Trickster buff is nice and all, but it still doesn't tell me why I should pick him over huntress

they call him trickster but he does no tricks! Whats up with that!

Aim?

Don't you have to aim more with Huntress than Trickster?

There are different kinds of aim.

Trickster demands some flick aim, and a LOT of track aim.

Huntress demands a bit more flick aim, and almost no track aim.

Flick aim is how fast and accurately you can bring your aim from one point to another. Track aim is how well you can maintain your cursor on a moving target. Thing firing a single high bullet vs firing a low damage laser beam.

*In general* weapons that demand high flick aim are mechanically favored because they dump all their value out in a single moment and while it takes a lot of practice to get good at them, once you are its a lot less demanding than track aim. Track aim tends to be 'easier' at first because if you make a mistake on 1 of 100 hitscan moments on your laser beam well... you only lose 1% of your damage output vs 100% on missing the initial flick, but once you get good at flicks you lose 0% of your damage, while its hard to not lose 100% on track aim stuff (Especially if deviation, recoil, cone of fire, ect is bad on the track gun), because your target will move and wiggle and duck into cover. Your also devoting more time to trying to get that kill and are committing harder to it: Once huntress tosses that hatchet she doesn't need to do anything, she can assume it hits or misses and start on her next task, while Trickster trying to land their 8 (now 6) knives has to commit to that process to get value out of it.

So in one sense, huntress needs 'more' aim because flick aim takes more practice and is less forgiving. In another, Trickster both requires some flick aim too (You want that initial knife to hit before the target rounds the corner, don't you?) but ALSO requires you to keep aiming over and over, thus requiring 'more aim.' Which is a really core problem with him.

This is ignoring other aspects of aiming in shooters, like recoil control, controlling fire rate, ect, because that... sorta doesn't work on trickster despite him having mechanics that are 'ghosts' of this kind of aim. Like trickster has a growing cone of fire not because it mechanically makes sense on him, but because that is a common shooter mechanic to reward you for firing in bursts rather than holding down the trigger, and to make it impossible to hold down the trigger and then track to the head so you can get ezpz headshots. But... Trickster's design is antithetical to burst fire, so it just exists because its 'a thing for rapid fire weapons' rather than because it makes sense for a character who has to commit to shooting by slowing down to be punished for shooting for long periods of time, in a game which is about mobility and where your targets will only be visible to you for a few seconds at most once you start firing. And DBD lacks headshots (As well as return fire, another reason to make holding the trigger bad, to reward calm players or punish players who delay shooting for too long) so letting someone track from the center of mass to the head while shooting someone doesn't... do anything. Making Trickster's increasing cone of fire weirdly pointless and frustrating.

So Trickster is secretly bringing more aiming mechanics into DBD, but they are mechanics that don't make sense in DBD's design. Like Trickster's blades are often described as a laser beam but they are fearsomely inaccurate for the targets your firing at.

In an open area the huntress can just 100% down you no problem, or just run up and smack you, to get a low TTK down. Trickster's deviation means your still gunna miss quite a bit, and still need to throw for at least 12 seconds to get the down assuming every knife you throw hits, and your not missing any due to speedboost or the fact the survivor is faster than you while throwing and thus can rapidly move out of effective range. Put another way: Sure trickster can't be dodged at all in a totally open area and you will eventually down if your close enough that the person can just zoom away while you aim and miss your first few shots... but in that case... you don't need a power anyway because that is what we call a 'deadzone' and trying to use it at all is sorta a liability. Just run up and M1 them ya goober.

In open areas, the huntress is, of course, the sniper rifle, so she is better assuming you can flick aim and properly zone with it rather than snap firing it in a way survivors can easily dodge. Slinger is even better of course, but its a super minor difference, and as has been noted by many people 'just run away' is a really strong response to Trickster.

