Myers Players

With the significant buff to tier 1 I really don't feel the need for Corrupt now. I think I will swap it out for lethal or maybe brutal.

Lock of hair is definitely going to be used. 40 extra seconds of tier 3 as well as it not resetting the stalk meter back to zero. Fantastic.

With double the amount of stalk on survivors now think how many 100 second tier 3's you can pop off.

I'm not a "Myers player", but I play Myers sometimes. Disclaimer: I haven't played Myers on the PTB.

I think the changes are nice and well-guided enough, but ultimately don't change too much about Myers and don't address the glaring flaw that are the Tombstone add-ons, both of which is disappointing after all these years of doing nothing.

First of all, the movement speed increase for Evil Within I is a great change. People know that Myers has a weak early game because he has to spend time getting out of EWI before he can "play the game normally" as it were, but what most people don't really know is that one of the most punishing issues Myers had was survivors abusing structures high enough to make it impossible to stalk them but still low enough to be able to keep track of Michael over. Rocks are an infamous example of this. What this typically meant is that you simply had to leave those survivors and search for others to stalk. With the 4.4m/s movement speed on the other hand, stalking survivors while chasing them around those structures will be much more managable.

Scratched Mirror reducing that movement speed back down to 4.2m/s is fine. You obviously don't actually need to get stalk from people with that add-on, and it should remain an add-on that strictly encourages going for a jumpscare playstyle where you do not commit to chases but hit survivors and dive back under the waves of an indoor map to attack them again at another point. I will say that I think Myers should have a slightly longer lunge in EWI than he does currently, and that Boyfriend Memo should be able to increase that to a normal lunge.

Changing the maximum stalk per survivor to 20 and required stalk for EWII to 3 from 5 obviously means that after stalking to EWII, there's still 77 stalk points to go around, or potentially 15 EWIII activations. While you might still run out of stalk on any 1 survivor, you will basically never run out of stalk entirely anymore. And even running out on 1 survivor will be rather rare, given that any survivor can give you 3-4 EWIII activations alone. I think I like this change, there should never be a point where Myers just does not have the ability to get an actual ability, that would be like limiting the amount of total blood orbs that can be dropped in a trial for Oni.

Making it so that you stalk at the same rate on distant survivors is welcome. I don't necessarily welcome the change that you stalk at a reduced rate if up close, but this depends on what "up close" actually means here. I think this is meant with the idea in mind to do something about much complained-about instances where Myers will simply pop up and pop EWIII on an unsuspecting survivor, but that has more to do with the ability to 99% the stalk meter and won't be affected by this change. What it may help with is instances where Myers is camping a hook and can then get EWIII even from 0 to 100% simply by stalking the survivor running up to unhook. It can also help with making the Tombstone add-on(s) less attractive.

Personally, I think rather than making changes to the stalk rate depending on distance, I would have simply increased the stalk rate significantly across the board but made it so that the stalk meter gradually regresses over time such that Myers cannot 99% it. With that, I would have removed the "stalk points per survivor" limit altogether, at most tying stalk rate to their hook stages (e. g. 100% stalk rate on a fresh survivor, 75% on a survivor that has been hooked once, 50% if they have been hooked twice). This would make for a much more dynamic gameplay flow where Myers is encouraged to stalk and immediately pop EWIII as soon and often as possible in whatever chase or interaction he is currently engaged in, rather than "pocketing" it and only popping it when it seems opportune. We would have a lot more EWIII in trials if this were the case.

I wonder why they are keeping the "only able to gain stalk from 1 survivor at a time" mechanic, but it's not a serious issue.

The Tombstone add-ons are a serious issue. Not only is especially the Tombstone Piece much too strong as it will often lead to an early death of a survivor, but even in cases where the survivors are smart and coordinated and can prevent this by communicating where Myers is and how much stalk he can have and getting ready to jump into a locker before he arrives at best this will still make for an incredibly boring and tired match where the killer will never actually interact with the survivors and only stare at them, eventually following them until they are in a deadzone and either kill them or grab them out of a locker, hook them and camp them because nobody can unhook against Tombstone.

