My Doctor Rework Idea
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The Doctor was originally designed by devs to counter pallet looping. He was supposed to be the poster child of counter looping and the devs praised The Doctor design and openly admitted of how proud they were of their creation.. Sadly, the doctor barely counters looping.. Yes, at some loops he can counter yet most loops our shocky boi simply isn't the man he was meant to be. The main issue with our shocky boi is the shock, animation, and delays are not instant. The animation shock will go out, then there will be a delay before the survivor is shocked. During that delay and animation, the survivor can still vault and drop a pallet. The shock shouldn't be delayed and as soon as the shock animation hits the survivor, the delay to their actions needs to be applied instantly. The delay is the biggest issue. Another issue is when attempting to shock a survivor, they will sometimes run up to you to avoid the shock. The shock is coming straight from The Doctor. A survivor should be punished for doing this if you are charging a shock. Back to the main topic that every second counts in Dead by Daylight and the shock not being instant is ONE of the major issues on why he doesn't counter pallet looping. Another major issue is that survivors can out run the shock or even if they're shocked, they will simply keep looping til they have to drop the pallet. There's no punishment for a survivor being shocked beside hitting madness 2 & 3 which the tiers themselves with even the best add-ons are a joke around rank 15-1. Anything below is just a pubstomp.
When you read about The Doctor's ability “ Carter's Spark” An opening question is asked " Is it a gift, or a curse?” the ability is simply a curse with how terrible it is and the add ons are no better. Here how can make the devs truly proud of The Doctor.
Carter's Spark(For This big change, the rate of madness gained would be decreased accordingly)
Switch Stance: Punishment mode is the stance used to injure Survivors. Treatment mode grants the abilities “Static Field” & “ Shock Therapy”.
While in Punishment mode, The Doctor moves at his normal speed weapon to injure Survivors.
While in Treatment mode, you move slower and generate a Static Field based on your Terror Radius which slowly increases the Survivors' Madness based on their proximity to the Doctor. In exchange for your normal attack, grants the ability to charge and release a Shock Therapy attack that greatly increases Survivors' Madness, and prevents them from performing any interactions for 2.5 seconds. Treatment mode still allows The Doctor to do normal interactions such as vaulting windows, damaging generators, breaking pallets and grabbing Survivors.
Shock Therapy attacks will leave a static field for 2.5 seconds where it was casted. Any Survivors walking over the field will get shocked. This applies to objects as well.
Madness Tier 1:Causes Survivors to scream revealing their position to The Doctor. 25 seconds after encountering The Doctor, the Survivors stricken with terror after the encounter will breathe more heavily in terror and whimper from time to time. If injured, the breathing and whimpering is louder. This is baseline without add-ons
Madness Tier 2: All effects of Tier 1. Causes Survivors to experience Hallucinations based on the Doctor's current add-ons. Baseline Hallucinations will include surreal hallucinations with sounds which the survivors can only hear yet both The Doctor & afflicted Survivors see of the doctor chasing, shocking, swinging, moving, laughing, face appearing in skillchecks, opening lockers, kicking gens, breaking pallets, hooking survivors, catching, moving. The Hallucinations DOES NOT HALT PROGRESSION OR HARM SURVIVORS. This is baseline without add-ons.
Madness Tier 3: All the effects of Tier 1 & 2. The Doctor can read afflicted Survivors auras and Survivors who are afflicted with begin to scream until they “ snap out of it. Survivors cannot heal themselves, repair generators, search chests, or cleanse totems while in Madness Tier 3. This is baseline without add-ons.
Madness Tier 4- When a Survivor enters Madness Tier 4, a Survivor will not be effected by Tiers 1 to 3 yet faces a new danger. The Survivor will have 25 seconds to snap out of it. If The Survivor does not snap out of it within the time limit, they will be engulfed by madness and begin to cradle. The Survivor will not be able to DO ANYTHING. Only another Survivor can help the player “ Snap Out Of It”. There're no add-ons for Madness Tier 4 and even achieving Madness Tier 4 will be difficult.
Perks- With the Big Change update(https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/73043/rework-ideas-series-of-my-final-posts#latest) I mention in my previous thread. The Killer perks can still be used on other killers yet limited and another special feature would be the killer perks would have a bonus effect on the Killer's Home Turf(Map). This also applies to Survivors on their Home Turf(Map). I personally feel like most of the Doctor Perks are good except for “ Overcharge”. It's pretty bad and a noob stomper perk.
-Overwhelming Presence would need a nerf since with the “ Big Change” items may be added for Survivors to collect to or maybe another secondary objective that requires items. Overwhelming Presence item consumption rates decreased to 20%/40%/60% from 80%/90%/100%. The Bonus effect from Overwhelming Presence in Treatment theatre would be that survivors passively gain Madness overtime rather The Doctor is in Treatment Mode Or not. Does stack with afflictions.
Monitor & Abuse will remain unchanged. Bonus added effect on Treatment theatre that a Camera will alert Carter when Survivors are repairing a generator, cleansing a hex totem, or opening an exit gate. The added effect has a cooldown per camera. Each camera being able to trigger effect. The camera will go offline for 20 seconds.
