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So, Why Are We Nerfing Pinhead?
I think we all know that Engineer's Fang needed some...toning down, shall we say? Like, it was way too good.
But why are we nerfing him. Seriously. This feels like the EXACT same thing that happened with Deathslinger, where BHVR nerfs a "problem" area and then forgets to buff any other part of their kit.
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Because we've gotta make sure the survivor playerbase gets their chance to that, click, point at, and in general BM every killer as much as possible. Duhh
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¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Nerfing = Balance
I think we are doing pretty good.
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Do you mean the other add-on nerfs, or have I missed the memo on something else?
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"Overperforming"
Aka
Solo Qs get stomped by him, especially when he has the hoarder/franklins combo - which is why the box solving addons are the ones being nerfed
Since PTB everyone knew Engineer's Fang was a bit much but BHVR likes to take the 'wait and see' approach sometimes
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Because learning things is too difficult for low-MMR solo queue, so we need to make complicated concepts like "GET THE BOX" too weak to threaten them?
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To be fair, the Devs dont need a reason. They can just change what they want. And dont need to give an explanation. If they like, they can change every Killer to 105 Movement Speed. Or buff Nurse to her Release State.
When it comes to Pinhead: IMO Engineers Fang is pretty clear. Someone who does think that this Add On does not need any Nerf is biased.
I dont think they should have nerfed anything else, however, they should have removed the interaction with Hoarder and Franklins Demise. But players wanted this to stay in the game. Now they nerf the next best thing, which is the respective Add Ons. So yeah, they listened to Killer players on that one.
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I mean to play devil's advocate
"GET THE BOX" turns into "Get tunnelled until he makes you drop the box with franklins" and "Never be able to solve it before then because he has hoarder + 2 solving time addons" and couple that with the weird chains still attacking you while solving thing and yeah
I don't think anyone complains about basekit Pinhead when it comes to the box itself
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Since I don't really play anyone consistently but Pinhead, without the addons pressuring the person with the box is nearly impossible in most maps. It turns into a way for the survivors to get you into awful loops, since the spawning mechanics will almost always make it appear far beyond anywhere you can reasonably get to.
The box will always spawn more than 40m from Pinhead. So, unless you were headed that direction before it was picked up, it's already more than 10m away from where you can get to in 6s. The chains are much faster, but take half a second of time to even pan to the portal and be able to fire, plus the travel time. So, 6s is almost always too little time to do anything except maybe teleport into a jungle gym. It sucks.
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As for the Engineer's Fang nerf, the way it was nerfed seems... well, I'll be honest, overkill? It's going to be easy to injure, but then practically useless for downing or in loops.
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Where did you hear about any changes and what exactly are they?
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Yes, and also what Otz said in his latest video.
To quote, "Chains will no longer interrupt the Survivor solving the box." I suspect this is referring to the Chains which spawn when the Chain Hunt is active, but I am not sure.
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PTB notes.
IIRC, Engineer's Fang will now spawn one less chain when you hook someone (i.e. if you hit an injured survivor); Iridescent Lament Configuration will now reveal within 24m (it spawns more than 16m away from Survivors, so that basically kills it if they're even slightly spread out; that's more than double the area covered); box-solving time addons have had their effects cut in half (green 4s>2s, yellow 2s>1s). Chatterer's Tooth gets a buff in how long the undetectable lasts.
Oh boy, forgot about that one. Now there's no penalty for ignoring the box until after the hunt starts/is about to start, since it can't even delay you.
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See... Pinhead teleporting to you is a good thing. It means nobody else is being pressured, if you delayed just a few seconds on solving to get into a good position you've dumped him into a loop staring at a wall (and not you), and (if you're in a good spot), he's now well away from any generators, because chances are it spawned where people aren't: dead areas of the map.
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He also just came out. A higher Kill Rate isn't unusual for a new Killer.
His nerfs are targeted at the ONLY thing that made him good, much like Deathslinger. His 4v1 pressure is immense, but his 1v1 is weak-average. If you aren't consistently getting Chain Hunts, he is NOT a good Killer.
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Why change the interaction with hoarder and FD though ? It's the best thing about PH's design imo. A killer who's power is unique and strong enough that running what would normally be quite memey perks for any serious loadout become a good reasonable trade off to increase consistency of his power.
It's the same for Nemesis and his vaccines or huntress's iron maiden etc.
