Do people actually believe Pyramid Head was nerfed?
And to take that initial question a step further, do people actually believe that Pyramid Head is in a better state than he was before? (balance and overall game-health-wise). These are debatably two separate questions, but for the sake of the poll I'm lumping them into one.
I say this because of a recent thread I saw on general discussions that went so far as to claim that Pyramid head was "crippled". Which I did comment on but for the sake of context I'll just copy and paste that here:
"Pyramid Head is light years away from being crippled and saying so is honestly deliberately misleading. If anything, the Pyramid Head change was a misguided attempt to fix a legitimate issue (free downs under threat of either M1 or POD is blatantly unbalanced, and not fun. Fight me.) but they went about it completely the wrong way and I would go so far as to say this was actually a shadow BUFF.
Not only did they not fix the problem they set out to change (you can still fake Trail of Torment and then cancel the animation switching to M1 thus resulting in the same problem previously, the only thing the change accomplished was change the timing which is something players can easily adapt to) but they buffed how quickly you recover from POD, an attack that literally ignores all collision and obstacles and is much easier to hit by comparison to other ranged attacks (like Deathslinger's Redeemer or Huntress's Hatchets) because you're only aiming on a horizontal axis.
All this does is it's going to ENCOURAGE Pyramid Head players to spam Punishment Of The Damned as often as possible. Hit or miss it doesn't matter since the cooldown is absolutely ridiculously quick. The distance a survivor gains after either is absolutely negligible and they are put in danger of being hit again almost immediately. Even more so if Pyramid Head has that survivor pressed against a loop in a corner with nowhere really to run all he has to do is keep. spamming. POD. The devs basically made Pyramid Head less skillful to play as, less fun to play against, and even more unbalanced than he was before, because now not only does he still have the same tool he did before of free downs under threat of M1 or POD with an animation cancel, but he has quicker recovery from Punishment of the Damned, an aggressive chase tool that was ALREADY powerful to begin with.
It's impossible to conceive that Pyramid Head was nerfed at all, even SLIGHTLY. To prove this, Otzdarva makes the exact same point during a match he played yesterday of the new Pyramid Head that lasted less than 10 minutes:"
Obviously I'm not hiding my own personal opinion with this rhetoric. That being said I still want to collect a "show of hands" to see how many people actually think the nerf was really a nerf, and to take that a step further whether or not the changes were actually beneficial from a design and game-health standpoint.
P.S. This thread is also technically a follow up to a previous thread I made about Pyramid Head where I provided my thoughts on an alternate more foundational potential solution rather than simply tweaking cooldown values and the other garbage that they pushed out. In the wake of the horrible changes they made, I hope people will see that thread in a new light and with renewed understanding.
Do people actually believe Pyramid Head was nerfed? 41 votes
18 votes
6 votes
17 votes
Comments
-
Other... (Explain)
I can't say yet. That clip does seem pretty damning (ugh) but you have to remember that people haven't adjusted to his new changes yet, PH was driven by an extremely experienced player, and it was the best indoor map for PH's new changes to look extremely OP, imo. Outside of the fact that people can/could still swing immediately after using his power, it'll take some experience playing against him for me to say. I only went against one PH in the last few days, and he was extremely reluctant to use POTD.
0 -
They messed up his controls. You cant strafe after using Potd any more.
Everything else I'm fine with. Fix strafing.
0 -
i play with him, and i thing its a little buff, he can use the abillity more (less cooldown) xD
this 1sec are nothing haha
0 -
Other... (Explain)
He's just as strong as before
0 -
People also think that the Spirit noise bug would gut her
im convinced these people don't actually play the game
1 -
Other... (Explain)
More people believe it was a nerf or in-between.
0 -
Absolutely not. Pyramid Head ended up being buffed (and as a result is even more unbalanced than he was before)
I don't think it's unbalanced though. Before you could use the power only if you were 100% sure it would land, because otherwise the survivor had the time to go to Narnia before you were able to move again, and as an attack it is pretty telegraphed so it isn't rare for survivors to dodge. That is what lead killer to use the fakes more than the actual power. Now that the killer is not punished so harshly there is more interaction with the survivor, and that is good.
