Scott, I’m gonna need you to roll a D20 to see if you convince the Devs to make these changes

BHVR: we hear you… in an attempt to balance Vecna, we’re nerfing an additional 15 killer perks.

I'm very nervous about the future of Vecna's balancing. It's essentially trying to stack four mini-powers together to make up a full power. That means four chances for a thing to become either too strong or too useless. And these "characters with multiple different abilities" can easily turn into "one of their things is really good and the rest is situational crap". Since that is much easier to balance around.

One thing I read elsewhere for the skellys is have them fly in a vertical "V" so the center and maybe the 2nd out could hit crouched but the furthest out is at its current height Either run forward and try to fit in-between them to dodge, or guarantee a duck but you have to run much further to the side

You forget, the whole point of giving survivors items is because he is supposed to be "Overwhelming strong" not a C tier killer, or a D tier killer once you add the fact that survivors get counters.

I would say, regarding the skelly patrol spell, have them in a V formation, so if they survivor is caught in a choke point, they have been outplayed and the skelly will hit them regardless of crouching, but it means that out in the open, the survivor has to make a read - will the killer huck the guaranteed low-flying skelly to the centre and force the surv to run to the side and crouch, or will the killer huck the skellies to the side to catch out that reaction. Even having the skellies in a ^ formation would have the same effect, but make it so that the centre skelly is duckable, not the side ones. also, give Fly collision the whole way, but Vecna flies through them and it knocks survivors on their ass. I don't really care about balance or anything, I just think it'd be funny.

'having to earn a hit' is a great line to explain why chucky's scamper/cd changes are so good

Vecna also makes a very obvious audio que for his spells so you can usually tell when the skeletons are coming anyway

The way I see the Fly spell is like singularity's teleport. Even if you land behind a survivor there should still be some wiggle room before the actual hit.

1:58 I can’t help but laugh at this part of the gameplay recording cause it reminds me of that image of a guy running from a floating dark figure in a hallway

6:48 A Mage Hand use that Scott didn’t mention but that I’ve seen used very successfully by other streamers is that while Mage Hand is animated on a pre-dropped pallet it prevents the survivor from vaulting that pallet. So if you are close to a survivor and they appear to be about to vault a pre-dropped pallet, you can Mage Hand it and the survivor ends up stuck in place if they then try to vault. Of course if a survivor fakes like they’re going to vault then they can gain a bit of distance while you cast the spell, but it’s a mindgame at that point that works even on dropped pallets you might not be able normally game as easily.

No, I think vecna is in a great place. Your ability to understand and juggle powers effectively takes a more nuanced way of thinking than just getting all 4 back on a shorter timer than other killers. Yes, he is a bit weak overall but not very, compared to other nuanced killers like Singularity. He also has the ability to snowball relatively well, which other nuanced killers aren't great at. The power level of the game overall is on the rise and I like to see where it all is going, especially when this is the new precedent being set. Compare the release of, say, dredge to that of Vecna, chucky or even the unknown. The game feels like it's in a better state to me, and I think a lot of people besides you agree.

What id like to see is the cooldown being roughly the same, 40+ish seconds, but using another ability lowers the CD on all othe ones by like ten seconds. Encourages you to use all your spells, which i think is the goal of the CD now anyway

The powers should always be at least a little scary to the survivors.

Being able to dodge Flight of the Damned by crouching for half a second is such BS - it literally can't even hit Survivors on generators without the iri

I honestly just think that his powers should cause way less animation stagger after activation, but after using them, block the ability to be able to m1 for a short duration (different cooldowns for each power, ie mage hand blocks m1 for 5 seconds, skeletons for 3 seconds, flying for 2 seconds, and orb for a half of a second.) Every time vecna chains his power, (using another power right after using an initial one) it resets the cooldown to m1 to the appropriate cooldown caused by the most recent spell used. The more spells vecna uses in a certain amount of time frame, the longer the spells become available again while the less spells he uses in a certain time frame, the less the cooldown becomes. This way, this will give vecna a fighting chance, and maybe give players that play him an incentive to chain his spells effectively and even mind game survivors with his powers, while also getting rid of the possibility of him simply spamming his powers by introducing the risk of longer wait time to use his powers after spamming multiple of them in one go.

I’d like a pizza with bacon, ham, cheddar cheese, stuffed crust, mozzarella sauce pls thank you no I don’t want the receipt alright yeah have a good day

think the base cooldown should be 30 seconds for maychan, 35 seconds for fly, 40 seconds for skulls and slightly increase the hitbox and remove crouching, orb cooldown 45 seconds and keep the no speed reduction but revealed were you are behinds walls except for when in lockers

Yeah the skeletons from what I've found is the most useless power so far. The hitbox on the individual skeleton is so small already, and crouching just makes it do nothing.

