Wraith has been Overbuffed and is now meta
Wraith has always had the reputation of being a weak killer, but taht era is over. Frankly I never though Wraith was a weak killer; he was problematic to verse for many reasons (the main one being how difficult it is to maintain positioning against him -- which is the most important skill in the game for a survivor) but he was fine before and indeed a bit on the weaker side without his super add-ons.
Now though that is simply not the case. Wraith has beenoverbuffed, with his invisibility buffs, his decloak buffs, and everything else. Wraith is OP right now and everyone knows it but no one will admit it here. I play DBD these days it's basically the Wraith show -- it's close to how Spirit was 2 years ago.
Every other game is Wraith. It's like how every game was a Spirit back then. Even during a Tome where Plague is the featured killer.
And he is practically unstoppable. Without add-ons he's manageable but still a headache. With Swift Hunt and Windstorm he is practically unbeatable.
I know all the killers will still say he is still weak, but this isn't really the case. Worse, Wraith still attracts the worst of the killer playerbase -- the tunnelers and campers who will just kill someone off the bat by tunneling hard. And if Wraith wants you dead you are dead. You can't lose him, you can't outrun him, and you can't even see him!
They need to dial Wraith back down a bit. He's in a similar position as Leatherface (overcompensated buffs) but frankly it's atrocious how meta he is now.
Comments
-
Wraith is finally in a good spot now. He can mindgame short loops but if you go to a safer area looping him is easy.
I will say though his add ons could use a touch up
7 -
at this point i hate going against him, wraith is probably the most annoying killer to go against imo. i would risk a dc penalty if i dont have to go against a wraith if im in a bad mood but usually i go against him and my teammates dont help either sometimes
6 -
Honestly I think that his addons (other than the Clappers) need a touch up
And if I were to change anything about base I would add a 3s delay where he cant uncloak after cloaking to deny the people who abuse his speed burst
0 -
Gonna have to disagree with that. He is still just Wraith, he is still countered the same ways as before. He is definitely still easily beaten by healing up when you can, proper positioning, using pallets, and decently strong windows.
I have been playing Wraith lately especially after his buffs, and there are games where I really struggled to secure a 4k because the survivors played very well.
6 -
I personally find Wraith to be the most annoying and boring killer in this entire game, but he's not op. He still has counters to his power.
1 -
Other than his buffed lunge, (which can definitely be toned down a bit, back to what it was before) he is basically the same killer, just not so add-on dependent. He's definitely better, but I don't get how people can't understand he's... just the same. Any Wraith worth their salt was going to be running Windstorm anyways, and his current speed isn't even the fastest he could go with old Windstorm.
His invisibility buff literally only helps him on open maps from afar. As soon as he's within 20 meters you can see (and hear) him.
I think people just hate the fact that he can finally use different add-ons now. Windstorm is still nice, but nowhere near his best anymore, and Swift Hunt is actually just bad. It shaves off less than a second. His real issue is All Seeing - Blood imo, that's an incredibly powerful add-on. Coxcombed combined with Ghost can be an issue, and Bone should be rarer.
6 -
Everyone knows he's clearly more busted than spirit but they're too afraid to say it in case of what could happen to them. The wraithspiracy goes all the way to the top
4 -
I'm alright with his base kit despite it feeling bad to play against due to it being very binary and low effort.
All-seeing, silent bell, and bone clapper are just way too strong with all the other additions to his kit now though. Throw in any of these and he's just downright miserable to play against imo.
0 -
Overbuffed? I don't think so. I had not played him since late 2019, and when I did give him a shot recently things felt so much better.
1 -
So in some games you have to play harder to secure the 4k and you think he’s not op? What do you want? Easy 4k every game?
1 -
Windstorm being basekit hardly changes anything... Wraith players always ran Windstorm anyways and nobody complained about it being too broken then? I suppose the lunge speed could be reverted but in all honesty I think Wraith is finally a good spot right now.
2 -
You know it's funny cause in most games it's either I snow ball enough to get a 4k or everyone escapes.
5 -
You keep using that word (meta). I don't think it means what you think it means.
Wraith is by far not the Most Effective Tactic Available. And also; here we go again; Survivors claiming a Killer is 'unfun' when what they mean is 'I can't mindlessly loop them'.
This way, they can scream for nerfs 'for the health of the game' rather than admitting it's because they want easy wins.
