Vecna, interesting but too tunnely
Played vecna for release yesterday, he is a lot of fun and on the whole very well designed. Loving his gen regression perk too, allows you to chase a surv off of a gen and dmage it without dropping the chase.
The vine ranged attack is good, doesn't instadown players all the time, provides good anti loop, is super satisfying to use and is good for mind games. So basically effective without being to oppressive. His add ons are immensely well designed imo, all of them add to a certain playstyle, and there aren't many I look at and think "that's useless chaff". The mini mori is interesting, I'm a little iffy about being able to trigger an effectively unavoidable mori at a distance but it does take a lot of work to max out someone's tokens on 2 hook states then hit another vine attack. Clocks provide a good bit of optional counterplay that survivors can use to aid someone who is currently in chase without unduly risking themselves. And it works for both sides too, if a surv is vibing to kate bush then they aren't doing gens. Nice bit of design that doesn't feel as urgent and oppressive as say pig's jigsaw boxes or plague's fountains.
My issue with him is that his upside down traversal gives him way too much tunnel and hook camp potential. I found when I was struggling in a game with him it was an easy fall back to use the traversal to scare people away from hooks to squeeze an extra hook state out or punish them for going for the unhook. Even without actively camping hooks if i heard someone get unhooked i could rotate back very quickly and pick up trail to chase the rescuer and rescuee. Usually after the endurance from unhooking had worn off, so the rescuee always made for the easiest and most tempting target.
Imo the traversal power needs a few limitations. Most other traversals, dracula's bat, demo's portal, spirit's phase, place some kind of limitation on the killer's senses. The upside down, aside from the slight perspective change does not. Personally I think scratch marks and blood pools should be hidden, sound completely cut off and aura reading disabled to make it harder to chase people straight off of hook. You are in an alternate dimension after all. Wraith has the same issue, but he doesn't get value just from uncloaking, and you see a LOT of tunnely wraiths. And we know how much of a fun and engaging experience it is to be tunneled out of the game
One relatively minor gripe can't say I'm a huge fan of his attack animation, tentacles from over the shoulder seems weird and makes the attack feel short. He has a whacking great big claw for a right hand so idk why he doesn't just slash people with it or even do a sadako style palm telekinesis attack like in his menu animation.
Overall enjoyable killer, just needs a tweak to stop people being being lazy and tunneling hard.
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