Seeing as Deflector is such a high-end shield (the most expensive one, currently), perhaps it is worth having a special ability as well?
Here are some suggestions, inspired by the shield’s name:
deflect (passive effect): while shield()ing:
If hit by an enemy missile, has a chance of turning it into a friendly missile and sending it in a random direction (effectively, “deflecting” them).
If hit by a melee attack, has a chance of bouncing the enemy attack, thus hurting the enemy and/or knocking them back.
I believe this would make the shield() method far more attractive and worth taking in account when developing strategies for complex levels.
What do you guys think? Feel free to suggest improvements to my suggestions or make your own suggestions.
Thread rules
Let’s keep this discussion specific to the “Deflector” item. I’ll make separate threads for other items.
Please avoid specifying exact values (e.g. for damage, cooldowns, effect duration, chance of activation). Game balance is hard™, so it is better to give more abstract ideas and let the developers do the balancing after implementing and playtesting the ideas.
It stands to reason that the velocity of the missile getting deflected would be reduced by a certain amount. Of course, this wouldn’t apply to magical projectiles. Also, what about things such as a shell or projectile from an artillery or catapult, or the beams from Beam Towers or the Lightning Twig?
Shells could be re-launched in a random direction with a lower velocity, as if they bounced off the shield.
Beams are more tricky, as they often look like a continuous beam but are in fact a series of beams (e.g. the ones fired from Beam Towers). Following the deflect rule, each beam attack would be treated individually, meaning some would be deflected and some not—visually there would still be a continuous stream of beams reaching the hero, but sometimes the shield would spawn a deflected sole beam in a random direction.
Or, perhaps, it may make more sense to make certain types of missiles non-deflectable.
If it’s shiney maybe it should reflect magic instead of arrows. Or just have a passive effect where it has a random chance of negating enemy magic. That would really effect the multiplayer rankings though…
Another suggestion would be to have shield() slowly restore HP while you are using it.
If it’s regening health while using the shield(); command, it might be a bit too overpowered, because in any brawls, players with 3000 health can just put shield(); in a loop, and they can go to amazing high levels.
