http://dbd.game/killswitch
The Artist: A Awfully brilliant Avian viciously Assaulting survivors
I've been playing with Artist a lot recently and i feel comfortable enough with my knowledge about her to give some thoughts.
The Artist is a 115% Killer with the ability to spawn Dire Crows using Birds of Torment, holding down m2 will charge the meter, once the meter is fully charged, you can spawn up to 3 (or 2 or 4 depending on your addons) of these birds at a time and pressing CTRL will launch all birds spawned in, Birds of Torment will then go on cooldown, with the cooldown increasing if you spawn multiple birds, these birds have a "flight path", if a survivor is in this flight path when the bird is launched, they take damage, however, if the bird hits a wall or goes past the flight path, survivors hit by them will get swarmed by crows, hitting them with a second crow while they are swarmed will make them take damage
If you read all of that and thought "Damn, that sounds kinda busted", then congrats, you have the right opinion, Artist's power is zoning, cross-map tracking, AND cross-map damage all in one, all on a killer that's 115% movement speed. However, i don't think this is necessarily a bad thing
For one, there are a few things that this blurb you see doesn't tell you about Artist's power
Example, the blurb says that you can get rid of crows by either completing a repel action or by going into a locker, guess what, you can also get rid of them and the idle Dire Crows themselves with a flashlight, it also doesn't tell you that survivors will become automatically Swarmed if they run into a idle Dire Crow, nor does it tell you that your cooldown doesn't reset when a survivor does this, AND it doesn't tell you that Artist slows down a bit after launching Crows, maybe it's to save space, but i defintely feel like knowing survivors can get rid of crows using a flashlight and by running into them at the cost of getting swarmed should probably be a part of the blurb honestly
Finally, and probably the biggest thing that the game doesn't tell you, the Dire Crows' flight path is affected by map verticality, so spawning a crow on stairs will make it either go up or down depending on where you place it
However, the swarms aren't, meaning that they will either go underground or into the stratosphere depending on where you place them
Next, the game can say Artist is a 115% all it wants, she sure as hell doesn't feel like a 115%, honestly i think that part of her description is a typo because she consistently feels like a 110% killer, maybe it's just because i'm used to 115s that also have powers that let them move faster (Blight, Demo, Wesker, Sadako kinda, etc), but she honestly feels like a 110% with a 32m TR.
Finally, Sexy Bird Lady's Artist's power is a bit weird to learn, on the surface it seems easy, just launch crows and get free tracking and hits, but it's more nuanced then that, surprisingly so. For one, because the Crow's have a limited flight path before they become harmless AND survivors can get rid of them either by running into them or with a flashlight, you have to watch where you place them if you want them to actually injure survivors, simply placing them in a straight line in the open won't do anything, i find that placing them around windows and pallets works best to actually get injures, for Shack, place the crow just outside one of the entrances so that it's flight path is inside the shack itself, forcing survivors to either take the window or drop the pallet (and then get hit)
Example
Avoid placing Crows this close to a pallet unless you're sure you can herd the survivor to run towards it, if the survivor runs back they will destroy the Crow
Try to place Crows around this far away from a pallet so that they will get hit regardless of which way they loop it
Swarms are kind of hilarious when they work in your favour, cross map injuries are always fun, I don't really have a ton to say besides "try to throw down crows as quick as possible when a survivor gets swarmed so that you can injure or down them"
In terms of maps, you generally want to avoid maps with a lot of vertical elements, maps like Shelter Woods and Rancid Abattoir are best, while maps like Grim Pantry, Temple of Purgation, Dead Dawg Saloon, and especially RCPD, are a goddamned nightmare due to the amount of changes in terrain height potentially screwing over your ability to track with swarms, however i wouldn't call Artist map-dependant per say, she can do well on just about every map, just as she can get railed on every map, it does come down to your own individual skill and the overall skill of the survivors, which i can appreciate, there's no real "instawin" map with Artist just as there's no "instaloss" maps.
Artist's addons are also pretty nice, all of them help in some way, my personal favourites being the O Grief O Lover painting, which inflicts survivors with Exhausted whenever they're Swarmed, and the Severed Tongue, which decreases how long you are slowed down after launching Crows by half a second, the main issue i have with some of the better ones is that they give status affects when a survivor is Swarmed, and only one of them has a lingering effect, which can be mildly annoying when you realise how quickly survs can get rid of the Swarm.
Is there anything about Artist that i would change? Not really, i think she's fine as is, whatever gripes i have with her are just personal stuff that i can honestly overlook, that and buffing her in even the smallest way might make a killer that is already pretty frigging obnoxious to play against even more infuriating, which nobody wants
Final thoughts, i like Artist, she's pretty fun, but i will admit i am not very good with her, not bad, but not fantastic, Artist's power is one of the most complex in the entire game, and honestly, i appreciate a killer where you learn something new about them with every match.
This is the build that i use, Lethal and BBQ are really useful together, Eruption is my favourite slowdown perk in the game, and Brutal Strength is there because i like breaking things quickly.
g'night.