Legion Rework Idea and why we've been going the wrong way about it so far
This will be a huge but encompassing rant about the Legion situation, so if you care about this killer and fixing its situation I suggest you give it a shot. Otherwise, you may skip to the end.
Let me just begin by stating that I believe that the way we've looked at the Legion Power rework is fundamentally flawed. I've seen many suggestions, each with their own particular quirks, some expressing how old features should be brough back, others praising the new ones but demanding a buff.
This may be a controversial opinion, but I believe legion's power is not weak, or unfair: it is just incomplete.
Certain players have brough attention over this, like Tatariu, but it's not the M2 power that's weak, it's what happens afterwards. Truth is, legion has one of the strongest injuring potentials in the game, heck it's his whole schtick, but at the same time almost nothing in his kit helps him with the actual important part of a killer: downing a survivor.
Think of a universe where plague didnt have it's corrupt purge, only the vile one. She would probably be one of the worst killers by far, and if we went about buffing her, what would definetly NOT constitute a good option, is buffing the thing she's already good at. Like if you buffed her vile purge, say make it injure survivors faster, or make infected survivors emit sound notifications, it would maybe make her slightly better, but fundamentally it wouldn't help her cause at all, because we didnt address the main issue, we just buffed stuff that didnt need buffing. The result would be making an insufferable M1 killer, which is exactly what a lot of people are calling out legion to be.
Now, granted, there IS a downing aspect to legion kit, being his 4+1 frenzy chain, but that's incredibly niche and easily countered, making it not effective in a coordinated team.
Alright, now that we've cleared that any buff to the injuring potential of legion (faster vaulting while frenzy, longer mending, faster frenzy speed etc etc) are NOT a good solution to his issue, how should we go about fixing his kit?
The solution I've come up addresses this issues and, while not perfectly refined and balanced, I believe is a GREAT starting position to go about the RIGHT way to buff legion: buffing the stuff that happens after the frenzy hits.
The actual change starts here:
-for each survivor hit during a feral frenzy which gets deep wound, you are granted one token (the same ones that increase your speed)
-at 4 tokens, you keep your ability to down the next survivor hit by a feral slash
—→ NEW SPECIAL ABILITY: BLOOD THIRST
After the legion exits its fatigue state, the following modifiers apply based on the number of acquired tokens:
-at 1 token: grants 2.5% haste, reduces time to vault windows to 1.6, reduces the duration of Pallet Stuns by 10%, increases the action speeds for breaking pallets breakable walls, dropped pallets and damage generators by 5%.
Each subsequent token increases the buff by the same amount (2 tokens grant 5% haste, 1.5 vault speed, 20% stun duration reduction, 10% breaking action speed, and so on, up to 4 times).
Ability ends after: 15 seconds, downing a survivor, or entering feral frenzy again. After that, it receives a 12 second cooldown. After ability ends, all tokens are reset to 0.
There would obviously need to be some balancing changes regarding the recharge time of frenzy (probably an increase to something like 20 seconds), and a slight nerf to red pin, although nothing to crazy since the two don't synergize as well.
Conclusions: This ability was inspired mostly by old Michael Myers, as he's the prime example imo of an ability helping an m1 killer do m1 better, and while it's definetly not perfectly balanced, I believe it's a great template to start from. as long as legion has no ability in his kit to help him down survivors remotely effectively, no buff to his power will make him better, just more obnoxious, to the point where you revert to a 0 skill ceiling old legion, with no skill and no counterplay. If you wish to add to it your balancing of the stats, please do, maybe Behavior will notice it that way and help us D tier killers too :)
Comments
First I'll say it's not going to happen. Second, I'll say that I wish it did.
I concur to some extent that Legion's power feels incomplete, though I myself would like to see a total ground-up rework of the kit and know that's not going to happen either, so may as well play along.
The reason this won't happen (just in my opinion mind you) is not because it's unrealistic or imbalanced - indeed I think the way you've present this is quite sensible. Haste after frenzy end which correlates to number of stabbings and is lost on the next stabbing is entirely sensible in the 'get the down' way and could solve for some of legions power crept kit portions.
The reason I say it won't happen is, flatly, because people hate Legion. Legion turns the game into mending simulator, and I am honestly convinced they will not receive a meaningful rework that does anything but remove their deep wound approach entirely. If they receive anything at all that is.