Mekkatorque (Supporting by Proxy) by oculuswindow

5 Votes

Mekkatorque (Supporting by Proxy)

By: oculuswindow
Last Updated: Sep 11, 2017
Quick Share

Mekkatorque (Supporting by Proxy)

Gnomish Inventor - Melee Support

A tactical support who supplies his team with passive buffs and flexibility

Forward


Hi all! The following is my concept for a Mekkatorque hero, inspired by my desire
for a macro-intensive support who's capable of being everywhere at once. First,
I outline Mekkatorque's strengths, weaknesses, and stats. Next, I detail my
philosophy behind the concept, broken down into three core principles: Macro-heavy
Support, Flexibility, and Passive Buffs on Demand. Lastly, we get into the
Abilities. Let me know what you think of the concept, and what changes you’d make
to improve it. Talents have now been added, with build concepts coming soon.



Note: See trait Gnomish Inventor and "deploy" abilities like Deploy Mechanostrider to better understand the philosophy behind the hero.


Strengths

Weaknesses

  • Provides passive support to his allies with Armor and Attack Speed.
  • Significantly improves his team’s dueling and split-pushing capacity.
  • Supports multiple points on the battlefield at once.
  • Alarm-o-Bots is a useful scouting ability.
  • Can act as a semi-Warrior with Steam Armor.
  • Adds a lot of flexibility to his team composition.
  • Very macro-intensive.
  • Requires a lot of map awareness.
  • Terrible waveclear.
  • His AA and Steam Armor are his only means of dealing damage.
  • Difficult to master compared to other support Heroes.
  • Inventions are squishy and in need of constant repair.

Stats

Health: 1476 (+4% per level)Regen: 2.92 (+4% per level)Attack Speed: 1.25 per secondAttack Damage: 115 (+4% per level)

Mana: 500 (+10 per level)Regen: 3 (+0.10 per level)



Macro-Heavy Support

Flexibility

Key to Mekkatorque are his Gnomish Inventions, three trusty mechs
that support his allies at his command. While Mekkatorque is within
close proximity of an ally, he can deploy/assign an Invention to
follow that ally and lend them support. This unique quality of
Mekkatorque’s allows him to support multiple allies from a distance.
Nonetheless, while Mekkatorque is able to proc his assigned
Inventions’ abilities from afar, that doesn’t mean that he can
simply deploy his Inventions and hide back at the Nexus; his
Inventions will inevitably take damage, and so he’ll need to remain
in the thick of things, ensuring their repair. A good Mekkatorque
player is capable of monitoring three points of support and regularly
rotating between them.
Should Mekkatorque assign X-21 to an already resilient hero like
Anub’Arak, blowing up their spell armor, or to a more fragile hero
like Li-Ming, to protect them from CC with Silences. Should he
assign Mechanostrider to an AA-heavy hero like Butcher, or keep
him to himself to more quickly repair his inventions? Mekkatorque
is all about flexibility, and can provide much needed adjustments
to even the most grisly of team compositions. He’s even capable of
momentarily acting as a semi-Warrior with his Steam Armor ability,
just in case his team is lacking in that department. Of course,
this means that a Mekkatorque player needs to be knowledgable of
every Hero in the game to ensure that his deployment decisions are
effective. So if you do have a Tank, maybe don’t loan them Jeeves.

Passive Buffs on Demand

As if Mekkatorque isn’t already quirky enough, his capacity to provide his team with passive, sustained buffs truly separates him from other supports. Depending on the Invention that he deploys, Mekkatorque can grant himself and his teammates Physical Armor, Spell Armor, and Attack Speed for as long as his Inventions survive. Unfortunately, they are quite squishy, making them an easy target for the enemy. Interestingly, this weakness of the Inventions pressures every allied Hero, even the assassins, to behave somewhat like warriors and support themselves; your allies will want to do whatever they can to keep the enemy off of their loaned mechs and preserve their passive buffs.

