Proposed changes to everything. (Work in Progress)

Demmou

Dear Dead by Daylight Dev-Team,

this post might be a little longer. Thanks for reading in advance.

First of all: Who am I?
I am a german videogame-nerd, studying computer science (focus on programming), that spends most of his free time playing games for fun and competetive. I have played games for longer that i'd like to admit probably something in the ballpark of 30.000+ hours. Currently i'm sitting at 250+ hours in Dead by Daylight. Probably watched twice or even thrice the amount. Read online articles, guides and everything. I'm a very analytical player and tend to figure things out quickly. The first time i reached red ranks was probably a week after starting the game. I am, though i don't have thousands of hours in this game, quite a good understanding of whats going on here.

I'd like to preface that these ideas might not be in their final state, yet. I'm 100% open to changes to them. So community lets work together. Let's start by saying this: All these changes are meant for killers in their BASE VARIANT. No Addons or Offerings in mind! Balancing around items that are one time use is a bad idea in general. Addons should help turn the game in the killers favour. So do the survivor items.

Also: Don't throw the changes out before testing. Open the PTB every couple of weeks for a weekend so players can experience the upcoming changes!

Starting with the Killers:

The Trapper:

The Trapper just has gotten some pretty good changes in 2.1.0. I'm not yet certain how it does affect Trapper in the long run. So i'd like to leave trapper untouched for the next couple of weeks to iron things out.

The Wraith:

The Wraith is a big one. The proposed changes to Wraith (which i have seen yet) won't make him any better. That'll make his life easier for sure. But doesn't make him any better. The Wraiths core problem is his power itself. Being trapped in another dimension for as long as you don't ring your bell for a couple of seconds is his archilles' heel. These seconds allow the survivors to start running (probably using sprint burst or another exhaustion perk). They will most of the times get to a window or pallet until you have uncloaked. The changes to his basekit (built in windstorm) won't help him much here. Pallets and windows are still 100% safespots for survivors against him.

Suggested changes to Wraith:
Wraith should get some more interaction capabilities into his kit, that involves his "invisibility" state. The wraith is a ghost. And ghosts are supposed to spook you! My suggestion to change the Wraith is simple. Here are two variants i thought of:

Allow him to pull off survivors in invisibility state.
This change will directly impact the gameplay of survivors and the wraith. Survivors will be under constant pressure to look around. Using their advantage of 3rd-person-perspective to scan the area around them and check if it is safe to do the gen at any given point in time.

Allow the wraith to hit people while stealthed
This one is a quite drastic change, I know. But if we take a look at for example Identity V where there's a "Wraith" like killer that does do exactly this and isn't broken to oblivion. This should be on a 90 second cooldown or something like that to balance it out and also put him out of his invisibility. Also make him recover the 90 second half as fast while in a chase. He already had the benefit when he began the chase. If he messed up, he should be punished for that.

This might be a change worth testing.

The Hillbilly:

Currently the Hillbilly seems to be in a nice spot to my eyes. His strengths are quite amazing when done right. Easy to learn, hard to master. How it should be. Hillbilly is perfectly playable currently.

The Nurse:

This is the elephant in the room. The Nurse is quite a challenge to get right. In my opinion, the nurse is NOT balancable. The reason being is, that her power ignores EVERYTHING there is in Dead by Daylight. Only the top end of the survivors are capable of beating a good nurse. A god nurse is beyond everything. Looking at for example Marth88, it'll show that nurse can 3k-4k EVERY GAME. With the proposed hatch changes i think it'll be 4k every game. This should NOT happen.

Now some killer mains will say: "But nurse is the only one that can do good consistently if played right". Thats what I'm trying to fix here.

Suggested changes to nurse
Rework her! A Killer that ignores ALL mechanics ingame shouldn't exist and is not balancable since nothing affects her but her own stats.
Edit: Start adding some inaccuracy on her blinks. Just tested the accuracy addons and they do nothing. Even on fully charged max range blinks the inaccuracy is negligible.

The Huntress:

The Huntress. My love and hatred at the same time. To me the Huntress is also in quite a good state currently. Her range attacks allow good players to really shine and bad players get stomped. Easy to learn, hard to master. Awesome! There is just one big problem with the huntress. And that is her hitboxes. The hitboxes are quite off sometimes and they should be fixed. Then in my eyes, huntress will be at a very good spot.

Suggested changes to Huntress
1. Rework the hitboxes a bit. Make them fit the objects as good as possible (I know about performance issues and everything i'll write something later)
2. Add an Addon for newer people that allows them to see the trajectory of the hatchet before throwing it. It'll make life for more unexperienced players easier and doesn't affect the higher skilled players. I think of something like the granades in Playerunknowns Battlegrounds.

The Shape:

The Shape, which I will now refer to as Myers is quite a hard one. Myers suffers the same problem than most killers. His power doesn't assist him much in chases. Myers himself has in EW2 and EW3 a movement speed of 115% (killer base) which allows him to be looped into oblivion just like the wraith. His power (only in his 60 second window of EW3) only increases the amount of pallets he will eat as breakfast. Since players are more likely to throw down pallets early against Myers in Tier 3.