He's Sanic The M1 Killer. He can't do anything but Meep-Meep and hit you. But apparently sneaking up on half-asleep Survivors holding M1 is now OP. Who knew?
5 -
We call that Oni.
2 -
lmao no of course not, why would you say something so short-sighted? I literally said that he is not OP and you will still struggle against survivors playing well just as you would before.
1 -
I agree. Any killer that has map traversing abilities with little to no cooldowns are massive problems on these tiny maps. Nurse (of course), Billy and Wraith.
0 -
base kit wraiths its fine.....now windstorm addons on him ....is kinda overbuffed.........WINDSTORM ADDONS... should decrease speed while uncloaking... like it used to be before.. to compensate the insane map pressure a wraith can get from this addons ...because double windstorm addons + insane lunge = is just insanely good------ w/out any penalty for using double windstorm
0 -
Awww, look guys. He even struggled in one game to get the 4k...
This is the problem, the game should be balanced around two kills and two escapes, that's even, that's a draw.
Killers are so obsessed to get 4k, that BHVR basically needs to buff every Killer into Meta land or people will cry and won't play him.
0 -
Just looped a Wraith for four gens on Haddonfield he DC'd. Wraith seems good but once you get to the best survivor maps Wraith will cry.
1 -
I agree, he is too fast. I don't know if resetting his speed will be the right choice though. I expect we will see cloaking cooldown timers any day now. Perhaps for every time you uncloak you get a token that adds a second or two to the time it takes to cloak/uncloak.
1 -
Never thought I'd see the day when people would complain about the Wraith being OP but here we are...
Goes to show, people will whine about this game no matter what the devs change, which they in turn can use as an excuse not to implement changes that are actually needed. Smh.
Post edited by Flawless_ on0 -
Bruh all I said was that I struggled to get a 4k. I always try to go for them and if I don't, then no biggie. This makes me seem like one of those "entitled killer mains" when I am not, and I am not obsessed with 4ks. Is it wrong to always try and kill as many survivors as you can?
And yeah people cry about certain killers being weak, why wouldn't they? Why would people play a weak killer like Trapper if they are always struggling to secure any kills?
4 -
Imagine if they buff trapper to have two traps at base. Then we will have people complaining about him.
1 -
Wraith still has the same counters as before his buff.
Paying attention to your surroundings and listening for his growling.
As for looping him if he goes into stealth you can infinitely vault windows since you get out of a chase when he goes into stealth.
If you want to bring a perk to counter him use spine chill. Then you will have more time to prepare for him.
0 -
There are now several forum threads full of people complaining about ######### Wraith. Never thought I'd see the day.
0 -
Looping him is absolutely not easy now. If you drop the pallet, he can break the pallet and still beat you to the next loop most of the time. This only gets more likely as the match wears on and some pallets have been broken. Especially with the coxcombed clapper / all seeing combo you can mindgame loops with poor visibility for easy hits. Being able to ready a mega lunge with a silent bell is strong too.
I used to like playing as and against Wraith. His issue wasn't ever really his strength; it was his add-on dependence. Now he's one of my least favorite killers to play against. It's basically Deathslinger, Pyramid Head, Twins, and then new Wraith. The combination of the true invisibility and 150% movement speed while cloaked makes playing against him feel annoyingly like playing against Victor. He just zooms up to you and takes a free hit unless you're within a couple of seconds of a safe pallet or vault. There's no way to know he's coming earlier no matter how observant you are. Unlike Victor, though, he can often follow up that first hit fairly quickly and he's therefore still effective against healthy survivors.
All other stealth killers have some sort of a downside to their stealth. Ghost Face can be broken out of stealth and lose his power for 14-30 seconds. Myers starts at a slower speed and also has to move slowly while stalking. Pig is slower than a base survivor. Freddy has the same true invisibility at range, but he has a lullaby/TR to warn you that he's approaching. Wraith has none of this. He gets a massive speed boost, a tad more than what purple Windstorm gave him before, while cloaked, and can only be broken out of stealth with a flashlight (and even then he has lots of say in this on most tiles). There's no cooldown on his stealth when he gets burned or decloaks. You can't see him at a distance and yet there's also no terror radius. Even his snarling and footsteps have been seriously toned down from what they used to be (good in a nutshell, but not when combined with all of his other buffs).