1 -
Other... (Explain)
You can still M1 right after canceling M2 so if you know the timing it's rather a buff than a nerf.
0 -
Absolutely not. Pyramid Head ended up being buffed (and as a result is even more unbalanced than he was before)
This is by far an over-exaggeration and a common but huge misconception with how his power actually worked. I can tell you exactly how far a survivor could run.
The original cooldown was 2.75 seconds if I remember correctly, as we all know survivors move at a static 4m/s while running. Which means if they ran perfectly straight without deviating even slightly or vaulting any windows or dropping pallets, that survivor would have gained 11 meters of distance.
4 m/s X 2.75 seconds of cooldown = 11 meters of distance.
I wouldn't exactly call 11 meters "the time to go to Narnia". Especially in fact, when you consider that Punishment of The Damned has a range of 8 Meters. So you're looking at an actual distance of true safety of exactly 3 meters. Only.
Assuming that survivor continues to run and maintain that 3 meter gain, divide that by the 0.6m/s that Killers gain over survivors (since Pyramid Head is a normal 115% movement speed killer moving at 4.6m/s) and you have a grand total of 5 seconds before you're in range of Punishment of The Damned again.
3 meters / 0.6 m/s (rate of change) = 5 seconds before being within reach of POD.
5 Seconds of safety. That is the "drastic" punish Pyramid Head gets for missing punishment of the Damned. And this isn't me pulling the wool over anyone's eyes like people try to do with Decisive Strike and they say "it's just a 5 second stun!" but what they don't tell you is that's 5 seconds of distance which is 20 meters which is actually some 30 seconds for a killer to catch up to a survivor moving in a straight line. No, keep in mind what we just found that 5 seconds is the time it takes for a Pyramid Head standing still to catch up to a survivor who ran 11 meters and be within range of hitting Punishment of the Damned.
And this is only if they move in a perfectly straight line, which we know many players either don't by choice or by force because of the map, whatever.
The difference being, it's no longer 2.75 seconds. NOW the cooldown has been reduced to 2.25 seconds. So scrub all the numbers and start over, but I'll tell you the answer right away survivors can now only potentially get a grand total of 9 meters of distance. In other words 1 meter of true safety and in other words less than 2 seconds before a survivor is within range of Punishment of the Damned again.
I would argue wholeheartedly this is not good. At all. And that this is way more unbalanced than it should be.
0 -
Other... (Explain)
other
he is niter stronger or weaker you just have to play him differently
0 -
Other... (Explain)
Buff in some things, nerf in others. Overall haven't played him so can't say what was a bigger impact for me personally.
0 -
Other... (Explain)
I think he remained the same power wise, but his playstyle changed. His camera is bugged atm and it makes him annoying to play, so i tested him in like 5 games and not gonna play him until they fix the camera.
First of all he has really massive slowdown right now, so no he cant fake his power into M1 because survivor can make another circle around tile before he will reach them, due to slowdown. I didnt test enough to say how he can play around windows, but i presume he can bodyblock?
Also i can say that his M1-M2 tech is not working. I dont know how Otz was able to do it in that vid, i tested it a lot to no success, and someone said on these forum this tech worked like a few hours after the patch and it doesnt work anymore. It works though in a short span when you start pulling sword into the ground, but it doesnt matter that much. You are able to do it while you Rites of Judgement bar is filling up, but not after.
0 -
I haven't tried him since the patch, but the new cooldown on his power is extremely noticeable as survivor. It used to be you'd have to bait his power to drop a pallet, now, especially in hallways, you have to try and bait it again to leave the pallet unless he breaks it.
0 -
Absolutely not. Pyramid Head ended up being buffed (and as a result is even more unbalanced than he was before)
"I think he'll be more inconsistent than before since going for the ranged attack is inherently more random whether you'll land the hit or not."
