How can Clown be better? Let's discuss.
It is pretty well-known that the Clown is one of the weakest killers in the game. Pretty much all he has going for him is his ability to force early pallet drops.
So, here's some of my ideas:
First, rework the larger maps. This will help many low-tier killers, as they don't have the mobility to effectively pressure gens across the map, especially now that Ruin is gone. If these maps were smaller, these killers could be more consistent.
Please note that the following ideas were written with this change in mind.
Second, give his power a secondary use. My idea is that he can throw his bottle directly at a generator to instantly "kick" it, which would also activate perks like PGTW. This way he doesn't have to waste time walking up to gens and kicking them normally, and you could save even more time if you're skilled at aiming the bottles.
The generator will also fill up with gas for a certain amount of time. For the first 30 seconds or so, Survivors who touch the generator will scream. After that, the generator will still have some lingering gas for a while, though not enough to cause screaming (The gas will be visually more intense if it would cause screaming, so Survivors will know when it's "safe" to work on the gen).
However, while the gen has any amount of gas in it, survivors will suffer the effects of the tonic while repairing the gen and for a short time afterward. While affected by tonic, skill checks might also move slower or faster than usual.
If the gen explodes (either by a failed skill check or a perk such as Surge), the gas will be released in the surrounding area as if a bottle was thrown there, and the gen will return to normal (Technician can prevent the gen from exploding).
As an additional buff, it would be nice to be rewarding more for directly hitting survivors with bottles. Maybe you could have a reduced cooldown if you land a direct hit?
What are your thoughts on my ideas? Do you have ideas of your own? Feel free to share!
Comments
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Honestly I think giving him Redheads finger baseline would be interesting. He can choose between area denial and denial of loops or play slightly riskier and become an instadown killer.
Also did they ever fix his gas no longer forcing slow vaults? Because I dont remember seeing that in a balance log. was just there one day
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Both of these ideas are great, but until maps are fixed it would be nice if he had a mobility option. Maybe he drinks some booze and dashes around with little control.
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My fix for him would be to let him drink his own bottles. Since he’s been so exposed he has a resistance to it, and it drives him into a drunken rage causing his vision to blur like it does for survivors and causing him to stagger like a struggling survivor is on his shoulder but giving him a burst of speed.
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The fact clown has less bottles than huntress has hatchets is kind of a joke to me.
He isn't that bad though, and can be powerful with the right build and add-ons. But you need to be on point with the bottle tosses, every time, as well as be willing to slug / camp / tunnel / etc.
Bleach bottles + ether 15% are pretty nasty if you are landing them. Makes almost every loop unsafe as long as you are hitting them.
His reload add-on is probably the most underrated of them all, and lets you reload mid-chase. His biggest weakness is needing to stop to reload every 20 seconds.
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Yeah, my ideas had reworked maps in mind. This game pretty much needs those huge maps to be normalized. Otherwise, we'd have to slap mobility on every weak killer.
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Honestly I'm not counting on map reworks..they've proven to not be enough at all..clown is very limited on what we can do for him outside a full rework..I like the idea of each reload has notches on the meter..each notch is a bottle..so they reload one by one..each bottle left is one less notch, therefore a faster reload speed..and you can reload just one or two bottles if your in chase to reduce time waste
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Be careful what you wish for. We could end up getting 5 versions of Haddonfield or 5 versions of the Thompson house.
And really, just run the cork stopper. It cuts the reload in half.
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I'd say give him a detonable gas bomb, where he can deploy anywhere on the map, then activate it, creating a Gas Cloud and making anyone nearby the detonation radius scream. The generator suggestion is not bad, but it would screw him up on larger maps everytime a generator is completed.
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Give him the ability to trap gens, where if they're used, or he triggers them from a distance, his fart cloud erupts from that gen. Maybe even lockers and chests could be trapped as well. Or maybe give his gas a debuff that causes increased difficulty in skill checks. They are supposed to be intoxicated, after all.
