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How I would rework the Legion (In-depth)

How I would rework legion

For anyone interested on why I think Legion's current state is bad for dead by daylight, I've included a detailed description on my thoughts on the killer later in this post. I assume most people are here to read the rework idea and, for lack of better words, could care less what I think about Legion.

My proposed rework

Deep Wound Rework
I believe many of the core issues with Legion result from how the Deep wound status effect works and thus it needs to be reworked along with Legion. These changes would also apply to borrowed time victims before anyone asks in the comments.
The first change to deep wound would be that it no longer sends survivors into the dying state after the bleed out meter expires. Instead, the wounds applied to the survivor would become irreparable and leave them in the broken state (cannot heal themselves or be healed by others). Secondly, survivors afflicted with deep wound will have suffer from 20% slower generator repair speeds until successfully completing the full mend action, downed by the killer, or being hooked by the killer. To reiterate, failing to complete the mend action before time expires will result in slower gen speeds for that survivor until they are next downed or hooked. The last change is a slight decrease to the time it takes for the bleed out bar to expire to compensate for its reduced lethality.

The goal behind this change is to eliminate the ability for Legion, or any killer pursuing a borrowed time victim, to easily tunnel and down the afflicted survivor (usually by intentionally losing chase while still actively following them). The generator repair penalty will act as Legions main tool to slow down the game (more on this later) and a reward for any killer applying deep wound.

Legion Changes
1. The first big change for legion would be that he can NO LONGER EVER down a survivor by using feral frenzy attacks. Hitting the same survivor repeatedly until their bleed bar is fully depleted will put them in the broken state mentioned above. Now before you killer mains start forming your riot in the comments, quickly read the second change. The goal of this change is to get rid of the chases that require little to no skill from the killer. Legion can always catch you feral frenzy. The purpose of his power is meant to allow him to rapidly locate different targets and chain attacks between them, not punish the same person over and over.
2. The second major change to legion is buffing his movement speed to be a 115% (default speed for killers like the Trapper). With Feral Frenzy becoming a non-lethal attack, there is no reason for Legion to have slowed movement speed.
3. Legion's base Feral Frenzy duration is slightly extended to support his new hit and run style and help his map control.
4. Hitting a Survivor already in the broken state (with the deep wound effect applied to get there) allows you to locate other survivors at a moderately increased range but no longer applies the deep wound status effect or bleed bar. (To reiterate, deep wound is still applied to no-mither and deliverance users unless they have already depleted a bleed bar without being caught).
5. Successful attacks without using Feral Frenzy no longer deplete feral frenzy's charge. Again, since Feral Frenzy is no longer a lethal action, there is no reason for legion to have it recharge when landing hits outside his power.
6. The last legion change is giving him a hitbox during the stun animation following his/her power. This will allow legion to use his/her power for some sick body block plays. His power will then still have usefulness in chases even if it can't itself get the down.

The new Legion Play-style
After all these changes are enforced, Legion's should strive away form tunneling one person to death and instead chain attacks to as many survivors as possible. Having 115% movement speed will allow legion to finish off the final victim he locates at rates comparable with other killers instead of slowly suffering through each chase. Legions add-on's will still be powerful. Increasing time to mend will help slow the game down if you deal with survivors who mend as soon as possible. Frank's mix tape will still be strong at quickly depleting the bleed bar but instead of drastically speeding up the game from all the survivors DCing, it will slow down the game by hurting their gen speeds. Add-ons that increase his power duration will gain even more distance with his base duration increased. Legion should become a more skill based killer that is more fun to play and play against.

My thoughts on Legion: A great concept with poor execution

Thanks for caring enough to read this part <3
Great Concept
I feel like the developers try to bring a new style of play with every expansion they add to the game, especially on the killer end. Of flesh and mud introduced hex perks as an alternate objective for killers to defend, spark of madness introduced a new way to find survivors and slow down their actions, the Halloween chapter forced survivors to always be on alert and no longer rely on a heartbeat to warn them of danger, and the Saw chapter put ticking time bombs on our heads. I feel that Darkness among us had the same goal of bringing something new. I think Darkness among us wanted to add a killer that diverged away from the typical linear chase. Legions ability to quickly locate a new target after landing a frenzy hit suggests to me that his play-style was meant to revolve around rapidly switching from target to target, only focusing down the last person you find. I think this is a really cool concept and is a refreshing alternative to the typical find and chase until down play-style utilized by most other killers. The problem is how the developers attempted to execute this agenda.

Poor Execution
Right now, landing hits outside of feral frenzy is painfully slow with Legions current movement speed being 110%. He is basically a hag without traps. I was not surprised to see how fast Legion builds switched to tunnel builds focused on using feral frenzy to basically guarantee downs. The unacceptable build that exists right now revolves around abusing the chase mechanics to intentionally lose chase while still following deep wound victims. Throwing bloodhound on your build allows you to literally stare and the floor, following a poor survivor until they die or heal in front of you (then die). It requires 0 skill to perform and isn't very fun for either side. Another strong build stacks purple add-ons to deplete a survivors bleed bar in 2 feral frenzy hits (3 if you include the first feral hit). A half-decent player will always catch you with feral frenzy leaving this build with no real counter. My rework addresses and eliminates these issues giving survivors a fighting chance and allowing legion's to complete a feral frenzy-less chase without breaking their monitors.

Comments

  • FinnishMoose
    FinnishMoose Member Posts: 6
    First, I just wanna commend you for writing a thoughtful post on this. It is always refreshing to see posts like these.

    As for my thoughts:
    I think the direction you're suggesting Legion be moved in is good. They are probably one of my favorite killers to play but I completely understand that the Legion is INCREDIBLY unfun to play against. It's a good idea, I think, to dial back some of the direct lethality of Legion's power in favor of more pressure.

    However, I'm not sure I like the deep wound change, as linking it to gen-speed seems kind of confusing and not thematically fitting. Maybe instead, Deep Wound could just be a permanent Broken state that can only be removed via Mending? That way, Deep Wound is less lethal but still applies a significant amount of pressure which in turn slows the game down.
    The Legion, then, could apply the current notion of Deep Wound (the bleed-out timer) if he strikes a Broken survivor with their power. This seems kind of confusing too, but it's the only way I can think of reworking Legion with minimal effort for the greatest effect on the experience of playing against them.

    I want to write a more in-depth post on the Legion sometime that is a different solution than this, but I just wanted to offer this here in response to your suggestions.

    Thanks for the feedback and read!