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According to BHVR's own stats
- Hag is the least popular killer in red ranks despite most tier lists placing her at around B to A tier.
- Freddy has the highest kill rate at red ranks, being over 75%. Freddy has an average pickrate too, Being the third most played killer.
- The top 5 most popular killers in red rank are Spirit, Billy, Freddy, Huntress, and Ghostface.
- The top 5 strongest killers in red ranks are Freddy, Billy, Spirit, Hag, and Pig.
- Statistically, the Clown, Demogorgon, and Nurse have the lowest kill rates in red ranks.
- Statistically, despite Nurse still being rated as S tier by some people, the Nurse in red ranks has a lower kill rate than Legion, Wraith, Trapper, Pig, Plague, Doctor, Leatherface, and Hag.
- The Clown is statistically the weakest killer in the game right now in red ranks. (When all other ranks are taken into consideration, the Nurse is statistically the weakest killer in the game).
- While the Spirit had the highest pickrate in the game, her killrate was only in the top 3. She was only the most popular killer, not statistically the strongest.
- Statistically the best 3 killers are Spirit, Billy, and Freddy. All of them have strong winrates and pickrates.
According to BHVR's own stats the following statements can be considered true.
- If Spirit was "overperforming", then she either barely grazed that bar or Billy and Freddy are coming close to it. (If they aren't already. If one of them is over the line I'd say Freddy is probably what BHVR would consider "overperforming").
- Nurse is no longer one of the best killers in the game. Statistically she is one of the weakest right now. She is only statistically stronger than Demogorgon and Clown.
- The Clown is statistically the worst killer in the game.
- Huntress is a very popular killer despite having a low killrate (if my estimate is correct Huntress is 14th.)
- Placing killer viability based on these stats is kinda tricky. But if these stats are true (which there's no reason to assume they aren't, then the following killers would be considered "not viable" at red ranks without a lot of help (Legion, Wraith, Nurse, Demogorgon, Clown, Plague, Doctor, Leatherface). (Hag would have been included due to her low pickrate but her high killrate disqualified her from what I would consider "not viable".)
Also, according to these very same statistics
- Hawkins, the Game, and Lery's are statistically the strongest killer maps. All of these maps are small, and Hawkins in particular has a distinct lack of safe loops, making loops winnable for the killer.
- Haddonfield is statistically the safest survivor map. This map features a lot of safe window structures and popular spots for the perk "Balanced Landing", allowing the creation of very long chases with minimal effort.
So with this in mind. I have a lot of questions for BHVR based on these stats.
- Are Freddy and Hillbilly on your radar for changes? Are they, what you would consider, overperforming?
- What exactly caused Spirit to be "overperforming"? Is it her pickrate or the combination of pickrate and killrate?
- Are there any plans to address the 3 statistically underperforming killers? And by "any plans" I mean, within the next 2-3 patches and not "they're on our list of things to address".
- Nurse was the recipient of a rework that, while on the PTB, received pages and pages of negative feedback from players. That feedback was ignored and the only addons that people considered good on the reworked Nurse were nerfed when she was pushed to the live server. Now that the feedback remains negative and the statistics show she is an incredibly weak killer at red ranks, are there any plans to go back and revisit this rework to try and address why she is so unpopular and weak?
- What is the reason behind Hag having an incredibly low pickrate. There are very few metrics that consider Hag to be a weak killer. The only logic behind her low pickrate is that people simply do not enjoy her playstyle for whatever reason. Is there any plan to make Hag a more fun killer to play as without necessarily increasing her strength?
Comments
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Nice analysis. Let's hope some of these questions can get answered.
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What shocked me the most was Hag being the least played killer at red ranks. Her killrate is one of the best too, so it can't be that she's weak.
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people finding the trap play style boring I guess?
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Then why is TRAPper the most-picked killer?
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I guess people don’t like her play style
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Trapper still chases more though, hag sorta has less interaction.
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eh people find trapper more fun also it could be a factor that hag is 110 speed
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I love hag.. but I hate how short she is.. alot of times I dont feel like playing her because of it.
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I think that that is because he is free and he is the image of dbd. Also, the tomes are now pushing trapper gameplay.
New people will pick trapper, at least once to try the "image of dbd" killer.
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I think the 110 speed has something to do with it. It might be that Hag has an over-reliance on her power and sometimes her power doesn't feel as interactive as the power of, say, Spirit, Huntress, Nurse, Billy, etc. Trap killers, in my opinion, are fun, but I think there is kind of this lack of interactivity with Hag's traps to make her fun. Maybe it's the fact that she's over reliant on her traps, maybe it's that trap killers just aren't popular.
