If Dracula doesn't get some tweaks soon, he might end up forgotten just like Vecna
I should start by saying that, no, I don't think Dracula is weak. He is actually quite decent, with multiple chase abilities and map mobility with the bat form. The problem that might make him unpopular in the future is that, honestly, every ability he has seems like a clunkier version of another killer's power, which certainly doesn't make him very fun or appealing to play for many players, specially in comparison to other killers that feel smoother to play as. Of course, be mindful that everything in this post is my opinion and, if you think I'll end up wrong, feel free to disagree.
The vampire form has arguably his strongest chase ability, since it's antiloop, but it's also an ability that feels quite bad to use: it's similar to Nemesis' tentacle, but slow to charge and with a cooldown. The slowdown just feels awful: even if you press the button for a quarter of a second and immediatly cancel it, you can feel the effect and lose a lot of distance. To make it worse, the only add-on that increases its range makes the charge time 25% slower. It also seems a little buggy and inconsistent right now. Sometimes it goes trough certain tall tiles, sometimes it doesn't. However, I must say I like that it can hit people in different elevations, to me that's the best part about it.
The wolf is, in my opinion, his most fun form. 3rd person view + a passive with speed boosts + a pounce attack. The problem is: the pounce attack feels similar to demogorgon's, but with a surprisingly long charging time. Sure, it's a double pounce, which is the part that makes it unique and fun, but that doesn't make the slow charge feel any better. Of course, there's also a cooldown on top of that.
The bat is great for map mobility, but using it near survivors is… oh boy. You can't see survivors just like the Spirit, but they can see you and, because there is a huge bat and many other smaller bats on the screen, is much harder to pay atention to details like grass moving. The bat screeches make it harder to hear survivors even with the survivor sound increase, and it doesn't help that the chapter was released just a while after Iron Will got buffed back into the meta. Pray for the scratch marks to be working fine when you play this killer, because when they take that delay to appear it feels awful.
Finally, even his shapeshift ability has a cooldown, AND he slows himself down when changing forms. So on top of other slowdowns and charging times he already suffers from, he also gets a slowdown for switching between powers, AND he needs to wait before transforming again every time, even if he just used the bat form to teleport near a gen and now can't even attack. Again, none of those things make him weak, but they do hinder the fun of playing him to an extent, and it shouldn't be a surprise if he ends up being another rare killer with a small pick rate. We already had multiple killers that received a lot of hype at first only for it to die out really quickly.
Comments
They will remove the hug tech as it is confirmed:
They will also fix the instahit exploit
Ah I didn't know that, thanks for clarifying!
See QoL stuff like this is fine, this is the sort of feedback he needs I personally think Bat is too loud on the killers end too
instahit exploit?
Year. when you shapeshift from the Batform to the Vampire or Wolfform, you usually have a cooldown before you can hit with M1 or use your power. However, by spamming the Shapeshift and M1 right, you can shapeshift and hit immediatly without the cooldown between. You can abuse on Pallets to shapeshift on the right side with the survivor to either hit or grab them or at a window for the same effect.
It’s not the exact same thing. Pyramid head’s punishment is far easier to dodge than Dracula‘s hellfire and walking/aiming at loops with the sword in the ground is more difficult than with his fire since pyramid head can only walk forward and not backwards or sidewards.
My point was Dracula is not the only killer who makes pallets and windows questionable. "walking/aiming at loops with the sword in the ground is more difficult than with his fire since pyramid head can only walk forward and not backwards or sidewards" not a problem for skilled Pyramid Head players.