[Champion Idea] Long Range Tactical Harassment Tank?
I had an idea for a type of champion that doesn't seem to exist. They are primarily a tank, with a lesser marksman aspect, but not great at either, use mana for their abilities, which are relatively useful, and mostly damaging, except for one very powerful defensive one, but largely expensive mana wise and the champion has little base mana reserves, so they have to use them particularly sparingly. Being less specialized than other tanks or marksmen forces them into more of a harassment role, but they are particularly good at weathering burst offenses of enemy mages in order to stick around, and good at keeping together with their team-mates or guarding a lane. They even have limited capacity to work somewhat like a support, if managed correctly, for limited amounts of time with their low amounts of mana. They are more focused towards their base stats than their abilities however, largely due to the high mana costs.
I don't know what the name or style of the champion would be, although I'd prefer something more heroic in design compared to another ranged tank, Vladamir. I think a thematic style based either on the magi-tech stuff from Piltover with a self-designed energy cannon, and special armor might be one option, preferably human and relatively 'pure' character and good looking, something of a 'cautious genius', probably human, short and slim but athletic looking, innocent type, slightly geeky tomboyish, with short hair, if a girl, and similarly geeky kinda feeling, but not overly so, 'well-liked by younger kids but still responsible boy-scout' kind of character if male. Someone with a sense of humor, if mildly prudish one, but not a stick up their ass type, just kind and relatively mature, but not overly social, more of a 'club leader of magi-tech club' or 'youth-scout-troop leader' type feel.
Another look and theme I considered was a sort of glowy, floaty, alien-like thing, similar to Vel'Koz in that there is kind of an 'eye' theme going on, but more leaning towards sparkly fairy-lights in a floating crystal formation, an entity focused on energy manipulation, itself made up of exotic mystical energies. Should have a pleasant kind of look, with a kind of series of crystal-looking lenses that shift in shape and size and float around in different patterns rapidly to set up different kinds of attacks and defenses, almost like a friendlier looking, crystal variation without tentacles of arclight Vel'Koz. A guardian spirit of some kind animating a bunch of magical gems, perhaps artificially created, perhaps the servant of some powerful entity, perhaps something ancient and strange from a distant realm, but relatively friendly and eager to protect the innocent, remembering terrible things that happened in the place they came from and desiring to help protect the new place they've found themselves and life-forms around them. Maybe some ancient guardian of a lost temple.
Here is a rough outline:
Primary Role: Tank Secondary Role: Marksman
Concept:
I wanted to create a defensive champion that prefers to avoid and disrupt risks and holds lanes well, and stands up well against assassin mages in particular, one that relies somewhat more on good item choice than normal to be really effective.
Base stats:
High defenses and range, base magic defense particularly high. Middling damage and above average attacks speed. Not quite the normal offensive power of a regular marksman character, nor quite as good tankiness as a melee tank, but good at attacking quickly with basic attacks from long range to harass easily without getting into danger, and tanking a little bit in order to run away, although particularly good at tanking spell damage compared to physical damage (without item help). Relatively small mana reserves.
Basic attack: This champion's basic attack not only has relatively long ranged, the shots travel very quickly (quicker than most archery types, but slower than most gun types), and the attack animation triggers relatively fast from choosing an enemy to hit to hitting them, although the cool down after a basic attack before the next one can be a bit awkward, and the champion can't re-target if they start an attack and then their target dies, they'll just fire ineffectively unless they are commanded to move very quickly to cancel the attack, but still face the (relatively short) cool down for the canceled attack. Still, it is good for finishing off minions that are particularly low on health before another minion finishes them off, because of how rapidly it can be aimed and fired, and how quickly the shot travels. Attack rate is relatively high, although not as high as some more dedicated marksman types, but damage over time rate, while above average, is noticeably lower than most other marksmen due to this champion's defensive focus, although the right items, seals, and masteries can potentially make them a real beast and refocus them towards offense rather than defense, at least in terms of their basic attacks.
Abilities:
Static ability - Shield Harmonics: This champion's static ability causes them to gain a small boost in armor and magic resist each time they damage a new enemy champion, are damaged or hit by an ability of a new enemy champion. This means they want to run all over the map early game trying to engage each champion in order to maximize their defenses. These boosts remain even after the champion is killed, so don't need to be kept up or worked on late game, but can make the start of the game challenging for this champion. Additionally, while standing in range of allied structures or champions, they gain a small boost to mana and health recovery, making them good at protecting turrets and staying in the lane or sticking to allies for support, but poor at pushing on their own or trying to deal with things like jungling. Design Philosophy: The idea behind this is that the champion adjusts their defenses to the magical signatures of enemies on the map, improving their defenses against attacks, as well as learning from their enemies and from combat. It's a way to help justify their high defenses, and force them to scout out enemy champions early on, disrupting their early game ability to gather wealth and level up easily. Enemies may also avoid attacking this champion to avoid giving them their full defense boosts so that you remain more vulnerable to some of their allies, but the total boosts is relatively small portion of the champion's defensive prowess, so this doesn't matter too much, and it is probably mathematically better for them to aid in engagements, especially in large team fights. It also discourages overly defensive early game play with this champion, who can really be frustrating to deal with early on when defending or pushing a lane, given their exact mix of abilities.