In close spaces, the huntress is still a sniper rifle, but because the TTK and aim requirements on the SMG that is trickster were not tuned well (because if they were it would, in fact, be kinda bogus, and you want track aim weapons to be slightly worse at quickly killing people, as you noted it IS a more casual way to aim) the huntress still is downing much faster and more consistently inside the loop.

This is why comparing Trickster to Huntress is so common: it isn't just different styles of weapons (for that, look to Deathslinger and Huntress. They function fairly differently but ultimately still are about as effective as each other), its that Trickster has a lot of vestigial shooter design that doesn't fit into DBD, and a rapid fire downing weapon that feels accurate and responsive would be bonkers. It isn't an accident DBD's ranged killers that feel good are all either sniper style characters, or are Plague who's a 115 killer with a ranged attack packing an entire minigame inside of it.

This is why the rework feels so off. Trying to make trickster more resemble huntress is sorta doomed, because its hard to force an SMG into a place where it compares well with a sniper outside of situations that don't exist in DBD: You can't lurk mid and flank push to take out that AWPer in DBD. We already have a killer who rewards good track aim and is a more casual ranged experience: Plague. Trickster is being crammed into a box with Huntress and DS, but he REALLY wants to be an alternative to Plague, who has a lot of qualities that make her SMG 'fair' in DBD, like not having total lethality without conditions, doing an alternate damage type that rewards tracking a whole burst of her 'gun' but at the same time still giving a reward for 'chip' damage, and her having the option to default to DBD fundementals to allow her gun to be weak situationally and not super high reward.

Its super ok that Trickster isn't a viable alternative to Huntress and does what she does WAY worse. The problem is he doesn't really have any upside compared to her besides a way lower skill cap and skill floor because you spam knives that travel at absurd angles so it doesn't really matter how good your aim is and its more about persistence. Which is just not an interesting or good upside, and its why 'higher damage, faster decay' is probably the opposite direction they wanna go with this guy.

In scenarios where trickster can consistently down someone via hitting all their knives in a row, Huntress doesn't need to charge hatchet.

Good example is vaults. Huntress is rocking a 2 second health state on a vault or pallet throw, which is a common event and its a space where you actually need your power quite badly. Trickster can... kinda do fractional damage on top of that if they get lucky or are prepared? But in reality fractional damage doesn't matter that much.

Trickster is only more lethal in very specific scenarios where the survivors essentially aren't trying to avoid your knives for multiple seconds. These scenarios are not realistic.

The lethality gap in that scenario is not relevant enough to make up for the case where the survivor is so bad you would get the down anyway. Having a TTK that is 50% as long as Huntress in some situations and 200% in others sounds fine and good until you realize the situations your getting that 50% TTK are situations the huntress has a 10 second TTK while the situations where you have a 200% TTK are situations where the huntress has a 30 minute TTK and are more common.

Once you actually account for what killers need as opposed to imagining white room scenarios, its really clear that Trickster has a lethality problem. Which, again, makes sense. 'Burst damage' is generally better in most scenarios, which is why games 'bias' towards sniper rifles unless you work hard to avoid it. This isn't a unique 'DBD' issue, its just that trying to make Trickster compete with Huntress... dooms him.

@FFirebrandd

You pretty much summed up my feelings/opinion.

Even if the survivor is healthy Huntress I feel would have a harder time getting a down, simply because of her charge.

The entire point I was trying to make was their relating to their aim anyway, not really who can down who the fastest. But as you said in open areas, I do agree Trickster can be more lethal, because you are dealing with a much bigger threat than a hatchet hitbox. Especially if they have Main Event available.

That is just flat out not true.

Case in point, a Survivor out in the open just after taking an injury. They're running at 150% speed and Huntress has... like 2.5 seconds worth of time where she physically cannot hit them again. Trickster however has no such 2.5 seconds worth of harmlessness assuming he got the injury with his knives.

