So Clown looks pretty weak...
Not gonna lie, I always hated getting hit by a Clown bottle... I'm already clumsy and his bottles always made me stumble around like even more of a goof and make a stupid mistake.
Each Clown I've faced, I ended up leaving having never even seen him, and wondered what was going on. I finally got hit by a bottle after the rework the other day... and there is barely a visual effect... it's slightly blurry, but that's it... I know the visual effect needed to go for those people who suffered motion sickness, but damn... Clown seems like he really sucks now, like REALLY sucks. He feels like he's been nerfed to have barely any potency or threat at all.
I don't get disoriented anymore, and thus the only mistakes I make are the same as any other killer, screwing up my timings at loops, just I'm slower. Pinky Finger got rightly nerfed to the floor... but Clown feels... pretty darned easy to face. I was expecting like my world to go dark and get partially obscured by a pink haze or something... but beyond the slow, bottles basically do nothing...
I haven't played against many admittedly, so maybe I've just had struggling Clowns who are learning... but how is everyone else finding him? Because he looks pretty darn weak to me...
I enjoy playing vs. Clown about as much as I enjoy stubbing my toe on the sofa as I walk by... but I also don't want to see a Killer on his knees...
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There is a 200+ pages clown guide, Otzdarva made a video about it, and the guy that wrote it basically explained how to outplay every loop in the game, clown is not weak, people just don't play him well enough, me included. And the blur effect felt quite useless anyway, so I Don think it changed much about his power to remove it.
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Ok... but why would anyone read a 200 page guide and practise for 1000's of hours on a M1 killer who has no additional utility or strength outside of closing off loops to get to that level instead of playing a killer you don't have to master to be effective? Maybe Doctor? Artist? Dredge? Cenobite?
I don't even like Clown, playing as or against, but being as unbiased as I can be, the man has for years been touted as a killer needing buffs, but couldn't ever be given them because Pinky Finger exists, and any buff would make Clown oppressive with that add-on. That is actually something that I can quote Otzdarva saying himself. If we're going to reference Otzdarva, that very video you're referring to, he points out that he tried the suggestions in the 200 guide, and I'm paraphrasing, but his conclusion was there are some good and very interesting points, but it's not something he would recommend to majority of players.
Clown finally got that add-on nuked, and has had the visual effect taken off his tonics, in exchange got 2 more bottles, and a half second faster antidote cloud spawn, and a 1s longer antidote speed boost. Correct me if I'm wrong, but those nerfs seem to outweigh the buffs, or at the very least go even... but if he was supposedly weak without Pinky Finger... what exactly has changed to say that Clown is now balanced?
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I mean there are a lot of killers that require a lot of work and time investment to get good results with and people still took the time to learn them, for example Billy, before the rework, ofc currently all the effort is basically worth it. I don't know man, I didn't read it entirely either, because 200 pages is too excessive and I don't particularly like clown. But he is capable of good results... Just because it takes a lot of effort does not mean he is weak, you could say he is weak unless you take a big amount of time to learn him, but as far as I'm concerned, that would be a good thing. It should take you some time to learn how to play a specific killer... Would be awful if every killer is as simple to learn and master as for example legion.
I mean ofc he would not recommend it... It is a 200 page guide xD The majority of players probably play more than 1 killer and the amount of time it takes to work through that and remember the stuff is just completely out of balance for the casual gamers. Which is fair, like I said I'm also not too interested in it, but that does not mean there is no potential.
I would say it is a buff... The blurry effect didn't have much of an impact on decent players, and just because 1 iri addon got nerfed shouldn't result in such a downgrade, because in that case you are only taking into account one addon... That's like saying Myers is a better killer than he is because of tombstone piece.
You could however say his average strength got increased but maybe his max strength got slightly decreased, we could compromise on that I think... But as it is an iri addon you cannot run every game unless you have excessive amounts o BP spend on him I don't think the nerf to that addon is too big of a deal for his overall strength.
I never thought of clown as weak, his chase is actually quite good, it is just that he has nothing besides his chase... I guess the two extra bottles give him slightly better map control... But yeah... I still like Scott's changes for clown with the teleport feature, the whole concept was quite fun ^^
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I mean, I get what you're saying, but Hillbilly is rewarded now because he's been buffed... for years he has only been played by a handful of players, who yes have mastered and can play him well... but even with their mastery, is outclassed by a good portion of the roster on much less masterful players... doesn't that by definition mean that the killer is weak? Difficult to learn, hard to master, and average performance when you do master him?
