The Bombardier @ 10th Class

The Bombardier                          150 HP/93% Speed

A fallen & disgraced Royal Air Force pilot, an ace from his single-handed defeat of an entire squadron. He was stripped of his right to fly after a crash during his test flight of the newest model heavy glider. His punishment, to be assigned to a monotonous tank division, was short-lived when he ingeniously devised a new form of jet propulsion. His subsequent inventions made him a world-renowned aeronaut & scientist, yet he could never outrun the urge to return to battle whenever someone radioed for air support.

Nicknames

Cannon

A huge-bore cannon that fires custom-designed shells, each designed to explode and cause massive flesh shredding. Each shell is loaded with all types of metal shrapnel & table utensils, exploding outward with enough force to push enemies great distances & even airborne. The real power in this weapon, though, is its rate of fire. Firing at roughly twice a second, the cannon can lock down a corner with its shower of metal or remove enemies from an open area with its long arcing fire (Similar to the rocket's but with a downwards arc). When fired at close range enemies will go flying away. Of course, to complement the Bombardier’s advantage of flight, the spiraling shells explode with more force the higher up they are fired from. At ground level the blast will only do 10-30 damage, but when fired from a great height (Badlands spire/flying for 5 seconds) the damage approaches that of a close range shotgun blast, in the neighborhood of 70-90 damage. AMMO: 3 loaded / 12 carried.

SMG

Identical to the Sniper’s SMG. AMMO: 25 loaded / 75 carried.

Mallet

Standard melee weapon.

Refueler

A support weapon similar to the Medigun, the Refueler functions very similarly except for its effects. The Refueler restores ammo to teammates it is attached to at a rate of one clip per two seconds (or five metal per two seconds). Additionally, the Refueler has the unique effect of reducing damage taken by teammates being buffed, each attack taken reduced by a quarter. The damage reduction effect, however, does not stack with other Bombardiers.

Jetpack

Attached to the Bombardier’s back, this simple-looking device allows the wearer to temporarily take off and even hover for a short period of time. Activated with right click, the jetpack works by providing upward thrust & lift for up to seven seconds at a time. To take off, the wearer should jump, but otherwise the jetpack lifts upward constantly. It recharges at a rate of one second charge restored per three seconds charging.

http://michaelfirman.deviantart.com/art/Pilot-Class-98112654

As always, take the numbers with a grain of salt, but I think that as a whole this idea (which you'll notice has appeared before in several forms) fits the TF2 universe a lot more than anything else and accomplishes the goal of a class that's always useful but never overpowered.

<333

That actually sounds awesome.  And it's really given me false hope of it becoming true.  although the canon thing would be like mega spam sometimes and the ammo heal gun thing should just be scrapped, I'm alright with an smg but he better not get the bloody razorback

that picture kicks ass, and the jetpack sound good, but i dont know if i like the weapons

So he's got 4 weapons? Or is one of those an unlock?

Yes, 4 weapons.

The idea here is that he's not totally useless on the ground but most of his power is in the air. Really what I was going for with the cannon was something that's relatively harmless except when used in conjunction with an "attack". When I was researching what could be added to make a class interesting, I came upon the classic Unreal gun the Shock Rifle that's most powerful when used with its two firing modes together... that made me think of a "Bomber combo". With seven seconds of air time, the bomber could pull off a nice combo attack every 30 seconds or so that involves flying straight up for 5-6 seconds and then firing down on the enemy, giving him a huge height advantage and therefore doing a ton of damage.

But, what balances out the cannon is that on the ground it does basically no damage. If you hit someone and you're not above them, because of the angle you probably won't be able to hit them again when they go flying. Even then, when you think it would be spammy, it always does less damage than the Demoman's pipes and its primary factor is that it knocks enemies away, so it's more of an offensive weapon to move enemies than to kill them. When you can get a height advantage (on maps like Badlands... most pub maps don't have it much) the bombardier CAN spam, but that takes away from his other purpose, which is to negate spam. (He also does it worse than the Demoman/Soldier and has less ammo, so there)

The refueler is a take on an idea I've had for a long time. It's not meant to be his main purpose, but to fill in to make him useful in the times when his cannon is useless. When he can't fly or it's too dangerous, being able to resupply teammates is a great function for a 10th class. He could also help the Engineers set-up (Brit Inventor helping a Texan...), and most importantly, the damage reduction is intended to limit the other team's spam. I've considered doing something even higher than 25% damage reduction, like 50%, but I figured that with the Jarate adding 35% damage it would be bad to totally overpower it, considering that Valve has shown 35% to be the perfect spot.

