🤖 New Tank Concept: Maximilien

General Discussion
1

Maximilien has 300 armor and 100 hp for a total health pool of 400. Click the arrows to expand the details of each ability:

Primary Fire click me
  • Light Saw
    • Shoots hard light saw blades that bounce once after hitting a hard surface
    • Fire rate is 1 per .5 seconds
    • Does 45 damage per shot
    • Can heashot
    • 10 round magazine
    • Travels at 40 meters per second (Pharah's rocket is 35 mps)
    • Reload is 2.2 seconds (Orisa's is 2.5)
    • Comments: much like Moira's damage orb can cause damage in an area by bouncing around, this ability would work similarly. Maximilien would be able to create a temporarily hazardous area for any enemies caught in the open or stuck in an enclosed space. He could also score some creative bank shots on enemies hiding behind shields or walls
Secondary Fire
  • Shield Projector
    • Fires Symmetra 2.0's shield with 700 health
    • Ammo of 2
    • Regenerates at 8 seconds per shield

Approximate appearance, this is relevant to Ability one:

Maximilien Tentacle Form

Ability One
  • Tentacle Wall
    • (Before explaining this I have to detail what Maximilien would look like. Basically he looks like Brainiac or Dr. Octopus, as in he walks around on two mechanical tentacles sprouting from his back while he uses two other tentacles as arms)
    • Maximillien smashes all four tentacles in front of himself so that they lay one on top another horizontally, they then act as a barrier that reduces in coming damage by 50%
    • Initial setting up of wall causes 75 damage to players 5m in front of Maximilien
    • Like Orisa's Fortify, Maximilien cannot be booped or stunned of the attack hits his tentacle wall, but if the attack hits him behind the wall then he will be booped/stunned/slept and wall form will instantly cancel
    • Maximilen cannot use his primary or secondary fire in this mode
    • Places Maximilien in third person
    • Pressing the ability again will cause Maximilien to shoot backwards 10m like a squid which does 75 damage to enemies he comes in contact with (Moira's fade has a range of 15m)
    • Pressing the shoot, jump, crouch or any other activity buttons will auto cancel this ability while in wall form
    • Auto reloads while in wall form
    • Teammates can see through the wall, but instead of a light blue like a shield it appears as a translucent yellow barrier to them while enemies see a dark red barrier
    • 6 second cool down
    • Comments: This ability is more or less Orisa's fortify since Maximilien uses his own body as a shield, however since he projects this barrier in front of himself he can use it to protect his teammates
Ability Two
  • Guard Blade
    • Shoots a tentacle pincer at a friendly which spins around them for 1.5 seconds
    • Does 50 dps to enemies within 3 meters (Reinhardt's hammer has a 5m range and does 75 damage per .9 seconds)
    • Does 75 damage total
    • 8 second cool down
    • Comments: This is more or less Zarya's bubble ability, but instead of insulating your teammate from damage it instead does damage to any enemies near your teammate. This would be ideal for when your Ana, McCree, Mercy, Soldier 76, Zenyatta or Bastion is suddenly dove on by an enemy and needs a helping hand
Passive
  • Greed
    • If he loses 50% of his health while realoading he will cut the cool down of all the abilities he's used by half
    • Example: if he started with 200 hp at the start of a reload but he ends the reload with 100 then this ability will activate
    • Only affects abilities that are on cool down
    • Cuts the base cool down by 50% so if his tentacle wall(which has a 6 second cooldown) has already cool downed by three seconds then this would mean he would instantly have this ability back up.
Ultimate
  • Overseer
    • Maximilien sprouts 2 Symmetra turrets from the top of his two top tentacle arms
    • Targets enemies within 6 meter radius (Symmetra turret has range of 10m and Death Blossom has an 8m radius)
    • Does 40 dps (Symmetra turret does 50 dps)
    • Lasts 6 seconds
    • Ability cannot be canceled by enemy stuns, but lasers will stop firing while Maximilien is stunned
    • Will target which ever enemy is closer: if an enemy is three meters to your left and another is two meters to your right then you leftmost beam will target the one on the left while your rightmost beam targets the one on the right
    • If there is only one enemy within your effective range then both beams will target them for combined damage of 80 dps
Role in Overwatch: Maximilien is a main tank who uses shielding and his own body to protect his team from damage, while also using a plethora of zoning abilities to keep the enemy away. His primary fire allows him to temporarily block a line of sight while his ultimate temporarily takes away his weakness in close quarters. Since he can easily dash backwards from tentacle wall form, he is an excellent counter to dive.
Counter PlayMaximilien is weak to close range as his forms of shields either move away from him or he has to sacrifice his ability to fire to enter tentacle wall form. This means that Maximilien must be used with a plan in mind. He can't brawl against heroes very well in close quarters nor can he challenge snipers very well at long ranges. A few of his direct counters would be Pharah, Junkrat, Bastion and to a lesser extent Hanzo
Who He CountersMaximilien is a great zone which means he creates a large problem for heroes who move out in the open. This means that dive heroes like Doomfist, Tracer, Genji, Tracer, Winston, D.Va, Lucio and Hammond would need to be careful not to accidentally run into any of saw blades or to be directly behind him while he is in tentacle wall form. Since he is a main tank he isn't going to be a damage powerhouse; much like Reinhardt, Orisa and Hammond he will primarily deal with keeping enemies focused on him while he tries to force them off his teammates. In this spirit, Maximilien would be the perfect tank to play if you need to both protect the frontline and also protect the backline

