Comprehensive feedback on the changes since the PTB

femboyfin

NOTE: This will only include commentary on the "Changes from PTB" section of the patch notes. While the 9.2.0 PTB feedback section is closed and therefor I can't link to that post, you can still find my thoughts on the rest of the 9.2.0 changes (including the postponed ones) on my GitHub if you're interested.

Changes from PTB

New Killer: The Krasue

NEW KILLER POWER:

• Intestinal Whip will now ignore obstructions for 0.6 seconds. This is excessively long. I'm unsure if the 0.2 second wind-up duration subtracts from this number or if the ignore duration is purely subtracted from the damaging phase of the whip, but either way, this is severely over-tuned, removes a large amount of her skill expression, and drops her mechanical skill floor to effectively nothing once you know what to do and when to do it (which is not very complex in and of itself). This should be either outright removed or more preferably, reduced to the first 0.1 seconds during the damaging phase of the whip, this would accomplish the goal of making her feel smoother to use than on the PTB without making her feel too rough to verse.
• Shortened the wind-up of Intestinal Whip to 0.2 seconds (was 0.35). This change has made the whip functionally impossible to react to. While you can theoretically begin an input before she will close the distance, without anticipation you don't have enough time to vault and have your hitbox clear the vault before the Krasue can damage you, effectively eliminating vaulting as individual pallet counterplay on the vast majority of fillers and less-safe tiles. A killer of this strength level doesn't need an ability like this, I'd like to see this reverted back to the state it was in during the PTB, 0.35 seconds, where it's barely possible to react to but still doable, this would turn pallet vaulting back into a proper 50/50 scenario and require mindgaming to get the hit reliably.
• Increased Intestinal Whip turn-rate to 220 (was 150). This is fine, she felt extremely clunky to play as in the PTB, and while her PTB strength level definitely didn't constitute buffs without compensatory nerfs, this makes her feels leagues better to control.
• Decreased the initial number of Glowing Fungus to 4 (was 6) and maximum number to 8 (was 10). This was a completely unnecessary change. It will likely be a while before fungi management becomes a well-known aspect of playing her, but this is a massively influential change for her macro pressure and snowball potential. Assuming two infects per head form transition, the survivors will be out of mushrooms after four cycles, meaning for every additional head form transition where this pace is maintained, one additional survivor will be broken, capping out at 3 survivors (or 4 if you opt not to use head form anymore). This is a killer with extremely strong map traversal, hatch and exit gate scouting abilities above that of any other killer, extremely low effort resistance to mind games as well as mindgame potential, passive slowdown in the form of fungi cleansing, and some of the strongest chase potential of any killer arguably rivalling Blight in this aspect- she does not also need to have a budget version of the Plague's in the latter portion of the match if played patiently as well.
• Decreased Corporeal Weave time to shift from Head Form to Body Form to 2.2 seconds (was 2.6). This is fine, this makes leaving the current tile on form-change substantially more risky and much more likely to leave you in the open, susceptible to regurgitation, for doing so. The old-pig style "leave the tile for free!" trick wasn't particularly interesting gameplay for either side, and 2.2 seconds doesn't feel too oppressive, giving you time to reposition yourself wherever you'd like (zoning allowing) within the current tile and sometimes even moving to a close-by adjacent filler or tile.
• Increased vault time while in Head Form to 1.7 seconds (was 1.5) This is a reasonable nerf, this might need to be tuned a bit more extreme to prevent her from outplaying otherwise must-break god pallets like shack though, however nerfs in other regards may accomplish this without making her feel sluggish when vaulting weaker pallets.
• Increased the initial number of Headlong Flight charges to 12 (was 10). This was simply an unnecessary buff, the main complaints surrounding her power on the PTB was the clunky feeling around her intestinal whip which was resolved by the turn-rate increase and brief obstruction immunity.
• Added collision with Survivors during Headlong Flight. This on it's own is fine, but I would rather her briefly lose collision during the cancellation (voluntary and involuntary) of Headlong Flight, allowing her to use this as a tool to combat body-blocking without letting her use it as a tool to squeeze underneath and then in front of a survivor to stick herself between a window or pallet preventing a vault.
• Added the ability to vault during Headlong Flight at the cost of ending the action. While this does make her feel smoother to play, it promotes using Flight as an aggressive chase tool far too much when she already has a strong movement based special attack in this form. Having some sort of penalty like having to wait a brief period before being able to vault a window or pallet after using Flight seems like a very reasonable trade-off for the distance you can close on-the-fly in chase, allowing a survivor who made distance intelligently to an area with a vault available to have a tiny bit of breathing room before they're being whipped.
• Added input buffering on Head Form abilities. Good change, always love to see input buffering being added to basically all inputs in the game.

