Trickster kit - A straightforward analysis
Hello, I've been played Trickster for multiple matches now, I have multiple issues with this killer but let me first say that I enjoyed the update visuals, animations, sound design, voices, backstory, and even the power of this killer enough to show up on the forums and give my thoughts.
I would like to share my analysis of this killer kit and my feedback on each of its parts. I'll be playing him again even after this post.
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Trickster is a 110% movement speed Killer, average height, 24m terror radius.
[ This means the killer will struggle catching up to survivors, but they will hear him later. If positioned well enough, it is possible to start a chase much closer to a survivor than one would expect, leading to an early hit if sneaky enough ]
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His power let him Aim blades when holding M2 and throwing them with M1. While holding the blades, the Trickster movement is reduced from 110% to 92% movement speed.
[ This means the killer must plan his throwing session ahead. It must be either in an open space where taking more time to aim won't be a waste of time or in a place where the survivor can get shot without moving much like in a loop with small objects, they run but they can barely dodge ]
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Clicking M1 let him throw a knife from one of his hand, alternating on each new shot. Starting to aim, stopping to aim both take a bit of time.
[ This reinforces the previous statement, that this killer needs to plan ahead, risking to waste time. Having an awareness of the map structure, pallet and windows is essential to find such key moments to land the knives.
Also the fact the knife is thrown from each hand will offset them. This means you cannot precisely aim with one point but rather two points in mind. One on the left and one on the right. One must consider them to throw precisely at all distances. ]
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Holding M1 let him throw multiple knives successively, again alternating, except this time the throws get faster after each throw have more recoil and the Trickster speed is further reduced.
[ The trickster trade speed and precision for a higher fire rate, this means your chances of hitting and downing a survivor is reduced the more distance is built between you and your target, this can almost only be used at close or mid range. A higher fire rate means more damage potential but also a higher cost on the number of Knives used. Running out of blades mean you have to reload. ]
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At its lowest, it would seem the Trickster speed can be reduced from 110% to 67% while using his power.
[ This reinforces the previous statement and further raises the risk the Trickster would take to use his power. Failing to injure a survivor with such low movement speed comes with a high cost. Huntress mostly pays her failure with hatchets, Trickster mostly pays his failure with Time ]
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The knives speed is around 1375%.
[ This means they're not instant hit, and can be dodged easily the more distance there is with the Survivor, it also forces the killer to predict where the survivor would go when dealing with long distance. ]
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Main Event is a SuperMove which builds up the more Trickster hits survivors with his knives. Once charged, the Trickster has a few seconds to activate it if he wishes to.
[ This makes the killer want to use his power more often to build Main Event and maybe get an extra down or at least an extra Injury on one or more survivors. ]
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Once activated, the Trickster uses a special animation to aim (which takes longer than the normal one), and then he throws knives rapidly at 92% speed, without losing further movement speed for a few seconds, but still with recoil.
The knives he keep throwing are Not reducing his knives count, they're technically "Free".
[ The fact Main Event is available for only some seconds to activate means that you need to hit a survivor first before activating it. If you were already throwing multiple knives, cancelling it to use Main Event is a waste of time assuming you have a large amount of knives to spare.
You'd have to Aim. Throw a knife. Enable Main Event. Throw more knives. These are two parts where you just wait for the killer to be ready to throw the knives. The extra 1.5 seconds of preparation can be what a survivor would need in a chase to get to the next window or wall.
The best uses for this would be when the killer ran out of knives. He technically cannot throw knives anymore, but the free ones from Main Event allows for some extra throwing.
However, injuring a survivor with your knives meaning they get a speed boost, just like when you hit them with a basic attack. So they will build distance, and we already established previously that Recoil prevent most of our throws to hit our target the more distance is built. Starting a Main Event while at close range is the best way to inflict two injuries on one survivor, the speed boost ends up giving more distance to the survivor but even though they run faster they still need some time to travel the distance, time that you will be using to land more knives. In this optimal scenario where no walls will block your vision, starting at close range, it is fairly easy to down a survivor.