I agree with everything that was said except the removing of the crouch dodge from skeletons. While playing Vecna in public matches, I found that its a lot more useful to aim the skeletons in the direction of where the survivor is running a tight loop, forcing them to stay crouched while you make distance around the tile. I definitely understand how much it sucks missing the spell and waiting the long cooldown, though. But on the flip side of that, if you make it so you can't crouch them and they are summoned in a group of 4-5 that does damage on contact, you just have stronger artist crows that don't require the precondition of "crow infested", or whatever the game calls that status.

About mage hand, if they have the boots it basically makes it useless cause they get haste even if you barely slow down it basically mitigates it right?

I think rather than just reducing the CD of all spells each spell should instead have its own unique CD length rather than 50s on all of them. As examples not to be taken seriously you could do 15s on Mage Hand, 25s on Flight of the Damned, 30s on Orb and 40s on Flight. By having unique CD’s you can then attune their CD’s according to if one of the powers is disproportionate in strength.

Maybe this is stupid and definitely would be harder to add but what if the cooldowns stay the same at the start but for each first hook on a survivor you would gain lvls in increments of 5 to keep with a dnd theme. So you start at lvl 1 with 0 cooldowns reduction then lvl 5 would be 50%, lvl10 100%, lvl 15 150%, and lvl20 200%! It might help with tunneling by instead of punishing it, making it better to get each survivor. I know lore wise I’m guessing a high lvl caster would already be max lvl but I thought this could be fun lmk what you guys think :)

Skeletons is valuable when chasing a survivor to a vault. If you cast it right, you can completely deny the vault or force a hit

What about the two vecna items on survivor end? Do you think they're too strong, too weak?

What about a change for the skeleton attack being that it has dropoff after firing? You can still duck if he shoots it up close, but because it spreads out like a shotgun the further away you shoot it from, it would be cool to guarantee some long range shots with it if you aim it properly without it being too hard to dodge if the survivor catches on!

they could make an addon that when you hit a suvivor that was marked by the ball you reduce the cooldown of his powers

i don't think the cooldown should be much less, it incentivizes people using multiple different spells instead of spamming the same spell every 15 seconds

A buff idea i had for mage hand, its let it be used on gens/walls to break them after 3 seconds, like his ir addon. Doing this will lower its CD by half of course. This would give it more ulitiy and let him do more without buffing the chase portion.

What if? Using his other spells reduced cooldown on spells already on cooldown? (Minus fly)

Although I agree the cooldown needs to be reduced Scott I think that maybe like 30 seconds or 25 seconds would be better. Having a short cooldown kinda encourages the killer to be a sorta one spell Andy of whichever their fave is. Having a longer means that the killer will need to adapt more. It becomes "How can I use the spells I have to win this chase" Rather than "I need to wait 15 seconds for mage hand again."

Coming into this video i was ready to completely disagree with your takes but after watching i can say i completely agree with every change. Honestly my biggest problem with this killer is the cooldowns. They heavy punishs you if you make a mistake which makes learning him extremely frustrating and not fun. Mage hand for example I mess up the timing so much when trying to pick up pallets and it always lead to me getting stun by said pallet and having a 50sec cooldown. It just too punishing.

I think an interesting change for the skeletons would be that at least some of the skeletons are always near the ground (for example the side ones) which allows for uncrouchable shots but it's more difficult.

The fact that they have an ad on making those skeletons go lower shows that they are insistent on being able to duck under them as being a good gameplay. For some reason.

Sounds like he would benefit from a Stored Charge system. Regarche 1 spell slot every 12 seconds and he could store up to 2 spell slots. Using a spell would consume a spell slot.

Can you use mage hand to block a pallet for a pallet save?

Honestly I think the only reason why the cooldown is so long is because they want people to be using a multitude of skills and not just spamming 1 of the 4 skills, It could be interesting to have all the skills cooldown speed up if every skill is on cooldown or every other skill gets like 5 seconds faster when a different skill is used

Exactly thank you Scott. Mage hand is literally his best spell. So many ppl dont fcking know how to use it and then get backfired by it bcs they used it in wrong way and then say its useless bruh. To the pulling pallet as somebody is dropping it 50/50 I also wanna add that you can also fake doing the cast encouraging even more mind games. From my way what I found out Mage hand's each use has differnt uses on different loop: Really short loop that are looped in less then 3 sec or so are better to just block, medium and long loops are best to pull the pallet as survivor is dropping it and long loops are good to pull a pallet that was already dropped. Obviously there are some exceptions to each of these loops but that the gist lul Also about the Hand rasing the pallet faster addon base kit could you explain to me why? And forgive me if I dont get this but i never used that addon for one main reason. The hand already pulls the pallet pretty quickly and addon doing that quicker feels to me like "If I raised the a pallet quicker doesnt the Survivor get the prompt to pull the pallet quicker as well?" That was my main reason to dont use it bcs i was afraid it could acually benefit survivor in some cases more. Do you feel that this possibility can happen with that?