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It's a bandaid fix...and I'm tired if it..I do run it however because it means less time waste
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Dwight: "What's this?"
Claudette: "DWIGHT NO-"
Clown: "THERE."
*Dwight explodes*
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I like the idea of the Clown making a new tonic during his time in the Entity's realm, but devs don't seem to like teleportation with no warning. I think the only killer that can do that right now is Hag, but she needs an Ultra Rare add-on, she's 110% speed, and her traps can be seen and destroyed/triggered prematurely.
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I like a lot of your ideas! Throwing bottles at gens to kick them sounds really cool and that would give clown a higher skill cap!
Not sure if I like the gas leaking from gens though. It's creative, but I'm not sure it would make sense. How exactly is the gas coming from the gens? Plus, it probably wouldn't do much. It doesn't matter if the survivors are being gassed at gens if clown is on the other side of the map.
Faster or slower skill checks sounds cool though! I think that could be made into a good add-on. Something like, intoxication no longer slows survivors, but intoxication now lasts 30-60 seconds and affects the speed of all repair, healing, and sabotage skill checks.
And yes, there is so much that could be done with status effects after direct bottle hits. Longer intoxification, even slower survivor movement speed, blurrier vision, action speed slowdown, etc. Maybe even, down a survivor after a direct bottle hit and survivors within 32 scream. Would basically give him Infectious Fright as an add-on, kinda like how the Nurse now has add-ons to give her Stridor or Nurse's Calling.
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The idea is that you throw the bottle inside the gen so the gas is stuck inside the gen for a while.
Smaller maps was my first suggestion because you can't really make weak killers better without normalizing the maps, other than just giving them mobility. These ideas rely on the larger maps getting smaller.
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I think reload time should be faster, dependant on amount of bottles you have at the moment. So, if you wasted only one bottle - you reload quicker.
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Aw, I see. Could be good, but Clown could just spam his bottles if he had a 3 gen strat and turn it into a hostage situation like with old Doctor.
I forgot to acknowledge the maps. Yes, a lot of the maps need to be shrunk. Especially Rotten Fields, both the Red Forest maps, Family Residence, and Mount Ormund. I'm all for some variation, but when it starts to make it unfair for the killer, it's a problem. I think maps like Coal Tower and Father Campbell's Chapel are examples of more balanced maps they should aim for.
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3 gens will always be nasty, but it should be on the Survivors to prevent that from happening. And if the clown is refusing to attack anyone and just defending 3 gens the entire game, there's always the option to report them.
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Have the clown learn not to grunt while going over windows.
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I've played clown the most of out all killers, and mostly imo he doesn't need any major changes just buffs to his stats.
- Reduce reload time
- Increase bottle count
- Reduce slowdown when throwing bottles
That being said, I'd love it if they gave him a passive gas cloud that he gives off, meaning he could save his bottles at loops, where he could rely on the passively generated cloud, and use his bottles to gain distance on survivors running away.
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I think there are add-ons for each of those points. Well, except the last one. But don't you move at full speed once the toss is fully charged? Unless you meant the slowdown after throwing the bottle, in which case I believe the feather add-on helps with that.
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Yes, there are add-ons for each of those. The problem is the clown has two add-on slots to address his four problems:
1. Too few base bottles
2. Too long reload time
3. Base gas doesn't do enough for a killer power
4. He slows down when bottle is released
(For No. 4 -- The clown moves full speed with a bottle charged, but when he releases it, he slows down for a brief moment. This can be reduced with add-ons that reduce cooldown.)
If he got more bottles, shorter reload times and no speed reduction (or at least Starling Feather base kit) when tossing his bottles, then he can use his add-ons for fun stuff -- buffing his gas clouds.