Q - Cannon booster: This ability improves the champion's range, attack speed, and attack damage on their basic attacks, at the cost of making each basic attack drain a small amount of mana. Design Philosophy: This is the champion's primary and fastest mode of single target damage, it's primary purpose is to deter more fragile enemy champions from properly supporting the lane, and to help pick off fleeing heavily damaged champions due to the extreme range. It's single target damage makes it a relatively poor choice against minions, and due to the champion's low mana, you want to turn the ability on and off carefully and be conservative in it's use to save mana. The attack speed boost grows little with leveling, same with the range boost, but the damage boost grows more noticeably, although all are affected by ability power boosts. This ability has no cooldown or anything like that.
W - Disengagement Device: This ability gives the champion a temporary shield that reduces damage from incoming attacks, especially magical ones. It entirely stops slows, and while the shield is up, it prevents stuns or slows from working, allowing the champion to flee unhindered, activating it also gives the champion a small movement speed boost. This ability consumes a significant amount of mana, and does so constantly at a rate that grows the longer it is active, but can be deactivated early. The ability consumes somewhat less mana and improves the amount it defends by as it is leveled up, making it easier to use to tank enemies trying to gang up on you. Passive: As long as you have at least one rank in this ability, the champion gains a small bonus to movement speed that is active all the time, this bonus movement grows by small amounts as this ability is leveled up. Design Philosophy: This ability has similarities to the Cleanse summoner spell, while it can't rescue you from a full on disable or silence after it is activated, it can free you from lot of movement restricting effects, and it can prevent a silence or stun or slow from hitting you while it is active. The ability is very draining, and it's drain grows the longer it is kept active, so you want to use it very briefly to tank or undo enemy debuffs and disabling effects that would prevent you from retreating from a group of enemy champions teaming up against this champion. It ties into their role of being able to weather assaults from mage type enemies. It has a secondary mode as a movement aid for brief moments to enable you to catch up to fleeing enemies for a finial finishing shot, or turn it on and off in small bursts to move across the map a bit quicker at the cost of mana, if you are careful to turn it off again before the drain increases too much and you rapidly run out of mana. This ability has a noticeable cool down after each use, so you can't just spam turning it on and off to minimize the way the mana drain grows over shorter periods of time, it's only really useful in that way for heading a significant distance across the map, and you'll still be pretty low on mana when you get where you want to be even with that technique, as even the initial activation cost of the ability is pretty high, although it gets easier at higher ranks in the ability.
E - Large Pulse: This fires an AOE shot that creates an area of damage that is relatively large, dealing small amounts of magical constant damage against enemies in the area in waves, it's a channeled ability, the champion can't move, use other abilities, or use basic attacks while using it, although they can cancel it early or by activating disengagement device in order to flee. It has the lowest mana cost of the champion's abilities, and has it's damage grow by moderate amounts and area of effect grow by small amounts, and it's rate of mana drain go down by small amounts as it levels up. The cool down is noticeable, but timed roughly so that the champion can use the ability about once per wave of minions, and it is more effective at helping take out minion waves than the Q. The initiation of the ability costs a noticeable amount, more than just the cost to maintain it, and will very briefly silence an enemy that is smack dab in the center of the targeting area, which makes it useful to disrupt some abilities of enemy champions, although it deals no additional damage. The ability has a maximum duration, it won't be enough to entirely drain you of mana from full, although the duration increases a small amount with each level. Design Philosophy: This is a spell primarily for the purpose of weakening minion waves, allowing your allied champions or your own minions to defeat them more easily, the damage it deals is relatively low and slow, but it usually catches more of the minion group than a lot of similar abilities of other champions. It is sometimes good to save it in order to use it's brief silence effect on an enemy champion that is trying to assist their minion wave or destroy your own, but that trick is relatively ineffective and difficult to aim and time correctly. Still, the ability activates relatively quickly, so it is possible to use this way, although centering it on the enemy champion can often weaken it's effectiveness against the minion wave, catching less of them in the aoe, and the noticeable cool down may cause issues as well. Still, this is the champion's primary ability to use, because it is the main one they can use without running out of mana rapidly, and fits in well with their purpose of being strong in lanes.
