Comprehensive buffs and changes to the Clown
People are talking about the Clown again after the recent 4th anniversary stream where the devs said they would be working on giving some love to the clown but the community seems unsure about what to give him.
The Clown and his lore to a lot of people doesn't feel open-ended enough to create some unique secondary ability or change his power in any meaningful or significant way, he lacks map pressure but it's not like the devs can give him a teleport that just doesn't fit with his character.
But I have been thinking about this for a long time and I've landed on two suggestions that I think would turn Clown from being in a poorly weak position balance wise, to a truly viable addition to the list of killers that can be effective in higher ranks. A secondary ability, and the addition of a new effect / mechanic to his Afterpiece Tonic which gives it a greater impact in his matches.
The Changes:
Introducing Secondary Ability: Fun Time Gas Traps
It's a circular device that the Clown would wind up, twisting it in an animation before setting it. He can place it on the ground, or attach it to a generator, once it is on the ground it will trigger when a survivor walks within a set radius (say 4m) after which point it will activate violently and loudly erupting, ejecting a large cloud of gas that covers a big area much more significant than the normal bottles.
New effect / mechanic for the Afterpiece Tonic:
While under the effects of the afterpiece tonic, disables Survivors' ability to perform any Repairing, Healing, Sabotaging, Searching, or Cleansing interactions.
Explanation & Elaboration:
New Mechanic -
One of the biggest ideas that I always bring up whenever talking about the clown is making the Afterpiece tonic more threatening, as it stands there's nothing that stops a survivor from lingering in the toxic gas clouds and basically ignoring them since they don't do damage themselves, and tanking the gas at face value. In this way it hardly has any impact in a match, even with the job it is meant to do which is stop loops, which leads to the implementation of this new mechanic:
While under the effects of the afterpiece tonic, disables Survivors' ability to perform any Repairing, Healing, Sabotaging, Searching, or Cleansing interactions.
The idea here is that as a survivor you really shouldn't be able to continue repairing a complex piece of machinery like a generator, or really any other act that requires focus like while inhaling toxic fumes and being disoriented. This way, the Clown gains map pressure in a unique way that makes sense for him and that other killers do not have. By being able to throw bottles long distances and stopping generator progress for a few precious seconds for you power-walk over there.
This rewards skillful clowns who can accurately aim and throw bottles right on top of generators from across the map. This also will help clown in other aspects too such as protecting Hex: Totems, or catching a group of survivors from pulling off a heal.
For those wondering, this effect already currently exists in the game. It is the exact same effect that Survivors in madness tier 3 are stuck in until they successfully perform the snap out of it action. The only difference is instead of "permanently" the effect only lasts for the duration that a survivor is intoxicated. The impaired vision lasts for 4 seconds after leaving a gas cloud, however the gas cloud itself lingers for about 8-9 seconds (keep in mind the spheres [how the gas physics work and it's modeled] of the gas are absorbed by survivors who "breathe it in" so the area gets reduced eventually) so it would be about this time frame.
NOTE: This does not prevent Survivors from performing crucial and important tasks such as rescuing survivors off hooks, or opening the exit gates. It only affects the actions listed.
Secondary ability -
The purpose of this is twofold, it mainly serves as a way to give the Clown more map pressure, in this way because of the loud activation noise and survivors screaming revealing their location, and giving a bead on where to go next. If this was introduced in conjunction with the aforementioned change that I mentioned beforehand this would also prevent survivors from repairing a generator for a short duration of time until the gas cleared giving the Clown more time to cross the map, finish a chase, hook someone, or something before applying pressure to that part of the map.
It also serves as a pretty significant anti-looping tool, because it covers a great area this trap could be used as a very wide area denial tool where you could significantly reduce the looping capability of an entire area. Say the killer shack, or maybe a central building or just a generally strong loop.
How the Clown would receive these Fun Time Gas Traps could be done a number of different ways. It could be set to a simple charge timer, or it could be based off of how many times the Clown has reloaded encouraging Clown players to make active use of their primary ability as much as possible before being able to access the secondary ability.
Bonus change:
Allow the Clown to reload bottles on an individual basis, much like the way the Nurse's Blink regenerates individually. Every second the Clown spends reloading he gains another bottle, this way he doesn't have to waste as much time in a chase and can cancel the reload mid-way through having only reloaded one, two, or three bottles rather than the full four.
