Devs, Change the Trickster, One More Time
Just one more time, developers. Give Trickster these changes, and I think that he'll be in the perfect spot as a Killer. Just slap this up, make a PTB out of it and see if the players actually like it.
If you're really reading these forum threads, read through this at least.
Killer: The Trickster
General Stats
- Buff: Trickster's movement speed is increased from 4.4m/s (110%) to 4.6m/s (115%).
- As the Trickster currently is, and how he would be changed with these changes I'm proposing, he currently struggles in the chase without his knives, and heavily struggles in locating Survivors as fast as the average Killer. This change in movement speed puts him alongside most of the other Killers and allows him to circumvent these mild weaknesses without making him an overwhelming threat.
- Change: Trickster's difficulty rating is increased to Intermediate.
Power: Showstopper
- Buff: Blade capacity is increased from 44 to 50.
- This change is here so that Showstopper's blade capacity is actually pleasant to look at.
- Buff: When using Play With Your Food, throwing a Blade will no longer consume one token. Instead, the token is consumed as soon as you Injure the Survivor with Showstopper.
- This change mostly ensures that The Trickster can fairly use this Perk without compromising his Power. His Power does not damage Survivors until he reaches maximum Laceration, and as such, should not proc a Perk that requires you to injure the Survivor, normally.
- Buff: The time to enter the Throw State, as well as charge time, are reduced from 0.35 seconds to 0.25 seconds.
- Buff: The time to exit the Throw State is reduced from 1.25 seconds to 1 second.
- These two changes are here to make Trickster's Showstopper feel a lot more fluid to utilize.
- Quality of Life: Entering and Exiting the Throw State now both require a button press each, allowing you to hold the Throw State without needing to hold the Power Button.
- Nerf: The movement speed while in the Throw State is now always 3.4m/s, reduced from 3.6m/s.
Laceration Meter
- Nerf: The amount of Laceration required to put a Survivor in the Injured State is increased from 6 to 8.
- This change is here in order to balance out The Trickster's overall utilization of his Laceration. He's currently a little too powerful in the chase and would be even more so with the increased ammo capacity.
- The amount of Lacerations required to put a Survivor from Injured to Dying, however, remains unchanged, mostly to make sure that Trickster isn't underwhelming in chase potential.
Main Event
- Rework: When activating Main Event, the ability to throw Blades is removed. Instead, The Trickster now runs at 150% movement speed, and using a Basic Attack during Main Event will cause The Trickster to perform a Blade slash at the Survivor.
- Each Blade slash performed has an active cooldown of 0.2 seconds.
- Each Blade slash performed with a Lunge Attack has an active cooldown of 1.2 seconds.
- Each Blade slash performed will increase the Laceration Meter of the Survivors by 1.
- Each Blade slash performed with a Lunge Attack will increase the Laceration Meter by 2.
- When performing a Lunge Attack, The Trickster moves at 500% movement speed for a total of 6 meters, and cannot turn while performing it.
- Rework: Main Event now lasts 60 seconds, and cannot be cancelled by stunning The Trickster.
- Buff: Main Event now charges passively, at 0.25c/s.
- Buff: Main Event can now be held indefinitely, or until activated.
- Nerf: Main Event now requires a total of 50 charges in order to activate, and will not activate from the passive charge.
- These changes to Main Event basically make it so that Main Event more or less feels like The Trickster's ultimate trump card. Currently, it's in a position where it is still very much so under-utilized due to the fact that he has a better option in Showstopper. However, these changes can make it much more useful, but also make it less frequent to use as a result.
- Buff: Main Event now reloads The Trickster's blades upon ending.
- This is to make Main Event even more impactful to utilize as a Power, as it now has an additional benefit instead of giving The Trickster infinite knives to throw.
- Quality of Life: The Trickster now has a VFX when activating Main Event, as well as a new running animation when it is active.
- Quality of Life: When Main Event ends, The Trickster no longer goes into a shocked fatigue animation. Instead, he now spreads his arms out and looks to the sky, as if he's giving one final pose to the "audience".
Add-Ons for Showstopper
The Trickster's add-ons for Showstopper leave much to be desired. They are mostly stat changes and don't impact a lot of the parts of his kit that he needs to be given, or just don't impact the parts that they're used for as much as they should. The following add-ons have been changed in order to mitigate that and make them a useful option.
Trick Pouch
- Buff: The amount of blades added by this add-on are increased from 4 to 10.
Memento Blades
- Buff: Memento Blades now only increases the Laceration Meter capacity of the Injured Health state of the Survivor.
Inferno Wires
- Rework: Now slightly increases Main Event's passive charge rate.
Tequila Moonrock
- Rework: Now slightly increases Main Event's passive charge rate.
On-Target Single
- Rework: Now slightly reduces the spread of Showstopper's Blades.
Ji-Woon's Autograph
- Buff: Now moderately increases the initial throw rate of Blades.
Waiting for You Watch
- Buff: Now also moderately increases the projectile speed of Blades while using Showstopper.
- Buff: Now also moderately increases Main Event's active duration.
Ripper Brace
- Rework: Now moderately reduces the spread of Showstopper's Blades.
- Rework: Now moderately increases the throw rate multiplier after 8 Blades.
Fizz-Spin Soda
- Rework: Now considerably increases the Throw State movement speed.
- Rework: Now moderately reduces the amount of Blades required to charge Main Event.
Bloody Boa
- Buff: The amount of blades added by this add-on are increased from 8 to 15.
