Clown will be awesome now
So before going into the changes I want to talk about clowns strengths as of this post.
Anti-looping. That's it. In the hands of players that know how to use him, clown is one of the better killers for making loops near impossible. In the overall concensus clowns major weakness was map pressure and being able to get from point a to point b. Also his god awful reload time.
New clown. Will still be amazing at antiloop. His speed bottles will improve his map mobility making it easier and quicker for him to end a chase and get to another one. That alone raises his tier potential.
Reloading speed being quicker is a huge buff. Huntress players can tell the difference with and without iron maiden or reloading gloves.
Now the elephant in the room is that the speed gas (or sonic tonic which is an amazing name and all credit goes the person who created it that i cant remember and i stole it from) affects survivors. And there was no real way to do have this kind of speed boost on clown without the gas affecting the survivors. Think about his anti loop and then add in throwing the sonic tonic in front of a survivor and them not getting the speed boost.
Clown would have the strongest chase in the game besides nurse. It would be meaningless to try to run from him. It needs to be this way.
All in all i think clown will be b tier if not a tier.
Comments
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I mean....you can still just....throw the pallet and keep going. It doesn't really change his counterplay all that much. He'll be better, but there are killers that can still do what he can but better so I doubt it will be that big of a difference.
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Thats true but not entirely. If the pallet is dropped you can always throw an antidote and boost your movement speed and deal with pallet sliding survivors. Won't work for every loop but does for more than other M1 killers.
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They won't be sliding- they just drop it in advance and move on to something else. Eventually you WILL go down against clown sure, but the point is people can still buy a tremendous amount of time.
This isn't bad for clown but it's nowhere near enough to solve is overall arching weakness. Though we'll have to see what else they do and what happens with the addons as well.
Same with trapper. Sure less RNG on initial traps is nice; but that isn't going to make maps, OoO, luck offerings not directly hard counter him. It's not bad; but it isn't going to suddenly make all these killers "A tier".
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I've noticed two kinds of people with these Clown changes:
1. People who actually main Clown and are appreciative of the buffs to reload speed and that he will be able to give himself a mobility increase, addressing one of his BIGGEST flaws. Players who see the potential in this and are already thinking of ways to utilize these, literally nothing but buffs.
And
2. Afterpiece Antidote gives Survivors a speed buff? WOW Behavior you just can't do anything right huh? This game is disgustingly Survivor-sided. Killers are a joke and I'm upset.
Clown is one of, if not the best anti-looping killers in the game. He's scary. Afterpiece slows down survivors. If Antidote DIDN'T speed them up / cure the effects of the Tonic (It is an antidote after all) then we're talking about a Killer who could slow people down while speeding himself up, how is that fair or balanced?
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The map mobility is useless because you'll use your bottles to get to the other side, see a survivor, then have to stop and reload before you can even start a chase at a decent loop. Ill just use his regular gas and enjoy the faster reload.
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I wonder if he'll be nerfed due to his orange gas being to strong. Since he can just chase you now at 125% movement speed after hitting you once. Combine that with stbfl and he'll be able to follow up with downs better than huntress
Edit: Rest in peace W key gamers
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The antidote punishes survivors that hold W significantly well. If it takes 10 seconds to reach the running survivor, with the bottle buff it will take you 6 seconds. That's significant and considering that the buff lasts for 7s it's quite good against survivors who hold W.
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Didn't the tonic do the same? Using the antidote (if they actually have the same percentage buff/debuff) should do the same. It doesn't matter if you have a 90% survivor followed by a 115% killer or if a 100% survivor is followed by a 125% killer. With a given distance it will take the same time as the speed difference is the same.
The thing is, with the 100%-125% version, you have a faster overall movement speed, giving the survivor a bigger chance to get to a safe spot in time.
I also disagree (for now, surely let's wait for the PTB first) with the map travel thing. You consume your chase tool as well by doing so, so you either need to run increased bottle count addons or land that one bottle perfectly, otherwise the reload kinda wastes the speed advantage.
tbh when I was looking at the first "gif" of the changes, I hoped for a totally different effect. Like no speed boost/debuff but it stays longer (30-60 seconds) as a type of tracking ability (making survivors just scream anyway)
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The difference is the initial distance between the killer and survivor. The tonic should be in the way of survivor for it to work which means you have to be accurate with your throw, be able to throw it that far in the first place and hope the survivor don't dodge it. Antidote is much more easier to use and more reliable.
I'm skeptical with the map mobility thing now myself when I think more about it. We'll see I guess.
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It’s immediately where my mind gravitated.
He will now be guaranteed even more loops that he can make 100% impossible for survivors to avoid a hit.
A cleverly thrown antidote and tonic at separate parts of the loop, so that the survivor runs through the antidote while it’s white, gets caught in the tonic, just as Clown passes through the activated yellow antidote.
No more 50/50 at loops with an already dropped pallet.
