Home
Edited due to progress
Original idea:
(below it is a revised version)
and now for the revised version:
(note this is pretty much copypasta of my reply to ploki but with some edits)
Same basic theme of casting spells with flavoring and each ingredient fits into some sort of functional role whether used as flavoring or the main ingredient.
This time, there would be a flavoring slot and a casting slot, having the first ingredient go in the flavor slot and having the second ingredient determine the spell that is cast (which would get rid of that pesky casserole monster). Spell ranks would influence the effectiveness of the flavoring and the power of the spell. So, instead of having to deal with 9 different reagents and a list of spell effects based on combinations, you pick your flavor then you pick your spell. Cast spells go on cooldown, but picking flavors does not, so you can spread out the flavor bonuses or pile on one flavor across the field.
Q W E or R initially determine the flavor. Casting Q W E or R gives you the flavor buff and then replaces your spell bar with Q* W* E* and R*, which represent the unique spells. Casting Q* W* E* or R* would cast that spell (this is where the mana cost comes in) and include the flavoring effect, then put that spell (the * spell) on its cooldown and clear the flavoring, returning the spell bar to the flavor list (flavors have no cooldowns). I could make R 2 things: a unique flavoring (perhaps a stun) that has a medium cooldown, or have it add all 3 flavorings to the spell and use a traditional charging ammo system (like Teemo shrooms, or just a cooldown). The cooldowns would activate when the * spell is cast. R* would probably be another unique spell with ultimate quality damage/cooldown, and possibly have it boost the QWE flavoring effect by a %. Ranking up R would provide a cooldown reduction to the flavor effect and standard scaling on the R* spell.
This brings up a problem with balancing and providing each flavor its own appeal for different situations instead of just having one god tier flavor and two meh flavors. It's almost just like Sona's Power Chord, except that you're balancing it for 4 spells that it affects instead of just one. The nature of the * spells as well as each individual flavor effect will determine what should be done. The * spells would most likely produce the same effect as the flavoring. They'd have to be applied in different ways via AoE, skillshot, targeted, ally/enemy, or even on-hit. They'd also need to be more than twice as powerful as the flavoring effect. One solution would be to offer slightly different methods of applying flavor vs spell, i.e. Q (flavor) reduces damage taken on ally or reduces damage done on enemy while Q* (spell) shields or heals allies.
Ranking up spells increases both the "flavor" effects and the "cast" effect. So a rank 2 Meatball flavored with rank 5 Herbs would apply Q's rank 5 flavor and W's rank 2 spell.
A new setup would be possibly like this:
Q - Defense
Flavor - Herbs: Allied Effect - reduces damage taken by % | Enemy Effect - reduces damage done by %
Cast - Salad: Ground Target Circular AoE heal or shield
W - Offense
Flavor - Hot Pepper: Allied Effect - increases AD/AP by flat value | Enemy Effect - base value DoT (with Grievous Wounds maybe)
Cast - Meatball: AoE damage to and around target unit
E - Control
Flavor - Parmesan: Allied Effect - increases Movement Speed by % | Enemy Effect - slows movement speed by %
Cast - Cheese Melt: AoE Skillshot silence (flavor applies to enemies and allies, think Essence Flux. No damage because of this capability)
R - Ultimate
Flavor - Seasoning Blend: Applies Herbs, Hot Spices, and Parmesan flavor effects (possibly increased by a small scaling %)
Cast - Into the Pot: Large, channeled, champion-centered AoE. All enemy champions caught in the effect are pulled into the pot, becoming suppressed and untargetable. After 2 seconds, they are expelled from the pot, taking damage and returning to their original location. A scaling % of the damage done to the enemies is then distributed evenly among nearby allies as healing. All affected units(Removing the suppress effect expels them immediately for damage, but flavors will not apply). Relatively long cooldown.
OR
Flavor - Bitter Chocolate: Allied Effect - large tenacity bonus for a few seconds | Enemy effect - stun
Cast - Molé Fountain: Creates a fountain of Molé at target location that damages enemies once (and applies increased flavor effect) and remains for a few seconds. Allies within range gain reduced damage taken, increased ad/ap, and increased movement speed, as well as the flavor effect (similar bonuses will stack) - or - Allies within range gain 50/75/100% of the effects from all flavorings available.