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"Overperforming" was most likely never meant to refer to the Spirit's flat killrate, that was an assumption made by members of the community. There were likely a lot of things which factored into that label, including data which we don't currently have access to.
According to the stats, every single killer has a kill rate of 60% or above at red ranks, so I'm curious as to what you consider "not viable".
And Haddonfield is actually not the safest survivor map according to the stats - that honour goes to Rotten Fields.
Otherwise, interesting read. I myself would be curious to know some of the answers to those questions.
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Specifically for the very last question, you're better off questioning the community.
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I feel like I really need to stress this line from that post:
Please keep in mind that numbers are not everything; there are a whole bunch of factors that could influence these numbers.
To use the Spirit as an example, as we've mentioned many times before, we do not balance based on stats alone. We make sure to do our research first and there's a lot of compelling arguments for why she should have been changed.
And again, there's a bunch of different factors involved. Is Freddy overpowered, or is it just a combination of perks and add-ons that make him that strong? These are all things that need to be considered.
So just to reiterate one last time, I really would not recommend drawing any conclusions from these stats. These are averages, not specific and incredibly detailed data that you should draw any conclusions from.
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I'm learning to play Hag and consider her my main killer. I think the reason for her low popularity is just that she plays very differently from other killers and not everyone likes that kind of playstyle. Which is ok. I don't think all killers need to have the same pickrate just as the number of people who like strawberries is not necessarily the same as the number of those who don't.
Changing Hag to make her more popular would require erasing what currently makes her unique and enjoyable for those who play her and according to the stats are pretty good at that job.
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This word "overperforming" always make me laugh. Idk, it has tons of irony and sarcasm behind it lmao it's all your fault, peanits
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"overperforming" usually pertains to statistics by a very heavy degree. If Spirit was overperforming on a macro scale, then it had to have been her pickrate or killrate. Her pickrate does make her appear as an outlier, and her killrate being one of the best probably influenced that decision. Peanits did just say that they do not balance solely on stats, but they did say the biggest reason they decided to shift focus to Spirit was because the complaints on her led them to see that she was overperforming.
And yes you are right, the safest map for survivors IS rotten fields. I read the percentages wrong and assumed the numbers were escape rate, not kill rate. That is my mistake.
Also a killer that I consider "not viable" is a killer who isn't able to reliably 3K on average. Nurse, Demogorgon, Huntress, and Clown all have killrates below 65%, which means the concept of a 3K for them is not that much more feasible than a 2K, which is a draw. (according to the red rank emblem system, a 2k is a loss but that's a different story).
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Poor Peanits. How is it his fault? He wasn't even the one who said it D:
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So can I ask why even declare Spirit as "overperforming" if you don't balance based solely around numbers? I agree balancing around numbers alone isn't the best solution to the problem. But why then would you put so much weight behind Spirit being statistically too strong as a killer.
And the question I really really want answered is why has the feedback on the Nurse rework been receiving no attention? Almo said on another post that complaints about something will draw attention to it. The Nurse rework got overwhelmingly negative feedback on the PTB and only two posts got any dev attention, one of which being a blanket "thank you for the feedback" and the other one being Almo trying to justify the viability of an addon that removes her power and boosts her MS to Trapper level for a minute. Myself, and many others have been expressing our opinions on the Nurse rework, to get absolutely zero attention. These stats show Nurse is not a powerful killer at red ranks, nor is she a popular one. Nurse mains have been all over these forums and Reddit talking about how she isn't fun to play as anymore, only to get dead silence. So I gotta ask one more time, are there ANY plans to actually look at Nurse and make her feel less un-fun to play as?
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I'm about 90% sure the overperforming part wasn't about her killrate, because they mentioned seconds later in the same stream that Freddy was actually the killer with the highest killrate. I suspect it was a bunch of smaller factors that added up, but there's really no way for us to know for sure without being told.
As for the viability thing, I didn't think of it that way, and that's a fair enough assessment.
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It wasn't him? I tough it was since the comment about Spirit kill ratio. Lol
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Yeah I don't think Peanits actually declared Spirit as overperforming. Regardless, too much weight was put behind the idea that Spirit was doing too well statistically. "Overperforming" means a killer is performing too well (since "performing" means accomplishing the conditions of your role successfully, "overperforming" means going above and beyond.) . Meaning that declaring something "overperforming" means "they're doing too well".
No matter who said it, justifying the idea that Spirit needs changes with "she's overperforming" and then turning around on a post like this and saying "we do not balance on statistics alone" is either facetious, deceptive, or a product of miscommunication.
