Hey, I have an ability concept that I think can be interesting. Shields and constructions in OW are mostly invariant. I propose an combo ability (say, E for dropping shields and Shift for collecting shields) that can accumulate and transform over usage. It works like the following:
At first, the player P will have a rectangular basic shield S0 that can be put on the ground, small as the size of a Brigitte shield. P can choose to pick up the shield and put it in pocket and put it down again next time when cd is over, and it will be of the health that remains or after a little bit re-gen.
Now if the shield takes damage, another shield bar shall increase, preparing for a new shield. When the generative shield grows to a certain threshold value, next time P can put down two shields with a common edge: S0+S1. And the building process goes on. Now here leaves some room for a counter-play, say, if P collects the shields Sn before it is used up, then P gets all the benefits from the damage it takes and charges up the shield bar, but if P fails to do that, then all the shields and the shield charging progress is lost, and P will have to start from S0 again.
Things like this will limit how large a shield would grow into in a single game. The building process of the shield will also provide the polymorphism of constructables. For example, one can try to charge up enough shield to fit in just the right size and shape for a choke when a payload reach there. Now there is still room for abilities like right-click and ultimate, and there is still details needed to be complete about how the health of the shield should be distributed – should each section Si counting their health on their own, or their health be averaged when the shield is put down again.
So this idea is sort of a combination of Zarya, Orisa and Mei, and it does not have to be shields, it can be Mei wall like obstructions as well. Please give any advise you can think of on why this may or may not work, or how it could work better. Thanks!
I feel like this would end up beeing way too snowbally,
The bigger and more health the shield gets the less people you can shoot and the more shield you have to get through, but at the same time getting rid of that shield is giving him MORE shield
I agree, but adding some mechanism should limit that.
i feel like it would be better to add some sort of construct tied to it,
like, lets imagine, Our hero deploys a construct that, Some way or another, Builds up shields,
For the sakes of the example, lets say that our shield takes into account each instance of damage, and “powers” 5% of it, just to give out an arbitrary number (like for example, theres a bastion doing 500 damage a second, our shield would build up 25 shields per second, Just to give out an example) and builds it all into its value, then, at any time, our hero can just SUCC all the shield charge and put it into its shield, if destroyed you lose it all,
it could be a pretty fun hero to counter brust damage, you have a junkrat and bastion, a really heavy damage comp spamming damage everywhere, but this construct beeing arround would force them into making their damage count and beeing more careful, because just spamming everywhere will build up your shield
That’s exact what is on my mind. It’s all about fine observation and prediction of damage, and shield economy.
the only thing that i see that should be changed, is how the construct works, we dont want to make our hero be stationary obligatory, so i think the range should be global, or atleast huge, like, shield gen range size
also, we could give this guy an ability that goes something like
Use E to place your shield
once its placed, you can press E again, to teleport your device to you, where you can move it anywhere and not lose the charge, after a small cast time, that is cancelled by damage
That’s a great idea. What I was thinking, is that player can place the shield far away, say, an L shaped shield will provide some protection on a flanker Genji or tracer back in enemy line. But it has to be collected when the player is near, thus there will be more risk for the shield to be broken before the player approaches and the player will lose all the shield. Or you can even make the player only able to cast the shield out of a certain distance.
i think that the shield should be toggleble as well but from range too, you could place the shield in whathever shape it is regardless of distance, then press it again to get it back with no cast time because i think that would require a bit more reaction time,