Is nurse ACTUALLY weak?
Concerning her recent changes, loads, and I mean LOADS of people, complained their asses off due to her change, multiple people were saying she's weak now considering a.... Charge mechanic was added to nurse...
It takes 6 seconds to charge, but I did hear someone say it felt more like 3.5 seconds. 'felt' not 'is'.
She may not be in S Tier, but her power is still strong, all it does is leave more room for survivors to counter her, since nurse previously could blink with no end on sight, which made it hard for survivors to escape her in chases. This change was intended to make the Nurse less impossible to escape, and give survivors larger windows of opportunities to escape her. And it was good when they did that, for the overall balance of the game. And this change did indeed succeed in that.
Don't say that the "Survivors got what they wanted", at the time, nobody cared much about nurse... Oddly enough. This update was unexpected, but was for the balance of the game itself. "Not the hero we wanted, but the hero we needed".
Go ahead and discuss more of this below.
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IMO, a Killer is only as powerful as you make them. Too many people complain when they can't rely on certain factors of a killer when they're changed, and that's the issue. They need to adapt a situation, not brute force it.
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The majority of people seem to think she is still nearly just as strong and worthy of S tier.
In all my experience with and against her post changes, she seems significantly weaker. Almost every game I've gone against her at rank 1 she's been destroyed. Her cooldown is very abusable as a survivor. I'd give her maybe A tier now.
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Precisely! I still think Nurse is still powerful, just not as much before.
The rank 1 players who complained about nurse clearly didn't take their time practicing with the new mechanics. She isn't the same nurse as before, so they really need to stop playing her like the previous one, and maybe, maybe then, they'll get better with her again.
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No, she is definitely not weak.She is unenjoyable to play as now, that's my problem with her.
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no
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The problem with Nurse is she was already the only killer who was objectively punished for using her power. No other killer in the game is forced to look at the ground barely moving every time they press M2 (Trapper and Hag look down, but that’s to activate the trap to use later).
Post rework, she is DOUBLY punished for using her power. You blink, you fatigue (wait), and then you have to wait a second time for her power to come back fully. That feels extremely unfun and actively discourages using her power. Add in the fact she’s the slowest killer in the game to force her to rely on her blinks, and now she’s being punished for not blinking and punished twice for blinking.
Is she still effective? Yep, I as a former Nurse main can still 4k with her. But it is a 100% unfun experience now as the killer. I am punished through game mechanics no matter what I do. It’s an experience in masochism playing her now, and I’d much rather play any other killer than her (well, except Leatherface or Clown). I’ve dropped her as a character completely, except for “no blink no perk no addon” Nurse games because somehow that’s legitimately the most fun I can have with her now.
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She is far from weak but NOWHERE near as good and dominant as she used to be before her nerfs.
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That’s literally how nurse worked on survivors though... punished purely based on mechanics... it has to work both ways for her to exist. You can’t take mechanics away from survivors and expect her mechanics to not get limited too.
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6 seconds after two blinks and the timer starts at fatigue. So it's not a feels like, it is 3.5 seconds after 2.5 seconds of fatigue.
I'm not saying it makes her weak. It makes her boring to play when your chases are broken up into micro segments because someone at BHVR thinks cool downs are fun and interactive. Consider that the Nurse requires her blinks to move around the map outside of chase.
A better approach would of been to apply the cool down after a hit or a miss swing. This would preserve her map movement and keep her chases fluid and engaging. It also keeps with the goal of allowing survivors to gain distance after being hit by forcing Nurse into cool down.
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No.
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Speaking from the survivor side, Nurse used to be my favorite killer to go against because you couldn’t loop her.
let me repeat that to be clear: I enjoyed versing nurses more than any other killer.
This is because I cannot loop. 800 hours in the game, 100% achievements, and I can’t loop for #########. What I can do is mindgame and juke well. Who does that work best against? Nurse. She forced survivors to not rely on the same thing, running in circles, which I’m glad for since I find running in circles boring no matter what side I’m on. Intelligent play is far more rewarding to me, and Nurse FORCED that.
