Disclaimer: I do these concepts just for fun. I don’t take it seriously or believe it’ll be taken into consideration in any way whatsoever. I don’t much care for lore either, I focus on the abilities and playstyle alone. I always welcome suggested improvements or balance modifications, so please be constructive with your feedback. If something seems overpowered to you, just suggest how it might be scaled down appropriately!
The Trickster
The Trickster is a wannabe supervillain you typically see in a Marvel or DC comic/film. He’s a DPS character and he’s proficient in the art of stealing, sabotaging, and deception. He would like nothing more than to have a superhero arch nemesis come along to fight dramatic battles with. The Trickster’s personality is not too dissimilar from Junkrat’s psychotic behaviour. His primary weapons are dual-wielded switchblades which he can use to slash at enemies very quickly, sort of like a melee version of Tracer. From an ability point of view, The Trickster is most comparable to Sombra, but specialises in stealing rather than disabling, and his stealing/sabotaging abilities can only effect objects, not players.
Role: DPS
Health: 200
Abilities
Switchblades (PRIMARY / L CLICK [HOLD])
The Trickster dual-wields switchblades which he can use very proficiently to slash at enemies. He’s a melee-only hero with a shorter range than that of Rein and Brig, but higher overall damage potential. Unlike Brig’s/Rein’s, the switch blade can only hit one target at a time.
Damage: 20 (max 80 p/s)
Max Range: 3 meters
Rate of Fire: 1 slash per 0.25 seconds
Headshot: No
Charged Stab/Lunge (SECONDARY / R CLICK [HOLD])
The Trickster can increase his movement speed when he’s getting read to charge forward with a stab attack. Whilst R CLICK is held, The Trickster moves faster and has his switchblades aimed ready to attack. Once R CLICK is released, The Trickster lunges forward quickly, max distance is capped, and determined based on how long R CLICK was held. Similar to Brig’s shield bash, the first enemy to be struck by the lunge is inflicted damage. This ability is very useful for manueverability and closing the gap to targets. R CLICK must be held for a minimum of 0.2 seconds, and the damage/distance caps at 1 second, but R CLICK can still be held for longer to continue benefitting from the speed buff.
Damage: 20-40
Move Speed: +30% buff when held, +400% buff when released (lunging)
Max Range: 5-15 meters
Cooldown: 3 seconds
Sabotage (PASSIVE)
When The Trickster collects a health pack, he’ll automatically sabotage the next one, so when it respawns and gets collected, it’ll explode if collected by an enemy. The explosion is not instant (to give the enemy chance to react) and will explode after 1 second of collection. A ticking sound (like a ticking bomb) will play when the sabotaged health pack is collected, so that the enemy knows it is about to explode. The blast is small, but can inflict some damage and knockback, negating some of the health they’d just gained from the health pack. The sabotage lasts for 60 seconds, and if the health pack is not used in that time the sabotage effect goes. The sabotage timer will reset if used again by The Trickster before 60 seconds. Once the sabotaged health pack is used by an enemy and it explodes, the sabotage effect clears immediately.
