Definitive clown guide (Updated)

Phasmamain · May 2021

So I’ve been Maining clown for about a year and a half now and I feel I am experienced enough to give a full comprehensive guide on him. This will go over basic knowledge and more advanced tricks with his power.

BASIC STATS

Clown is a 4.6 ms killer with a 32 meter terror radius. He is very tall and he doesn’t exactly blend in with any map. He has his own unique terror radius music so people will realise you are a clown very early.

One major thing to note. When clown vaults a window or begins breaking a pallet he will do a loud grunting sound. Experienced survivors will hear this and will know you’re vaulting making any window play futile. This doesn’t apply to breakable walls.

BASIC POWER

I’ll be splitting this into two categories based on his two bottle types. Here I’ll talk about things shared between both bottles.

These bottles will break on any surface and release multiple clusters of gas. These clusters will spread out and fall if the bottle is thrown at a high surface and last for 10 seconds

You can reload the bottles any time you have less than 4 (5 or 6 if you have add ons). This takes 3 seconds and reduces his move speed immensely. Make sure you have at least two bottles when starting a chase but if you can reload before hand do so.

He suffers a 1 second Cooldown after throwing a bottle. This doesn’t slow him down but he can’t do any actions besides movement during that time.

If you hit a survivor directly with a bottle it will interrupt any action they were performing and give clown a scream notification. This can be used to stop unhooks or exit gate opening

BOTTLE ARC

You’ll notice early on that clown’s bottle arc is quite different from huntress or trickster. It looks something like this

While you might find this annoying at first you’ll soon learn to make great use out of it. Throwing over buildings and high up is very important to high level clown gameplay

THE AFTERPIECE TONIC

The afterpiece tonic is a thrown projectile that will break upon any object. When broken it releases multiple small clusters of gas. This gas slows survivors by 15%, reduces their visibility and caused them to cough while walking through it. If a survivor vaults a window while intoxicated they will only be able to medium vault it.

I’ll elaborate on the ones that need it

Red heads pinky finger: While it may be tempting don’t get into a habit of using this. All it will do is teach bad habits and stop you from improving

Fingerless parade gloves: Same deal, it will teach bad habits and hinder your ability to throw over walls which is very important.

Flask of bleach: His best add on imo. Helps in every situation and doesn’t require any thought to use

Chloroform bottle: Heavily underrated. This spreads out gas more so survivors are required to walk through more to get to pallets windows etc

Acid vial: Free sloppy butcher in an add on. Very simple but very effective

GENERAL TONIC TIPS

Always aim in front of your target if they have distance on you. This will force them to have to run through more gas and in turn be slowed more
Aiming at high structures can be very advantageous. This will cause the clusters to be more spread out causing a wider area of effect. Don’t aim too high though as then it will be too spread out and will rarely hit your target
If you know you are going to get stunned by DS make sure to throw a tonic at your feet. This will make sure they gain the least distance possible. Same applies for head on stuns

TONIC ZONING

Another very important skill to learn is zoning with the tonic. This is when you use a tonic to discourage a survivor from going to a stronger tile. It works something like this.

This is one of the most important things to learn to become a good clown player. Remember you don’t get slowed down for holding or throwing a tonic. Always try to keep one out and keep an eye out for good zoning opportunities

THE AFTERPIECE ANTIDOTE

The antidote has the same throwing properties as the tonic. The gas is made up of less clusters and is overall smaller though. The gas will stay grey for 2.5 seconds before it turns orange. This gas will speed up anyone who walks inside by 10% for 5 seconds. If a survivor is invigorated by the antidote the slow from the tonic will not cancel the speed boost leading to a 5% slow down

While his antidote’s are more situational than tonic’s they are still really useful and make clown’s chase game very oppressive if used correctly. Here is an example of a good antidote usage on a basic loop found on cowshed or Macmillan

This is pretty important to learn since the antidote can help counter more troublesome loops such as the example above.

ANTIDOTE ADD ON TIER LIST

There is quite few add ons that solely affect the antidote but I’ll still talk about each one

Cigar box: This add ons shows survivors auras within 16m when you are invigorated by the antidote. Pretty much wraith’s all seeing add on except you use a bottle for it. Great for early game and patrolling gens.

Garish makeup kit: This gives the antidote 2 extra seconds of invigorated. Very useful if you are using the antidote effectively and never a bad choice.

Spirit of hartshorn : Works like a chloroform bottle for the antidote. Decent but it doesn’t do as much as the make up kit from my experience.

Solvent jug: Man what a fall from grace. Not terrible but underwhelming and worse than other add ons

GENEAL ANTIDOTE TIPS

Don’t use the antidote for map traversal. You’re better off saving your bottles for chase
If you want to reload with one bottle left throw an antidote and then reload for a free boost
You only need one cluster to get the 5 second boost so don’t worry about throwing up higher. Just make sure the survivor can’t get any
If you’re chasing a survivor who is holding W throw a antidote at them then throw a tonic in front of them. This gives you the most distance possible

PERKS

There are many perks that synergies well with clown’s power. Here I will go over some of my favourites and go over some you should avoid

GOOD PERKS

Brutal strength: Brutal strength is good when you consider clown’s biggest weakness is pre dropped pallets. Never a bad choice and especially good for newer clowns who need some extra help in chase

Save the best for last: While clown is already great at chase since he is an M1 killer STBFL is very good on him. Having 8 stacks makes escaping him near impossible.

Surge: Since clown can only get downs with an M1 surge is always valuable. If you hate the RNG of ruin this is a good call

Corrupt intervention: Corrupt is great on any killer who struggles in early game. This makes it a great choice for clown.

Devour hope:Clown can make great use of devour hope especially if you can snowball with it quickly. It is rng reliant though so if you don’t like that don’t bother

BAD PERKS

Enduring: While great on a lot of M1 killers since most people will pre drop pallets against clown I would avoid this perk

Bamboozle: Clown can already deal with windows fine and since he grunts when he vaults bamboozle mind games will be much more difficult

Ruin: Ruin requires high mobility both to keep the totem safe and to spread pressure to gens. Clown has neither of these attributes.

BBQ: Unless you want BP don’t run this on clown. His lack of mobility makes the information not very effective. (That isn’t going to stop me though 😁)

Sloppy butcher: While good on paper since he’s an m1 killer you can just run the acid vial to get the same effect while opening up another perk slot

Play with your food: Each bottle you throw makes you lose 1 token. He doesn’t need it to begin with so avoid this at all costs

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Despite what I’ve said in this guide clown still isn’t an amazing killer. A bad map or 4 really good survivor will make your life hard. If you want consistent wins clown is probably not the best option and I’d recommend looking for more consistent killers like spirit or nurse. I’d still say give him a try regardless though. His gameplay is simple yet very rewarding and fun. Hope you enjoyed my guide! I might do one for hillbilly or slinger but I don’t feel confident enough with them at the moment.