http://dbd.game/killswitch
What on earth did they do to Clown?!?
So Clown use to actually have 2 powers. Pinks got destroyed so badly, he practically only has 1 now. The way of playing him seems just plain boring and the skill expression he actually had is now full blown diminished. So you're telling me all I gotta do now is throw yellows near my feet for instant activations and just go zoom zoom zoom? Sticky Soda Bottle with Cheap Gin literally gives this guy speed faster than blood lust 3 (132%) any time he's invigorated. His pinks….are just pretty much useless now. Gas clouds seems noticibly smaller, 1% less hinder (why not just leave it at 15% instead of deducting 1 measly percent), hinder add ons nerfed, and most of all….the 1 second linger effect. Big brained Clown is dead, brain dead and boring gameplay of him is the only real way of playing him now. Before the changes, you at least had the option to pick out of the two playstyles. Use only pinks (braindead) or actually utilize both of his bottles religiously around loops (big brained). This change is only gunna promote much easier gameplay of him that considerably lowers the skill ceiling he had. Tunneling….oh man. Went against this twitch streamer yesterday that had a 40 win streak on him last I checked. Tunneled, tunneled, tunneled. Sticky Soda Bottle and Cheap Gin every single game. Didn't use almost a single pink. Is this were we are now? Did Clown ever even needed to be touched?!?
Can't even play him well calculated and strategic using both of his bottles at pallets/dropped pallets/loops anymore. His pinks are GONE!!! They buffed his invigoration by 2% and his add ons for speed increases remained the same. He pretty much only has 1 power now and it makes him straight boring. Only people saying he's "more fun now" only spammed the freaking pinks all the time before the change. That, or never really played him and just love the speed.
Comments
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So I decided to give him a go with all this talk. I really hadn't played him much before so I can't compare. I think he's absurdly fast (I haven't tried the add-ons to make him uber fast) but I find I'm using the two bottle types pretty evenly. I use the yellow to zip around from gen to gen, I use the pink in chase, often to mind game by pre-throwing and then forcing the survivor into the cloud. It's worked pretty well. I feel like that the mixture they're going for? Maybe it's because I'm not used to how they were that it seems okay to me. The matches haven't been universal wins either. Coordinated teams have stomped me.
I wouldn't mind maybe a slow down to the bottle-mixing animation to balance him, or maybe four bottles instead of six. And anything that encourages tunneling sucks, so I'm all for a nerf if that's how it gets.
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I don't get it though. His hindered is only 1 or 2% less than what it is? How is that so terrible? They just made his yellow bottles stronger. The purple gas after leaving it doesn't hinder you as long but there is an addon for that for an extra second no?
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I'm on holiday so I can only surmise by intuiting the changes and listening to what people are sayimg elsewhere...
However the general consensus from what I can see is: -
- The Tonic Hindered effect lingers after leaving the pink cloud 1 second less than it did before. This makes occasions where you clip a survivor with the cloud on tricky tiles much less effective. The 1% doesn't really change that much, but in conjunction with this change, it's a definite nerf to pinks.
- The Antidote plume used to take 2 seconds to activate, which while more complex to use, gave Clown the ability to fake bottle for survivors to dodge and took more skill to place and time them correctly to gain the benefits. Now you just throw them at your feet, no effort or knowledge required.
The result does mean that Clown is actually buffed overall... but he is so much less interesting to play as and against (which he was that interesting to play against already).
Instead of taking skill and knowledge to play tiles efficiently, he can just spam yellows at his feet and move with insane haste (bloodlust 2.5) for hits, and in a lot of cases stack a haste effect to do it even more...
It's not so much that Clown is weaker, he's in a lot of ways much stronger... but he's stronger in the most boring way he can be.
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The 1% decreased hindered nerf isn't even the problem. It's the 1 second linger (was 2) and the noticeably smaller pink clouds that are. That's what destroyed his pinks. Because of this, you can't utilize both his abilities and play him with skill expression anymore. His pinks are so bad, only power worth using are his yellows and they straight buff the shid outta those things. It's an extremely easy and boring playstyle. And that add on you're referring to USE to increase linger to 1 second. Guess what….they nerfed it so you'll only get 0.5 second extra linger which isn't even worth running. Me being P100 Clown, I've tested all this. That add on no longer even exist as far as I'm concerned. You'll almost never EVER get value out of that especially with clouds being smaller.
