P100 Trickster - I HATE the Rework: Updated Feedback

EDIT: After some feedback, I decided to rework a majority of the suggestions I put up in this post to something I find better overall. Skip to the end for the most up-to-date version of the changes, and read through for updated thoughts.

EDIT 2: Fixed formatting, grammar, spelling, etc. Also hammered in some points better.

Hello. I’m a P100 Trickster. I’ve spent years learning the ins and outs of this character, and invested most of my DBD playtime solely to him. This post is regarding the recent Trickster rework. I’ll be attempting to thoroughly deconstruct every change, from the PTB to now, and provide in-depth and honest feedback on the entire update. 

I’ve loved Trickster since his release, and was really putting in practice to get good at him starting this year. He was an incredibly nuanced, incredibly flashy, and endlessly fun character to me. He was the primary reason I got on to play the game, and unfortunately, this Trickster update has absolutely destroyed any enthusiasm for the character I had.

Many nuanced mechanics have been stripped down or removed, pointless and confusing stat changes have me relearning him every week, and his power just doesn’t feel as strong or satisfying to use as it did before. He feels like a glorified zoner with an increased focus on using basic attacks and Main Event, rather than just sharpening your skills and learning how to use his knives.

Despite being highly critical of this update, I don’t mean to insult the developers behind it. I know this stuff takes time to get right, and my only hope is that in the future you will take another look at the character with this critique in mind. There will be a summary of the changes I want at the end for those who only want to skim. I hope this reaches the right people.

PRIORITY #1 - 8-KNIFE LACERATION METER, and how it affects his gameplay style.

After playing with the new version more and more, I can confidently say that changing Trickster’s laceration meter capacity to 8 Knives from the previous 6 has been THE biggest tragedy of this update, and has had a direct negative impact on almost every single part of his gameplay loop. 

Previously, you could use the knives anywhere & all the time if you learned how and when to use them effectively. Not only could you use them anywhere, you also had to, because he was 4.4m/s. It wasn't easy to get in for a basic attack most of the time, and that was fine, because the knives were SO good you almost never had to use the bat. Only needing 6 hits meant that each individual shot you hit mattered more, even if you were only occasionally throwing.

Nowadays, getting downs with only knives is less fun and even less effective. Being forced to hit at least 4 extra blades for a down compared to the old version feels terrible. It gives survivors way more time to just run past you, or away from you without much threat. To compensate, you very often have to intentionally zone people out into open areas to use a basic attack or Main Event: as these options are more effective at downing players, save you knives, and are easier than trying to hit knives manually.

The change from 6 to 8 really killed the knives-only playstyle that old trickster bred. Another big reason for this is that the ammo economy of new Trickster is terrible. You have to use over ⅓ of your base ammo capacity just for one down, even without missing a single time. Even pro players can’t possibly hit ‘em all, so I don’t see how that's a reasonable amount. You have to reload after every chase unless you use Main Event, whereas before a down was barely over ¼ of the base ammo capacity, and you didn't have to reload or use Main Event every chase just to compensate. 

Additionally, on a smaller note, the order of the melodic sound effects that play whenever you land a blade has changed due to the increase, often making me believe I’m closer to a down than I actually am. This causes me to drop my knives when I shouldn’t, and provide the survivor more time to run away by mistake. Yes, this HAS cost me entire downs sometimes.

The solution isn’t to increase his ammo capacity, it’s to reduce his laceration meter back down to 6 Knives. 

6-Knife meter fixes so much about this character fundamentally. It lowers chase time in more significant ways than just making him throw faster, allows for better ammo management, revives knife-only playstyle, and it makes Main Event better by proxy. And no, this would NOT be overpowered in any way when combined with a 4.6m/s killer. 4.6m/s Killers by themselves are not scary: They need good powers that can cut down chase times to compensate: if they lack mobility. Which, as you know, Trickster does. The counterplay to ANY killer is always going to be to put as much distance and as many obstacles between you and them as possible, and Trickster still holds true to this.

PRIORITY #2 - THROW RATE

Let’s go back to Pre-7.4.0 Trickster for a second.

Throw Rate Growth was a mechanic where Trickster’s throw animation speed would increase for each blade he threw in rapid succession. This meant that despite his initial throw being pretty slow, you could follow this up with a flurry of blades very quickly, and it added a nice rhythm to his gameplay loop.

