Hey Hey

Rework idea for Breach's Aftershock (C)

I checked over the rules before posting but if I still got something wrong please tell me I'm happy to takedown or edit.

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Please note:

I am not a game developer, I don't play a massive amount and am not a pro, so I don't know if this would be a good change to Breach and that's not what I'm trying to say. I simply had an interesting idea I wanted to share :)

TBH I probably went way overboard with writing this as it's more than 1600 words which is frankly more effort and words than a lot of my college assignments.

oh and all number changes aren't set in stone or anything. I wasn't going for complete balance with this, each value change is just so you have an understanding of the concept.

The live numbers are taken from the wiki or just a google search if the wiki didn't have it so sorry if I got them wrong.

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Rationalising:

Currently Breach's Aftershock's Equip time is 0.9 and the Unequip time is 0.7 which doesn't sound very long but you have to remember the only benefit this gives you in a fight is forcing an enemy to move position or take damage, and more often than not that position is just dry peeking you, which is kinda terrible when you're still bringing your gun up and moving your crosshair back. Unlike other types of abilities that harm players like flashes and stuns, it doesn't give the user any benefits other than forcing your enemy to peek you. This could be solved by just adding a stunning effect, but the windup time is 2.2 seconds, a huge amount of time to walk a few meters. I also find that it feels a lot longer to use because I spend so much time with it out, staring at the map trying to find a good spot to throw it, this however can be ignored because it doesn't really happen mid-fight and is also just entirely a skill issue lmao.

I get that Aftershock isn't designed to be used mid-fight and I've started to avoid using it in these situations, but I think that this rework would make the ability a lot more interesting, both for yourself and enemies as well as make it potentially viable mid fight.

"Breach has a prolonged animation time for each of his abilities, and this is usually where beginners make a mistake with the Agent."

Yes, I know I'm bad lol

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Proposed changes:

• Breach's Aftershock Equip time reduced from (0.9 -> 0.5)
• Instead of Instantly firing, holding down (C) will immediately begin charging a bar and firing when released. The bar has 3 checkpoints including full charge as a checkpoint, much like Sova's Recon Dart.
  • Tapping (C) will still fire instantly, like (Left Click) did before while channeling the ability.
• Damage tick rate reduced from (0.6/second to 0.4/second)
  • Therefore total time to fire all shots is now:
    • (1.8 seconds -> 0.4, 0.8, 1.2, 1.6 seconds)
• For every checkpoint:
  • add 1 more total blasts\* to the projectile, starting at 1 for no checkpoints:
    • (3 blasts -> 1, 2, 3, 4 blasts, depending on checkpoint count)
• *I also refer to blasts as ticks later on
  • Increase the total Unequip time by 0.2 seconds, starting at 0.4 seconds for no checkpoints:
    • (0.7 seconds -> 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1 seconds)
  • Total damage per blast increases:
    • (60 x 3 damage -> 35 x 1, 40 x 2, 45 x 3, 50 x 4 sets of damage)

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Additional changes/balancing:

The Windup time will play the exact same as before, however, it will immediately start firing when it reaches the amount of blasts breach has picked instead of playing the entire animation first.

What the hell do I mean by this? Well, currently the animation winds up by showing a large fire(?) beam with 3 rings appearing as the animation continues. Instead, the animation upon hitting the amount of rings put into the aftershock would immediately end the windup, firing without further delay. This means that the Windup time for each selection would be:

1 0.73 seconds

2 1.46 seconds

3 2.19 seconds

4 2.92 seconds

(These values where simply taken by dividing total current time by number of blasts, I haven't checked if that is the time it takes for each ring to show up in the animation, after all maybe the entire set of timings would be intentionally changed for balancing)

It would be like this specifically so that the enemy would have no clue how many blasts any given aftershock might fire and, the damage that comes with it. You would only know the minimum shots each time it continues wind up, in fact adding a crescendo sound effect for each charge might be fun. This is all so that staying in the aftershock is now a 2.2 second gamble, instead of just a notification of how long you have to toss your flash out and peek.

