So Clown is... still Sucks?

We got a master of strategy here

Before you slow the survivor down so you catch up faster. Now you speed yourself up so you catch up faster. It's the same power. None of his weaknesses have been addressed. It's like a clone character in Smash Bros, slightly different but basically the same ya know?

You can use both you know?

Yes much faster to a point where survivors can’t really do much

The same old tactics still work against Clown. Pre-drop pallets, don't try to loop him, keep as much distance as possible. In order to get the most out of the new bottle, Clown is expected to use bottles more often, which depletes his ammo faster. As such, a lot of people just treat his buff as just improved reload speed, which IS nice. While Clown CAN use the bottle to make a few hits he might not have been able to before, it's a marginal improvement at best and still requires that he use more bottles per chase. His resource management can backfire if its not handled well.

He's better than before as his yellow bottles now allow him to catch survivors on longer loops that were otherwise difficult for clown to catch survivors at. The reduced reload time also helps.

But overall not much improved.

That's... The point. Tonic makes hindered effect : -15% speed. Antidote makes haste : +10% speed.

If you place both gaz well, only you are getting the antidote and the survivor is getting the tonic.

The survivor is at 85% speed, and you're at 125% speed, making a speed difference of freakin' 40%. That's a mad bloodlust 9999.

Plus, he got also buffed his reloading speed, and that is a small, but important buff. That's why now he's a pretty solid anti-loop killer in good hands.

This is one of those "on paper" things isn't it. Clown could get hits easy before, he just suffered like a lot of killers with poor map pressure, poor mobility on larger maps, can't easily juggle survivors. This update fixes very little of his flaws. 10%+ speed does not make him a good killer.

Poor mobility like every 115% speed killer. His power lies in his anti loop potential. I actually saw some big brain plays from clown while playing survivor, and on YT. If you really know how to do and what to do with both bottles on each loop, you will get some super fast hooks, and mobility is not a problem. The time you gained by ending your chases quickly will bring you pressure. Plus, in the late game, the map technically isn't big, you're moving on your 3 gen.

He was buffed. His largest counter was the fact that his gas doesn't affect survivor vaults, so throwing pallets early and camping the pallet was sort of an effective counter against him.

But since the antidote speeds the clown up, he can make some safe loops pretty unsafe when paired with his gas at the same time. He's very hard to play effectively, but he does reward you for learning him. It's just that the reward you get for Clown maybe isn't as high as some other chasing killers is all.

Ok you convince me Clown is top tier. I shall look forward to seeing players dominate with him in the next tournaments.

That's an idealistic scenario that isn't playing out like that in most cases.

It also doesn't negate my point about Exhaustion perks in general.

You can set it up anytime a survivor is camping at a loop. It’s complicated if there are a series of interconnected tiles but at any singular tile it’s pretty easy to score hits by combining the bottles, especially if you are running chase perks as well.

By all technicalities Clown still got a buff from the reload time reducation alone however the rework as whole didn't change anything. Clown is still Clown and all of his assocated weaknesses like dropping pallets early, spreading out on gens, not being greedy around loops and good ol' fashion holding W still dumpster him pretty hard. The rework only really doubled down on Clown's chase potential and improved it...kinda. You can do big brain plays with your antidotes and tonics around loops but at the end of the day all that brainpower only nets you an extra hit in a few extra loops. I like Clown and he was one of my earlier killers but the rework doesn't make him any more rewarding to play, you're mostly going to be doing the same things as clown and suffering from the same issues. Which is a shame but I guess BHVR would rather not have another Freddy on their hands because god forbid you try to address a killer's flaw so the only other option for the rework was to hyper-specialize Clown's power and hyper-specialize it is.

I'm not trying to poopoo on the Clown, he's still okay-ish strength wise but the rework really doesn't change all that much about him and the antidote is really more 'optional' than anything else. There's a lot of killers with optional stuff like PH and his cages, you don't need to cage anyone in the whole game if you don't want to but the incentive of moving them away into a dead part of the map and bypassing DS is big enough of an incentive to make you want to cage them but with the Clown there's just no real incentive to use the antidote bottle. You can still mostly get the same results only using the regular tonics really.

Yep this is right. Clown doesn't suck, but every loop in the game has a bottle placement that covers most of the loops. L and T walls most clowns throw bottles improperly. Jungle gym's have certain arcs where bottles cover. Loops become extremely unsafe if these bottles are placed correctly.

Pallet down and looping it?

Yellow bottles

Windows?

Purpule for slow volt

Strong loop without pallet? (cow loop or jungle gym)

A combo of all 2

If you use in right way you hit the surv easy

Trhow yellow in your position and Purple near window

He's absolute garbage. Not even this rework could save him.

what? Clown is in a really good spot now he is a lot better but they didn't buff him so much that he is top tier but he is a very solid killer now.

His antidote bottles aren't as good as some people think but they definitely aren't useless they can make shack or some long loops completely useless. Then you add on his increased load speed and consequently more room for addons he is a very middle of the ground killer much better than something like trapper, wraith, ghostface, or even legion.

You throw it ahead of you so the survivor doesn’t get it and you do

The problem with that is that most the anti-exhaustion perks suck such as the ones you mentioned.

Exhaustion perks are so good that they are literally ran x4 every single game. So it is exactly the best time to be running those anti-exhaustion perks and they are still not ran. There's a reason for this.