Evil Within 1
The Evil Within 1 state is a good early state to have and not to bad to get out of. I'd suggest increasing his stalk movement speed in this form would be a nice quality of life change. To get the ball rolling earlier against good survivors.

Evil Within 2
In Evil Within 2 Myers gets base stats with a 16 meter terror radius. This is the place where myers will be at most of the game. This is a state where he isn't too dangerous but not too bad.

Suggested changes to Evil Within 2:
Evil WIthin 2 should be making survivors generate their evil back over time. Not by much. But a little bit. Numbers and fine tuning are not yet given for me but i'm thinking like 1/4th of a T3 up (from EW2 to EW3) every 3 minutes per survivor. So after 3 minutes micheal has an additional 60 seconds of EW3 if the game goes on for longer than expected.

Evil Within 3:
Is quite okay in its state.

Suggested changes to Evil Within 3
Make Myers' movement speed a LITTLE higher than before. something about 117/118%. It's a small window that he is really powerful. Make it feel that way. Survivors should be punished for not being cautious of breaking line of sight!

The Hag:

I love the new changes. I applaud to your team. This made hag viable! No changes to be done here until we figured things out.

The Leatherface:

Leatherface is in an okayish state aswell as Hillbilly is. He is definetely not as powerful as the Hillbilly but good in other situations.
Suggested changes to Leatherface
Reduce his chainsaw chargetime by a little and reduce the effect that Primer Bulb and Award-Winning Chili have on him.

The Doctor

The annoying one. The doctor, in the right hands is a devastating machine. Not being able to use items, pallets, windows for 3 seconds in a chase is quite good. He lacks in the chasing department a little bit though. While he stops pallets and windows from being used, he suffers from the slow down effect.

Suggested changes to Doctor
Reduce the slow on his charging of his sparkly floor. If a survivor is looping a pallet and the doctor tries to go for a shock, he looses one more round around the pallet. This hurts him more then it helps.
Allow bloodlust building while in shock-mode. Make him loose bloodlust after a successfull shock hit though.
EDIT: Also increase his Shock range by 25%. Currently the Doctors shock range feels a bit low without any addons.

The Nightmare:

Rework his entire kit. It's needed. There are a lot of good suggestions over on reddit that i've read. Can't remember them right now. If i find some of them i'll like it on a later point.

The Pig:

Amanda Young is a little tricky at first. But the balance problem is all in her power. Her power does help in chases but not enough. Her crouching is awesome and should stay as is

Suggested changes to Pig
While preparing her Ambush, Amanda should not roar as a warning. She should rather roar while she's charging at the survivor (Mid charge, not beginning). So reflexes of survivors can save their asses from being swooped. This would help her get a free hit after successfully stealthing upon a survivor. And can be counterplayed by paying attention to your surroundings.

The Clown

Quite a good spot. Haven't seen too many clowns yet, so i'd like to pass on the clown changes.

Suggested changes to Clown
Change his effect on the survivors. It's nauseating and i've heard a lot of complaints from the community. You guys should definetely take a look into that.

We have made it through the killers now. Gratulations guys and thanks for reading!

To the Devs themselves: I know some of these changes take A LOT of time and effort of you to implement. That is why i propose to you a small solution: Implement the MOST BASIC way to realize any idea and throw it on a closed PTB where selected people (take a look at your reporting system wink wink, or however you want to go at it) can go ahead and try those changes. If they like it/dislike it they'll tell and you go on to the next stage and so on. Don't make yourself work for something that is probably gonna be scrapped or might be scrapped at a later point.

I will edit this at a later point and add Perk Changes/Survivor changes/Map changes too. So be prepared

Thanks for reading through everything. I'd greatly appreciate ANY kind of constructive critizism.

Master

Trapper is still not strong enough after the buff

His trap hitboxes need to be looked at and he should carry 2 traps by default, also there should be more traps available on the map

Wraith wil be reworked in another way, did you see the changes they proposed in the last livestream?
Also your rework would require a lot of rework of the actualy mechanic and the devs are too lazy for that

Billy is fine where he is yeah, but they need to take a look at the chainsaw hitboxes. Sometimes hits connect that shouldnt, sometimes the other way around. And there are a lot of places in the map where you bump into sth where you shouldnt (shool bus autohaven e.g.) and sometimes you bump into a pallet as if it was a wall

Huntress
Hitboxes are mostly fine now, the only problem left is P2P.
However, I believe that the base kit should be buffed a bit, especialyl since tinkerer was removed and both wind up addons have been nerfed

Myers, I like the suggestions

Hag seems fine now, the only thing that feels really weird is that you cant lunge after a teleport, but well...

Leatherface is in a quite bad spot if you ask me. He is just really bad in chasing and when you face a competent survivor who knows how to dodge the chainsaw (the left/right swings can somehow be dodged, I never understood how they do this, neither did I manage the same as survvivor) , you will be done with this killer

Doc:
Yeah faster moving while charging the shock seems like a good idea. However, you can forget about the bloodlust idea, a doc will never dont shock a survivor long enough to gain bloodlust

Freddy rework is scheduled for next mid chapter patch, we will see

Pig, yeah the roar makes ambushing completely impossible because sprint burst is a thing.
Another thing I dislike about pig is that traps are so RNG dependent, but well... guess im just a guy who hates RNG in games^^

Clown:
The main problem about clown is that even if you are blurred, the red killer stain is so bright you have no problem at all locating the killer. all the gas is good for is slowing down the survivor.