You say that situations like that are rare, but they aren't. Now granted the most common situation where this happens you... don't actually want to be in, but that exact situation happens every game if you end up getting to late game. Against most killers, unhooking with BT = Free out. Not so with Trickster. I can routinely inflict 3 health states worth of damage with knives before they get out the door and that's enough to down the rescuer and the rescuee assuming I get 1 injury prior to or as the unhook happens. Also, Trickster can punish an unsafe unhooks far better than most Killers.

If you are accounting for Huntress's time to reload and re-aim, you need to account for the fact that it takes Trickster time to land multiple knives.

Your numbers seem logical here, but its actually deceptive because your tracking Huntress's full TTK, while not tracking how long it takes for Trickster to go through a full damage state, which is more than 2.5 seconds even ignoring speedboosts which make trying to use a ranged power immediately after a hit a bad idea in the first place, at least with old trickster. Realistically, the Huntress doesn't even practically speaking have a cooldown after hitting because of the realities of this speed boost, unless the survivor makes a huge mistake and burns their speedboost on a vault (in which case yes the trickster gets another hit, but the huntress should be able to M1 after 5-10 seconds. In that scenario knives are a 'win more' that don't actually help you that much because your already in such a good position you should be fine). Trickster could technically exploit this on a vault if the target is already mostly on their way to an injured state, like if they have 5 knives or something so they get the 6th, and then 3 more or maybe even a full state... but think about it. In that scenario, the Huntress should have already injured the survivor, meaning that while the Trickster can technically 'double hit' on a really solidly lined up vault, the Huntress should never need to do so.

In fact, one of the BIGGEST COMPLAINTS about Trickster is how much worse he is vs that speedbost. Huntress can't damage the survivor, but she is back to speed. Trickster needs to put his knives away and ramp up again, or try to land shots vs a speedboosting survivor now at long range which is... not a good idea. So in a very big way Huntress is BETTER at chaining hits in open areas.

New Trickster closes the gap a bit and may even lead to some situations where there IS more lethality (that 'double down' on vaults is more likely to occur if someone really is obvious about vaulting from 0 knives, for example), but its not so much that it will really be worth how little utility the power actually brings to the table. Again, cutting down a single aspect of a chase by 5 seconds when it would otherwise last 10 is not generally worth not projecting threat with your power at all within most loops. Trickster's biggest problem compared to Huntress is so much of his actual gains on her are 'win more' gains.

On the BT angle, Iagree that one of the few places Trickster actually beats huntress is against extreme survivor aggression. Like I said, his TTK advantages are only relevant when the survivors essentially aren't or are unable to avoid your knives, such as suicide unhooking, where almost all of the weaknesses of track aim goes away. That is, however, still relatively minor and not worth building a killer around IMO, though it should definitely be recognized its there. Its just your spending far more time in a match (or heck, over multiple matches, most survivors are smart enough to not suicide unhook vs ANY ranged killer because ALL of them are strong vs it) trying to win loops or chase over long open distances compared to stopping a suicide unhook. That said, yes it should be noted Trickster is much more defensively strong than Huntress, though as we saw with Old Bubba, this is really not worth losing 'large scale' chase power. If your at the point people suicide unhook vs you as Huntress you are almost certainly going to win or its not going to meaningfully change that much because the match is mostly over anyway: the strong part of your power being camping when gens are open vs BT is... interesting but I think we can agree you want your power to do most of its work during a match. And this isn't even a 'weak' area of Huntress, she is notoriously strong at defending hooks because, again, you really don't have to charge your hatchets at all and fire them much faster than melee.

Again, one solution to the Trickster problem might be trying to emphasize other strengths of the kit rather than him as a 'long range' character like Huntress, and while I wouldn't say he 'wants' to be a Bubba, making him a 'plague-bubba hybrid' isn't a terrible position for him: Making him really scary to be 'overt' against and forcing you to respect him more. But right now that isn't even an especially strong part of his kit, even with the ultimate you can't actually fully block an unhook vs a healthy target from what I understand, meaning its... a weirdly worse tool at this than just using two hatchets as huntress. At least she won't go into a fatigue state after.