Regarding Myers, he absolutely IS artificially propped by Tombstone Piece. He similarly can't be buffed because that add-on exists. Myers is one of the weakest killers in the game (for the record, I love normal Myers, both playing against and as)... but the only reason he has any threat at all is he MIGHT (and probably does) have Tombstone Piece. I've usually been killed when he's somehow managed to stalk himself up to EW2 99 within 40s of the start on a teammate then surprises me with an instant pop Tombstone Piece stab.
It's fair if you see Clown doing well. I'm asking for peoples experiences, but my experience thus far facing Clown, is he's been smashed every game... as I say, I barely even saw him in 3 games, because it took him so long to catch anyone, I never needed to come off gens to help the team. Clown has always been my achilles heel, I play awful against him, and even I was able to waste so much of his time when he came after me in the forth game... I don't have a big sample size, cause I rarely see him, and few times I have, he seemed to get beaten up. 3/4k everytime, and even the 3k, was cause it took him an ages to tunnel out 1 player.
If I'm wrong I'm wrong, but he doesn't look particularly strong right now.
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Average performance means average killer doesn't it? A bit of a contradiction to say the killer is weak because he performs average... I don't know how good Clown is when masters, but I would say at least average,maybe even better. And I would not say clown is hard to master, Billy is hard to master because of the mechanical skill, clown seems to be more of a learning thing similar to trapper, you don't need mechanical skill but knowledge how to use the bottles not necessarily be super precise how to throw them? Therefore I think hard to master is not accurate... More like time consuming to master?
I think even without tombstone he is still a lot better than Freddy... But yeah sure, people think of him as stronger because of the addon, but we should not value a single addon so highly as to push up the killer a lot because of it.
I mean that once again just sounds like weak players... That's the same with me and some nurses... I had games where I ran a nurse the entire game around the house side of dead dog, and not because of i am good but because the nurse was super trash... To evaluate whether the clowns you go against know what they are doing or not should be rather simple, do they use yellow bottles? No? - > in experienced clown or loop that is not playable... Usually it is fairly easy to tell whether or not the opposing player is decent or not...
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I haven't played against many admittedly, so maybe I've just had struggling Clowns who are learning... but how is everyone else finding him?
Killer players in general are struggling and "learning". There's a significant gap between casual killer players (at least 90% of the whole playerbase) and the ones who know what they're doing. You'll quickly notice the difference once you face a seasoned Clown.
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Well I was kinda meaning that it seems to me you have to be a fair bit better at Clown than the respective skill of the survivors to go even. When I was saying "average", I was talking relative.
Balanced killers should be survivors vs. killers of equal skill should mostly go even, such as Ghost Face, Huntress, Demogorgon.
Overpowered killers would be survivors vs. killers of equal skill resulting in more killer wins, such as Nurse, Blight, Spirit.
Underpowered killers would be survivors vs. killers of equal skill should result in more survivor wins, such as Myers, Trapper, maybe Sadako.
To me Clown always fell in the latter, where at even levels of skill will usually result in Clown getting ties or beaten, and wins come from Survivors making a horrendous mistake. This has been what I've seen from content creators and my own experience as and against, and suffice to say you shouldn't need to master every loop and tile in every map to be beating scrubs like me and my level.
As Clown when I've faced a good set of survivors you really feel it. This happens on all killers ofc, but on Clown (prior to these changes) it doens't take many mistakes for a game to start slipping irredeemably away from you. There is a reason he tends to be ranked low. His problems is he's basically got 1 thing, really good anti loop. So I'm not saying that a good Clown player will not be able to win games, but it seems to me the relative skill level of Clown needs to be higher than on other killers in order to win, and he has a pretty clear skill ceiling that at best makes him only average (and that is debatable).
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I mean to break it down to the basics to get a hit as killer you need to outplay the survivor, to avoid a hit as survivor you don't need to outplay the other side you just need to not get outplayed... Might seem to be semantics at first but I think it is a bit more than that. The whole concept is basically that you need to force the other side into making mistakes, and very few killers can get hits despite the other side not making mistakes.
The question to these categories is at what skill level? Because as soon as you go beyond average those categories don't exist anymore in this way. Really good survivors or comp survivors won't lose against some of those killers that are average and even wins against spirit nurse or Blight can happen rather frequently. But sure if we look at the average survivor then maybe.
