Just The Absolute Worst Killer?

I'm going to have to go with Legion, they may be fun to play as and I have gotten a good amount of 4ks playing as them, but their power is just probably objectively the weakest. Though that may just be my own personal experience with them.

I can get kills easier with Clown and Leatherface, but Legion I kinda struggle a bit. Yeah he can injure everyone in one go, but that requires them to be nearby to him, plus he also gets stunned for 5 seconds after using his power, and not only that but using M1 just resets your power for some reason.

I'm pretty sure that isn't a thing for Freddy, Spirit, Nurse, Doctor or other cooldown-based killers in the game.

I would say Clown is the weakest Killer. At least Leatherface has an Instadown.

However, I think Leatherface is the worst. He is quite lazy designed, has only one really useful Line of Add Ons (Charge Time), his unique Add Ons are 100% useless (with the purple one even worse than the yellow one due to the penalty) and the ones he shares with Hillbilly make no sense on him (except Chargetime). Cooldown reduction is meh, Speed is useless... Things which are good on Billy are not helpful for Leatherface.

I am really looking forward to his Rework to make him a better Killer AND more important - a unique Killer.

In concept, Clowns power sounds great. Survivors slow down allowing hits. His power I'd negated however because survivors just drop the pallet if they're at the loop, and it's been proven that if you're not at a loop, you don't save any time by throwing a bottle.

Poor CLOWN bro! The Big Belly Boi has Been Beaten and Bullied for YEARS.

He needs a full rework, the slowdown just isn't drastic enough to have an effect on most loops and sure the devs may have answered this indirectly through the map reworks we will get to see literally today in about an hour or two (as of writing), when the mid-chapter patch goes live. But this still doesn't make Clown as interesting to play

I wish, wish, wish, wish, WISH there was some more nuance to his ability but there really isn't. It's a 15% slow, survivors in the haze get dazed, can't perform fast vaults, and cough, that is literally about it that is all he has. It sucks because I love the character: his lore, his aesthetic, his theme, he has some pretty great cosmetics (especially Mr. Puddles) but I can't enjoy any of them because he's so awful. Plus he's literally a Clown, clown's are ######### creepy as fuc and if I saw that in real life I would literally be booking it in the opposite direction. There's so much to like about this character, but his power is so woefully ineffective, and the gameplay isn't unique enough to set him apart from an m1 killer that these two reasons alone dampen the entire experience. I would play him so much more if he was better than he is now

Because the Clown is one of my favorites I took the liberty of creating / putting together a few ideas because a lot of people don't know what to do with the Clown when it comes to reworks.

