Suggestion for The Artist's Birds of Torment

Clockwork_Enigma

Birds of Torment

Birds of Torment, Artist's Power, is a very divisive ability that has caused many frustrations with Survivors and Killers that make Artist one of the more unappealing characters to go against.

What I want to suggest is something that makes Artist a lot more interesting to play and go against.

New Effect - Ink Trail

One of the main points of contention with Artist is how she utilizes the Dire Crow ability by locking in loops with their ability to damage Survivors with their Flight Paths. This is not fun and often times leads to extremely slow gameplay, so the ability to damage Survivors with the Flight Path has been removed.

In its place is a more intuitive ability that plays within Artist's lore as, well, an artist. This is known as the Ink Trail, an ability that casts a path of ink where the Dire Crows once damaged Survivors directly and lasts for 8 seconds.

When a Survivor steps on an Ink Trail, two effects happen to that Survivor:

• While directly on an ink trail and for a brief time after the Survivor leaves it, the Survivor has a reduced movement speed of -3%.
• After the Survivor leaves the trail, their footsteps are then covered in a black ink that lingers for up to 30 seconds. This ink can also be seen through walls within a 6 meter radius of your location and will only be dispelled once the Survivor is injured.

In addition, whenever a pallet or window vault location is affected by an Ink Trail, the following effect occurs:

• Survivor vaulting speed is reduced by -25% for the duration that the area is affected.
• The Artist is unaffected since she jumps over vault locations.

However, in order to ease frustrations for Survivors, this ability does not go through walls and if it affects a pallet or window location, the trail will immediately stop once it hits that obstacle, meaning that the other side of the obstacle is unaffected whatsoever.

Changes to Birds of Torment's Statistics

Because Birds of Torment no longer directly injures Survivors while they're on the Flight Path of Dire Crows, this will inevitably make The Artist weaker as a Killer, but opens up more opportunities to give her a more fast-paced playstyle for her long range and ability to hit through walls.

Additionally, since The Artist could potentially make some loops weaker with the ability, there are some other changes that would be made to make sure that it isn't overtuned.

So the following changes would be made to accommodate this playstyle:

• Buff: The activation time of Birds of Torment is reduced to 0.5 seconds (was 1)
• Buff: The flight speed of Dire Crows is increased to 50m/s (was 35)
• Buff: The idle timer when summoning Dire Crows is increased to 15 seconds (was 10)
• Buff: For each Dire Crow that swarms a Survivor, Birds of Torment has a 25% reduced cooldown.
• Buff: Swarms no longer become invisible to The Artist past 32 meters, even if a Survivor attempts to repel them.
• Nerf: The cooldown of Birds of Torment when firing multiple Dire Crows is increased to 11/14/16 seconds (was 9/12/14)
• Nerf: The idle timer no longer resets when placing down an additional Dire Crow.

Add-On Changes for Birds of Torment

Due to the new effects gained from Birds of Torment, The Artist can now receive a well-needed add-on pass to give her some new and interesting effects.

The following add-ons would be changed:

• Vibrant Obituary - New Effect: Increases the Ink Trail length by +2 meters.
• Thick Tar - New Effect: Increases the Hindered effect by 2%.
• Choclo Corn - New Effect: Increases the flight speed of Dire Crows by +30%.
• Untitled Agony - New Effect: Increases the duration that Survivors are affected by Ink Steps by +20 seconds.
• Automatic Drawing - New Effect: Automatically launches Dire Crows after the idle period is over. Reduces Dire Crow cooldown by -25% if more than one was launched.
• Silver Bell - New Effect: Survivors on top of an Ink Trail are revealed to you with Killer Instinct. This effect lingers for 2.5 seconds after the Survivor leaves the trail.
• Darkest Ink - New Effect: Whenever you step on an Ink Trail, you gain Undetectable. This effect lingers for 8 seconds after leaving the Trail. However, Birds of Torment cooldown is increased by 50% whenever launching a single Dire Crow.
• Severed Tongue - New Effect: Survivors swarmed by Dire Crows are given the Ink Step effect and the range you can see Ink Steps is increased by 4 meters.
• Matias' Baby Shoes - New Effect: When you step on an Ink Trail, your movement speed is increased by +7%. This effect lingers for 1.5 seconds after leaving the Trail. Survivors no longer become Hindered while on an Ink Trail.
• Iridescent Feather - New Effect: When The Artist touches an idle Dire Crow, it will disintegrate and give The Artist +20% attack cooldown reduction, vaulting speed, pallet breaking speed and +80% lunge attack range for 10 seconds.
• Garden of Rot - New Effect: Removes Ink Trails and Swarms, but Survivors hit by Dire Crows now become covered with Ink. Once the Survivor is struck by Dire Crows three times, they become Exposed for 60 seconds, after which the ink is completely removed.

With these changes, Artist would go from a rather unfun anti-loop Killer whom forces players to go to another loop or get hit guaranteed to a much more chase-oriented Killer whose abilities make it a gamble to both players whether or not they will win the interaction.