In addition to the above, currently there are a few frustration points largely revolving around timing that would serve as very reasonable nerfs while promoting the usage of Head Form and without degrading the experience of Headlong Flight/Intestinal Whip:

The extremely low delay between regurgitations can make her feel quite spammy, especially given how high stakes an infection is. Between the supplementary homing mini-glands that also fully infect you, how greatly strengthened she is once she lands the infection, and how quickly she can then swap to Head Form, the frequency at which she can regurgitate should be noticeably reduced. Increasing the recharge time from 2.5 seconds to 4 seconds should do the trick without making misses too disheartening.

Her post-throw cooldown before being able to M1 after a regurgitation is also extremely short, leading to situations where in order to dodge the infection, the survivor is put in a position where they have to simply accept getting infected, getting infected and M1ed, or get M1ed anyways after the miss. This puts the survivor in a lose-lose-lose situation with no real positive outcome for them, making regurgitation a relatively strong zoning tool despite her chase power being restricted to Head Form traditionally. Increasing the post-throw cooldown from 1 second to 2 seconds should do the trick, without making the risk feel too high for the reward.

The PTB included sweeping basekit anti-tunnel changes, which preemptively squashed most concerns around her infection remaining post unhook because that was the environment she was tested in. This is a major oversight in her balance between PTB and live, and has made her one of the best killers in terms of tunnelling without accounting for her already high strength level. This needs to be addressed to some extent and there are a few approaches that are hook-specific that avoid touching fungi directly. Option 1 is to immediately begin lowering the survivors leech meter the moment they're placed on hook, without requiring them to consume a mushroom, this has the bonus of making the current fungi-count numbers on live much more reasonable. Option 2 is to automatically set their Leech Meter to a certain number of charges but not quite at Leeched I, something like 1/3 or 2/3 full, this has the benefit of avoiding punishing the hooked survivor for being unhooked before their infection has fully regressed.

The final major frustration point in versing her is how quickly she can whip when transitioning to head form. She effectively has no delay, being able to swing before her husk has even fully hit the ground. This combined with the decreased time to change to head form has resulted in a lot of hits where you then say to yourself "oh yeah I forgot she can swing mid animation :/". It's simply unintuitive and feels visually weird from both points of view. She should at least have to wait until a brief moment after her transition animation is fully completed for clarity's sake.

NEW KILLER ADD-ONS:

• Chicken Head:
  • Now spawns 2 additional Glowing Fungus at the start of the match. This add-on needed a nerf from it's state in the PTB, this change simply partially reverts a buff between PTB and live, it almost seems as though this downside was decided prior to the basekit fungi count changes. This is by far her most oppressive add-on and a minor start-of-match downside that still results in fewer Fungi available after all have initially cleansed on top of the early game chase benefits of starting everyone infected makes this by far her strongest add-on. The infection either needs to start at 2/3 while keeping the fungi count downside, or start at 1/3 without it.

FEATURES

Tunneling Reduction Update

• Reverted the perk changes associated with this update. Notably: Notably, this list is missing a variety of the updated perks, some for better and some for worse. Off the Record, No Mither, Plot Twist, Tenacity, A Nurse's Calling, and Deerstalker were all adjusted due to either the tunnelling reduction or slugging reduction as shown in the 9.2.0 PTB patch notes sneak preview discord stage, but have shipped to live regardless. No Mither, Deerstalker, and A Nurse's Calling changes coming to live without those reduction systems is welcome in my opinion. However, Off the Record and Tenacity have effectively been butchered and will likely see very little use in their current state in the context of live (I'm hopeful that Tenacity, an already low pickrate perk, will accompany OTR in the announced 9.2.2 adjustments accounting for this mistake). I disagreed with the Plot Twist changes on the PTB and still disagree with them on live, I don't think it needs this buff neither with nor without the tested reduction systems.
  • Babysitter
  • Barbecue and Chili
  • Borrowed Time I was surprised when some perks weren't reverted from the PTB and BT was as I believe it could use the buffs on live, but I'll be fine with the lack of inclusion once OTR is readjusted.
  • Eruption
  • Pop Goes the Weasel
  • Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance

KILLER UPDATES

The Shape's Add-Ons

• Fragrant Tuft of Hair:
  • Decreased rarity to Uncommon (was Visceral). As explained below, I like for Add-ons to be classified as Visceral specifically when they change the way a character is played (or played against). This reduces the frequency at which new players trying to learn the basekit mechanics of a new killer will end up being confused (as generally newer players will tend to have less high rarity add-ons at their disposal).
• Scratched Mirror:
  • Increased rarity to Visceral (was Very Rare). This is not the nerf I was hoping to see as this nerf practically does nothing against the players who are already going to be the most oppressive when using this; the ones that main Myers, have him P100'd, or simply have been playing long enough to where spending Bloodpoints has no real cost for them anymore. I do think that Visceral addons should be specifically reserved for add-ons that change the way a character is played, and that add-on rarity should be directly correlated with add-on strength, however these rarity classifications should be done after balancing, not as part of it, because of the aforementioned examples of players who are unaffected by this type of balancing. The existence of the 4.4m/s Memorial Flower add-on really constitutes the old reduced lunge distance penalty of the previous Scratched Mirror add-on.