Krasue Overbuffs and the problem of not letting killers being "hard to play"
Hello everyone,
After PTB, that I tested for the whole weeks for 1v1s and even public games as Krasue, I'm disappointed at the full release of this killer I was waiting for. The main problem is that tricks, timings, positionings and micromanagement of the forms that I was learning and finding fun to learn and master are gone in favor of some changes that oversimplified her gameplay loop. I know some people are not fun of "hard killers", but at the same time I feel that nowadays we've so many "easy" alternatives and adding some more complex killers would add replayability to players who're around for a long time now.
I'm gonna comment what made mainly problematic this release from PTB and other changes I would go for to make her more challenging and rewarding to play.
- Shorter Wind-Up: This is THE MAIN problem of her buffs. One of her counterplays in PTB, that made 1v1s interesting, was that a survivor having control of a pallet allowed them to react to Intestinal Whip, forcing Krasue either at taking the stun or switching to Human Form to play the tile differently and then consider if breaking the pallet or switch Head Form at the right moment. It created interesting chase dynamics that were both fun for me and the persons who helped me at testing Krasue. New wind-up is too short and makes this whole "metagame" gone: the survivor has to completely guess in a situation that can punish them if pallet drop happens too late (getting hit) or too soon (pallet vault into hit). There's no strategy anymore, and this makes her feeling less interesting to play already just for this.
- Input Buffering, More curving: These changes are the only ones I really like. These didn't impact directly how to play her and made her more interesting and smoother to what I already learned after grinding her PTB for the whole tests week.
- "Ignoring Collisions": this is a tricky one because for some obstacles, for the nature of DbD collisions, some frustrating situations could happen, but I think the current window is too big. I would reduce it to 0.2s, just for the exact starting frames, to only impact smoothness and make correct positioning feeling rewarding again.
- Vault in Flight Mode: This change was so unnecessary, if I needed to vault something I could figure out the timing of the cooldown post Flight to have the interactions back. It was a skill factor, now it's not only "simplified", but it's also a balancement problem.
- Collisions in Flight and Fungi spawns: Both of these sound fine
Now, let's look into what of her current kit is an issue, not part of the changes you made from PTB:
- Pallet Vault: This is not needed, her Intestinal Whip is strong as it is (or it was, even in PTB version). A solution can be making her break the pallet and switch to Human Form while doing it (to avoid zoning into Flight for free hit)
- Chase Perks Synergy of Head Form: Perks like Enduring, Bamboozle, Dark Arrogance and Superior Anatomy are a problem with her. Enduring oversimplify her gameplay loop by making pallet stuns, that are one of the few counterplays she has, not feeling rewarding and forcing the survivor at playing a tile with lowered pallet, so a W/W situation for zero efforts. These perks make an already strong killer feeling literally unstoppable and highly uninteractive on survivor side. I think capping the value of stuns, vaults, etc… of her head form would be the right call to avoid this synergy. Dissolution is problematic as well, but there unfortunately the activation condition is just injuring a survivor: the perk itself feels unhealthy and should be attentioned.
- Flight Mode has too many charges: You can "Fly too much" and leaving no room to survivors in chase in uninteractive ways. I personally like to mix the use of Flight mode for well timed hits, but also the many charges are really forgiving. I would maybe increase consumption rate and slow a bit the recharge or making the possibility of using the Flight at a higher percentage (35% instead of 25%?), maybe making hitting Human Form shots giving some charges back to add more value to the Human Form. The strong add-ons that give almost infinite charges are still there and base charges increased indirectly the recharge rate
- Head Form should go 4.6 m/s and get Bloodlust as normal Human Form.
- To compensate these nerfs, switch to Human Form can be smoother and faster (but not as switch to Head Form to not just make instaM1) to allow more metagaming switch between the forms and allow a more dynamic strategy on the killer side.
Krasue has the potential to be an interesting addition to DbD roster, but her being so oversimplified will make her become boring to play (and miserable to face) really soon. I was so happy for a killer that looked requiring something more to perform well after her PTB, but I got hit by changes that oversimplified what I was enjoying taking time to learn. I believe she can be improved tho and become fun as she looked to be in PTB with right changes that address ALL the problematic and uninteractive parts of her kit. I hope that DbD starts considering having more challenging killers to learn because replayability and stuff being hard is a value, not a problem.
Wishing to the team a good time at addressing Krasue issues to deliver the amazing killer she can be.
Comments
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+1
the thing i want the most for this killer is to make head and body form feel truly dependent on eachother - as it is now you can pretty much ignore every single pallet on the map because of how overbuffed head form got. making the decision to chase someone in head OR body form should be a real question at every loop, not just going into body form to spit and then be discardedto achieve this i like the idea of keeping a small bit of slide for intestinal whip but making it a super straight and difficult to turn to establish its niche in more standard tiles, and then when you get to round fillers and such you use body form for the curved lunge and break zoning. they also def need to address the vault → headlong flight combo since it can be used right now to outplay god pallets, completely eliminating the need to use body mode to break :/
5 -
I fully agree with everything you said here! I really hope we can have skill floor and ceiling for this killer with micromanaging between the two forms!
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