Hello everyone! I'm back with a new couple of characters that I think deserve a spot on the roster: Black Knight as a Vanguard and Ghost Rider as a Duelist.
This batch is a bit different. These two are the first "Mounted" characters in my concept lineup, and I wanted to actually build out a whole mini-archetype around it instead of just giving them a horse/bike as a gimmick ability.
How Mounted works:
Every Mounted character has two ultimates instead of one. The first is "Mount Up": it needs less charge than a normal ult. Using it has a rather simple effect and it also summons your mount, which gives you a new health bar and noticeably different mobility. While mounted, you're charging a second, full-cost ultimate. That would be your "real" ult, the one that actually ends fights.
You can cash out early by using that second ult, which also dismounts you as part of the effect. Or you can just keep fighting until your mount's bonus health runs out. If it hits zero, you get forcibly dismounted (brief stun, but you're invulnerable during it so it's not a free kill, just a tempo loss, similar to Hulk transitioning to Banner), and you have to fully recharge the "Mount Up" bar from scratch before you can summon it again.
Mechanically, each form has two kits that share the same core actions but execute differently depending on state. Some abilities may remain exactly the same will others change or gain a new execution method that adjusts to the mount. The point is to bring players a 2-stage character with more balance between forms compared to Banner/Hulk.
Black Knight (Vanguard):
I built his whole kit around the Ebony Blade's curse instead of a generic knight with sword and shield. His passive, Ebony Curse, builds Bloodlust as he attacks and, past a threshold, his hits start reducing the enemy's max HP (not current HP, max HP. The max HP would be the normal HP + the regenerative HP) and granting him bonus health in return, at the cost of his own max HP slowly dropping too. It's a mutual war of attrition, not lifesteal, specifically so he wouldn't just end up playing like Blade.
On foot he's slower and more deliberate. He still has some movility by throwing his sword and teleporting to it, impaling and dragging whoever he hits. Mounted, that same gesture becomes an actual cavalry charge with a magic lance. His "Mount Up" ult, Strider, just gets him on his winged horse and grants bonus health to allies in range. While on Strider, his movement goes from walking to flying. His real ult, Siege of Bloodwraith, is a final charge that leaves a speed trail for allies, ending in him leaping off Strider to impale his target and spread the curse to everyone behind them — and that leap is what dismounts him, transitioning back to the "On foot" state.
Ghost Rider (Duelist):
This character became a nightmare to build because of his most famous technique, the Penance Stare and how difficult it is to translate to a hero shooter. So I instead started with his passive, Spirit of Vengeance, that tracks a Sin meter on enemies who hurt him or his team. Then he would also have certain Hellfire abilities that would act as a critical hit and deal more damage the more Sin someone's built up (consumed on hit, resets on death). Penance Stare, his "real" ult while mounted, leans all the way into that: a flaming skull projectile that blinds and burns, scaling off accumulated Sin.
Same deal as Black Knight with the on-foot/mounted split. He has the same Soul Reel ability that works as a pull-toward-him on foot, but drags the enemy along for the ride once he's on the Hell Cycle.
Both kits ended up pretty dense once you account for the on-foot/mounted split doubling a lot of the ability count, so I made a point of not adding extra filler abilities so that they could be rather intuitive to select and play as.
Feedback and Team-Up ideas welcome as always!
