Buff ideas for Clown
Clown’s chase potential definitely isn’t weak. But his bottles can still be of little use at certain loops, with survivors being able to loop him long enough. Problem is, his chase potential is all he has got going for him. Nurse and Spirit are both better at chases for sure, yet at the same time they have very good map pressure. Clown has even less map pressure than a normal M1 killer, since he has to waste time reloading bottles. So I personally would love to see a small buff to his chase potential to become more deadly, and also some small buffs so his map pressure doesn’t suffer as much. I don’t think he needs to many buffs, because of the upcoming map reworks, but these few buffs I think would make him a well balanced killer.
· Increase the hindered penalty of Clowns flask bottles from 15% to 20%, so make his Flask of Bleach add on base line and rework the add on.
However, I feel like this buff could also be replaced with some kind of new ability for him to apply more map pressure. Maybe add a secondary ability, that makes him throw a bottle at a generator which then explodes and regresses the gen by maybe 10% or 12% (gen would still have to be kicked to further regress it), having a cool-down of 30 or 40 seconds or so. I would love to either see his map pressure go up, or his chase potential. Both are not needed in my opinion. However just making Flask of Bleach baseline would be the easier thing to do, but I feel like giving him some kind of map pressure would be more interesting and fun.
· Decrease his reload time by 30%, and maybe increase the amount of bottles he can hold from 4 to 5
· Whenever Clown downs or hooks a survivor, his bottles get refilled automatically
I really hope to see these kinds of buffs to Clown. He is one of my favorite killers to play, but he just feels pretty weak as of now and can be quite frustrating to play, simply because he has so little map pressure, with his chase potential definitely not making up for that. And I really hope to see more red rank viable killers. Right now though there isn't really any reason to pick him over new freddy.
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Clown is most useful for discerning a good, experienced survivor from a bad one. Throw a bottle at a pallet and watch whether they simply run through the gas and continue on with their loop or whether they avoid it for some reason and take the hit.
Flask of Bleach and Starling Feather should be baseline. Put the reload timer closer to the Thick Cork Stopper and increase the reload time with the amount of bottles. It makes absolutely no sense that it takes the same amount of time to reload 4 bottles as it does 6.
I'd also give him movement speed by allowing him to inhale his gas for a Play With Your Food-like buff on some amount of cooldown.
For his add-ons:
Tattoo's Middle Finger- why is this a thing? What is the application of this? If I'm close enough to gas someone, I probably don't need to read their aura. Who is running face first into Clown beyond rank 10?
Kerosene Can- I can't even.. Why? Like...if someone is running towards a hook or downed survivor and I gas them, will they forget their general intended direction?
VHS Porn- Why am I reloading at a time that I also need to move faster? I'm not going to actually reload in the middle of a chase. I'm going to fake it. It could synergize with Thick Cork Stopper, but at that point my two add-ons are for reloading, which I'll be doing a lot of because my base gas isn't threatening.
Sulphuric Acid Vial- Not particularly useful. I guess it's useful in an anti-healing build, but Clown lacks the map presence or pressure to really do that build.
Basically, if BHVR wants Clown's identity to be a chasing/anti-loop killer and nothing else, actually give him the power to do that. As it stands, he's a half-baked chase killer who doesn't actually contest the vast majority of loops in this game. He just forces pallets down early. Whoop-dee-freakin' doo. He's clearly tuned around the lowest common denominator rank 15 survivor, and that's a shame, because the potential is there in his design for him to be powerful.
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Already made these suggestions.
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The one thing I would actually like to see is when the clown lands 2 bottles that directly hit the same survivor within 45 seconds of each other, the survivor gets exposed for 45 seconds. That would increase the skill cap on the killer while being fair to survivors.
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I feel like his bottles are fine for the most part. I think giving him a 2nd ability would help him a lot, his kit is just too simplistic imo.
Here’s my suggestion for a 2nd ability
Balloon Animals:
Clown can now tie balloon strands to a max of 3 generators on the map. Once Survivor(s) complete a Generator that has balloons attached to it the balloons will pop causing all the survivors that finished that generator to suffer the blindness status for 30 seconds. The max amount of generators the clown can tie balloons to will decrease by 1 for every generator that was completed with balloon animals tied to it. I think a fair cast time for this ability could be 3 seconds. It’s a small but nice 2nd ability that wouldn’t make Clown too powerful but would certainly make him better and more fun to play.
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Interesting, but I do feel like hitting survivors directly with bottles is too unconsistent. It can be quite luck based since they are easy to avoid.
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I mean I really like the concept, though it might be too much work for the devs to implement just to buff Clown. Also, if they only cause blindness, than that second ability would be pretty useless and Clown would be no more effective than he is now. Blindness barely does anything at the moment. I'd rather have a second ability that helps him with map pressure and to slow down the game a bit.
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I like your idea, but blindess is fairly weak. I would suggest it would inflict the survivor with deep wound or something like that.
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Yes, Flask Bleach and Starling Feather as baseline would be great. I don't think Clown should receive any speed boost though as well if those two go baseline. I agree though that if he is supposed to be an anti-loop killer only, they need to make him stronger than that.
Personally though I would love to see a buff to his map pressure. Filling up his bottles when downing and hooking a survivor at thevery least would be great. Some kind of secondary ability with which he can interact with gens from farther away, reducing or stalling progress a bit would be fantastic. It would give him the map pressure he needs. I think he would be more fun to play as and against if he wasn't just anti loop but also had some kind of map pressure.
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I mean if survivors would get Deep Wound when they are healthy, that would be a bit much.
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Well, if the clown is near a trapped gen, you’re right. That may be too much. But if the clown is not in sight, it just means that survivors who complete a trapped gen will have to spend extra 30 seconds healing. It’s not that bad. Maybe if you’re in the clown TR you receive another debuff instead of deep wound.
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Just changing values is a pretty boring way to buff the Clown, I think. I rather see some new and inventive stuff to add to his arsenal.
Here's some suggestions from an old Clown thread I made;
- Staying in the gas increases the slow duration for survivors. Basically forces them to make a move or suffer the consequences.
- Directly hitting a survivor with a bottle douses them in the Afterpiece Tonic, making them leave a trail of gas for 2 seconds after leaving the cloud. Rewards the Clown for hitting throws with a guaranteed 2 seconds of extra slow.
- Reloading release clouds of gas around the Clown. Tapping reload could intoxicate nearby survivors without wasting a bottle. Moving around while reloading leaves a trail of gas which makes loops even more dangerous for survivors, should they stick around.
And here is a link to that old thread itself → https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/61217/so-clowns-the-least-lethal-killer-on-pc/p1
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Those are interesting ideas, but I feel like if they will want to buff Clown's anti-loop potential, they'll settle for something easy to change, and not want to put to much work into it. Who knows though.
If they change up the Clown more, once again I'd rather have some kind of ability to apply more map pressure with him.
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I don't know. I don't find Clown's anti-loop potential to be bad honestly. It's just not nearly good enough to compensate for his terrible map pressure.
It does feel like he's very dependent on the loop you use his bottles and map rng. Jungle jyms for example are still very good against him. Problem is, he can't ignore survivors defenses unlike Spirit or Nurse, which on top of that also have great map pressure.
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It's moreso that his chase potential isn't necessarily greater than many other killers. He doesn't cut off loops that many other killers don't already cut off themselves. Even just giving him a Sprint Burst where he can't attack but can cross the map would be funny, considering in his bio they mention he's a great athlete.
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