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Using Legion's power effectively results in unengaging gameplay: How can we fix it?

Legion is a fairly popular and fun to play killer, but playing against Legion can often be boring or dull as survivor. The killer taps you and runs away to chase someone else, so you don't really get to have any kind of fun interaction with the killer. On top of that, you must spend 12 seconds Mending before you can safely go back to doing gens or start healing.

My proposed solution aims to keep the identity of the Legion intact as a killer that excels at chaining hits, while also giving players more meaningful options when playing as or against Legion.

Problem:

  • Legion is boring to play against since it benefits the killer to hit and run, and matches against Legion often take exponentially longer than other killers due to mending.

Solution:

  • Hitting a healthy survivor in Feral Frenzy no longer puts them in deep wounds. Instead, they are injured. Hitting an injured survivor with Feral Frenzy puts them in deep wounds. Everything else about Legion is unchanged.

This might seem like a direct nerf to Legion, but it actually has tons of interesting implications now that Legion's fifth Frenzy hit can get a down after chaining four hits. This means Legion can commit to chasing one survivor and get two hits on them (one to injure, second to deep wound), then switch to a second survivor and down them in three hits (one to injure, second to deep wound, third to down). This way, survivors are able to go on meaningful and engaging chases with Legion in their power, and Legion is no longer able to easily stall out games with constant mending.

The playstyle of chaining four hits on four survivors is not gone, but it is less effective since the survivors no longer have to deal with deep wounds. It's more consistent and probable for a Legion player to get a down while in Feral Frenzy since they can get two hits on a single survivor now.

It's a simple change, but what do you guys think? I understand that some people might look at this as a nerf to an already weak killer, but I think it's a necessary change to promote Legion to chase and get downs over stalling the game out repeatedly. Being able to get more consistent downs in Frenzy will strengthen Legion's lethality, but having to stab survivors twice will reduce their game stalling potential (strengthening the weak part of the killer, and weakening the boring and unfun parts of the killer).

Comments

  • Oscarnator
    Oscarnator Member Posts: 304

    He’s so easy to counter. If you want chase interaction camp a pallet and don’t drop until he hits you. You stun him out of his power and he has to chase you. And honestly just spreading out. It’s the best strategy against any killer. Can’t do anything about the SoloQ teammates that are gonna feed him tho.

  • BenOfMilam
    BenOfMilam Member Posts: 911

    Problem is not strength, Legion is weak.

    Problem is he is boring to play against and games against him feel kind of like a waste of time and simply take too long.

  • BenOfMilam
    BenOfMilam Member Posts: 911

    You are part of the problem

    Yes, having the killer hit you and then run away while you stand still and mend for 12 seconds several times in a match is boring. I would rather get hard tunneled the whole game, because at least you get to go on full length chases. Legion is generally considered to be the most boring killer to play against for this reason.

    By "engaging" I mean the player is interested in the game and not falling asleep at their keyboard. It's a buzzword people use to refer to how much attention people pay to a game while they're playing it. Legion is the least engaging killer to the point that if I'm in a Legion match, I open up Youtube and usually have time to watch a 30 minutes video since I don't really have to pay full attention to the game or don't want to.

    ...did you even read the post?

  • dugman
    dugman Member Posts: 9,713

    I did read the post, I’m just disagreeing that you don’t have normal chases with Legion because you’re ignoring all the chases where you are injured and they don’t use Frenzy against you. Aside from the corner case of a five chain hit Legion doesn’t down with Frenzy hits so all their downs are regular chases, and obviously you’re enagaging with them doing that, even by you personal definition of that word. I doubt you’re asleep at the keyboard while in a chase.

  • BenOfMilam
    BenOfMilam Member Posts: 911
    edited August 2022

    I don't experience normal chases with Legion all that much. Legion players will pretty commonly Frenzy and then run away even if you are already injured (which makes me want to claw my eyes out as someone that enjoys playing Legion aggressively).

    They really only commit to chase if it's a free down (e.g. I can't find something to loop in time). This means a lot of games I play against Legion is just the killer running around making everyone mend over and over until he finds someone in a dead zone. Matches take forever, even though the survivors typically win against this playstyle if no one dc's or commits #########.

    My point is that Legion's power encourages dull gameplay. It might just be my personal experience, but most people hate Legion even though it's often an easy W.

    Don't hit me with "lol mmr issue" becuase I can't just flick a switch and be max mmr. I would if I could, I prefer playing against good players.

    Edit:

    If someone describes their experience with something and you respond with, "no your lived-in experience that you had didn't actually happen because it didn't happen to the theoretical model that exists in my head," you are actually just making things up instead of engaging with the arguement itself.

    Post edited by BenOfMilam on
  • dugman
    dugman Member Posts: 9,713

    Don’t worry, I’m the last person to insult someone for not being high MMR. I’ve never claimed to be a top tier player. 😄

    Also just to clarify I do agree with you about there possibly being an issue where Legion matches can drag on a long time, especially with regression and action speed penalty perks. But I wouldn’t say the problem is a lack of interaction, it’s more the game length overall and the sense of getting very little progress at a time toward escaping. On top of which players who enjoy being stealthy against killers versus being chased pretty much are out of luck against Legion since it’s really hard to remain hidden from them.

  • SekiSeki
    SekiSeki Member Posts: 516
    edited August 2022

    Huh, trying to find something wrong with the post but I really just can't. That sounds like it would help quite a bit, buffing him as killer while making him less obnoxious to play against in the lower end games. You would need to change some of his add ons but honestly, I really like what you have come up with here.

    Awesome job man, hope they take this into consideration as they continue their updates.