Damage: 10-70 (splash damage)
Area of Effect: 3 meter (splash radius)
Knockback: Minor, 1–2 meters
Duration: 1 second (delay before explosion), 60 seconds max (remains sabotaged, until clears)
Steal (SHIFT [HOLD])
The Trickster can ‘steal’ deployable items (barriers, turrets, teleporters). The stolen items will then become owned and usable by The Trickster and his team. For example, an enemy Winston bubble/barrier will turn from red to blue and will benefit The Trickster’s team instead, meaning Winston’s team shots will be blocked instead. Rein’s/Brig’s shields cannot be stolen because they are not deployable. Stolen turrets will fire upon enemies of The Trickster, and stolen teleporters will also turn from red to blue and will be usable by The Trickster’s team instead. Sombra’s teleporter can also be stolen, and next time The Trickster pressed SHIFT, he’ll activate the teleport/translocate, meaning he can teleport with it (one time usage). This means only one item can be stolen at a time, and pressing shift again will activate the item and/or undo the steal (and destroy the item). Stolen items will be destroyable by the enemy team as normal, now that they belong to The Trickster instead. Stolen barriers will contribute to The Trickster’s damage mitigation stat. If Sigma’s shield is stolen, his shield cooldown is activated and he’ll have to deploy another. The Trickster’s stolen Sigma shield will remain until destroyed, but can also be undeployed (and lost) by pressing shift again. The Trickster can only steal one item at a time, so if The Trickster has a barrier/turret and pressed SHIFT again, it will deactivate/despawn the stolen item and he’ll have to steal another. Torb and Sym will be able to place a new turret after their old one was stolen, but in Torb’s case he must wait for the cooldown, because it’ll act as if his previous turret was destroyed. The steal can be stopped, like Sombra’s hack, and will work in much the same way as hack. Objects can be stolen back by enemy Tricksters. When stealing, an animation will play similar to Sombra’s. The Trickster must be standing near to the item to steal it (which may result in taking fire from the turret, stopping the steal). Due to having to get up very close to an object to steal it, it will be difficult to pull off steals with lots of enemies in the area. SHIFT must be held in order to steal, but if you start taking damage you can release to cancel, and try again another time. Cancelled/interrupted steals will fail, and result in a half cooldown.
Max Range: 10 meters (less than Sombra’s hack)
Casting Time: 1 second, 0.2 second recovery
Cooldown: 20 seconds (10 seconds if steal failed because cancelled/interrupted)
Move Speed: -50% debuff whilst stealing (making him more vulnerable)
Mimic (E)
The Trickster can ‘mimic’ an eliminated enemy, transforming into them. It will work in much the same way as Mercy’s res: The Trickster will see a light of where they were eliminated, and will need to be close to the eliminated enemy in order to perform the mimic. Once you’ve mimicked an enemy, they cannot be res’ed, likewise a res’ed enemy can no longer be mimicked. Once mimicking an enemy, your name tag will be blue for everyone so as to appear on their team, you’ll also play as the mimicked player’s hero, but will only have access to their primary and secondary fire, not their abilities. You can be healed by an enemy support if they don’t realise you’re a mimic, thus ‘stealing’ heals and beneftting yourself. Ana can not heal you, since it also acts as her offensive weapon. Once you fire upon the enemy team or get fired upon, the mimic will end after 3 seconds, giving you a short time to use the primary/secondary fire of that mimicked hero, alternatively you can press E to end the mimic immediately. You cannot use your other abilities, including ultimate, whilst mimicking. Very similar to Echo’s duplication, but The Trickster does it for deception, thus looks identical and not blue/red, and has limited usage of abilities to primary/secondary only. Trickster does not receive any of the passive benefits of that class (for example, support’s self-heal). Trickster cannot heal neither allies nor enemies when mimicking support heroes, but can still use for example Mercy’s beam to pretend they’re healing (thus to look more convincing).
Casting Time: 1.4 seconds
Max Range: 5 meters
Cooldown: 20 seconds
Duration: Until take or deal damage + 3 seconds
Move Speed: -75% debuff to self whilst casting (transforming)
Ultimate - Spawn Delay (Q)
The Trickster can delay enemies from spawning using his ultimate ability. This ability could play crucial when coming close to capping a point or pushing a payload. The respawn timer for each enemy’s next respawn will be increased by 10 seconds when the ultimate is activated. Those already eliminated will have their respawn timer immediately extended. It will only affect their respawn once, and then their respawn timer will go back to normal. The effect lasts for 60 seconds, and after that time all respawn times reset to normal, so any of those enemies that remained uneliminated will no longer have their next respawn time effected.
Ultimate Cost: 2000 points
Duration: 60 seconds max, then the respawn timers reset
Respawn Time: +10 seconds for each enemy (one time)
Pros and Cons
The Trickster will be particularly strong against those that rely on deployables, but will be weak to those that are manuverable and able to shoot him down from far away, since he’s a melee-only hero.
I’m excited by The Trickster concept, I think it’s a really cool alternative take on a sombra-esque character, with the psychosis of Junkrat. Please let me know what you think! Describing abilities can be tricky, so if you don’t understand how one of the abilities works or have a question regarding them, just ask! And please, make any suggestions you think would help balance the hero if you feel he is unbalanced in this current concept.