The Dredge needs reworking
He has a lot of powers but none of them do much. Teleporting to lockers is map-dependent and slowed significantly by the locks. Teleporting to the Remnant slows him down while holding it, makes it harder for the killer player to see, and can be shut down by the survivor touching the Remnant or just leaving the loop because Dredge is slowed. Nightfall makes it harder to see but survivors and Dredge are lit up like glowsticks anyway and Dredge is also the loudest killer in the game so any stealth is completely nullified, so all it really does is let him teleport more, which again doesn't matter much if the map's locker spawns are terrible.
If anyone needs a rework after The Twins, it's The Dredge. His abilities are fun in concept, and terrible in execution.
At minimum, I would suggest tweaking Nightfall in a few ways. Remove the light-up aura effect for survivors on Dredge and reduce its range for other survivors. Make him significantly quieter in Nightfall so that his stealth can actually do something. Tone down the darkness effect if necessary but in exchange, give Dredge the same distant invisibility effect that Freddy Krueger and Sadako have, preferably at a much smaller range, like he's invisible beyond 16 or 20 meters. Maybe mute the sounds of him teleporting to and exiting lockers too. On top of that, make it so that injuring and hooking survivors during Nightfall extends its duration, adding new charges to the timer. Also make it so that Dredge isn't slowed at all while holding his teleport during Nightfall so his anti-loop becomes a lot more useful.
And no, slapping a Haste buff on him during Nightfall isn't good enough. I'm sick of the devs slapping Haste on everything as "fixes".
Nightfall is supposed to be like a "super mode" he earns by progressing his game, it should have more meaningful effects. Right now, it feels like it does barely anything except mildly inconvenience survivors and only slightly enhance his RNG-dependent map mobility. Dredge is barely more threatening during Nightfall when he should be very threatening, compared to how useless he feels most of the time.
Comments
Careful what you wish for asking for any type of rework. Behavior might change him completely like with other killers. 😅
Dredge needs some QOL changes for sure.
More locker spawns.
No slow down when using remnant.
Agreed buffs and QOL changes.
I have wondered if giving Dredge fixed remnants at generators could resolve his map dependency and can be done without breaking the character somehow.
The problem ofc and why I havent suggested it is it would easily push Dredge to being OP with how readily available his TP for gen presense would be. The gen remnants ofc need a LOT of trade offs so they were not his default best choice every time.
For all intents and purposes they function like lockers, with something like the following restrictions:
I get concerned this is touching on other killers territory as well, but it's the only idea I've got to trim the map dependency back 🤔
I like the idea of making it so that there is no loud *BANG* when you teleport to a locker.
When the killer first came out, I tried cutting off survivors by teleporting and waiting in the locker for them and was confused how they always knew to do a 180 even if I broke LOS in Nightfall. Turns out the dredge gives you a very loud warning like he bashes his face against the door when he teleports, even if you just sit in the locker. Also if you sit in a locker it starts glowing purple warning survivors you are inside, which feels really lame.
If they removed this , it would give you a chance to plan if you want to come out of the locker or wait in ambush. There was one rare moment as Dredge where I teleported to the basement because I could see a survivor heading towards the shack, so they didn't hear the bang. She approached my locker and I got a free hook because of it. I basically just want that to happen more often, because dredge locker grabs are probably one of the scariest things a killer can do.
I agree that maps should have more locker spawns, but holding a remnant should have a slowdown attached to it as it already is a solid anti loop tool that basically forces survivors to leave the loop if the dredge player isn't offensively incompetent. If dredge could just hold a remnant and chase at full speed that would leave the survivors with no real options.
Remnant is currently fine as it is, either it stays the way it is or it gets a rework.
Nightfall effects could be changed a bit, while i personally love it and makes the Dredge scary, its also an accessibility nightmare imo, he can be changed in other ways to compensate.
More and better locker spawns (also helps with survivors and some Killers).
Some more optional ideas:
Make Malthinkers Skull partially basekit then nerf its effect to compensate.
Footprints are now visible while teleporting similar to Xenomorph using tunnels.
Manually entering lockers now circumvents any cooldown (its a feature with no purpose currently).
That’s fair but maybe make it a little faster but still a slowdown cause it feels too slow. lol. In my humble opinion.
Dredge is actually one of my main killers I play a lot. However he only needs a few QoL changes.
-More lockers/better placement. Some maps are so bad because of limited lockers and bad placement of lockers.
-Boat Key and Haddies Calendar need to be base kit. The teleport mid chase is just way, way too slow base kit to where these addons are basically required for this play style and even then it’s too slow if the survivors are good. This is the biggest change they need. As long as these aren’t base kit the other addons don’t matter to me.
