What role do you think the unannounced character is, and who are they?
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I think the unannounced character will fit into the tank slot but I don’t know what abilities they could have, the tanks at the moment revolve around creating opportunities for the team to move in. The other thing they excel in is absorbing damage and surviving in the front line which helps extend team fights and increases the chance of your team winning, so what abilities could this new person have?
I feel like an ability could be one where they absorb damage in an aura and any teammate in the aura gets a damage boost and the amount of damage gained is how much damage is absorbed? Another could be a temporary front facing barrier with a lot of with a lot of HP that lasts 12 seconds or until destroyed and the cooldown would begin on destruction. As for ultimates, I couldn’t decide what another tank could have which would be useful enough for the team to utilise so that’s something I can’t decide.
Who do you think it is, and what abilities do you think they could have?
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@Raindrop8246 i agree i feel like it will be another tank if not another support but im guessing tank.
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@Raindrop8246 But as far as abilities,supers,characters i have no clue. I think one of if not the strongest thing bleeding edge has IMO. Would behow diverse each character is and give them there own story ninja theory did a great job as far as creativity goes.
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Before Cass came out, I figured there would be 4 of each (Heavy/Assassin/Support) but now that we have 5 assassins I'm actually assuming the last character is also an assassin. The reason being it would seem, from the developer's perspective, your typical team comp would have 1 Heavy, 2 Assassins, and 1 Supports, which would make sense if the total number of characters was 3, 6, and 3 respectively. However, it could be anything honestly, and I wouldn't mind another Heavy for sure.
A passive aoe defense buff would definitely be a great basic ability for a Heavy to have, which is basically that damage reduction aura you have. To fit the general design of the game though, it wouldn't be too strong, comparable to Kulev's passive healing perhaps.
A shield user is definitely on the table, especially since the only wall-type abilities are on supports (Miko's Kinetic Shield and Zerocool's Firewall). If it operated like a Kinetic Shield but included melee attacks you could move around while blocking damage up to a cap, tanking for your team. That'd be pretty great. You could take away evade like they've done with most Heavy's and replace the stamina bar with a recharging "block" bar. Then just grant them some kind of movement/CC as specials instead and have them focus on blocking to be viable. If you give them a slightly higher health pool and maaaaybe the ability to regenerate out of combat like Zerocool they should be more than viable. Without a built in self-heal or self-shield they'll have a harder time keeping up with other Heavy's, but the recharging block bar and general team synergy should make them great picks for any team.
Personally, I'd like to see a Heavy with some micro-invulnerability specials. There's some of that in Supers, then there's Maeve's Vanish, but a fast cast but very short invulnerability on a character that can't evade, perhaps one that puts them in a stasis but lets them use some kind of AOE that works during it, would be pretty fun to play and have a higher skill cap. Like I was saying before, I'd also like to see more wall-like abilities, perhaps even total terrain creation that would let them corner targets.
If it's an Assassin I have some ideas for that, I even posted a Chain-based character concept on the subreddit when I was feeling a little creative. Either way, I'm super excited to find out who it is!
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I personally feel like a new Support character would be the best fit right now. Or at least a Tank with some sort of AoE or healing ability (Makutu already fits that role to some extent however). A support is a vital pick for a team comp, I've not yet seen a successful team without a combination of Kulev, Miko and/or Zerocool. That's the downside IMO. At least one of your team of 4 is almost guaranteed to be a Support, and right now that choice is limited to 3. I don't think any of us have played enough to get a sense of whether a Kulev or Miko as a solo Support is completely viable but from my lengthy Alpha experience it appeared either a Zerocool as a solo Support or BOTH Kulev and Miko filling the Support role were the combination being used the most and with the most success.
Again there wasn't really enough time to form any considerable "meta" but the only thing I noticed creeping in was either Zerocool OR Kulev AND Miko being the only 2 alternatives and either of the 2 was necessity for every team. The rest of the characters could be mixed n matched as long as you had a base of Zerocool OR Kulev and Miko. So the viable choices were really limited to 2 in the Support category (again from my experience).
That's why I'd quite like a 4th Support to disrupt that a little bit. Perhaps one that could serve as an alternative to Zerocool - another healer that can target a considerable amount of healing output.
In terms of the hidden design, I don't know why but beyond the Hammond similarities and hamster wheel stereotype I can't help but think it looks like an electrically charged fish bowl or something. That's my wild guess.
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I had quite a bit of success running only 1 support in the team... in the ~10 games I've gotten to play so far lol. So yeah, the meta isn't set in stone yet at all. I do think an over-reliance on supports stems from inexperience with the game though, and that should change with time. Like you said, Zerocool is the only one with considerable healing power (ignoring supers) but that's a trade off he pays for in being offensively negligible. He's also really easy to chase away from the fight. His escapes are definitely strong, but if he's running he's not healing and that's often good enough.
The problem is that healing orbs are very common and easily accessible. A lot of fights will be about making trades, then establishing control of the orb spawns and either killing the enemy or forcing them away from objectives to find healing elsewhere. Healing is definitely strong, but it just means that the team with less healing will need to engage harder and make up for it with superior damage and control, and use that superior trading ability to keep the orbs under their control.
In terms of non-support fighters, Makutu is an excellent support tank and can support/heal/peel for an ally decently by himself, at least well enough to skirmish and get out. There are also the self-healers: Buttercup, Maeve, Nidhoggr, and the self-shielder El Bastardo. That only leaves Cass, Daemon, and Gizmo as being particularly vulnerable to making trades. Cass and Daemon have enough mobility and survivability though to make that much less of a problem, as they can quickly get out, grab an orb, and show up again soon after. That leaves Gizmo as the only character I would say absolutely needs to be babied with a healer. Gizmo has strong zoning and carrying ability though, so that makes sense.
The only one I'm really unsure about is Nidhoggr, because even though he has self-heal it doesn't seem to be all that good... maybe balancing will fix that, or mods.
That being said, I think I agree that another support is a good idea at this stage. For the Heavy's, you already have a nice split of Control Tank (Buttercup), Dive Tank (El Bastardo), and Support Tank (Makutu). The supports have a mixed bag of Burst, Zoning, and Utility but could probably use another Control option. Stasis is strong but not enough to call Miko a controller, and neither of her supers offer that option either. Kulev has Bamboozle, which is arguably the strongest CC in the game next to Sleep, but as a super it's not reliable. I'm thinking a support with a simple push special, like knocks enemies back or something, would be highly desirable...
Aaahhg I don't care what it is I just want to see the new fighter I'm so excited >_<
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You make a good point about a large number of characters having self healing abilities, including Mods making this more powerful. Regardless though, as such a vital aspect of a team composition even with solo healing abilities and controlling healing orbs on the field, I still feel like there is a slight lack of variety in that area, at least in comparison to the variety in other roles so far! Always difficult to comment from our limited play times! If you had success then I've no doubt there is success to be had with running a Solo Miko or Solo Kulev, it just never really seemed like a thing during my games! Looking forward to testing this myself during the Beta!