You don't need to master every loop, you can also just kick the pallet... Like that's the whole point, you can train to be able to outplay the pallets Gideons or you just force the drop and kick it... And most tiles have similar solutions anyway... So the effort is not that big to get a rough idea of what to do. I think for clown the 20 80 rule should somewhat apply, with 20% of the work towards mastery you will get around 80% of the result... Most tiles should work by the same rule, just some special ones require seperate plans that need to be learned first.
Some killers only have good anti loop and nothing else and are still considered really good, for example Deathslinger. I d be curious to see how the clown guide creator performs against really good or even comp survivors.
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Fair enough, I mean he's not traditionally been unplayable, but most things I've seen prior to these changes rank Clown pretty low, and my facing him and playing as him tends to agree. The only reputable person I know who disagrees Clown is quite weak is the 200 page guide creator, who is probably the best Clown player, and has mastered him, and it's like... what if you sink the same time into a Killer stronger at base? Is Clown really "Balanced", or is this player just that much a freak Clown player that he evens out the Clowns weaknesses? Hard to say, but of course this was all prior to the changes.
With the recent changes, he seems easier to face to me, and on the old version, even experienced and skilled survivors in my experience make more mistakes vs. Clown bottle disorientation that can lead to hits than without. A bit like Doctor skill checks generally don't affect skilled players too much, but they go from never missing a skillcheck to sometimes missing a skillcheck, Clown is the same. They go from almost never making a mistake to occasionally making a mistake.
That to me suggests that overall Clown hasn't been buffed. At best he's had his strongest add-on nerfed, and otherwise come out even, which means he's equal/weaker overall to where he was before.
If you think he's perfectly balanced as he is then fair play I guess, and we'll have to agree to disagree.
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my opinion is that clown was B-tier killer with pinky finger. Current clown got shift in power where he lost lethality(instant down) for better anti-loop/pallet play. As a result, he is now B-tier as base. Basically them nerfing clown pinky finger has sealed the deal that he can never go beyond B-tier.
Clown finally got that add-on nuked, and has had the visual effect taken off his tonics, in exchange got 2 more bottles, and a half second faster antidote cloud spawn, and a 1s longer antidote speed boost. Correct me if I'm wrong, but those nerfs seem to outweigh the buffs, or at the very least go even... but if he was supposedly weak without Pinky Finger... what exactly has changed to say that Clown is now balanced?
Each of those buff are pretty substantial buffs especially the faster 0.5 second cloud change. The issue with clown now is that clown lacks any map presence. He has no ability snowball anymore. Pinky finger really helped his snowball potencial and map presence because if he found survivor out of position and grouped up, he could often get muti-downs on healthy survivors. Now he can't do that. He has to 1vs1 each survivor one a time.
This means that if survivor outplays you, even once, clown has no hope of comeback. he loses automatically on the spot. He has to win every single chase in under 30 seconds and any mechanical error or small good play for survivor will force clown to lose. there is absolutely no margin for error. In old pinky finger clown, he had greater margin for error. I kinda hope pinky finger get unnerfed so that clown gets more viability.
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I would argue that map presence comes from mobility and because of longer effect and more bottles I would argue his map presence has been increased, you can more often afford to use a yellow bottle to move around faster, as before this would have resulted in a bigger disadvantage in chase.
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his mobility is terrible. he has to commit to decisions in the match. More bottles, more duration and faster activation do nothing for his map presence. They only improve his 1vs1. Clown lacks ability to slowdown gen-rush.
It took 2 years for clown's pink bottle to not have m/s slowdown when throwing a bottle and to add yellow antidote which was largely useless beyond cigar box add-on. It took another 2 years for them to buff antidote to be more relevant chase tool vs good survivors. Now we just need wait for another 2 years for BVHR to unnerf pinky finger so that he can finally use pink bottle and yellow bottle with pinky finger.
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Crown is a killer whose main ability is an antidote, and the key to success is how long you can continue to obtain haste effects throughout the match. The buff this time is the one who supports it, and he himself has been sufficiently strengthened. It is also important to shorten the chase time by creating a checkmate situation by using purple bottles during haste as much as possible.