As for a passive, it could have something to do with flavoring affecting auto attacks (it would work if chef attacks with a spatula and uses the spatula to stir the pot, leaving the flavor on the spatula) for a certain time period (possibly while the flavoring is in the pot or gained after casting spells) but that would probably just pile on the possible effects so I'd like to stay away from that (since I already did it with Rennal). I could make the passive cause the chef to always gain the flavor bonus when casting a spell, or cause the flavoring effect to be boosted by a % once every 30 seconds. Another thing could be just having the fact that you apply flavorings to spells be the passive. The best thing is probably to add some other independent effect, possibly some sort of stat aura having to do with the aroma of cooking, which could apply permanently or for a duration after spellcasts. It would probably be mana regen related and scale off of chef's mana, chef's mana regen, or the cost of the spell.
oh, and for reference, it'd probably be a melee champion with beefy stats, sort of like Taric.
some visual theme pieces would be: apron, hair net or fancy chef hat, spatula, cooking pot, backpack with ingredients or a belt with ingredients (someplace to keep all the food). Animations - for flavoring, chef tosses the ingredient and catches it in the pot then begins stirring. For casting, chef tosses the contents of the pot outwards. Auto attacks could involve striking with spatula or pot.
Original idea:
(below it is a revised version)
Imagine a chef champion that functions slightly like Invoker from DotA.
Q W and E are ingredients, and R cooks them and serves a dish.
Q is veggies and spice, mainly for defense, W is meat, mainly for offense, and E is cheese, mainly for control.
The ingredients work like an ammo system: You gather ingredients every so often and can store up to 3 each, allowing you to cook 4-5 spells per fight with her passive and depending on your CDR.
In order to cast spells, you need to put 3 ingredients in the pot. An ingredient goes in the pot when you cast Q W or E. Once there are 3 ingredients in the pot, R will turn into a spell, the dish that combination of ingredients produces. You can then use R to cast that spell, consuming the ingredients. If you put an ingredient in the pot when the pot is already full, you'll take out the first ingredient you put in, refunding its cost. So, if you cast Q > W > W and realize you wanted the E ingredient instead of Q, casting E would remove the Q to give you W > W > E, and casting Q again would give you W > E > Q.
Putting ingredients into the pot costs mana, and replacing an ingredient will refund its mana cost. The average cost per spell will start at around 60 mana and will go up to 120 (20-40 per ingredient)
The passive lets you cast a spell free of ingredient cost once every 30 seconds.
Each spell you are able to cast is based mainly on the Main Ingredient. The main ingredient is determined by putting 2 of one ingredient into the pot. Then you add in a flavor, or more of that ingredient. If you add in 3 different ingredients, you get a casserole with a separate effect.
Ranking up each ability increases the color coded effect of each spell. e.g. Veggies&Spice uses the "Green" effect, Meat uses the "Red" effect, and Cheese uses the "White" effect.
Now for the spells
Q=Veggie&Spice, W=Meat, E=Cheese, X=scaling value based on spell rank, Y=constant value
Main Ingredient: Q - Salad - Focuses on Healing allies. Flavor provides a buff.
QQQ - Veggie Salad: Heals allies in the target area for X amount. Flavor effect: Q - increases the heal by Y%
QQW - Meat Salad: Heals allies in the target area for X amount. Flavor effect: W - buffs their attack damage by X
QQE - Cheesy Salad: Heals allies in the target area for X amount. Flavor effect: E - buffs their movespeed by X%
Main Ingredient: W - Meat - Throws a Meatball at the enemy, dealing AoE damage and effect to the target and units around it.
WWW - Meaty Meatball - Deals X magic damage to target unit and surrounding units. Flavor Effect: W - increases damage and AoE by Y%
WWQ - Spicy Meatball - Deals X magic damage to target unit and surrounding untis. Flavor Effect: Q - Lowers targets' damage output by X% for Y seconds
WWE - Cheesy Meatball - Deals X magic damage to target unit and surrounding untis. Flavor Effect: E - Slows units by X% for Y seconds
Main Ingredient: E - Cheese - Cover foes in a cheesy sauce to hinder them
EEE - 3 Cheese Sauce - Covers enemies in target area with a cheesy sauce, slowing movement by X% for Y seconds. Flavor Effect: E - Increases duration by Y seconds
EEQ - Spicy Cheese Sauce - Covers enemies in target area with a cheesy sauce, slowing movement by X% for Y seconds. Flavor Effect: Q - Lowers units' damage output by X% for the duration
EEW - Meaty Cheese Sauce - Covers enemies in target area with a cheesy sauce, slowing movement by X% for Y seconds. Flavor Effect: W - Units suffer from Grievous Wounds and takes X damage over the duration
Casserole: Q+W+E - Create a Casserole Monster
QWE - Casserole Monster - Dump out a mystery dish casserole at target location, spawning a Casserole Monster. Casserole Monsters last for Y seconds before disintegrating. The Casserole Monster gives off a strangely delicious aroma, buffing nearby allies. Casserole Monsters chase the closest enemy champion.
