Posted by
Geoff Goodman
We're still working on him so it might be a bit early to talk about where we are right now.
What I can do is mention a few things we have tried that haven't worked so far, that might be interesting.
We tried replacing Scatter Arrow with Piercing Arrow, which was an arrow that had an extremely fast projectile speed and would pierce through enemies and barriers. This was pretty fun as a 'snipey' arrow that you could occasionally take a super long-ranged shot at an enemy widow, pharah, or just a support in their back lines. Ultimately though, it was pretty frustrating to be feeling safe behind a barrier and get headshot through it and die.
Another thing we played with was just changing Scatter significantly. The most successful version was one where it had a very fast projectile speed, could only ricochet one time, could no longer split off the floor, and had a much tighter spread. This version removed the floor scatter entirely but added some new options in either using it as a long-range sniper shot or using it more accurately off a single wall (or ceiling). This one was pretty fun but mostly just felt really hard to use consistently. There were some areas of maps where it felt useful and fun but a lot of the time there weren't any usable surfaces around to cause a split, and using your cooldown to merely increase the projectile speed of your shot didn't feel great as a common use-case.
Another crazy thing we playtested a few times was a new ability bound to his Reload key (which is currently unused). This ability would have a small animation delay (~2-3 seconds) after which your cooldowns would reset. This meant if you wanted to sacrifice some normal shots you could forcibly reset your special arrows. This was pretty interesting when paired with the Piercing Arrow idea, but felt pretty crazy with Sonic Arrow. This idea overall wasn't bad but I think its shelved for now.
We're still narrowing in on what broad direction to take him, and what would make you really glad to have him on your team etc.