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The clown is an inferior version of the new Freddy
People like to make comparisons of huntress and clown (why throw a slowing agent when you could just chuck a hatchet in the same time frame), but I think that comparing clown to the new Freddy makes much more sense when pointing out just how underwhelming the clown's kit is.
Both Freddy and Clown rely on their powers to slow survivors against bad loops. Mid-chase a Freddy can drop dream snares and the clown can throw down bottles to create gas clouds. But there are some additional things Freddy can do:
1). Freddy can prepare the worst loops ahead of time
2). Freddy can use his snares as a scouting tool next to generators. (Clown can very awkwardly do this but only at limited range and it obviously telegraphs his location letting survivors plan their escape route or hiding spot)
3). Freddy can teleport to generators!! eliminating a big problem with split map pressure
4). Freddy can bait survivors off of generators and cancel his power as he approaches
5). Freddy is invisible to survivors at a long distance away which means that he starts chases closer on open visibility maps.
While its true that many of Freddy's effects don't apply to survivors outside of the dream world, in practice survivors don't bother to try and keep themselves awake anymore unlike the old Freddy who couldn't hit awake survivors. The only unique edge that I'd give to clown is being able to throw bottles ahead of a survivor in a narrow corridor; however, most maps that have these places also have doorways or indoor ceilings where the clown's high arc bottle is interrupted.
In summary, Clown seems like 1/3rd or 1/2 of a killer. Most killers in DBD have multiple effects or different powers that they can use--not just one. Clown just needs something that can make him fill a more unique role other than just being a "slow the loop the killer" which the very successful new Freddy fills in a much better capacity.
What kind of powers should he receive to make him more interesting?
Comments
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Well we need something to work on his mobility, and reloading bottles is what messes it up.
Clown has 4 bottles and you need to use at least 2-3 to hit an ok looper at a jungle gym. You always run out to get a down on a healthy survivor.
You can easily compare him to doc or huntress, and as you said he just lacks so much. There's a video of Yerv making suggestions, some of the ones below are his.
1- He should have more bottles by default, 5 or 6
2- The whole bottle reload thing should be gone for good and the bottles should recharge passively, 1 bottle/3 sec
3- Gens that he damages should be trapped with a gas cloud, this gas cloud emerges as soon as a survivor touches the gen, and obviously causing them to scream like default. It could act as a built in surveillence
4- Allow gas clouds to also penetrate like 1-2m only on the other side of a wall.
5- Direct bottle hit = 3s exhaustion
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Concept: Clown has an alt ability where he chugs a tonic, curls into a ball, and rolls around map at 200% speed. I think that's fair. Kidding please never make this.
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Clown is more fun to play though even if he’s not as strong. Throwing bottles and creating gas clouds is better than just spamming blobs of tomato soup on the floor. If I play Freddy I pretty much always use pallets.
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It'd help, but to put things into perspective,
1). Freddy doesn't need to reload to begin with
2). Freddy doesn't need to worry about the rate at which snares are placed
3). It'd give the clown some scouting tools, but Freddy's is still more flexible being able to scout doorways.
5). If close range enough to land bottle hits reliably with that arced trajectory, you might as well M1 swing instead.
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Perhaps he could take a finger off each survivor and have each power the ability more. They would have to change his mori but I think it could work.
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In past Clown could force the slowest vault with his bottle.
Bring it back. :^)
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I'd imagine that it'd be harder to work on a generator with a missing finger.
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Its more apples and oranges. While they both excel at loops, Freddy is more territorial, his snares being traps to litter around while teleporting. Clown instead can shutdown an entire loop with a well placed bottle, and can cut chases short. Freddy certainly has a wider range of viability, but he will never be able to throw snares at people.
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But some kind of effect if he drinks his own potion is a potential way to make him very unique while being thematic to his concept as well.
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The sheer stupidity of it all is that no-teleport Freddy is actually stronger than Clown. Go figure.
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He isn't. I will let our resident clown main @DudeDelicious do the talking, since he mains clown, and is a veteran Freddy.
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santa clown does not approve...
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What if it caused hallucinations? Like causing you to repair a phantom generator or something, or seeing the killer as a teammate? As usual, SWF would kind of ruin it, but I think it'd be fun nonetheless.
