Judgement: The Zealous Question
Back when the Devs were creating the Exile realm, 1 question they had was what the incentive should be for exiling survivors over hooking. This has lead to the current zealous mechanic.
In my post I'll advocate why I think zealous should take a somewhat different direction to perfect the killer.
OLD ZEALOUS:
Old zealous is mainly a state that you should be in for most of the match. This means that when you're not zealous (The first chase), you'll be at your weakest. But due to the length of zealous, a good Judgement should be zealous for most of the game.
PROBLEMS:
One of the problems with this is that The Judgement is a very Muscle Memory based killer. So playing with her ability and having the curve durations change based on your modes screws with that internal training. That is why, I believe zealous should take a different direction:
THE CHANGE:
The new zealous should not be based around a mode that you're supposed to permanently maintain, but should give you a short burst of power.
The main ability, will from now on ALWAYS have a 0.3 curve window and is by default 10% bigger. This is healthier as only 1 specific stat would make her ability a fair thing to play against. Any other number would make it either unfair to The Judgement or to Survivors. Whether 0.3 is that number, I'm not completely sure, but it's close to around that. Probably no more than 0.4.
So the new Zealous will instead help The Judgement in areas where she needs it; map mobility, as we have learned from gameplay testing.
THE NEW ZEALOUS:
Whenever The Judgement exiles a survivor, she gains 4 stacks, up to 4.
Judgement can use her second ability button to Activate Crab walk:
- Crab walk consumes 1 stack and causes her to quickly walk into 1 direction, gradually slowing down to normal speed and regaining direction control
- At 50% of the "dash", she can already cast the next Crab walk dash
- The next time she M1's or cancels her power after Crab Walk, she slows down and spins her weapon instead (for about 2 seconds). Called Twirl
- When she Twirls her weapon, she casts a circle of light with radius of 10 meters around her, revealing the auras of survivors in it for 60 seconds, for as long as those survivors are within the circle.
- At 50% of the crab walk, she can also cast her ability. If fired, not cancelled, this removes the Twirl effect.
This ability overall creates the well fitting crab walk effect as illustrated below: Where you first move mainly in a straight line and slowly gain more control of the walking curve.
Now… what have all these random new suggestions accomplished for The Judgement? Seems rather arbitrary, right? These changes have come from a close analysis of her underlying weaknesses:
What The Judgement currently lacks is map mobility. For The Judgement to be able to use her power in a meaningful manner, she has (in fact) to be close enough to the survivors to have vision over them. This is typically the length of a wall of a loop. Which typically means she has to be less than a loop away.
Now of course, many of you know The Judgement as a long ranged sniper. Sadly, however, against good players, this plan starts falling apart. As many of her long ranged shots turn into gambles, which she cannot afford. That means that currently, The Judgement can lose alone by the virtue of being an 4.4 m/s killer, spending most of her time catching up to prerunning survivors to get into "Lethal Range", or having to resort to gambling.
With the current changes, Zealous offers her that exact map mobility that she's lacking. Allowing her to move into Lethal Range quicker, without being able to use that Dash for a cheap M1, similar to Henry.
So that's good and all! She gets slowed down by Twirl. And we get a nice aura circle! What's the point of that?
Another one of The Judgement's main weaknesses is a lack of visibility. In most maps, that won't be too much of a problem, but on certain round loops, or certain maps, she can severely struggle. This aura circle can help The Judgement strategically push survivors away from problematic areas, and gives her more of a fight, leading to less gambling and more skilful gameplay.
That is also why it's so important in this version of The Judgement to make her main ability as fair as possible, and not tinker too much with it. That's why zealous will no longer change how it works. At 0.3 curve and +10% of the current baseline is what we'll consider the fair beam.
As long as The Judgement has stacks, she'll have the visual Zealous effect.
CONCLUSION:
All with all, these changes will make the Judgement a fairer killer to both sides;
With her main ability being constant in power and balanced exactly at the sweet spot, neither parties suffer unfair disadvantages, which would be the case with longer curve durations, and in turn, the Judgement will have map mobility and built in aura to help pressure problematic loops for her and create more overall strategy, tying in perfectly with her amazing crab legs and creating the visual of this quick crab-walking to tie in with her overall theme ❤️
Let me know what you guys think! Do you agree with this design philosophy? Where do you consider The Judgements problematic areas to be? Let me know in the comments down below!
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