Clown is the worst killer and needs buffs
The Clown is actually the worst killer but a lot of people overrate him.
His bottles do basically nothing that helps him in a chase. He can't mindgame pallets with them (only super unsave ones but you don't even need bottles for them anyway), and he still has to kick all the pallets. His bottles don't help him and survivors can always just run to another pallet.
His bottles fly way too slow, he gets slowed down while releasing his bottles, they only slow you down for -15% for 2 seconds and reloading takes ages and slows you down massively.
Hitting survivors directly with bottles doesn't do anything without the addon which is stupid.
He is really not good and can't counter loops because the slowdown is just not enough and against good survivors he is an actual joke. As mentioned earlier, he only can shut down unsave loops but you don't even need bottles for that in the first place. And he still CAN'T hit you most of the time, you still have to kick pallets and survivors can run to another save pallet. He can just force a quicker throw of the pallet or making survivors loop a bit less but considering the enormous amount of pallets and windows on maps it's just not enough and he can't down survivors fast enough to actually put out pressure.
Also, most of his addons are really bad. The purple ones don't really do much stuff, some of them are too similar and feel uninspired. Only pinkyfinger is somewhat good but it's hard to directly hit with bottles anyway and you have to be close to survivors and if you miss your bottle hit you have to spend ages reloading again.
Even the best streamers say he is trash and that's just the truth.
He needs a rework or a cube/buff to make him viable because right now he is laughable.
Comments
The issue: I don't like if a killer is only viable with certain perk combos.
Personally he cuts the gap between chasing a survivor from one pallet to another pretty well. You don't need to have perfect accuracy he can screw survivors with his addons and he is definitely one of the most devastating in the right hands.
Clown is quite bad, but not as bad as trapper and freddy
Meh. This is a problem with a lot of killers. They cannot apply pressure to survivors outside of the current chase, or can't get from A to B very quickly. Clown doesn't have map pressure. Leatherface doesn't have map pressure. Doctor doesn't have any pressure. Pig has close to no pressure. These are the worst killers (besides Legion) in the game right now. Legion is in some weird spot where you have pressure, but can't chase.
I've had ONE good game as the Clown, and I only call it that because I got a t-bagging, flashlight clicking, hyper vaulting, P3 Claudette at a pallet with a bottle. And she missed her DS.
I wouldn't call him weak, but he is low-mid tier AT BEST. Seriously. He needs a few buffs to make him useful. Even when throwing ahead of them, the slow just doesn't do enough.
I like him. I get my best results with clown.
No. Trapper is better due to his loop shutdown and map trap pressure potential, but Clown doesn't have that. He can get hits at loops sometimes, but he cannot apply map pressure. I would say he's better than Freddy though. Freddy's power relies solely on RNG.
He's not bad, one of the few killers that you have to respect in a chase.
But he is hard to play, you need good mechanics for this throw and if you're not a good chaser in the first place, clown wont help you much. He has little room for error in his playstyle.
Clown could need some qol buffs though. He is not very rewarding for how hard he is to play.
I think that the clown is pretty balanced, maybe a small quality of life buff may be good, but not too much
Clown is pretty good. I of course need to practice more but I have friends who regularly 3-4k with him. And to those who say Trapper is bad, you guys need to know how to use him >_>
I played a bloodpoint gain build with padded jaws and various bags from Rank 10-1. It might be just me that's good with him but still my point stands, he is not bad.
Freddy is also not as bad as you think, but you'd be crazy to think I'm bringing him to rank 1.
Clown > Trapper.
That's just my opinion.
Clown has no Map Pressure but is the best in chases. When done right, of course. But that applies to all Killers...
Without add ons he is basically only effective if the survivors cant mind game at all or dont know where the pallets and jungle gyms are. So basically
Great Killer from rank 20 to about rank 8.
Mid tier Killer- Rank 7 to Rank 5
Waste of Life Tier- Rank 4 to 1
IMO
Best in chases? are you insane? Billy, nurse, spirit, huntress are way better than clown. His bottles don't do ######### against good survivors.
You think I haven't played him enough? I got 2500+ hours in this game and play killer tons and watch a lot of streamers. Clown is trash and needs buffs is what a lot of people think. If you think he is good you are just bad as a survivor.
Clown can stop looping decently well.
No he can't. If you believe that you can't play survivor well against him. All he can do is force you to drop it a bit early but survivors can just run to a different pallet. The gas is not strong enough to really punish big loops. He can only shut down unsafe, small loops but any killer can do that without the gas.
A killer isn't good because he can destroy pallets. He will just get genrushed and not kill anyone. A killer is good if he can down survivors fast and has good map control. The Clown can't do either.
I am surely not the best survivor around, but I can play decently well. Maybe you have issues playing the clown properly. It's kind of like hag, you need to predict their movements really well so you can effectively intoxicate the survivor and get a hit.
If you utilize the clowns tonic bottles you can do very well. This isn't a matter of how much experience you have. This is about using his power to your advantage.
Clown is on the high end of mid tier for killers. He's practically a trapper with no traps but he can close down survivors and restricting paths to safe areas or to slow if you prefer.
Here, the common loops:
T+L Walls -
Clown can gas the survivor and usually end up getting a hit, these are very unsafe loops.
Double L's with Pallet -
If the survivor sticks to the long L wall, the Clown cannot break the loop and is forced to break the pallet.
Jungle Gyms -
Based on the variation, if the pallet is next to the short wall, the clown can bait out a hit. If the pallet is on the long wall, the clown cannot.
Junk Tiles -
Clown can usually bait out these unsafe pallets.