Casserole Monster has X health, X armor, X magic resist, X damage, Y attack speed, and X Movement Speed.
Nearby allies enjoy X bonus regen/5, X% bonus attack speed, and X% tenacity. Bonuses do not stack.
Passive: Efficient Cooking - Every Y seconds (affected by CDR), the champion gains a charge of Efficient Cooking. While it has efficient cooking, the next dish will not consume ingredients, allowing them to be used again. Cooldown starts when the effect is consumed.
The result is a champion with 4 distinct spells, 3 of which allow you to flavor them for different sub-effects. You have a heal/buff, a damage/debuff, a slow/debuff, and a pet with an aura buff. You can choose a number of options from your list of ingredients during a fight, and will always have enough ingredients to cast 3 different spells (outside of the passive). You can do XXX YYY ZZZ, XXY YYZ ZZX, or XYZ XYZ XYZ for three casserole monsters. You can even mix it up, using XYZ, XXY, YZZ during one fight. You can also use your passive to get two of one dish or use it to cover the third dish you wouldn't have been able to serve.
I might aim to have the ingredient recharge rate be somewhere around 10 seconds, or have it higher and reduce the cooldown with rank, but the problem then lies in only having one ingredient at level 1. The other thing I would do would be to make each ingredient recharge faster the more you have of it, so like a 10 second CD to get your first veggie, 5 seconds to get your 2nd, and 2 seconds to get your third for a total 17 second cd, but then you could just spam casserole monsters every 2 seconds. Another thing would be to make the cooldown unique to each ingredient's charge, much like Death Knights from WoW used to have individual rune cooldowns. For Example, you have 3 veggies, and use all 3 in one dish. This would then proc 3 cooldowns, 1 for each veggie, so all your veggies would be ready to cast after that cooldown. If you only used 2 veggies, then those 2 veggies would proc cooldowns for themselves, allowing those 2 veggies to be ready again once the cooldown was up. This would be really clunky to utilize, however. The best I can think of would be to have a sort of "Ingredients Bar" on the interface above the spells, below the buffs. It would have 3 color coded bars for each ingredient that would be full and bright when ready to use, and shaded and filling up when on cooldown.
The real challenge comes with balancing the numbers. I hope that with my setup, it will be fairly easy to determine the numbers required based on the amount of each ingredient in each recipe, with the main ingredient weighing more heavily per ingredient.
TL;DR
You have 3 units of 3 different ingredients that replenish over time
Mix Q W and E Ingredients for different spells
Serve a dish with R once you have 3 ingredients prepared, consuming them.
Every so often, you can make a dish and not consume ingredients
Spells focus on whichever ingredient you used two of, then adding a flavor with the third ingredient.
Using 3 different ingredients creates a Casserole Monster (uncontrolable pet) with an aura buff
Q focuses on defense
W focuses on offense
E focuses on control
Ranking up ingredients increases that ingredient's effect in a dish.
You can play well enough using the basic XXX ingredient spells, but more skilled "chefs" will be able to make better use of the flavorings
and now for the revised version:
(note this is pretty much copypasta of my reply to ploki but with some edits)
Same basic theme of casting spells with flavoring and each ingredient fits into some sort of functional role whether used as flavoring or the main ingredient.
This time, there would be a flavoring slot and a casting slot, having the first ingredient go in the flavor slot and having the second ingredient determine the spell that is cast (which would get rid of that pesky casserole monster). Spell ranks would influence the effectiveness of the flavoring and the power of the spell. So, instead of having to deal with 9 different reagents and a list of spell effects based on combinations, you pick your flavor then you pick your spell. Cast spells go on cooldown, but picking flavors does not, so you can spread out the flavor bonuses or pile on one flavor across the field.
Q W E or R initially determine the flavor. Casting Q W E or R gives you the flavor buff and then replaces your spell bar with Q* W* E* and R*, which represent the unique spells. Casting Q* W* E* or R* would cast that spell (this is where the mana cost comes in) and include the flavoring effect, then put that spell (the * spell) on its cooldown and clear the flavoring, returning the spell bar to the flavor list (flavors have no cooldowns). I could make R 2 things: a unique flavoring (perhaps a stun) that has a medium cooldown, or have it add all 3 flavorings to the spell and use a traditional charging ammo system (like Teemo shrooms, or just a cooldown). The cooldowns would activate when the * spell is cast. R* would probably be another unique spell with ultimate quality damage/cooldown, and possibly have it boost the QWE flavoring effect by a %. Ranking up R would provide a cooldown reduction to the flavor effect and standard scaling on the R* spell.
