Kit Kit: Underdog

[Tarnum]

Kit Name: Underdog (open to suggestions since its the only name I could think of that represents this kit)
Kit icon: No idea for this one haha
Armor: Iron helmet, chain chestplate, gold pants, iron boots or some equivalent
Inventory: Iron axe, or equivalent damage item

Lore: Screw your teammates, you work on your own. You don't like to try hard when your teammates are around, but when you're left all alone you do a bunch of damage all on your own.

Premise: An AoE (area of effect) fighter kit that fights better when outnumbered, but worse when it is surrounded by its allies.

Abilities: This kit would come with two passive abilities: Level out the Field and Cleave

Level out the Field:
You deal an extra (X - Y) damage to every enemy you hit with a 3-4 block radius of you, where X is the number of enemies in the radius and Y is the number of allies in the radius.
So for example if I am fighting someone, and there is another enemy within my radius and there are no allies around, then X would be 2 and Y would be 0, making the extra damage be +2. However, if I am fighting someone and there are 3 other allies in the radius, then X is 1 and Y is 3, making my extra damage output become -2, making me deal a lot less damage.

Cleave:
Whenever you hit an enemy and there is another enemy standing right next to them (1 block away or less), you deal a fraction (33% maybe) of your damage to the adjacent person.

So the abilities maybe sound a little bit broken, which is why I think this kit should have relatively middling armor and a low damage weapon, since its ability would make up for the weak weapon. I also think this would be a cool dynamic for when the kit is caught in a weird situation or could take on 2v1s. I think the armor needs to be somewhere better than demo since its supposed to be a kit that can sustain getting itself into a mess.

Please let me know what you all think. I welcome any suggestions! Thanks

 

[Onett]

This is a cool idea for a kit :)

Its unique and works well as an initiator on maps with strong chokepoints like Valley of Death. Could also be very useful to deal with enemies when they are grouping up with their medic, thanks to both the damage buff and cleave it gets. Even if you die trying, you can probably take out the medic or at least get them really low.

I think with a few small tweaks it would be a very good kit.

First, the axe should be buffed to an iron axe with sharp 1 or another weapon with equivalent damage imo. The kit does get a lot of damage when facing against a lot of enemies but in those situations it would also die very fast. And in other scenarios, when it isn't trying to 1v8 the enemy, I feel like just an iron axe would make it too weak.

Also, maybe there should be an exception made for medic for level out the field? I feel like the underdog + medic combo could be oppressive. Maybe you could change it so medics count as "2 players" instead of 1. This would apply to both enemy and ally medics.

So for example, if you are alone, fighting against a medic and two troopers, you would get +4 damage, since a medic would count as 2 instead of 1.

This would also help the kit be a better initiator, since trying to push against enemies with a medic makes things a lot more difficult.

 

[nano30000]

I think this kit is very creative and offers a refreshingly unique playstyle to SnD! When someone is badly outnumbered they are unlikely to beat multiple opponents in combat, and so those with a numbers advantage almost always win. This kit could enable more comebacks by changing this dynamic, encouraging a back-and-forth gameplay that makes the game effectively more interesting and unpredictable.

That being said, I feel like this kit will be annoyingly difficult to balance. Continuing Onett's train of thought above, your damage equation (X - Y) assumes all allies and enemies to be of equal worth (1 damage each), when in reality some kits (like medic) need to be accounted for differently to make the kit balanced.

Would the cleave effect from multiple underdogs stack? Consider 3 underdogs against 6 opponents in a 3v6. Each underdog will be doing (6 - 3) = +3 damage to their individual targets, which is an insane amount in itself, PLUS the cleave damage to surrounding opponents (assuming 33% cleave, that's around 2.67 damage to every other player within the ability range for each individual hit by an underdog). That's a lot of damage. Maybe implement a cap on the cleave damage, or count ally underdogs as 2 allies.

Also, the "Level out the Field" ability doesn't account for allies attacking at range. Archer kits contributing to the combat, but which are outside the ability radius, would give the underdog additional damage fighting against melee enemies, even though the underdog may not be "outnumbered" at all. For example, for 3 archers and 1 underdog versus 2 troopers in an effective 4v2, the underdog still gets +2 damage against the troopers, even though the troopers are the outnumbered ones. One could argue that this is just playing around the kit's strengths rather than it being unbalanced in and of itself, but I still think a scenario like this could be devastatingly overpowered.

I think the kit name is fine, but off the top of my head, some possible alternatives I like are "warmonger" or "maverick".

 

[Gilburrito]

It's a cool idea, I think it could work as long as the kit has at least a slight disadvantage in 1v1's against trooper so that the enemy team doesn't have to face a lose-lose on combating the kit. Also both the above comments are pretty great

 

[Onett]

I think this kit is very creative and offers a refreshingly unique playstyle to SnD! When someone is badly outnumbered they are unlikely to beat multiple opponents in combat, and so those with a numbers advantage almost always win. This kit could enable more comebacks by changing this dynamic, encouraging a back-and-forth gameplay that makes the game effectively more interesting and unpredictable.

That being said, I feel like this kit will be annoyingly difficult to balance. Continuing Onett's train of thought above, your damage equation (X - Y) assumes all allies and enemies to be of equal worth (1 damage each), when in reality some kits (like medic) need to be accounted for differently to make the kit balanced.

Would the cleave effect from multiple underdogs stack? Consider 3 underdogs against 6 opponents in a 3v6. Each underdog will be doing (6 - 3) = +3 damage to their individual targets, which is an insane amount in itself, PLUS the cleave damage to surrounding opponents (assuming 33% cleave, that's around 2.67 damage to every other player within the ability range for each individual hit by an underdog). That's a lot of damage. Maybe implement a cap on the cleave damage, or count ally underdogs as 2 allies.

Also, the "Level out the Field" ability doesn't account for allies attacking at range. Archer kits contributing to the combat, but which are outside the ability radius, would give the underdog additional damage fighting against melee enemies, even though the underdog may not be "outnumbered" at all. For example, for 3 archers and 1 underdog versus 2 troopers in an effective 4v2, the underdog still gets +2 damage against the troopers, even though the troopers are the outnumbered ones. One could argue that this is just playing around the kit's strengths rather than it being unbalanced in and of itself, but I still think a scenario like this could be devastatingly overpowered.

I think the kit name is fine, but off the top of my head, some possible alternatives I like are "warmonger" or "maverick".

Personally I don't think cleave would create balance issues, the cleave radius is pretty small and there's few situations where enemies will be clumped up near each other. In the rare case that you do manage to sneak up on the enemy and catch them grouped up, I think you should be rewarded for it.

You bring up a good point concerning level the field though. I could see maybe tweaking some of the values of kits other than medic. But tbh, I like keeping things simple and I don't think any other kit really rivals medic in terms of importance in the game. I could see maybe giving juggernaut and dwarf a value of 2 though.

I also don't think stacking multiple underdogs will be OP. The range for level out the field is pretty small and also people don't really group up together closely much in SnD.

In addition to this, I don't feel like comboing ranged kits with underdog would be oppressive. The kit is pretty squishy so while it does get high damage from being around many enemies it will also die very quick.