Houndmaster's First Impressions Fall Flat
On paper, the Houndmaster’s power sounds great, but in practice, the dog is a mess. It constantly gets stuck on even the smallest obstacles, breaking off its path and wasting your time. "Redirect Chase" is supposed to help, but it’s so slow and inconsistent that it rarely makes a difference in a chase. To top it off, the dog’s hitbox is tiny, survivors just need to make a small turn.
Map Design Problems:
The maps aren’t doing this killer any favors either. With tight corners and narrow spaces everywhere, survivors can easily break line of sight or sidestep your attacks, making the Houndmaster’s chase potential feel pointless. When even basic map design is working against you, keeping up pressure is a serious struggle.
"Chase" Command:
This is supposed to be the Houndmaster’s big threat: you send the dog out in a straight line, kind of like how the Artist uses crows. The problem? Survivors aren’t clueless, they know how to move. "Redirect Chase" should help, but in reality, switching to the dog's view and "firing" takes so long that survivors have already moved or hidden by the time you act.
The dog is supposed to be able to curve around obstacles, but it’s so inconsistent that it rarely works out. Instead of sticking close to objects, the dog just shifts slightly and keeps moving in a straight line, making it laughably predictable, honestly, even easier to dodge than Vecna’s FOTD.
"Search" Command:
"Search" is pretty underwhelming. Sure, sending the dog to a distant gen might tell you someone’s there, but it leaves you with no real way to apply pressure across the map. At best, it’s useful when you’re already heading to a gen, since you can use the dog’s path for a small speed boost. But even then, survivors hear the dog coming from a mile away, so you pretty much announce you're coming.
"Redirect Chase":
Just a quick note, this ability often doesn’t work as intended. Half the time, it either cuts off before you can use it or just flat-out fails to work. Not sure if this is a bug, but I really hope it isn’t intended.
Dog Pathing & AI:
The dog’s AI is all over the place. Sometimes it’ll stroll right past a survivor without reacting, especially when it’s returning to you. It makes the whole power feel like a joke instead of a threat. The visuals and sounds are cool, but what’s the point if it doesn’t work properly?
It gets worse when the dog circles around you while idle. Depending on where it starts, it might take a totally different (and usually bad) path when you send it on a chase—or just get stuck. And there are times when it just does nothing: it’ll miss survivors it runs right through, get stuck on the map, cancel chase randomly, or take a terrible route to a gen.
Overall Experience:
Playing the Houndmaster is like rolling the dice every match. Between tight maps, buggy pathing, and unpredictable AI, you never know if the dog will actually work as intended, and most of the time, it won’t. You’re not just playing against survivors, you’re fighting the map and your own power too. This killer needs way more consistency to make it worth learning. Right now, it’s like if Nemesis’ zombies were his only power, you’d have barely any control, and it’d feel pointless. That's how it feels playing Houndmaster.
Comments
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Playing Houndmaster will be similar to playing Knight, I suppose.
You have to hope your power will work properly.
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She seems very clunky. I haven’t been able to play much yet but so far everything feels janky.
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From what I have seen, it’s been the same result. She needs to be smoothed out. Her dog doesn’t even injury people from what I saw?
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