and powerful damage output is an unrealistic way to counter the ability in 99% of cases. As for talents, most seem fine.