Solutions for Big Boi Clown

1. New Secondary Ability: Funtime Gas Trap - A small but brightly colored circular piece of equipment which the clown twists and winds up, with a very sensitive trigger mechanism. Upon activating the circular object pops up and opens, violently erupting with a loud sound and ejecting a large cloud of the Afterpiece Tonic's Gas which covers a large area (24 meters) causing survivors to scream revealing their location and suffer from the effects of the afterpiece Tonic. The Funtime Gas Trap is activated when a survivor walks within 4 meters of it, it can also be attached to generators, where it will trigger as soon as a survivor begins repairing that generator. Only two Funtime Gas Traps can be placed at a time
   1. The intended use of this ability is to give the Clown a bit of awareness when it comes to the movements of survivors, it provides him a bit of Map Pressure that he previously lacked, and can also be used in the middle of a chase. If a survivor is abusing a certain loop to its fullest extent, say the killer shack, the Clown can quickly set this down and if the survivor stays and continues to loop it will trigger and cover the whole area with gas making looping that jungle gym, or pallet, or central building much more difficult. This change also works particularly well in conjunction with solutions 2 & 3 which would allow the trap to be better in chases or halting generator progression.
   2. This secondary ability might operate similar to the Doctor, starting on a cooldown and after about 60 seconds, or alternatively it can be charged up depending on how many full reloads a Clown has completed. After reloading 3 times the Clown gains access to this ability. Unlike the Doctor however, these Funtime Gas Traps can picked up and placed somewhere else, a Funtime Gas Trap cannot be picked up when the Clown has one already charged up. After a Funtime Gas Trap has activated and fully ejected its contents it will fall apart (and probably eventually disappear to save resources)
   3. A second concept of this ability that I didn't include is that any survivors who are in close vicinity of the Funtime Gas Trap when it goes off (within 8 meters) are splattered with brightly colored paint or possibly brightly colored dust which would either wear off or a survivor would have to perform an action to clean / wipe off. This makes survivors who triggered it and anybody else nearby much easier to spot, especially those wearing dark clothes (IE Blendettes) and more difficult for them to hide after they've activated the trap. This version of the Funtime Gas Trap also cackles and laughs maniacally after being activated. I scrapped this idea since I felt it might be a bit too extra even for the Clown and not fit the intense horror theme of Dead By Daylight, I feel the intense explosive nature of this piece of equipment would be enough for a jumpscare and the cackling might detract from that depending on how it was recorded / if it was distorted, etc.
2. Create a progressively increasing slow - As it stands the Clown's current 15% slow is simply not enough in most cases, especially around pallets loops particularly rather than window loops because a survivor can still just drop a pallet or fast vault a pallet that's already been dropped. The idea here is that the longer you stay in the gas the more you are slowed down.
   1. This can start at the current 15% slow and grow by 1% every second a survivor is intoxicated, since a survivor is hindered for 2.5 seconds this guarantees an extra 2% slow just for getting intoxicated at all, however the longer a survivor stays in the gas cloud the more they are slowed (IE the more they run the same loop which presumably is covered in gas). Up to a set maximum of say 25% slow.
   2. A different idea is that survivors who are hit by the intoxication of multiple gas bottles are slowed by a stacking 5% for each new gas bottle they inhale. So say they are running in a straight line (toward a loop or whatever) you throw 1 bottle they get slowed 15%, a second bottle and now they are slowed 20%, a third 25% up to a set maximum of 25% let's say
   3. A third idea is that the hindered effect itself lasts longer, currently, when a survivor leaves a gas cloud they remain hindered for 2.5 seconds, the change here is the longer they stay in a gas cloud the longer they remain hindered after leaving it, for 3.5, 4.5, 5.5 seconds and so on and so forth up to a set maximum of say 6 seconds or something.
      1. If the progressive slow ever becomes too powerful because of how high it can stack (I chose a "relatively" low number of 25% maximum) you can nerf the base immediate effect down from 15% to 10% so there's more room for survivors to gradually become slower and more sluggish. And look, we can sit here talking numbers all day, numbers are probably the easiest thing to change and tweak but the core idea remains the same the longer you stay in the gas the more potent its effects become. Encouraging survivors to leave the area ASAP rather than just ignoring or tanking the full force of the gas.
3. Limit survivors actions while intoxicated - "Disables Survivors' ability to perform any Repairing, Healing, Sabotaging, Searching, or Cleansing interactions" until they are no longer intoxicated. The impaired vision effect lasts for 4 seconds after leaving the tonic's area of effect, so this when one could be considered no longer intoxicated. For those wondering, this is the exact effect The Doctor creates when tier 3 madness is applied to a survivor. This forces survivors to move off a generator since they can no longer repair it, and allows more skill on the part of a Clown since he can now throw cross-map bottles to slow the progress of a generator that may be at 90%. This change is intended to give the Clown more map pressure, something that has frequently been cited as one of his major weaknesses.
   1. NOTE: This change allows the clown to apply more pressure by interrupting actions such as repairing generators, multiple survivors healing as a group, preventing a totem to be cleansed, etc. BUT DOES NOT prevent critical actions such as saving a survivor from a hook, or opening the exit gates.
   2. It always bugged me that survivors seemed relatively unaffected by what is literally a toxic cloud of gas, that they could heal grievous wounds and injuries or repair complex machinery only coughing slightly while they did it. This changes that completely, making the afterpiece tonic a far more powerful substance that can't be taken as lightly. It also allows the Clown to interrupt
4. Reload individual bottles - The change itself is quite simple: every second a Clown spends reloading he gains a bottle, the time to reload completely is not reduced but he can stop after say three seconds and use the three bottles he reloaded. This is similar to how the Nurse's ability operates post rework where her blinks now recharge individually rather than being able to spam them all at once.
   1. This idea is actually not my own but something I've heard echoed across the community as a change that makes a lot of sense. Currently it takes 5 seconds to reload his bottles and that reloads them all at once, however, this slows the Clown immensely allowing a survivor to gain a significant amount of distance. It makes his chases much more difficult than they should be, because eventually at some point you may be forced to just operate as an m1 killer without a power because you don't want to lose that distance.
5. Increase base capacity by at least 1 - This change is fairly self-explanatory. The current four bottles can be used far too quickly forcing you to reload much earlier than you probably should have to, especially when it frequently takes more than one bottle maybe even three to slow a survivor significantly enough to hit them. Leaving you with only one bottle to work with for a second hit or down