I will add more to this later, though I would hope for some feedback or ideas on how you would go about developing this concept.

2 Likes
2

Maximillien would work better as a dps

2 Likes
3

Oh man, stop hyping me with this posts about Maximilien! I love him so much! I need him in the game!

5 Likes
4

I say no. We have too many dps heroes already in the game. But this idea is just great, I would love this to be in the right now!

1 Like
5

I would give a simple no because it’s MAXIMILLIEN you’re trying to put into the game.

He isn’t a tentacle monster (boy that sounds bad). Judging from the comic, I would say he is more a mastermind who never gets his hands dirty, but is the kingpin behind everything.

Making him a tank is weird enough. Giving him tentacles just sound rather insane

3 Likes
6

New tank concept: rework Mercy.

7

This is actually why I chose to give him mechanical tentacle arms. He would be coolly suspended above the ground much like Zenyatta, except instead of his feet crossed and his hands in a prayer Maximilien would have his arms crossed and his legs straight in a standing position. He won’t get his real hands dirty and he knows it.

This matches him as an anti-Zenyatta in terms of character design. One is serene and peaceful while the other is chaotic and warmongering. Which matches with Max’s Talon affiliation.

8

That’s the problem. Maximillien isn’t chaotic. I feel like he’s a cunning, thoughtful, well-planned mastermind. Chaos isn’t his ally, his plans just thrives better when you don’t have goodie goodie guys running around.

Also, “anti-zenyatta” isn’t exactly a great place to start a unique character, personally

Good creativity though, and I can see where you are coming from

2 Likes
9

I don’t think Maxmillien should be made into a playable character.

It’s more interesting to me to have a member of Talon who uses politics and corruption to achieve his goals. A character in the background who pulls the strings.

I feel that making him into a playable hero would undermine his character.

1 Like
10

The lore is very much secondary to the mechanics. I chose Maximilien because he is recognizable and easy to visualize versus some random character.

Alternative Lore Though, we could easily say that instead of Maximilien it is instead a Canadian deep sea petroleum engineer who stole a prototype deep sea repair exoskeleton, and which he augmented with black market military tech, for the purpose of taking revenge against Vishkar for pressuring the Canadian government to prohibit extraction of petroleum from the sea. Having lost his job and all the money to his name, he has gone postal and is intent on punishing anyone who stands between him and his vengeance.

Alright…

Now that we have lore out of the way…

What does everyone think of the in game mechanics of the design?

11

I would like to see maximilien take the role of all for one. I don’t know how but he could have compiled a ton of diffrent abilities to use.

What if one of his abilities were to toggle between kits. He could change himself to tank, dps or support anytime he chooses from all the abilities he’s stolen

12

I think he better fits a Darkseid concept, Omega Beams and Parademons but with Omnic flavor, it’s the only DPS archetype they haven’t done yet.

13

He seems a bit weak, especially his ult.

The fact that he get’s a much worse shield than rein isn’t good either.
The fortify will protect, but you can’t see through it, and it’s his health, not a shield that gets taken down.