Post rework her best counter is running in a straight line with a single juke here and there. Much less entertaining to go against.
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I only used her basekit before her nerf because the addons she had would always throw me off. Even though I played like this, I still feel that she is far worse after her nerf. She isn't low tier by any means, but she isn't great. The nurse is a killer who is punished for using her power, be it the fatigue after each blink and the fact that she is reliant on using her power for transportation. This was fine before, as she was very strong but required skill to master. Adding a recharge rate, however, removes this benefit by adding further punishment. Her kit now forces her to blink and punishes her harshly for doing so. This makes her far weaker and feel awful to play.
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I don't think she's weak but she's not that fun.
I unexpectedly did well with her lately, with a matchbox and only a few safe blinks.
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She‘s faster than survivors moving in a straight line but you have to read them... if anything she is now what you’re referring her to be... a mindgame killer... before she didn’t need that and would always just eventually catch up for free giving several chances to land on the survivor’s legs.
She’s fine now but the game objective isn’t nor is the swf-solo gap.
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she can indeed eventually catch a survivor running in a straight line...but it takes painfully long. Thus why I said “straight line with an occasional juke”. Check @Endstille ‘s comment history, he has videos showcasing this, and technically he’s not even showing the worst case scenario.
It seems like we’re arguing slightly different points though. You’re saying “Nurse is fine since you can force her to give up quickly if you mindgame her once or twice.” I’m saying “I enjoyed running a Nurse who was determined to get me for three gens, until, despite having two blinks on command, she had to give up on me and go try to pressure someone doing gens.” Some people pride themselves on looping regular killers for five gens, I prided myself on being able to run all but the very best nurses so long through mindgames and jukes that they had to give up or risk getting no kills. It felt extremely good and rewarding to do this. I don’t get that feeling anymore since the moment I force the second blink I know I’ve won the chase against new Nurse. That’s just not as rewarding.
People seem to have built old Nurse up into this unstoppable force that would get you 100% of the time no matter what. She absolutely could be juked, lost, or rendered useless through proper counterplay. Anyone who played with me against an old Nurse would clearly hear my tone of excitement when I heard the first scream signaling we were against her. Now it’s a tone of surprise because you just don’t see her anymore. And really that’s what I find most telling about her rework. If you never see her anymore, can you really say it was a healthy change?
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Nurse without addons had the same trouble with good survivors as any killer did, and all her nerfs did was make survivors that already knew how to play against her able to abuse her even more, which is one reason she is no longer really played by people at red ranks, because a lot of SWF knew how to play against her. Good players as good as the Nurse can give her a real hard time.
She's generally unfun. You have the slowest killer in the game that was hyper aggressive, now turned into a slow moving killer, who has to go into fatigue, and also wait for blinks. Then, if you're not perfect with your 2 blinks, the survivor will always have distance on you.
Your blinks can be juked much easier at those distances, you can't just randomly blink through the LoS blockers because you'll be punished hard for missing your blinks. Your blinks can very easily be abused by, in turn, having survivors abuse specific areas and objects that, even when in a chase, can mess you up. Ping can mess you up. Large maps can mess you up.
Overall, she's just super unfun to play as. It has nothing to do with her ability to kill. I'd take having to hit a survivor 3 times to put them downed if I could keep the basekit I had, because at least I'd still have fun. She's still a great killer, no doubt, but what good is being great if it's so slow and unfun? I personally think a lot of people just do not understand her problems any more than the devs, and they're just happy no one plays her anymore so they don't want actual discussion. Most people who played Nurse were simply really good with her, so you can't justify her current state by saying that anyone who isn't a top 10 god tier Nurse, who never misses blinks or messes up at all, do just fine. It's ignorant.
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She is faster but slower than a 4.4 m/s killer in a open straight line.
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She's weaker, but still really strong if you mastered her.
