Legion 2.0 (A rework that tries to keep Legion's "identity")
The Legion (2.0, aka ‘An attempt to preserve parts of Legion’s kit while balancing them out)
Opening statement: This is long. If I don't mention something, it's because I either forgot it exists or didn't feel it even needed to be touched. Feedback is appreciated, it helps me as well as anyone on the development team that happens to see it. Avoided giving numbers where I wasn't sure on the specifics, might go back and edit them in if I rethink them. So yeah, let's get to it.
115% movement speed.
Activate ability to enter Feral Frenzy (FF). In this state you move faster, can vault windows and have a (within a range of 25% and 50%, not sure yet) reduced cooldown on attacks, both missed and hit. Hits in this state put survivors into the Deep Wound (DW) state, and additional hits reduce the DW timer, but immediately cancel FF. Hitting an injured survivor without DW will start them with a lower timer, but still cancel FF.
Break pallets (50%?) faster while in FF, vault them with Iridescent Pin (instead of the breaking effect, probably? Could be an addition to, probably too strong but Iridescent Head exists so...).
While in a chase, FF recharges slowly (and doesn’t start recharging normally until a short period after the chase ends, maybe?). The current recharge time reduction addons instead apply to recharge while in a chase. While not in a chase, FF recharges at its current speed. After hitting a healthy survivor while in FF, all survivors within your terror radius are marked. (Excluding injured survivors feels like too hard of a nerf, but focusing on injured survivors makes it too tunnely.)
So, short summary on the changes before I explain the rationale: normal killer movespeed (no change to FF movespeed), no longer vaults pallets by default and instead breaks them faster, attacks have reduced cooldown in FF instead of none, hitting injured (not DW) survivors now end Feral Frenzy but apply additional DW, slower FF recharge in a chase, aura tracking only triggers when you hit healthy survivors.
115% Movespeed: Pretty straightforward, saw this requested a lot when Legion changes are mentioned. It puts them in a similar position to Wraith: getting a free hit, then having to chase normally. The DW pressure doesn’t particularly matter unless they escape, or you abuse game mechanics and moonwalk to start the timer (more on that later). However, the change allows the Legion to move at a reasonable speed, which significantly improves them without Feral Frenzy (my primary goal was to improve the killer outside of Feral Frenzy, and turn Feral Frenzy into more of a Phase Walk type ability).
Window/Pallet Vaulting: The biggest problem with The Legion is the fact that they effectively invalidate any counterplay a survivor has in a chase. Being able to vault windows quickly, I feel, would not be as damaging with the other proposed changes in the list, since you are now punished for mindlessly using your ability (or wasting your addon slots to make it less punishing, but less effective). Saving it to end a loop at an L-Wall T-Wall or Shack quickly is, in my opinion, smart play as opposed to ignoring counterplay.
This argument, even with the rest of the changes, does not apply to pallets. Pallets are ‘consumable’ and therefore should not be completely avoidable by any killer without significant drawback (see Huntress for an example of this done right). Breaking them faster feels like a happy medium to this (you’re in a frenzy, you beat on it harder and faster, yeah?). Tying Iridescent Pin to vaulting pallets instead of breaking them is a (potentially poor) attempt to not completely remove the mechanic, and the argument is that Iridescent Head exists, I suppose? I’m not really hard on keeping it, it’s one of the least fun parts of the killer for survivors. Just trying to change as little as possible.
Reduced Attack Cooldown: Straightforward: It’s stupid to not be punished at all for missing attacks. Reduce it? Sure. Remove it? No. This is also something I don’t have a hard stance on keeping, but the counter argument is that you’re in a frenzy, which implies speed, and getting a hit will still apply a greater cooldown, so maybe it’s fine.