And then he has the SMG and a melee weapon. ^__^

Its good, I like this idea, but I still prefer lilgamefreak's version (ages ago, on a different thread).

I'm not sure giving him the refueler is useful. I think his main role is to fly above enemies and support the team by dropping shit on them, rather than sitting back and giving them ammo. I think too many people would just sit back and act like medic 2. I've never had much of a problem with ammo, anytime I do need it, there is a dispenser giving it out anyway. Also not sure about SMG, most people think the sniper's is underpowered anyway, and giving it to another class might be stupid....although this one does have more attacking potential than the sniper has...I dunno, maybe replace it with shotgun?

I love the names though. I can just imagine the heavy calling him "LEETLE BIRDY" now...
Love the art too, did you do it yourself?

I actually referenced gamefreak's version when creating this, so some credit has to go to him (we come up with a lot of the same ideas independantly, hehe and we're cool with it).

That said, my idea tries to counteract some of the problems I found with his ideas. Namely, the fact that his idea had unlimited flight. Basically the idea is that with the ability to fly directly over someone, you can drop things on them. But, unlimited flight leads to other problems, for instance with maps where the bomber would hit the top of the map. The limited seven seconds of flight I came up with is specifically intended to not let a player playing the bomber escape from the map, so the height he could attain in seven seconds is equal to that of a Soldier's rocket jump or what have you.

With limited flight a requirement, in my opinion, that meant that the main weapon couldn't be actual bombs that have to be dropped directly above the enemy, because in most cases the bomber simply wouldn't be able to get up there. It would make him WAY too situational, too, because his only use is in maps with enough vertical space to reach height. Even with the way my design is set up the bomber is going to have a challenge killing people when his weapon is weak in most cases (unless he uses his jetpack). So, that led to my addition of another ability...

Like I said, the refueler isn't meant to be his main weapon, and that will be very obvious to someone who does nothing but resupply the whole time... because they'll get no points. I think you underestimate the draw of points that people could get if you think that they'll sit back doing nothing all day. Really the refueler attempts to solve the issue of "well, I can't fly here but we're still attacking the enemy in a heavily defended position". Attaching to someone who is either going to eat a lot of damage, need a lot of ammo, or needs protection will basically allow the bomber to be useful in that situation. On dustbowl/goldrush where spam is the name of the game, the bomber is inferior to other spam classes unless he's flying, so when he's grounded this is his way to be useful. Instead of making his only option SMG-kamikaze attacks or spamming his weak cannon, the refueler is something productive that no other class does. If you left him without that option, players would treat this class like a glorified battle sniper.

-FoXy

Hmmm....without unlimited flight time, he seems sort of like a soldier or demo. He can't get any higher than them, and can only stay flying a bit longer than them, which means he's sniper practice. You could give him a helmet so he can't be headshot, or makes headshots weaker.

He gets no points for refueling? Noone would use it then. Why would you bother, especially when noone is likely to need ammo anyway?

I rush-read your post, so I may not have picked up everything, but at the moment it seems like a good idea that needs a bit of tweaking...

I wouldn't say he's that different from the Soldier or Demoman, but the real difference is that he spends a LOT more time in the air. Realistically, the average Soldier or Demo will spend about 10% of their time in the air, if that. That makes up a very small part of their time and most of their kills are still from the ground. With the bomber, however, you'll notice that the math works out so that he can spend 25% of his time in the air. (7 seconds air time and 21 seconds to refill the charge, works out to a quarter of his time in the air). I think that it will feel MUCH more significant than it sounds numerically, because for most of that time in the air you're just shooting whatever you can.

As far as being Sniper bait, well that was intended. I mean, already a good Sniper can pick off a Soldier... and in this case I think we all know what would happen if suddenly we had a hovering Soldier. Giving him a helmet... is not a good idea, because it's akin to what Valve did with the razorback... it's a counter to his hard-counter. Also, Soldiers and Demos are good counters to air-borne bombers (if they can hit him...).

Totally open to tweaking, I think that as a mechanic, a flying class is about all that would fit into the world of TF2. As it is, another flying class with heavy firepower in the air would also become a spam-whore on the ground, too... which is why I approached it from the angle of filling another role on the ground.

EDIT: Also the artwork is by the guy at the link I provided, I don't know him but it's absolutely PERFECT for my idea so I kinda jacked it. ^__^

Sounds pretty good. Still needs a bit of work/fixing but probably one of the best ideas I've seen so far.