Check out my other concepts:

Combat Trait

1
Gnomish Inventor
Mekkatorque is followed by three Gnomish Inventions: Jeeves, X-21, and Mechanostrider. Gnomish Inventions can be assigned to Mekkatorque or his allied heroes to provide them with support, with a limit of 1 Invention per hero. Gnomish Inventions have 526 (+4% per level) Health, provide no XP on death, and respawn on Mekkatorque after 15 seconds. Mekkatorque's Basic Attacks heal targeted and assigned Gnomish Inventions for 100% of the damage dealt.

Activate Gnomish Inventor to destroy your nearest, assigned Gnomish Invention after 2 seconds.

Note: There is a very important distinction between "following" inventions and "assigned" inventions. Following is entirely aesthetic; unassigned and therefore inactive inventions follow Mekkatorque around, waiting to be assigned and do something useful. Unassigned inventions that are following Mekkatorque DO NOT benefit him. Mekkatorque can however assign one and only one of his followers to him at a time, and benefit from its support. Assigned Inventions will follow their master and support them, and unassigned Inventions will follow Mekkatorque, doing nothing.

Primary Abilities

1
Deploy Jeeves
Assign Jeeves to assist an allied hero or Mekkatorque. Jeeves passively grants its assigned hero 10 Physical Armor. While Jeeves is assigned to a hero, (Q) becomes Quick Repair.

(Q) Quick Repair - Cost: 75 Mana.Cooldown: 6 seconds.
Heals Jeeves' assigned hero for 398 (+4% per level) Health instantly.
2
Deploy X-21
Assign X-21 to assist an allied hero or Mekkatorque. X-21 passively grants its assigned hero 10 Spell Armor. While X-21 is assigned to a hero, (W) becomes Mass Nullify.

(W) Mass Nullify - Cost: 40 Mana.Cooldown: 10 seconds.

Silences an enemy hero near X-21's assigned hero for 2 seconds.
3
Deploy Mechanostrider
Assign Mechanostrider to assist an allied hero or Mekkatorque. Mechanostrider passively grants its assigned hero 15% Attack Speed. While Mechanostrider is assigned to a hero, (E) becomes Turbostride.

(E) Turbostride - Cost: 50 Mana.Cooldown: 8 seconds.
Grants 25% Movement Speed to Mechanostrider's assigned hero for 3 seconds.

Heroic Abilities

1
Steam Armor
Cost: 100 Mana.Cooldown: 100 seconds.
Strap into some Gnomish Steam Armor with 1842 (+4% per level) Health, 25 Armor, and different Abilities. Steam Armor lasts for 20 seconds.

(Q) Pound - Cooldown: 6 seconds.
Pounds an enemy, dealing 246 (+4% per level) damage.

(W) Steam Blast - Cooldown: 6 seconds.
After 0.5 seconds, fires a cone of steam, dealing 168 (+4% per level) damage and pushing enemies away.

(E) Eject

Immediately ends Steam Armor and launches Mekkatorque in target direction.
2
Deploy Alarm-o-Bots
Cost: 60 Mana.Cooldown: 45 seconds.
Release 3 Alarm-o-Bots each with 526 (+4% per level) Health. Alarm-o-Bots seek out enemy Heroes, who are then revealed.

Special Mount

1
Gelbin's Flying Machine
Note: This is a Hero-specific mount that has no special ability. Unlike the Mekkatorque shown at Blizzcon 2013, my Mekkatorque is regularly foot-bound, due to his frequent attacking and repairing with Wrenchcaliber. As such, his Blizzcon flying machine is nothing more than a mount in my concept.

Level 1 Talents

For Gnomeregan - Mekkatorque deals 5% more damage per assigned Gnomish Invention. Repeatable Quest: Repair a Gnomish Invention. Reward: Increase For Gnomeregan's percentage by 0.02.

Crowd Pummeler - X-21 fights alongside its assigned hero, gaining an additional 526 Health and attacking for 92 damage per second. Quest: Repair X-21 200 times. Reward: Increase X-21's Health by 214 and Basic Attack damage by 32.