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I think your idea of the gas affecting gens is a good starting point for a clown buff. However, instead of gas kicking the gen, which would be a little odd, I think a simple thing is to make it so that if a survivor affected by gas touches a gen, it automatically explodes. This would help immensely with his map pressure as survivors could not complete a gen in his face and he could prevent gens from being done from a distance, giving him sufficient time to get there and Pop Goes the Weasel it.
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I play a lot of the so called "low-tier killers" because I find pity in their existence and in some ways, I look to challenge myself to win with them. Clown's problems though are mostly statistical.
-The bottles have delayed slowing effect and while this was always the case, The dedicated servers have made them significantly worse. from player behavior stand-point, it makes you unsure if your going land the bottle from further distances to close-ground faster. You almost need to throw them in front of a survivor rather than on them with current latency.
-He doesn't have enough bottles per chase unless you deliberate conserve them. It's kinda like giving huntress 3 hatchets and while it is possible to land 2/3 hatchets, you'll take less risk because of limitations and there's saying in fps games, "Every shot you don't take, you miss".
-The cooldown when he throws a bottle slows him making his power counter-productive to slowing survivors and it makes using his bottles to force medium vaults/mindgame pallet loops awkward to use in some instances.
If they did just these 3 quality of life improvements for clown, clown would feel way more responsive and interactive to play.
1- Reducing Clowns Aftertonic Gas delay(For server latency problems) for applying hinder status effect faster.
2- Adding 1 Extra bottle
3- Removing the slow after throwing aftertonic bottle(He moves at 115%). The recovery frame could be reduced but it is for a lack of a better term very annoying.
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These aren't bad ideas, but balance wise he would be incredibly powerful and almost considered OP. Sn ability to kick gens without kicking it. Then the ability to kick a gen for a certain amount of time then on top of that after they still wait out the initial scream time if there is a failure they still suffer effects from the bottle, and if you apply these effects on smaller maps he would be able to pressure gens without the use of actually having to be there and would gain knowledge on everything as long as he reloads a bottle which he can do on the fly. This would make reload add-ons incredibly powerful as he would be able to pressure gens without being there and on top of that reload just as quick.
A general issue he has is he has no quick movment speed ability to be able to pressure larger map gens, so if we follow the idea of every map rework this would allow him as 115 much higher amounts of pressure, get better angles on gas throws and pressure more from a distance now maybe instead of making people scream and such what you g
Could do is allow him when the gas hits survivors it causes a prolonged status effect of coughing kind of like the plague which would make it easier for him to track the survivors he hits at a range, along with increasing the knowledge he gets when in a chase. Then to help at loops instead of forcing slow vaults at loops on pallets to give a better. Balance while he's in his gas he breaks pallets, and vaults objects quicker to provide a little more skill to his mind game and give better reason to use tbe add-on that increasing the lingering effect.
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Your idea for bottles beeing able to act as damage action is interesting and i don't think its op because he wastes a lot of time reloading anyway. However there will arise a question why Huntress axe or Doc shock can't do the same? And on those 2 killers might actually be broken. Maybe create addon for it for Clown?
Your point here is valid, its not fault of specific killers, it is map designs that are super bad and sadly devs don't see it. It will be hard to do something about it because maps are randomised (i like this, but it can create so broken loops that i literally feel bad as survivor sometimes) and devs balance game arround new survivors, which is ridiculous on its own.
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I think he is perfect. You just need a mastermind brain to play him, kinda like trapper. Basically predict the future, and then block their paths, because if they are stupid enough to go through it, they slow down. He's not bad, but not top tier. I'm a clown main btw, so I know it works. But if he were to get an add-on that makes intoxicated survivors exposed, he would be really good.
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I'm not saying he can't get kills, but even when played optimally he is still weaker than many other killers when played at their best. And I think Trapper needs a buff too, tbh. Right now he is very add-on reliant.
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Give the clown an inhaler
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Give the clown a gym membership
(2 months on a stairmaster might do the pudgy fck some good)
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