Riktor Heading to Paragon, Bringing Yoinking Hook
Yoink-zap
Birds do it, bees do it, even MOBA character rosters do it. What am I talking about? Having an individual whose job it is to shoot a hook of some kind out to grab those that would disobey them, obviously.
Dota 2 has Pudge, Heroes of the Storm has Stitches, Overwatch has Roadhog and now Paragon [official site] has Riktor.
As you'd expect from a melee hero who can suddenly bring opponents up close, Riktor is a tanky character. His thing seems to be looking imposing and being an electrified cyborg with red sparks flying all over the place.
As the game's creative director, Steve Superville, writes on the game blog:
"He's a powerful initiator who brings order to the battlefield by locking down targets and pacifying enemies. His Riplash ability reaches out with his electric chain and pulls in enemy Heroes and/or minions while dealing damage. His Shock Therapy disrupts enemies by silencing them and his Skewer Ultimate uses a web of chains to damage and stun everyone in his path."
Something I'm interested in here is that when you get a player who is good with the hookshotty characters in other games it can be a terrifying experience - they predict where you are and then yank you out of safety and into certain doom. With terrible players you either spend your time gleefully avoiding their terrible hooks if you're on the other team, or eyerolling as the miss an easy opportunity if they're on your side.
Given Paragon is a third person MOBA which lets you shoot in the vertical plane as well as the horizontal one I'm thinking that the landing of hooks or riplashes or whatever might end up more difficult, but that legitimately good players will be even more of a pain to play against? This does make me laugh, though:
Epic are doing that paid early access thing with Paragon at the moment. If you do have access Riktor will be available to play from 31 May, ridiculous electrified shoulder pads and all.
