My thoughts on the live Legion changes
So, let me preface this by saying, these changes did not kill Legion. Not at all. I do, however, think these changes are a nerf overall. But what grinds my gears about these changes is that the tweaks that literally everyone and their grandmother were asking for ever since the Legion update was announced were not made in the span of weeks that Legion was on the PTB. And they aren’t even complex changes; they are mere number changes that could totally turn these nerfs into a huge buff. Today, I’m going to go over such changes—simple number tweaks that I and everyone who doesn’t want Legion to be a bad Killer wants.
So, before I describe the changes I want to see made, I want to point out what is, in my opinion, holding Legion back the most.
- Feral Frenzy cannot effectively chain hits against Survivors who spread out or otherwise know what they’re doing. If FF moves at 5 m/s, and a running Survivor moves at 4 m/s, this means that FF only has a closure rate of 1 meter per second against a running Survivor. With a 10-second Frenzy, this means that all a Survivor has to do to avoid a Frenzy hit is be more than 10 meters away from the Legion when their Frenzy starts. And that’s just running in a straight line; that isn’t including Exhaustion Perks or loops or anything else a Survivor has at their disposal to keep a Killer at bay.
- Deep Wound is not a threat. Because it stops going down when the Survivor is in the Killer’s Terror Radius and when the Survivor is mending, this means that simply forcing a Legion to chase someone else even remotely nearby prevents it from going down, allowing a DW’d Survivor ample time to do a generator instead of mending—the exact opposite of what Mending is supposed to do.
In short, the utility behind Legion’s power is cancelled by well-coordinated or even decently intelligent Survivors. Mending can be rendered useless by having someone else simply exist near a pallet, and the Legion’s ability to chain hits is, at best, very weak because of how little distance Feral Frenzy closes against a running Survivor. Turning Legion’s power from a chase/utility power into a utility power and then nerfing the utility is not a good idea.
The problems that cause these weaknesses are as follows:
- The nerf to Feral Frenzy’s movement speed. The closure rate was okay-ish before, but the new Legion catches up to a running Survivor over 20% more slowly than the old one.
- The harsh restrictions applied to Feral Frenzy’s usage. The inability to catch up to a second Survivor in just one use of Frenzy would be fine if you could follow it up with a second Frenzy if the Survivor was in a compromising position. But if you don’t get that hit, you will have to wait 20 whole seconds to even attempt to set up another one. That’s way too long of a time.
- The slower speed when vaulting in Frenzy. The new speed is slow enough that unless the Legion still has a high amount of Frenzy, Survivors can drastically hinder his ability to chain hits by simply vaulting or throwing down a pallet, which leaves me asking—what’s the point of vaulting now? If it can’t quickly and effectively overcome loops while chaining hits, then it’s pointless.
- Legion’s 32-meter Terror Radius. This change is overall healthy as it prevents Deep Wound from being exploited, but at that radius, there is a huge chunk of space around Legion that Survivors can sit in to prevent their Deep Wound timer from ticking down. Legion, just by existing, helps to nullify the threat level of his power. And Monitor and Abuse doesn’t even help, because your TR is widened in a chase—and if you aren’t in a chase as Legion, what are you even doing?
So, what are the solutions to these issues? The answer is simple: Number tweaks—among other things, but mostly number tweaks.
Below is a list of every Legion change I’d like to see, separated into 3 categories:
-Chaining hits: Changes needed to make Feral Frenzy better at quickly and effectively injuring multiple Survivors
-Deep Wound: Changes needed to make Deep Wound more of a threat that forces mending.
-Other: Changes that aren’t relevant to the issues that I listed here, but would be nice to see.
CHAINING HITS
- Increase the Feral Frenzy movement speed back to 5.28 meters/second. The closure rate between the Legion and a running Survivor must be increased.
- Reduce the Frenzy window vaulting speed to 0.9 seconds, and the pallet vaulting speed to 1.1 seconds. The whole point of that mechanic is to prevent those things from being effective blockades.
- Allow Frenzy to be used once 25% of it has been charged. That’s waiting 5 seconds for 2.5 seconds of Frenzy at the bare minimum. If the Legion ends up falling just short in that first Frenzy, they should be allowed to quickly follow it up with a second one if the Survivor is close by or in an otherwise compromising position.
DEEP WOUND
- Reduce the Legion’s Terror Radius to 28 meters. I know Killer’s Instinct is dependent on the TR as well, but I think 4 less meters that Deep Wound’s urgency can be rendered null is a fine trade-off for 4 less meters of Killer’s Instinct, especially when Frenzy can cover that distance in a mere 0.8 seconds (or 0.76 seconds, if the speed nerf is undone). And also, 32 meters is a huge distance to be notified of the Killer’s presence from anyway.
- Make Mending take 20 seconds when outside of the Legion’s Terror Radius. This will increase its stall potential if the Survivor is lazy with their mending but also rewards Survivors for taking the risk of mending while near the Legion.
OTHER
- Allow Legion to see blood pools while in Frenzy. I don’t understand why that nerf was made.