The other stealth killers trade easy first hits for having to work for a second hit. In the case of Myers and Ghost Face they need to either give survivors distance and/or be extra sneaky in order to apply Exposed and forego that extra chase time. Meanwhile Wraith takes his easy first hit and then he uses his insanely high movement speed to quickly track survivors down for a second easy hit. You can't even predrop pallets once he starts to uncloak because he'll just cancel the uncloak with no penalty, shred the pallet, and beat you to the next loop.
Wraith is still weak on the same tiles that gave him trouble before. For example, a shack, god bus, or party basement that has at least one strong pallet and at least one strong window. Nearly every killer struggles at these tiles, though, and there aren't many of them. On most other tiles he's reasonably strong, and he will probably beat you to the next pallet once you're forced to drop this one. 2.6s pallet break time without Shadow Dance gives a survivor ~10m of distance on Wraith. He closes that distance in 5 seconds. Good luck finding another strong pallet or window that he can't bodyblock in ~8 seconds (pallet break time & catchup time) + uncloak time. Maybe in the first chase, but even then that's questionable.
---
I would personally nerf his true invisibility to only work outside of 32m to align with his base terror radius. I would also reduce his cloaked speed to ~137% speed instead of ~150%. That'd put him in line with the yellow windstorm add-on from before as opposed to a tad above the purple windstorm add-on. Finally, rather than slowing him down to uncloak and following that up with a massive speed boost + mega lunge. I would prefer that speed be smoothed out. I'd reduce his speed just slightly while uncloaking (~90%) and then bump him up to 115% when the uncloak finishes without the speed boost. I think this would still give him plenty of utility, as he'd be able to more effectively bodyblock pallets and windows, but would remove the frustrating ping roulette at pallets and windows that happens when a killer tries to land a hit while moving very quickly. It would also discourage the ol' "95% decloak to bait the pallet drop, then cancel the decloak to shred the pallet" maneuver.
Post edited by notstarboard on1 -
Agree here. Sometimes (albeit at lower ranks - I'm around 11), the Wraith will uncloak next to me and hit me even when I see his heat shimmer coming and run to escape. Additionally, along with a lot of killers since reset, the wraith killers I come against will "patrol" near the hooked and then zoom back in to get a quick 1-2-3 hook on one survivor which is boring for the survivor.
Tunneling and camping is kind of a whatever situation. I've seen survivor groups do nothing under these circumstances and groups also get at least a couple of survivors out by working gens hard during camping/tunneling. It's just a strategy that happens to boring af for survivors.
0 -
He's anything but "just Wraith" nowadays. Before he only gained 11% movement speed while cloaking, so it was usually only feasible to do this mid-chase if you were quite a bit behind the survivor you were chasing and/or if you were running Windstorm. As a result, he was pretty easy to loop and toothless in the chase. Now he gains 35% movement speed while cloaking. He's so fast while cloaked that he will nearly always recloak after landing a hit and just chase you down. He can break a pallet and have made up the distance you gained from the pallet break in 5 seconds. He's fast enough to bodyblock pallets and windows with some ease and especially with a coxcombed clapper he can milk his speed boost mid-chase for some really easy hits.
You should struggle to secure a 4k if the survivors play very well lol. If both sides play very well it should be closer to a 2k average with a fair number of hooks. Obviously matchmaking isn't based on skill yet, but still. I've found Wraith too easy to 4k with, which is exactly how I felt when playing him before with purple Windstorm + Clapper. Now Wraith is a good bit stronger with just a Clapper than he was before with purple Windstorm + Clapper (slightly faster cloaked speed, better stealth from true invisibility + quieter snarl/footsteps).
1 -
I think that is just because of matchmaking. I know for sure that most of the survivors I play against just aren't too good of players. I don't think it is because Wraith was overbuffed, but rather because of terrible or nonexistent mmr.
0 -
Matchmaking is a big factor, but I feel the same way playing against a halfway decent Wraith as I do playing as him. There's just not enough you can do to counter him, especially in solo. Survivors can't choose where the gens spawn and some of them simply aren't close enough to strong tiles to avoid an easy hit. You can heal to counter this (good luck, solos), but Wraith is strong enough now that he doesn't even need to hit and run. You're still vulnerable from full health because of how fast he closes distance, and that only gets worse the longer the game goes on for.