The projected barriers are decent, primary is also decent for a tank, though i don’t see anyone being able to hit much with the bounce.

Guard blade doesn’t do anything unless you get really close to an enemy, and even then doesn’t do much damage.
Who do you see him putting it on? A doomfist?

The passive also doesn’t do much for him.
His cooldown abilities are his fortify and blade.
If he is already at low health, using the fortify would just get him killed.

Changing his guarding blade to a symmetra turret that howers over the target would be better. And fits better with his ult.

His ult should also have 4 turrets instead of two, If he has 4 tentacles. And they should work even with his fortify up.

14

Please don’t bring Mercy into posts where she has no relevance. It does not give Mercy mains a good name.

15

I just wish we HAD Maximillien. We have too many ‘good guy’ Omnics and it’s really clear Blizz is just pushing the ‘All Omnics are good, pure sweetrolls that can’t do any wrong’. Even if Zenyatta is somewhat menacing (‘You have ushered them to paradise’ when complimenting a friend’s kill), he’s not evil in the way Max seems.

Also, he looks pretty cool.

1 Like
16

Thank you for the feedback.

I agree, instead of 250 per shield, let it instead be 700, and be moved to an 8 second cool down per shield. For reference, Symmetra 2.0,'s shield was 1000 hp on a 10 second cooldown and Orisa’s is 900 hp with an 8 second cooldown.

Ah yes, visibility will be a problem. His arms would need to become translucent. That way you would be able to see through it from both the enemy and friendly perspective. Insteas of a light blue shield you see through, instead from the friendly side you would look through a yellowish barrier, and from the enemy perspective a dark red barrier.

While I agree it is health so it is somewhat weak, I believe it is not bad if you compare it to Orisa’s Fortify; Orisa only has 200 armor and 20p hp while Max would have 300 armor and 100 hp. Also, Orisa’s cannot be used to protect friendlies from things like Mei’s wall or Earth Shatter. Also, it is on a cooldown.

Tentacle wall has the added benefit of being an escape ability. Though I am still curious if you still believe it to be too weak, and if you have any suggestions on making it more balanced.

It would have similar physics to Moira’s orb, so if you can imagine how sometimes the orb goes back and forth through the enemy team that is how light saw would work. Though you are ultimately correct, it would be a difficult thing to pull off mechanically. Chalk it up to Max having a high ceiling.

Fair point, I like the Symmetra turret suggestion. My original idea was for the ability to do knock back, but I am wary of adding more cc abilities since they are unpopular these days.

That would be pretty neat. However, the damage per turret would need to be lowered, as having 4 beams at 40 damage each would be just shy of the dps of Reaper’s Death Blossom.

How about 4 beams with each beam doing 20 fps for a total of 80 dps?

Keep in mind that tentacle wall wouldn’t stop the ability and that Max can still shoot during his ultimate.

Thanks again for the feedback.

17

Well.
It depends a lot on the size of the block.
If it’s smaller, he won’t take as much damage, but he wouldn’t block as much either.
If he has 300 armor, this takes away 5 damage per shot from some enemies.
(hanzo would deal 390 damage with his storm arrows)
But seeing as you gain 50% damage protection, it’s not that bad.

I could see a lot of people get angry If their main tank escaped behind them though.
So it would need a visual before he escaped.
(he pushes the key to escape, and it takes half a second before he actually moves backwards.)

If you look at other damage ults, reaper does 170 per target, each second, for 3 seconds, and it has an 8m radius.

Yours would do 80, on a single target, for 6 seconds, and with a 6 meters radius.

It’s an ult, so it should be powerfull enough to make the enemy back away from you.

18

i think this idea is genius i really like the concept but i think you might have to try and change the silloute of the character because it doesnt fit him like from the comics where we saw him. But a great idea for a new tank

19

I don’t see Max fitting in as a tank in the game. I see him more as a utility support or as a “pet” user.

The problem they will have is that Max has too close of a silhouette/model to Zenyatta and he will not be very unique when it comes to the select screen. Something bliz has been very careful about making each hero feel different.

I don’t see Max coming in as a hero anytime soon. When he does, he will not fit into the tank role.

Your concept might work, but it would need to be on another character lore wise.

20

Here is my Maximilian idea I posted a while ago