Review: The Artist Adds a Ranged Killer Flourish to ‘Dead by Daylight’

The first original Killer for year six of the asymmetrical horror smash Dead by Daylight has finally arrived, as the Portrait of a Murder chapter has added the raven-haired, symbiote-like Carmina Mora, codenamed The Artist. She’s a fun blend of styles that makes for a solid Killer experience, with a character design that is another in Behaviour’s excellent line of them.

Described as a “ranged-reconnaissance Killer” on the character select screen, The Artist makes use of a number of Crows, her Birds of Torment, to track down and pester Survivors. If they can’t make direct contact, they can at least ring the alarm by way of Killer Instinct. If you can manage to send a second set of Crows on a Swarmed Survivor, they’ll cancel out, but not before damaging the Survivor. Using Perks such as Barbecue and Chili (one of Leatherface’s natural Perks) or A Nurse’s Calling (one of The Nurse’s) can help locate Survivors in different situations, allowing The Artist to sicc her pretties on an unsuspecting Survivor.

As for The Artist’s natural Perks, one expands upon the Scourge Hook mechanic with Pain Resonance, which blows up a Generator and instantly adds regression to it upon hooking a Survivor upon a Scourge Hook. Further, anyone working on the blown-up Generator screams and gives away their position. While I haven’t had a chance to try this, I feel like Surge (one of Demogorgon’s natural Perks) would be great to combo with Pain Resonance, especially for those looking to blow up any Generator in sight (or out of sight).

Grim Embrace locks down the Generators after every Survivor has been hooked at least once, as well as reveals the Obsession for a short period. Something like Corrupt Intervention, which blocks Generators at the beginning of the match, could work well with Grim Embrace to dangle the proverbial carrot in front of Survivors. These two aforementioned Artist Perks offer a solid “screw your Generators” build that can be supplemented with whatever one prefers.

The odd man out, and perhaps the trickiest to work with, is Hex: Pentimento. This allows broken Totems to be rebuilt, with various effects added on, from reducing recovery speed to totally blocking Totems from Survivor interactions. Hex builds are incredibly tricky business, but for those who feel fortune favors the bold, by all means, have at it.

In all, I’ve had loads of fun playing as The Artist. She’s easy to learn and use, and the satisfaction one feels when a caw rings out from a successful swarming is something that cannot be understated. Watch out for any flashlight spammers, though, as these will dissipate any idle Crows, and while the cooldown between uses of Birds of Torment isn’t horribly long, it’s still an annoyance to see one of your precious birds stunned like a ghost out of Luigi’s Mansion.