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Ranking all killers by the quality of their design

Bard
Bard Member Posts: 657
in General Discussions

S Tier: Masterpieces

No. 1: The Blight

A simple power with unlimited possibilities, but not to the point where you just auto-win if you know how to use it.

With recent changes to his camera, he's felt pretty damn incredible.

You could argue that he has some gamebreaking bugs, I disagree with that notion. Once you know what objects you slide off of, the "sliding off objects" becomes less a bug and more a feature. On the other side of things, using a DPI clutch for J-flicking might seem like bug abuse at first, but in actuality it's a mindgame like anything else.

If you catch somebody off guard with a J-flick it feels incredible, but if they know about J-flicks they're the easiest thing in the world to dodge since they use the "narrow" version of Blight's lethal rush attack hitbox.

No. 2: The Ghost Face

In concept, he's the perfect stealth killer.

99 somebody from a distance, sneak in close while hiding behind cover, and then end the chase before it even begins.

While the exact mechanisms behind his reveal are janky for both sides, and his power CD is a bit too long at baseline, he's a very cool killer design for the most part.

A Tier: Pretty good job so far

No. 3: The Oni

The best executed snowball killer by a mile.

In his base form... he's dogshit. Completely useless, and what's more he's so tall you can see him over basically any loop.

Give him one hit, though... just one... and he becomes a monster.

No. 4: The Huntress

No fancy frills.

Just a killer throwing projectiles the size of bathtubs. Nice.

Her main problem is over-reliance on lockers, which the devs sometimes just forget to distribute around the map (ie Swamp and Temple of Purgation can spawn large dead zones).

Additionally, something common between projectile killers is that they require extreme precision, but are not provided with a crosshair. You can fix that yourself if you like, but you will get ######### from anybody that finds out.

No. 5: The Nurse

Her power feels great to use (as long as it doesn't bug out), but is just completely unfair.

No. 6: The Clown

A bit biased, since he's my personal favorite killer, but I really like the way they changed him up with the rework.

A simple killer with a lot of lethality. If you don't think so, try running Brutal Strength and a double feather. If you can intoxicate the survivor and invigorate yourself as you break the pallet, it only takes you a little more than four seconds to catch up with them after breaking the pallet.

The biggest problem with his design, is that he encourages survivors to play in a boring way, instadropping pallets all day. Yawn.

No. 7: The Hag

Love a good Hag game. Brings a completely unique gameplay style with her web setup.

The biggest flaw in her design in my opinion is how her kit begs you to be an #########. That said, you can play Hag without being a #########, so I won't put her too far down just for that.

B Tier: Just "Okay"

No. 8: The Pig

She's fun, and with a bit of luck can buy more than enough time to work her magic, but she has some serious problems.

  • Extremely luck reliant, to the point where it feels like bullshit for one side half the time.
  • Weak chase game
  • Was massively hurt when her terror radius got "normalized" to 32 meters

No. 9: The Trickster

A lot of minor flaws that coalesce into a killer that's just underwhelming.

  • Main Event wants to be used against full health or clumped survivors, but it usually triggers partway into a chase and can't be held for the right moment without gimping yourself.
  • Main event is supposed to be powerful, but it removes the option to stop firing and get a bit closer, making it clunky as hell.
  • Despite being a precision ranged killer, he has recoil (less than before, but still) and has no crosshair.
  • Laceration decays for some ######### reason
  • Reliant on lockers

Yeah, needs some work.

No. 10: The Demogorgon

A lot of concepts that are just really underdeveloped.

  • I love the idea of tracking people via the Upside-down leaking into the overworld, almost like Zerg Creep. Unfortunately, the AOE is so limited that it's practically useless.
  • Shred is fun, but reliant on Rat Liver (which you're nerfing... for some reason)
  • Portals would be incredible, but the combination of their vulnerability and setup time makes them a lot weaker

He has tracking, but it sucks.

He has a chase power, but it's barely better than an M1 (and in some cases, it's worse).

He has map mobility, but it often wastes as much time as it saves.

No. 11: The Hillbilly

A lot of room for skill expression, but I'm honestly still mad about overheat, which was managed horribly.

If it was something akin to Rumble from League of Legends where you had to ride the line between "Hot" and "Overheated" to get maximum effect from your power it could be a really interesting risk-reward thing, but the way it was implemented is just a pure negative, along with removing all his good add-ons.

There is no reason to pick this killer over Bubba right now, so I look at him with spite.

No. 12: Bubba

Finicky, but very powerful.

You drop the pallet, or you die.

He encourages a very boring "instadrop and hold W" playstyle in survivors, which is pretty annoying.

No. 13: The Wraith

He does what he's supposed to do pretty well, I guess, but there's just so little here.

The fact it took them this long to get a character as basic as Wraith done right is kinda annoying.

No. 14: The Trapper

An extremely unreliable killer that is reliant on luck in multiple ways.

Not time efficient in the slightest, and if he doesn't get lucky he's a pure M1 killer.

That said, you do feel like a genius when it works.

C Tier: Ugh...

