[New Hero] Faust

[Softmints]

It's been a while since I've worked on a new hero. I've discussed this concept with some of you already, and a basic implementation is already in the game. As usual, this is an early iteration.

Faust is a hero designed to sow the seeds of dissent among the enemy players. He presents opportunities for individual players to prioritise themselves over their teammates, hopefully allowing their selfishness to overcome teamwork. While this is morally questionable in a genre where players are known to descend into shouting matches and stop cooperating, I believe this is a concept worth exploring. Perhaps banding against Faust will bring people together!?

Faust is a refinement of Sivaz, both in theme and mechanics. I plan to replace Sivaz with Faust, and move abilities like Screen and Hand of Death somewhere else. I'm aware many players enjoy Sivaz, so we'll need to discuss specifics.

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Innate: Fruit of Betrayal
Splits X damage between all units in a target area to produce the Fruit of Betrayal at the target point. If a hero eats the fruit, they are healed by X, but split X damage among their living allied heroes.

If no units are in the target area, Faust takes the damage. All damage from this ability is non-lethal.


Q: Paranoia
Averages the facing direction of all units in the target circle. A projectile spawns from "behind the group" and travels through the centre of the target circle, damaging enemy units. The more the group agrees on a single facing direction, the faster the projectile will travel. This is not easy to use.



W: Prisoner's Dilemma
Creates a cage around all enemy units in the target circle. The first enemy to leave the cage may walk free, but causes the rest of the units in the cage to take damage and be pushed to the centre. If there are no units inside the cage, it disappears.



E: Seclusion
A renamed Mind Carriage, Faust teleports himself and any nearby units to the target area.

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Notes:

• Having enjoyed the high life, Faust is now serving his time by tempting more mortals into selling their souls (or selling out their teammates!). His ultimate will probably involve making some kind of "deal" with an enemy player.
• EotA's Nephilim has an ability called False Alliance, which makes a single enemy hero treat Nephilim as an ally until the ability is cast on someone else, or Nephilim damages the hero. This concept might fit Faust, because some of his abilities damage indirectly and could escape the damage clause.
  
• The Fruit deals/heals quite a bit of damage. Refusing every fruit on-lane will be unsustainable.
  
• Paranoia is a vanilla nuke, but I felt this hero would be dull if he was leaving all the thinking to his opponents.
  
• If 2+ units leave Prisoner's Dilemma at once (due to Mind Carriage for example), both walk free.
  
• All of his abilities target a circle of roughly the same radius, but behave completely differently.
  
• The most similar hero to Faust (apart from Sivaz) is Emperor.

[Grumbletok]

Ohh, a new hero, I approve! Let's look into him, hmm...

First of, I'd like to know why Sivaz is getting replaced? While people generally (it seems), don't agree with me on his role in a team composition, I think he's pretty stable overall? I really like Faust this far, want to see him in-game, but I'd be sad to see Sivaz go because of him.


Okay, to the abilities!

Fruit of Betrayal:
Okay, I'm gonna ask this, just to clarify; Will the ability split up the same amount of damage, no matter how many enemies struck? And, if so, am I correct to assume that it'll deal the most damage if used on two enemy heroes alone? Also, is the fruit's healing equal to the entire X, or just the percent of X they were struck by? Apart from this, that ability looks nice, I can see how it'd be really fun to use and interesting to face. Just hope the numbers will be given due consideration, so that it won't become a silly nuke unless someone eats the fruit, and in that case becomes a double-silly nuke on all the others... Oh, and will the initial damage be Sharp?

Paranoia:
Okay... I shall be honest, I got no real clue what you mean by this, can you explain the ability further?

Prisoner's Dilemma:
Okay, so, is there meant to be some cast time on this, or...? It doesn't seem to leave much room for counterplay otherwise, since you don't get any reward for sticking together inside the prison, more than not getting nuked. Why doesn't their co-operation backlash at Faust? Aside from that, I really like the ability and I think it'll do really well, even fi you can probably make it into a extremely easy-to-use nuke, by timing so that a creep walks out of it the moment it lands. Then again, I like nukes that demand something from their user, and I think it still would.

Seclusion:
Still a mad ability, but, i think it fits way better here than on Sivaz, if nothing else, I'd like to see this ability on Faust and some new ability on Sivaz.

[Softmints]

Fruit calculates X on ability cast. The same X is used throughout. If there is only 1 other living hero ally, it deals X to them, if there are two, they take X/2 each, etc.

Paranoia needs to be seen in-game, much like Arc Arrow does.

Generally it'll be a hero walking out of Dilemma, so you're not hitting one hero and they choose which one. We'll see how this performs in-game.

Sivaz is stable and people enjoy him, but his design is a mess since he lost Cthulhu. He has always just been a collection of "cool" spells with no direction. As long as those spells stay in the game in some form, I don't think he will be missed. I would rather be replacing Garry, but then we would have Sivaz/Emperor/Faust who are really close mechanically.

[Grumbletok]

Okay, I see... Hmm.. Fruit is probably going to be a very powerful spell, looking forward to it. Will be interesting to see Barrier absorbing the fruit without thought.

As for Sivaz, I still don't think he's a mess, just a role that people don't consider playing thoroughly; Support. But, We'll see how it goes, as said, I like Faust and I've never personally enjoyed playing Sivaz, mostly since, well, I never get to actually support with him...

[Softmints]

As 0f 71g, Faust is now officially a member of the RoW cast! Will you succumb to temptation? Or band together against his nefarious schemes?