An essay on the Legion, and what can be done to optimally balance him.

Legion is in a very rough spot right now. The way his power is designed, he currently stands as the worst Killer in the game, but at the same time, he is the easiest one, with the least amount of counterplay. In this thread, I will use my knowledge of Legion and the game as a whole to analyze all of his problems and what can be done to solve them.

First issue: Deep Wound in chases
Deep Wound is unequivocally the cheesiest mechanic in the game. A lot of Legions will resort to simply hitting someone with Feral Frenzy, then moonwalking until the timer drains enough for another Frenzy hit to down them immediately. The problem therein is the design of Frenzy: You can either cheese Deep Wound, spam Frenzy, or just be a 110 speed Killer with no upside. None of the options are very pretty. Many people will resort to the first option, because it is the easiest and takes the least amount of time—something that every Killer is short on.

What's the solution?
Well, it really isn't that simple. The way Deep Wound is designed, directly nerfing the ability to cheese the timer in chases would be a nerf to the rest of the ability overall. The different aspects, strengths, and weaknesses of Legion all overlap, because they all stem from his power and what he's capable of. The best solution I see is to make Legion better at M1'ing so it's a more optimal play than cheesing, which not only buffs and balances Legion by encouraging players to take the high road since it is objectively superior to the cheesy route, but also raises his skill ceiling by offering more counterplay in a chase.

However, this will not be enough, as just making the skilled option stronger won't make the easy option weaker. This means it has to be nerfed in some way. So, what would be the best way to nerf it? There is no easy answer to this question in my sight, but the best one that I can personally reach for is: In addition to the timer not draining during a chase, it will also not drain for a short period after a chase ends—say, five to ten seconds. This may make Deep Wound as a whole less of a threat, but it certainly discourages the exploitation of waiting for it to go down while still chasing the Survivor.

Now, before I go any further, I know some people are asking questions in regards to something I mentioned earlier: Making M1'ing as Legion a superior play to other options in his kit. The truth is, what I've thought out regarding Legion is mostly traced back to his ability to M1—or lack thereof. I wish I could sum up what I had in mind quickly and concisely, but I can't. The best I can do is show you what I mean over the course of this thread. With that said, I'll move on to his second problem, which is also tied back to his ability to M1.

Second issue: Deep Wound as a pressure applier
The idea behind Deep Wound is obvious: You chain hits to apply pressure to Survivors so they don't just flop over and die. But the problem is, with the way Deep Wound and Feral Frenzy is designed, Deep Wound actually takes away pressure from him rather than giving it to him. Why? The answer is simple: Survivors are discouraged to heal against Legion. With Feral Frenzy, it will take the same amount of hits to down an injured Survvor as a healthy Survivor, and without Feral Frenzy, Legion is, as I've emphasized, a 110-speed M1 Killer—something that is of no threat. As such, healing is little more than a time-waster against Legion, and since Mending is faster than healing, a Wounded Survivor will be back to doing gens faster than an injured one in a non-Legion scenario.

What's the solution?
The reason Survs don't heal against Legion is because, once again, he is of little threat as an M1 Killer, and his only other option is spamming Feral Frenzy, which is unaffected by being injured. Although the devs have said they planned to give injured Survivors a shorter timer when Frenzied, I believe this is the wrong buff, as it will take the cheesy, uncounterable parts to Legion's kit and make them even stronger. No, I believe that this is yet another problem that can be traced back to Legion having little M1 power. But aside from that, here are some ideas to make Deep Wound more pressure-worthy:
-Make Mending a healing action. This will allow anti-healing abilities, like Sloppy Butcher and Thanatophobia, to slow down Mending and make it take longer, thus allowing Legion more pressure. In addition, it can be detected by A Nurse's Calling. However, as a trade-off, it can also be sped up by Perks such as Botany Knowledge, We'll Make It, Spine Chill, et cetera.
-Make Mending take 50% longer if Frenzied while injured. This will encourage healing against a Legion without making his power more exploitative than it already is.

I believe this is all I can talk about in regards to Deep Wound. So from this point on, I'll talk about Feral Frenzy, a power with many shortcomings that need to be discussed.

Third issue: Feral Frenzy in chases
Again, M1'ing. Legion has to either cheese Feral Frenzy, which is not counterable, spam Feral Frenzy, which is also not counterable but takes forever, or use his basic attack, which is not doable.

With this in mind, I believe now would be a good time to talk about this whole "M1'ing Legion" thing I keep mentioning. So let me start off by saying: I do NOT believe the solution is to make Legion a 115 Killer. No, that's not right. His power allows him to sprint and fast vault; what needs to happen instead is his power needs to be powerful and versatile enough to justify his 110 speed. But how will this make his M1'ing better, you ask? I'll tell you. See, Legion's biggest weakness is, of course, loops. Because he needs to M1 to be able to take down Survivors in any sort of way that be considered "fast," loops are his biggest enemy. This is what his power should be best for in chases: encouraging Survivors to drop pallets, allowing Legion to destroy them and make the loops a non-issue.

THIS, ladies and gentleman, is the window of opportunity that allows Legion to be a threat when M1'ing. If Legion could stall the game enough to destroy enough pallets, then being a 110 M1 Killer will no longer be an issue. But the combination of the faults in his kit mean he cannot do this: He cannot apply enough pressure to slow gens down to a good level, meaning he cannot take the time to break all the loops, meaning he cannot reach a point where he can M1, meaning he has to resort to cheesing and exploitation to do well. But because his power is the way it is, not even cheesing can get things done fast enough.