    Edit:

    I think legion is also boring to play as and I think this might make it a little be less so. I would have to play it to know for sure, though I doubt I'd play him that much more.

  • YOURFRIEND
    YOURFRIEND Member Posts: 3,389

    Stealing legion's inherent slowdown and reducing them to an M1 killer that just gets an injury before running stay strips a lot of their identity for what? Survivor convenience? No thank you.

  • GrimReaperJr1232
    GrimReaperJr1232 Member Posts: 1,705

    There are a few issues I have.

    Legion, by design, is a killer meant to chain hits onto multiple survivors in rapid succession. The Deep Wound he inflicts is because he needs to leave the survivor to go hit another.

    "But Legion is mostly unchanged and this lets him get the fifth hit easier!"

    This has far more implications than you may realize. Legion can now get the fifth hit off 2 survivors and makes Pills + Mural Sketch even MORE powerful when it's already arguably his strongest add-on combo. This is a load BS. The 5th hit is deliberately made difficult to accomplish because Frenzy has effectively no counterplay besides hoping Legion screws up.

    Also, this doesn't really change anything. Legion will just double hit you, so he's still annoying.

  • White_Owl
    White_Owl Member Posts: 3,786
    edited August 2022

    While I understand the reasoning behind this suggestion I don't think it would solve the problem: by double tapping survivors Legion could build up speed and get access to an instadown much more quickly. Survivors would still need to mend though thanks to the double tap.


    If the problem is the mending time, maybe it could start low (like 4 seconds) and ramp up for each survivor hit.

  • BenOfMilam
    BenOfMilam Member Posts: 911

    There's some kind of solution somewhere. Stacking slowdown on killers with natural slowdown makes games pretty unpleasantly long at times, so it's either do something about natural slowdown or do something about stacking slowdown.

    I agree, add-ons and Legion's chain hit speed boost would be an issue. I like the idea of making the 5th hit easier, since going on a chase where you are getting hit multiple times by a fast killer is more exciting than a chase where you get hit and the killer runs off. More "high octane" gameplay and less "mending simulator" gameplay.

    That's reasonable. At least with this change only two survivors would be mending at the absolute most, instead of frequently 3 survivors.

    Reducing mending time is also a simpler and less potentially messy solution.

  • Devil_hit11
    Devil_hit11 Member Posts: 8,824

    it has counter-play. you can stun a legion with a pallet when he hits you because he has recovery on successful hit. It does use up a pallet resource but it does prevent you from going down.

    why are there 3 survivor mending? you can spread out and prevent mutiple injuries from happening. the vast majority of map are like 10,000 square km meters and legion doesn't have enough duration or speed to go from one end of the map to another. Smaller maps like... Gideon meat packing plant have short distances making feral frenzy easier to chain, however it has twice as many pallets in comparison to other maps.

    this change guts the legion's 4vs1 and doesn't solve his terrible 1vs1 problem. the only change that would be acceptable for legion is making his feral frenzy down survivors like how it worked at release, though you would need give survivor's base-kit old dead hard for iframes to dodge his swing due to his ability to vault pallets and windows like survivors so that survivor can outplay his ability in chase.

    not sure how you would implement base-kit dead hard.... but i mean nemesis has base-kit infections so maybe it works like an item? you press item button and dh for iframes happens with some cooldown on the item.

    You can still do generators against legion that hit & run so I don't see any problem with his current mechanics.

  • dugman
    dugman Member Posts: 9,713

    Well the devs did apparently consider the Legion plus Thana combo to be oppressively long which is why Thana got nerfed to be much weaker unless everybody is alive and injured. That does in particular help against Legion with Thana once it's in a 3v1 situation since they can only get 6% penalty at most out of the perk at that point. So I wouldn't be surprised if the devs are still monitoring Legion with slowdown in case they want to make any other tweaks.

  • DEMONANCE
    DEMONANCE Member Posts: 800

    i think the mend timer should be made 4-5 seconds and rework the filthy blade addon to do something else. so they get to keep their slowdown but it isn't as effective and boring.

  • Zolfo16
    Zolfo16 Member Posts: 479

    Do you know that the mending time is delay time for the legion?

    Let's assume a legion frenzy surv A and B and then C, but keep chasing only C.

    A and B are going to lose 16 seconds each to mend and be wounded, the survivor C do not care because he is chased.

    If you allow to mend in 4 seconds A and B do not lose any time and are back on gen immediately, C still not care.

    It is a HUGE nerf. It is like if someone propose pig start with only 1 trap instead of 4 because pig's trap are "boring".

    Yes, everything killer does to you may be boring, this is not the whole point. Does anyone like to be catched by the traps of the trapper? Does anyone like to be stormed by crows? Doea enyone like to be in madness tier 3?

  • FilthyLegionMain
    FilthyLegionMain Member Posts: 1,148

    This is a hot change that I and hopefully many others would love. Those frenzy downs are always satisfying.

  • DEMONANCE
    DEMONANCE Member Posts: 800

    you're right my idea might not be the best but something still needs to be done.

    i wish for both sides to have fun while playing the game and if a killer design is so bad it gets constant complaints then maybe something is wrong?

    i am not saying "nerf legion cuz they're boring" but i feel they can change mending somehow without making legion bad. they might even give them further buffs to compensate.

  • Kaitsja
    Kaitsja Member Posts: 1,833

    Mending is boring, hit and run killers are not.

  • BenOfMilam
    BenOfMilam Member Posts: 911

    yeah, I might have misworded it.

    It's exciting not knowing if Wraith is still chasing you or if he dropped you to chase someone else.

    It's mind-numbing to have Legion tap you and make you mend, then run away for the umpteenth time this game.