New Class Idea: The Electrician

This is... my fifth? Sixth one if you include my joke one. Anyways, came up with this when researching directed-energy weapons that exist in real life. Thought, these are really different from conventional weapons. Played around with implementing them into TF2 and came up with this. The name doesn't fit too well, but it's a hell of a lot better than "lazer dude".

The Electrician:

General Info:

            “Electrician” is a bit of a misnomer. He might be good at electrical engineering, but he isn’t content to wire new buildings all day. Specializing in directed-energy weapons, he uses his engineering skills to design and field his various laser devices. His primary is a large electro laser that fires brief, instantaneous shots with large cool down times in between. His secondary is an automatic, laser pulse weapon which has a medium rate of fire and produces a small amount of knockback, akin to sentry guns. Both weapons are fueled by a shared energy reserve the electrician has that, when depleted, leaves him vulnerable and forces him to rely on his wire-strippers as a melee weapon.

The Weapons:

Primary:	Electrolaser	100 shared (uses 5)	60~65 dmg per shot
Secondary:	Pulse Energy Gun	100 shared (uses 2)	20~23 dmg per shot
Melee:	Wire Stripper		43~87 per hit
Stats:	175 hp	93% run speed	Offensive

Detailed Description:

            The electrician isn’t a powerhouse. He deals decent damage but his rate of fire is fairly abysmal for all weapons. He is far more useful when utilizing the special effects of his weapons effectively to benefit an offensive push. He assumes more of a guardian angel role, making it harder for enemies to attack his teammates, by neutralizing incoming attacks or sources of healing. This is most effective with his primary weapon, the electrolaser.

            The electrolaser is effectively a lightning gun, sending off a bolt of electricity and then recharging for another shot. The electricity is conducted down a path of charged air formed by the laser, so the weapon is effectively hitscan. It has a fair amount of damage and range, capable of killing light classes in two good hits and capable of reaching down the length of the bridge in 2Fort. However, it isn’t a great weapon for dealing damage. Though it’s damage isn’t bad, it tapers off heavily towards the end as the ionized channel dissipates. Three-quarters of the length of the bridge receives the usual falloff from most weapons, but the last quarter sees a dramatic fall. Also, the weapon has a rather long recharge time, taking around two seconds to ready fro another shot.

            The weapon, however, makes up for it in it’s variety of uses. First and foremost is it’s ability to “shock” a target. While it doesn’t stop an enemy, it causes their screen to momentarily whiten and causes their character to point straight up and discharge their weapon. This can come in handy for buying a teammate enough time to deal with a firing heavy, save someone from sniper about to fire, or cause classes with small ammo capacities to waste a small bit of their ammo. The enemy will always discharge the weapon so long as the weapon has ammo in it, which means even if a soldier had shot a rocket milliseconds before, he will still fire a second one when hit by the shock. While the damage of the shock lessens with range, the effect does not change throughout.

            Aside from the electrolaser disorientating enemies, the nature of the weapon allows the shock to travel from enemies in contact with one another, through healing beams, and be “stored” in construction, waiting to shock any passing enemy. Any such transfer will decrease the damage of the shock by 25%. So if an engineer is hitting a sentry gun while next to a dispenser that is healing a heavy, a shock to the sentry will transfer to the engineer should he touch it, move to the dispenser through the heal beam, and give a shock to the heavy as well through the dispenser. The sentry will receive 60 dmg. The engineer receives 45. The dispenser receives 34. The heavy receives 26. In this way, the electrolaser is great for hitting enemy medics who are good at hiding behind their patients, as well as breaking the medic from his patient as the medic must reacquire his patient afterwards.. It can also turn buildings into traps. Any building hit by a laser that does not immediately pass it on will store the charge and give it to the next person who comes in contact with it. The building sparks noticeably to indicate it’s danger and passes the charge anything that touches it or, in the case of the dispenser, anything that gets near it. This charge does dissipate after a lengthy amount of time, so that damage isn't completely unavoidable. Another small bonus is that the laser will prematurely DETONATE any explosive ordinance it is fired against, causing grenades, rockets, and stickies to explode mid-flight. The explosion will still hurt your teammates however and the time it takes to recharge means this is not a very viable strategy.

            The secondary weapons if a “rapid” fire pulse gun. Firing out laser pulses, it creates a small expansion of plasma upon impact, causing mild damage and a minor shockwave. The weapon fires 2-3 shots a second and is hitscan as well. It also emits no way to trace the shots from their source, as all it fires are beams of light. The only indication that a person is being fired upon is the small, appropriately color coded explosion and the electrician’s own muzzle flashes. The shockwaves have the added benefit of causing a small amount of knockback, similar to that of a sentry gun. While an electrician can’t send an opponent into the air like a soldier can, and he has minimal effect on an enemy firmly planted into the ground, he can use the knockback to propel or maintain a preexisting juggle by another teammate. This makes the electrician interesting to combine with pyros, soldiers, or demos, especially when dealing with an enemy defensive uber.

            The electrician occupies a strange role. He is quite capable of using his abilities to deal with a one on one situation, but his abilities rapidly degrade the more people are pitted against him. The more teammates surrounding him, the more of a support role he plays by keeping enemy munitions off of his teammates. While this isn’t very important on defense, when there are supply cabinets, dispensers, and sentry guns to help with the situations an electrician is capable of countering, these are much scarcer for offensive players. An electrician in an offensive push can help greatly, momentarily incapacitating high priority targets, turning dispensers into death traps, and really putting the squeeze on gun-humping engies. Unlike other support types, the electrician is best when he is in the thick of things, right alongside the heavy hitters. Not only does this give him the most situational awareness, but it allows him to bring the full power of his weapons to bear.