Besides you can play around it, hoarder has area of effect so if the killer is close, don't pick up the cube or be able to loop PH for a bit. It's a nice combo that has very unique feeling for him but it's nothing that wins the game instantly by itself and you're giving up 2 perk slots for it.
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It also takes 45 seconds for the Box to even SPAWN after he teleports, then another 90 for a Chain Hunt.
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Plus, I thought we hated Killers running Ruin, Undying, PGTW and Corrupt?
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Exactly, if anything we need more of this.
Every killer has some perk that synergise really well with them and this is one of the most unique power interactions out there.
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Honestly I've never understood the hate for Hoarder or Franklins. Hoarder is not as good as people assume it is and I bet the people complaining about it haven't played many games using Hoarder. Maps that survivors are likely going to throw offerings to go to are big enough that the box can be picked up out of range and picking up the box while pinhead is animation locked is still an option.
Not to mention if people are picking up the box and instantly solving it, the hoarder notification isn't doing anything for you.
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"hard to land chains" ok... interesting
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Chains definitely aren't easy to land on PC, definitely difficult on Console too.
I don't think that justifies the strength of Engineer's Fang, but they are skill shots.
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They shouldn't change him yet. Give survivors time to adapt to some of the preferred tactics of Pinhead players.
Guess it's going back to wraith, blight, nurse, and camping bubba for my survivor matches....
Or I'll just play something else since escape-based matchmaking is terrible and my survivor queues are longer than the actual matches.
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Give it time, people will eventually start to complain about his synergy with Lethal Pursuer and demand more nerfs
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What's particularly frustrating about these nerfs is that the main thing the non-Fang addons did is give Pinhead some measure of control over his own ability. Without time to get to whoever is holding the box (by time-extension and chain interruptions and the survivor not finding it until the hunt starts), the way it works can be summed up as "do survivors forget to do the box or invite a teleport into an open field?"
Except for having a very good idea where everyone is when it's time for the box to spawn, this shunts his effective 1v4 power completely into the control of the survivors.
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Because they prefer to listen to the mayority of the low level player base and make sure they can deal with killers easily rather than make a decent competitive balance. Most inteligent groups balance the games around mid/high to high levels as theres where things get serious, DS was nerfed because low level people couldnt deal to learn to counter him, same for the anti loop killers, the great mayority of survivors just want to deal with every single killer in the same exact way, the sad part is that the devs listen to that side more than they should. Just look at how they butchered wraith and DS
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They really should buff his other add ons so he has variety 🤷🏻♂️
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I think the exact opposite. I actually find them really easy to hit, it's like casting a nurse blink. As long as you're on top of the survivor it's not really possible for them to dodge. As for Fang, I'd say this can give way to many easy hits, which can be a real game changer. It's like if huntress could hit you through anything. I would prefer if there was some kind of range requirement to get a hit with the chains, rather than a free first hit without any drawbacks.
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Yerp.
The weirdest thing - Fang wasn't even nerfed all that hard. It escaped mildly singed.
The 'faster hunts' and 'longer solve' addons were incinerated and the iri Box nerf...why?
The answer seems to be that BHVR are going off gross kill rates, meaning that it's about him being troublesome for newer players without any regards for high MMR viability.
By which logic - Nurse needs one hell of a buff.
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Survivors didn't want to learn how to deal with constant box hunting, so behavior is effectively removing him from the game. I think it's funny they shot their reputation via NFT's to get pinhead in and now they're killing him in under 3 months
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I mean, they didn't do anything about the part of Fang that people could want nerfed, they just decided to make the rest of his kit more potato instead. Like, you might balance the kill rates, but does anyone really enjoy the way this has changed???
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It depends on the map and the survivors in question. People that just hold W in the middle of the Serengeti - yeah. Easy chains.
Indoor maps or in maps with lots of jungle-gyms? Chains break almost instantly and they are off.
Survivors that know how to juke chains (very much like juking Nurse, actually) - oh man can this be difficult to deal with. Sometimes you can fool them by faking it though and gain distance.
He's a really cool killer, he just needs help somewhere in his kit to offset the nerfs.
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He's getting nerfed because he's stomping casuals, and for whatever the reason, the devs still insist on balancing around the casual level even though MMR should be separating them from good Pinheads in the first place showing that, there is indeed no positives to the MMR system. Anyone at the mid to high level gets shafted because BHVR would prefer that their game's playerbase be a revolving door.