At a higher range, only visible survivors running in a predictable way would be easier to hit. Since the knives are not instant hit, you need to predict their movements and you still have to consider the recoil.
All that was for when you can use it, there are a lot of times where you'll have to skip the Main Event phase because you used your knives to down a survivor, filling your Main Event bar in the process but with no target available, then the bar progress goes back to Zero. ]
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Once Main Event is over (if you had a nearby target to use it on), the Trickster needs 3 seconds to rest and then he can move again properly. During a longer time, the Trickster is not allowed to use his knives, probably 10 seconds.
[ This is an handicap to make up for the high fire rate with no further reduction in speed. This ends up being a similar thing. You're still getting slow down, which wouldn't be a problem if you managed to down or injure a survivor at a distance where a basic attack wasn't a good option ]
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The knives hitboxes are small enough to allow them to go through various small holes and above objects.
[ This should enable some decent plays, however the obscure attention required to rotate your camera to adjust firing from your left then right hand and the fact recoil would happen if you were to hold M1 makes it barely usable to shoot through holes but it works great above most objects, similar to Deathslinger's spear hitbox but better since you can fire much faster, not leaving much time for the survivor to adjust his position behind that one small crate of wood ]
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Now we can talk about some details.
Trickster has a default 60 blades count that he can reload when interacting with a locker it takes 4 seconds to reload.
[ This entices the killer to look for a proper time to use his blades. Also the animation is quite pleasing to see ]
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He needs to hit one survivor 8 times with his knives to injure them. The Laceration meter decays after 15 seconds from the last knife hit.
[ This means a survivor can slowly remove the progress you had to injure him while running, this reinforces the idea that you can't afford to let a survivor go once you found one and must finish the job to injure him.
It forces the killer to throw multiple knives instead of a few, lose speed, take risks, lose precision from the recoil.
In itself, getting hit 8 times is a fun feature for everyone. The killer feels rewarded from landing multiple hits and the survivors are excited to be able to take more than 2 hits. However having the charges being lost automatically even during chase is simply wrong.
Removing Laceration charges automatically during chase only further punishes failure. Having a chase lasting for 7 hits + 15 seconds for that last one is already a loss for the killer. These +15 seconds are used to repair generators, do totems, heal each other. It's already a loss, this adds unnecessary advantage to the survivor.
It makes a hard situation harder basically. This feature only comes into play if the survivor manages to lure you in a bad spot or if you let him go, if you choose your targets carefully you don't get to see it. It only affect newcomers who didn't figure out this killer yet.]
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Laceration is reset upon getting injured, even from a basic attack. Hitting another survivor than your lacerated target can also reset the Laceration Meters.
Hooking a survivor also reset Laceration Meters on other survivors.
[ Laceration meter must reset if they get injured with knives, obviously. Having it reset upon landing a basic attack is debatable.
Where huntress only needs to hold up a hatchet, to have a survivor panic. Trickster on the other hand needs to be lot more aggressive with his knives to make a survivor afraid.
To be as threatening as the huntress, you'd need to waste ammo. This can be a plan, for example in a loop. If you decide to land a few knives and the survivor understand you're trading speed with more hits, he'll most likely loop some more. With a decent timing and lack of awareness from the survivor it is possible to land a basic attack.
But you're still wasting ammo and the electro woosh sound warns the survivor when you're switching back to your main weapon making it harder to trick him. No pun intended.
That being said I don't think Laceration Meters should reset on OTHER SURVIVORS when htiting a survivor with a basic attack or hooking a survivor (it sounds like a bug to be totally honest)]
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Injuring a survivor with knives give them a speed boost.
[ At close range it is acceptable, similar to huntress, you'd use your hatchet to hit a survivor and avoid losing speed to hit them with a basic attack.