He's just not fun to play against right now and playing as him feels like easy mode.
0 -
My guy, I've been maining Wraith for the past three years. I don't gotta thing to prove to you. You have your opinion, I have mine.
0 -
In my experience, it has not done much, and it never has. Old Windstorm + Bone Clapper or All Seeing was always better, and now it's a similar thing.
I've never needed Swift Hunt. It has never been useful to me. Our experiences are different. That's literally all there is to say.
You have your opinion. I have mine.
1 -
Kinda hard to say it was overbuffed, considering he's mostly the same as he could be before but with the ability to use other addons.
I think he's just in a good spot now. Low A Tier, potentially.
0 -
Unpopular opinion but for the sake of game balance, all killers should eventually be buffed into the A or B tier. The more powerful the killer role is, the more impactful each individual survivor is allowed to be because the killer has the ability to manage them. Just nerfing killers is a kneejerk reaction, especially considering Wraith has always been nerfed with his buffs. Every single time he got one, they also detracted from somewhere.
2 -
They are projecting their entitlement onto you. Anyone with reading comprehension can see that you didn't say you shouldn't struggle. Problem is, some people expect it to be easy.
As for Wraith, he is fine. Loops should not be 100% safe. You should have to actually play correctly at them. You should not always be able to reach the next loop before a killer catches you. That is how 4 gens get done in a single chase.
The closest thing to having a problem with him that I see is that he seemed to be balanced around NEEDING an add on. Previously, Wraith without Windstorm was as worthless as Trapper without a sack. Now, he doesn't need Windstorm, so other combinations have become viable. That is what people aren't prepared for.
2 -
I mostly agree, but for different reasons. I think the devs should be regularly buffing weak killers and nerfing strong ones in order to minimize the gap between the strongest and weakest killer. This is great from a balance perspective because rather than having some killers overperforming while others are a struggle to use, all killers should perform similarly. The devs can therefore just focus on buffing or nerfing the killer role in general.
I'm not sure what you're talking about with Wraith; he's been consistently and gradually buffed over time, and almost always without corresponding nerfs. There are two legit nerfs in his entire history and one was part of a big net buff:
0 -
Unrelated, but even if they balance the killers, a problem does occur in that killer in general cannot be addressed easily because each killer attacks in a different way. Wraith, Ghostface, Twins, and Oni, for example, are at their strongest when the survivors don't heal, so you need to heal whenever possible. Healing against Leatherface, Plague, or Legion is almost always a waste of time. Changing generators impacts low mobility killers way more than high mobility killers. Changing maps massively impacts trap based killers, both for good and bad, but is largely ignored by teleporting killers, like Freddy, Demo, and Nurse. I almost think they need to balance killer in general first, then do the individual killers, so they can be made to match the new standards while maintaining their strengths.
0 -
He is B or C tier now so better, but can still be buffed more without being a problem. Stop complaining just because you lost a few games because you can instead focus on improving your own game so you don't lose in the future.
0 -
I would be more than happy to discuss the specifics of each nerf, if I could find a complete change log anywhere. I'm not really surprised nobody really remembers he got nerfed as it was always seen as an overall positive exchange.
I don't think it helps the game though to reduce the skill ceiling by nerfing killers. If you nerf the ceiling, then the average skill of the player base goes down, which is not what you want in a game that you need comfortably 1k hours in to be considered "competent" not even necessarily good at it.
What needs to happen is that weaker killers are buffed up to where stronger killers sit, and from there survivors can be buffed to account for the new, higher tier killers. This probably makes survivor players uncomfortable to read, but the unfortunate fact remains that survivor changes are going to have 4x the impact, so the systems need to already be in place for killers to succeed before survivors can get changed.
0 -
bottom of his wiki
0 -
Wiki changelog isn't complete, thanks though I saw it.
0 -
what nerf are you thinking?
0 -
If I remember right, it came when they redesigned his addons. But that was back in 2.3, so the memory is vague at best. Perhaps I'm conflating PTB notes with actual release notes after that amount of time.
0 -
no more debuff on windstorm. That debuff is now your actual decloak speed. so the debuffs can't stack
0 -
How do you balance killer in general without balancing killers first, though? Feels like a bit of a guessing game at that point. Maps are always going to add variability to killer performance, and a bit of variability is honestly fine. There just shouldn't be gaps like what we have between Blight and Spirit versus Trickster and Clown.