Even so, losing is simply the fate of this game. No matter how strong he is, he cannot make a leap forward as long as he is in the category of an M1 killer. Unless there are survivors who slack off or complain, the majority of matches will not exceed 2k.
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First of all the yellow bottles do something for his map presence in the sense of faster map traversal and somewhat a counter to holding w, sure he does not suddenly become super fast but it helps quite a bit. Having two more bottles means you can sometimes afford to use a bottle or two to get around the map without having to reload immediately afterwards. Getting sped up to 126.5 is not too bad in my opinion, so his map mobility is at least better than that of other 115 killers.
As for slowdown, yeah sure he does not have build in slowdown, however getting quick downs is probably the best way to create pressure and if we consider the 200 page guide that explains you how to get a hit on every tile then he is not necessarily bad in that category either.
Most killers only work in the 1v1 category, very few are real 1v4 killers like Oni for example.
Why pinky finger? I don't think the exposed effect should be used that way, how about giving it a new effect?
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it is not about map traversal. it is about the inability pressure multiple survivors at once. you cannot chain downs as clown. you have take isolated 1vs1's, win them quickly then hook. most of the other killers are not so binary in decision making as clown is. I already miss being able to get 2 downs in <15 seconds with pinky.
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I wouldn't necessarily say he's weak now. Clown was always that killer (and this is not exclusive to him, a lot of the roster suffer with this) that no matter how good you get with him, or how well you play a chase, if the tile rng is in the Survivors favour, or the map is just too big to navigate between pressure, you will probably lose.
This is why the best builds for Clown are a mixture of detection and chase builds. You constantly need to be on someone at all times with Clown. Any down time for Survivors cripples him.
This is why the changes to Clown aren't that bad. The visibility reduction does make certain deceptive plays that you could previously attempt to do impossible now. But the 6 Bottles makes his meta add-on choices even better now. And not needing to reload as much is definitely a huge buff. Since experienced Clowns, such as myself have always said to people trying to improve with him or disprove their claims that he is bottom tier, that you ideally only need two bottles at max in a single chase to get a down. (Again, this is why I said map and tile rng cripples him)
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Map reliance does seem a strong argument. That might explain why the Clown's I've been facing got crushed, especially if lowbie survivors are making fewer mistakes now the disorientation is gone (I know I certainly am making much fewer mistakes).
Trusting your opinion, as I haven't played Clown all that much... I can play him quite well and I tend to prefer m1 killers, but his concept didn't gel with me... if I want to cut off paths for survivors, I found closing things down prior and playing it with Trapper more satisyifng personally. So with that in mind, 2 bottles for a down? 1 per health state? Doesn't that mean that you barely even use the yellow antidote bottles at all in chase?
I would have thought the tile RNG would be somewhat overcome by correctly linking Tonic and Antidotes together, something the faster deploy and longer duration on antidote would help resolve, especially in conjunction with the extra bottles... the implication being knowing exactly when and where to place both would take a lot of practise and precision... a level of both which makes it understandable non-Clown mains find him extremely lacklustre. As stated prior, small mistakes from Clown snowball out of control very quickly.
The obvious point here is that if you only use 1 bottle per health state, that his means his net changes primarily consist of removal of disorientaiton for the benefit of more bottles. The visual distortion ofc destroyed low level players, but even high level players, it made them more suceptable to mind games, because keeping track of the red light and Clowns facing/movement was much harder while affected by Tonic. This is made up for with the extra bottles to reduce reloads and perhaps reduce the precision requirements of Clown... but to me it seems a pretty even trade at best...
Wouldn't we say having a heavy reliance on map RNG, where when in goes against him there isn't really anything he can do, DOES mean he is weak? As I say, I'm not really complaining, cause the disorientation messed me up hard every time... but I have noticed Clown feels much easier to go against each time I've played against him. Had another yesterday, the man had 5 hooks by the time the last gen popped.... and the kinda argument is... if the Clown's skill ceiling is so low, but takes so much practise to be affective, and STILL get smashed by RNG... why would a new player seriously consider playing him?
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As a Clown main, I hesitate to ask for Clown buffs because it would just look like I'm salt-posting, but years ago someone had the thought of letting Clown bust bottles on generators to make them repair slower and/or have Huntress Lullaby on them. I thought that would be a good way to give Clown mild map pressure while he chases a survivor.
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I don't think most of the other killers are different though? At most maybe 1/3 or so... But most is a bit of exaggeration.
