Should Nurse's attacks be Special attacks?
I know why they're not Special attacks, but with the advent of abominations such as Starstruck Nurse, I thought I'd hear what everyone else has to say.
When I asked, I was given 3 reasons why Nurse's attacks are basic.
1) She is so reliant on her blinks that she would otherwise functionally have no basic attack
2) While having some small differences, her post-blink lunges are otherwise nearly identical to a basic attack
3) She pre-dates the special/basic attack distinction. Going back to change it causes "issues." This is an assumption, but I THINK we saw a glimpse of this with how buggy her Post-Blink grab cancel was (to the point she got disabled even).
But should they go through the effort anyway? I look forward to seeing your reasoning down below.
Comments
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Why? She’s in a spot of perfect balance with the exceptions of her distance increasing add-ons/three blink add-on. No reason to kill perk diversity on her. Even with Exposed perks, you just have to mindgame to avoid the hits.
Also it makes completely zero sense mechanically. It’s not a special attack, because she doesn’t attack with the blink. Blinks are exclusively a movement tool. She just attacks regularly after she moves. Compare this to someone like Bubba, who attacks WITH the chainsaw. Or Blight, who attacks WITH the Rush.
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Perfect balance? You have to be joking.
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The data from matches against players of even skill shows as much. She averages out to 2K. Taking perks like Starstruck is a significant risk because all the survivors have to do is bolt in completely separate directions ASAP, and she will lose the majority of time on the Exposed pursuing them. Or be spread out already, and thus not even in the area of effect. Even with Agitation, this is a trade off against good players.
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Because... that would completely kill any perk that only works with m1's on her?
I like to use surge on her and since that only applies through m1 downs that means I would get no value from it forcing me to go back to ruin or pop. Overall killing my perk variety for her. I get that not many nurses have perk variety but it's better to have the few that stay using it than to make them like the rest of the nurses.
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Yes, I've said this before, and I think it's a very fair nerf to Nurse that does not destroy her at all. A power as strong as hers should never be allowed to come with an instadown. This would obviously still keep her a very strong killer but reduces stuff like starstruck nurse on midwich or MYC floods of rage nurse which I've already been seeing a lot of.
Imagine if blight could run starstruck and instadown you with a flick. Obviously Iri Tag exists, but it's balanced by being an iridescent and that it only works on the last rush so it requires extra planning.
I realize that this would pretty much kill any basic attack/Exposed perk on her, and while you can make a valid argument for keeping them basic attacks as she is pretty much entirely reliant on her ability to get hits (whereas even the worst Blight for instance could still play M1 killer at 115%), Nurse already breaks a bunch of the fundamental rules of the game and it's not like changing it would make her any less of an anomaly.
I do not believe Nurse needs a full-blown rework or anything, but this change is a good idea in my opinion.
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It’s funny because Starstruck is only good against low to mid MMR survivors. At high MMR, it would be throwing to play this perk : survivors are going to split and hide immediately. Also, it is played with Agitation and Infectious Fright most of the time, so you are basically playing with only 1 perk left when it’s countered.
But let’s go, let’s nerf Nurse so she can’t play Starstruck (snowball build) or Noed (end game build) leaving us no choice to tunnel with a regression build at high MMR. I don’t really mind.
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Yes, let’s kill perk diversity for risky perks on an already balanced killer. This is clearly the way.
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When did we start using data to mark balance. If that’s the case then pinhead is the best killer in the game and old object of obsession was balanced
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She is not perfectly balanced. She still has 3rd blink (this add-on is so busted) and plus range add-ons kills her all counterplay. I mean you outplayed Nurse but she still can catch you with second blink. Because range add-ons makes this possible.
But even without this add-ons, BHVR can not make strong killer perks. Because they would be so op on Nurse. For example Starstruck is med perk at best but it is so strong on Nurse.
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How about her first blink is a basic attack , but her second is a special attack.
Rewarding her for riskier plays of using only one blink.
(Line of sight blocking and all that)
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So you’re basing it off meaningless kill rates? Not taking info consideration that she’s a free killer so new players can play her from the get go? She’s super hard for new players but her skill ceiling is so massively overrated it’s ridiculous.
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And that’s why he got nerfed by the devs.
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Dude she’s the strongest killer in the game. I think she’ll be fine if not most perks synergies well with her.
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I... think I might've just pulled the pin on a grenade reading this thread. Oops.
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Yet he’s still at the top anyway. Fact is stats don’t mean much in a game as inherently random as dbd and we shouldn’t use them when talking about balance
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I’m not talking overall. That’s useless because it’s not controlled for any factors. I’m talking about specifically high levels of play, with evenly skilled players facing each other in an evenly balanced map. As in, actually controlling for relevant variables.
Yes, good job stating the literal exact add-ons I already said were an exception. Also you are blatantly beyond wrong on the second point. Perks that are very good on her have been buffed just fine, like Hex: Retribution/No Way Out’s buff. Perks that are incredible on her have also been released just fine. Like No Way Out post-buff/Deadlock/Pain Resonance/Floods of Rage/etc.
I wish people would actually do their research before making up points.
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IF we did want to nerf Nurse, that would be the best possible choice. Much like the nerfs that Spirit got, it would still leave her with an incredibly strong kit that skilled players can leverage to unrivalled strength, but she'd have to work for each hit instead of being able to bypass it with Exposed perks- as well as a lot of perks being able to be tweaked without considering whether they'd become overpowered on Nurse.