No. 15: The Doctor

Yes, he's annoying.

Yes, he can completely remove any option for you to interact with your defenses.

The main reason he's this low, though, is that he's an example of the Devs explicitly failing to deliver the product they promised.

The Doctor's original, intended design was as the ultimate "mindfuck" killer. His afflictions were supposed to be convincing enough that you were messing with the people playing the survivors more than you messed with the survivors themselves.

This was completely failed, so a few weeks later they added a stun to his shock and that's been his main gameplay aspect ever since. What a waste.

No. 16: The Spirit

At least with Nurse you can try to mindgame her by breaking line of sight.

With Spirit, you either run Iron Will or you're #########.

She also doesn't feel nearly as good to play as Nurse, so she loses points there as well.

No. 17: The Executioner

Demogorgon to his natural extreme.

A ton of concepts on this killer, all of which are executed (heh) poorly.

  • Trails are practically useless.
  • Cages/Judgement are a gimmick meant to bring people who had quit due to DS back into the game before they'd figured out how they wanted to nerf DS.
  • Torment has the potential to be cool, but it does nothing.
  • Punishment is clunky as hell. It's slow with restricted aiming, so you can only really land it when a survivor animation locks themselves, and that makes for a very boring gameplay loop.

No. 18: The Deathslinger

Fun to play, but cancer to play against.

The survivor hit capsule is so inaccurate to their model that hits over terrain feel like complete bullshit much of the time, being sniped from outside the killer's terror radius feels somewhat unfair, and he also has Deep Wounds fore no reason at all.

Also, of course for all the killers to have a ######### crosshair its this game's version of Pudge.

No 19: The Plague

I personally like her, but I feel alone in that.

Playing as her, she's too vulnerable to her fountains getting rushed and her Corruption getting stolen. Puke feels sluggish, easy to accidentally cancel, and easy to "over puke" since sickness gauges are hidden from you. Being forced to collect your power as an immobile killer is also a massive problem.

Going against her, she's a massive annoyance. You want to do a healing build? ######### YOU, BUD. You got tagged by one speck of puke she wasn't even aiming at you? Well now you're going to be injured. Good luck!

As I'm writing this I feel like this ranking is too harsh, but I've already written most of the others so I'm not redoing anything.

No. 20: Michelangelo

Complete. #########. Dogshit.

His stalking is a strictly worse version of Ghostface. It falls off with distance and doesn't work at all if they hide their nipples, even with direct eye contact.

Tier 1 is cripplingly awful.

Tier 2 is passable, but you're still just an M1 killer.

Tier 3 is strong, but easily kited and extremely limited.

D Tier: WHY???????

No. 21: The Twins

Clunky as hell to use.

Easy as hell for survivors to abuse.

  • Jump in a locker with Charlotte at a distance, and Victor holding you in is strictly a better outcome than him latching you and there's nothing Twins can do to stop that.
  • If Twins use their power SUCCESSFULLY, they are punished for it by Victor getting kicked in the face and the body getting picked up.
  • Oh boy, they're hiding behind a 2 meter diameter hay bale. Again. Lovely.

Worst of all, this killer forces you to play like the biggest, most unrepentant ######### you can imagine.

Hag's power enables her to camp and slug, sure, but she doesn't have to.

With Twins, you no other option.

If you down somebody with Victor, swap to Char, and then go hook the survivor, Victor is right there. You can't just manually re-absorb Victor, and it would take way too much time to manually move both killers away from the hook, so you automatically camp without even having to do anything.

If you down somebody with Victor that is at a distance from Char, you can't pick them up. As a result, you literally have no option other than slugging.

No. 22: The Legion

Like Doctor, we were lied to with what this character ended up being.

I'm 99% sure Ghostface's power was supposed to go onto Legion, but then they got the license at the last minute and had to change it.

Unlike Doctor, Legion never found his stride.

He gets one free stab and then becomes completely ######### useless. It's one thing to be a weak killer, but this is just ######### lazy.

They didn't even get rid of his old limiters from back when his power could down people (like basic attacks draining the power bar), and some of the new limiters from the rework (ie missed attacks ending Frenzy) don't even make any sense because Frenzy being non-lethal made those things non-issues.

No. 23: Freddy.

A massive waste of a license.

Honestly, old Freddy was incomplete, but he wasn't that bad of a design.

If the "rework" had consisted of tacking Projection and Alarm Clocks onto the old Freddy, he would have been a very interesting killer. Not as powerful, maybe, but certainly interesting.

We didn't get that, unfortunately. Instead, we got this mess.

  • A completely braindead spam-bot. You could teach a roomba to play Freddy at his skill ceiling.
  • Boring as hell. Oh boy, he's pressing M2. And he's pressing M2 again. There's no thought behind playing Freddy, and things like the inability to see the auras of Snares only make that worse.
  • A lot of his add-ons are garbage. Next patch, basically all of them will be garbage.

The upcoming nerfs to him fix nothing. His strength isn't the problem (he simply isn't that good), it's that he requires zero skill.

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