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6) Doesn't' have the stupid coughing when he vault a window
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in addition to ALL of these effects of the cloud creates a hindered status effect by 2 seconds(UP FROM 1.5).
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Not just Clown, he the better version of all almost M1 Killers. Freddy has everything for him, he can slowdown survivors at loops, deny fast vaults and teleporte through the entire map, yet he is very easy to play with.
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Freddy shuts down loops at the loop clown shuts down loops before the loop, counter freddy snares by being awake or looping to new places
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thats why he is getting reworked.
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Prove it. I spent 20 games in a row without teleporting as Freddy and had quicker overall chases than when I did the same as clown. Overall I got about 12 3/4k's as Freddy, 9 as clown. No addons, no offerings besides BP.
At the end of the day, Freddy is all about reaching a pallet, snaring the pallet, and getting a hit. Clown can't do the same, and he has massive self-slowdown. No amount of sweet bottle tricks helps that.
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like 1 month ago or more.
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Clown is fine.
Freddy needs a nerf but he's licensed so they'll leave him in a godlike state.
Buy Freddy. Buy Leatherface for bbq. Profit.
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Reloading his bottles.
And I definitely call you on that. If clown had that hidden potential against good survivors, he would be top tier. That's nurse-level chase times.
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Maybe you should consider making a teaching series if Clown really has this amazing, secret potential. Honestly, it wouldn't really surprise me as much as it should, but I've genuinely never seen it. Every fast clown chase I have been in or watched has been good clown VS terrible hold-W survivor. Even perfectly thrown bottles seem pretty much useless given the short amount of slowdown and borderline-worthlessness of his screen muck.
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clown is a terror against the 95% potatoe survivors...
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I'll drop down to 90% potatoe survivors...
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You have a source on that? AFAIK he could never force slow-vaults.
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How does Freddy need a nerf?
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>they’re too focused on throwing bottles at survivors, instead of thinking about trying to get survivors running through as much of a gas cloud (or clouds) as possible
This, this, so much this! This is 90% of the reason people think clown is "bad". People always throw the bottles right at the survivors instead of using them to block of loops and predicting where the survivor is going.
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clown is more comparable to huntress or slinger tbh.
closest killer to new freddy is demo, and the only thing stopping demo from being freddy tier is how sluggishly slow portal placement is (game should start with 2-3 random portals placed dammit) and how annoyingly loud his movement is disallowing you any real mindgame ability
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4 bottles is more than enough if you can place good bottles. You can't just keep throwing them at the survivor to try and close distance, they need to be used at loops. If you do want to throw a bottle ahead, it seems best to throw it up high and spread the area more. It'll also make it slightly more difficult for the survivor to dodge as they'll have to look up and see where the gas is falling.
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clown alway been hard to use for me..
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You just have to be a beast to be able to play clown efficiently
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Yet as a comparison, there are killers whose powers can be used to close distance and be used at loops (spirit, hillbilly, etc). Many killers have strengths in multiple categories and clown is just a 1-trick pony at loops and he's not even best in class for the single thing he does.
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He definitely could at launch. It was shadow-patched out a long while back and the devs have never commented on it. It honeslty hurt his viability significantly.
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he should be the next killer to be getting a rework
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same slow down 2.5 times more traps and no reload dream snare are objectively better than clowns bottles
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There is a small slowdown after Clown finishes the bottle throw animation.
This makes him gain almost no distance as a result unless the survivor tries to loop you.
Your suggestion gives the clown more of an advantage, but in most situations it won't make much of a difference.
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Here's a list of concept's and ideas that immediately spring to mind. Maybe all making it into the clowns kit is too much but picking and choose how many should be added can be decided any of these suggestion's make it as far as QA.
Switchblade mastery: Every time the clown scores a hit he builds tokens that reduce his cd between attacks by X% per stack these tokens stacks up to a maximum of X stacks.
Contaminate blade: The clowns coats his blade in the bottles extract making attacks inflict the slow effect emitted by bottles for an increased period of time. This also applies any debuffs associated with the bottles add ons.
A clowns excitement: After successfuly hitting a survivor with the bottle the clown receives an increase to his ms of X%.
All of these abilities can be improved with add on's. Depending on what abilities are selected this will define how add ons will be reworked or added too.
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Come on guys, you're all just bad.
Clown is clearly just underrated, yet to be played at his full potential by someone. -the devs.
