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An in-depth Trickster rant.
First, I'd like to say that win or lose, I just like using Trickster's power, and that's pretty much the only reason I've been playing him. It certainly isn't for his actual strength; I personally could get consistently better results on Doctor, Pyramid Head, Plague, Dredge, Legion, Nemesis, Demogorgon, or Knight.
So, what's Trickster's problem? In short, other projectile Killers can do what he does, but much, much better. The only reason to pick Trickster over Huntress/Deathslinger/Pyramid Head/Nemesis is if you enjoy landing multiple shots that each deal a fraction of a health state, rather than a single shot that deals a single health state.
Take, for instance, the common scenario where a Survivor is about to drop a pallet or is vaulting a window, and the Killer has successfully predicted this and readied their power. For any other projectile Killer, that's an instant health state. For Trickster, that's usually 2/6 or 3/6 of a health state, and the chase continues. Or another scenario: The Killer pulls out their power on a loop, does a successful mindgame and the Survivor is now face-to-face with the Killer for 1-2 seconds before they can round a corner. For other projectile Killers, that's a health state. For Trickster, again, that's only a fraction of a health state.
Trickster's power is designed in such a way that it's only really effective when used at close range, yet he's a 110 Killer who has no way to actually get that close. Laceration decay forces him to commit to chases and discourages medium to long-range poking if he wants to take healthstates and apply pressure to the Survivors, yet his power is also markedly inferior to others' when chasing at tiles.
So what options does that leave him with? What's his saving grace? Camping... that's about it. And given that an anti-camping update has been announced, Trickster's already-terrible kill rate is likely to plummet immediately after if nothing changes. So outside of camping, what is Trickster's intended playstyle even supposed to be? Losing? His ineffectiveness at loops (And laceration decay) makes committing to chases a bad option, his laceration decay and locker reloads preclude him from zoning, and his 110 speed with no mobility precludes him from hit-and-run. Every conventional Killer playstyle has some sort of built-in counter for Trickster, except for camping.
For actual suggestions on fixing him:
-Make him faster. Faster time to pull out his knives, faster movespeed while holding out his knives, faster movespeed in M1 mode, one or more of these would help make his power actually work when using it at loops. You could at least have an argument for why Trickster's power is better than other projectile Killers' on some tiles.
-Remove passive Laceration decay. For an already-struggling Killer to be given a feast-or-famine mechanic like this pushes them even further toward camping, as it makes using his power under practically any other circumstance a calculated risk at best. Either all 6 knife hits land in one chase, or none of them mattered. Long-range poking and gradually chipping away at the laceration meter in chase are both punished by this mechanic.
One could replace Laceration Decay with a Mend-style mechanic so Survivors can still get rid of it, but only if they actually stop what they're doing for a few seconds. This would both prevent Survivors from removing it mid-chase, and make it so a long-range knife hit still slows down Survivors slightly even if the Trickster doesn't follow up. It would at least promote more than one playstyle on him.
Comments
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I agree with your post. for some reason, they treat trickster as if he is burst damage character. in theory, the other range killer only need 0.01 seconds of line of sight for their projectile to hit. that is why they can have reduced movement penalties when using their power because their skill-cap is entirely revolved around timing. Trickster's skill is revolved more around raw aim then timing but you cannot aim if you cannot hit your target. For damage over time(DPS) character to work, he needs more movement speed when holding his knives so he can hold his knives around entire loop as he rotates the loop to hit the survivor. This would also improve his Main Event because current main event locks him into 96% m/s where the survivor can loop trees and rocks where he can do nothing other than cancel main event.
Long-range poking and gradually chipping away at the laceration meter in chase are both punished by this mechanic.
laceration mechanic also discourages him from disengaging chases. The laceration decay creates sunk cost fallacy for him where he is forced to commit to chases that he cannot win. The 40 meter lullaby does him not favor him either. He's not good at long range yet survivors can hear him miles away while being a killer that moves very slowly.
So outside of camping, what is Trickster's intended playstyle even supposed to be? Losing?
Bingo. You should try new forced hesitation perk on him. It is fantastic for Trickster's camping game.
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Yeah, the 40-meter lullaby is quite unnecessary. The only time a Trickster is remotely threatening at 40 meters is if a Survivor already has 4-5 Laceration stacks (And probably doesn't need the warning anyway). There's a stronger argument for giving Blight or Oni a 40-meter lullaby, given that they actually have the tools to realistically be threatening at that distance.
And you are correct, the laceration mechanic does create a sunk-cost fallacy. It encourages you to commit to chases even when it's clearly not going well. So throwing even one knife in chase is always a calculated risk.
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I do not want to post any links or anything but there is a player named Wacek134 that is one trick p100 trickster player. you can write in google Wacek134 twitch stream. he makes trickster look a lot stronger. majority of survivor do not play well vs trickster so I think he is still strong if you have the mechanical aim to play him. he only has shortcoming if he plays vs gen efficient teams and hold-w type teams that abuse LOS correctly at high-wall type loops. it makes chases quite long and not much kill-pressure when chases are long.
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A one-trick p100 player can make any Killer look good. And as you said, when you go against good Survivors, you're gonna learn the limitations of a Killer real quick. So what's your point here? He's still a weak Killer.
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Wacek134 has done 200-win streak on trickster. he has roughly an 60% accuracy on using trickster's knives. that is pretty impressive. He can run bola(+8 knive add-on) and death throes compilation and reload 0 times in the entire match because of how accurate he is at using trickster's ability. It is not that he is meaning to do that. He is not doing it as challenge. It is just that his aim is that good at base that he can do that on most games if not all games.
for average normie that plays trickster, they will naturally miss more knives on average and missing on trickster hurts a lot because it makes very easy to LOS him. So at least in my opinion, trickster should be a bit more newbie friendly so that playing for chases more achievable for non-one trick player. right now average player just camps with trickster because of how punishing he is to play and how his mechanics hurt his chase potencial. I guess my point is that you can usurp some of his drawbacks with raw aim skill but few player are willing to put the time to do that and there are simply much easier killers that produce higher output for less time investment.
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Well, apart from not being very rewarding to master, Trickster is just a pretty one-note Killer as-is. On paper, a power involving spammable projectiles has all sorts of applications for harassment, zoning, sniping, chip damage... y'know, basically everything Huntress can do that Trickster can't.
But passive laceration decay pigeonholes Trickster into using his knives in chase, and nothing else. And it's not even that good in chase, either; few things feel worse than having to drop chase when the laceration meter is at 5 stacks, or going too long without landing a knife and watching the meter reset. And even if you get really good at aim tracking with Trickster, that doesn't really make up for the fact that other projectile Killers can do what he does, but better.
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Hello. I made an account just to say that the Trickster is my favorite killer, but he still feels very useless. I started playing dbd a few months ago with friends, and was never comfortable with being a killer. But if I'm gonna play as killer, I want to use a character that I genuinely like as I have to learn so many things about a single character going up against 4 other players. So..At this point, I have survivors unhooking and repairing generators as I attack with MELEE AND LONG RANGE ATTACKS. His attacks are so weak that they are able to do objectives while ignoring some of my attacks. It takes longer for him to down a survivor. Zoning in on one survivor isn't effective because the other players will just repair multiple generators. But he isn't strong enough to switch to another victim because he's a ramp-up type of character, the type that usually sucks lol. Oh, and I don't know how I feel about choosing to be a killer as I get trolled in literally every game as Trickster. Players even wait at the edge of the exit to troll to waste my damn time before they end the game. I genuinely like the character and I hope they actually make him better. It's been 2 years. He's considered "B" tier on some sites and well....yeah no.......
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