Feral Frenzy Hit Changes: I’m throwing these together because I feel like they’re explained the same way: Staying injured should not be a hard counter to Legion, but just making Frank’s Mixtape baseline is a bad way of fixing that. On the PTB, with Frank’s and Stab Wounds Study, you can two shot an injured survivor (and you get two swings in Feral Frenzy, so it’s effectively a one shot). Having Feral Frenzy end on hitting an injured survivor prevents this regardless of addons, but adding the extra bleed does make it a punishment to stay injured. It’s just not a death sentence, since you can still run the killer around (and DW doesn’t tick down until you break chase). Removing the aura tracking from all but healthy survivors hits (effectively, since FF ends when you hit an injured survivor) is a way to do what Legion feels like they’re supposed to: delay the game by keeping everyone injured and healing.
Feral Frenzy Recharge Changes: I saved this one for last because it’s the one with, I feel, the biggest mechanical problems. I went for a reduced recharge instead of none because that’s what it should ideally do. No recharge, while more punishing, shouldn’t be necessary with the rest of the changes (but it’s worth consideration regardless). However, there is no change you can make related to this that does not have the biggest mechanical problem with Legion: moonwalking.
For those that are unaware, when Legion is chasing a survivor, the Deep Wound timer is paused (Pig works the same way with her traps, I believe). This is to avoid Legion tunneling someone down, since it’s so easy to get a hit. However, you can break chase by turning completely around, and avoid reinitiating chase by not looking directly at the survivor, therefore “proxy chasing” a survivor that has no way of avoiding the down. It’s a guaranteed down, but it’s slow and unfun for both players in the chase.
These same issues arise with the proposed recharge changes. Unfortunately, the only way to truly fix them would be an overhaul of chase mechanics. Things like beginning a chase if you’re moving towards someone you would have LoS (line of sight) on for multiple seconds, knowing when you’re actually following someone versus when you just happen to be moving in the same direction without that knowledge (I imagine this is more difficult to do than I might assume, since the chance of having “phantom chases” that completely dick over a survivor would now be there) would be a good way to try and fix it, but ultimately anything relating to the state of chases in the game can be abused with the current mechanics. It’s just that Legion is the first killer that can do so effectively, and the only solution would be to untie them mechanically from chases. However, this is a far more difficult change to balance around, at least for me in this short write-up that I’m already not entirely confident in balance wise. And if chases prove too difficult for the dev team to fix, then the power will have to be changed accordingly.
But there’s a high note, I feel. With the changes I’ve proposed, I hope that Legion is effective enough at a normal chase that abusing the game mechanics is no longer preferable, and it’s more difficult to abuse said game mechanics easily (without much faster recharge times out of chases, you’ll have to waste a lot more time moonwalking, though I don’t think most people run the recharge addons anyways).
So yeah. Wrote this up in roughly an hour, been thinking about the changes for awhile. You may be wondering… why bother?
Two reasons. The first is that I like thinking about game balance, and the more I actually discuss the changes with others, the better I feel I’ll get at it. I might be a complete idiot sometimes, but evidently so are other game developers (no hate BHVR, love your game but boy Legion was a colossal mistake) and the only way to improve is to be called an idiot for my stupid ideas.
The second reason is that I’ve seen so many people say to delete Legion, that Legion is a failure, and there’s no way to salvage the killer. Obviously, this is borderline impossible since people paid money for them, but it’s also not helpful feedback to a development team that clearly aren’t sure how to balance the character. I wanted to take a crack at it, hopefully it helps them find a path towards a better character. Or at the very least, a less oppressive one.
And yes, Legion is oppressive in their design currently. Nurse is technically better and more oppressive, but Nurse requires a large amount of skill (and a significant amount of game knowledge) to be as oppressive as Legion is to a single player. A bad Nurse is laughable, a bad Legion is annoying. A good Nurse is terrifying, a good Legion is… still annoying, but more so. And a great Nurse is unbeatable, but you can’t be great at Legion. And it goes without saying that the PTB changes are a step in the wrong direction, because they do nothing to correct the design problems Legion has, they only correct the power problems.
If you read this far, thanks. If you give feedback, regardless of what it is, thank you for taking the time to do so. I genuinely appreciate it. That being said, try to target specific points so I know where to correct problems. If everything is bad, then well... try to explain why, or just move on. I'll get the idea.