Trickster Adjustment
Problem:
Trickster is in a weird place where, not only is he relatively weak, but he doesn't offer anything unique that playing another killer won't provide. He's got (Killers in brackets fit this role better):
- Poor long-ranged pressure (Play Huntress)
- Okay medium-ranged pressure (Deathslinger, Huntress, Plague, Demogorgon)
- Inferior close-range pressure (Hillbilly, Leatherface, Meyers, Huntress, Slinger, Oni, Demogorgon, most of the roster)
- Low map control (Nurse, Hillbilly, Wraith, Blight, etc.)
- Low crowd control and objective contest (most of the roster)
- Okay zone control (Pyramid head, Deathslinger, Huntress, Demogorgon, etc.)
- Some stealth with his low terror radius and size (Pig, Wraith, Ghost Face, Freddy, Twins/Viktor, etc.)
He's basically a jack-of-all trades, master of none. This wouldn't be that bad by itself, but compounded with his spray-and-pray play-style and an uncontrollable ultimate ability makes the killer boring and unreliable on top of this.
Suggestion:
Give him the ability to tap M2 to instantly fire a single knife with only an action cool-down of X seconds (no movement penalty).
If he wants to fire a flurry of knives similar to what he can do now, he can simply hold the M2 button instead of tapping it, for 0.35 seconds (the length of time it takes to start throwing knives currently).
Keep everything else about him the same.
Purpose:
This will change his play-style to something unique to the current killer roster. Trickster will become more focused as a mobile ranged killer whose main goal is to capitalize on openings to sneak in small hits that compound during a chase as opposed to delivering a single large blow.
As it currently stands, Trickster is incapable of this play-style because the time to prepare his knives in a chase is too long and prevents him from using small holes or other openings effectively in a chase. He also gets punished for even attempting this play-style currently due to the immediate slowdown and cool-down when putting his knives away. This leaves him in an awkward spot where he either has to wait to deliver a lot of small blows all at once during a large opening, or not use his power at all to be effective - something every other killer experiences, but whose powers are all better suited for this purpose.
Benefits:
- Trickster's power becomes more unique, standing out from Huntress and Deathslinger
- Becomes more flexible in a chase without actually raising his lethality significantly
- Increases skill-cap and power depth
- Encourages more interaction of power with map obstacles, since it can be used more
- Arguably increases the fun of the killer overall
- Requires a relatively simple change, and not a full rework
- Does not effect the potential oppressiveness he could have at objectives as with other changes (controllable main event, rate of fire change, spread reduction, etc.)
Potential Issues:
If this makes him too strong, the cool-down between M2 taps can simply be adjusted until he's at a decent place.
While stacking laceration may be easier, basic attacks would still reduce the laceration meter and require tactical use of the M2 tap to actually derive benefit from it.
I'm clearly biased, but I don't really see any other potential issues with this change.
Additional notes or ideas:
If this were implemented, you could rework add-ons to be more interesting than they currently are as well. An example would be allowing the M2 tap knives to have additional effects. Some ideas are listed below:
- Lesser rarity ricochet effect add-ons on M2 taps (so more people can enjoy this effect without it becoming overwhelming)
- Temporary blindness hitting x number of tap knives
- Hemorrhaging or Mangled on hitting x number of tap knives
- Escalating laceration on consecutive M2 tap hits (more skillful and relevant than the current one)
This feature would also give you a new way to balance the killer that's probably easier than adjusting main event or knife flurry/movement speed rates when holding M2.
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Aesthetically, I love this killer, but his power is just not rewarding or interesting at the moment. Even if you buffed his numbers ridiculously high enough to be considered S tier, this would not change and only seek to make facing him more oppressive and frustrating for survivors.
This change, however, I feel would be a healthy way to increase player skill expression and improve the community's view of him without delving into significant power creep. As such, I hope this suggestion will be considered, or that other changes to his power will be otherwise thought of in the future to improve the player experience for this particular killer.
Comments
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Lesser rarity Ricochet sounds nice
Hemorrhage and Blincness add-ons, not so much. They're generic and offer no real benefit.
Also, one of the worst things about spamming knives is the recoil. What idea do you propose for that?
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My main concerns with this change are two-fold:
- Create a more unique and fun play-style
- Increase effectiveness of his power in an active chase
I didn't want to touch or make suggestions to anything else in his kit (such as recoil), as I worried doing that in conjunction with my suggestion might be too strong. Being able to stack knives during a chase with a single knife periodically would already reduce the burden of having both an opening large enough to use your knife flurry ability effectively, as well as to hit all those knives when you have one. Changing any other stats related to him in addition to this was too much effort for the scopes of this suggestion.
The ability to have more interesting and flexible add-on choices based on this change is also a bonus. Though I admit I haven't given this aspect as much consideration as I could have, and mangled/blindness were a bit lazy in that respect. More serious add-on recommendations would require a bit of thought, but some relevant examples could be:
- Every consecutive M2 tap you hit in a chase would add a stack when you next hold M2 to release your flurry of knives (allows faster access to high rates of fire during flurry, based on skill and chase length, with a stack cap based on add-on rarity).
- Every consecutive M2 tap you hit in a chase would reduce recoil by X amount when you next hold M2 to release your flurry of knives.
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Edit:
Another add-on idea would be:
- Double/Triple the amount that M2 tap knives contribute to powering up Main Event
This would actually allow an easier time access main event when you actually want it in a chase, without actually making it available on demand. At the moment, you typically get Main Event when you're already in the middle of throwing a flurry of knives and it's not worth using it. With this add-on, it'll be easier to power it up mid-chase and have its window-of-use open when you actually want it.
If it were too easy to proc on demand with this add-on, you could always change it to only power up main event faster after the second M2 tap in a chase. This way you can't just proc it easily as a hook camper with a single M2 tap, you'd have to wait for the CD to M2 tap again.
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