- Reduce the tunnel vision caused by Frenzy’s fatigue. This isn’t so much a buff as it is making him less annoying to play; as it stands, he suffers a similar issue to Nurse where people with weaker eyes could very easily get headaches or nauseous due to the fatigue if they aren’t running Shadowborn. And in a game where Killers can’t afford to run a Perk as non-useful as Shadowborn, that’s a major issue.
Thats just my take on what I think needs to be done to fix Legion 2.0. Hopefully Frenzy’s utility is brought to a brighter shine, because as it stands right now, it really struggles to get its point across.
Comments
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Same toughts, that's even what i tought back on the PTB, all theses restrictions the devs decided to put on FF makes no sense since they decided to make it non-lethal.
Glad to see someone who understand how Legion works around here, i hope they listen to this...
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Legion is still a very annoying killer. Nothing needs to chance atm.
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I forgot to mention: I do want to share this with @Peanits so that this can hopefully be seen by BHVR, for obvious reasons.
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How is he still annoying? Sure, the first hit is basically free if you're his first target, but outside of that, that's all that's really "annoying" about his power. Mending is not a threat and only takes 15 seconds, and now he has no choice but to down you legitimately—i.e. his only option is to be better at the game than you are. Compare that to, say, Trapper, whose entire power as well as overcoming it when you fall for it is 100% based on RNG rather than skill and renders you immobile and waiting for death to come the longer you stay unlucky for; or Nurse, who can literally ignore every single line of defense you could ever throw at her; or Doctor, whose shocks can briefly take away your entire ability to defend yourself in a chase; and I'd say Legion 2.0 is definitely one of the less irritating Killers to go against.
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Pretty much what I've been saying as well.
Bring back Variable TR, Get rid of the vault nerfs, at least bring back the faster movement add-ons. Boom, Legion fixed. More viable, still can't be exploited, still holds Legion's core vision intact.
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Thank you for the very detailed (even if it is very long) feedback. I feel like most of what you said is very reasonable.
Just to clear up two things:
- Blood pools are now hidden like scratch marks to discourage you from using frenzy on an already injured Survivor. There's not much sense in doing so anyway since it won't down them.
- Setting the terror radius to 28m is probably off the table. Terror radii are standardized in 8m increments. This is why the pig's terror radius was changed from 28m to 32m a while back.
On a personal note, I'm not too sure about increasing the base mending time. While I get where you're coming from, it starts to feel really awful when you get stuck in an endless loop of mending. I feel like the mend time add-ons do a pretty decent job of that already. If that's the way you want to play the Legion, you can already get a pretty long mend time already.
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I appreciate your response, but none of it seems like valid justification.
- Blood pools are now hidden like scratch marks to discourage you from using frenzy on an already injured Survivor. There's not much sense in doing so anyway since it won't down them.
Well, as you have probably seen, the unanimously poor reception of the change means that, well, nobody cares and it should probably be done away with. You shouldn't have to rely on your character’s kit to tell you not to do something stupid; you should rely on your game sense. That change is nothing but an annoying QoL nerf.
- Setting the terror radius to 28m is probably off the table. Terror radii are standardized in 8m increments. This is why the pig's terror radius was changed from 28m to 32m a while back.
I have a hard time believing that the people in charge of programming TRs would really be all that caught up in making a TR not a multiple of 8. Why? Well, old Pig was allowed to exist in the first place, but also the only recently-changed Monitor and Abuse, which used to alter your TR by either 6 or 7 meters. The most damning evidence against this 8-meter increment idea, however, is the fact that Myers in tier I has a 6-meter heartbeat, and I’m pretty sure that he has since October of 2016—over 2 and a half years ago.
(Also, doesn’t Ghostface’s leaked Perk give you tokens that affect your TR in increments of 4 meters?)
•On a personal note, I'm not too sure about increasing the base mending time. While I get where you're coming from, it starts to feel really awful when you get stuck in an endless loop of mending.
Several things.
Firstly, no Legion is going to Frenzy you so much that you’ll be stuck in an “endless loop” unless you make incredibly dumb decisions like continuously healing against Legion.
Secondly, as I emphasized in my first post, just because you have Deep Wound doesn’t mean you need to mend—quite the opposite, in fact. As long as the Legion is within that substantially large 32-meter radius from you, you literally don’t need to mend. The Legion can hardly force you to be constantly mending when it’s not even a necessity most of the time.
Thirdly—and the only point of yours that genuinely irritates me—why should I have to stack a purple and green addon just so mending can actually divert Survivors from gens? That’s stupid. They’re called “addons” for a reason; I should run them for a boost or an edge, not to allow my power to do what it’s ######### DESIGNED to do at base.
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FF is for tracking and slowing down survivors.
Their base MS was increased to help combat the FF nerfs which were completely unfun from the survivor perspective.
Try them out for a few games. Try out new builds. Try new tactics and playstyles. Let the rework breathe for a bit.
Now you might actually be able to play against survivors without them D/Cing because of your killer pick.
