Hi all,
You may remember that several months ago, I came up with a 3rd Wargear item for the Chaos Sorcerer. It was a first attempt, but this is a further refinement of that. The idea still revolves around the item that I came up with it, an ancient de-powered lightning claw, but several changes have been made to make the wargear itself more practical from a modding perspective, as well as more practical as far as the Chaos army composition itself.
In the previous iteration of my suggestion, the Lightning claw would have fit over the CS's right hand. In my new iteration, it would fit over his left hand, and the CS would retain his regular default csm_sorcerer_sword.
The CS did not have an melee attack animation for a lightning claw, and to be honest, I wasn't sure if it was feasible to get someone to model a melee attack animation for a single lightning claw. Thus, the lightning claw was moved to replace the CS's boltpistol, and now just shoots lightning from range.
To differentiate it from the Rod of Warpfire, the Ancient Lightning Claw's ranged attack has less range(22) than the Rod's(38). Furthermore, the Rod does 50 piercing damage per hit, while the ALC will do 40 plasma_pvp per hit, with a DPS of roughly 20.
Plasma_pvp will allow the claw to be useful later on in the game, while making the amount of damage it does to units in T1 less than overwhelming. 20dps is also not a huge amount, but ultimately this can be tweaked.
T1 - Ancient Lightning Claw
Cost: 110/25
plasma damage
40 damage per hit
20 damage per second
csm_sorceror_sword
melee damage
49 damage per hit
35 damage per second
Replaces the sorcerer's bolt pistol with a single lightning claw, an ancient pre-Heresy relic. It's power circuitry is beyond repair, yet it somehow still crackles with an intense, otherworldly lightning. Grants ability "Touch of the Warp". Touch of the Warp
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Targeted ability: Forces the malevolent energies of the warp into the targeted unit, increasing energy regeneration by 3/sec for 10 seconds. The unwilling recipient takes 5 damage/model/sec over 10 seconds. Does not affect vehicles or units that do not use energy.
30 Mana, Range 8, 60 second cooldown. Targets: Self, Ally, or Enemy Squad, Commander, or Vehicle.
I was initially unsure of what to do with the damage, until
Torpid suggested to me that I should be able to come up with a new damage type that would allow for similar damage to be done across the board to all units. Of course, there are issues, as the webo and the lictor do not have commander armor for some unknown reason, despite being subcommanders(for reference, the autarch and the librarian have commander armor).
The new damage type can be tuned to hurt HI more than regular infantry as well, for balance. For instance, if it does flat 5/model to Raptors, the multiplier to regular Infantry can be 0.6. Thus, a squad of DAs would only take 3/model.
A fully upgraded DA squad with Exarch would be losing 18hp/sec for 10 seconds, while gaining 30 energy. Raptors w/o AC would be losing around 15/sec for 10 seconds.
The mutliplier for commander armor would be 3.0, so that any single entity would lose approximately 150hp over 10 seconds as well.
For Vehicles, the multipler will be 3.0 as well, which seems like a large amount of AV.
But remember that units without energy bars will simply not be affected by this ability at all. In other words, if it does not have an ability that costs energy, it is not affected. Examples of vehicles not affected: Leman Russ, Predator, Baneblade, Fire Prism, Avatar, Wraithlord, Deff Dread, and others...
A few examples of vehicles affected: GK, SM, and CSM dreadnoughts, Bloodcrusher, GUO, etc...
Technically the GUO and the Avatar aren't vehicles, but I'm not 100% sure about what to do with them yet.
Note on Retreating Units: While this ability is DoT, and most DoT abilities tend to "stick" to the unit, I feel that using this on a retreating unit and causing it to take full damage would be crazy. As a result, it would need to be reworked so that its damage is reduced on units in retreat.
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Rationale behind this wargear:Several people have suggested that the CS get some kind of wargear with an ability to allow him to replenish energy, or increase is energy pool. However, given that the CS already consume and a steady supply of batt... I mean heretics, it would turn out to be rather OP if he could just doombolt his way through the entire game. As such, I made the energy cost of ToW cost the same as the energy gain, and as a result, the CS has no reason to ever cast it on himself, though it would be possible.
However, there are a few units in the Chaos roster that could benefit from an injection of energy. Specifically, Raptors and Bloodletters came to mind.
The ALC and the Touch of the Warp ability are designed to synergize with energy intensive units, but at the cost of a drawback.
Using Touch of the Warp:ToW can be used on enemy units, allied units, or the CS himself. There does not seem to be any good reason to really use ToW on the CS himself, as the ability has a cast cost of the same amount of mana it regenerates. On allies, however, this is different. ToW can be casted on an allied Apo in team games to allow the Apo to heal more, for example. You can also put it on an allied Librarian who has run out of energy.
Enemy units can be harmed by ToW's DoT. However, the practicality of applying ToW to say, a DA squad, is severely limited by ToW's low range. The CS would have to be very close(same range as Consume) to the enemy in order to touch it. This allows for additional gameplay combos for the CS, and gives players a reason to keep Vestments of the Warp into T2. Teleporting the CS next to DAs and then casting it on them would be an alternative to casting doombolts, for example.
The ability also gives the CS a soft-AV ability, in the sense that he can now damage vehicles to a degree. This being said, however, most vehicles, walkers, and superunits in the game would be immune to ToW because they do not use energy at all, or their abilities use another resource or are simply cooldown based.
However, remember that any unit subject to ToW gains energy as well, so it is potentially a double edged sword. Skilled players who pay attention to what abilities have been used in the course of a battle would be rewarded, as they would have a decent sense of what is or is not on CD.
Friendly units, such as Raptors, can be "beneficiaries" of ToW as well. There would be a somewhat obvious cast effect on the Raptors itself, which can telegraph an impending jump to a skilled player. Raptors buffed with ToW would start to take damage immediately, but after the duration of ToW and taking 150(200 with AC) damage, they would be able to jump again. With the ALC, a CS could potentially avoid buying a Havoc at all, as a Raptor with the ability to jump twice will provide the necessary suppression in almost all engagements.
Bloodletters would function similarly.
Bloodcrushers can be targeted as well. With ToW, a Level 1 Bloodcrusher would be able to perform a demonic roar a few seconds after charging, or charge back to safety sooner rather than later.
Since repair is 20hp/second and a 3.0 multiplier against vehicles would be 15/second or 150 over 10 seconds, a single squad repairing any of the aforementioned vehicles should negate the effects of the spell, which would result in the vehicle simply gaining energy.
Using ToW on the Falcon would be largely useless as the Falcon's energy field absorbs 5 dmg for 1 energy, and the 30 energy granted to the Falcon by ToW would allow for the Falcon's shields to absorb the incoming damage.
OP:However, I feel that ToW would be completely OP with vehicles in regards to one vehicle, the Khorne Dreadnought. ToW would allow the Kdread to chain two Blood Rages together, which, in my mind, is not fair. This being said, given the mechanics of ToW requiring that the CS be within range 8 of whatever he is casting it on, warrants more testing. I realized in hindsight that while it does seem rather OP on paper, for the Kdread to do this, ToW would have to be cast on the Kdread
beforehand, or the CS would have to be right next to an uncontrollable Kdread.
Any suggestions to help fix this(and suggestions in general too) would be welcome.
Credits to Torpid for letting me bounce ideas off him!