This brings up a problem with balancing and providing each flavor its own appeal for different situations instead of just having one god tier flavor and two meh flavors. It's almost just like Sona's Power Chord, except that you're balancing it for 4 spells that it affects instead of just one. The nature of the * spells as well as each individual flavor effect will determine what should be done. The * spells would most likely produce the same effect as the flavoring. They'd have to be applied in different ways via AoE, skillshot, targeted, ally/enemy, or even on-hit. They'd also need to be more than twice as powerful as the flavoring effect. One solution would be to offer slightly different methods of applying flavor vs spell, i.e. Q (flavor) reduces damage taken on ally or reduces damage done on enemy while Q* (spell) shields or heals allies.
Ranking up spells increases both the "flavor" effects and the "cast" effect. So a rank 2 Meatball flavored with rank 5 Herbs would apply Q's rank 5 flavor and W's rank 2 spell.
A new setup would be possibly like this:
Q - Defense
Flavor - Herbs: Allied Effect - reduces damage taken by % | Enemy Effect - reduces damage done by %
Cast - Salad: Ground Target Circular AoE heal or shield
W - Offense
Flavor - Hot Pepper: Allied Effect - increases AD/AP by flat value | Enemy Effect - base value DoT (with Grievous Wounds maybe)
Cast - Meatball: AoE damage to and around target unit
E - Control
Flavor - Parmesan: Allied Effect - increases Movement Speed by % | Enemy Effect - slows movement speed by %
Cast - Cheese Melt: AoE Skillshot silence (flavor applies to enemies and allies, think Essence Flux. No damage because of this capability)
R - Ultimate
Flavor - Seasoning Blend: Applies Herbs, Hot Spices, and Parmesan flavor effects (possibly increased by a small scaling %)
Cast - Into the Pot: Large, channeled, champion-centered AoE. All enemy champions caught in the effect are pulled into the pot, becoming suppressed and untargetable. After 2 seconds, they are expelled from the pot, taking damage and returning to their original location. A scaling % of the damage done to the enemies is then distributed evenly among nearby allies as healing. All affected units(Removing the suppress effect expels them immediately for damage, but flavors will not apply). Relatively long cooldown.
OR
Flavor - Bitter Chocolate: Allied Effect - large tenacity bonus for a few seconds | Enemy effect - stun
Cast - Molé Fountain: Creates a fountain of Molé at target location that damages enemies once (and applies increased flavor effect) and remains for a few seconds. Allies within range gain reduced damage taken, increased ad/ap, and increased movement speed, as well as the flavor effect (similar bonuses will stack) - or - Allies within range gain 50/75/100% of the effects from all flavorings available.
As for a passive, it could have something to do with flavoring affecting auto attacks (it would work if chef attacks with a spatula and uses the spatula to stir the pot, leaving the flavor on the spatula) for a certain time period (possibly while the flavoring is in the pot or gained after casting spells) but that would probably just pile on the possible effects so I'd like to stay away from that (since I already did it with Rennal). I could make the passive cause the chef to always gain the flavor bonus when casting a spell, or cause the flavoring effect to be boosted by a % once every 30 seconds. Another thing could be just having the fact that you apply flavorings to spells be the passive. The best thing is probably to add some other independent effect, possibly some sort of stat aura having to do with the aroma of cooking, which could apply permanently or for a duration after spellcasts. It would probably be mana regen related and scale off of chef's mana, chef's mana regen, or the cost of the spell.
oh, and for reference, it'd probably be a melee champion with beefy stats, sort of like Taric.
some visual theme pieces would be: apron, hair net or fancy chef hat, spatula, cooking pot, backpack with ingredients or a belt with ingredients (someplace to keep all the food). Animations - for flavoring, chef tosses the ingredient and catches it in the pot then begins stirring. For casting, chef tosses the contents of the pot outwards. Auto attacks could involve striking with spatula or pot.
Last edited by Zarkof on Sun Mar 03, 2013 6:54 am; edited 3 times in total
(It's still a concept I'm not quite interested, so it's hard to read such a wall of text... but I do love both the chef part, and the combo-y part.)