0 -
I linked you a complete change log lol. Are you looking for more details than what's on the wiki?
Nerfing killers doesn't necessarily have to lower their skill ceiling at all. For example, new Nurse requires even more skill to play well than old Nurse despite being weaker. A killer's strength and skill ceiling are pretty unrelated. Ideally the strongest killers would also have a high skill ceiling, but in practice that's often not the case.
I don't like the idea of introducing high-tier killers and buffing survivor to compensate since that does little to shrink the gap between the weakest and strongest killers. It makes a lot more sense to me for the devs to try to introduce mid-tier killers (or at least balance them after launch such that they end up mid-tier) and to bring any killers that are outliers in terms of strength back towards the middle. Then they can buff/nerf survivor/killer to address overall game balance without any killers being too strong or too weak.
0 -
His his previous windstorm debuff for the decloak speed is now his actual decloak speed.
0 -
It's like having a bar you need to straighten, and a bunch of gears that go on it. You need to get the bar straight first, then get the gears attached to the bar in the right position. If you get the gears where they are supposed to go, attach the bar, then try to straighten the bar, all the gears go out of position again, and you have to reset the gears.
0 -
In this analogy there's a clear metric for how to fix the bar: make it straight. In the game, though, the metaphorical bar is already straight enough to attach some gears to it. This might change at some skill levels when MMR comes back, but mid-range killers statistically perform well now (68% average red rank kill rate & 56% average overall kill rate as of late 2020). If we want to make any fine adjustments to that "bar" before addressing killers who are outliers in terms of strength, we risk making the top killers in the game too strong or the weakest killers in the game too weak before they're individually adjusted. On the other hand, there's no downside to buffing weak killers and nerfing strong ones since mid-range killers are already performing reasonably well. Then from there we're in a great place to adjust overall game balance as needed, because balancing the game for one killer should necessarily balance the game for other killers (provided they balance the game with a number of small and well-rounded tweaks rather than heavily nerfing or buffing mechanics that are more impactful to certain killers).
0 -
What you linked is the wiki for wraith, what it is not is the complete changelog. Its the cliff notes at best, but I don't really think thats the argument at this point. So lets just set it aside.
You need some strong killers with disproportionately rewarded actions for the skill level involved, that is how new players are able to handle coming into an environment with more experienced players. These mechanics are called FOOS, first order optimal strategies. All they do is create a foothold for a new player. Killers like Spirit, Doctor, Oni, and Freddy roughly fit this bill.
My suggestion is not what you are saying. I would not release any new killers until the current ones are raised up to be a high tier and relatively tightly grouped compared to now. Once baseline killer role power is established, from there the new reciprocating role power can be delegated to the 4 survivor slots. (This would include buffing/redesigning perks to fit the changing meta of no low rank killers at all.) From then on, yes I would release fairly powerful killers knowing that survivors have decently strong utility tools to deal with them and only need to learn the new skill curve of the killer.
Fun comes from engagement, engagement comes from the feeling of agency, agency comes from freedom. The more freedom and power a killer has, so too does that translate to the agency a survivor is allowed to have against them. This clashing agency now creates more complex systems of engagement and ultimately leads to fun for both sides.
While this is a nice analogy, it does not work in a game like dead by daylight. In fact a more apt description to balancing this game would probably be: Trying to hold water in a perfect sphere with just your hands. All the elements you interact with affect each other, pressure, ripples, and waves resonate through it.
Every killer has their own needs, fixing the game for one would break the game for all other killers. Therefore you have to establish an environment where they can all play to their strengths. You cannot balance strictly by the numbers because the simple matter is that straining for a perfect average assumes the population itself is perfectly averaged, which it never is.
The obvious answer becomes, in that case, to relieve how painful it feels for survivors to be sacrificed. That vaguely translates into more opportunities to earn survival points, and points overall in the short term, but hopefully through increasing the complexity of the killer role the avenues for earning points can become more numerous altogether. I think most players with enough hours in the game would agree that getting 4Ks or surviving every game becomes super boring and they are pretty much over living or dying mattering to them. Its not about the end, its about the journey of the trial, so using kill rates for balance is just going to make a boring game.
Post edited by BenihimeWrath on0
