New Melee Weapon Trait - Electricity

JordanYuki

In some other zombie games you can sometime modifie melee weapons with some kind of attachment that can stun enemies with electricity. I suggest creating a melee weapon trait with this functionality;

Attacks sends electricity to the enemy. Normal attacks regardless of body shot have {0}% chance to stun and critical hits have {1}% chance to stun. The electricity will arc to {2} adjacent enemies. Adjacent enemies hit by the electricity take {3}% of total damage and can also be stunned.

Electricity Bronze could arc to 1 adjacent enemy, Silver to 2 and Gold to 3

This is like a combination of critical aim for melee while also increasing the amounts of target the weapon can hit. The trait would fit any special functionality weapon since it doesn’t change the arc of the regular attack.

Traits like cripple, ensnare, threat reduction, etc.. could activate on the enemies hit by the electricity

Some people have suggested traits to increase the range or arc of melee weapon, this one could do both while not being overpowered. 

@Jeroen

BenjaminT

This is brilliant! Love this.

How would this work on weapons which already hit multiple targets? Does it spread to enemies adjacent to the main target? Meaning gold Electricity is always 3 targets, regardless of if the weapon would otherwise hit 1 or 8 targets? So it’s effectively useless on a bruiser Smash charge attack?

And how would it select which adjacent enemies to hit? Random?

I’d much rather DECA develop this idea than my Reach suggestion the other day. 

JordanYuki

Let’s say you hit 2 targets with Mercer’s Axe. The electricity would travel to 3 random enemies adjacent to any of your targets or from an adjacent enemy to another enemy. So it would hit up to 5 enemies. For exemple, if you hit an enemy and there’s 3 enemies in a straight line behind him, it could travel to all those enemies. @BenjaminT

BenjaminT

JordanYuki said:

Let’s say you hit 2 targets with Mercer’s Axe. The electricity would travel to 3 random enemies adjacent to any of your targets or from an adjacent enemy to another enemy. So it would hit up to 5 enemies. For exemple, if you hit an enemy and there’s 3 enemies in a straight line behind him, it could travel to all those enemies. @BenjaminT

So if you had gold Electricity on a bruiser weapon, and you went for for a Smash charge attack, you could still hit 3 enemies outside the circle area of the usual Smash attack?

JordanYuki

BenjaminT said:

JordanYuki said:

Let’s say you hit 2 targets with Mercer’s Axe. The electricity would travel to 3 random enemies adjacent to any of your targets or from an adjacent enemy to another enemy. So it would hit up to 5 enemies. For exemple, if you hit an enemy and there’s 3 enemies in a straight line behind him, it could travel to all those enemies. @BenjaminT

So if you had gold Electricity on a bruiser weapon, and you went for for a Smash charge attack, you could still hit 3 enemies outside the circle area of the usual Smash attack?

Yes 🙂

BenjaminT

So an Infused scout weapon (currently a single target weapon) with gold Electricity could hit 4 enemies on an uncharged attack, and they wouldn’t need to be lined up in any particular way. As long as there was a chain of adjacent tiles then the electricity can pass from one to the next.

The genius of this is that the bigger the area of attack of the weapon, the less impactful the trait will be. 

A few potential complications I can think of;

How might Electricity interact with Herding? I’m thinking particularly of Riot Shield. If it’s possible I’d suggest the status effect Herding be applied after the attack/Electricity if both originate from the same weapon. Or might Electricity pass through Herded walkers to further adjacent enemies? That seems a bit silly, no? Surely the herded walker should be ‘electrocuted’ if occupying a tile adjacent to a target, and then herded. But obviously if a Herded walker is electrocuted by another weapon in a subsequent attack then it would break Herding status, right?

Snd then what about push weapons? What is the sequence of events from a pushed enemy to activating Electricity? My guess would be it’s from the enemy’s starting position before being pushed?

This is my favourite idea I’ve ever seen on the forum. Please can all the developers start working on this immediately?

JordanYuki

I think it would be interesting if the electricity activated after the push, to reach enemies further away.

For the herding it could ignore herded enemies or simply not break the herded status effect 🤔 

Jeroen

I will add it to the list of suggestions  

BenjaminT

JordanYuki said:

I think it would be interesting if the electricity activated after the push, to reach enemies further away.

For the herding it could ignore herded enemies or simply not break the herded status effect 🤔 

On first point, yeah. That does sound more interesting. Pushing a reg walker towards a Spikey and managing to root the Spikey without getting close sounds like a very cool additional layer of strategy for melee.

Not happy about the solutions to the herding problem though

Surely if you attack a herded walker then you break herded status? Especially if another hero attacks in range of a herded walker. No reason to change this. Come to think of it, my guess is when a herding charge attack is activated herding status just needs to be sequenced after total damage is inflicted. Which we already know happens based on CW walkers being herded despite being in range to be stunned by Riot Shield

So this shouldn’t be an issue, I don’t think. Only question is, are herded walkers counted within Riot Shield’s area of attack? I’d guess not, but I think there’s a good case for saying they are, too. 