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Ideally using only 2 Bottles per chase doesn't necessarily mean only using the Tonic. For example, if you get a Survivor at a long pallet tile but position yourself so that when you break it they don't gain much distance, on top of using the Antidote right on top of you before you break it, you'll catch up and be on them in minimal time.
You're spot on about Clowns being heavily punished by a mistake. But that's where the extra bottles at basekit buff helps out. Before, using a Bottle and getting nothing out of it meant you most likely would need to reload mid-chase to try and rectify it. Now you can make that mistake and have enough Bottles not to worry about the reload as much. Best time to reload is usually after you've just got a hook and have moved off to pressure the next Survivor. I use the word "ideally" a lot in Clown topics because if you have a goal play style as him, then being able to measure your current experiences in the context of the match you're in with that ideal, you get a better understanding as to whether you're on the back foot or if you're doing all that is physically possible in that match, regardless of if you've got the momentum or not. So, for example, if you ideally have a minimum of 1 Bottle, or at most 2, left after you've just got a hook and have started your next chase or pressured them off of a gen, you can use an Antidote directly on top of the gen to gain the Haste effect after you have kicked it and then reloaded to be at your strongest, and then catch up to the Survivor afterwards wasting the least time.
When it comes to unfavorable maps or tile rng, as Clown, you need to know when it's worth even using your Bottle to slow them down or Invigorate yourself. If they have a god pallet and you most likely will just get them to drop it wether you've slowed them or not, it ain't worth the Bottle. If they have a strong window into a strong pallet, getting them to drop the pallet quickly in the chase, it's definitely worth using a Bottle. This is where it all comes full circle of Clown not being as punished for having to use more Bottle in a chase to get the down because of the buff to his capacity.
It's a risky game mixing the two Bottle types in a chase, in the broader picture of it. The 05 faster activation is still too long in my opinion. If they made it activate in 1 seconds, that would be perfect.
I'd say, the only time to mix and match is if you've practiced a style with both bottles and know when to utilise it. An example, when Antidotes were introduced, I experimented with them to see if it's worth using them at close distance to get a hit directly into the Haste effect. Turns out, this is only viable in tiles where the Survivor is healthy and is gonna get to a vault and perform a fast vault regardless of whether you intoxicated them or not. Using it in a situation where a Survivor can turn after the hit and use the Invigoration as well as you is a situation I put myself in numerous times when experimenting with the Antidote.
Antidotes are best used when the Survivor is guaranteed to get distance, so you can minimise how far they can go. Tonics are best used to confirm a hit in loops that would usually waste time you can't afford to waste. Since the nerf to the blur effect, it does simplify how and when to use the Tonic, which is a good and bad thing. You don't need to use them to try to mindgame when a Survivor is pallet camping anymore. But it also means those hits what could have been turned into a 50/50 are now more in a Survivor side and you just need to get it dropped before playing around your power.
Ultimately, Clown is just one of those killers where you need to rack up that experience in order to truly feel his strength, which from reading how you speak, you know that already. That's also a reason why I am scared of any nerf or buff Clown gets, because touching the wrong thing either way, could lead to Clown being too brain-dead and a monster in chase, or you end up with a Killer that has an anti-loop power but no actual power to actually anti-loop with it lol
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Solid points throughout. Nothing I can disagree with there really, thanks for the in depth explanation dude.
It is a fair concern Clown becoming brain dead if his chase is made stronger, would make him unsatisfying for people who do put in the time.
I like that kind of idea.
I was thinking along this kind of line myself, where survivors get a lingering effect after getting hit with a bottle, like an intoxication effect that affects fine motor skill actions. E.g.
Getting hit by a tonic bottle makes it so for the next 80s, skillchecks appear in pink and misty (just a nice cloudy effect that doesn't obscure but gets the idea across) , do not have a Great skill check zone, and has an additional 30% chance of triggering skillchecks. Using items have a heal/repair speed penalty of 25% (similar idea to don't use tools when intoxicated).
This would make it so that players have to constantly be dealing with skillchecks and making it harder to pay attention to the environment, with the potential to be interrupted for a big skillcheck regression miss, and of course reward Clown when he hits 2 players with a bottle at the same time. Self healing especially starts having issues here.
I think something like that would be a nice little buff that gets the idea across in lieu of losing his intoxication disorientation effect. This would also synergise with Clowns own perk Coulrophobia.
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