Torch Man

Torch Man is a fire-based Robot Master from Mega Man 11 which debuted in the Gondola 2.5 "Spring Break" Update alongside Bounce Man and Tundra Man. Taking vague inspiration from fighting games, a lot of aspects about him directly reference such games, be it everything from hot-dukens to roundhouses.

He originally was manufactured by Tsubakuro Precision Machining as an outdoor advisor that taught campers about fire safety and practiced martial arts to keep the flames coming out from his body under control, but was reprogrammed by Dr. Wily to fight against Mega Man and use his pyrokinetic abilities for destructive purposes. He is a practitioner of Torch-jutsu, a martial art he developed, being particularly good with jumping kicks. His Special Weapon, Blazing Torch, allows Mega Man to fire a ball of red-hot fire diagonally into the air.

Overview
Torch Man, like Blast Man, has the Power Gear gimmick where he builds meter upon hitting enemies with attacks. Unlike Blast though, his Power Gear automatically activates after a certain ammo threshold and always slowly depletes after not landing shots after a while or not attacking. He sports higher speed and lower HP then the average class, at a movespeed of 0.9, with 90 HP. With Power Gear activated, you get more survivability with 10% damage resistance (effectively 99 hp) which can give you incentive to go in and continje comboing enemy crowds. His jump is an above average 12, which allows him to take routes that plenty of other classes cannot when paired with the extra boost he gets when performing his divekick.

Main
Fist of Flame

Upon pressing mainfire, Torch Man lets out a singular flaming fist, consuming a sixth of your ammo (or half of a torch stock). It does 16 damage on contact, traveling up to approximately midrange before dissipating. Pressing M1 subsequently after the first punch lets you get a second punch in. With no ammo throws out a melee punch.

POWER GEAR: Torchjutsu Torque

When he's powered up, Torch Man's primary fire becomes the Torchjutsu Torque, a yinyang-like projectile that has a much longer travel time than Fist Of Flame. This deals 10 ripping damage, and can be used twice in a row the same way Fist of Flame can. Consumes the same amount of ammo as Fist Of Flame.

Alt
Torchjutsu Kick/Torchjutsu Dive

When grounded, Torch Man will perform a flurry of five Torchjutsu Kicks. These do low damage on their own, but rack up DPS quickly if all kicks connect. The final kick has a much brighter look to it and applies knockback, making this tool useful for disengaging foes that are too close for comfort. In the air, Torch Man will briefly propel himself upwards before flying down with a ripping divekick down at an angle. Upon landing, the user damages enmies close to him and creates 3 floorhugging waves of fire that travel for a short amount of time before dissipating. It is worth noting that landing with divekick slows you down heavily and leaves you vulnerable for a moment before returning to normal. Both the air and grounded uses consume a third of your ammo reserves (equivalent to a full torch stock).

POWER GEAR: Blazing Demon/Blazing Torch

When grounded, this thrusts the user forwards incredibly quickly before stopping to do a flurry of kicks. The kicks in question aren't too different from their regular counterparts, but have hitstun attached to them and are vertical instead of horizontal. Furthermore, instead of having a final kick with knockback, it creates a small burst that knocks every enemy back in an AoE around the user. Compared to the unepowered version, this also comes with significantly long endlag. In the air, this is virtually identical to Torchjutsu Dive, but the damage on landing is increased as well as providing a full 360° flare shockwave around the landing as opposed to only three flares in front of you. Consumes the same amount of ammo as their unempowered counterparts.

Basic Tips & Strategy
Torch Man's kit is very centered around being able to stay on targets and accumulate enough damage over time to finally finish them or their allies off with souped up Power Gear attacks. As such, he can easily capitalize off of mistakes off of enemy players and requires a team to be coordinated to lest he leave them all crippled through one player rushing in too early. However, this also means that through proper team coordination, Torch's mistakes can be just as easily exploited should he try and build Power Gear during inopportune times. He only has 90 health, which is not a lot for a class whose entire kit is ramge limited, so the difficulty in Torch's gameplan comes in knowing who to ambush and how. Heavier tanky classes like Gutsman or Hardman tend to beat Torchman on a solo fight without Power Gear, so fighting against those classes can usually be done by hitting them for a roundhouse, as it's a very quick and easy way to confirm damage on top of knocking them away, making the trade far less risky than trying to maintain pressure on them with with your mainfire. Where mainfire does come into play, though, is when you know the enemy is at a health disadvantage compared to you. The damage done by fists not only outshines altfire, but its increased range allows you to prevent enemies from running away should they try and avoid the encounter. If they try disengaging with a mobility tool, then divekicking allows you to close the gap and farm meter off of them.

Once Power Gear has activated, it's best not to get too crazy lest you end up dying during or right after getting the upgrade. Your upgraded moves are stronger and may make it enticing to just bumrush the closest bad guy, but the increased range and damage on mainfire, along with more mobility on the powered up kick moreso help make Torch less punishing and offers him more leniency when it comes to dealing with enemies. Now, should an enemy have high health, you should be able to confidently melt his health in direct combat, given the sheer damage his powered up attacks do, but never feel forced to rush enemies. You will be able to build Power Gear back later in the round, so theres nothing wrong with sitting out and not rushing upon getting the occasional inopportune Power Gear. You need to know restraint and timing in order to make sure that you maximize your overall time in Power Gear, as the limited time makes capitalization difficult in a far different manner rather than the skill of just knocking when and how to hit shots (which, as mentioned, is much more lenient in this mode).