It’s a relatively minor detail though, the general concept is brilliant and adds so much complexity to melee, and potentially generates so much income for DECA. It might even be the great equaliser of the classes and solves quite a few annoying issues as well 

ATLAS-Z

@JordanYuki I love this. Very brilliant idea.

I think it should be reserved for special weapons though that it would make sense on, like a stun baton or stun gun/tazer. 

Wouldn't make sense for a regular sword to be electric. 

Unless you used the same mechanic (which is the brilliant part) with another theme? Like "Kinesis" perhaps?

A kinetic Katana or Kinetic hammer could have same mechanic, and maybe be easier to imagine than electric blades? 

BenjaminT

One of the problems this can solve is regular/infused melee weapons being a bit pants. If it’s reserved for special weapons only then it’ll be a huge opportunity squandered.

Now I’m no electrician, nor do I know anything about swords. But I’m more than happy to believe it’s entirely possible to sellotape a small battery pack to a sword and then use said sword to electrocute your enemies. That seems like a very reasonable presumption to me 

ATLAS-Z

BenjaminT said:

One of the problems this can solve is regular/infused melee weapons being a bit pants. If it’s reserved for special weapons only then it’ll be a huge opportunity squandered.

Now I’m no electrician, nor do I know anything about swords. But I’m more than happy to believe it’s entirely possible to sellotape a small battery pack to a sword and then use said sword to electrocute your enemies. That seems like a very reasonable presumption to me 

Haha I love it, ok touché 

BenjaminT

@JordanYuki Have you considered withholding it from any class of melee weapons? For the sake of infused and regular melee weapons I hope not, but I was thinking about Critical Aim being withheld from assaults and wondering if their melee equivalents (bruisers) might be better not having this, too? Will bruisers become too powerful with Electricity? I assume that was the thinking in withholding Critical Aim from assaults 

JordanYuki

BenjaminT said:

@JordanYuki Have you considered withholding it from any class of melee weapons? For the sake of infused and regular melee weapons I hope not, but I was thinking about Critical Aim being withheld from assaults and wondering if their melee equivalents (bruisers) might be better not having this, too? Will bruisers become too powerful with Electricity? I assume that was the thinking in withholding Critical Aim from assaults 

Wouldn’t bruisers be the ones that benefit less since they can already stun with ease with piercing and weakening? Unless I’m missing something? Assaults can only stun on charge attacks and they can hit lots of enemy so I see why it’s not available to them. 🤔 

BenjaminT

JordanYuki said:

BenjaminT said:

@JordanYuki Have you considered withholding it from any class of melee weapons? For the sake of infused and regular melee weapons I hope not, but I was thinking about Critical Aim being withheld from assaults and wondering if their melee equivalents (bruisers) might be better not having this, too? Will bruisers become too powerful with Electricity? I assume that was the thinking in withholding Critical Aim from assaults 

Wouldn’t bruisers be the ones that benefit less since they can already stun with ease with piercing and weakening? Unless I’m missing something? Assaults can only stun on charge attacks and they can hit lots of enemy so I see why it’s not available to them. 🤔 

Yeah, I think you’re right. I agree. Imagine an infused bruiser weapon with silver First Strike, Gold Electricity, Gold Razor and infused Concussion. I’m pretty sure that’d be top tier, it might even be better than Riot Shield 

Edit: Had a think, I’m pretty sure that’d be better than Riot Shield

ShadowWalker

This is a pretty cool idea, but might I suggest giving it a more badass name? Electricity sounds kind of basic.

Electrify
High Voltage
Shock Wave or Attack
Electric Slide
Static Shock
Sparky Sparky Boom Boom

Ok, maybe not the last three.

JordanYuki

ShadowWalker said:

This is a pretty cool idea, but might I suggest giving it a more badass name? Electricity sounds kind of basic.

Electrify
High Voltage
Shock Wave or Attack
Electric Slide
Static Shock
Sparky Sparky Boom Boom

Ok, maybe not the last three.

Yea, I’m not very good at naming things 🤣🤣

BenjaminT

ShadowWalker said:

This is a pretty cool idea, but might I suggest giving it a more badass name? Electricity sounds kind of basic.

Electrify
High Voltage
Shock Wave or Attack
Electric Slide
Static Shock
Sparky Sparky Boom Boom

Ok, maybe not the last three.

How about Frizzle-Frazzle?

ATLAS-Z

Part of the danger here is not to make something that will make "special weapons" near to obsolete. If that happens, you know it's too good. Right? 

Mcellus

It's a cool idea, but it doesn't connect well to the show. Only time they used electricity on walkers was when they defended Hiltop. Maybe make it a support. Like a tripwire you can place that electrocutes walkers (stun/fire/damage) then goes away. In the show the walkers where too much for the batteries of the tripwire

MudMoccasin

Definitely consider this!!!!!:

https://nmlforum.decagames.com/walkingdead/discussion/comment/465127/#Comment_465127