What's particularly puzzling is that part of what makes his chain hunt spam possible is a glitch that they are now fixing AND they're nerfing the add-ons that increase solve time. Like, BHVR, have you even remotely considered that possibility that the reason he was "overperforming" was because of the glitch that causes chain hunt to stop survivors from stopping the chain hunt and not because +4 seconds was too much on hits own merits? Maybe, just maybe, you should have just released the bug fix, see if that changed anything, and THEN considered nuking Pinhead's add-ons into oblivion after collecting the data. Let's be real. The only addons untouched and are "in line" are the ones that do borderline nothing relative to the typical killer add-ons in this game.
"When it comes to Pinhead: IMO Engineers Fang is pretty clear. Someone who does think that this Add On does not need any Nerf is biased."
Actually no. People are not biased in saying it wasn't too much. In what universe is an Iri rewarding Pinhead's power proportionally to other anti-loops in the game, and not being able to down with it this massively overpowered thing? He gets to have the skill requirement of Nurse and be rewarded it for the first hit, and basically have the same requirement, but with Clown's power for the second. Some just take issue when a killer has an Iri that has power proportional to the bloodpoint/rarity.
"I don't think they should have nerfed anything else, however, they should have removed the interaction with Hoarder and Franklins Demise."
So you just wanted the Pinheads to run 4 slowdowns. Got it. Really, you're just complaining about every aspect of the killer. Killer has an add-on that partially rewards him proportionally to their skill requirement->bad. The killer that embodies what survivors supposedly want (weak 1v1 but strong 1v4) has perk combos that allow him to more effectively use his 1v4 power->also bad. Just be honest and say you want Pinhead to be like Pig and be outright bad at both aspects of the game. This is why you get nothing but strong 1v1 killers, and why content creators that talk about 1v1 killers being unhealthy for the game have no idea what they're talking about.
Post edited by MarcoPoloYolo on7 -
I think Chatterers is decent as it is but, I'm curious to see if the Stealth will even be remotely useful after the buff. I liked pairing it with Toeture Pillar or Iri Box, both of which are being nerfed :/
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Because hur dur kill rate too gud
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if behaviour can't nerf SWF or improve SoloQ, then they're optiong to nerff killers so much, that even soloQ will be able to harrass every killer.
Post edited by Stryker on2 -
It's really sad how allergic BJVR is towards SWF when we all know PC players use discord and consoles have Party Chat anyway, so nerfing SWF sounds incredibly idiotic to me.
It seems like a no brainer we should buff Solo Q so we can get more engaging and demanding killers like Pinhead.
I dont even buy the argument about communication barriers in Europe, even with massive communication barriers people will find a way to communicate in a basic manner. I played MMOs when I was 12 and there were BRs everywhere, I picked up barebones Portuguese lingo rather quick.
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Serious question why do people think EF is to strong? Its an iri which means it should be strong it can only injure and not down,it add 50% on your animation after using your chains, I belive it only spawns 2 chains on injured. Thats a lot of downside to be able to get an injury from a distance.
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The addons that made it take longer to solve the box needed the changes 100%. It was just too much when paired with hoarder/franklins (especially on small maps). It shouldn't be possible to keep chain hunt going all game. Most unfun thing I've played against in this game. I'm fine with the other changes as well.
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Because the Devs clearly know what's best for this game. (Sarcasm)
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So, you'd agree that we need to buff his base power now.
He literally takes the skill of Nurse for the reward of Clown.
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Pinhead is one of the killers I main, so I wouldn't mind a buff. I feel like he is pretty balanced tho.
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I kind of thought it was because of console button mapping making break chains override throwing down pallets.
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I put a significant amount of time into him and his Possessed Chains are garbage.
His real power is Chain Hunt, which was just nerfed. If you aren't getting it to proc reliably, Pinhead is only just above Clown tier.
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So...delete the character because behavior can't do programming a first year student could do? How about like, hire a competent developer to fix it?
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I don't think he should have been nerfed too hard. The only thing that I thought should go was the chains attacking you while solving the box. It was extremely irritating and coupled that with slowdown addons made it not possible to solve without him teleporting to you.
They also should change the teleporting exploit.
Other then that he was a fine strong but fair killer.
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What teleporting exploit? The one where he can touch the button near the end and it makes them stuck in place?
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Yes
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That was fixed, I'm pretty sure.
EDIT: Yep, 5.3.0 hotfix.
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Oh ok. Well I guess I still stand by my first point
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