Edge of Revival Album
- Buff: The spread of the Blades shattering is increased from 1m to 1.5m.
Diamond Cufflinks
- Rework: Upon injuring a Survivor with the Diamond Cufflinks, they are now dealt the Oblivious status effect for 60 seconds.
- Due to this, you can no longer reveal the Survivors' Auras when this is applied.
Cut Thru U Single
- Buff: Blades can now go through walls and objects when using this add-on. However, Laceration damage is reduced to 50% when this occurs.
Iridescent Photocard
- Rework: During a Throw State, Blades can now be charged for 1 second before throwing them, increasing their Laceration Meter damage output by double.
- Rework: Due to this, the player will need to tap the attack button while in the Throw State in order to rapidly fire a Blade.
- Rework: Iridescent Photocard now requires the Survivor to be one Blade Hit away from being Injured to apply the Exposed Status Effect. However, the Exposed Status Effect no longer goes away until the entire Laceration Meter has been depleted.
Death Throes Compilation
- Rework: When activating Main Event, the Auras of all Survivors on the map are revealed to you for 5 seconds.
- Rework: When Main Event is active, Survivor Laceration Meter capacity is reduced by 2.
The Trickster's Perks
Starstruck
- Buff: When Starstruck activates, base movement speed is increased by 3%/4%/5% and lingers for as long as a Survivor is Exposed by it.
- Nerf: Starstruck's active duration is reduced to 7/10/13 seconds on The Nurse.
- Due to The Nurse's overwhelming power in the game, Starstruck can often be seen as extremely powerful on her when used properly, so, the Perk now exclusively has a reduced timer on her, just to compensate for her amazing map traversal after hooking a Survivor.
- Additionally, Starstruck is often a lot weaker on most Killers, generally, so the first change would ensure that most Killers will be able to get value off of the Perk now.
Hex: Crowd Control
- Buff: When Hex: Crowd Control is activated, the totem that holds it will be blocked by The Entity whenever a Survivor performs a Rushed Vault through a window for 4/7/10 seconds.
- Currently, Hex: Crowd Control is one of the weaker Hex Perks in the game, even after its buff. This change ensures that Crowd Control survives a little longer to be more impactful.
To the developers of this game, please, just try this out internally first, then let the players give it a shot on the PTB. I've thought of this so quickly, yet I've come to realize that this would ultimately result in a far more cohesive, far more defined Trickster.
The Trickster, as he is, is still very much so flawed from a balance and design perspective, but this would at least allow him to shine with an identity still unique to him and the ability to perform incredible things now.
Come on, give it a shot. At least this one time, give something made by a member of the community a shot. You never know what might happen.
Comments
This new iteration of main event scream's dull and boring. Oh boy I sure would love to move fast and melee survivors on my god damn ranged killer. No one want's to play trickster to go fast and m1. Trickster needs to down fast this blade slash nonsense doesn't do that. Your taking too long using an ability that downs incrementally. Dbd is a fast game with an infuses on generating pressure this leaves to much room forsurvivors to exploit and put distance between you and more importantly the rest of there team.
Again I'm going to reiterate what everyone has been saying about trickster. Add ricochet as base kit leave his current 6 to damage requirement. He still is an underwhelming killer despite his buff. Also make main event something you can carry but have it take longer to build up. I see the direction this rework is going and it simply takes too long to down to work.
I think that the Main Event is fine as it is.
The new Main Event is supposed to be more in tune with his character and more to give him something that's a little more unique than simply making his knives infinite and go faster for very little value altogether. The new one replicates the actions he takes within his own trailer, where he's shown to be very agile in his performance and utilizes his blades to actually slash open one of his victims. The Trickster is known in the lore to be a performer with quite a lot of capability, and even his own Mori shows he's exceptionally more agile than we believe.
Functionally, the new Main Event gives Trickster even more capability to pressure Survivors in a way no other Killer actually can. Sure, the Laceration Meter being active during Main Event will be jarring at first, but the idea behind it is that he slashes so fast that he can injure and down Survivors while remaining on top of them at almost all times, then transfer over towards the other Survivors nearby as well. So both functionally, and thematically, this new Main Event should make sense when you realize that he can do a lot with it.
Now, you pointed out that you think that this would be slower for Trickster. This is absolutely not the case. Since the blades would take 0.2s to hit between each other, and since there's no penalty for injuring a Survivor, that means that Trickster can take 1.6 seconds to Injure you, then start running straight after you again; that's almost as short as missing a Basic Attack. Then to down them, you take around 1.2 seconds (excluding chasing them down) to down the Survivor with the rest of the Lacerations. Combined, that's 2.8 seconds, which is little under one successful basic attack.
I've accounted for basically everything regarding Main Event. How fast it needs to be, what it needs to be balanced out, what it needs to be to make it unique among the other speed Killers, how to make it an option rather than a necessity, and how thematic it is to The Trickster.
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As far as the second statement goes, that simply will not be good for balancing or the reception of this Killer. Trick Blades should never be base kit, nor should he keep the 6-to-damage thing altogether. It's because of the latter that he's powerful in the 1v1 and is considered very irritating, if not downright cheap, because of it and various add-ons he can put on to worsen the blow. There's no need to add something that would draw more ire from the community.
The rework I propose aims to completely overhaul The Trickster into a more polished and much more promising Killer than he currently is. Plus, he would be much more unique since he'd be the first range-to-speed hybrid Killer.