Now, devs, I mean, jokes aside,
What if, just if
Everytime you throw a bottle, you have small window to press the power button again, and throw a dart at the bottle still in the air? Thus making the gas area expand, in the same way that happens when throw a bottle into a tree upright.
It would add some layer of strategy to his bottles, and help him cover a bigger are during a chase.
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But then one has to wonder, if the clown is carrying a bunch of darts in his pocket, why isn't the clown throwing his darts at survivors?
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Mostly outdoor maps. Think about a jungle gym, you throw the bottle above it, and pop it with the dart. That area now is not as safe anymore.
Something they really need to with him as well, is having him not suffer such an obscured vision from his own power..
Good Lord, sometimes it hurts more than it helps, as you can't see #########.
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Blunt. Meant only for breaking bottles
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Clown and Freddy are really different from each other - Freddy is more akin to a Hag or Trapper than a Clown.
That said, Freddy is default stronger than Clown, but a few adjustments would see him in S Tier.
1) Make the "VHS Porn" & "Fingerless Parade Gloves" add-ons default. Clown's biggest issue is mobility, exacerbated by additional slowdowns when reloading bottles.
2) Remove the grunt when vaulting. Seriously, why was this even a thing? Literally no one else makes a noise. I love to know which meeting determined adding this was a necessary investment of time; I'd like to stop these meetings going forward.
3) Fix stupid gas collision at windows. Gas can actually float through windows - I promise you BHVR, it is a thing.
4) Copy another killer's power - Now we are squarely in the BHVR wheelhouse. Do what was done with Doctor's shocks, now make a slightly weaker version apply to being in a gas cloud.
Congrats, you now have a powerful Clown.
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your taking the worse case sernio for freddy and comparing it to the best case sernio for freddy and even then it doesnt work. aside from the fact freddy can "prep" loops more effectively than clown. you also mentioned a gas cloud doing more work than a snare and i will concede a gas cloud under ideal situtations can be more effective than a single snare the problem is freddy has 10 snares and clown has 4 bottles you might find it reasonable to say clown's bottles are around 2.5 times more effective than a dream snare under ideal conditions but freddy actually has 2.5 time more snares (4 times 2.5 is 10) and if it ended there you might come away thinking freddy and clown are about equal but it doesnt freddy never has to reload.
this is without mentioning freddy's other powers like teleporting and the dream world and having more addons that work more effectively because 1/4 of them arent about reloading
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"To be clear, I’m not pushing for a “Clown is better” argument" dear god i hope not. youe would've had to have been kicked in the head as a child to make that argument.
people compare freddy and clown because dream snares and the after peice tonic gas cloud are super similar yes they both inflict hindered but they also: are base kit, dont damage survivors, can be used in a chase, have no downside to being used in a chase, cause a heads up notification for the killer if a survivor interacts with them.
the differences are pretty minor in effect and the similarities are huge.additional similarities that off set each other:
clown's better ability to used his power in chases is off set by freddy's ability to pre trap loops before the chase has begun this respect clown and freddy are equals
clown's power effects about 2.5 times the area as freddy's dream snares but freddy has 2.5 time more dream snare than clown has bottles they are about equal in this regard
now all the things freddy has on clown:
1.no reload( in addition he functionally gets more add-ons due to having none to mess with his non existent reload)
2.dream world(slowndown and wasting time trying to wake up)
3.teleporting to gens( and fake teleporting to push survivorts off gens)
4.uniquely hard to read terror radius and unable to be seen if not asleep
the similarities are more extensive than you give them credit for and clown has nothing on freddy and freddy has these 4 things on clown.
i dont think you are stupid or have been kicked in the head and i never said i think you thought clown was better than freddy
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It's a different way to play, doesn't matter if another killer can get similar or better results.
I can't throw my phase or chainsaw to the two loops next to the one im in to prep for them to run.
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You're hired
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Regarding 2). What if you could press a key to trigger the grunt as a mindgame (and suppress future grunts for a brief duration simultaneously)?
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While that might be a fun idea, I have more confidence giving money to a Nigerian prince than I do in BHVR's ability to competently add a new mechanic like this.
I'd rather just remove the sound and still have the ability to vault windows.
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Wait...what happened to DudeDelicious?? It shows him as deleted user now :(
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