Maybe the Iri change could be that the Skeletons spawn much farther away, like mabye 10 to 15 meters but they run towards the killer, and mabye tighten the cone of them

I'd love if you part of the skeletons could be crouched, but only a part of them. For example, the center and outside ones are crouchable, but the other two hit even if you do.

I know that it's not gonna happen, but I thought that if you had 2 ability's on cooldown then the cooldown gets faster, 3 and even faster and if you are using all 4 then that would be the fastest( in theory your first cooldown would be up by the time you got to the 4th one, but if you are cycling cooldown correctly you are rewarded for it rather than just spamming one spell)

My dream is them making the purple add ons change the power completely taking inspiration from other dnd objects and spells i.e. changing mage hand to bigbys hand to block windows or making dispelling orb a scrying orb to make it a stationary turret that reveals survivors. You could turn the skeletons into crawling claws that move faster at a lower hitbox but spawn less of them and make flight jump or teleport. But I know that won't happen.

wait do they not have bots int PTB? i the old dc symbol on first surviour

Also can't the survivors hear when you are casting flight of the damned? So they can just instantly crouch when they hear The Sound?

I would like to see the power cooldown decrease on successful use of other powers. Ex: Flight of dame hit takes 15s off other powers, Entering chase after fly takes off 5s, hitting survivor with dispel also 5s, Hit shortly after using mage hand 15s. overall cooldown should be lower yes but instead of 20s maybe 35~40s plus the above suggestion

Solid suggestions from vile fog whisperer Scott

Making the skeletons uncrouchable would be fucking miserable to go against.

why does the flight of the damned trail become cyan occasionally? (Like at 11:15)

I feel like flying being cancelled after a vault is good, because then there is counterplay to it. Otherwise Vecna will most certainly always catch up with you. Now if you make it to a vault you may escape. I do think they should make the cooldown after the flying shorter though.

unrelated but how did the bill get injured by the locker at 7:00

BHVR: best we can do is a 5-6 second reduction in cooldowns and remove the slowdown

IMO its gonna take a minute for everyone to figure it out, but picking a dropped pallet up while walking through it for a hit, is much much easier to pull off than holding an upright pallet is place and getting the timing correct for shorter loops. God pallets, its GOATed either way. But you're right, lifting a dropped pallet with a good read gets you a hit almost every time.

as an artist main i hate the skeleton crow things lollll im so used to lining up shots like artist and i just miss every time bc im using it like 1 projectile but thats a skill issue i think they need to either be closer together with the hitboxes or not crouchable (not both tho)

they could either do the balance as scott sugested in the video to make him feel less sluggish or they could buff him to be more opressive overall but also buff the magic items the survs use. i like the second option better since the magic items right now feel like just a side thing that aren't really required, i'd rather if the items were important like the EMP are important when facing the singularity

3:08 Levitation that's not flight If it were an actual flight, we would be flying up to the second-story levels We can fly up through the vat in the game we could fly up to the second layer of Erie of crows we could fly after being holed in RPD

all of these changes are great, but i think the skeletons should just be faster to launch, and/or have longer hitboxes, while not slowing you down, so the fact that they have to crouch means more in a chase. still allows for survivor counter-input, but killer still gains something from it.

3:22 there are no bots in the ptb?

I think Mage Hand is so short that it allows survivors to continue another loop, adding another second to the standing block and maybe 3 second block when you lift the pallet

Been playing a lot of Vecna as well. Much good input in this video. Instead of a flat cooldown reduction for all powers, I'd prefer a slight cooldown reduction across the board (all powers 50s -> ~35), and then have the 5 sec cooldown reduction per basic attack add-on be base-kit, BUT increase the reduction per hit to 10 secs. This would make it so that Vecna doesn't feel spammy and one-dimensional in using each of his tools. I think it'd be a little lame if Vecna could rely on Mage Hand every 15 secs as opposed to being forced to use another power to overcome the situation . It'd also make precise power usage feel more rewarding IMO. Spot-on w/ the Fly suggestions. Mage Hand 50% base-kit is also exactly what I was thinking. Instead of uncrouchable skeletons, what I had in mind was making them just a little thicker to make them a bit harder to dodge. I found that frequently survivors wouldn't even crouch, because they never had to. The gaps in between each skeleton feel super big. Vecna already needs to be really close to have a chance of hitting this to the point where it often feels less effective than a basic attack. I thinking making them a little thicker would make it feel equally as dangerous as Mage Hand at loops. Orb suggestions are pretty thoughtful actually. I personally figured that having the faster Orb add-on be basekit and slicing the cooldown in half would be enough, but I like your suggestions a lot more here.

