How would you improve 'The Dredge' via buff or QOL improvements?

CrowVortex
CrowVortex Member Posts: 961
edited July 22 in Feedback and Suggestions

It's a no brainer that he needs some sort of help and i would hope he would be on a roadmap at some point in time down the line, but it brings up the question of how would you improve him without indirectly buffing Trickster / Huntress with additional locker placements?

In my mind, additional locker placements are not the way to go about it and it would most likely be a pain to specifically code in more locker's only for Dredge on every Map. Instead we can perhaps look at his Remnant teleport ability to be more effective, with how the Unknown's clones are passively generated, maybe Dredge can get a similar treatment with passively generating remnant's he can teleport to once Nightfall has hit? Maybe include a toggle for locker / remnant teleport function, like how clown's purple / yellow bottle power activation works.

So some ideas…

  • Once Nightfall has commenced, the dredge will drop a Remnant at his current location every 10 seconds for the entirety of Nightfall's duration, that last until removed by a survivor touching it. (up to 6-8 Remnant's allowed on the map)
  • Once Nightfall has commenced, any injured survivor can not see readable auras while within 16m of a dropped Remnant's husk's vicinity until Nightfall ends.
  • While the Dredge is out of Nightfall, he is completely silent with his teleport directional audio cues while at least one remnant husk remains on the map.
  • While in Nightfall and you have at least one remnant husk active, you are not Highlighted in white to survivors.

Other than that, perhaps some reduced cooldowns and increased teleport speeds outside of Nightfall and some additional addon updates with the changes above in mind.

Thoughts on these suggestions or how yourself would go about changing him?

Post edited by Rizzo on

Comments

  • MechWarrior3
    MechWarrior3 Member Posts: 2,197

    Better locker spawns, tone down the noises he's makes a little while in nightfall or undetectable. He is loud. Haddies Calendar base kit. @Blueberry honestly would know better than me, but from what I have learned from him this is what I could think of.

  • fussy
    fussy Member Posts: 1,508

    I can't agree on "more locker for Dredge is not way to go". On some maps he literally has no power and there no doubt should be some work on locker placement on every map. Dredge is most map dependent killer and something should be done with it.
    But I love your first idea. To be fair, same as Trapper, Dredge needs literally half of his addons basekit just to be ~B tier killer.
    So for me locker placement and basekit numbers improvements is a good way to begin with. I still wish to see this killer as my one of the most playable characters, but in current state he can compete only against pretty bad soloq team, especially after anti-3 gen.

  • HexHuntressThighs
    HexHuntressThighs Member Posts: 1,243

    Honestly there is no reason to be able to lock lockers anymore. Even If lockers couldn’t be locked he would still be mid.

  • Yggleif
    Yggleif Member Posts: 182

    Assuming more lockers isn't an option which seems like the case.

    -Remove lock mechanic

    -24m TR, the remnant is an extremely close range power and they're incredibly loud anyway so I see no reason why Dredge needs the usual TR

    -Make the brown hood add on basekit, Dredge is already very loud so survivors have a ton of time to run away. Give Dredge a basekit way to punish survivors that try to stealth instead.

    -Increase teleporting speed out of nightfall by 15%.

  • CrowVortex
    CrowVortex Member Posts: 961

    I think either way it would have to be approached cautiously if they don't want to have Dredge specific map coding regarding lockers, but yeah better locker placements would help tremendously.

    It's a part of his counterplay in BHVR's eyes, though somewhat heavily hurts him when he's forced into the locked locker while teleporting regardless of which locker he highlights in close proximity. But yeah, i agree.

  • ReverseVelocity
    ReverseVelocity Member Posts: 4,315
    edited July 19

    This is a case where a few small changes would go a very long way.

    Here's what I'd do:

    • Increase Daytime Teleport speed to 20m/s (and Nightfall to 40m/s to even it out)
    • Decrease power cooldown, or make it so using the Remnant only takes 1 Token, and have his cooldown be Token based instead
    • Decrease the amount of charges required to activate Nightfall
    • -0.5s time to break a Locked Locker
    • Remove the sound when teleporting to an unlocked locker

  • Huge_Bush
    Huge_Bush Member Posts: 5,335

    I’m not a Dredge main but I figured since he can teleport to lockers, he might as well teleport to totems and chests.