Ultimately, Torch requires a lot of restraint and gamesense, both in knowing when to engage and what mistakes the enemy might make that he can capitalize off of. If you have allies with support tools such as Acid Man (or a good old fashioned healer like Plant Man or Splash Woman) backing you up, then you should still have opportunities to pop off easier if solo Torchman gameplay seems too risky for you, but otherwise its all about using the tools given to you in the right scenarios to build meter and have it ready to leave entire teams crippled in a few fell swoops.

P.S. I didn't mention it too much but the flares that divekick makes on impact are useful for getting bits of guaranteed damage even if they don't do too much or build a lot of meter. Landing directly on someone with divekick gets a lot more meter so getting an enemy caught in the waves on top of getting that direct landing dmg is useful for getting little bits of damage and gear, even moreso in Power Gear where you spawn 36 flares in a circle around you instead of just 3 which practically guarantees damage against anyone in the same room as you.

Gondola V2.5

 * Designed by Pr. Gibus and Greg.EXE
 * Skin by Redflash, HUD by Pegg, sprites by Frostblue
 * See CLASSHELP for more!

Gondola V2.6

 * Health 100 > 90
 * JumpZ 14 > 12
 * Fixed bug where Torch would seize on the Player Setup class select
 * Fixed bug where Torch would disappear if Time Stopped in Power Gear
 * New SFX provided by Fr3ak
 * Spawning now gives you Power Gear drain stall for 50 tics
 * HUD now indicates when Power Gear drainstall is active
 * Fist Of Flame damage 15 > 16
 * Fist Of Flame speed 40 > 69, duration 9 tics > 8 tics
 * Torchjutsu Torque ripper damage speed 60 > 70
 * Torchjutsu Torque ammo gain on hit 100 > 35
 * Torchjutsu Torque ripper damage 8 > 9
 * Flaming Kick hits 1-4 projectile speed 80 > 60
 * Blazing Demon now split into five kicks as opposed to one strong kick
 * Blazing Demon kick radius 48 > 56
 * Now has added FX while traveling before kicks
 * Damage 15 > 4 per kick
 * Blazing Demon kicks now apply full hitstun
 * Blazing Demon finish with Blazing Demon explosion that does 15 damage and knocks enemies back (and special FX upon kill)
 * Blazing Demon now has 16 more tics of endlag, now only releases user from stationary tics after endlag
 * Divekick now is a singular actor that warps in front of the user and explodes for 3 damage max every tic
 * Divekick landing explosion damage reduced 15/25 > 9/15
 * Divekick landing fulldmgradius reduced 90 > 45
 * 9 explosion added to divekick landing, 15 with Power Gear
 * This explosion also grants 35 meter on impact
 * Divekick flare damage 6 > 3, meter gain 15 > 5, powerprotect 8 tics > 5 tics
 * Divekick flare count 5 > 3 without Power Gear
 * Power Gear ammo drain now stops upon doing damage, stalls for 50 tics afterwards before continuing draining
 * Power Gear meter cap 560 > 500, minimum to enter Power 420 > 400, meter on spawn 280 > 200
 * Entering Power Gear no longer gives you 20 free Power Gear meter, instead fills all of your ammo and grants 10% damage resistance
 * Now has MAPICON sprite, provided by Smashmania

Gondola V2.6.1
! This means that if one punch gives you power gear, the second punch thrown will be a power gear shot instead of a regular punch
 * Now gains 10% speed boost during Power Gear
 * WaveDashAmmo max ammo capacity 600 > 800 (effective ammo increased 3 stocks > 4 stocks)
 * Projectile fired by mainfire now properly reflects if user is in Power Gear or not
 * Using mainfire with no ammo throws out a 16 damage melee punch, melee can be manually thrown by using altfire when firing
 * Blazing Demon thrust before kicks 75 > 50
 * Updated Roller Roaster impact/death sprites

Trivia
- Torch Man has gone through arguably one of the longest development cycles in the history of Gondola or CCBM.


 * His initial build, released around the summer of 2020, was an incredibly basic and barebones experiment addon as Gondola developer Pr. Gibus' first attempt at coding a class with major assistance from Saxton Hale developer MegaVile and CCBM developer MGO. It featured a very simple projectile for mainfire and a flurry of kicks akin to the current version, with divekick just being a forwards thrust with zero ammo limitations. This received moderate balance changes henceforth until finally being dropped for being conceptually uninteresting in favor of development on an Ecl1p5e Patch Tundra Man addon that would eventually also find itself in the Spring Break update, albeit with far less changes when porting.


 * Around a year later amidst Gondola's 2.4 update set for release in May of 2021, some videos of Torch Man with an updated skin by Redflash were shown off during an attempt to revitalize and rework the original concept and finally officially add him to the game. This concept was a Frankenstein's monster of different gimmicks, charge attacks, and other highly bloated features that ended up being deemed too complicated and messy for release, and were left in the file unused as such.


 * Finally, in preparation for the Spring Break update, Torch was reworked one last time in secret with assistance from Greg.EXE, made to strike a balance between simplicity and complexity and was finally publicly revealed at the end of the Spring Break devlog along with Tundra Man and Bounce Man. Talk about a wild ride!

- The walking cycle on Torch Man's skin by Redflash is a direct reference to Akuma's walking cycle from Street Fighter.


 * Furthermore, Blazing Demon in its entirity is a reference to Akuma's raging demon attack, which is solidified by the messatsu and extra flaming FX produced by the move on killing an opponent.