If Survivors couldn’t see now that they’re meant to play stealthy against Clown, they’ll learn quickly now.
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The Tonic is a 15% debuff.
Flask of bleach makes it 20%.
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Phew...I finally got away from that fat, slow clown.
*Clown sprints around the corner and hits me in the face with his elbow* HAAAAHAAAAAHAAAAAAAA
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The changes move Clown from garbage dump tier to garbage dumpster tier. As people have said, his counter-play is the same.
I fully suspect that very high level Killers will make great use of him. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of Killers who play Clown are going to get bullied hard by SWF due to the speed boost from his new tonic.
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if anything, the reload speed is the biggest buff. the antidote is cool, but a 3 second reload without add-ons will be AMAZING. killers that have to do extra things in between downing and hooking just slows them tremendously. clown pretty much reloads after every down/hook so those seconds really add up.
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First I dont think that the antidote will be easier as you need placement AND timing to use it, second I still think that my numbers are correct, regarding same chase time reduction but bigger chance to make it to a save spot
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ok, that would make the antidote even worse as the difference in speed is less. so you HAVE to combine both bottles or the tonic will always be the better choice
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Agreed. It requires experience and isn't free. Which is a good design.
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I don't know if you read all comments before, but I said that because the antidote is inferior to the tonic in almost every situation.
I still think that the antidote won't have an effect at all (or a worse effect than the tonic can give you) making it mostly useless. Only situation I heard so far where it helps is to help you if survivors camp a dropped pallet and hop from left to right, so the speed boost will make several pallets unsafe.
But my main point is, that they said in the dev notes how this could increase tactics and that also people here jump on that, but this whole "bait into a direction" thing will never work, at least it is obvious that you as a survivor shouldn't run into an antidote when you have already a save spot available.
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"Think about his anti loop and then add in throwing the sonic tonic in front of a survivor and them not getting the speed boost"
This is what I don't understand. You still have only 4 bottles why is boosting yourself with speed better than a normal bottle to slow survivor down? You catch up to the survivor at the same speed?
And with addon rework getting rid of Solvent Jug, Pinky Finger and probably change the Ether bottles and Bottle of Chloroform..we can be pretty sure addons will be nerfed.
I mean Clown was ok before and I still think he is ok. If he is better now depends on his new addons. If he gets some good addons then together with faster reload then yes he will be stronger but..let's wait and see.
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I find your argument specious. If they can make one gas affect only survivors and not the Clown, they could make another affect only survivors and not the Clown. I think what they want to do is make it a lure but they're ignoring the potential issue that popping Sprint Burst as you head into the cloud would give the survivor a compounded effect compared to the clown.
For example, it's a flat boost of 15% to the Clown's 4.6 move speed, which cannot be boosted, resulting in 5.29 m/ps.
For the Survivor, though, the Antidote by default will make them go from 4 m/ps to 4.6 m/ps, assuming no speed perks. If there IS a speed perk, it puts their base speed at 6 and the Antidote fires it up to 6.9. That's a 300% bonus over Clown's bonus to speed using a perk that a LOT of people use.
I don't know why they nickel and dime killers on their power boosts and nerf stuff for killers so eagerly while not crunching data to actually see how challenging it is for killers already. I mean, I have my theory that they need 4 survivors for every 1 killer so they're trying to keep the max numbers of people happy but if they make it unplayable for killers there's no game left.
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Funny thing.
People rag on about how Clown is a weak killer, but he is probably the second or third most common killer I see in my games. For some reason lots of people like to play Clown, and he isn't even a free killer. I see way more clowns than Trapper, Wraith, Nurse, Billy or even Huntress.
Either people just like a challenge, or Clown isn't actually that weak.
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People play Clown becuase he is fun to play, it's not about who is weak or strong because then all would play Spirit and Nurse. That said Clown is probably a better killer than both Trapper and Wraith.
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Two years ago it was exactly that -- almost everyone was playing Spirit and Nurse.
Today the most common killers I see are Deathslinger, Legion, Clown and Oni. Deathslinger is legit strong but he's also fun to play. There are still a lot of Freddie, Bubba and surprisingly a lot of Nurse players and others mixed in, but it's actually pretty telling that you see a ton of Legion and Clowns playing.
Like I said in my crackpot topic, we have survivor queues today (compared to two years ago) because killers are bored. So they play fun killers. Most of the try hards left the game to play Civ5 or something -- because Spirit is pretty are these days unlike 2 years ago when every other game you played was practically guaranteed to be Spirit. I think a lot of the killers have already left the game, what's left are the ones who actually love the game and want to play.
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If Antidote DIDN'T speed them up / cure the effects of the Tonic (It is an antidote after all) then we're talking about a Killer who could slow people down while speeding himself up, how is that fair or balanced?
What stops him from doing that with the new tonic anyways? Throw the slow-down gas ahead, then throw the sonic tonic close. Boom, you are now moving fast while they are moving slow. Is there something I'm missing?