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Sorry Peanits! For a reason I associate you with this word because you always answered question about Spirit and this word was created since all the conversations about her nerfs :( it is still funny
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It was probably just not the perfect word to use for what they were trying to describe, but the stream wasn't scripted or edited and people don't use the perfect word all the time. It's just unfortunate that the community latched onto this one word so hard and refused to let go.
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The performance is mostly based on the skillfloor. Easy characters perform very well and hard ones perform badly. Freddy and Billy get a lot of value with their easy to use mobility. Spirit replaces the hard chase mechanics with hearing. Thus an average player performs well with them. Nurse, Huntress and Clown have the lowest killrate due to them beeing skillbased killers. Most players dont have great aim to make them work.
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If this was general population of the game I'd be fine with that logic but this is red rank. This is where the best players lie. This is where the players have "great aim to make them work"
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So many obvious purposeful wrongdoings in conclusions makes me sad.
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The devs can say what they want, we all know billy is next on the chopping block.
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Red ranks has nothing to do with aim. Beeing good at shooters makes you have great aim. Red ranks just means you played a lot this month.
You can get rank 1 with freddy for example. But your aim is just as a bad as a rank 20 freddy.
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Just a couple of comments based on your questions you listed at the end:
The feedback from the Nurse changes has been overwhelmingly negative from Nurse players. It has been overwhelmingly positive from everybody else. I feel like a killer with the ability to avoid many of the games mechanics, that all other killers have to abide by, should have an extremely high skill ceiling and be punished heavily for mistakes.
If the majority of the community feels that when they play against a killer, they are just going to die no matter what they do, I think that killer should be very punishing to make mistakes with.
The hag is an extremely strong killer. And it's mostly due to her ability to camp. And it has to do with people not liking that playstyle. I think having strong killers for different niches of playstyles is good for the game. I think it's impressive that BHVR has been able to make killers that play much differently that remain pretty balanced with eachother.
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I think Hag has a low pickrate because of how it feels to play her.
She is slow and short, which kinda makes me feel weak even though I know she's strong. You can't really chase with her since she relies on her traps for map traversal. Her stun animation is annoying AF because you can't see what direction the survivor runs when they stun you, where you can with other killers.
Her ability forces her to look at the ground for a while, and her traps don't reset so if one triggers on the opposite side of the map, you're screwed until you walk all the way back over there. The traps also have a counter, and people running Urban Evasion are her worst enemy.
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The Archives have a lot to do with that! The statistics of Trapper are rigged because of that.
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I don't think they were overwhelmingly positive from everyone else. Certainly from people like yourself who are content with the changes. Bystanders with no investment one way or the other have, just as their group name is, mixed opinions. I've seen quite a few people agree the addons should be changed but the basekit was too much (especially if they haven't tested the addon changes first like they should have) but I've also seen people agree with the changes.
Either way, we'll never have the solid data that could be very useful in this debate. If they have changed her addons first and left her basekit alone, we could see if it was just addons over-performing or if it had something to do with her basekit. Now we'll never get to know AND she's unfun! The best outcome!
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How pathetic it is to see Nurse sharing a spot with CLOWN.
Good work on that small cooldown on her blinks, it seems to have robbed her of a lot of prowess.
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Cool, but what about answering his questions? This doesn't answer a single one tbh, and we all want too know what's the deal with if Nurse is getting fixed.
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I do agree with you that it would have been better to test the add-on changes alone first. But from what I recall, many people used her without any add-ons. (I know I did)
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So... Spirit has a lesser killrate than Freddy. Nurse is now the weakest killer.
Isn't it ironic they nerfed the only 2 killers that deal with pallet looping at the highest level of play?
No need to argue with the devs because they'll say "stats don't mean everything" while in the meantime they take advice from the survivor mains because that is their research that somehow invalidates their own stats.
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But most of the outcry was for addons. The devs started out saying it was just going to be addons.
It would have been so much better to have data and reason behind basekit changes instead of a shotgun approach by people who clearly don't understand what makes her fun and interesting to play.
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Probably once survivors start complaining how UnFuN it is to face Billy.
"InsTa doWn is OP, PleAsE NerF".
Not matter what, is a valid concern and I don't believe trying to be witty is the most appropriate response.
But who are we after all, right? Just some customers.
A paying one, in fact, cause I've actually bought some dlc.
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Re: Nurse, the stats are somewhat frustrating to see because they ignore the problem Nurse players have been touting from the beginning of this rework: yes she still performs, yes she can 4k...but she isn’t fun. We’ve seen kill rates drop a bit, given the stats, but kills don’t dictate how fun a game is. I have way more fun playing less effective killers than I do playing Nurse now, and I know I’m not alone in that. Nurse was my favorite, but she’s pretty much dead to me at this point. I’ll play her for dailies but I’ll have far more fun 0king with Legion than 4king with her.
