From Sadako with love
Okay, I must be one of the few people in the game that play Sadako and actually enjoy her. I play quite a few of the so-called C/D tier killers and am intimately familiar with their kits, but Sadako is one of my top 3 favorite killers. And with that experience comes a knowledge of her design flaws. As it stands, Sadako with addons and certain perk setups can be EXTREMELY oppressive, and Sadako without addons is arguably the weakest killer in the game. All things considered, she may be the single most addon-reliant killer in the game.
The issues with her basekit are small, but individually compound to make almost every aspect of her power useless without sacrificing some other part of it in your addon selection. Manifestation invisibility is near useless in most loops without Reiko's Watch/Old Newspaper/Well Water/Mother's Mirror, and her Condemned power can be ignored entirely without Ring Drawing/Iridescent Tape. Her basekit is lackluster and feels like two half-powers strung together with the player expected to pick between one or the other.
All that being said, I think she can be made into a solid C/B tier killer with just a few minor tweaks:
- Old Newspaper becomes basekit. The addon's new effect is reduced to 20%
- A weaker form of Iridescent Tape is made basekit. Either the last TV or two TVs at random are turned on after a Spectral Strike.
- Survivors doing a TV at =<2 condemned only lose one stack. Survivors doing a TV at 3-4 condemned lose 2 stacks. Survivors doing a TV at 5-6 condemned lose 3 stacks. Survivors doing a TV at full condemned lose 4 stacks.
- VCR is changed so that it plays the same sound effect as the TV from which Sadako emerges, instead of the generic effect
- Range at which Condemned is applied is extended by 20m.
By contrast, an important change needs to be made for survivors: when a survivor is holding a tape, TWO TVs appear as objectives instead of just one. Additionally, Iridescent Tape is nerfed to only turn on the last THREE TVs projected to.
Now, to explain the logic behind each of these changes one by one. Old Newspaper is pretty easy to explain: the basekit iteration of the power is essentially worthless on any pallet/loop that can't be mindgamed by a simple double back. Old Newspaper gives it a tight timing where Sadako can actually cross over line of sight/small obstacles and that small hesitation can provide the window to hit a survivor. As it stands, trying to use basekit Manifestation on most loops does more harm than good to her.
Iridescent Tape is her strongest addon by a LONG shot. It enables her to apply proper map-wide pressure and harass survivors with Condemned. However, Iridescent Tape IS an Ultra Rare addon, and it is expected that it will be this powerful. All that being said, without it, her cooldowns are egregiously long. 100 seconds for a TV to turn back on after being teleported to without Iri Tape feels extremely punishing. I would be opposed to a reduction in this cooldown since it would enable the "spam teleport on every TV" playstyle that Iri Tape also enables, which I'm not a fan of, but to allow her to turn the last TV that she projected to with a Spectral Strike makes her teleport more rewarding to use, and especially promotes tactical use of it; being more selective with which TV to teleport to until one is confident they can get a hit.
Survivors can lose Condemned stacks far too easily. By contrast, on certain Condemned-only builds, it becomes extremely tedious for survivors to micromanage the Condemned while constantly being harassed with extra stacks. Having a linear increase to the amount of Condemned stacks lost once a TV is done makes her power more useful as a slowdown on her basekit, while also disincentivizing survivors to do the objective as soon as possible which easily removes all pressure she can build with it.
VCR is probably her most useless addon. All TVs play the projection effect, but even without line of sight, there is an extra sound cue that indicates that Sadako has exited from a particular TV. Either removing this sound cue or adding it to all other TVs would make this addon function properly.
The range increase to her Condemned is just a slight improvement she needs to actually get stacks on survivors that pre-run after hooks. 16m is barely enough to catch a survivor that starts running as soon as she teleports.
Adding an extra TV objective when a survivor is holding a tape helps to prevent a low-effort high-reward playstyle from her that consists of camping the survivor's TV objective and letting them get to full Condemned/hooking them over and over again.
Finally, the Iridescent Tape would be necessary with these changes imo. The addon by itself is already very powerful, but there needs to be a limit to how much disparity in power the killer has with and without the addon. Additionally, the addon, even in its current iteration on the killer, makes it far too easy to just spam teleport and hit people over and over again with little effort.
Please BHVR, give Sadako some love. She deserves it.
Comments
Alternatively instead if doing all this they could just make condemn build passively while near an active tv
That would change the dynamic of her power. Now, survivors automatically take off the tape and do gens.
For 3, I meant increase TO 20m, but yeah. As far as Old Newspaper being basekit and ALSO being an addon, I'm entirely fine with a 1.2-0.5 configuration, considering it lasts a few seconds. That being said, Old Newspaper would need to go up in rarity to a yellow/green.
I think these are actually some fair points. I think your buffs make quite a lot of sense - there is just 1 last issue I have with this killer.
Having larger radius and more often tv's to spam ability creates new problem with her. Survivors that get fully condemned but can't get rid of the condemn even if actively trying. I already found the issue with iri tv refresh addon and sadako that spammed her ability. First she built stacks quicker then I could loose them if I went to middle (to unhook) second I could not get to active tv ever - because they never stayed inactive for more then 3s and you can't pick the tape from it if it's already off.
Meaning buffing tv's the way you proposed would not create Wesker-like slowdown you just can't ignore. It's more like buffing both iri addon meyers to get to kill phase quicker. I am all for the first option as the killer really needs it. I don't like the second one
It's specifically why I also mentioned to add a second TV objective (so that she can't just camp out one), as well as nerf the Iri Tape slightly. I've never been a fan of the spam teleport Sadako playstyle, I prefer when her teleport is used more tactically to funnel survivors into, or to stop gen progression, or to just traverse the map faster.
I get you covered return tape point which was problematic. But I was talking about aquire the tape part of the process. I mean if there was say 1 random tv that had tape even if turned off (or just vhs somewhere on the ground & respawn after pickup), this problem would not really exist.
To compensate let's say that return point of VHS needs to be at least say 32m far (I don't really know how far it is now, but I presume any other tv can light up)