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I'm always going to refer to the antidote as sonic tonic from now on. I love it.
since there is a delay for sonic tonic to become active and give the speed boost (from white to yellow) good clowns will throw it in a way where the survivor won't be able to use it but it will become active when you get there.
it can also be used at open loops for free hits, simply throw the sonic tonic at the side of the pallet you will push from and the tonic at the other side and you will be fast enough to hit the survivor before they get to the pallet at a large majority of loops.
Unless survivor drops the pallet as soon as they get to it they can't even abandon the loop to avoid getting hit since when doing as i said above you will use sonic tonic to catch up to them as well as tonic to slow them down.
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I mean most killers suffer from this, against any killer without a ranged attack doing that against clown is the same as doing to any other m1 killer.
The thing is you wont be going against those players often and if you do just switch targets, if all the survivors are doing this you are probably going against a good team that's try harding in which case you never had a good chance in the first place.
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I’m almost certain that the core idea is so that some of the really strong loops will now still also be manageable for Clown, and dangerous for survivors. This will likely be achieved by quickly throwing a tonic way ahead of the survivor in front of a pallet or vault Clown knows they’re heading towards (Zanshin is a GREAT training tool on Clown), and then throw an Antidote in front of (or at) the survivor so that the survivor DOESNT get the boost, but Clown does, resulting in Clown being faster at the same time the survivor is hindered (making for a total speed difference of 25%), meaning it should be 100% impossible for a survivor to reach any vault or pallet before being hit.
I can see other uses for the antidote, but I think this is the main idea of how to use the antidote.
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As I said (we need to find out on PTB) I think that you need plenty of distance to the next loop to throw 2 bottles and get both effects running. I understand the plan, but I think there are not many locations or occurrences where this might actually work
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I just feel like the devs made a unique power that has high risk high reward. Using the sonic tonic in chase can backfire tremendously if you are not good at aiming the bottle.
On paper i just think this change is a really good buff
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We have yet to see gameplay against good survivors and that's not gonna happen until the update goes live, because lets face It, everyone is messing around when playing the PTB.
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But isn't the normal tonic the same reward for no risk?
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I hope he is awesome but they didn’t exactly entice me to play him more. I was hoping for something a little less ######### up-able.
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I suppose it's all going to depend on the delay that turns the gas cloud into a speed cloud. I don't know if there's any official numbers yet but I've heard it takes 2-3 seconds to turn into a speed cloud and if that's the case it's gonna be pretty bad by default, using it as a speed boost to travel across the map will be annoying because you'll have to throw bottles way ahead of yourself and survivors will see them giving them more time to get ahead of you. 3 seconds is a lot of time to think ahead of in a chase, especially around a loop. You can put your speedy gas cloud perfectly for your loop but it won't mean much if the survivor just throws down the pallet and leaves for another loop which is something that already happens a fair bit with clown.
My guess is they'll probably introduce addons that lessen the delay for the speedy gas cloud appearing but I already have my own problems with that where BHVR have this annoying tendency to make default powers really sluggish and annoying to use and then band-aid it with addons instead of just making the power good in the first place. What I'll be looking at very closely will be Flask of Bleach and Solvent Jug, they'll be getting changed for sure but if the new versions are inferior to their old counterparts it could be an overall nerf for clown.
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I feel if they separate his Tonic into 2 different bottles: First for Hindered & coughing, Second for Blurry effect & increase the affected time.
Then his add-on increase the effect of each type: like 1st bottle +exhaustion time or reverse the control; and 2nd bottle become a flash bomb ect.
I find it would be more fun.
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It’s really not going to be that hard. If a Clown player already knows where to throw 2 tonics at a strong loop, then it won’t be hard to figure out which of those 2 spots should be swapped for an antidote so that Clown gets the speed boost at the moment a survivor is affected by a tonic.
This new ability is going to turn 100% of every loop in every map completely unsafe for survivors. They’re going to hate it.
A lot.
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This is what I was trying to say. Clown players will be rewarded more. Will have a higher ceiling skill wise.
A really good clown player can be scary, as being able to down quickly is very important. Having increased mobility is incredible. Say it takes 2 seconds to activate. Throw the bottle then reload and then zip to next victim.
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This. I've loved Clown since release despite his weaknesses. Zoning is fun. But this is rather disappointing. I can't really see any situation where the yellow gas would help you and NOT the survivor save for chasing a hold W player.
He'll still be a killer you're playing exclusively because you like the concept of his power over its actual gameplay use.
Still just a worse Freddy.
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I think speeding up his reload is good. I remain unconvinced that the new tonic will make him "awesome" since in theory you want to gas the Survivors and juice yourself, and the timing of that is going to a difficult skill and work to master. I think he has the potential to be potent, but will have a learning curve even more pronounced than the Nurse to get right.
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