Heavy Suggestion: (Gyro-)Charging / Overspinning

Gyrocharging / Overspinning would be a secondary ability that can be used while spinning the minigun.

What it'd do is when you press your jump key while spinning either minigun (currently does nothing) you would then take a second to spin up your minigun an additional time, leading to an overspun state.

When in an overspun state the Heavy would hold the minigun straight up and down.
The meaning is that this allows him to balance gyroscopically on his small legs, allowing him to run instead of just jogging.
This has the effect of creating a significantly faster Heavy when overspun.

The disadvantages:
Overspinning means Overheating.
Not only will this burn constantly and set you on fire,
but it will also reduce your bullets (ammo) into useless molten blobs sitting at your feet as time passes.
Overspinning also doesn't work underwater.

In the end, not only does this ability throughly fit as a class mechanic for the Heavy, but through the constant burning also stays true to the Health or Speed mentality used in making the classes.

The ammo dripping prevents a Heavy being healed by a Medic from sensibly charging constantly (the burning damage would probably outweigh the Medic's healing as well), and prevents the Sandvich from becoming significantly better than the shotgun, as while the sandvich can effectively help you regain health lost from charging, the shotgun provides a backup weapon that can be used if you drip too much ammo.


For balancing purposes these statistics could be tweaked:
Overspinning Spin-up time (the time it takes to go from spun up to overspun and)
Overspinning Spin-down time (the time it takes to go from overspinning to normally spinning)
Overspun speed (how much of a speed boost it provides)
Overspun Burning (how much damage is done per second in addition to being set on fire)
Overspun Ammo Drip (how much ammo is lost per second while overspun)

Note that you can still overspin without ammo, and will continue to burn (but without additional damage) from the fire after you stop overspinning.

Alternative to an Ammo Drip: Instead of losing ammo while overspinning, there is a cooldown period where the overheated minigun cannot be fired after you spin-down from the overspun state.

Hmm... this may be viable... I'm all for anything to give him a speed buff. Maybe don't even take away ammo when doing it, only have it start to burn and a longer overspinning spin down time. It might look a bit silly though... the heavy moving fast I mean.

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The problem with not taking away ammo is that the Sandvich quickly becomes a fair bit superior to the shotgun since it can be used to regain the health lost from the burning.
Taking away ammo helps to counteract this, and prevents Heavy rushing.

As for looking silly, that's probably a good thing.

Considering a longer overspun spindown time, keep in mind that to fully spin down you're adding together both spin-down times.

Probably a better alternative to losing ammo would be a period where the overheating minigun cannot be fired, similar to what you're suggesting, but separated from the spin-down process.

Think I posted an idea where the heavy could get speed by bunny jumping and firing minigun backwards.

Good stuff anyway. Another alternative for disadvantages of overspinning could be that he gets fatigued for a short while, just like a bonked scout.

"Getting all excited and letting those tiny legs rushing you forward renders you exhausted for a short while. But don't worry, you can now feed your enemies with lead!"

I don't really understand how that would make you run faster.

And at the same time, the movement speed needs a buff in general, without a penalty in return. Make it to that of a Soldier's.

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It doesn't so much make you run faster, as let you use the gyroscopic motion (think how a top works) to balance yourself so you can go faster without falling. (I know the heavy doesn't fall, but if he tried to run faster without being balanced by something he probably would)

As for just a speedbuff in general, this idea is simply an alternative to it.
I'd love to have either, this is just a more complex idea that does more to add depth.