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Discussion:

It might feel useless to ever fire 1 blast as it won't guarantee flushing an enemy out as you can counter this by simply not moving for a bit to check how many blasts the Breach is hitting you with, as taking 20 or even 60 damage may well be worth it to not be forced into the open, however this could be used another way, as:

1 and 2 charges would destroy KJ's Nanoswam, Cypher's Tripwire and Camera (if you can reach it) and KAY/O's Knife (If you're a god of prediction),

3 charges would destroy all above and leave KJ Lockdown on 5 hp (not useful I know)

4 charges would destroy all above and KJ's Lockdown and also leave Harbor's Cove shield with 300hp remaining while flushing out anyone hiding inside (if aimed for the centre so as to not leave enough room to hide the whole body.

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All of that might not be very useful which makes me consider if changing the damage dealt to other abilities specifically would be a good idea, doubling or even tripling might be viable as this would allow 4 charges to bring a sage wall down from 800 to 400 or 200 for every block hit. It would also mean that 2 shots at triple damage or 3 shots at double damage would destroy a Lockdown Ult.

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This should hopefully balance having an extra 4th charge while making it more viable to fire just 1 and peek without having the punishment of the Unequip time that means you can't use it as a flushing tool, as the peeking enemy will just kill you before your gun is up. If you were to fire just one the total time of your gun being down should be much lower than what it is currently, and to me would make it more viable for mid-fight use, rather than what it is now.

Other Ideas:

Stunning

I thought a bit about whether or not this should have a stunning effect like Breach's (E), perhaps even being accumulative, as in being hit with one stun is only like a 10% reduction in speed/accuracy, but 2 is 30% and 3 is 60% and so on.

However I think Breach already has enough CC seeing as literally every other ability is a flash or stun lol.

Cumulative damage

I also thought about making it deal more damage for more hits in a row, like maybe every tick does only 20 damage but triples the damage of the next tick's damage every time so it would be like

1 hit (20 = 20)

2 hits (20 + 60 = 80)

3 hits (20 + 60 + 120 = 200)

4 hits (20 + 60 + 80 + 240 = 440)

the numbers could be played with but you get the idea

this could also improve the point I made about it being used as a tool to clear/damage enemy abilities as they cannot move out of the way so would always receive the maximum amount (for the charges supplied).

Multiple charges

I also thought about having Breach able to buy as many charges as He liked. This could be very interesting as you could use any left over charges again on a different use of the ability, after a cooldown of course. Could be interesting as a mind-game thing, say you use 3 on your first encounter, then later fire your last one. The enemy could simply stay in cover being confident from remembering or being commed that you already used three so that there's no fear to force the peek from the next use.

Full animation

Perhaps having the full wind-up animation play out every time might be a good idea. As then its not so obvious how many you have used, forcing your opponent to respect every Aftershock.

Maybe how many rings show up would still be accurate to how many charges you put in, letting the observant know if they can stay or must peek the Breach.

First Person Animations

I actually came up with the full idea by thinking of what it could look like to the player if it was faster to use.

Considering how it might look realistically, I imagined that it might just fire out from the right forearm instead of forcing Breach to fully drop the gun and 'configure' his hand into the launcher.

I first thought that it could just be used while the gun was still up the whole time but realised quickly that this would be beyond broken.

Instead, Breach could simply rotate his arms away enough so that the charges could face the enemy and it could be swiftly swung back to position, explaining the short recovery time. This would also be a realistic reason to not be able to fire.

Then I thought about having an increased Unequip time for balancing and assumed that this could be realistically explained in animation by having the arm heat up and need to cool down before it could be moved again, having different stages of overheating requiring different lengths of cooling while being a cool visual indicator of what how many charges you are firing and also how long until the arm is cool and can move again.

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Again, this might all be a terrible idea, but I'm mostly curious about if this actually could be a good change. What do you all think? Would this be useless or broken? Is there anything else that I could add to my changes to make it better? Does Breach's Aftershock even need a change? Do I need to "git gud"? am I a fool for writing a 1600 word essay on a change to a game I barely play, that no one will read instead of going to bed? I know the answer to that one lol

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