Demmou

@Master said:
Trapper is still not strong enough after the buff

Lets see and watch good trappers play the Trapper enough first. Just got my first iridescend stone against me today and it was horrible. I knew where the traps were at the end and he didn't move them just blocked off some of the pathways.

His trap hitboxes need to be looked at and he should carry 2 traps by default, also there should be more traps available on the map

I think the amount of traps is fine especially with the iridescend stone. Having 10+ traps on Trapper with a stone on such small maps won't be balancable.

Wraith wil be reworked in another way, did you see the changes they proposed in the last livestream?
Also your rework would require a lot of rework of the actualy mechanic and the devs are too lazy for that

I read the livestream changes they proposed. And it won't be enough. Since it doesn't help the wraith with his problems. Thats what i mentioned above.

Billy is fine where he is yeah, but they need to take a look at the chainsaw hitboxes. Sometimes hits connect that shouldnt, sometimes the other way around. And there are a lot of places in the map where you bump into sth where you shouldnt (shool bus autohaven e.g.) and sometimes you bump into a pallet as if it was a wall

These are obvious fixes that i don't mention because it is not balancing. It's just quality of life improvement.

Huntress: However, I believe that the base kit should be buffed a bit, especialyl since tinkerer was removed and both wind up addons have been nerfed

I don't think the huntress should be buffed. Basically because a huntress that predicts the survivors perfectly, will get a lot of kills. One that doesn't doesn't get many kills. How it should be.

Leatherface is in a quite bad spot if you ask me. He is just really bad in chasing and when you face a competent survivor who knows how to dodge the chainsaw (the left/right swings can somehow be dodged, I never understood how they do this, neither did I manage the same as survvivor) , you will be done with this killer

Leatherface doesn't really have a problem with his kit. His kit just doesn't support the playstyle we have in DBD. We are rarely clumped together unless we're in the basement. But at that point he becomes godtier. Also he is one of the best at defending his prey. Which is what makes him balanced. I think a revtime reduction is quite good for the first minor fix.

Doc:
Yeah faster moving while charging the shock seems like a good idea. However, you can forget about the bloodlust idea, a doc will never dont shock a survivor long enough to gain bloodlust

I do sometimes. Nevertheless it won't hurt the doctor. Change it, try it out. If it does balance, good.

Pig, yeah the roar makes ambushing completely impossible because sprint burst is a thing.
Another thing I dislike about pig is that traps are so RNG dependent, but well... guess im just a guy who hates RNG in games^^

Well. Pig for me personally was a missed opportunity. Saw was all about helping each other and making choices. And the RBT is not making a choice. It's just a trap that extends the game a bit. I'd like it to be a little dangerous thats why the reduction of the RBT Timer

Clown:
The main problem about clown is that even if you are blurred, the red killer stain is so bright you have no problem at all locating the killer. all the gas is good for is slowing down the survivor.

It's not about the actual impact on the game. It's about removing the nauseating feeling you have, when playing against the Clown.

Bravo0413

Pigs timer needs to start as soon as the survivor is saved when gens are complete the timer is reduced.. decrease time in which it takes to crouch because right now it takes way too damn long and increase movement speed while crouched... her RBT do not work as intended I find the survivors with traps on their heads working on gens.. the traps are not threatening what so ever 

Demmou

@Bravo0413 said:
Pigs timer needs to start as soon as the survivor is saved when gens are complete the timer is reduced.. decrease time in which it takes to crouch because right now it takes way too damn long and increase movement speed while crouched... her RBT do not work as intended I find the survivors with traps on their heads working on gens.. the traps are not threatening what so ever 

I'd rather have it closer to the Saw movies. Reduce the time it takes for the trap to snap. so low, that it's close to impossible to search for all 4 Jigsaw Boxes. So the people in his team have to MAKE A CHOICE to either kill their friend or let them survive.

Bravo0413

Demmou said:

@Bravo0413 said:
Pigs timer needs to start as soon as the survivor is saved when gens are complete the timer is reduced.. decrease time in which it takes to crouch because right now it takes way too damn long and increase movement speed while crouched... her RBT do not work as intended I find the survivors with traps on their heads working on gens.. the traps are not threatening what so ever 

I'd rather have it closer to the Saw movies. Reduce the time it takes for the trap to snap. so low, that it's close to impossible to search for all 4 Jigsaw Boxes. So the people in his team have to MAKE A CHOICE to either kill their friend or let them survive.

It already is that though if they end up having to go to all 4 boxes its next to nothing.  Having to navigate around the killer kills time... it's when the timer hasn't started... that's when her power isnt working as intended because they just work on a gen... 

Demmou

And by reducing the timer to 1:30 you make sure, that they will at least check 2 out of 4 possible boxes beforehand. Since they wont have the time to do all 4.