  • CrowVortex
    CrowVortex Member Posts: 961

    Interesting, how would that function on cleansed totems or your own hex totems?

    Yeah these sound like some good qol options for him.

    They could probably keep the lock mechanic, but stop it forcing you into the locked locker while attempting to teleport to an unlocked locker next to it, just unnecessary how it works like that.

  • SkeletonDance
    SkeletonDance Member Posts: 325

    Give Dredge an additional locker placements like the pig with jigsaw boxes, nemesis with vaccines, sadako with TVs etc

  • Iron_Cutlass
    Iron_Cutlass Member Posts: 3,191

    Outside of improved locker placement (which a lot of people covered), I would make it so hits following a teleport reduce his ability cooldown (effect does not apply or stack during Nightfall).

    His power is really punishing in a normal match of DBD, hitting your power puts you on a lengthy cooldown when not in Nightfall which ironically leads to situations where you dont build Nightfall as fast since all chase-related factors that build Nightfall are inherently slow because you are not in Nightfall.

    It is effectively leads to a situation, where the only time you actually have a power is in Nightfall, and you effectively have nothing when not in Nightfall, and you struggle to build up to Nightfall since you have nothing to work with.

  • JesseJH28
    JesseJH28 Member Posts: 483
    edited July 20

    I came back from a 2-3 year break recently and picked up Dredge - genuinely don't feel like any buffs are needed, but I'm also probably not in very high mmr yet. I've found with the right perks, it's a VERY oppressive killer...

    If I had to choose any sort of buff, it'd simply be to have your teleport ready at the very start of the match. I've found that the early game is very much my weak point, but once I've built some pressure, it's usually very easy to keep it up, even if almost every locker has been locked.

    I'd actually also like to increase the hit boxes on the locks because the amount of times I'll try to break a lock by swinging at it from the outside and somehow miss is just embarrassing lol

    Edit: really didn't need to explain my whole build with all those extra words

  • Hex_Ignored
    Hex_Ignored Member Posts: 1,873

    Better locker spawns and more lockers in general on some maps and maybe slightly faster teleporting speed outside of nightfall would be all it really needs.

  • HaunterofShadows
    HaunterofShadows Member Posts: 4,092

    As a dredge main, I disagree. When people see they are going against dredge, they will not enter lockers. They will lock them however, giving the dredge and opportunity to grab them.

    They just need to change the dredge automatically going into the locked one.

  • Huge_Bush
    Huge_Bush Member Posts: 5,335

    I’m sure they can make it work even if the bones are broken.

  • danielmaster87
    danielmaster87 Member Posts: 9,130

    I mean lockers don't have to have locks on them. That's just overboard on his counterplay. He doesn't need to slow down so much while holding out the remnant. And he doesn't need to be so loud!

  • squbax
    squbax Member Posts: 1,451

    I would do just two simple changes, first one better locker placements, I think thats a no brainer. And second one rather than removing the lock mechanic make it so that while in nightfall all lockers get unlocked and cannot be locked.

    With this change you still keep the counterplay dredge has aka locks, while making his tp better and making nightfall something thats actually dangerous for survivors.

  • ARTRA
    ARTRA Member Posts: 938

    You know how alien and sadako have tunnels/portals close to gens?

    Dredge (and may be trickster and huntress) spawns 7 extra lockers somewhat close to gens.

    Code is already done, just change tv with regular locker. Survs can use those too for inner healing, hide and stuff.

    That and a little addon pass.

  • Devil_hit11
    Devil_hit11 Member Posts: 8,411
    edited July 20

    -drastically lower the radius of his terror radius in nightfall

    -reduce nightfall charges to 225 from 300.

    -invent a mechanic to spawn revenants in nightfall to teleport on without a locker reducing dredge's map locker rng.

  • LordGlint
    LordGlint Member Posts: 8,371

    I fail to see why we CANT have dredge specific lockers. There's already spots assigned on maps for various killer specific props to utilize. Pig's boxes, Freddy's alarm clocks, Sadako's Tv's singularity's EMP printers ect. These locations have the property of being spread around the map very well... It really shouldn't be all that hard for Dredge to have a similar killer specific prop that I'd just regular lockers in those locations.