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I was not active on the forums prior to the nerf, but I did of course know that the multi-blink add-ons had always been an issue. But, every streamer I had ever watched pre-nerf always used her without add-ons and still complained about her strength. So in my eyes, it seemed like a nerf to her base kit was justified when several rank 1 killers consistently complained about her ability to be far more effective than other killers, even without using add-ons
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Lots of people wondering about Hag's low pick rate. I play her for many of the same reasons people wouldn't. I like that I don't have to chase or loop when I use her. You're constantly evaluating the map and gen layout to build and reshape your web so thst your chases are essentially over before they begin. When you understand the survivor tendencies and pathing, only Nurse and Spirit can rival Hag's chase speed (in her web). She's super difficult though. Every map tile on every map has a specific place a trap needs to be to get someone, and she can feel frustrating against well-coordinated SWFs that somehow always manage to run outside of your web. The games can also get tedious if survivors get completely immersed towards the end or 3 gen themselves but also refuse to do any of them (happens more than you think).
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How many videos have been and still are made showing squads bullying killers? Or streamers looping killers to the point where they have DC montage videos. Nothing has been done to address SWF, a problem that affects EVERY killer, yet we have decided to completely gut the fun of a killer who only saw use on a very specific platform and only in high elo where the devs say they don't want to balance the game around.
And there was always counterplay to Nurse. Tru3 did a few videos on it that I saw many people put into practice against me. It was up to survivors to change the way they engage with the killer when it was Nurse. Most refused and tried to applying the same boring looping strategy to her as they do for other killers. When that doesn't work they complained of no counterplay. Now they can just literally run across the map a few times and waste so much of your time without even having to wipe a single drop of sweat off.
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I had a game where the last 3 gens were on one side and I had a wall of traps preventing entrance. It got to the point where they had people running in to get hit while the others rushed past until they were hit where they would proceed to run back into the gen-less area to try and bait me out.
It was a long game but you can't really stop them when they do stuff like that as hag :(
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The amount of positive feedback that the Nurse rework received on the PTB is minimal. Most of the feedback was overwhelmingly negative. There are select few posts that were positive regarding the feedback. The only place where the Nurse rework was considered a success is on Reddit, which is known to be a more survivor sided environment due to the nature of discussions being about killers/killer perks being OP and not much about killer struggles. Any Nurse related discussion on Reddit is hit with downvotes unless it is (forgive my crude language, I'm trying to stay professional) a circlejerk about how since it's not impossible to 4k with her, she's still gigabroken and needs more nerfs.
And furthermore, if the feedback was overwhelmingly negative from Nurse mains, shouldn't that be enough to reconsider the changes? The addons were not something you see get a lot of negative attention because a lot of Nurse mains (myself included) agreed there was a change needed, and a change we got. But the basekit nerf was something people only started asking for when BHVR said people were asking for it. Basically a bandwagon that BHVR started caused the idea of her basekit being OP to be a mindset.
"If the majority of the community feels that when they play against a killer, they are just going to die no matter what they do, I think that killer should be very punishing to make mistakes with."
I agree. That's why her fatigue stun exists. To punish her for messing up her blinks and to stop her from snowballing one down into a 4K with Infectious fright.
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Yup. I actually think that buffing Hag to 112.5%ms and increasing her trap range would make her more fun for everyone. She's perceived as unfun because of her weaknesses, not her strengths. I don't want to be campy, but base trap range is too limited to cover even half of a map, and she's way too slow to chase outside of her web. The reduced speed curve coming out of traps makes them just ok at some loops. But trapping loops during chase is ineffective most of the time.
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I was completely fine with the add on reworks. The base kit rework has had me playing other killers instead of my former main, or playing Civ V (or technically Tales of Maj’Eyal, but...you know, another game.). Barely worth doing her dailies anymore for how much not fun they are to do.
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I agree, her range limitation is a double edged sword.
It feels like it would be too strong to have basekit, but having a limited range encourages hook camping like you say. But having map wide range would encourage more strategic trap placement since you have a much wider area to cover with way less traps than you need to do it.
I also agree the speed coming out of teleport is another problem. It feels like the byproduct of their earlier days when they didn't have as much experience in animation and coding. I'm sure now they could redo/touch up the teleportation so you aren't extremely slow for a second before returning to normal speed.
Those 2 changes are all she needs, and one of them is honestly just a QOL fix.
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