The reason this mechanic was so important was because it gave Trickster a way to punish Survivors very hard when they made a mistake, but it also made sure that survivors who were playing correctly had a reasonable amount of time to react to his initial windup and get behind something before too many blades could be sent their way.

This led to Trickster’s bread and butter gameplay loop. Tap-fire and chip away at a survivor’s laceration meter in tall loops, and when they mess up or are stuck out in the open for too long, mow them down with a full-auto flurry.

Removing this mechanic in favor of a completely static throwing speed has been another major killjoy for the character. Now, when a Survivor makes a mistake, they aren’t punished for it nearly as heavily, because the base fire rate isn’t fast enough to do that. Reducing the base throw rate isn’t a good option either, as this makes it so survivors get punished for the mere crime of EXISTING, and Trickster is able to throw far more knives in shorter spans of time than anybody is reasonably able to react to. This was a big problem for him on the Chucky PTB, and hasn’t been addressed reasonably since then.

With all that said, I think the best thing to do is return his throw rate to how it was before the 7.4.0 Update. 3kps (0.33s windup) base speed, with a ramp up to 4kps after 8 throws, and a further ramp-up to 5kps in main event. Here’s roughly the exact numbers from the wiki.

The reason I vouch for this mechanic returning as well is because old Trickster's power was never super oppressive to necessitate it's removal. Even though his power was flexible, it took a LOT of getting used to: and your skill was rewarded heavily with the ability to down people quickly.

I think it's important that Trickster is treated sort of like an insta-down killer, similar to the Chainsaw bros. All three can down you incredibly easily and quickly when you make a mistake, but if you position yourself correctly and outplay them, you can easily save your health state and/or prolong chases for long times.

Similarly, all three characters have always been good at camping too, but nowadays we have a baseline anti-camp mechanic, and you still have enough time to pull off an unhook against all three, even if you're noticed before you reach the hook.

Giving Trickster a good power while also being 4.6m/s is not going to shoot him up to the top of tier lists or Kill Rates, or even make him super oppressive in chase. It will just force people to actually learn how to play against him, which I think is interesting.

PRIORITY #3 - MAIN EVENT

Main Event has transformed from an occasional part of your power that required good time management and usage of knives... to basically being used in every single chase, and you are punished pretty hard for not making use of it. This is another change that just killed the character for me.

New Trickster is too reliant on Main Event as a crutch for his other very obvious problems, and I think this is TERRIBLE for the health of the character. His base knives suck bad compared to the old Trickster, as you have to hit more and the throw rate is slower than before. Additionally, you will have to reload more often because of the other changes.

The only way you can compensate for all that is by using Main Event as often as you can. And uh, you can use it often, that's for sure. You can activate Main Event whenever you hit the equivalent of 1 Health state worth of knives. Compared to the previous 5 Health States worth, that is a massive buff. Besides that, it was basically unchanged, minus the implementation of an extremely clunky use of the existing Combo system to supplement the duration. I don't like this.

It is crucial for me to make my point clear here: Making Trickster's power terrible so you can afford to make Main Event central to his playstyle is a terrible idea.

Main Event is not fun to use or play against most of the time. It's a binary ability. During this mode, you have little control over what you do: A huge beam of knives comes out and all you do is line it up so the beam hits the survivor. This kind of sustained-fire mode is incredibly boring compared to manually taking each shot. Even compared to trickster's old maximum throw rate it's ludicrous. It's good for when you want to get through a group of people quickly, but when you're just using it on one person alone, it's super dull to use AND play against.

That's not to say it doesn't have counterplay, it's just that the counterplay is significantly less fun than base Trickster throw rate. You can either get in a locker to completely nullify the ability, or you just get behind something that doesn't have any openings he can fire through so that he's forced to walk around it... often resulting in a fatigue by the time the time he catches up.

I'd highly prefer if Trickster had a better power and a worse Main Event. With all that said, I offer a small rework.

• Decrease Main Event Duration to 5 Seconds. Remove Combo system implementation.
• Decrease charge requirement to 6 Blade hits.
• NEW: The Main Event gauge will lose 2 Charges for any Blade you miss when Main Event is not charged or activated.