Even if the changes to double the amount of stalk required to get EWIII with these add-ons coupled with the stalk rate reduction "up close" will make them less effective (which is arguable and depends again on what "up close" means), at best this will make any match in which they are used even more boring as it will only get to be an even longer sequence of "trying to stare". I think they should have reworked these add-ons entirely. I do think Myers being able to instakill any survivor is very befitting of his character and should be kept, but there are still ideas that could make this a little less oppressive and boring. Only being able to kill survivors when they have at least 1 hook stage would already make things much better, with Myers having to play a more or less normal match before having access to the gun. Or only when at least 3 generators have already been repaired. Obviously other changes to the add-ons would accompany any such reworks.

There is a risk that these changes will have even made the Tombstones better still. Sure you need more stalk to get EWIII the first time, but now you have more stalk points on any survivor. You can go from EWI to EWIII with Tombstone Piece entirely by stalking only 1 survivor. And this exacerbates another issue with these add-ons that an unaware (or AFK or inexperienced or trolling or out-of-position etc.) survivor can single-handedly doom a round by giving Myers very early access to an instakill. As well as the issue that in groups without communication (i. e. the overwhelming majority of groups) people can't even surmise that Myers may have Tombstone based on how much he has stalked multiple survivors. Additionally, when EWIII ends without killing a survivor, these add-ons will cause his power to go back to a significant portion of EWII already filled up, as opposed to going back to 0%, and this portion stands to also increase with the requirement for the first tier-up.

Play With Your Food plays into the Tombstone issue, and as a perk of Myers that I have long considered to be ill-designed would have been good to see touched in the update that finally changes a few things about the character itself too. That they didn't even so much as rectify the glaring issue that literally killing a survivor is not considered an "offensive action" for the purpose of losing tokens is… disappointing. His other perks could have done with touch-ups too: Save The Best For Last is a great perk and I think it got overnerfed a little when they last changed it. At the very least, hitting the Obsession with a special attack should only lose you 1 token. Dying Light is simply not good enough and could at the very least do with a simple number buff, to 4 or even 5% (or alternatively also apply to vaulting speeds). Laurie's perks also deserve buffs, with Decisive Strike being able to activate on any unhook (so up to two times), Object Of Obsession's periodic aura reveal also working if you are not the Obsession (having an increased duration if you are the Obsession, e. g. 3 seconds normally, 6 seconds if Obsession), and Sole Survivor… well, doing something else entirely that isn't worth expanding upon in this thread (it should have to do with other survivors being in the injured, dying and hooked state and not only beneficial when they are literally dead). Haddonfield certainly needs some serious looking-at as well and it's similarly disappointing that they're not doing anything on that front alongside these Myers changes.

But no, short of the "up close" stalk rate reduction being much more limiting than I assume it is, there is nothing that will really change about how Myers is played or what builds he is played with. But he will certainly be seen more often and will be noticeably stronger. I would have wished for more compelling changes for Myers (as well as some visual upgrades), but he has always been a really sound and fitting design, I don't mind too much him only getting what amounts to Quality-of-Life improvements ultimately, although they are pretty notable improvements.

I might not run Corrupt on him as much anymore, it'll still be good on him but with the buffs to tier 1 it won't feel as necessary as it did before.

Outside of that I don't think a lot will change for me personally as far as perks and addons go, I already don't use tombstone anyways. Only thing that will change is Lock of Hair (purple t3 duration addon) will be more common now, since it's not worse than the green duration anymore.

I might give it a try. It would have to be with a PWYF build which I already use on Myers a lot anyway. Moving around undetectable at 120%-125% speed sounds like it could actually be somewhat viable lol. Maybe throw a couple exposed perks on the build as well.

i feel like tuft of hair is a camping add-on now because you can play normally hook someone and than just proxy camp from a distance by stalking survivors.

in general, the myer's update feels heavily sided towards proxy camping hooks