Certain loops he can't though.
He can also throw gas to force pallets down faster, as their speed is temporarily decreased they can not go around another time. And for the longer loops the gas in combination with bloodlust can be used.
The fact of the matter is, he still is forced to break pallets. It's about a 50/50 that he can get a hit. He, along with Leatherface, are the bottom of the barrel for killers. They do not have pressure on survivors outside of chases.
I'd not mind seeing some buffs to his base bottles, primarily removing the Red Stain for survivors who're intoxicated and perhaps setting the heartbeat to a set tempo, making survivors unable to determine just how close the Clown really is. This would open up for some mind-gaming shenanigans.
Clown is highly dependent on specific perk builds. You go outside the box, you get a very light killer.
Clown is as I will always say, one of THE MOST well rounded killers. Of course, my personal opinion.
I got tired of playing Billy and Nurse, and wanted another killer to play. None to fond of Hag or Trapper, just not my cup of tea, I will play them for the occasional round, perhaps I will grow a better taste for them. Wraith is pretty good, but eh. Huntress is great, but I still need to practice a hell of a lot more. We all know where Freddy stands, I wish he was stronger quicker! Doctor, Leather Face, and Myers are all a toss up, don't mind playing them.
Recently, I have been playing Clown a lot more. When Pig, Clown, Spirit, and Legion were all introduced. The only one I really wanted to get was the Clown. I tested all of them in their respective PTBs if they had one, and I don't know what it was, but Clown drew me in the most. Spirit and Pig are good, don't get me wrong, in fact Spirit is an extremely powerful killer. But I just didn't like them. And Legion is... A thing... Why, I don't know, but they are, and I refuse to buy them. Long stories.
But Clown, I have found to be very fun, and very under represented, which may have been a major factor. I say the occasional Pig, and plenty of Legion and Spirit. But this month, I have come across one clown. ONE and within 2 months, only a grand total of about 8. Why is this? He is the only killer with a unique sound effect when he hits a survivor, and I LOVE IT! Him getting stunned, is the greatest thing.
He laughs and scoffs "Yeah yeah, you hit me", that is what I feel like he's "saying" anyways, but that is besides the point.
He's no where near being the weakest killer, nor is he near being the strongest killer. If you used improperly, sure he is just awful. But when used properly, you can see a huge amount of success.
Quick Tip: Did you know hitting a survivor directly with the bottle, stops them from doing whatever they were doing, apart from Vaulting and throwing pallets? It stops unhooks, this is so good. Its cheeky as all hell, but it's great.
clown is boring but consistent
Clown isn't top tier, but he isn't trash either.
He can slow survivors down well. Sure base is a bit weak but so are most killers without add ons.
He can slow survivors down enough that you can often hit them at or before pallets. He's far better than Pig, Freddy, Wraith, Leatherface etc
Just from my experience surviving against the clown, the gas doesn’t really mess with me too much. My screen gets woozy but I can still process where to go next, and things are fine a few seconds later.
On the flip side, playing as clown, I've found it’s better to not even use bottles. More often than not I’ll lose the survivor in the gas cloud since it obstructs my view so much. Really the only benefit is flinging bottles at distant generators to see if survivors are there. Admittedly it is pleasant hearing multiples screams at once!
All in all though, meh.
I took clown from rank 7-3 in the last few days. Exhaustion add on combined with low cooldown throws, bbq, enduring, agitation, and discordance. It is nice not having to deal with dead hard as much and I have got pretty good at not wasting bottles only cutting off loops or throwing at their feet close range. The extra hinderance add on also helps. Plus he laughs at the survivor every time he downs them. If you can keep the chases relatively short you can get 2-3k pretty often and more 4k if you are willing to slug. (which I am not.)
Clown can't stop loops or has an ability that really helps you catch people. People can still use millions of pallets against clown if they just don't get too greedy. He can't stop that like spirit, hag or huntress for example.
And this is why I know it is effective and that yellow bottle will always be the add on I try for on his bloodwebs. I have 60 ready to go.
Plus if you use the extra hindered penalty or the one that makes toxin effects last moderately longer than you can hit them befote they get to the next pallet.
the whole point of the clown is to cut a survivors path off and force them to run into the open field.
obviously he cant just stop survivors from using the pallets, but he is far from being as useless as you try to picture him. yes, he is a basic 115% M1 killer and eats pallets like a wraith or leatherface would do, BUT he has his bottles.
the bottles make it way harder to loop him, as the decreased movement speed forces the survivor to drop the pallet way earlier than he would do it against a wraith or trapper. of course you will eat many pallets at the beginning, but they will run out of pallets fairly fast later on (considering that they dont have 20+ pallets and done the gens within 3 - 4 minutes). another factor to the clowns gas is, that you can cut off a survivors path and force them to run into the open field. i know the gas isnt that threatening, but its enough to have most of the survivors try to avoid it.
he does have one BIG problem though:
map pressure. his map pressure sucks, as he just has no way to travel the map effectively and protect his gens, which leads to a fairly fast genrush scenario, especially with the current gen times.
if they would give him a way to apply more map pressure, he would easily be one of the top killers this game has.
Doesn't matter. Survivors can still waste enormous amounts of time because of the great amount of pallets on a map. Clown can't down survivors quickly enough to put out enough pressure. He doesn't have a mobility tool either.
OP is a real clown. Made me laugh.
While in the smoke you get a massive slow.
When you get out you get a medium slow for a few seconds.
You then get a long term 60 sec action speed debuff and makes them cough occationally.
That way hitting people with it is actually harmful to them as opposed to a slight inconvenience