Defensive Circuits - Gnomish Inventions gain 2 maximum Health every second that they are alive, which is lost on death.

Level 4 Talents

Titansteel Plating - Increases Jeeves

Level 7 Talents

Premium Service - Jeeves

Level 13 Talents

Repair-o-Bot - (Secondary Ability; Cooldown: 60 seconds) Release a Repair-o-Bot with 218 Health that seeks assigned Gnomish Inventions and repairs them for 55 Health per second. Repair-o-Bot is destroyed if there are no remaining damaged Gnomish Inventions available.

Scouting Drone - (Secondary Ability; Cooldown: 45 seconds) Places a Scouting Drone at target location, granting vision and revealing a large area around it for 45 seconds. This drone cannot be hidden and is killed by enemies with 2 Basic Attacks. Stores up to 2 charges.

Tough Technician - Every 5 repairs, gain 50 Physical Armor against the next enemy Hero Basic Attack, reducing the damage taken by 50%. Stores up to 3 charges.

Level 16 Talents

Deploy Wadsworth - (Secondary Ability) Add a second Deploy Jeeves (aka Wadsworth) to your secondary ability bar. Wadsworth has the same Basic Abilities and Health as Jeeves.

Retrofitted Generators - X-21 grants its assigned Hero 50 Spell Armor for 2 seconds upon death.

Battlestrider - Mekkatorque

Level 20 Talents

Steam Armor V2.0 - Increases the duration of Steam Armor by 20%. Hits with Steam Armor

Quick Comment

You need to log in before commenting.

[-] Collapse All Comments

Sort Comments By
1
[-]
Challenge (8) | September 14, 2017 4:56am
Im going to upvote you because of the effort it took and it does seem like you put a lot of thought and time into this (which is NOT me saying this is a bad concept at all btw).

In my opinion, I think its too busy. Too much going on in terms of just a basic kit and so much emphasis is put into his robot minions that it detracts away from the actual hero himself. I think the warrior tag is also interesting. Because if anything, this screams specialist to me but thats not a big deal.

My opinion, I think having 1 basic ability/trait dedicated to helping allies via invetions is good enough. Because otherwise it because of a game of ok whos the AA damage dealer/hard carry on my team, they get mechano most/all game, whos the tank? Ok they get jeeves.

And by having him be a massive utility hero without any real way to impact the game on his own, he would never see play. we already have 2 relatively macro focused heores in the form of rexxar and TLV and despite their harder to playstyle over normal heroes, they still are seldom seen in part due to this. What makes this hero better than those 2? He's in basic terms, the buff ***** for your team which isnt fun to play as.

So again my crique is, I think his inventions should 100% be a part of his kit, but I dont think it needs to be his only and pure defining feature. Maybe even if you made it so his trait transforms/altars his Q W E into options to create a temporary investion, you would still have all 3 of those ideas, make them MORE powerful because they arnt permanent, and create a new Q W E giving him new options, and a way to be a playmaker himself.
1
[-]
oculuswindow | September 14, 2017 10:32am
Wow, thanks for taking the time to do such a thorough review of the hero! I think that some of your critiques are legitimate, and I’ve been thinking about ways to either revise his kit or talent options to address them. The worst offender is Mekk being, as you put it, the “buff *****”. I agree that him being 100% utility makes him not fun to play. I suppose that I’d liken that playstyle to an Abathur symbiote build, but without the impact of Stab and Spikeburst. It wouldn’t necessarily be fun to act as, say, an attack speed buff for Butcher, and have no other way to impact the game. Plus, as you said, there are no ways to make any plays yourself with that play style, which can also not be so fun. My biggest concern is that his kit would encourage abstaining from every fight, which isn’t exactly in the spirit of any MOBA. Currently, I’m trying to remedy that by giving Mekk talent options that’ll encourage building around one invention, and having such builds give more agency to the Mekk player.