Me playing Vecna: "I'VE GOT FRIENDS ON THE OTHER SIDE....."

I generally agree with what you said about not making guaranteed hits, but I disagree that the cooldowns need to be 15 seconds long. If you’re frequently using your abilities as it is on PTB, with the rate that cooldowns come back you’re getting an ability off cooldown every 10-ish seconds. Maybe the cooldowns could be a little shorter, but if every cooldown is 15 seconds long then you’re just getting hit with 12 abilities within a 30 second period and that’s going to be obnoxiously oppressive.

Flight of the damned is actually pretty useful even when survivors crouch under it, actually I wanted them to. I was able to use it at shack pretty effectively, you aim it to cut them off , zoning them so they take it wide and crouch. This allowed me to catch up and have mage hand ready to pick up shack pallet and get a hit almost always

I'll be honest, with what are not a very high level spells, I just have no idea why they have long cooldowns at all. Is mage hand supposed to be a high level spell?

I'm not a killer main, so can someone explain why the killer would want to put pallets back up? Seems like that would only benefit survivors. I do like how the hands hold the pallet up.

Crouching skeletons still kills loops when used precisely

My honest opinion is that Vecna should have his speed penalty duration all around reduced, not massively obviously. A small tweak would go a long way, cause being slowed down to a snails pace for about 1 second feels awkward and clunky, this is also a thing with the skeletons albeit to a degree I can understand. I think if it is a 1 second speed penalty, reducing it to around… 0.65 or 0.75 seconds would feel a bit better until they feel comfortable to make bigger changes. The skeletons however I think either their spread adjusted or their speed ramp up time increased, because the skeletons take so long to shoot out that even if you fixed the crouch avoiding them is almost a non issue. So they should either increase the hitbox width by a small amount or decrease how much the skeletons spread to make dodging inbetween them a little tighter and riskier.

The sphere seems like the most useless at a glance, perhaps having survivors inside of the sphere could lower your cooldown on your other spells at a quicker rate?

I want them to make his .5 seconds until he can attack again from flying basekit and then buff said add on to .6 seconds of recovery there’s no need for a 3.5 second wait time there would still be a wait but it wouldn’t take 3 eons

0:44 You forgot to put Blight with both iri add-ons & back rev billys in that list

Hey Scott. The most powerful use of mage hand is to cast it directly before the pallet is thrown. The slowdown in the survivor is about the same for on you allowing you to walk through and hit them and they don’t make even 5 ft if distance. So i would disagree on buffing mage hand it just requires a lot of skill to use.

I feel the ghost attack shouldn't have a delay, it has such a build up before it even shoots

How about they add D20's to his powers 1: picks up the pallet and you get a big slow down 2 - 10 same effect as now 11 - 19 less slow down 20 always breaks the pallet (if it's up it can drop it then smash it) Same concept for the other abilities

Personally, I just want Mage Hand to be more versatile. Give it other interesting mechanics, like blocking a locker (which would be useful, since Hand of Vecna is insane), blocking a generator for 2 seconds to prevent it from being popped in your face, picking up a survivor from far away to avoid a save, SOMETHING to make it useful in multiple niche scenarios, instead of just a few. Give it a reason to exist other than "Flight of the Damned is on cooldown"

For ur first argument about the survivor side he wouldn't be like chucky since they give survivors multiple magic objects that give u multiple effects

Smott always doing the best takes 💯💯

Could you do an experiment were play kill your friends and have them not duck the skeletons? I’d like to see how strong/avoidable that would feel.

Can anyone confirm if Iron Maiden works with the locker teleportation?

i agree with not being able to crouch the crows but if theyre artist crow type speed (which it seems they are) then hell no

I have a question that I think Scott, one of the great minds of DBD, could weigh in on in a well thought out manner; how many more unique powers exist? What i mean by this is that there seems to be more killer powers being made that function nearly the same with very slight changes. One of the main culprits with DLC killers is object penetration. Doctor toyed with the idea back during his release eons ago, but since the release of PH, we've had the Artist, the Unknown to a certain degree, and now Vecna. And I am dumbing things down cause comment length, but they all have an ability that does the same thing, and ultimately artists is the best, and using any other form of it is purly playstyle preference and not a new concept. If you can describe a power as "its x killers move except..." its not a new move. So to move back to my question; what original abilities can you think of that havent been explored yet?