If you really never played Clown extremely calculated and with strategic measures around loops/pallets/dropped pallets, you really wouldn't have a true understanding on how bad the nerf to his pinks really is. You'll just be ultimately wasting your time using both of his powers. You just throw yellows at your feet now and just blitz survivors without having to use the other half of his kit. it's just beyond sad what they did to him. Whoever did this had an immense hatred for those pinks.
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That makes sense! Thank you for explaining! Especially when you said the changes make playing as the killer less fun/boring and against.
Obviously the goal here is to strike balance. Fun to play as and against. Hopefully they will make proper adjustments.
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Revert him please he was fine before patch, a bit on the weak side but fun to play his anti loop was nice…
The yellow spam and perma bloodlust 3 is not ok, and purple bottles are close to useless
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They slashed the linger time in half, and the only way to increase it is with a purple addon and they nerfed that to 0.5s too.
This change needs to go back to the drawing board, they ruined the skillful parts of his power, and made the yellow bottles too easy to use to the point where he can basically be 15% faster for the entire game.
The Hindered being reduced at all is not good because every Clown was running Flask of Bleach, indicating that the default Hindered might very well not be strong enough anyway.
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The idea that pinks are useless now is just a parroting of content creators that create doomsday videos on game updates to farm views, which increases their profits.
Before the clown buff, most clowns mains just throw pinks in front of you and hold W for down. Only rarely did old Clowns even bother to use both bottles, unless they were taking advantage of Cigar Box, which was a broken add-on which deserved a nerf. So Clown gameplay was one-dimensional before these changes, lets not forget that. There was no "big brain" plays going on except for a tiny minority of clown players that learned to effectively use both bottle types in a single chase. Most Clown players that bothered to use yellows were only doing so to abuse broken Cigar Box.
After the clown buff, yellows are now more viable, but Cigar Box is less viable, and the pinks are somewhat less effective. But to say that it is only worth using yellows now is false. That may be the simplest approach, just like only tunneling is simple. But just like a skilled survivor can heavily punish an aggressive tunneller, a skilled survivor can also heavily punish a 1-trick Clown who neglects to learn how to use half his kit. In spite of that generous haste, good survivor runners will just keep making distance with pallets and windows while feeling overjoyed by the absence of pink slowdown.
The best way to play Clown, is to use both bottles for max efficiency. Yes, this requires a bit more skill than only using one or the other and holding W. Yes, this means you must take the time to do more than spam a single button in chase. There is always a learning curve when utilizing advanced tactics, as opposed to the cheese tactics most killers rely upon due to their low skill floor. But guess what, if you use a pink and a yellow in a tile, that both speeds up the clown and slows down the survivor. Which is objectively better than only speeding up the clown, or only slowing down the survivor. Given all the complains about Vigil making Exhaustion "OP", Clown players should be learning to use both bottles instead of the lazy approach of only 1 bottle. A highly skilled Clown main using both bottles to maximize their speed and minimize the survivor's speed will have no problem catching a survivor, as he is even more powerful than before. Okay, fine, you'll have a tough time catching me regardless, but I'm an exception.
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Yeah thank you. This was cleared up for me earlier. :)
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Well…I'm not a content creator first of all.
If we're talking regular, decently sized tiles, utilizing both bottles doesn't work as effectively with the pinks being so nerfed. Playing him that way actually ISN'T stronger. You can literally just spam yellows with 2% increased haste and much faster activation. And everyone is using Sticky Soda Bottle and Cheap Gin. And yes, I stand on what I said about pinks not being worthed using. At least in most scenarios. To be fair, I did state that they're "practically" useless. I'm very careful with my wording, so lets not do that. I've put in far more than enough time to be able to voice my experience and for what things truly are after the changes. And I stopped using Cigar Box a looooong time ago. I personally don't care that actually got nerfed. I'm one of the extreme few that wanted a change or a rework for that specific add on. The 1 second linger along with the clouds being slightly smaller is what hurt his pinks the most. Survivors are making pallets and quick vaults (because of the linger) that they've never been able to make before while wasting time utilizing both bottles. What's the point of pushing survivors into smaller clouds of pink with only a second linger (with them still making pallets and quick vaults) than to just shoot yellows? When you make line of site shots for the pink to expand right in front of survivors holding W is also when that 1 second linger truly shows. I've tested it out, and I barely had to use any pinks to catch up to survivors and get downs. And I'm playing against skilled survivors.
