Proposed Carnifex Changes Removes ANY Reason to Using Him in Chase

I am a P100 Knight main, and I am incredibly concerned after reading about the proposed changes to Carnifex and Jailer, and I believe using Carnifex for chases will be actively detrimental to gameplay.

There should be no part of any character where it actively hinders you to use the Power as intended, and under the proposed changes that is what Carnifex will do if he is selected to be used for Patrols and Hunts.

I detail my concerns below, and at the end of this post I offer my variation of proposed changes for Carnifex and Jailer as opposed to what is proposed in the Dev Blog.

I am very excited about most of the upcoming proposed changes, namely adding the minimum patrol paths to deter unavoidable hits. However, I had to mull over the Carnifex and Jailer changes for a while before realizing this has incredibly poor unintended consequences:

Removing Carnifex's chase specialty will make him the weakest Guard in a Hunt and render him entirely useless for being using to chase Survivors. By unlocking the Guard Select Order, CARNIFEX WILL NEVER BE USED IN CHASE AGAIN because by unlocking the Guard order, he has no reason to be used in a chase.

Benefits of Using Each Guard for Patrols/In Chase Under New Changes:

Assassin: Fastest chase speed, inflicts Deep Wounds

Jailer: Now has the fastest patrol speed, largest detection radius, longest patrol time, longest chase duration, and longest banner spawn time.

Carnifex: Nothing

Carnifex has NO Chase Specialty Now:

Each Guard, currently, has a specialty when it comes to Hunts: Assassin chases faster (4.4 m/s) and inflicts heavier damager, Carnifex chases longer, and Jailer is excellent at initiating hunts and nearly always guarantees one will start, thanks to his detection capabilities.

Currently, on live servers and as acknowledged in the Dev Blog, Carnifex's strongest use is for both breaking things and for keeping Survivors preoccupied for a long time. This, in my opinion, is a good thing, as IT GIVES CARNIFEX A STRENGTH IN A HUNT - a reason to bring him out for a reason other than merely breaking stuff.

The Guard Damage interaction and the drawing a path interaction are both completely separate - you cannot draw a patrol path into a Guard breaking something. They do either patrolling or breaking, but not both.

The concerns that initiated changing Carnifex in the first place is that having two specialties on one Guard is too strong. However, while Carnifex has two specialties, not being able to both Break and Patrol at the same time meant that only one specialty could give him a benefit at any given time.

If Carnifex's only specialty is that he breaks stuff faster, then there will be literally no point in spawning him to initiate hunts with the proposed changes.

Giving Jailer Extra Benefits makes him a Catch-All Guard That's Better for Chases, Camping, & Tunneling:

Jailer, having the longest patrol duration and largest detection radius, almost always guarantees a Hunt starting if a patrol path is drawn even somewhat accurately. This is great if you just need to keep someone busy, to push someone out of an area, or to guard an objective. However, the tradeoff is that Jailer has little lethality on his own, being one of the slower guards (4.0 m/s) with shorter hunt duration (12s). Between being able to guard objectives or detect a Survivor, both give him incredible usefulness, but it balanced out because his chase wasn't as lethal without Killer input or unless Survivors made a major mistake.

Jailer is also often used by crafty Knight players so that his detection range covers a Hooked Survivor but is out of sight, so that Hunts won't begin until an Unhook actually is pulled off (as Unhook notifications initiate Hunts), and this is quite easy to do thanks to Jailer's massive detection range.

I am anticipating now that the buffs to Jailer will be used to guarantee easier hits and tunnels/proxy-camping off-hook. Knight is already one of the best proxy-campers in the game, making it nearly impossible to get an unhook off without someone trading should he decide to proxy-camp.

But beyond just camping and tunneling, Jailer will now be the catch-all Guard to use in most scenarios: Not only does he chase for an incredibly long time (24 seconds, up to 32 with the new proposed changes), but merely using him already almost guarantees Hunts because it's so easy to initiate hunts with his increased detection radius and patrol duration! So now you're almost guaranteeing up to 32 seconds of Survivor time wasted or in chase with every use of Jailer.

Breaking Objects Faster Has NO Use in a Hunt:

The bonus of using Carnifex for a Hunt is that he has the longest chase duration. Now, without that, he is objectively the weakest Guard to be sent out for patrols, because he doesn't chase faster, he doesn't detect better, and he does not chase longer. With these changes, the ONLY reason to use Carnifex is to break something.

