Oni's flicks should be reverted and he needs an addon rework
Background: I have over 1700 games of Oni, on mouse and keyboard PC, with at least 1000 before the flick rework.
Summary
- His new flicks make him less fun to play as AND against. The old flicks had more counterplay and required more setup and thinking.
- Addons - Most Oni players only run Hull, Crutch and Fang. He needs more interesting addons worth running.
- Oni is a healthy slugger, but the slugged-too-much Abandon option is too easy to reach in general.
Revert Flicks
In an attempt to make flicks more equitable between MnK and controller players, you have made Oni easier, less fun to play (on MnK), and less fun to play against. Bring back old 2023 flicks.
His brainless flicks are causing people to hate him more. Look at this twitter thread and see all the complaints, some quotes: "impossible to juke", "zzz to face", "just so boring", "counterplay is almost non-existent".
https://x.com/tehdarkestlord/status/2051868012249231524
No disrespect intended, but that Oni did nothing special - while you have to somewhat position yourself, you can often just wave your mouse in their general direction and it just gives the flick to you.
Previously you could achieve a lot by setting up your flick by preturning 90 degrees and flicking 90 degrees. This would open you up to counterplay from the survivors flaring the flicks and made successful downs more rewarding, especially in complicated tiles. While this setup is still useful, I can currently get the stupidest flicks without putting any thought into it.
Yes the flashy instant 180 flicks were very cool but you did not need them in most cases. In fact, what people often thought were 180s were actually the preturn 90/flick 90 set up I described above. See the example below:
https://x.com/igotcleareyes/status/1809035146730811451
I understand that this change was to make it easier for controller Onis, but I really dislike how doing that has made not only my experience playing less fun (along with many other Oni players) but also that of the survivors who have to play against it.
Addon Rework
Despite a few other interesting options, Oni really only has 3 addons worth running (5 if we're being generous with Topknot and Ink Lion). When was the last time you saw an Oni running anything other than Hull, Crutch, or Fang?
For now DO NOT make Hull, Crutch or Fang partially basekit. Oni is mostly good enough to play without them but there's just nothing else worth running. Rework the rest of the addons and then see if partial basekit is needed.
My main complaint is that there are multiple pairs (and one triplet!!!) of addons that have the same effect. Most are not good enough to warrant multiple tiers, excepting of course Hull, Crutch and Fang. Remove the lower tiers and you open space for new interesting addons.
I've summarised my thoughts in a tierlist (excuse the old colours), listing based on overall addon design, not their strength:
- Red = Needs rework, merging or major buff.
- Yellow = Some changes needed.
- Green = good. Don't touch.
My complaints about current addons, starting from bottom up:
Chipped Saihai - no killer should have three addons that do the same thing. Rework.
Wakizashi, Bloody Sash, Wooden Sword - Not good enough to warrant two tiers. Should be merged with lower tier addon. e.g. Bloody Sash should be 1.1 m/s and rework Blackened Toenail. Could also even buff to be greater than sum of pair (e.g. Wooden Sword extending aura range by 8 m).
Paper Lantern - weak addon but brown and has no duplicate = good. You could also merge it onto Wooden Sword to make a super QOL blood orb addon.
Ink Lion - this is a great green addon. Sakazuki could also merge with it, but both could exist as they are and be fine.
Tear Soaked Tenugui - useless because purple or blue Duration is better unless you're exclusively going for 4 man slugs. Downing two survs with Tenugui saves me 8 seconds, which is identical to blue Duration giving 8 seconds. It's only once I down the third surv and go for the 4th that I have more power duration available with Tenugui. Rework or buff it. If you buff it, it could be interesting to counternerf another part of his kit (like Vanishing Box)
Scalped (s)Topknot - Good! Makes his dash more comfortable to use without being brainless.
Renjiro's Bloody Glove - Transformative. Fine idea. Could be buffed.
Iridescent Family Crest - power crept. If you keep and buff the core idea, it should have a transformative downside effect. Or just straight up rework it.
Sashimono, Oni Mask, Talisman - duplicate of his 3 actually good addons. There is value in double stacking (and every Oni player is running out of Hulls) so these should also stay the same.
Hull, Crutch, Fang - the goats.
Without removing any content you could safely add four addons by merging and reworking: Rope, Toenail, Maedate and Chipped Saihai.
You could increase this to seven or eight by also reworking: Paper Lantern, Sakazuki, Tenugui and maybe Family Crest.
New Addon Ideas
Some addon ideas, feel free to ignore. Some ideas are much more cooked than others.
- Lopro - dashing through a pallet costs a few seconds of power, force injure/deep wound shortly after dashing through pallet. (This could replace Family Crest's effect)
- Faster vault speed in power. Faster space-bar pallet breaking speed in power.
- The obsession drops more blood orbs.
- Think of Myers' new Reflective Fragment add-on. No insta down but hits extend his power.
- Being stunned in power gives you much faster dash charge time for a few seconds.
- Massively increase terror radius in power (maybe increase the cost of downing survivors to reduce Infectious synergy)
- Injured survivors completing a gen drop a large number of blood orbs (NOT healthy survivors).
- Collecting blood orbs shows you the aura of the survivor who dropped it.
- See the aura of blood orbs near gens.
You could copy a lot of Michael's addons, but don't copy Lock of Hair because that would ruin what makes him such a healthy slugger, in that he's forced to pick up to stop power drain.
Comment on Slugging
Oni is a slugging killer done right - natural limit on slugging power with extra cost on down, rewarded for hooking, encouraged to pick up to stop power drain, survivors can counterplay slugging with lockers.
That said, it feels a bit too easy to give survivors the slugged-too-much Abandon option without really meaning to. It should require an extra down, because currently survivors can abandon and throw games a bit too easily.
Comments
Have you tried playing Oni with a controller on console? The entire point of this change to his flicks was to attempt to make him more viable and effective with a controller. Didn't they say those flicks weren't intended as well?
Most of the playerbase is on one of the consoles, more than 70% globally. Most of them still use a controller. Tinkering with killer powers to improve how they play for most is a good thing imo.
No, but now he's less fun for all survs (MnK or controller) to play against.
This reminds me of a lot of complaints I've heard about shooters like Apex Legends where controller players receive an unreasonable aim assist advantage to the detriment of MnK players. While new oni flicks don't provide a direct pvp advantage in dbd, it's still catering to controller players that makes the MnK experience worse.
It's also a part of the ongoing trend of making the game easier, trying to take away as many layers of complexity (and depth and richness) as possible. Just look at Singularity as an example.
Other changes could be made - like providing MnK support on console, or even making inputs for MnK and controller have different outputs.
Whether or not old flicks were intended doesn't matter:
Also I don't think I said clearly in the original post, but I really don't want Oni to get Skull Merchanted as people continue to complain about him more and more, and reverting the flicks is how you dial that back a bit.
MnK support was supposed to come to console in the QoL roadmap they did, have not heard about it at all since then tho.
Hopefully they fix the console input delay also