What's the solution?
The big aspects of Legion's power I am considering, pressure and M1, are mutually beneficial: The more pressure Legion applies, the closer he becomes to having his M1 be a threat. The more his M1 is a threat, the more pressure he applies. It will even get to the point where people will start wanting very badly to heal against Legion, because without pallets, his M1 now is a true danger, so being injured is very bad, which slows the game down even more.

This is what I believe would change Legion for the better in the best way. By tweaking his ability to apply pressure, the game will grow slower. And when the game grows slower, the next buffs I had in mind can be arranged:
-Shorten the fatigue time when coming out of Feral Frenzy. The fatigue time is long enough that on many loops, Survivors who know about this strategy will often not drop pallets, as that is exactly what Legion wants. But because his fatigue time is so long, Survivors can get on the other side of the loop, allowing the loop cycle to continue. By shortening his fatigue time so he can catch up to the Survivors faster, Legion will become much better at forcing pallet drops so he can break them and grow in power.
-When using Feral Frenzy, the Legion can break pallets while standing still. This will also lend greatly to his ability to delete pallets from the game, since he won't have to waste time coming out of Frenzy just to break a loop.
-Reduce the Feral Frenzy timer from 7 seconds to 6 seconds. This will make it harder to spam it in a chase, allowing some more counterplay in the face of a buffed Legion. (Don't worry, I'll mention a counter-buff to this nerf soon.)

Between the changes to Deep Wound, and the changes to the chase, I assert that Legion will become better at giving himself more time to break pallets and remove loops until there is little to stand in his way, making his 110 speed no longer an issue. However, there is one final topic I'd like to mention.

Fourth issue: Feral Frenzy as a pressure applier
In my time playing Legion, I've found it near impossible to chain hits if the Survivors are not very close to me. Simply by running in the opposite direction when at a moderate distance, they can drain his power gauge completely before he can hit them. This makes it extremely difficult for Legion to set up and apply the pressure he needs to slow the game down. Considering I suggested a nerf to the Feral Frenzy timer earlier, I have two significant buffs that will greatly aid Legion in using Feral Frenzy to chain hits.
-Increase the Frenzy's movement speed from 132% to 140%. This will allow Legion to better clear large distances between Survivors without relying on addons, while also making Exhaustion Perks less of an immediate shutdown to anything Legion can do.
-When hitting a Survivor who is not affected by the Deep Wound status effect, the Feral Frenzy power gauge is refilled fully AND pauses for three seconds. This means that after hitting a Survivor, the Legion essentially has 9 seconds of Feral Frenzy to activate a chain hit instead of 6, giving him 50% more time, which should make chaining hits much easier.

Other problems with the Legion
These are parts of Legion's kit that I could not fit into the other four main issues, or that I believe people will bring up in their responses, and I will talk about here.

1. Gens get done extremely fast. What if the buffs to pressure application aren't enough?
This is a fear that I cannot seem to quell. Even with these buffs in mind, the pressure and stalling potential of Legion can still very well be weak, and I do not know of any ways to fix this issue involving buffs to Legion without making it ridiculous. However, in the state of the game where most Killers must run Perks to get by, I have a suggestion: Thanatophobia. Sure, the Perk itself isn't spectacular by any means, but its near-perfect synergy with the Legion's strengths and weaknesses mean that injuring Survivors as Legion is a win-win. Survivors do not want to heal against Legion, but they do want to heal against Thanatophobia. This can lead to frustration and indecisiveness, giving Legion a mental edge over the game. In addition, it's a win-win in terms of stalling: They either don't heal and have to deal with the repair speed debuff, or they do heal and waste time healing. There's no way out that won't slow the game down in some way. Now, that said, Thanatophobia's debuffs are absolutely pathetic. But if Legion can hit all 4 Survivors and they don't heal, then Thana will add 16 seconds to generator repair times, turning the default time from 80 seconds to 96 seconds. At the very least, that's something to work with. But if Thana were buffed to be, you know, actually usable, it would be more of a must-have on Legion than Monitor and Abuse.

And, of course, if all else fails: Run Ruin. Survivors need a second objective anyway; that will be a better help to Legion than a buff to him ever could.

2. What about vaults? Legion is still weak to them.
This is very true. If a vault is safe enough, then Legion will be left unable to M1, meaning he will have to go to a different Survivor or resort to Frenzy spam. To aid in this, I propose a simple buff: Increase Legion's vault speed from 1.7 seconds to 1.4 seconds. This is faster than Tier 2 Myers (1.5 seconds) but slower than Tier 3 Myers (1.3 seconds). If the optimal play with Legion is making yourself capable of being a 110 M1 Killer, some kind of aid in a chase is in order. Also, this will make Bamboozle on Legion more than just a funny meme to use while Frenzying.

Conclusion
With all the changes I have proposed—the nerfs in some places, the buffs in others, and the tweaks in yet more—I believe this will fix Legion's two biggest issues: Being a bad Killer, and being an easy and unfun Killer to play against. By nerfing the exploitative aspects of him but not nerfing the non-exploitative ones, it will make Legion stronger in the hands of knowledgeable players, while also raising his skill ceiling and giving him more counterplay, thus making him more fun and interesting to play both as and against. In truth, some of Legion's weaknesses aren't a Legion problem; they're a Dead By Daylight problem. This includes gen rushing and the power of looping. But in the face of all this, I've given the Legion the best changes I could think of that would make him stronger, both with how the game balance stands now, and in a hypothetical balanced game.

Thanks for tuning in, and let me know: What do you think? Are these changes sound? What do you like, and what do you dislike? If you dislike the overall essay: Do you think I at least know what I'm talking about, or do you feel I don't have enough skill with Legion and the general game to formulate reasonable changes?