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Take into account that bug though probably gives her the necessary extra distance... if that’s patched I hope they at-least make traversing through large objects take a bit less suction on the blinks. Right now there’s no chance blinking to a survivor around those there’s too much time.
Also there’s bugs atleast for me where I’m trying to use M2 and it’s not responding. always seems to occur at the times I’d have definitely hit. :P
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She's not weak, but she's unfun to play as and very punishing. Tho I still would say that she's top 3, but Dedicated Servers and certain maps mess with her really hard.
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I can only say, that nowadays i seldeom encounter the nurse, and i never died to one since the nerf. But in one of those games one actually got a kill.
And i mean it, i never disconnected because of the killer being a nurse, and if i her one now i know its an easy win.
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Yeah, if you take a bug into account and only chase with one blink. But we shouldn't base things on bugs.
Without abusing bugs she's 4.2 m/s with one blink and 4.3 m/s with 2 blinks in a straight open field. That's if you go max distance with perfect timing.
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It's pointless for me to say my experiences as a "Rank 1", since my queues usually are filled with people either in purple mixed in with some reds, or just reds by itself, likewise for the killer.
I believe in one night of gameplay I've encountered 9 nurses out of 28 games. The rest were Ghostface, Wraith, Oni, Spirit, and Trapper.
In all of those 28 games ruin was present and I cbt mark how long they lasted but that's deviating from the topic at hand.
In the 9 nurse games,
I escaped 5 times.
Died 4 times.
To tally the nurse, I wrote down on a notebook how many kills she got and how many gens were left when the game ended, and what map. To summarize, from Game 1 - 9...
1. 4 kills, 4 gens left (I died) - Swamp
2. 3 kills, 1 gen left (I died, randy got hatch) - Coldwin Farm
3. 2 kills, 0 gens (Escaped) - Crotus Penn
4. 1 kill, 0 gens (Escaped) - Hawkins National
5. 2 kills, 2 gens (Escaped with randy's Key) - Lety's Memorial Institute
6. 4 kills, 3 gens left (Died to Moris) - Gideon Meat Packing
7. 1 kill, 0 gens (I died to tunnel/mori) - MacMillan Estate
8. 3 kills, 1 gens (I escaped by hatch) - Haddonfield
9. 2 kills, 0 gens (Escaped) - Badham Preschool
I'll let you guys decide from here.
To me she's fine, shes not broken anymore, but she's not weak or falling behind either.
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She's far from weak or garbage, but she's definitely a lot weaker and less fun to play.
And this is coming from a console player; I can only imagine how painful she is on dedicated servers.
I wouldn't even put her A Tier anymore. Sure her power denies looping, but she suffers considerably from any mistakes and no longer has half as much map pressure.
Honestly, nobody has any reason to ever play Nurse anymore unless you're a masochist, like I am, or just really like the character. Spirit does anti-looping better.
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Happy accidents can occur though, no one’s complaining about it in how it affects her performance... there’s the meme “not bugs but features”... but really it’s an indication that if that’s gone she needs something in place and where she’s kinda weak... large objects are one of those things because it’s pretty damn predictable for the survivors what the nurse plans to do around those.
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Played against a Nurse the other day on Gas Heaven. Start off by saying she was not a bad Nurse and I was found several times. All gens done. One dead and two on death hook.
She never hit me the entire match until the very end where I stood at the exit and let her hit me as I left.
If you know how the Nurse works you can move against her easy enough.
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This is true for all killers :)
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Correct. Nurse just plays differently than other killers.
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I just feel frustrated now when I have used up my blinks to attack a survivor but miss. I then have to wait as the survivor runs to and out of the exit gate whereas before, I would have had the ability to challenge that survivor's confidence.
I'm repeating myself from other posts, but I'm disappointed about the add-on changes especially her speed add-ons which were my favorite add-ons to use on The Nurse.
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Nurse isn't weak.
