Myers needs love, desperately.
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This killer is bad in every conceivable way. His "normal" playstyle is the weakest in the entire game, arguably tied with trapper but probably not. Yet at the same time he has addons which are extraordinarily toxic to play against, especially in combination with certain strategies. Tombstone piece is the most often cited, but even regular Tombstone can be nigh unbeatable on most maps if combined with Play with your Food and a gamut of info perks to find the obsession quickly.
So while the removal of these addons would remove one of the more toxic and annoying killer strategies, it would fail utterly to actually fix the killer as a whole who struggles to keep up with the ever increasing degree of power creep. Gens are faster than ever before, medkits and boons make healing a trivial affair, and survivors have gotten incredibly good at denying his power and stalling his one single moment of power to the absolute ends of the earth.
He just needs something to be done. I have ideas, but I'm far from the most experienced of players. The above is more or less common consensus, he is at the bottom of every tier list only occasionally not at the absolute bottom. Furthermore, the prevalance of exceedingly overpowered killers forces survivors who play to win to run the broken strats which make them competitive against those OP killers- and absolutely unbeatable to everyone else, especially Myers.
This killer was the entire reason I bought this game, because he's one of my alltime favorite horror/slasher antagonists and I cannot understate the disappointment I feel every time I have to so much as look at his portrait on the killer page- wanting to play him but knowing that it will always result in 10 minutes of unwinnable suffering.
That said, here is my thoughts on what could be done.
First, I don't believe that removing any addons is the correct choice. Being able to Mori outside of hook progress is a major part of his identity and fantasy as a killer, but the way it is currently implemented is absolutely unfair and untenable. He also has the highest number of Transformative addons (Addons which dramatically alter how the killer plays) in the entire game- and it should stay this way. Myers takes alot of forms, and has had a great deal of variation across his movies. Keeping all 5 of his transformative addons is important.
However, baseline Myers without these addons is absolutely awful to play. Many will cite that his power eventually stops working- but this isn't really the issue. Most games end before all 4 survivors have been drained of stalk in any case, and management of a limited resource is an inherently interesting mechanic to play with, and also ensures that he can't truly abuse stalling strategies forever. Making stalk infinite is too much, even if that means making it take even longer to gain than it currently does, and regeneration won't work. If it's enough to enable T3 even when there is less than 4 survivors, then it may as well be infinite when there is 4. If it's not so great as to be infinite when there are 4, then it is so little when there is less than 4 that there may as well not be regeneration. There is no balanced sweetspot. But, as said, limited supply of stalk is not the issue.
The issue is time. When Myers was first released, he was a fairly powerful killer- simply because the game then was much much slower. Even with a technically lower time on generators, there was not a massive number of ways to boost gen progress, healing wasn't lightning fast, etc. There were just fewer perks. But he's been power crept over- he's simply too slow to keep up with the pace of modern DBD. Outside of dramatic, sweeping changes to the entire game that slows it down for everyone, the only change that can make Myers competitive is going to be to Myers himself. Trapper actually suffers a very similar issue, on top of bad map design and trap rng.
The above in mind, here are the changes that I believe would make Myers a competitive killer to be taken seriously.
-Passive Stalking speed is now 3 m/s, Active is 1 m/s
Additionally, nearly all of his Addons would have to be changed in some way.
Tacky Earrings - Reworked to Active Stalking speed is increased to 3 m/s
Memorial Flower - Reworked to Stalking rate no longer decreases with distance.
Boyfriend's Memo - Reworked to Stalking a Survivor for at least 1 second gives your next attack within 1 second +50% lunge distance
Blond Hair - No longer increases amount of Evil required to reach T3 for the first time.
Reflective Fragment - Now works on multiple survivors at once
Jewelry - Reworked to Fully drained Survivors suffer a 10% action speed penalty.
Hair Brush - Amount of additional Evil required reduced to 25%, additionally increases the total available Stalk points by 5 (up to 11.26 per survivor), or about 12.5%
Glass Fragment - Reworked to Reaching T3 inflicts Survivors with Blindness for 30 seconds.
Jewelry Box - Reworked to Stalking a Survivor grants a 5% Haste buff for the same duration the survivor was stalked.
Hair Bow - Now additionally increases the total available Stalk points by 10 (up to 12.51 per survivor), or 25%
Tombstone Piece - Now additionally requires the Survivor to be fully drained of all Stalk Points
Scratched Mirror - Now gives Myers a normal Lunge while in T1
Lock of Hair - Required Evil for first T3 reduced to 75%, additionally increases total available Stalk points by 15 (up to 13.76 per survivor), or roughly 37.5%
Judith's Tombstone - Additionally requires the Survivor to be fully drained of all Stalk Points.
