My full critique of the Legion changes, as a rank 1 M1 Legion

Hi, in this thread, I'm going to go over every last piece of the Legion changes and give my honest-to-goodness thoughts on them. I'm a devout Legion main who is at rank 1 Killer with him more often than not, and I got there through learning how to be a 110 M1 Killer. Basically, what I'm saying is, I know my way around Legion and consider myself qualified enough for my two cents to be worth two cents.

Let's begin.

• The Legion’s base movement speed is increased to 4.6m/s. 

This should go without saying, but this is just a flat buff, and a huge one at that. Finally, Legion will be able to have a choice other than "4 hit downs" or "110 M1 Killer"—both of which are terrible options that will make Legion want to commit neck rope.

This is easily the biggest and most important change out of all of these, and I love it.

• The Legion’s Terror Radius is increased to 32m. 

I don't really understand the obsession with giving 115 Killers big, fat Terror Radii. 32 meters is a HUGE distance to get notified of where the Killer is coming from. In my opinion, all 115 Killers with low-to-medium mobility (Clown, Trapper, etc.) should have 28 meter TRs unless their power calls for something else, and that includes Legion, since Feral Frenzy isn't nearly as mobile as some people think.

• Most of The Legion’s add-ons are rebalanced or reworked to account for the changes to Feral Frenzy and the Deep Wound status effect. 

Cool, but overall no comment.

• The Iridescent button addon no longer requires The Legion to apply Deep Wound for the effects to be active. 

Interesting buff to one of his better addons.

• The recharge time of Feral Frenzy is increased and now requires a full power gauge to use it. Once it has been activated, the Legion must wait until the power gauge is full to be able to trigger the power again. 

I don't particularly care for this change, as it makes Feral Frenzy's usage restriction even stronger than Yamaoka's Haunting (Spirit's phasewalk), a much deadlier power. Feral Frenzy as an offensive tool is basically just a bootleg Spirit, so why would it be used less often than Spirit's when it's weaker in that regard?

For those wondering how I know it'll be used less often than Spirit's: Right now, Haunting and Frenzy both take 15 seconds to fully recharge from 0. A nerfed recharge speed along with only being able to be used when fully charged means it will take longer to recharge than Spirit's but have the same restriction apply. Not a good thing, not at all.

• The duration of Feral Frenzy is increased. The Legion spends longer in frenzy. 

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call an "epic gamer moment".

I love this change. A 6-second Frenzy is, frankly, pathetic. Even if Legion's movement speed was higher, 6 seconds is still a joke. However, I find this worryingly counterbalanced by the next change:

• The movement speed of Feral Frenzy is significantly reduced. The Legion moves faster than base speed while in frenzy, but not as fast as they did before. 

I do not understand this change. At all. The math doesn't check out; Legion's 132% movement speed is so pathetically slow that spamming lunge will actually make you go faster. I think that Frenzy's movement speed should be buffed, and to show you why, I'll do some math.

Let's say the Frenzy speed got buffed to 150% but the duration stayed at 6 seconds.

150%=6 meters/second

Running Survivor=4 meters/second

Legion can close the gap with a running Survivor at a rate of only 2 meters per second at a 150% movement speed Frenzy. This means that with a 6-second Frenzy, all a Survivor needs to do to outpace a Frenzying Legion without even so much as using loops or Exhaustion Perks is to be more than 12 meters away from them when they start Frenzying. To put into perspective how small that is, a Survivor can run 12 meters in 3 seconds, or 2 seconds if they have an Exhaustion Perk on.

To make matters worse, Legion doesn't even move at 150% speed; he moves at 132%. His catch-up is even worse than the one described above. I hope that if they go through with this change, the slowest they make him is 125%, but even at that speed, he would need a Frenzy that lasts longer than 12 seconds to catch that same Survivor standing 12 meters away. So, in short, even with the duration increase, his movement speed should be buffed, not nerfed.

• The Legion can no longer see blood pools (in addition to not seeing scratch marks) while in Feral Frenzy. 

This is just... Why? Everyone and their grandmother was saying that Legion should see scratch marks in FF mode, and yet you nerf that ability even more?! This is almost as bad as when the Legion first came out, and you answered EVERYBODY's pleas to make mending activate Nurse's Calling by NERFING the Perk so it detected even less actions!

Devs, what were you thinking with this change?

• Feral Frenzy is immediately and automatically cancelled whenever The Legion misses an attack while in frenzy. 

I understand that a lot of people think this change went a bit too far, and I can kind of see where they're coming from, but in my honest opinion as a rank 1 Legion main: Most of the time you miss in Frenzy, it is because of your own recklessness, and you should be punished accordingly. There are some exceptions to this, like playing with high ping or playing on console (shudder), but overall this is a perfectly fitting punishment for when people get too excited and don't anticipate jukes or lunge overconfidently. The only issue I take up with this is the nerf to Legion's power recharge, for obvious reasons. But aside from that, I think this change is perfectly healthy.

