My idea was that you wouldn't be able to wasd at all if you had the minigun, so your position would only be affected by initial velocity, gravity and knockback. But being able to very slightly affect your momentum by firing sounds a lot more interesting

Good morning people :)

I have an idea for a Heavy weapon that I would like to share with someone.

I find that Heavy is the most boring class in the game to play as or play against. Both his shooting and movement feel extremely repetitive and predictable. When engaged in a fight (spun up) he's a little over 2 times slower than the next slowest class, or 2.7 times slower than the next class when taking blast jumping into account.

I was wondering if it isn't possible to give Heavy a balanced movement option that doesn't make him lose his identity too much. I came up with the idea of giving him wheels to slide on. Here's a video demonstrating this concept.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPC4rBXeaW8

In this video, I should probably have given him a lower speed limit and some attrition.

I was thinking that the sled could either replace the primary or secondary weapon while being impossible to strafe if used as a secondary and have something like +50% damage taken when sliding. Maybe you could also have a cooldown for sliding similar to the demoman's charge meter?

I know that giving mobility to the class with 300 hp may not be the wisest idea, but I'm hoping damage vulnerability offsets it a bit. Also, the movement is not as practical or versatile as rocket jumping. You can use it to get in, but getting out isn't as easy. Making it so you can't strafe when using it as a secondary prevents the Heavy from getting to mid with a minigun any faster than normal in most maps. Your mobility is also heavily impacted by enemy fire. From the little I've played with it, it didn't feel too ridiculous (just felt that I should have capped the speed at some value) though I only played around with it against bots.

What do you think of the idea? Is it possible for Heavy to ever get a movement option or do you think it is just fundamentally against the idea of a Heavy?

I know it looks extremely goofy, but I would love to read some feedback!