What were seeing is the killer community largely trying to come to terms with what a nerf feels like. Historically it's been survivors who've received nerfs. However games now are seeing more than 50% survivor kills, so the devs are trying to pull it back closer to 50%.
With the years of survivor nerfs, with little to no push back on killers. You've essentially created an entire entitled killer class that just can't accept the change.
That's why you're seeing so much drama.
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That's for the best.
Nurse is a broken killer and should never have been introduced to begin with.
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Glad to see that many agree that's she's strong. The basekit shouldn't have been touched i agree on that but, i'm sure they added a cooldown because they were out of ideas for add-ons. This only show how unprofessionnal they are.
4s of cooldown is not a lot but, i do admit that yesterday i played with both add-ons that reduce the cooldown and he was so good to see her back for a bit. We just know that they will never revert that. I mean when you look at Legion how they keep nerfing them is insane. People have stopped making thread about nurse like if she's forgotten.
How could you(forum community) stop fighting for the killer that saved DbD for three years from extinction. Nurse saved the killers during dark ages to today we should be grateful that Sally saved this game.
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Oh don't get me wrong, her old state was absolutely unhealthy for the game.
Nobody should be able to get an almost guaranteed win in a PvP game because they learned how to play a difficult character.
Old Nurse needed to be removed. I just wish they would have reworked her into being both a fun and a viable character, instead of simply nerfing her.
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Man, you just don’t know how to not be inflammatory, do you? I’d respond with a short list of a bunch of killer nerfs across 2017, when I played more consistently, but I’m not putting in the effort when there’s that much bias and “let’s start a fight” in your initial post in the thread.
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she is weaker yes, but still one of the strongest. but thats not the issue with her, its more that the new base kit is unfun to play with so most nurse players moved on.
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Well I'm not pulling punches if that's what you mean. Maybe I could have said it nicer but I'm not wrong.
Infinites gone, vaulting/perk/map/pallet nerfs, bloodlust added, end game timer added, hatch close added. All this has made being killer easier and survivor harder since release.
You don't ANYTHING NEAR the same level of game changing nerfs aimed at killer.
Survivors have always been the ones that needed to adapt to the game, it's only more recently that killers aren't having the game catered to them.
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Fixed an issue that caused The Nurse to move at 3.85 m/s when fatigued if she charged the 2nd blink.
Devs bought insurance
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Across 2017:
General killer nerfs:
Bloodlust nerfed 3 times after its introduction
Window vault speed nerfed
unrelenting/save the best for last both gutted to take apart the machine gun combo, unrelenting never regained usefulness.
Iron grasp heavily nerfed.
Trapper:
Trap hitbox reduced multiple times
Red stone/purple stone both nerfed.
reduced time to sabo/disarm trap.
Wraith:
First attempted rework weakened him significantly. Second rework is current form.
Hillbilly:
flick removed
increased default penalty when bumping into things.
nurse:
removed one blink by default and nerfed her movement speed to current levels.
Myers:
removed ability to stalk multiple survivors at once.
Nerfed stalk gain rate.
hag:
Introduced the counterplay to not activate traps by crouching.
Long persisting bug that left her unable to move for a brief moment after teleporting.
Doctor:
was intended to break the game, had to be buffed within a month due to being so weak. Never considered strong.
huntress:
Heavily nerfed iridescent hatchets
increased base wind up time.
Freddy:
reduced his aura reading powers
...this is hardly comprehensive, just what I could come up with thinking through the killers. Now please, let me stress:
I FULLY BELIEVE SOME (not all) OF THE ABOVE NERFS WERE JUSTIFIED.
That being said, I mention them to make it crystal clear that your narrative of survivors being the only ones who have been nerfed in the past is incorrect. Being angry about recent nerfs to survivors is all fine and good, but not when you create a false narrative.
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Hmm... I might stop playing nurse for the time being xd was fun though ngl. Wonder if they even fixed her with the new map or maybe thought to give her less suction. Or possibly fixed the M2 bug. Who knows.