For instance, I’ve tried to make talents that can support a X-21 warrior build, that has Mekk and X-21 acting on each other symbiotically. There are talents available that can make X-21 a relatively impactful damage dealer and peeler with silences. Granted, you could assign X-21 to any hero, but assigning it to Mekk would better improve it’s survivability with Mekk’s AA repairs, and a shorter Nullify cooldown. This would hopefully encourage Mekk to join team fights, and give Mekk more impact on the outcome of those fights. That said, Mekk himself would only be AAing X-21 during that fight and spamming Nullify, so while that play style might be more impactful, it might not be any more fun.

TL;DR, Mekk’s playstyle not being active enough is my primary concern with the kit at the moment, and I’m working on ways to remedy that. If I stick with the AA heavy playstyle that has Mekk smacking his inventions to keep them alive, then that playstyle has to be fun, and needs to at least feel like it's interactive and engaging for the player.

Regarding the kit being too busy, I can respect that, but I’m satisfied with the breadth. I don’t think that Mekk decisions would be as simple as, “Assign Mechanostrider to the DPS every time,” mainly because the inventions are not good enough without building around them. Sure, you could assign Mechanostrider to the DPS, which would encourage picking For Gnomeregan, Battle Saddle, Battlestrider, and Roadrunner if DPS is AA heavy. But maybe the enemy comp is tank heavy with healers for sustain, and you need to add more pressure to focus down their support. In that case, Mekk can talent toward a Boom Mod Mechanostrider build, not assigning Mechano to anyone at all and instead using it for DPS of his own. Either way, if you talent in those directions, it’ll render X-21 and Jeeves relatively moot. He seems busy upfront, but he has to pick a direction and stick to it to have any sort of impact.

The problem with that, IMO, is that you’re left with two less than desirable Basic Abilities once you’ve talented to support only one. But, while that might make games too one directional for Mekk on an individual basis, there would be a ton of variation across games. One match might have Mekk filling the role of tank with an X-21 Steam Armor Build, and another might have him doing some mid-game ganking with a Boom Mod Mechanostrider build with Alarm-o-Bots for scouting. That game-to-game flexibility is what’s core to his concept, and it’s what would hopefully make him more desirable than TLV, for instance. I originally considered making him multiclass because of this, and likened him to Varian. Part of the reason why I geared his talents toward “sacrificing” two Basic Abilities in favor of supporting another was because of his level of flexibility in comparison to Varian. Varian can make use of all his Abilities whether he goes tank or assassin. I wanted to make Mekk more flexible on a game-to-game basis than Varian, but consequentially couldn’t give his kit as much stability without him being OP. But perhaps there are other ways to go about that, such as having his trait provide the flexibility in gearing toward an invention, and basing his QWE off of the selected invention, as you mentioned. I’ll think about that, and maybe there’s a way to pursue that without blowing up his kit with too many options.
1
[-]
Challenge (8) | September 14, 2017 11:12pm
oculuswindow wrote:
The problem with that, IMO, is that you’re left with two less than desirable Basic Abilities once you’ve talented to support only one


I think that is a prime example of the current live version of Azmodan.

While his abilities arnt as extreme and are relatively straight foward, building either E or Q or even full minions push makes your other abilities near worthless to the point of almost not being castable (only make worse by the badly tuned black pool ult he has)

Just keep in mind that options are good but in the end, all his abilites should have a purpose and feel meaningful regardless of the way you build him.
1
[-]
hawkray (22) | August 16, 2017 12:50am
This is very, very well done. Beautiful formatting, and interesting kit.
+1!
1
[-]
oculuswindow | September 11, 2017 8:05pm
Thanks for the kind comment! Just added a list of talents that should make him even crazier. Tried to support a X-21 bruiser build that has Mekk single-mindedly healing X-21 and little else (for those macro newbs), among other potential builds.
Loading Comments...
Load More Comments

HeroesFire is the place to find the perfect build guide to take your game to the next level. Learn how to play a new hero, or fine tune your favorite HotS hero’s build and strategy.

Copyright © 2019 HeroesFire | All Rights Reserved