Right now a big problem with Trickster is once you understand his 'win conditions' and how easy they are to avoid you never have to respect him. This change helps but ultimately you should not be bringing a killer power to give you what Trickster offers you. It isn't worthless, its just the opportunity cost compared to what you get makes absolutely no sense because in any situation where you need a power consistently Huntress does it better or doesn't lose much appreciable, assuming you can aim with huntress and know to use her power as a zone tool and are not trying to land silly Hail Marry shots.

Trickster really needed his power to be more versatile, or affect the game in a larger scale way than all or nothing pseudo-damage states, not to be more lethal, because you can't get very much more lethal than Huntress without being silly, and Trickster can't in most situations be more lethal than Huntress without getting unfair.

Again, there are things to like about him, and there is definitely a salvagable character in there, but it really needs to be understood that he is not going to work as a sidegrade to huntress as is without a lot of pretty extreme changes to how knives work. Like tightening the cone so good players can always hit their targets at close range. Even ignoring the math around theoretical TTKs in reality the fact of the matter is Trickster cannot reliably hit 5 knives on a target 5 meters away in a row that make a lot of this math somewhat pointless. Once you account for the fact his projectile deviation is so high that he does not have a 100% hit rate at that distance your expected TTK on even stationary or semi-stationary targets goes WELL below Huntress's. But changing that would almost certainly make him very oppressive and not fun to play against because DBD's design doesn't.... work great with track aim weapons without them having a lot of funky properties (again, looking at you Plague!).

Tickster's visual design and what he brings to the cast in terms of themes and aethestetic is A++. He is a very 'real' psychopath. Very American Psycho about it all. There is something unsettling about how he could be a real dude and the way he acts and behaves is a lot like a real sadist.

Like it is unsettling to be playing against him and to have the thought 'this person is the most likely member of the cast to actually kill me in real life. Even Legion is a bit out there compared to a well off good looking psychopath in a position of trust abusing that trust to hurt people.'

Dead by Daylight is a complex love for me. A 'problematic fave' if you will. As someone with an understanding of game design its super interesting because its so unique and how it gets a lot of complexity out of simple systems.

It is, ultimately, tag with extra steps. But it has a lot of focus in psychology, long term vs short term tacitcs, bluffing, baiting, ect. A lot of the things people are super vocal about on a shallow level (ex: Camping, slugs, immersed players, whatever) actually are extremely interesting and complex outcomes of these simple systems that almost 'have' to exist the way they do for the game to work.

Basically there is a lot to think about while none of the pieces are too wild, which is why the game is so popular despite its flaws. In a weird way it most closely resembles a fighting game out of any other game in how much depth it gets out of simple interactions and how competitive it can be, while solving that genre's main problem of being inaccessible. Which is why a lot of FGC folk are super into DBD!

I mean, if there's no point in playing Trickster because Huntress and Slinger exist, then why do we play any of the killers other than Spirit or Nurse at all? They're better at destroying solos and SWFs than the other killers.

I personally find Trickster more fun to play as than Huntress and Slinger, and one of my favorite killers to play as.

I'm mostly fine with the mid-chapter buffs for him; but I still wish Main Event could be held on to until the killer actually wants to use it; like a Myers or GF can hang onto their ability to 1-shot for when they want to use it.

Also his mori is technically showing him doing a trick too

You do it because you play him for fun.

That's it.

I like Huntress, but sometimes I don't feel like getting sniper shots from across the map. Sometimes I just want to completely fill a survivor with blades to fill my sadistic desire 😈

Well he takes more hits but less risks, like you can only miss 5 times with huntress before reloading, needing 2 hatchets for one surv, it means 3 misses at best

Trickster takes more time to down, but you have less risk to fail and hes funny to play

I love both but his Buff goes in the wrong way i think

there is one reason and only one reason to play Trickster over Huntress

Trickster is a Jojo Reference, that's the only reason you need