A Trickster Balance Idea
Hi all. There is obviously a lot of talk around the current Trickster kit, and how using his power can be fun, but ultimately he's too slow to meaningfully apply pressure to 4 survivors across a map. A lot of the ideas to fix this problem mostly seem to focus around his speed. Increase his speed, problem solved.
To me, this doesn't help to deal with the second most popular talking point, which is why use his power at all when you could just M1 them? The obvious comparison is Huntress, who throws slower, but one hatchet is a health state vs. 8 blades. This with the chase in mind, meaning lots of breaks in LoS to hit 8 shots over one.
My idea is this: Instead of just tweaking his speed, why not give his power more depth and add to the Trickster element by adding passive laceration mechanics similar to what we see in the Plague's kit? Make it so the Trickster's daggers can stick to surfaces that they come in contact with (gens, pallets, windows), and when survivors interact with these, they incur passive laceration. This adds more reasons to why you want to invest in his special ability; it gives the blades more use than just being weaker, faster hatchets. Options in play styles open up, you can be tricky about your pressure on the map, but you still have the option to just spam blades if you want.
This all in mind, he could still use the speed boost, he could be buffed to match the Plague's speed in this regard. There could be a two blade limit to the passive laceration, that takes longer to recover from, so it doesn't get too oppressive for survivors, but still gives him reason to finish the health state off with blades.
In the end, I think this would add more tension to playing against him as a survivor, give more reason to want to play around with his powers as a killer, and maybe give him the boost he needs to feel more viable.
Let me know what you think! A lot of killers have powers that can accomplish multiple things, but Trickster seems to veer a little too close to the simplicity of Huntress without hitting the same notes that make her simple kit effective.
Sorry for the huge post!
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