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I didn't say survivors were the only one. What I did say is that the level of changes fundamentally changed the game to the detriment of survivors. Overall the game has gotten harder for survivors, easier for killers. FULL STOP.
You seem to be looking at more of a play by play, which we can wade into but that's a nuanced and involved conversation. For example, you mention reduced speed to sabo traps, but skip over the fact they regenerate themselves now, overall you would call that a BUFF as far as impact on the game is concerned, there's no way you could call that a nerf unless you want to feed YOUR narrative.
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And I quote, from you, in this exact thread:
“With the years of survivor nerfs, with little to no push back on killers. You've essentially created an entire entitled killer class that just can't accept the change.”
Little to no certainly implies survivors were the only ones getting significantly changed.
My narrative, as we’ll call it, I suppose, is that the game feels a hell of a lot more fun to play as either side than it did when I stopped playing out of frustration back in early 2018. It’s not perfect, far from it, but at a fundamental level the balance has improved. My narrative in the last post was purely to disprove your stance that I quoted, verbatim, from you at the start.
Feel free to respond, but I’m likely done with this line of talk for two reasons: one, we’re derailing the thread, and two, shifting goalposts and continued hostile tone isn’t something I prefer to engage with.
...as for the sabo change, since you called that out, sabo I was fine with at the time, since again, as I stressed, some of the changes made sense. The disarm time being nerfed at the same time was what I thought was overkill.
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Not weak at all just a Pain to play.
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I just want to say as a survivor she not weak just able to counter a little better. You still can’t reliably loop her, but her fatigue give us time to put distance between us and her.
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I just hate how you spend like half the game fatigued playing as her, spend more time getting or being in all sorts of stun animations than you do playing lol.
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She is weaker. It was a straight up nerf with literally no way to play her differently. In fact it forces you to play her in a very specific way or get extremely punished. This was a bad rework because it was lazy, it was dumb, and it was done by people who don't play and understand Nurse.
It does not make playing her take more skill, it just artificially limits the skill ceiling on Nurse. There is no other way to word it. With no way to make new plays and HER MINDGAME POTENTIAL GOING STRAIGHT INTO THE DIRT there is just this artificial ceiling that you hit where there is no way to be more skillful with blinking since you are limited every single time you blink.
It was poorly done. If you must nerf her PLEASE listen to those of us who play her and understand her. We can give you nerfs that are still fun and leave skillful gameplay intact.
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Most discussions, including the biggest thread regarding this don't say that she is weak but that the cooldown makes her unfun to play.
That's part of the reason I switched to other killers, I could still get 4 kills with her but she's just not fun to play anymore due to the way cooldown mechanics
(biggest thread so far: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/908457#Comment_908457)
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Really tough to make blanket statements like "weak" or "strong" with Nurse right now. There are too many variables that go into playing her, from survivors, to maps, to add ons, etc.
Her long range map pressure is actually weak without range add ons. Her tracking is among the worst of any killer.
Her chase potential is very strong, but it comes with several major caveats. How good is the survivor and how predictable are they? Base Nurse has always been a game of prediction to an extent, except now the Nurse gets punished for guessing wrong. It doesn't even come down to an outplay at times. You have to make an educated guess at LOS breaks, and you'll never be right 100% of the time. How fast does the survivor react to the Nurse's reappearance animation? I've run into some survivors that are always just out of lunge range. Again, these aren't necessarily things you can do anything about as a Nurse. This was BHVR's idea of counterplay: give survivors the chance to do it right and punish the Nurse player for it. Is she still strong in a chase? Yes. But a wrong guess or two can complicate matters.
She can still snowball like crazy off of Infectious and still end chases in 10 seconds. Her tracking went from bad to an unholy mess because she HAS to blink to move at a reasonable speed, and her map pressure is completely dependent on your loadout.
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Nothing listed about the dead zones being fixed. 😢
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She's just awful to play, not weak.
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People who were good with Nurse still dominate with her while your average "Ruin Nurses" struggle.
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