The Executioner Still Has The Potential To Be More Skill-Based.

I don't think the solution is making missing the shockwave less punishing. That way you can use it just as well when survivors are animation locked, but also when they're not. I would prefer missing it be even more punishing, actually, so he can't zone as effectively; if missing is hugely punishing the survivor may keep holding W to try to bait him into using it at a bad time, because him missing would be a huge advantage to the survivor.

I do like the idea of giving him a bigger cooldown when cancelling it, but if he's punished less for missing he'll end up just using the shockwave more, or zoning to gain distance and then bodyblocking. Buffing him without really getting rid of the problem is just going to make him even worse to play against.

"This killer has an ability that can be used skillfully, but the game does not encourage more use of it outside of animation locks, as it has a very punishing cooldown if you miss, and it's quite easy to juke. Thus, this killer is often known for leaving not many options in chase to counterplay, as like I said, you either vault a window and get hit, or juke and get hit anyway. It's a very annoying thing to go against, as good as it is."

This sums up PH's issues exactly.

Your ideas for change almost identical to my thoughts for improvements as well.

Basically we want to shift his power to being used for mind games and predicting survivors movement/zoning when out of line of sight and not just auto lose/lose hits at windows/pallets.

You mentioned some of this:

Take 2 seconds of recovery off his fatigue after using his ranged attack and add 1 second of recovery after canceling his sword from the ground. Make the shock wave faster and apply the trenches on the ground of its radius. This will allow for zoning strategies and apply Torment on hit.

These changes take away the lose/lose scenario at pallets and windows by adding some counter play time. However, it now incentivizes and makes it actually worth it to make skilled shots when out of line of sight. Outside of animation lock it's current just not worth the risk for such a low reward, it's just too easy to dodge and too punishing.

This would add much more skilled, dynamic and fun game play to PH for both sides.

I see your point; I just disagree. I think he should be using it less. It'd be one thing if everyone played on 30ms ping, but reality is often more like 100-200ms. That means it's often impossible to dodge the shockwave without anticipating it and juking pre-emptively. It's basically like Deathslinger without the deep wounds, but with the ability to go through walls, to injure multiple people at once, and without the need to reload (worst case you wait a bit when your gauge is empty).

Making his shockwave more powerful makes him even better at zoning people, even with a little cooldown before he M1s; if he's more likely to use his shockwave, survivors also have to respect it more. If someone's going to animation locked through a window, either they dodge, he bodyblocks the window for a moment, and then he M1s them, or they go through and he hits them. A bit of a cooldown won't be enough to change how he's played much, and meanwhile he can get even more spammy with his attacks at long range due to the reduced punishment for trying. If you want to make heavy use of a ranged attack that can hit multiple survivors at once and through walls, it should be punishing for you to miss because there needs to be a drawback of repeatedly using an attack that powerful.

If you want the cooldown to be shorter, the best option I can see to not make this even more broken and frustrating is to add some sort of charge mechanic, just like Huntress winding up her hatchets. For example, you could have the wave propagate faster the longer you have your sword in the ground. That way you can't use it to zone people or just spam it through walls because a survivor would be able to dodge it easily unless it had been charged. You could also just lower the propagation speed across the board, as that would basically lower its effective range, but I'd prefer the first option.

Anytime a killer can't normally be looped survivors complain about them. Which killers do survivors hate?

• Spirit
• Nurse
• Freddy
• Deathslinger
• Pyramid Head

What do they all have in common? You can't loop them like you can every other killer in the game. You have to play differently.

Leatherface will soon be on that list.

Pyramid plays very similar to huntress at loops though, the difference is he is faster. Huntress has the exact same gameplay in fact. The difference between the 2 is PH can't reliably use his power outside of animation locks, whereas huntress can, and at a longer range, so she suffers movement speed.

if you don't like the way PH plays, why do you like how huntress plays, when they effectively do the same thing at loops?

Why do killers need to be harder to play than survivors who just have to hold m1 and W to win while getting handheld in chases through the red light and third person camera with maps that are mostly still very biased for them.

No ph don't play like huntress at loops. Huntress is punished HARD if she prepare her hatchet and i dont drop the pallet, i can do another loop. Vs PH i just pray he's a noob and he can't aim.

Ph is at 4.4 when using his trail still way faster than survivor + he can cancel his trail for free.

It absolutely is, it's already a miserable feeling to play alone while 4 others are trashtalking you.

It absolutely is, what is the point of playing killer then purely from a perspective: You're not just playing alone but you're also way more stressed and people here for some reason want the killer to require more skill than the people who are in the numbers advantage.