At mid range, it's tolerable, assuming you managed to hit most of your knives. It will take alot of time to catch up since you can't hit with your knives from a higher distance enough to take the down.
Higher than that, it's close to impossible.
Range killers like Trickster, Huntress, Deathslinger have a harder time to use their power when their target are aware they're being chased, but at least Huntress and Deathslinger have precise shots. The Trickster not only has less accuracy on longer distances but also need to hit 8 times, this is 8 times where his movement speed was reduced and that's not even counting the missed shots. Giving a speed boost in this unlikely scenario where the Trickster somehow managed to injure his target is the final nail in the coffin.
This one survivor will run for a long time, you'll even get to meet his friends along the way who may or may not decide to help him in one way or another. ]
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-Addons-
Death Throes Compilation, rewards you for landing blades without missing. And make you pay for missing. Even though the kit is made so that you'd throw multiple blades, which in turn increase the fire rate making quite possible that one would slip out with added recoil. And this is not even talking about the left-right hands offset you'd have to consider... so you will miss as the design intended.
I would understand giving x2 damage on consecutive hits, but I don't understand reducing the damage by half when missed since you WILL miss often.
Iridescent Photocard, lets you expose a survivor after landing enough knives, letting you downing them with a basic attack. But the knives don't injure or down survivors anymore. This is quite a shame to have it designed that way. As previously mentioned, one could think of using knives to threaten the survivors which may lead to a basic attack or more knives.
At some point in the match, whether the survivors intended it or not, the killer will find an injured survivor. With this addon, the injured survivor doesn't care if he gets exposed but also doesn't care if the killer can throw knives. In this specific scenario, our power is nullified technically giving lot more room for a survivor to escape our chase.
Edge Of Revival Album allows Laceration to progress on your nearly missed throws, it also allows your blades to hit multiple survivors. Although quite rare they can sometime pack together. Synergizes amazingly well with all purple add-ons.
Cut Thru U Single, is only working if multiple survivors are lined up. Having multiple Survivors nearby in a chase is quite unlikely, having them lined up is even more rare usually.
However, ironically, the fact this killer base power is lot easier to counter than other killer's power can make some survivor squad willing to take turns to tank all your knives. It doesn't happen often but with attentive and dedicated SWF squads it does happen at times. In these times, this add-on is a beast. But survivors wouldn't play that way if the killer's power was more dangerous. After a proper buff update, this add-on might change the survivors' tactic and make it less useful.
That being said, it synergizes with Edge Of Revival Album in a chase against one survivor. You hit the survivor, it goes through, knife hit the ground, you get +0.5 charge. if done properly, in the open, all hits would be +1.5 charges worth. This probably makes it the strongest add-ons combo on his power. In a 1v1 chase you'd deal 1.5 charge per hit but the main functions of these add-ons are still about hitting through survivors and radial damage on environment hit. So you have the damage AND the utility in case SWF decide to group up and look down on your power. This is the only time where they'll think differently.
Trick Blades make your blades ricochet off the environment, on its own it's a really fun addon, this is probably the only add-on with the word "Trick" in its name and with a mechanic that could fit the Trickster base kit. It gives extra room for hits, although the bounces aren't totally predictable, when a survivor goes behind a wall, this help you get an extra hit.
By itself, the best scenario about this add-on is on a simple loop where the survivor cannot move out if you stay on one side but you also can't shoot your target from where you are. The bounce allows you to shoot from the ceiling or on objects around the survivor. Extremely fun, doesn't seem that OP considering you will miss alot of knives from not being able to predict where the knives will go. When coupled with more add-ons the results are so much better, I'm sad to not have an infinite amount of this add-on.
Diamond Cufflinks is a welcome extra help on some maps with reduced visibility, like corn maps. On other maps it can help for that last mind game you'd need to do to land the final blow.
