How would you change The Dredge?

That‘s a good idea

I honestly wasn't even aware dredge needs that much help.

As a dredge main, I win most of the matches I play.
He is not an S Tier killer thats for sure and I get that it is very hard to play against very good survivors but I would be carefull to not overbuff him.
Because the consequence of an overbuff in the history of dbd lead to the killer being nerfed to a weaker state then before the buff.

Dredge has the highest mobility (depending of lockers of course) among all killers. His ability to traverse the entire map including different levels in seconds is unparalled even the Ghoul cannot do it this quick.
However using his remnant effective can be tricky and the most effective thing against dredge is holding W which will cause long chases with good survivors.

In my opinion the best usage of its power is to surprise survivors, catching them offguard and try to chase them to an edge map loop (corner map tile is best). That way you can place down your remnant without the survivor being able to hold W and then it becomes a 50/50. With every second you see the survivor and hold the remnant the chances get higher you get the hit.

On the other hand survivor being able to destroy the remnant for free has always annoyed me.

In summary I think dredge is decent but maybe you could tweak some numbers. For example breaking a lock from insde the locker happens twice as fast during nightfall

Apart from locker placements I think Dredge is in a good spot, they have mobility, anti loop, stealth; and some of the best skins in the game.

the only buff he needs is to add more lockers to maps

alright then following that same argument we should also remove: Legion and wraith and we should also punish holding W because that also requires low amount of skill….

Dredges biggest issue is extreme map dependency because of locker amounts and locker placements. That’s it. That’s the core of the problem. That’s why not many people play him. To fix him they need to add more lockers to maps, at least when he’s the killer anyway. Allowing him to teleport to chests would help some I guess, but I doubt it would be enough to fix the problem. Essentially between how far lockers are from gens on most maps and how much of a sound heads up the survivor gets from you teleporting they gain far too much distance pre running you. This causes him to just have way, way too many bad maps that already make you unlikely to win before the match even starts.

Other smaller grievances:

Boat Key and Haddies Calendar also still feel required for teleporting mid chase for cut offs. Being able to do this is what makes them fun and even with these addons it’s still not generally viable against good survivors. Even nightfall teleports are barely fast enough for this.

The “lock only one locker and it always forces dredge to use that one” thing should’ve been gone ages ago.

Fix how bad his ultra rares are. This isn’t a numbers issue like some addons, their design is just bad. Make one that silences him entering and exiting lockers but it reduces his teleports by one.

Why does he light up like a Christmas tree during nightfall again? Kinda defeats the point.

If Dredge could place lockers like Freddy can dream pallets it would help since they're map dependent

Hit and run is a playstyle that in most circumstances is less effective than just focussing and tunnelling one Survivor out so I wouldn't discourage it, especially since it's not particularly strong right now anyway.

Dredge, while not requiring the same mechanical skill of, say, a Huntress, DOES require extensive map knowledge and understanding of the macro/win conditions of the Survivors you're facing, so you can reliably teleport to where they intend to go and cut them off. You also have to understand positioning and timing really well to get the benefit of the Remnant ability to anti-loop. Dredge isn't an overpowered Killer by any stretch of the imagination, though he can be a bit of a noobstomper during Nightfall because new Survivors struggle with Blindness and Undetectable Killers. You're the only person I've ever seen complain about the Dredge in such strong terms. Would you like to elaborate on why you dislike them so much?

Hit-and-run and tunnelling are arguably diametrically opposed strategies but you don't want either in the game. What do you want Killers to do if it's not acceptable to apply pressure evenly across the Survivor team or to apply it heavily to one Survivor, while being realistic that going for 8 hooks across 4 Survivors is not a feasible strategy in most trials? Moreover, it's far easier to counter hit-and-run than it is to fix tunnelling: bring a decent medkit, or some perk that lets you self-heal, or an aura perk that lets you find other Survivors more easily. There are plenty of good options for all of these but I never see Survivors bring these (whicever side I'm playing) because 90% of them all bring flashy chase perks instead of ones that might help their team survive.

Locker locks are, at least in principle, easy to deal with, but also easy for Survivors to apply. It's literally pressing a button in front of a locker. For Dredge it also breaks Bloodlust and removes momentum if they break locks from the outside, slowing you down if you're trying to chase a Survivor.

When Dredge charges his teleport, you can't see any of the map geometry you pass through, so you need to know where you're going to end up in relation to Survivor and tile positions, which is a skillset that's not unique to Dredge per se, but is peculiar to some (Freddy, Unknown and Dracula have similar mechanics). No Killer is totally unique in how they operate and what skills they require, otherwise learning more than one Killer would be insanely difficult.

I agree that Nightfall can be oppressive for new Survivors, and I wish they'd make some visual adjustments so it's not so bad on some monitors. But it's virtually a non-issue for experienced Survivors (or anyone who uses shaders).

Dredge isn’t fundamentally flawed at all you can literally leave loops and they just have no power, in chase people use the teleport that is a relatively healthy 50/50 if you wanna fight it since if dredge ######### up they wasted alot of time and by that logic alot of hit and run killers should be removed

Not every killer needs to require a genius to play.

Also, hit and run is mostly a dead playstyle, so not sure how that's a problem.

I would understand if the argument was that it encourages brainlessly holding W, but making hit and run the base of your argument against him seems really shaky.

I think there should be extra locker spawns around objectives when a Dredge is in the trial. There's a handful of maps that are a nightmare for Dredge to play on due to massive locker deadzones.

Have some lockers show up with the same kind of spawning rules as Sadako's TVs (or a similar prop), especially on maps with a small amount of lockers.