Play as many games with the new Legion that you can. The devs value any data that can be provided, and since they are now on live, they will be getting significantly more data to pull from than on ptb. If Legion truly need some balance buffs, the devs will look into it whether you believe that or not.
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We already played games, the feedback got ignored, what are you on about @TheVVitch ?
They didn't even remove the loss of frenzy during stuns when they told us they would.
Legion's tracking is weak in frenzy, you can barely catch up to people you track with it with how slow you are rendering it close to useless.
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Play more. PTB is generally not great for balance data. Since they just went to live yesterday, play them on live. People play more seriously on live than on PTB and the volume of players give more data points.
@Peanits already said in another thread he will be looking into the loss of frenzy during stuns.
Legion is not slow in FF... maybe compared to the previous version, but overall no they aren't "slow".
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They are slow, as long as survivor have around 10 meters of distance between you and them and run on a straight line, you won't catch them in time before ff cancels itself.
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By that time you should be pretty close to them and can easily catch up to them with your new 115% base MS.
FF is not going to be as fast as it was previously and imo that's better for the game overall.
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You seem to forget we have to eat a 4 second stun, and that our stun add-ons got nerfed, Wich gives them enough time to find a loop or a structures, and kills the first hit gimmick on multiple targets aka share the pain playstyle Legion had.
If I could re activate my power when it wasn't full I wouldn't mind being that slow, but currently it makes no sense, it even feel like they balanced the power as if it was still lethal but forgot they removed that feature, if you consider that good, then I don't know what to say to you...
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I'm definitely not saying Legion is perfect, not even close. I'm just suggesting the people that want changes to keep playing them so the devs can have more data to back up the claims that they are underperforming.
I think what they have now is a good starting point for easily implemented QoL buffs.
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if it was meant for tracking why no scratch marks and now no blood...
legion was introduced to counter infinite palettes and looping the problem is devs ######### up and did the pallet update before the legion release so pallets spread out more with legion in mind wasn’t good for survivors. Now legion is just a slap in the face to killer mains that really wanted this killer to be good, yeah he can vault pallets good for that but everything else legion does is a counter against his own power. Why would we get penalized for successfully hitting someone? Why would we give survivors a free borrowed time when we use our power? And no other killer has an on miss depletion of their power. Legion was introduced to the game of spiteful survivor loving dev team because killer mains were making them look bad and biased toward the majority of those that make them money. And ghostface won’t be any different, as soon as high rank survivors start putting in tickets he’ll be nerfed to ######### too.
and before he was nerfed there was a reason to hit them twice it reduced the timer on mending but you made sure that no longer was a thing .
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I played Legion yesterday, only once, i had school the next day and aome survivor rituals. I immediately went into FF and I hated the now slow speed. Then that pinhole fatigue, I wanted to barf.
Legion isn't fun anymore. That's the baseline. While, yes, I got a 4k, it was literally hitting the RT button. That's how. I'm not tempted to use FF anymore, there's no fun.
I never exploited. Moonwalking was fine in my book and I didn't even care about it as survivor. I barely faced moonwalkers. I faced one FMT and I was tired anyways so I just died on hook.
This is coming from a survivor main (because that matters apparently).
I don't like this Legion. I'm trying to keep hopeful and hope for buffs, but he's worse as survivor imo.
He's boring to play against and there's like 3 things going for him rn.
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Legion slow af in new FF, I was testing it today, I was literally looped in FF around pallet. After I vaulted pallet almost at the back of surv, but just out of range to hit, she made distance from my slower vault to make another loop into vault, and another, and another, until FF was depleted. And I could not catch up with FF speed. Legion is now loopable in FF, how awesome. :D
Only time FF was useful - in open spaces for some tracking nearby survs with instinct. Otherwise I was just generic M1 Killer. New Legion power is trash, and they even removed ability to see if their timer is going down or not. Ppl were just hanging around in TR with DW doing gens and not even give a ######### about it.
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Been playing Legion since the changes (I main Legion, so I've played a lot of him before the changes). All I can say is, this nerf is the worst. Been doing some practice rounds with friends in KYF and playing in normal killer rounds. All I can say is, this nerf feels like the only thing thought about was pleasing those who didn't like facing Legion and DC'd when they saw who the killer was.
It's honestly pushed me away from the game a little, because Legion was my favorite killer to play as. But now my killer is almost unplayable. I can still get two FF hits on Survivors, but it doesn't feel all that useful? Been messing around with perks to just find a way to make it work. But trust me, it isn't enough. Been pipping down, say what you want about that. But I used to be able to pip up. Never cheated, never exploited, never face camped etc etc.
I'm hoping we can see some changes. Because everything done is making me upset. And before you say I'm just biased or something because I play Legion, no. I play a lot of Survivor and other killers. I just don't want to feel like my main is reduced to a powerless basic hit killer.
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The worst part about playing as Legion is the constant disconnects by survivors. Even the current incarnation gets no respect.
I would love to see more blood points awarded killers for disconnectors. Right now DCing robs killers of not only an enjoyable game but points.
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