My Thoughts on the Trickster Update

Shroompy

Good evening ladies and gents its a pleasure to meet you but its even better to meet me. As a Trickster main I must say that these changes are pretty damn good. It doesnt only keep his identity, but also add onto it by increasing his skill ceiling and have more skill expression.

First I wanna go over the actual changes to his base kit. 6 blades, faster pull out and exit, and better laceration decay are all great. It feels really nice to be able to quickly throw around a corner at high wall loops. With all of these changes in mind I do think 4.4 is warranted since he is a lot more threatning, but making him slower while throwing as well just feels a bit much. Slowing down his base speed already means holding W is a lot more effective and making his throw state movement speed also slower makes it even worst. Essentially it makes him worst in places he's already bad at, while not making much of a difference in places he thrives in.

Now the part Im most divided on, and thats his blade count going from 44 to 36. Part of me agrees with the change purely because it deincentivizes spamming and makes every knife count. On the other hand he wont have Main Event nearly as often which automatically means he's going to be going through those knives a lot faster, regardless if youre hitting your shots. He was also initially reduced to 44 knives (from 60) when he received his first batch of changes shortly after his release, and no one really had an issue with that.

Next up the reintroduction of a faster throw rate for consecutive throws. Unless they changed what counts as a consecutive throw (which from what I can tell it wasnt) then this doesnt really make a difference. 8 knives for a 5% increase, or 16 for a 10% is just not going to happen outside of Main Event where youre already throwing really fast. Id either remove this part of his kit entirely to make room for a faster throw rate for each Style Rank, or lower the amount of knives needed to reach that faster throw rate (especially for the 10%)

Main Event is something I want to touch on as well. It being a static 8 seconds is nice in theory, but with how much he slows down its just extremely awkward to use. Personally Id like to see the duration increased a little and make it so you need to manually input blade throws. That way if they decide to keep the slower movement speed while throwing, you can at least adjust yourself a little by moving a tad bit faster.

Now the main part of his update, the Style Ranking. Very big fan of this and it feels very satisfying going up in ranks, the faster throw rate and reload speed are nice, the latter sort of off setting the lower blade count. The only thing I would change about this is making it so hitting a long ranged shot also gives 3 style points, since right now its only throwing through small gaps.

Speaking of throwing through gaps and hitting long range.. I feel like these should be rewarded more. Edge of Revival is something I feel should be basekit and also apply to small gaps. 32m is also quite crazy, 24m seems more appropriate. (If not make it basekit, Edge of Revival should also apply to smaller gaps)

One other thing is I dont know if Im going insane but it feels like they changed something with the knives themselves. Im convinced they make the hitbox of the knives smaller or there was some sort of desync issue since there are times where things just felt off.

Now for a more misc. thing... his new laughs. I dont know if its something that is just gonna take time to get used to, but even after all the time I spent testing him I just could not get over it. His high combo laughs on live is something I absolutely love hearing and those have been replaced with something that feels way too over the top that doesnt even sound like him.

Anyway, if you read through this entire thing I thank you. Never would of thought that Trickster of all killers would of received a 2nd chapter, but I am not complaining whatsoever <3

Brimp

The knives did feel a bit off in the ptb like I was hitting knives that looked like they had huntress hatchet hitboxes. Other times it felt like they had model accurate hitboxes. As for style ranks I feel you go up too fast mainly because the bonus points for "threading the needle" is actually so generous and can trigger off of other survivors that are near the knives. Also, Main Event had this weird clunky 0.3 second delay when you press the button compared to when it actually ends. I assume its to have it more line up with the animations to where it ends after your next arm comes down but overall feels awkward.

As for him being back to 4.4 I feel like the best way to go forward is to literally just give him 4.6 only in S rank or leave the current numbers as they are in the PTB and give the entirety of Cut Thru U Single base kit and rework the addon again. It's haste so it makes main event, throw state and windup/down times a little bit more lenient without him being too overbearing. Other than that if he were to release like he is in the PTB now I would definitely like the laceration time to go back up to maybe 14 seconds as the decay is a little bit longer than live so the first stack would decay around the same time as live but be longer overall.

OrangeBear

I think double laceration should not exist. Because it'll always have to be conditional and survivors already struggle to understand why they are getting hit. The small gap detection is also bad as well it seems to work by just throwing over a box. Additionally, the UI/SFX feedback is not designed for double laceration.

Otherwise i like the update but it simply just does not address any of trickster's issues. Does it make him more fun to play sure. Are survivors going to hate him and continue to call him skillless absolutely. They are simply just landing on an iteration that feels better to play (for now…). One that requires more usage of the power in exchange for it being more rewarding. But the unfun aspects have not really gone away, it's mainly lack of map mobility and map reliance. The style system and laceration changes does at least make it a lot less irritating to have to drop a chase for any reason. But he is still very much a proxy camper/slugger.