• The Deep Wound timer pauses for survivors within The Killer's Terror Radius–regardless of whether they are in a chase or not. 
• The Deep Wound timer pauses while Mending. 
• The Killer does not see the Deep Wound timer progress–only the Deep Wound bar to know that Deep Wound has been applied. 
• The Deep Wound timer progress is no longer reduced by regular Feral Frenzy attacks. 

These changes were all made so that Deep Wound and Feral Frenzy became what, in my opinion, they were meant to be: Utilities, not chase mechanics.

Deep Wound in a chase was already a bad thing. Combine that with Frenzy spam, and you have a recipe for disaster—and it was. It was disastrous. Everybody who understood balance hated this, and it was the sole reason behind everyone despising Legion's existence.

Now, however, Deep Wound is no longer a chase tool, but closer to a stall tool, threatening Survivors with the knowledge that they will go down if they don't mend, forcing them to spend time doing another objective. These changes overall are very good in my opinion, and the only thing I might add is to increase the mending timer, because as it stands right now, its stall is quite weak and could use some buffs.

MY OVERALL THOUGHTS

As a whole, I think these changes had a great thought process behind them. I've always believed that Feral Frenzy should be a utility power and not a chase power, and this is a step in the right direction. This new Legion can play like a mix between the Pig and the Plague: Combining hard, fast-paced, near-constant aggression and injuries to pressure Survivors with a heavy methodical flavoring to it, slowly whittling down the Survivors and driving them away from generators, thus allowing Legion players to put some brains into their brawn. However, there are some undesirable changes in here that will certainly put a damper on that, and I think they absolutely need to go. These include the Frenzy speed nerf, the lack of blood marks, and the recharge speed and power usage nerf. But overall, I think these changes have the potential to be very, very good, and I hope the necessary improvements are made to them.

Now, before I close out, I'd like to address some arguments that many people like to make regarding these changes.

"Feral Frenzy will be terrible at chaining hits now!"

I think we'll have to wait and see for the speed nerf before we can make final judgement on that, and honestly, it already was terrible at chaining hits, so I don't see why you're just now complaining about it.

"All Feral Frenzy is good for now is a free first hit!"

No. Just, no.

One successful Frenzy hit will get you that free first hit, but it also, at the exact same time, opens up an opportunity to apply those free hits to other Survivors, and in that process apply a ticking time bomb to their health that they will have no choice but to deal with eventually, thus driving them off generators for at least some time—in other words, stall, something nearly every Killer needs more of.

Frenzy is a utility power. Use it like one.

"Without being able to down with Frenzy, Legion is useless!"

... I have no words.

Well, I have a couple, actually.

So, we take away Legion's ability to down with Frenzy, yes? But here's what Frenzy does in return:

-Puts the Survivor on a one-hit down

-Lets you try to put other Survivors on a one-hit down

-Forces Survivors to take time mending, allowing you a little bit of extra time in the event the chase becomes longer than you expected

-Applies a Deep Wound VFX to the Survivor's screen that darkens their vision and applies random opaque blood splatters, hindering their ability to, well, see

Use the effects of Frenzy and Deep Wound to your advantage. With Frenzy alone, you can secure a guaranteed hit to multiple Survivors, put them all on a one-hit down, and obscure their vision, giving you more edge in your mindgames—speaking of mindgames, Legion is now a 115 Killer. Not only that, but Legion is the shortest and smallest Killer in the game. They are the most easily obscured by walls and can hide themselves better than any other Killer. Combine this with the Deep Wound VFX and use this to your advantage!

I will not hesitate to make the argument that because of their size and vision-obscuring, a Legion moving at 115% movement speed might be the best Killer for basic attack mindgames in the game—except for Freddy, since he's also very small and the Dream World is full of mist. But even so, a 115 Legion has much more mindgame potential than people think. You just need to use what you have to your advantage.

"Legion is just a worse Plague now!"

No, they're a better Plague. And I'll show you why.

Feral Frenzy allows you to:

-Instantly apply injuries to multiple Survivors in rapid succession by sprinting at them

-Stall the game by applying ticking time bombs to multiple Survivors that they will have no choice but to deal with

-Enhance your ability to traverse the map (maybe, depends on the movement speed nerf and duration buff)

-Enhance your mindgames as the smallest Killer in the game through visual distortion

Meanwhile, Vile Purge allows you to:

-Build up a power that slows you down as you charge and hold it

-Release an avoidable projectile that VERY slowly builds up to a free hit unless you get all of it on the Survivor at once

-Apply VFX hindrances to the Survivor's screen that only cover the edge of their vision and don't really enhance your mindgames, which are already weak because Plague is so tall and her clothes are so wavy

-Give you the ability to become a bootlegged Huntress for 1 minute, but only if the Survivors cleanse, which is an action that takes away the free hit you applied (and may not even take place if the Survivors don't feel threatened by you), and only if you go out of your way to find and harvest the source of the cleansing, an action that a Killer with no extra mobility like Plague simply cannot afford to do the majority of the time

All in all, Legion can afford to be much more aggressive than Plague can, and more importantly, gets much more finely rewarded for using their power effectively.

TL;DR: The changes to Legion had the right mindset but were very questionably executed. I don't think it would be all too hard to fix them, however.