[Points to the anti-Mage Hand items giving 7% haste]

You can't fly an extended distance over a pallet for the same reasons they nerfed chucky's scamper, why wesker can only single bound thru a window, why Blight doesn't continue lethal rushes after breaking pallets, etc. That'd basically give Vecna the Nurses teleport over pallets and make counter play ridiculous.

Well good thing it's only the PTB. They've never put bad changes from the PTB into the main gain right?

3:23 why is there an actual DC icon?

I YEARN FOR SCOTT UPLOADS

If they just reduce cooldowns, slightly buff flight of the damned and buff some add ons slightly I think he'd be fine

tbh i feel like 15 seconds or so would be a little too much, 30 or so seconds seem like a good balance between incentivizing not using the same spell over and over but not making you wait forever for them

Honestly, I think buffing his powers overall and making the magic items for each power stronger (as they're needed) is the way to go. I understand this probably won't happen but I think it'd work out much better than just tweaking numbers slightly. Like, the 7% haste item when Vecna uses mage hand. Make something like that for EVERY magic item a survivor can find then make each of his powers even stronger to compensate. The alternative is nerfing the magic items and only tweaking numbers which is just boring. This killer can be buffed up with the magic items and neither side NEEDS to be nerfed against him. The magic items are fun to get and grab with the little d20 it rolls and making those items more unique and interesting and giving different counterplay would go a long way in making the killer fun to play against while also not weak.

I would love to see addons that completely remove one spell and instead buff another. Like imagine removing the orb entirely, and instead mage hand has no cooldown. Would be cool.

Alright, now roll Persuasion. For real though, Mage Hand is a cantrip please let me use it more often, I'm begging.

Ok but if you cannot crouch the skulls how is it not a significantly better version of pyramid head m2 or artist m2? i think if you want to make it undodgable you have to reduce the amount of skulls so its actually dodgeable at loops. its like asking survivors to dodge doctor m2 consistently.

If they don't change the mage hand slow down, they should at least keep the pallet raised longer. I can easily see the raising pallet being useful in many ways. As it stands, only using the pallet block portion as a mind game for a pre drop is pointless. imo

i was going to agree that the skulls shouldnt be crouchable is a hot take, but fuck did you raise a good point

This may be a very unpopular opinion, but I think Dispelling Sphere should give a very small hindered effect while in its AoE

I would love these changes. It would make him feel less clunky and goofy.

Instead of removing crouch make the spread tighter, and have them move faster. The cool downs should be based on power. My ideal cool downs would he info ball 10 sec, hand 15 sec, flight and skeletons should be the highest between 20 and 30. They shouldnt have the same cool down whatever power seems to be more powerful could get the higher time, but they should be within 5 seconds of eachother. What sucks ablut flight if you miss time it you can get stunned when coming out of animation. I feel your let him get collision sooner so he can body block better and faster to avoid the survivor going through and stunning out of animation. I'm a survivor main, but i do play both sides. Ive only played against this killer for a day and looped him pretty easily. Mind you my skill in chase is ass. Also if you do wana remove the crouching instead of that allow vecna to aim lower or higher for his power. If you aim it lower it shouldnt go across the map it should just go low and go through the map. I feel that adds a skill component to either decide to crouch or keep running away to try to avoid it hitting you if they aim it low. Allowing him to aim it high also avoids when survivors loop him on something with like stairs or a 2nd floor.

Hey guys vecna here today im gonna talk about scott

I dont think survivors should be able to do not crouch at skeletons... At least not at the very start, from my testing on any short loop the skeletons is a pretty much garanted hit if you do not crouch. Because if you stay close to the loop you cant dodge the skeletons, because at start they still not much far from each other, and if you go a little to far, then the killer has the time to just hug the loop and hit you. But if like, for just the first second you could crouch, and then the skeletons fly lower and then you no longer being able to, then yes, that would be pretty fine by me, cus this gives a real use the long skeletons use, but a long distance is almost entirely up to the survivor to just dodge.

i think i agree with everything except the skeletons. Maybe im wrong, but it just seems like it would be too easy to get hit upclose if you couldnt crouch them

I don't understand why Flight is on cooldown at the start of the game when much better mobility tools that can also be used to injure and down survivors arent. Hell you could probably get overcharged on Billy before Flight could come off cooldown

I really hope BHVR can refine this killer so we can have an amazing spellcasting killer, constantly switching between different spells and keeping the survivors unsure of his next move.