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new Clown is an even more miserable tunneler. boring awful horrible terrible changes.
Clown mains hate it and survivors get the brunt if it. id rather face ghoul than this
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I've played as and against new clown, there is no skill required to win almost every tile in the game, the few you can't (shack pallet) you kick then win as you spam yellows at your feet.
You can use pinks on occasion to slow down survivors, but you can win with only yellows, it's pretty ridiculous and I expect it will be toned down in the next update.
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Don't worry. I'm sure it will only take them a year to realize how ridiculous this is and make the appropriate changes.
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It's one second less, and 1% less, and you do have to be a tad more precise cause the cloud is smaller, which is actually something I like about this update.
Regardless, I think it's more so the buff to yellow bottles ironically enough that's upsetting clown players. You no longer have to predict where you'll need a YB 2 seconds ahead of time, which means you my as well be speed boosted, almost always, and yeah that does kind of suck to fight. I do think we have the classic, "It's NEW! EVERYONE SHOOT IT DOWN!" effect happening, but I do agree the changes suck.
To me, Clowns problem is a lack of map presence, which is fine so long as people still think he's fun to play as. But, if they were going to work on something, it should have been that instead of this thing.
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I hope devs at least would give us a useful guide to counterplay the rocktet boy clown. They buffed and made him braindead to just sit and wait that survivors have any chance to play against him, at LEAST give us a guide or tell us how to play against a dude with a rocket in his *ss. There is no mindgame, or anything remotelly useful against clown now, other than use BNP and gen rush the hell out every gen to get out asap of that match.
If you had any doubt that devs dont test things before it comes out, this patch made us confirm 100% this.4 -
Look…it's not like I want Clown to be buffed as survivor main. No killer should be above an average 50% rate, Clown included. So I'm not even really in support of these changes which are overall a buff. Of course you can spam yellows and get results. But a clown that uses both bottles in a clever manner is much harder to outplay because not only is he faster, but you run slower at the same time. But this requires clever placement and thus far more skill than yellow spamming.
-1 -
Only way you use pink (purple) is now like yellow before even less, its only good to use on loops where survivor cant run to other and its not super unsafe loop then you use it and catch him (now purple slows them only in smoke if they get of the smoke the hinder effect last only for one second which is nothing before it was two).
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Yeah thank you. This was cleared up for me earlier already. :)
You make great points though.
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They have destroyed his expression of skill in all aspects, even if he wasn't the most demanding killer.
Does anyone remember when the Clown used to throw a bottle to a tree or the ceiling to expand the area of the gas? Well, he can't anymore, because it has been incredibly reduced.
Does anyone remember when the Clown used the yellow bottle at point-blank range to hit you and immediately recover? Well, he can't anymore, because it would give haste to the survivor and he doesn't need to prepare such a situation after the changes.
Does anyone remenber when the Clown used to combine both bottles in a long loop to mindgame? Well, the same thing.
The changes are clearly made by someone who either doesn't understand anything about the killer or deeply hated his gameplay. Throwing bottles at his feet, that's the genuine expression of skill.
Not even when Chucky became a power spamming machine they caused such a disaster. And the worst part is that they never corrected that mistake and continued to work around this “rework” until he became a killer that no one wanted to play.