How so?
I do just want to briefly point out, it's not like the devs actually changed anything to prevent a Pyramid Head from just waiting until survivors are locked in animations to attack. It's part of the reason why I disagree with the changes made in the first place, I mean all they really did was reduce his cooldown to "encourage" PH's to use Punishment of the Damned more often in a match outside of those scenarios where a survivor is stuck vaulting a window or pallet, or dropping the latter.
This doesn't mean a single thing about whether or not it will actually happen though, and I want to make that abundantly clear. This change has made virtually no impact on actually changing how Pyramid Head plays, the devs don't seem to know or care that all they've done is make it so that Pyramid Head's are rewarded at all times for just using their power at any point. Regardless of whether or not it was a skilled predicted shot through multiple obstacles, or the same classic amateurish window shot that they claim they want players to move away from.
Either way, in both cases the cooldown has been reduced, really there's no reason at all to stop from always going for those classic hits where survivors are locked in animation. Unless your new plan is to start spamming punishment of the damned to zone survivors for free into a corner until eventually you get a hit, which is something thew new changes have entirely enabled Pyramid Head players to do, intentionally or otherwise. So really you can do both at no cost or punish to yourself at all through the match.
And if by "more inconsistent" you're not referring to guaranteed hits at windows but just hits in general, likely thinking of the delay where the warning shows up on the ground before the attack actually hits (I think this lasts some 0.6 seconds so it's not as long as people think) I don't think this makes his power inconsistent at all. This is in fact no different from certain shooters who have weapons with faster and slower projectile speeds, when using a weapon with a slower projectile speed, you typically want to lead your target first, firing where you expect them to be rather than where they are so that the projectile has time to travel that distance to meet its moving target.
In this way, Pyramid's Punishment of the Damned much like any ranged killer (or attack [except Plague's Corrupt Purge but that's a different story...]) requires a certain level of skill and practice to use and hit. Which is kind of an obvious statement, but I say that to make clear a point that a skill floor which requires a certain level of practice on the part of the player in order to use is by no means the same thing as "inconsistent". Otherwise for example, Nurse would be considered a wildly inconsistent killer, but we know for a fact she's not she's just one of if not the hardest killer to learn and use effectively which requires practice, not that she's inconsistent.
Or at least "requires a certain level of skill and practice" is how it should be, but given all the different issues of Pyramid Head really only ever going for "reliable hits" when survivors are locked in animation for whatever reason, and the free downs under threat of M1 or POD, it's all a mess. That's why we're talking about this after all.
But please, if you meant something else by the word "inconsistent" and that overall sentence or still think that he is inconsistent after reading through what I wrote then by all means, enlighten me.
0 -
Other... (Explain)
He wasn't nerfed or buffed, he was just turned into a braindead killer.
0 -
Other... (Explain)
The change didn't touch the reason why people did use the hit or get hit strat for PoD, the problem is that the ability is so telegraphed you cannot hit anyone without basing it majorly on luck if they are not stuck in animation or taken by surprise.
An ability that can't be relied on unless some very specific parameters that have nothing to do with a player's own skill is at it's core badly balanced.
To me, this didn't buff or nerf him at all, the result are more or less the same, you will rarely hit unless the same parameters as before are met.
In all honesty tho, I still have as much fun playing pyramid head as I did before the changes!
0 -
Absolutely not. Pyramid Head ended up being buffed (and as a result is even more unbalanced than he was before)
Which either way: nerfed, buffed, or braindead, all of those end results mean further change is required.
A lot of times both the community and the devs put way too much stock in only the balance itself and statistics of how effective a thing is rather than the actual experience of playing. There's a place for both of those things in the game and they should be treated equally because they are of equal worth, both the balance and the experience.
Scott Jund released a great video recently that only sort of loosely directly relates to this thread but definitely indirectly relates to the idea I just mentioned in this post, which I think completes and rounds out that concept better than I could ever type.
0