-He’s too loud. Survivors can pin his exact location even behind walls. Tone it down. At least during Nightfall.
-Too much info given to survivors on locker teleporting. It’s already so ridiculously slow to exit lockers that the bang of entering them is unnecessary.
-Fix the bug that’s existed since their release of forcing you to always go to the locked locker. Super annoying.
The main reason many people don’t play Dredge is because of the map dependency of how so bad many maps are for lockers and how survivors have such overly easy control of their teleporting power with the lockers. People would find them way more enjoyable if teleporting mid chase for mind games was more viable.
exactly my friend! I tried to get into dredge when I first started playing this game while I was also learning how to play onyro, I really struggled with him, I really think he needs like you mentioned the quality of life changes, at least for me before I start again.
I probably won’t keep learning how to play him until they add these, I’m already dealing a lot with my own plate of stuff
That's not a bug, that's an intended feature. While it is annoying, I understand why it exists, and it would be fair if Dredge was a stronger killer so that consistent counterplay would be important. Sadly, he's not that strong, and everything about his power screws him over.
That’s pretty annoying if it’s intended and not a bug. Feels bad. I agree with your point. He has tons of counter play, just not the strength to justify all of it.
i think it is intended. the idea is that you can lock lockers in nightfall and you get 2 second chances because locker typically spawn in pairs.
regardless, i think issue with dredge is that his nightfall doesn't feel strong enough and his teleport is too map dependant. he needs rework for how his nightfall buffs his locker tp in my opinion because like… you can spawn on a map like haddonfield and there is no lockers in the middle of the map. My suggestion would be to make remnant spawns all over the map that have old trapper trap spawn rng during nightfall. Dredge can target these remnants in nightfall to tp. It would him less map dependant without changing anything about the maps themselves.
I would also buff his nightfall however i am not sure what would be a good buff for it. The two ideas that i thought to make nightfall more prevalent is to make nightfall inflict broken for duration of the debuff and to lower nightfall charges from 300 to 250.
He's surely killer that need changes but they first need change Freddy who is a lot worse and Myer's whoses base-kit leaves much to be desired and tends to rely… mori add-on's. Dredge & Nemesis are in the need changes department but other killers are taking their priority.
Maybe just make Dredge during nightfall ignore locks. Make the “bang” of teleporting to lockers silent during nightfall. Also simply more locker placements would help those map issues, like if they just threw a few in the middle of the Haddonfield road next to cars.
As much as I don’t really play much Freddy or Myers I agree they are definitely more deserving of the next changes. They need it the most.
pretty sure that defeats purpose of locking lockers. powers can have drawbacks but if they have drawback, they're suppose really powerful to have a drawback.
It doesn’t defeat the purpose because it’s only during nightfall, which is a smaller portion of the game than not. Locks would still be useful outside nightfall. I agree on your second point.
his teleport is not very good outside of nightfall. you don't need locks to outplay it. you only care about locks inside nightfall.
While I agree with your principle, locking locks is so inconsequential in time that they would still do it anyway, it’s not costly. However I’m not dead set on this, we could buff nightfall in other ways.
I personally think more of their issues lie in core mechanics and outside of nightfall though. I don’t have as much issue with the nightfall itself.
i played dredge for about 100 games when he got released. i didn't find much of a problem outside of nightfall. His tp is point A→B outside of nightfall. Not fastest mobility but it does work. His anti-loop is also same strength. you play it like knight's guards, put remnant on side, go other side, squashy the survivor between the two places you can be. He's fine outside of nightfall.
His biggest issues are in nightfall. His TP is suppose to be ambush/anti-hold w tool but it doesn't work because most of the maps don't have enough lockers. this is what my Nightfall remnant change is talking about. You can hear dredge directional in nightfall which almost removes any mind games vs good looper. they legit hear you across wall…. It is like having spirit phase-walk as m1 killer and then outside of that, the nightfall simply isn't dangerous and surprisingly easy to counter. There is no stealth in his kit because… glows like christmas+sound. You can heal during nightfall so when nightfall ends, the nightfall meter builds so slowly based off # of injured survivors but if everyone heals, you end up losing nightfall charges.
I don't know, he's just a mess. I don't really play him. he was boring for me and ineffective. when I play vs him as survivor, the two add-on i typically see are Ottoman writing and Lavier's microphone. Ottoman writing is add-on that reduces cooldown for using his power outside nightfall. this is strong for a number of reasons, one of them being that you can double-tap to charge nightfall passively and other being that you can't like hold-w in the cooldown of his remnant. Lavier's microphone is like… free lethal pursuer… periodically, just spammed. really strong for just straight up tunneling survivor on death hook. It is impossible hide vs dredge. Distortion only real counter to that add-on.