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Yes, I understand and I do agree that using both bottles still grants him more skill expression that just spamming yellows. It's just that although you speed up while they're slowed down, the nerf to the slow down makes that tactic of playing him worse than it was before. It still works at smaller loops, but I've notice a difference at larger ones playing him like that. Clown has always been very close to being this fast even before the changes. Only difference is the extra 2% speed buff and the instant activation. That instant activation makes it far more annoying to deal with for survivors. Especially if the Clown is running STBFL and Rapid Brutality. I've found myself actually wasting time doing those set ups at larger loops. The best way to get clown somewhat close to what he was before is if you use Flask of Bleach with Either 15%. That, or use Bottle of Chloroform with Ether 15%. Ether 15% is such a miniscule difference now. A lot of the time, I never see that 0.5 second of linger. It's almost not even worth running. It's crazy because I never even used that add on before to increase the linger effect. 2 seconds was perfect for him imo. I don't care what anyone says, but I know they slightly decreased the radius of those pinks. It makes that linger effect nerf even greater.
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BHVR listen to the playerbase: If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
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Worst thing is you know they're gonnae nerf the hell out the yellows now and not restore the pinks to what they were previously.
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- Clown is currently one of the strongest killer in the game (a solid A-tier). The only effective move the survivors have is the pre-drop, but once the strong pallets are gone... it becomes a massacre. Clown simply negates the concept of loops. This forum simply doesn't know how to judge the power of killers, because in the PTB I read "The clown has been nerfed!!!"…. really?! 🤣
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its wild how anyone thought this change would be a good idea.
really good showcase of bhvr's current mindset with killers smh - just take all the skill away from playing the killer by lobotomizing macro and dumbing down powers as much as possible so little timmy can feel STRONG mowing down survivors until the survivors are good enough at which point little timmy will have to lose no matter what
they should stop balancing the game and killers around the idea a person should easily do well with any killer they pick right off the bat.
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honestly, I think these new changes are good for clown, yes, afterpiece tonic took a hit, but I think you're going a little overboard with it, his antidote was useless before, you'd have to lob it the full distance just to get it to work in chase, that's not accounting the survivor just goes a different path away from the yellow cloud, meaning you'd have to do it in hallways or places with no escape, it wasn't even helpful in loops, if you hit a doorframe or heaven forbid a nearby bush, you'd either have to keep chasing and completely waste the bottle or wait for it to activate, and at that point the survivor is too far for the haste to help, as for the pinks being "useless" now, that's just not true, they're still a good strategic tool which can control survivors by putting them in a tough situation where they risk going through the tonic and take the hindered, which even with the slight nerf is still pretty bad for survivors, or take a long way around where the clown can still cut you off by going through his tonic, they're tools for herding and controlling, my past few matches with clown were still fun for both myself and the survivors I was up against, clown isn't braindead, he's viable, changing him back will only replace the "yellow spam" with pink spam, and he'd still only have "one power", is clown easier? yes, but he's not meant to be a hard killer, he's a medium, if you want hard, go play Oni or something. Is he less fun? No, he's a blast, you can still have close or tense games with him. Is he mindless? No, absolutely not, he still needs both bottles and a good idea of where your bottles should go to work, the only difference is that he actually has both his bottles, he's still a set up killer that can deny survivors easy paths and loops, but now he can actually keep up with them and not rely solely on hindered
-2 -
Antidotes were useless before?!? WHAT?!?! You're one of the many that just never even understood Clown. It's all making perfect sense. His yellows were always severely underrated. I used those even more than the pinks. For set up, catching up, and map traversal. Clown has always been close to being this fast. They gave him an extra 2% boost. The greater buff would be his yellows being instantly activated. It took mainly THAT along with the measly 2% buff for you to see that? Here's the thing. Both powers worked great before the changes, meaning they were amazing when well executed together. Pink spamming (which I was always highly against) was 1 out of the 2 true playstyles you could use. He was much more flexible before the changes. He had significantly more skill expression. His pinks are now destroyed, only allowing one true playstyle. After all the hundreds upon hundreds of matches I've played Clown, utilizing both of his bottles every match, only for him to get changed around and highly promote only 1 type of playstyle? Spam instant yellows and blitz with far less strategizing? That's…..braindead. The quality in playstyle took a huge hit because of those changes.
I don't know "exactly" how much experience you have playing Clown, but to say this is "a good change" and "fun" is…insane. This is just plain boring and I now feel ashamed that I'm even a P100 Clown.
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I really hope they revert his changes in the next patch.
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Me too, because this is not good smh.
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