-Overcharge- More than 2 Survivors on a generator will trigger “ OverCharge” making skillcheck zones tremendously smaller, faster, appear more. If The Survivors stop repairing a generator outside of the killer's terror radius when the " OverCharge" status is active, the generator will pop and cause regression depending on how many people were working on the generator. The penalty is doubled within the Killer's terror radius.
Outside Of Killer Radius
3 Survivors- 5%/10%/15%
4 survivors- 15%/20%/30%
Inside Of Killer Radius
3 Survivors- 10%20%/30%
4 Survivors- 20%/40%/60%
Bonus effect in Treatment theatre- Survivors who are Madness Tier 3 will cause 10% generator regression each 5 seconds they attempt to repair a generator
Add ons- If this rework would to go through, you couldn't really touch The Doctor's current add-ons. It would make him simply op. The only add-ons that need to be reworked in my opinion are “ Maple Knight” & Scrapped Tape”
Maple Knight- A white knight chess piece made of maple. This gift from an old man brings back distant memories and imbues The Doctor with devastating focus.
Obsessions gain Madness 2xs Faster.
A compact cassette from
Shock Therapy effect becomes a sphere of pulsing electricity that pulses and shocks Survivors in or near it for 2.5 seconds.
That's all I got for now.
Comments
now, ive read read through the big wall of text at the beginning of your post by now and i already spot a huge flaw in your post:
Doc, despite what you are saying, was NOT designed to fight pallet looping. his design was ment to break the game to some extent, which he is still very good at.
He messes with Survivors Skillchecks, Audio, Vision and disables their ability to interact with things, which no other killer can do to that extend.
Your assumption that Doc was designed to fight pallet looping comes from the 2.5 second stun a Survivor receives uppon being hit with the Shock Therapy. now, i believe its important to know that this was not part of his basekit when he got released back in the day. in fact, this has been added later on when the community voted for a Doc change. With the same buff he received the fake pallets add on aswell btw.
Another thing is, that Doc is clearly a "Tracker" (a killer whose strength is to find survivors). this becomes very clear uppon taking a look at his power "Carthers Spark", which will have Survivors scream, revealing their location, and also allowing you to read the auras of Doctor illusions, staring directly at the Survivors location (once they entered tier 3).
now here is the main problem with your argument that Doc gets looped too easily:
looking at the different cathegories of killers, we can see 3 main cathegories: 1. Hunters (Killers with the ability to end chases quickly. weakness: stealth) 2. Trackers (Killers with the ability to find Survivors easily. weakness: chases) and 3. Defenders (Killers with the power to easily defend one area against Survivors. weakness: tracking and hunting outside of that area). looking at the Docs build, like i said earlier, clearly makes him a Killer from the Tracker cathegory (probaply the strongest out of all of them, due to his Shock Therapy allowing him to gain the upper hand in chases), which means that his natural counterplay should be looping. However, with making him a Hunter aswell, you would create a new very very strong killer that would also be little to no fun to go up against, since there is literally no counterplay to him. Any other Killer that dominates during chases can be avoided with stealth rather easily, while any Killer that can find you easily has a hard time during chases. giving a Killer both strengths would just create a Legion 2.0, since, if you remember, Legion (pre nerf) used to completely dominate in chases (you could literally not get away from them) while also easily tracking you down with their Killerinstinct - and we both know who the most hated Killer in DbD used to be.
now im sorry for that wall of text, but i just felt the need to correct you there, since i feel like you got the wrong impression of Herman...
oh, and a little heads up: if a Survivor decides to dodge your Shock Therapy by running towards you, just switch to punishment mode and collect your free hit they just gave you. next time, they would rather get shocked instead of getting hit again.
PS: Doc is my 2nd favourite Killer in this game, ive spent a lot of time playing him and personally i feel like he is not in the need of any serious buffs. the only thing id personally like to see would be survivors being forced out of animations uppon getting shocked, so that they cant just continue their fast vault animation (which is not just the fast vault, but also a short sprint towards the window) and continue the loop, even though it looked like you shocked them before they reached the window.
The only thing I think needs to be changed is the animation issue you mentioned. Start the action block right as it hits you, lessen the slowdown of the doctor while he's shocking, or reduce the charge time. Other than that, he's highly underated imo and actually somewhat balanced, minus the lack of map pressure.
I don't think Doctor's original purpose was to deny loops because the interaction stun was added in the Doctor cube (patch 1.6.2).
He's actually a pretty underrated Killer, but he still has a couple of problems. The only buffs I'd give him are:
All the problems you talk about are solvable by just learning the timing, taking in consideration all the delays, and shocking not the survivor but where the survivor will be once the shock is about to end. As someone who mained him for some time I can tell with enough practice you can deny 90% of loops.
I wouldn't mind some change to him though, but adding a 4th madness level is not what he needs. Good changes are what @SnakeSound222 proposed, that encourage an active and chase-focused playstyle instead of what most Doctors do which is a passive use of his power (which leads to him performing poorly against good survivors)