Dredge needs some buffs pretty badly
I'd like to put this video on here, as it does a very good job of detailing what problems Dredge faces at the moment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13tdMYuDmCkI agree with most things in this video, honestly, the exception being Locks only working at Nightfall and Dredge getting a speedboost coming out of a Locker, apart from that, this video has some really good buff ideas.
The main change I'd love to see to him is making his Daytime teleport significantly faster. Currently, it's only 2m/s faster than Billy's chainsaw, which feels REALLY slow for a teleport power that can only go to predetermined places. It really feels like I'm sat there twiddling my thumbs on longer teleports.
Like, his MAIN thing is teleporting around the map, and Demo, who has it as a secondary power, is almost twice as fast at it. This video suggests 25m/s for Daytime, and 40m/s for Nightfall, which sound kind of reasonable.
I want to bring the discussion about everyone's favourite abomination/turkey/sometimes-a-horse here. What are your opinions on Dredge? How do you think he needs improving, if at all?
Comments
His teleport speed to lockers could be buffed. It's very slow like demo's.
I would even prefer nerfing a teleport speed to locker in nightfall and instead buff it normally.
And maybe faster exiting from a locked locker?
proper and consistent locker placement would be my first prio tbh
dredge's gimmick is that he's vampire. he is strong in night time and weak in day time… right? no. that is the issue. I highly doubt they would buff his main gimmick of teleporting in day time to be same as night time. at some point, you lose purpose in having a day and night mechanic. The slower teleport is intentional because his Resign of darkness charges nightfall the more you teleport. Fallen shingle add-on is related to that mechanic. your essentially suppose spend most of your time in day-time to nightfall to prepare a play for nightfall.
What they could do to buff his teleport speed is reduce number of charges needed to enter nightfall from 300 to 225. this allows him to enter nightfall more often and therefore buff his teleport more often allowing him to make more plays. unfortunately, having faster teleport more often doesn't help if you can't teleport to anything relevant. so he needs nightfall buffs that make his locker teleport more reliable outside of map rng in addition to variable changes.
The video suggests reducing charge time to 175 and making injures charge 0.5. these changes are counter-productive. you should always avoid counter-productive changes that clash at each other. you end up changing very little about the killer.
Unfortunately that is unlikely to happen. It's a lot easier to do a pass on one killer than every single map.
There's a LOT of room to buff Daytime teleport without it getting anywhere near Nighttime's value. 25m/s and 40m/s are still very far apart.
I have to wonder is it not possible for dredge to have exclusive locker placements? Like instead of where onryo TVs would be, could there not just be lockers?
i am pretty sure that fallen shingles also applies as you are teleporting from locker to locker. faster teleport in day time means less nightfall charges. i think it is better to reduce nightfall number of charges as it makes the slow teleporting more attractive to use because your building large % of your nightfall per teleport. After that, it is more of just improving nightfall as a whole.
My impression is that if BVHR does buff him, they'll probably nerf his nightfall visibility making character less unique. They already did that with Clown's Purple gas where purple gas barely has any blinding effect. I don't know why Killer blinding the survivor get nerfed but survivor blinding the killer with flashlight with chain-blinding possibility is **fine.
I really like playing Dredge. He just feels so unnecessarily hindered by maps though. So many are just near auto losses from how bad locker placements are and how few lockers there are. His other main issue is that non nightfall teleports and locker exits are just way too slow. Mid chase teleports to try and cut survivors off are what make Dredge fun, but this play style isn't viable from map design and how slow those teleports are. This is what makes Haddies Calendar and Boat Key basically required just to make this play style "semi" passable, but not even. Dredge actually is one of the few killers that has a lot of interesting and viable addons, but you're just never able to utilize that from the required ones.
I could even go on for more things such as how trash and uncreative his ultra rare addons are and other things but that's the priorities above.
The biggest must have is #1 and #2. Everything else would be nice but those are a must and are his biggest issues.
I can't remember where I saw it but someone had a good idea on fixing some of the locker issues. Essentially when you play Dredge add an extra locker at every spot an Onryo TV would have spawned. This wouldn't totally fix the issue, but would help a lot and would be very easy to implement since it's already programmed in.
The Video:
Honestly this guy gets it. I agree with most all his changes bar a few like some addons and the locking during nightfall. He wanted more passive Nightfall recharge and less on hits, whereas I think it should be the total opposite. Instead of just flat increasing how fast you get Nightfall we should just increase how much progress you get on hits. This means you only get the Nightfall faster if you're skilled, not for free. I also don't think he baked enough Haddies Calendar into base kit. Overall though great changes, he actually buffed Dredge more than I was aiming for. With his changes Dredge would be so much stronger, healthier, and have a higher skill ceiling.
Weirdly enough I submitted my own suggested changes thread for Dredge just a few minutes before this but it was set "under review" so I don't know if it'll even post. But this is convenient and I'll share my thoughts on how I would tackle improving Dredge as a Dredge main.
I think the ideas presented in this video are interesting, and I particularly like the concept of Onryo's speed boost when teleporting applying to Dredge exiting lockers but I also don't see it as a necessity. I went in a different direction, and seeing as I meant for this to be its own thread it's a wall of text but here goes:
*As a note for the first 3: It takes 300 charges to fully charge up the Nightfall Meter which equates to 20 minutes if you do literally nothing to charge it as it charges at a rate of 0.25 charges/second. So injuring Survivors, hooking Survivors, having Survivors stay injured, teleporting & hiding in lockers, and teleporting back to your Remnant are the ways to significantly gain charges. Any add-on that affects the charge rate of the Nightfall Meter that isn’t Malthinker’s Skull is never worth it and I don’t think Dredge needs to have any add-ons that affect the charge rate with the exception of the Malthinker’s Skull. It’s strong enough on its own and having any other ones is boring and lazy design potential.
This may look like a lot of changes, but it's only 3 basekit changes that are mostly number buffs for better quality of life when playing as the Dredge. Of course I also suggested changes for 50% of its add-ons, and outside of making Haddie’s Calendar and Ottomarian Writing fully or partially basekit I wouldn’t be overly upset if the others were left unchanged. But would the others be changed and depending on the strength of what some of the add-ons could turn into, I still feel it shouldn't feel dramatically different to play against the Dredge, but still make the Dredge more powerful to play as and even more importantly, consistent from map to map.
They should make malthinkers skull/haddies calendar basekit ATP because I don't he's a killer without using these addons
Considering their recent reworks, if BHVR buffed Dredge, it would read like this:
A small buff I want is that dredge being in a locker counts as searching one (to activate locker perks).
Locked lockers should reset in nightfall.
Hoping for brighter screen while holding remnant because it's near impossible to see with it on console.
Yeah, it's horrible, feels like I'm debuffing myself just to use my power.
A fun fact I just learned: Engravings Billy is actually faster than Dredge's TP in Daytime. You don't even need to be in Overdrive, AND you get much freer movement.
PLEASE make his Daytime TP faster at the very least, it's borderline unbearable without Boat Key. I'd say you could increase it even further than Boat Key does at the moment and it wouldn't be OP.
WE'RE COOKING
W BHVR
Honestly a lot of what was suggested here, even the values, are incredibly close to what has been posted in here.
I'm hyped!