NOTES - I'm not expecting all of these to go through at the same time, if they did the Clown might be unbalanced (or maybe not, maybe he could just be a powerful, viable killer who knows) this is merely a list of proposed changes that can be made that can be picked from or chosen specifically to stand on their own or in conjunction with one or two of the others.

If I were to chose a single idea from my list, I'd have to go with #3, I feel this is legitimately the most important change that should be made to the Clown because it solves one of the most important problems he has. Lack of map pressure. As a killer with no means to move any faster or apply a large amount of damage at one time (through injuring multiple at once or instadowns), the ability to interrupt and briefly halt survivors who are healing, or repairing a generator at 90%, or cleansing an important Hex: Totem from a distance I think is an incredible idea and truly a saving grace. This allows the Clown to cross distance and close that gap without feeling hopeless that he can do nothing before he actually gets there and that his gas does nothing.

I deliberately left the reloading "solutions" for last because I think they are the most boring changes we can make to buff the Clown, and I also think they're the most well known / talked about ideas. Don't get me wrong, those changes probably would help if his core ability wasn't changed at all (meaning nothing from changes #1-3) but I think even with changing how quick the Clown reloads the core issues of his ability not having a big enough effect or impact on the survivors remains. If only the reloading / base capacity changes were made (which I think is the bare minimum of what you would want to do and this killer deserves more than the base minimum) he would still be a lower tier killer. He needs a solid rework with significant changes to be made to be both more fun and more viable, which is what solution numbers 1-3 are for.

TL;DR - Clown needs some big changes. His power has very little impact and effect on survivors who are completely unafraid to simply ignore or tank his gas clouds at face value, on top of having hardly any map pressure this means he doesn't even succeed in the chase like he is originally supposed to. If you would like to see some of my suggestions I've put them in a bulleted list and bolded them, the following paragraph explains the change, and sub points go into greater detail behind the mindset / reasoning and other pieces of extraneous information that you don't necessarily need to read to understand. The bolded title of each change should give you a rough idea of what I mean and the explanation that follows paints that picture well enough.

This comment also became way longer than I intended and because of that I'm going to copy and paste this into a new thread / discussion for people to talk about the Clown specifically.

Legion without a shadow of a doubt. Their power almost works against them most of the time. Clown and Bubba are bad, but at least their power helps them get kills. Legion's Frenzy typically just lets survivors get a huge speed boost, then they eat a 5 second stun, then they can chase them with M1. It's literally the worst killer in the game.

So I play PS4 thus my answer is guaranteed to be a minority here.

Nurse.

While she may be incredibly powerful if you pump time into learning and playing nothing but Nurse on PS4, the fact that you are fighting against controller sensitivity (haven't played with updated sensitivity from patch yet) terrible frame rate, maps that see random performance drops, countless bugs that plague the Nurse every patch, etc etc.

Its the reason you see maybe 1 Nurse every 200 games on console and the ones you do see are often the sad lot who thought a quick Nurse daily wouldn't break them emotionally.