Now Main Event becomes a sort-of reward system for players with high accuracy. It’ll be about the same frequency as now if you have high accuracy. But, players who either have lower accuracy, or ones just take riskier shots will have to forego the ability for a bit longer as a trade off. Which I think is fine. Definitely an upgrade in design compared to what we have now in my opinion.

LACERATION DECAY, & MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS

Figured I’d cap off my thoughts on his basekit by just nitpicking a bit about other aspects of this update that have bothered me, starting with Laceration Decay.

Laceration Decay, as it stands right now, is kind of lacking-- design wise. It works fine for what it is, but it's honestly so annoying that it actually uses decimal numbers sometimes. If you hit someone a fraction of a second after the meter decays, your next shot won't count as an injury, but instead as 5.939393 stacks or something. It's annoyingly designed and sometimes a bit aggravating. I suggest a mild technical rework and buff to cap off the final round of basekit Trickster changes.

• The Laceration meter now only depletes after reaching the next whole number. When the Laceration Meter begins decaying, Laceration Meter Stacks will be preserved until the stack is fully depleted.

This prevents situations where stacks will only deplete by a small amount before you hit a Survivor again, effectively nullifying the stack. As an example: If a Survivor’s meter is decaying after 5 hits, and the meter hasn’t yet counted down to 4, Your next hit will still count as the 6th.

This can be achieved by keeping the Laceration Meter value in memory as the meter depletes, and only decreasing it when a whole number is reached. In a sense: Basekit Laceration meter stacks will only ever deplete by -1, and never count as some number like 5.9393. Any other Laceration modifiers that produce a decimal result on hit will simply be rounded down to the nearest whole number when that stack is depleted.

This would be a hefty buff to current trickster by itself, but I think some other changes could be made to amplify this design:

• Decrease Laceration Decay time to 12 seconds (from 15)
• Make Laceration Stacks deplete in 3 Seconds / at 0.33c/s (from 2 seconds / at 0.5c/s)

This would make it so survivors can genuinely see their progress sooner as they're outrunning a Trickster. This would also make it less likely that you'll want to leave a chase the moment it starts going south.

And here's some other nitpicky thoughts that could be used to further the discussion.

• Increasing his Terror Radius was a good idea, sure. But was it really all that necessary when he still has a huge Lullaby? Why does he even have a Lullaby to begin with? It’s not as if he’s good at surprise attacks, since he has to hit so many blades anyway. Just get rid of the thing already! Or, just go back to 24m terror radius if you want to keep it.
• The removal of the slowdown penalty was good, as it seemed to be barely functional anyway, only reaching the minimum speed after throwing 30 entire knives. Not exactly an exciting part of his kit to keep around, but I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to it coming back in a more prominent way if Trickster was deemed too strong.
• Trying to make combos anything other than his bloodpoint earning method has been a disaster. It’s too confusing of a mechanic and doesn’t need to be exemplified beyond what it previously was. It gives you bloodpoints and that should be the end of it.
• Recoil was cool. I think it encouraged a more skillful playstyle of tap-firing and only going full-auto when it was necessary, and made learning how to full-auto without losing accuracy incredibly rewarding. I am sad to see it go but I’m not exactly combative of its removal either. If it makes the killer more accessible, that’s fine I suppose.

Let’s move on to add-ons now, as they are a beast in their own right.

THE ADD-ON PROBLEM

Finally, I'm gonna wrap this up with a thorough look at each of Trickster’s add-ons, how to change them from here, and why they need updates. I kept this separate from the “priority list” because I think add-ons are a huge problem, but nothing is more of a problem than his current main kit.

We’ll go from top-to-bottom, starting with his Ultra Rares.

Death Throes Compilation

• Current Effect: Reveal the auras of Survivors hit by Blades during Main Event for 6 seconds.

This add-ons effect is pretty cool and makes Main Event better for sure, but it’s a far-cry from how useful the old version was. The Diamond Cufflinks add-on has a similar, better, and more common effect at a lower rarity, so I think this effect should be reserved for a lower rarity add-on. I would like for this add-on to return to a similar effect as the old version, but with an added caveat that makes it more fair to play against.

• New Effect: During Main Event, the amount of Blades you hit Survivors with will be returned as Ammo at a 2x conversion rate when Main Event ends.