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So I like a lot of the stuff, but I would make him have some sort of connection to an engineer.  Can reverse enemy teleporters w/ the wirecutters would be awesome. 

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No, not including friendly spies as that would be kinda douchey. I'd much rather allow the electrician and spy "team up" so that an engineer might be forced to take damage should his buildings be sapped and charged as well. Not only that, but the charge will also buy a little more time for the building to be sapped as it disorients the engi and forces him to swing his wrench upwards.

And yeah, the secondary is kinda OP. I don't know, I was more or less trying to give the guy a somewhat valid dmg dealing weapon. I mean, it deals similar dmg as the pistol but with a fixed rate of fire. Then again, I guess the increased accuracy might bring up a little higher, as well as the continuous magazine. So yeah, I guess tracers are called for since there are enough benefits from the pistol to make it a valid combat weapon. And yes, a lvl. 1 sentry. Technically, it's the same force as a sentry bullet, but due to the low rate of fire, it's more comparable to a lvl 1.

I was considering having the electrolaser temporarily short circuit enemy engie buildings, but I thought that might be stepping on the spy's toes a bit too much. But I never thought of wire cutters having odd effects on buildings. It'd lead to some really cool dynamics between him and the spy, as that's the only reasonable way to get close to a sentry gun. But I guess two swings from a wirecutter to a building can cause it to act buggy. Like two swings to a sentry can turn it neutral, targeting all players and buildings in its range. The dispenser only gives out ammo and no health. Teleports are reversed. These would all be fixable by engineers, but they won't actually show up on his HUD, unlike sappers. Of course the building's model will change appropriately should it get rewired, and maybe they can become targetable by enemy units as well (definately so for the sentry gun).

Sounds kind of boring to play, to be honest.

I think these may be good spy alt weapons.

least the chainlightening thing. It could be a james bond watch!

@Phoenix: Eh. Maybe. In my mind, it plays like a more tactically minded soldier. A bit slower paced, that's for sure, due to the rate of fire of the weapons. When I made it, I had in mind a soldier that thinks like a medic, basically. Like the weapons are kinda comparable. The primary is a sort of hard hitting, medium tempo weapon. The secondary is a backup/cleanup weapon. But the way the two are incorporated in the playstyle are very different. Soldier's have to choose their targets due to their weapon's style, but most of the time they choose targets based on the biggest threat to themselves. At times, they'll work on the biggest threat to their medics, and rarely will they go completely out of the way in ignoring present dangers to help the team as a whole. That's what a soldier is good at. If a defending soldier is on the right slope of gravel pit A, he won't rocket jump all the way to the left slope to help take out a medic+heavy if he has a pyro coming up at him from the bottom of a slope. In the case of a medic, a good medic WILL try to get there. Admittedly he won't simply ignore the pyro, likely backing up and shooting needles down as he back-peddles to the other side, but unlike the soldier, he will make a conscious effort to get the the other side before taking out the pyro.

This is how I think the electrician would play. The way he moves, attacks, and the damage he does would be more similar to a soldier, but he'd tactically think like a medic. Rather than deal with the pyro and then run off to help his team with the medic and heavy, he'd keep the pyro at bay, hitting him with his secondary or disorientating him with his primary as he tries to run over to the medic and heavy. While in combat, he'd act very much the same way as a soldier, but he needs the team awareness of a medic in order to be useful.

So whether or not he'd be boring. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe having a two second recharge would make the class to much of a drawl to play (though I really can't make this any shorter or else ammo-less soldier/demos would find it impossible to fight this class, plus it'd be really annoying). But then again, I don't think he'd be any more boring to play than the medic or sniper, which really aren't that boring.

@Conspiracy: Yeah. That's mostly a consequence of the fact valve has covered all the roles fairly well in this game. There aren't many niches that demand a new class to be filled with. Most are quite capable of being simply alt weapons, as you said. I know that when I write most of my class ideas, I think, "These would make really good soldier/engie/spy unlocks". Eh. The only real unique one was my aviator idea and that one is just impossible to implement with maps the way they are anyways.

He could electricute water. Just a thought.

Actually on first read this sounded pretty awesome to me. Very well thought out imo. And I normally hate these threads.

I quite like the idea. I think the shock thing is a bit stupid though, it seems stupid that a class hit by this would just stop and shoot into the air. I think he should probably just slow down or something. I like the traveling between linked enemies bit though

The shock thing is supposed to simulate the player character's nerves suddenly contracting, which includes the trigger finger, which is why I have the weapon discharge into the air. On a realistic level, it'd make more sense than slowed movement. On a gameplay level, it gives interesting tactics to allow an electrician to help more vulnerable teammates survive an assault by forcing an enemy to reacquire his target and also making him waste some ammo. Both can be lifesavers when fighting a soldier/demoman.

The main point is to create a class that requires the reasoning of a medic to be effective in combat situations. A medic needs to take into account who's hurt worst and who's more important when he plays. An electrician needs to do the same thing. The difference is that the medic uses this reasoning to determine which teammate he should directly effect. The electrician does this buy choosing which enemy.