TheSurgeon

Character Skills

Blood Bank (Passive)

• Special can hold up to 10,000 charges (though you start each stage with only 1 charge).
• In addition to recharging naturally with time and items, all of the Surgeon's other skills can work to reduce Special's cooldown.
• If the number of stored charges exceeds four times your level, abilities will no longer charge Special.
• Special has by far the highest DPS of any of the Surgeon's skills, so proper resource-management of its cooldown is the key to winning any engagement.

Lacerate (Primary)

• A shotgun blast that pierces enemies. Each hit charges special.
• Holds up to five charges. The more charges you have stored, the more shots will be fired. Will never drop below 1 charge.
• Attack speed will affect the number of shots fired, rather than the rate of fire.

Incision (Alt Primary)

• A rapid-fire attack that continues firing until it misses (does not require the button to be held down).
• Like Lacerate, charges special each time it hits. The amount each shot charges special increases the longer it fires without missing.

Laughing Gas (Secondary)

• Drops a canister that covers the surrounding area in gas for a brief period of time.
• The gas lingers in place at the Surgeon's position when the move was used.
• All enemies within range are continually stunned and weakened, and dramatically increase the amount Primary charges Special.

Transfusion (Utility)

• Over the next couple of seconds, heals a fraction of your max HP.
• Healing above full will charge Special.
• Any damage taken while this ability is active is stored. Each healing tick, a static fraction of the stored damage is healed back.
• Stores more damage than is actually taken - meaning that taking damage may cause you to be healed more than if you hadn't been damaged at all.

The Sanguinator (Special)

• A huge laser beam that deals tremendous damage to a single target.
• Continues firing as long as the button is held - as long as it has enough charges.
• The longer it fires continuously, the more damage it deals per charge consumed.

Blood Bath (Alt Special)

• Hold the button to build up power. Once the button is released - or you run out of charges - unleashes a massive explosion that deals light damage to everything in its range.
• The damage and radius of the explosion increases the longer it is charged.

Tips, Tricks, and Trivia

• For performance reasons, the actual number of shots Lacerate can fire is capped. The damage and special charge of each shot will increase to match the intended total values.
• Lacerate pierces through enemies, making it extremely effective against groups. Use the time spent waiting for its cooldown to line up the perfect shot.
• Incision's damage also increases the longer it continues firing - though it grows slowly enough that it isn't really noticable.
• Watch out for Malachite enemies; they render Transfusion completely useless.
• Though Special is most powerful when you allow it to build up a lot of charge, don't feel the need to save it exclusively for the teleporter boss.

Changelog

1.2.0

• Lacerate's base damage has been increased, but it's proc rate has been reduced.
• Laughing Gas now increases Lacerate's growth rate (instead of applying a flat boost to its special charge).
• Laughing Gas' special charge boosting effect now stacks.
• Rex's Weaken will no longer increase the special charge of Surgeon's Primary.
• Transfusion now stores damage dealt to temporary barrier.
• All items that increase max health will now increase the amount of special charge gained from Transfusion's overheal (previously, only shields affected this).
• Added brief startup delay for Blood Bath, to make it easier to use only a single charge.
• Increased time between each hit of Blood Bath, to make the fact that it hits multiple times more noticeable.
• Increased Blood Bath's base damage, but gave it damage falloff.

To-Do List

• The Surgeon uses Artificer as a base for a lot of non-gameplay things. The model and animations used aren't going to change, but the ability icons, skins, and ENV Suit eventually might.
• As a result, mods that change Artificer may have knock-on effects on the Surgeon. The mod may be restructured in the future to reduce such incompatibilities.
• This mod has been rigorously playtested, and I'm currenly quite happy with all of the numbers right now. However, there may still be some balance changes in the future.
• There are a couple of known, unintentional exploits, that remain in due to being 1) not that crazy and 2) extremely annoying to fix. Until I get around to dealing with them, you can consider them secrets to discover.
• Squishing bugs wherever they happen to emerge.

Other Stuff

• This mod is installed the exact same way as every other mod.
• Works in multiplayer - though, of course, all players must have the mod installed.
• If you have feedback and/or complaints you can hit me up on Discord.
• Have Fun :)