This reworked version makes use of Main Event’s strength as a finisher, rewarding players for their accuracy and smart use of the power with some extra ammo returned. Under absolute dream conditions, this add-on could theoretically still allow you to play without ever reloading at lockers. But, the accuracy that would be necessary to pull this playstyle off would make it a true test of skill, and endlessly satisfying for sure.

Iridescent Photocard

• Current Effect: For each consecutive Blade hit, gain a stackable 1% Haste effect, up to a maximum of 7%. This bonus is lost when missing a Blade or when a Survivor loses a health state.

This new version of the add-on is extremely cool and provides a reward to Tricksters who leverage his tap-fire playstyle well. However, it has some problems. Firstly, with the prospect of lowering his Laceration meter down to 6 Knives, I don’t think it makes sense to keep the effect stacking to 7%. Secondly, the Haste never goes away if you don’t do one of the other two effects, so it provides some value in ways I don’t think are intentional. To remedy this, I’ll suggest a change to its deactivation condition.

• New Effect: For each consecutive Blade hit, gain a stackable 1% Haste effect, up to a maximum of 5%. This bonus is lost when missing a Blade, when a Survivor loses a health state, or when the Survivor’s Laceration Meter begins decaying.

Now the effect is much less stackable and only serves its purpose when actively in chase, which I think is for the best.

Trick Blades

• Current Effect: Causes Blades to ricochet off the environment a total of 2 times.

While this add-on does allow for much more cool skill-expressive plays, I think the add-on is currently too strong and makes a good Trickster inescapable. This add-on allows a blade that would otherwise miss two additional chances to deal full damage, and I think it needs to be toned down a bit to stand in-line with the other similar add-ons.

• New Effect: Blades that travel less than 20m ricochet off the environment a total of 2 times.

This limits the effect to medium-range, allowing cool shots but still making it so blades that straight up miss are not relevant. From this point on I'm gonna talk about add-ons in groups.

COMBO ADD-ONS

Fizz-Spin Soda

• Current Effect: Increases the time before a Combo ends by 15%.

Ji-Woon’s Autograph

• Current Effect: Increases the time before a Combo ends by 10%.

These addons are laughably awful. I don’t even understand how this passed through. They're meant to increase the amount of bloodpoints you earn and help increase your main event duration. But… There’s plenty of other add-ons that increase main event duration. We don’t need more. Not to mention, the modifiers used here are so pathetically small they barely help in that regard. Both need to be reworked.

Fizz-Spin Soda

• New Effect: Injuring a survivor using Blades applies the Mangled status effect.

Ji-Woon’s Autograph

• New Effect: Decreases throws required to reach the maximum Throw Rate by 1.

I’ve given two different effects that I believe are more deserving of their rarities. Soda has become a Mangled add-on, making Blade hits pack a tiny bit of a slow-down punch, deserved for using your power well. Ji-Woon’s autograph has been restored to it's previous version as a replacement for the "Memento Blades" add-on, which we'll get to later.

DECAY TIME ADD-ONS

Ripper Brace

• Current Effect: Increases the time before the Laceration Meter begins decaying by 3s.

On Target Single

• Current Effect: Increases the time before the Laceration Meter begins decaying by 2s.

While these add-ons both have respectable effects in their own right, I think stacking add-ons leads to less interesting gameplay. I don’t think a decay time add-on needs to be in the Rare group of add-ons, and I think On Target Single isn’t good enough to run on its own. 

Ripper Brace

• New Effect: Blade hits from beyond 16m apply 1.25x Laceration.

On Target Single

• New Effect: Increases the time before the Laceration Meter begins decaying by 3s.

Now, On Target Single takes the reins as the sole Decay time add-on, unlocking an even 15s decay time, and Ripper Brace has a new effect as an add-on that rewards good accuracy at a distance. This effect can be used to lower the amount of hits required for a health state to 5 if you hit all of your shots from that range, or can just give you some extra time to deplete the laceration meter before losing a stack, which is nice.

INFERIOR DUPLICATE ADD-ONS

Add-on variety is very important, especially for a killer like Trickster who you can do so much with. For a long time his duplicate add-ons have had the problem of the higher rarity versions being good and the lower rarities being terrible, and the next couple add-ons are a perfect example of what I mean.