Fragrant Tuft of Hair - Now requires all Survivors to be fully drained of Stalk, additionally reduces the total available Stalk points by 10 (down to 7.51 per survivor)
These changes would accomplish a number of things to both dramatically lessen the impact of the Mori addons, providing counterplay to them, while also improving Baseline Myers and allowing him to properly keep up with the pace of gens and healing. To summarize these effects:
-Tombstone Piece can no longer result in an immediate Mori at or near the start of the game. Since T3 will always be reached at least once before a Survivor has been fully drained, there is a dramatic increase in how long it takes to Mori a survivor via either Tombstone. Not just the 60 seconds of T3, but the amount of time it takes to find and drain a second survivor, and then finding and fully draining the original survivor in order to get the Mori (99'ing this is extremely difficult, since going 100% to T3 off one survivor leaves them with .1 Stalk points. So you might ######### it up and drain all points and not Hit t3 and need to go find another survivor again to get that last little shred). In aggregate, it's a minimum of 2 minutes before a Mori can occur, if two survivors are standing right next to each other doing nothing. If the survivors actually try to hide, or to bodyblock to make fully draining the original target impossible, they can in fact completely shutdown Tombstone and make the Mori near impossible until the absolute end of the game. In other words, Tombstone would be given counterplay with these changes. This also forces a Tombstone Myers to play baseline Myers while waiting out T3s when there is no fully drained survivor.
-When combining Iri Tombstone and Iri Tuft, Myers can threaten to Mori all Survivors, but fully draining all 4 of them is an extremely tall order and will take quite awhile- often so long that 3-4 gens can be completed before entering T3. This is a unique strategy which creates a race against time for both sides, I cannot overstate how often I have been told by more experienced players that this combination is not problematic and is ultimately pretty fair, so I did not change it. Iri Tuft and Purple Tombstone results in only ever getting a single Mori, and permanently losing T3 for the rest of the game- an obviously very bad combination.
-The baseline power change is just to make numbers clean
-The addons Myers traditionally has are all just repetitive number buffing garbage, leaving no reason to use browns or yellows when their green or purple counterparts are just better. The reworked addons now provide a variety of different effects, with browns being mostly minor stuff that is nice to have but not particularly strong, yellows being solidly usable even with nothing else. The Greens and up were not changed very much, since most of them are already usably strong, with exception to the transformatives.
Thoughts? I'd love to hear from people with hundreds or even thousands of hours on Myers. Would these be too much? Too little? Do nothing at all? Community consensus claims that Myers is bottom tier garbage- but perhaps the true OTPs know better? If so, what's the trick (other than using TSP, obviously. Might as well play blight instead)?
Comments
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Too long for me to read whole thing but I think judith tombstone is fine only the tombstone piece is problematic but even that can be countered by just going locker. Myers needs some buffs definetely first he should never run out of stalk. His tier 3 should be also stronger you need lot of time to build it up but the reward is not that great. I think he should have lot faster vaulting/pallet breaking currently it's just small boost. Scratched mirror myers I agree should have normal lunge.
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they based his balance around instant-kill mori's. I do not see them balancing him for any other type of gameplay other than instant-kill moris. His tombstone piece and Judith tombstone add-on does give him a redeeming quality that only 3 other killer have access to. His version of Mori is arguably most consistent and most powerful of the mori killers. I think they like his gameplay being based around these two add-on and do not see a reason to change these add-on or his base-kit default play style as a whole. You never need to play his base-kit if you can just use these two add-on and replace his base-kit with these two add-on's.
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The only changes Myers needs is
can activate evil within tiers like Onis blood fury so you can stay in tier 1 as a strategy.
conspicuous actions drains survivors stalk meter so Myers never runs out of stalk.
Evil Within 3 makes pallet/gen breaking speed 20% and stun speed reduced by 50% but doesn’t stack with Brutal,Endurance and Fire up
Bam just fixed Michael Myers
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-"can activate evil within tiers like Onis blood fury"
This is the only good suggestion in your list. More than anything else this would be a really valuable QoL change for MM.
There was no reason to make Michael and Legion's powers not be affected by Fire up or Bamboozle. Both of these killers are "meh" and really did not need the nerf.
1) Michael either needs to start with 115% speed or start slow and become 120% speed once he gets into T2.
2) Return multi stalking (how he was released) OR remove the penalty to stalking based on distance OR greatly reduce the stalk needed to tier up.
Considering Ghostface has 1 minute power duration and can stalk infinitely MM doesn't make any sense. Making tier 3 last 2 minutes would be too long. The only solution to balance his power relative to GF is to make his stalk much quicker - more like GF. But unlike GF you can't ever undo the MM stalk and MM will eventually drain you which will balance things out.
3) undo the nerf that made Bamboozle/Fire Up not stack with his power for faster vault. He was one of the only killers in the game that got value out of Fire up.
Your ideas suck sorry - no offense.
Most of his addons are fine. The few important addons I read that you suggested changing are a huge nerf- no thanks.
It would be interesting if MM got reworked to be regular speed in T1 (imagine current T2). Then when he hits T2 the first time he gets a "normal" T3 like he does now. Then when he gets his power again he would be in infinite T3 for the rest of the game.
Combined with the other changes he is now way more interesting and scary. You only need to change the tuft of hair that gives him infinite T3.
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