Comments

• @DingusbyDaylight said:

  Hi!

  Absolutely dirty Legion main here with less than 100 hours, so if you want to Ad Hominem without reading a single thing here feel free. I'm only rank 10, too, so you might wanna bring that up. Now that we've got all the reasons not to read another word here out of the way, I'm going to dive right in.

  I'm primarily a killer side main and specifically Legion. I love their dumb, over the top edgelord aesthetic. I love the notion that they were just a punch of poo-head kids, specifically Canadian poo-head kids from the 90's and I love the notion of a gang that's been compacted into a single amalgam of flesh and spirit, all of them and yet only one of them for all eternity. I play Legion for those reasons and their relative strength as a killer isn't very important to me. That said, it's obviously a fairly common topic of discussion and I'd spent an egregious enough amount of time thinking about it to want to share my two cents.

  When I started playing (not very long ago, obviously, I came in with the Pyramid Head and crossplay patch) I heard up and down that Legion was the worst killer in the game. It's part of what drew me to try them, a sort of morbid curiosity as to why they had that reputation. I found an all around very average killer with decent potential with proper perk support and a fun play style to suit their dumb, goofy design. And overall, I feel that's where Legion lays-very much middle of the pack. A good enough killer can succeed with anyone, of course, and I don't think Legion's one of the hardest to get those wins with. I think their effort to reward ratio is pretty solid too-they're not a terribly hard survivor to play but they do have some neat tricks to mastery and simply by the nature of their power they require good decision making and match awareness to 3 or 4 kill with.

  I don't think a rework is remotely necessary the way a lot of posts I've seen seem to. Legion will always be somewhat limited by the nature of the Deep Wounds mechanic and thematically I think basing them around was a slightly weird choice, but Deep Wounds itself isn't the core or focus of their play style and though I think there are several potential changes that could increase the power of this mechanic without making it utterly unfun (like the nightmare that was launch Legion, not something I've experienced but have read extensively on) I don't think they're totally needed, either. They would certainly make the foursome more competitive, but it isn't a big deal either.

  No, the only thing about the killer I truly think should undeniably be changed is the lack of visible scratch marks during Feral Frenzy. I understand why Deep Wounds is built the way it is-it's because an undeniable down by the killer that requires no skilled play is innately frustrating. If you fall over to Deep Wounds it should be your own damn fault, totally and completely, which is why I think the mechanic is fine being a bit weak for downing. Denying scratch marks doesn't make Deep Wounds less frustrating. It doesn't make the essentially undeniable first hit that comes from a chase with Feral Frenzy any harder to get and it doesn't punish poor Legion gameplay or reward the opposite. It's just frustrating and contributes to the only time I truly don't think DBD is fun: when I'm literally unable to process visual information or cues. It doesn't help limit the pinball effect of a well executed Feral Frenzy and it doesn't help a survivor escape a well-conducted chase, it can only modestly increase the difficulty of your first Frenzy hit. Killer Instinct means that the ensuing hits are unaffected by the lack of scratch marks and generally speaking your first hit in Frenzy shouldn't require an extended chase anyway if you're playing well. Which makes this particular design choice just a pointlessly frustrating weakness for an already middle-of-the-road killer without in anyway reigning in their more unfair aspects.

  Slightly less major to me than FF's scratch marks but still a central design issue with the character are their add-ons. Their rarity in almost no way corresponds to their actual usefulness and two of their Purples are rendered essentially useless by their post-launch changes. Frank's Mix Tape and Stab Wound Study are both basically unrunnable. The Mix Tape's ability to reduce remaining Deep Wound timer is utterly pointless. Deep Wounds will almost never be getting your downs anyway and should almost never be the source of your downs. Furthermore, the fact that hitting a Deep Wounded target pushes you out of Frenzy and resets the cooldown means that actually using this add-on for the ostensible goal of its existence (getting a Down while in FF) is so unbelievably inefficient as to be borderline impossible.

  Stab Wound Study is demonstrable garbage for the exact same reason. Reducing 5 seconds from the already insanely long 30 only leaves you with the still insanely long 25. These add-ons aren't merely weak for their rarity, which would be relatively fine, their entire purpose is incoherent to Legion as they exist now. Legion's downs are not supposed to come from Deep Wounds, so even if they contributed to your ability to do so meaningfully I would feel they need to be changed. The fact that they're useless and some of their rarest add-ons is just a cherry on top.

  I do have an idea for both add-ons that I feel is sensible to Legion's current design philosophy and would make strong but not game-breakingly frustrating add-ons. Remember that the idea here is to reward good gameplay and punish bad. It's frustrating to lose when your options for counterplay were non-existent to extremely poor, it's a satisfying game when your opponent's more skilled execution or better decision making outmatched your counterplay. I tried to keep that in mind with these add-on ideas.

  Frank's Mix Tape: Hitting a survivor marked with Killer Instinct with Frenzy Slash reduces the cooldown stun by .75 second when exiting Feral Frenzy.

  The logic here is that a good Legion, who's using Killer Instinct effectively, will be able to reduce a total of 2.25 seconds from the exit stun (assuming you are able to hit your initial target again, thereby exiting with the maximum possible cooldown reduction). This brings the effect of the Mix Tape in line with the other Mix Tapes which have CDR effects (except Susie's, but she's weird so it's fine), a nice thematic touch and more importantly powerfully benefits Legion only if they manage to play well. The effect if they do so however is quite noticable, especially in conjunction with the other CDR add-ons, while still avoiding the unfun combo of Legion's almost unavoidable first hit into an equally unavoidable second hit.

  Stab Wound Study: The time required to perform the Mend action on a Survivor with Deep Wounds is increased to 8 seconds with another player and 12 seconds alone.

  Alternatively

  Stab Wound Study: Survivors within your Terror Radius inflicted with Deep Wounds will scream and reveal their locations once every 8 seconds.

  Both of these keep SWS's relationship to the Deep Wounds mechanic but actually make it useful. The increase in Mending Time is certainly the weaker of the two, contributing to the slowdown that Mending on top of Healing creates for Survivors while only very modestly increasing the actual lethality of Deep Wounds (again, the goal is NOT to make Deep Wounds responsible for the actual down, this is antifun). The second doesn't increase slowdown but does rather massively increase detection. It also makes Deep Wounds useful against survivors you're pursuing by giving you detection, making it harder to lose you. This is of course very powerful, especially with Killer Instinct's built in tracking, and may even be redundant, but it was a more interesting choice from a gameplay standpoint so I wanted to include that idea here.

  Believe it or not, I have more to say about Legion, but in terms of concrete thoughts about their gameplay, potential changes and the necessity thereof, I think this is more than verbose enough. If you agree or disagree with my thoughts I would love to hear why and if you have your own thoughts about those stabby Canadians I would love to hear them here too.

  I posted a pretty exhaustive description of my own experiences and thoughts playing Legion there, but if you don't happen to have the time or desire to read something like that I can TL;DR by saying they're average to a little bit below average in terms of overall power.

  With the right perks (I personally run BBQ/Thanatophobia/Pop/Sloppy Butcher) and good core mind-games and mechanical skills they can perform without being seriously disadvantaged. They're not terribly competitive in terms of overall power and their add-ons are kind of a mess (especially Stab Wound Study and Frank's Mixtape, which I talk about in my post) but the frustration of their power without the kind of serious limitations it faces currently is too much for survivors to have fun.

  if you focus on a solid, coherent build and play well you can dominate games but they do have to work harder than a lot of killers but they're not demonstrably awful the way some poor buggers (*coughClowncough*) are.

  in How is the legion Comment by DingusbyDaylight September 10, 2020