Lucky Blade

• Current Effect: Increases the duration of Main Event by 0.3s for each Blade Hit.

Inferno Wires

• Current Effect:  Increases the duration of Main Event by 40%.

Counting the Combo add-ons, we have way too many add-ons solely to increase the duration of Main Event. 6 to be exact. That’s 30% of his total add-ons. Unacceptable, we need to cut this down to allow for more variety.

Lucky Blade

• New Effect: Increases the time required for Laceration stacks to Decay by 1s (0.33s -> 0.25s)

Inferno Wires

• New Effect: Decreases Main Event charge penalty for missed Blades by 50%.

I think these new effects speak for themselves. Watch is unchanged. Lucky Blade is reworked into a new type of Laceration decay add-on, and Wires is reworked to a completely new effect, allowing more leniency in activating the new Main Event.

Killing Part Chords

• Current Effect: Increases movement speed in the Throw State by 1%

This add-on is just terrible. It’s a copy of the far better Caged Heart Shoes add-on, but way less useful. Not even noticeable, and never worth running. I think this add-on needs an entire rework just to make sure no terrible duplicate add-ons are left.

• New Effect: Increases the Main Event activation window by 5s.

Now this add-on has a dedicated use, letting you hold on to Main Event for longer so you can use it when a good opportunity arises. This is accomplished by changing the modifier that drains the main event gauge from -0.33c/s to -0.25c/s, increasing the time you can hold onto Main Event from 15s to 20s. 

(Which by the way, is a change that was swept under the rug, because changing Main Event’s Base duration also affects this. When Main Event was 10 seconds, this allowed you to pocket it for 30 seconds. When the duration was changed to 5 seconds, this resulted in you only being able to hold it for 15 seconds, and now 18s with the current 6s duration. What a mess!)

Bloody Boa

• Current Effect: Increases Blade ammo capacity by 8.

Trick Pouch

• Current Effect: Increases Blade ammo capacity by 4.

As a final example of terrible duplicate add-ons, these two are a prime example of what mean. Bloody Boa is an amazing add-on, it helps in more ways than one and is just nice to throw on in any build. Trick Pouch on the other hand, provides so little it’s barely ever worth using-- not even stacked with Boa.

Since Trick Pouch seems more blatantly designed as an ammo add-on, I think Boa is the one that should be changed to something else.

Bloody Boa

• New Effect: Reveal the auras of Survivors hit by Blades during Main Event for 6 seconds.

Trick Pouch

• New Effect: Increases Blade ammo capacity by 8.

I decided to give Boa the effect of the current Death Throes Compilation add-on since I still like the effect, but don’t think it’s worthy of being an Ultra-Rare. I think this would put both of these add-ons in a good spot for their rarities.

Memento Blades

• Current Effect: Increases throwing speed by 10%

This add-on has had a sad life. For most of its life, this was always an intentionally terrible add-on, forcing you to hit an extra knife to injure survivors. Nowadays, it’s practically a crutch for current Trickster’s design problems. It increases his base throwing speed to almost 4kps with no downside, which is brutal and pushes him right back to his problematic state where he was on the PTB. This add-on needs another full rework.

• New Effect: Laceration caused by Blades is based on proximity to the target, starting at a minimum of 50% Laceration. Each Blade Hit increases the Laceration caused by Blades to a maximum of 200% Laceration. Missing a Blade resets Laceration to its initial value.

If you’re confused, this is the ORIGINAL effect of the Death Throes compilation add-on. It was a fun add-on that was challenging to use, but it had a short life before being removed, presumably for making the character even more difficult than he already was. 

The gimmick with this add-on is that hitting your blades from close-up will cause them to deal half as much damage, but hitting them from incredibly long ranges will cause higher damage. In addition, hitting shots without missing also increases your laceration output by a significant amount. 

This add-on effect would fit right in as a brown add-on, as it provides a hefty challenge for those who desire it.

TL;DR

Well, by this point I’m sure I’m running out of space to type anything else, so I’ll end it here. Please consider my words, as I think this new direction would help make Trickster feel fun again. Here's a summary of all the changes.

Thanks for keeping the Trickster discussion alive y'all. I just hope he gets treated better in 2024.