Yumi's Murder helps alot. The fact you need one charge less (which is one knife by default), on each meter of all survivors is saving you alot of knives. You'd need to hit 8 times to injure a survivor now it's 7. If you think about the total of knives you'd throw in a match, this is alot you'd save on the long run, for a green add-on this is an amazing bargain.
The movement speed bonuses while throwing removes a bit of the burden set on the killer, but it still won't remove the fact he'll be slower than all survivors, using both add-ons gives him 4% move speed. (eg Caged Heart Shoes, Killing Part Chords)
Initial throw rate bonuses should help alot considering you'd start firing when a opportunity arise, you want to land knives right away not later when the survivor made more distance. But the difference isn't too big either. (eg Fizz-Spin Soda, Ji-Woon's Autograph)
Extra blades add-ons are decent as they can serve multiple purposes, let you engage another survivor or give you more room to finish a job without having to reload. (eg Bloody Boa, Trick Pouch)
Main Event duration bonuses are good only in the cases of multiple survivors getting shot one after another. The more Main Event last without downing the survivor, the more distance and obstacles is likely being built with the target. Of course in some rare occasion it will help to land that one knife randomly at a longer range but it is quite unlikely. And Main Event won't be activated for most of the chases. (eg Tequila Moonrock, Inferno Wires)
Laceration meter decay rate reductions when out of blades are highly questionable. The Laceration charges matter only for your knives, not your basic attack, when out of knives you only have your basic attack. The value from this add-on implies there is a point in reloading your knives at a locker to chase the target again, but there is really not.
It takes some time to reload your knives, time the survivor will use to run from you, building enough distance to have the Laceration meter back to Zero. Not only that, but when you're done reloading, the bonus is gone. So the time you supposedly saved is wasted twice.
The charges that you are meant to delay are from a survivor you'd be chasing right away. Because hitting with a basic attack or hooking one survivor will reset the Laceration charges of OTHER survivors. Even if you decide to throw knives at another survivor before hooking someone and reloading afterwards, it doesn't matter because of the reset from the hook. (eg Waiting For You Watch, Lucky Blade)
Laceration Decay Delay bonuses have their uses in a chase, although the fact you'd need them already point out the awful amount of time you wasted in a chase, it would still help you enough to save the charges you built on your target. Assuming one really commits to knives, it helps in a chase, it barely saves you time. (eg Ripper Brace, On Target Single)
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There are numerous handicaps on this killer, each individually are not a problem but all of them together packed in this one kit makes it much more harder on the killer.
Just changing one of the following could fix the sloppy progression in a match with this killer. I'm not asking to apply all of these changes, I'm just listing what would seem to be a solution for each part individually.
1) His movement speed. If the survivors are allowed to remove Laceration charges and if the recoil has to be kept, it would make sense for the killer to be able to catch up faster, especially when you consider how much he has to slow himself to throws his knives, and he has to throw alot.
2) If his movement speed isn't increased and he's not meant to catch up to survivors, can he aim from afar properly ? He has to hit 8 times his target before injuring it. If not for the regular shots can Main Event at least have no recoil especially considering how rare it is to find a time to use it.
3) If Main Event is supposed to be a Super Move that has a long activation time, can we keep the bar so that we can use it at a more fitting time without having to add extra steps ?
4) If Main Event cannot be stored for a later use, can we aim our blades instantly ? Either with regular or with Main Event like Deahtlinger does ?
5) If all the above is supposed to be kept, can the knives spawn from one point instead of two ? I personally enjoy the fact they spawn in each hands separately, but coupled with other handicaps this is just too much handicaps in some maps
6) If all the above are not good options to devs and if Laceration Meter still decays with time, can we make it so we don't lose any Laceration Meter progress from landing basic attacks or at least not lose Laceration Meters on OTHER SURVIVORS when hooking or landing a basic attack ?
This killer definitely needs at least One change in his kit. Thank for the update, I still find the killer fun, much love from France.
Comments
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Updated post, just to make sure mods see it. I should be done editing this now, think I covered everything I wanted.
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