The reason why Trickster is such a bad killer - and why the buffs will barely help

Mister_xD

hey all!

today i'd like to take a bit of a closer look at the Trickster as a character and his ability and quickly break down why i think the killer is in such a bad spot balance wise, even after the freshly announced buffs, and would like to point out the problems that need to be addressed.

so to begin this, i'd like to make a comparison:

the way the Trickster is build is very similar to how the Deathslinger is build.

by this i mean:

1) they have the same movementspeed (4.4 m/s / 110%)

2) they have below average map pressure

3) they have no tracking abilities

4) they have no game slowdown abilities

5) their powers are purely centered around the chase aspect of the game and can not be used outside of that

now if they are so similar, why is it that i find the Deathslinger to be one of the most balanced Killers in the game, while i find the Trickster to be the most underwhelming one?

its relatively easy: the Deathslinger is average to below average in every category. He is nothing special in any of them and is beaten quite easily by any other Killer - unless we look at his chase. He is easily one of the best chasers this game has to offer, his Redeemer being incredibly powerful at short distances and still being quite threatening at longer ones.

He makes up for all the weaknesses he has with this one, therefore quite powerful, strength.

This means he is not a Killer that will be run around a lot, if at all, therefore its very easy to exploit all the other weaknesses he has. He is nowhere near being Overpowered, yet he also feels strong when you play him and he can hold his own against a lot of other Killers, who might have much more variety in their power (like for example Doctor who combines tracking, game slowdown, map pressure and chase - but none even close to the extent of the Deathslingers chase power).

and this is exactly where the Trickster fails.

just like Deathslinger, he is lacking in all of those aspects - his Knifes being unable to track people, his below average movementspeed making it much harder for him to apply map pressure, the knifes decay being automatic, therefore the survivors dont have to go out of their way to do anything different than usual (in fact, due to the Deep Wound the Deathslinger can inflict he even has a better game slowdown than Trickster and much more of a reason not to tunnel the same person down, as they'd now have to go and mend somewhere while you chase someone else).

and when we come to the one point where his power does affect the game, it is, sadly, quite obvious that he is significantly weaker than the Deathslinger in this regard.

Calebs shots have about the same difficulty level of hitting as the Tricksters knifes, yet Caleb deals 1.5 healthstates worth of damage with a single shot, while Ji-Woon only deals 0.125 healthstates worth of damage.

and this is where his main problem lies and why i do not think the buffs are going to change much.

because as long as you keep him so similar to Caleb, his power is going to fail in comparison to him.

but enough of the comparison, lets look at the aspects of him and his power that need to be improved:

1) his movementspeed. one of the main reasons why he is so easy to compare to the Deathslinger is because he is forced to walk at the same movementspeed as Caleb. This is the root for many of his problems, such as the below average map pressure or the fact that he has to rely on his knifes to achieve downs, when they are such a non lethal and rather insignificant ability. by making him a 4.6 m/s / 115% mms killer we could quite drastically change the way he plays and give him at least the average map pressure any M1 Killer has.

2) main event. now, they did announce some changes to main event, but they are, imho, nowhere near enough to be of any use. the main problem his main event has is the fact that the Killer can not decide when he wants to use it, but instead gets it forced uppon them mid chase with a short timer ticking down that, should the ability not be used during its runtime, is going to completely empty the power gauge again. this combined with the fact that he still moves slower than a survivor while using it just makes it a very underwhelming ability to have.

3) the lack of power diversity. this one i talked about a bit when comparing him to Caleb, but its true - his power works very similar to the Redeemer, just that it has much less of a punch behind it. One way to address this would be to finally make his ricochet add on (the PTB one that allows the knifes to bounce once) basekit. it would make his knifes work vastly different to the Redeemer that way, as they'd no longer need irect LoS to be used efficiently. and they might even be able to justify a 4.4 m/s / 110% movementspeed - just maybe.

to conclude the above:

the Trickster right now is but a heavily nerfed version of the Deathslinger, which is absolutely incapable of holding their own amongst the other Killers.

additionally his power, in its current form (yes even after the buffs), is nowhere near lethal enough to be considerable as a justification for a 4.4 m/s / 110% movementspeed Killer.

the combination of those two means that not only needs he to receive significant buffs to his powers lethality, but that he'd also need to receive quite drastic changes to how his power works, in order for him not to turn into Deathslinger 2.0.

so in oder to avoid this problem, i'd buff him in other aspects. make him a more universal killer that has the ability to do other things than just chase with his Power - or make it so he is not forced to rely on his power by increasing his movementspeed - have his power be more like Plagues, where its more of a secondary tool to achieve downs with rather than a necessity.

and thats all for now.

if i can think of anything else i'll either edit the main post or put it in the comments below.

have a pleasant day / night!

Blazelski

I'd definitely rather have ricochet base kit than 115 movement speed, ricochet is fun and 115% ms is boooorrrring. It's also worth noting that Deathslinger has to reload after every shot and Trickster doesn't quite. It's not enough to justify the current differences, but it's something. But I agree with everything else you've said. Especially that he needs more map pressure than Deathslinger and less chase potential.