  • Caiman
    Caiman Member Posts: 2,612

    Make him quieter, especially during Nightfall. Spawn special lockers in killer belongings locations like others have suggested. Make him faster while charging Remnant and reduce the darkness visual effect because blinding myself to use my power sucks. Make Haddie's Calender partial basekit.

    I'm fine with toning down Nightfall's darkness effect for survivors but in exchange I want Dredge to have outright invisibility at a distance during Nightfall like what Spirit, Freddy, and Sadako have but way better. He shouldn't glow during Nightfall either, in fact no one should except from Dredge's perspective.

  • Akumakaji
    Akumakaji Member Posts: 5,184

    Its so counterintuitive that Dredge, while in his scary nighttime mode and stealthed, is soooo loud that you can hear him from the other side of any tileset.

    Op specifically was against optimised locker placement, but I had a game on Lerys where my initial thought was "oh well, at least its an indoor map with lots of lockers", only to realise that the map literally had two quarter's without ANY lockers.not only did it gimp my ambush potential, it made moving over the map a pain, when I couldn't even react to a loud noise notification. Ugh.

  • UndeddJester
    UndeddJester Member Posts: 3,066
    edited July 21

    If you could someone turn everyone's Monitors into TVs so that darkness actually does something, that'll help a lot. Dredge on console is unbelievably spoopy. 😁

    I like everything here. Especially the faster teleport. The number of times I've flown past a survivor during teleport, or clicked the wrong locker behind the one I wanted, hurts my brain... now I'm floating in the void trying to come back... 😒

    Now I think about it... changing target mid flight at the expense of a token would actually an awesome QOL change. Would let you correct mistakes and react to things as you move around.

    Not sure faster Nightfall would be needed with the rest of this in place.…though if it is... I think it would be cool if the faster locker break was during Nightfall, go even harder on this value and make the add-on apply to normal locker breaks. Nightfall is supposed to be Dredges equivalent of Oni's Demon mode, a series of locked Lockers can make his life seriously hard for him...

    Also does anyone else find it inexcusable awkward to break lockers locks with m1s? I probably succeed in breaking them maybe 70% of the time, and the rest of the time I seem to hit the locker itself and have to swing again…

  • Marioneo
    Marioneo Member Posts: 808

    Faster teleport during daytime.

    Rework his antiloop can't be buffed without him getting a guaranteed free.

    Malthinkers skull basekit

  • Assassin97
    Assassin97 Member Posts: 35

    Remove the damn whooshing noise he makes when he is near, it sounds like an industrial vacuum cleaner is being ran, it undermines his stealth so hard, better locker spawns on some maps also.

  • BlueDragonHatch
    BlueDragonHatch Member Posts: 12

    The dredge is fun to play against, so i'd love to see more of them. Here's some changes i wouldn't mind seeing as a survivor.

    Additonal lockers as killer's belongings to remove teleportation deadspots.

    Slightly faster daytime teleportation and reward good teleports by adding night time progress when you start a chase from a locker.

    During nightime drastically increase speed of breaking out of a locked locker, maybe limited to twice per night.

  • VomitMommy
    VomitMommy Member Posts: 2,257

    I would want two changes.

    • More locker spawns, they can make it as Dredge only spawns
    • During Nightfall if you teleport to locked locker, you instantly break it and get out as usual

  • BlueDragonHatch
    BlueDragonHatch Member Posts: 12

    Dredge is fun to play against, and i'd love to see more of them. With that in mind:

    • - Remove forced teleportation into locked lockers
    • - Slightly increase daytime teleportation speed

    • - Add lockers on the "killer possesion" placements

    • - Make starting a chase from a locker give nightime progress

    Mainly quality of life, removing teleport deadspots from the map and making him a bit stronger during the day.

    Also rewards good teleports with night time progress, making lockers more threatening early game.

    Btw, he's already undetectable at night.

  • Jean_Cobra
    Jean_Cobra Member Posts: 114

    Don't ask for buffs, there is a Monkey's paw, it will end up like the Knight or the Twins, or Trickster.