It seems like a small change but the small changes add up, and this would benefit the clown and make his gameplay much more smooth. However it is important to note that this change would NOT be significant enough on its own and would not make Clown a noticeably stronger killer by itself. This would be a change that would need to be made in conjunction with bigger more robust modifications to his current kit, such as the aforementioned secondary ability and added effect to the afterpiece tonic.
NOTE FOR THE DEVS: I really hope someone, anyone, on the team gets the chance to read these possible changes. That these ideas might be further discussed within the inner circles of the dev team would be amazing because I firmly believe these are the kinds of ideas that will make the clown a more fun, better, and viable killer. Some kind of comment or confirmation that this has been "BHVR Read" would be really cool to hear and see.
Comments
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Clown has always been a pretty one-dimensional character. Hoping that some of these suggestions may one day make it into his kit, because this would certainly help to remedy that.
However, going this in-depth with updating his power, I also think it would be nice for his "fun" factor to get a boost too. Because quite frankly, his gas just isn't fun to play with or play around.
What I would love to see in this regard is a significant increase in the actual dizzying + hindered effects that intoxicated survivors would suffer from his bottles (your gas traps would still work more like the current gas does), but that the actual cloud would be much smaller and not linger for very long. Maybe with a bonus penalty applied if Clown can actually hit survivors directly with the bottle (possibly also preventing them from vaulting or dropping pallets during the intoxication effect).
Basically, Clown could get more direct benefit out of using his bottles well in chase, but survivors would have more lee-way to try and dodge around them. An increase in what player skill offers for either side in this interaction, which would hopefully make him feel more fun for everyone (in a similar manner to Huntress).
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@APoipleTurtle One Dimensional, that's the word I was looking for. Good adjective
A lot of people seem to think that, that he's one dimensional and there isn't much you can do to change his power outside of changing stuff about his reload which everyone and their mother seems to think is the only thing the devs can do to make him better. But the main intention and driving inspiration with the changes I created were of the mindset that he doesn't have to be.
He certainly is right now, but that's not to say it's impossible to create unique and fun additions and changes to his power and I'd like to think I proved that with the addition of the new mechanic and the secondary ability (especially in conjunction with each other).
Where Huntress can throw cross map hatchets all the way across the map you could do the same thing with Clown and stop a generator from popping right at the beginning of a game and forcing everyone to scatter. You could stop someone from cleansing your Hex: Totem who is about to get rid of it, you could see a group of survivors healing under a hook a decent ways off and with no hope of catching them, but you could stop them with your Afterpiece tonic by intoxicating them. Or even stop survivors from healing themselves in the middle of a chase like people tend to do behind the safety of pallets and windows when they've got a medkit or self-care.
That to me is super cool because nobody else can do that. It makes the Afterpiece tonic a so much more imposing and ever-present threat and danger, it makes it so that you really don't want to stay in that cloud of gas. Which is very clearly not true as of now, people hardly care about the gas in the current state of the Clown.
And the secondary ability too, it allows him to exert his presence and pressure in parts of the map where he is not at the moment. It also functions sort of like an alarm if you're confused about where survivors are and can't seem to find all those immersed P3 claudettes this thing goes off and you can't miss them. I think it'd also be a pretty startling jumpscare for survivors because it would happen so suddenly and loudly, a mini explosion going off right at their feet and a cloud of gas suddenly everywhere as they scream revealing their location.
And obviously it serves a more practical purpose as well, locking down a very wide area which is also something no other killer can do not even clown right now without using up all his bottles anyway. And in conjunction with the previous change you could really lock down a generator and keep people from gen rushing you until the gas dissipates, by which point hopefully you will have made it back to exert actual pressure with your own presence.
I like your idea of intensifying the current effects though, it's also one of the issues with Clown although one I didn't spend too much time discussing. When I'm playing against one, rarely am I ever actually disoriented enough to mess up a loop. Sometimes, but not typically or consistently, nothing that makes me really fear getting downed unlike other killer abilities say a Spirit phasing, or a Doctor charging up a properly timed shock, or the Deathslinger's redeemer, or Ghostface mindgaming a loop with Night Shroud.
I heard someone say once that being intoxicated should hide the killers red stain from a survivor which I thought was a pretty interesting idea too, correlates with your idea of actually buffing the impact and intensifying the effects of the gas itself. Could be potential there for add-ons if not for his base power.
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I just want them to change what his gas does altogether. At this point, all you can really do against him is camp pallets, which is extremely unfun as survivor, as most of the fun comes from chases. Make them do something else altogether.
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