Even then, being able to break stuff quicker is, in my 100 Prestiges of experience on Knight, INCREDIBLY limited in practice.

While it may be incredibly satisfying to break something very quickly, there almost no usefulness in being able to quickly break something from far away - in most cases, unless the Killer is breaking a pallet or breakable wall directly in front of The Knight, the Killer would almost always make it to the damaged object by or after the 6 seconds that it takes Jailer or Assassin to break something.

If Carnifex's only benefit is breaking stuff quicker, then it doesn't even make sense to break things unless it's a pallet directly in front of you that would take 4 seconds or less to reach - any other guard would do just as fine because in most cases the Knight wouldn't even reach the object in the 2 seconds it takes Carnifex to break an object.

None of this is an issue in live servers, as the preset Guard order means you must be judicious in what you use them for, but they will all eventually get used no matter what, which means if you need to send out a guard then you have to use whatever you've got on hand and use it for the best immediate scenario - which means, when it comes Carnifex's turn, you either do a long chase with him or break something with him, but not both.

With Guard order unlocked, players may now choose to freely ignore Carnifex for a Hunt because they don't need to, and they shouldn't because he has no reason to even be pulled out except to be Ordered to Damage a pallet at the Knight's feet in an incredibly short time.

Re-Approaching The Scamper Problem

While we're discussing Carnifex changes, decreasing the Damage Object interaction is very dangerous to play with, in my opinion.

Disregarding the fact that The Knight has to stop, lock into Draw Patrol Path animation and select a pallet in Path mode, then come out of animation in order to break pallets, 1.8 seconds to break pallets is incredibly fast, and in most scenarios already can result in a very easy hit.

This change brings us back to the Scamper problem. Being able to break pallets faster is quickly approaching the same territory of unfun gameplay that made Scamper have to be removed, and that also makes Mage Hand very unfun for many to play against on Vecna.

Even just yesterday, Vorpal Sword had to be nerfed to take 3.2 seconds, yet Carnifex is being buffed to break pallets in 1.8 seconds?

Remote pallet-breaking functionality Should Be More Consistent across all aspects of Dead by Daylight gameplay I think, and this inconsistency has been a little frustrating to play against at best. Vorpal Sword is functionally no different from Knight's Guards, and in practice neither is pallet lifting with Mage Hand. Players do not enjoy when a pallet is essentially deleted or made as if it doesn't exist before their eyes, making Carnifex's only strength is shaping to be exactly that.

The Carnifex Problem Boils Down To This:

Now that you can choose your Guard, why would anyone ever send out the guard (Carnifex) that has objectively has the slowest chase speed, the smallest detection radius, and the shortest chase time?

Under the proposed Dev Blog changes, there is absolutely no reason to use Carnifex for chasing, and I think this is a major issue that greatly strips large layers of complexity and interesting strategy to this Killer.

The concerns that initiated changing Carnifex in the first place is that having two specialties on one Guard is too strong. However, by placing Carnifex's specialties onto Jailer, now the Jailer has THREE incredibly strong specialties that all activate at the same time, and Carnifex only has one specialty which will never even activate during a chase.

My proposed changes, as a P100 Knight main:

I believe either one of these options would keep Knight's entire kit more well-rounded than they would be under the proposed Dev Blog changes:

• Keep the Hunt and Standard Spawn durations as-is for both Jailer (12s) and Carnifex (24s), do not change anything

OR, if we want to make Jailer to be slightly more lethal on his own (I think this is a more interesting option that buffs Jailer without making him a clear Catch-All, thus creating a more interesting overall strategy to every guard):

1. Keep Carnifex's chase time as-is (24s)
2. Buff Jailer chase duration + Standard spawn time to an in-between of what the difference between Carnifex and Jailer chase duration is now (16s Hunt / 7.5s Standard spawn)

OR, experiment with adding a bonus ability to Carnifex's chase:

• When Carnifex approaches a pallet in the middle of Hunting a Survivor, he will instantly transition into breaking the pallet. To give Survivors reasonable counterplay, allow this to take longer (2.4 seconds, which is regular kick duration) or give the Power cooldown a slightly bigger cooldown (currently 3 seconds) when this happens.

If not any of these changes, Carnifex needs some other form of extra Hunt specialty to make him worthy of using to make patrols with and to use mid-chase.