Why is Wesker's power only usable in select few instances?
Long read, so: TLDR: Wesker's power is a jack of all trades, but master at nothing.
One of the things that bugs me the most about playing Wesker (I've gotten him up to P7 at this point) is that his power is cumbersome to use unless the survivor is in your direct line of sight & also not behind a loop. A M1 hit with Wesker is usually the only way to deal with survivors around loops, as his bounds/dashes are always fixed in terms of their length (this is disregarding the brown addon, which simply extends his first bound at the cost of the second's length).
Any good survivor knows that his special attack is very linear - he can not hit someone across a short loop with low obstacles (like Nemesis or Deathslinger), and if he tries to bound, he'll significantly be slowed down by his charge-up for his special - at this point, he can either use his first token (of which he has no control over how large that first lunge is) and attempt to speed around a loop), or try to fake out his power (of which he then suffers from a large slowdown from that cooldown too). All a survivor needs to do is hug the loop, and they'll be fine.
Blight and Nurse have quite a lot of agency when it comes to course correcting (Nurse can pivot and lunge at a survivor to make up for slight mistakes, Blight can significantly curve when he's lunging out of his charge to hit survivors running around an unsafe object). Not to mention, grabbing a survivor out in the open (probably the shining time to use his ability for chase) has the potential to have him simply throw the survivor w/ infection if no nearby wall/obstacle is in the way - granting no injury state while Blight and Nurse would guarantee an injure state upon successful usage of their powers.
Sure, his power is somewhat good at catching up with survivors and map traversal. However, unlike Nurse and to some degree, Blight, he must respect all obstacles on the map. Blight can catch up to survivors with his power very easily, and also has fantastic map traversal. However, his ability to zone survivors is significantly hindered by the aforementioned cooldown after his bounds as well as his lack of being able to shorten the length of his bounds. The Blight can simply swing to cancel his charging special if need be and not suffer from a significantly long cooldown. If Wesker misses a survivor (and the survivor is smart and runs towards the location of his previous bound, furthering the distance between them + Wesker's slowdown), it's a significant punishment for the killer. Not to mention, his tokens have a charge period, so he can not quickly make up the distance for his last mistake.
Using his special to vault windows and pallets is quite frankly pointless, since he both suffers from the aforementioned cooldown at the end of his bound/vault as well as the window/vault canceling his second token (if he has both tokens charged). A survivor has enough time to continue running the loop, forcing him to likely destroy the pallet anyway to make the loop unsafe.
Finally, unlike Nemesis, all sprays in the chests have 2 charges, which arguably will never be depleted in a normal game unless he only uses his special (which is extremely unwise in most situations).
So, my question's this - why is his power so constrained to the point of being so situational?
Comments
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A lot of the time, I'll lead with M1, then try to catch them with the grab on the way to the next loop and hope they are too distracted looking for a pallet to dodge me. Also, stealth perks help.
But yeah, overall, it's a tough power to use against survivors who can time a halfway decent dodge. You really have to hope for a mistake.
It is nice for catching up, and sometimes when I miss, I end up in front of the survivor I'm chasing, which confuses them and I can land a M1 sometimes. So that's... something? Anything that makes patrolling faster helps, I suppose.
I dunno. I still like playing him for some reason.
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because he's dynamic and he's fun when his power works, that's why. He's nothing special, but i found him funny and enjoyable despite he has a simple power
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Honestly one of the reasons I like wesker is that his power is generally more effective at stronger loops/jungle gyms and often less effective at weaker ones (although that’s not a hard rule). At shorter filler pallet loops (like rock loops and such) he’s often not much different from an m1 killer.
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Why should a power be useable in every situation?
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So that the player can use it? Why play one killer over another if not to use their specific power?
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On top of his power only working in lines, which means you straight-up can't use it at short loops like rock pallets, he has way too much slowdown on it. His catchup is overrated because of how much he slows down, as in maybe you're better off not using his power for map traversal, because then you don't have it ready for when you do catch up to them either. Even when he vaults a pallet or window instantly, it's not true anti-loop because you slow down and the survivor can just vault through you. Assuming you catch and throw the survivor, they might clearly hit something, but they slide off it instead like they're a slippery Blight, meaning you don't get the injure or the down. His hitbox? Also still pretty specific. You will miss survivors you should have grabbed all the time. But back to the slowdown, it's annoying that you HAVE to run Uroboros Tendril and Loose Crank. It sucks. If you're not running those, you're missing out on so many opportunities to use your power. It doesn't mean that suddenly hits with his power are guaranteed, but you won't feel as sluggish. I can't use 95% of his add-ons because 2 of them are better than literally everything else, like Ghost Face, like Pyramid Head. And his sprays? They're never-ending! You'd think that hit and run with him wouldn't be that terrible but it is. You keep hitting survivors with your power and they keep getting healed AND cured, and still come back to pressure enough to win the game. It feels horrible, and that's the same way Pig and Nemesis feel when you just keep getting your power off on the survivors and it doesn't do anything but a sliver of slowdown.
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