R - Ultimate - Targeted Pulse: This ability has a relatively low cool down for an ultimate, it also activates instantly, and isn't a projectile like the champion's first ability, nor a maintained ability like the second two. It's main drawback is very high mana cost, especially on a champion with as low mana as this one does, although it does have a noticeable cool-down, certainly higher than the champion's other abilities. It's a pretty devastating attack however, main purpose being to disable enemy champions. You can only target an enemy champion with this ability, and it will deal a decent amount of damage to that champion, equivalent of about three of the boosted basic attacks from the first ability hitting at once, on top of that, it will stun the enemy champion for a short time, while simultaneously leaving them silenced and slowed for slightly longer than the stun. It has a tiny AOE, such that any other enemies that are in a practically on top of or very close right next to the target, such as minions or other enemies, will also take a reduced amount of damage (about half of the primary target) and also get the slowed and silenced effect for a slightly shorter amount of time, although not be stunned like the primary target. Design Philosophy: This is an alternate method to allow the champion to run away from an enemy assassin, or, when surrounded by allies, lock down an enemy champion for the kill, the damage it deals and the high mana cost it has makes it poor at helping this champion from finishing off enemy champions on their own, their first two abilities are more effective at that for chasing down and dealing lots of damage.
This champion is ultimately not as reliant on their abilities as it might appear, partly because of their relatively low amounts of mana, and the fact that their abilities don't significantly boost their damage output over the long run, due to how draining most of them are. Most of the champion's power is focused in their defenses and long range, but they can be surprisingly potent in just the damage output of their basic attacks, not as good as most marksmen, but high enough to maintain a threatening presence and whittle away at the health of enemy champions, forcing them to retreat to heal more often, or pinging away at low health lane minions at the right moment while saving mana for champion engagements to make sure they get lots of finishing blows on minions for lots of gold, due to their pretty good attack rate.
Note that they function best while sticking close to allies or allied structures, due to the secondary function of their static ability, they don't have Garen's level of regeneration outside of combat or anything like that, but they can still recover faster than normal while relying on this ability, especially if they didn't take too much damage to begin with, which they are good at. They function especially well backed up by a support hero who can heal them if enemies try to focus on them, or who can boost their damage output to levels more comparable to typical marksmen, or by allied damage dealers later in the game who can annihilate enemies that this champion lowers the health of then stuns with their ultimate. They don't function as well if you don't manage your item purchases well, don't gather their defensive buffs with multiple early game engagements, or use their relatively high mana cost abilities wastefully, or try to solo in an offensive way (they can solo relatively well defensively, holding a lane while allies push in others for instance, by staying around their own turrets).
Their long range and relatively high mobility, as well as their ability to escape attempts to team up and stunlock them or whatnot with their W ability, makes them very effective at harassment hit and run style attacks, and they are tanky enough to handle a little bit of pressure while keeping up their own, and avoid being overwhelmed by surprise bursts of enemy abilities. They are particularly good at surviving team fights due to their W combined with ability to stay out of range and stronger than average magic resist, as well as their ultimate's ability to potentially hit multiple enemy champions and their ability to flee easily if your team is overwhelmed, or push through and finish off a fleeing enemy while tanking the enemies trying to stall and protect their weakened ally... at least if they are full up on mana at the start of the team fight, otherwise they'll quickly run out of mana and become quite vulnerable and not particularly helpful outside of their basic attacks.
While defensively very powerful once properly established, they have more difficulty establishing and maintaining offensive ability, even with aid of items and abilities and allied champions, and rely more on long range and the defensive power to tank some retaliation or kite/harass melee enemies than raw damage output, especially compared to more offensive champions like most other marksmen, especially primary ones.
While items that boost mana regeneration and mana reserves can be useful, this champion probably should do slightly better with items that focus on either boosting their defenses or the damage rate of their basic attacks, enabling them to take advantage of their relatively high overall base stats and easy to use harassment and lane guarding/pushing ability.
Avoid going on solo offensives or trying to finish off enemy champions without support. Also remember that lack of specialization can be a weakness in and of itself, since you aren't as tanky as most other tanks, relying more on long range and mobility and the W ability for emergency escapes, nor as powerful as most other marksmen, and you run out of mana rapidly for your abilities if you over-use them or try to use multiple in a short duration, and you can't deal damage to enemy champions very quickly even with them, you are better at whittling them down through some harassment before trying to finish them off with allied help or hoping that they are unsupported and don't retreat for some reason. Be very careful early game to avoid enemy champions good at killing champions from finishing you off repeatedly early game and setting you behind while you are weaker than normal and trying to engage each enemy at least once. Remember that your abilities aren't actually that powerful, except for the defensive ability of your W, they are more for softening up and disrupting enemy offenses and maintaining lane presence than burst damage that many other champions can pull off. Even if you can chase well, you can't finish opponents off if they don't let you get them very low before retreating to heal, especially not on your own.
(if not now, his eventual rework will likely resemble this even more)