However, I'm not certain we should nerf Nurse. I think her kit is... probably fine, and the only real issue that it presents is that she has kind of a chokehold on the balance of a handful of perk types since they can never be too strong without making her overpowered. Even if we end up on the understanding that this makes her deserving of changes, I think a complete ground-up rework would be a more appropriate tactic, and we aren't at the point where that's an obvious necessity anyway, so... she's probably fine.
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So it’s all about high level then. So since the Twins are “absolute monsters at high level play” I guess they deserve the nerf because high MMR is the only level we should be focused on.
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??? I don’t know why you blame balance for matchmaking issues. There are a small number of good players, and even fewer extremely good players. The absolute majority of players are average. For queues to not take hours, the good and amazing players are put with comparatively worse players. Obviously, that makes matches uneven/a definite win. If you paid attention to the Q&A stream, you’d realize BHVR said the exact same thing themselves for regular matches/MMR.
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I mean if you want more dead mans switch and pain res nurses then I guess that's what you want because that's what you are inadvertently saying.
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Not to pick sides, but what M1 perk replaces that combo right there?
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If there’s zero reason to use M1 perks, and most perks are crap, that leaves the only perks worth using to be full slowdown pretty much (outside of some stuff like totem Nurse/BBQ/Shadowborn/etc). Cause nothing else is worth using.
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Its not a matter of replacing perks, its the matter of I don't want to use the strongest stuff all the time. By removing the possibility to apply sloppy, surge, third seal, etc for different builds in a time where people are complaining about variety is just not a good idea.
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What killer player has fun with a build like that on Nurse though?
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Some people are very competitive and try their hardest to win because that's how they are. Not gonna judge them, though I think that's overkill, personally.
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Yeah I’m not judging them either, I’m just trying to figure out how they find it fun.
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I respectfully disagree that Nurse is balanced. However, I do not think she is as much of a problem as some people say she is. But she does have her issues.
Besides, there are already killers who don't benefit from basic attack perks much. Like who uses exposed perks on Huntress (barring Iron Maiden, but that's not why it's used on her)? Realistically I don't think this would really play out much differently than those kinds of killers if this change went through.
There's also already perks which are simply not practical on her due to the nature of her power. For instance, bamboozle is great on chainsaw killers but Nurse vaulting windows is basically a myth. This change just adds basic attack perks to that list, and that's about it.
Surge's basic attack requirement should be removed anyways.
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Some people have fun winning and not messing around despite what type of game it is.
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Lmao
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I wish people would bring some actual evidence for their claims. I've literally acknowledged myself that her distance add-ons and three blink add-on are unhealthy design, but people can't read I guess, cause they bring it up for some reason anyways. So far, everything that actually exists shows the contrary, for all other points.
- Winrates at high levels of play in even matchups? 2K average.
- Average match one-way stomps? MMR putting good players against worse players because there's not enough of the former - something BHVR explicitly addressed themselves in the Q&A stream.
- Prevents balance? Blatantly false, perks good or amazing for her have been buffed just fine (see Hex: Retribution, No Way Out, etc). Perks good or amazing for her have also been released just fine (see Deadlock, Pain Resonance, Floods of Rage, Starstruck, etc)
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I think it's a very fair nerf to Nurse that does not destroy her at all.
She. Literally. Has. No. Basic. Attack. Capability. Except. If. A. Survivor. Literally. Stands. Still!!
Which means any perk that requires basic attack functionality would be completely useless on her.
She already has to wait for blinks to be available, charge them up (with no option to cancel), blink (accurately), and then swing within a very short window, and then suffer fatigue. And you're still not happy with all these challenges because Nurse mains put the hours in to warrant the skill level required to play her??
She's perfectly fine where she is. Survivor mains just need to learn to juke her instead of crying about everything that doesn't pander to their simplistic playstyle.
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I've never understood the categorisation of "basic attacks."
If you want to make perks strong for M1 killers, but weaker on killers that have huge mobility power hits, then sure, but basic attacks have no consistency.
Of the two top tier killers, every hit from Nurse is considered basic, yet power hits from Blight are not.
Every hit from Spirit and Wraith, even those greatly amplified by their post-invis boosts are basic.
No ranged attacks are basic from Huntress, Nemesis, Trickster or Plague, but every hit from Deathslinger is.
A perk like Surge with a built in cooldown is basic attack only because letting people trigger it with power downs is unacceptable, but something like Infectious Fright is fine when it lets Billy and Oni chain 1-hit downs easily.
In my opinion, "basic attacks" should be removed as a concept entirely, with the exception of the exposed status. As far as I can see the only downside in doing so would be Demogorgon having a harder time keeping StBFL stacks, and I've never been fond of that on him anyway.
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Nurse is basic attack, because her power is exclusively movement. She does a regular attack after.
Blight attack is special, because he attacks WITH the Lethal Rush.
Spirit/Wraith also only move with their power, before doing a regular attack.
Huntress/Nemesis/Trickster/Plague is attacking WITH the power. Deathslinger only pulls them in, and then does a regular attack. The harpoon itself is not an attack.
Surge shouldn't have a basic attack cooldown. Infectious is balanced, including on killers that can chain-down easily.
It has been nothing BUT consistent.
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Slinger literally reels you in for an M1. Breaking the chain is considered a special attack. Now, if you wanna talk about how odd it is that a basic attack can put you into Deep Wound, then you might have a point.
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Perfect isn’t really a way to put it, she is not perfect balance wise and due to her design, she never will be
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I think it sets too much of a bad precedent, because if they make The Nurse's blink attacks special attacks there can be a serious discussion to be made on them making The Wraith's uncloak lunges into special attacks, or The Ghost Face's marked shots, etc.
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I've wondered about this as well, it's an interesting question
Worth remembering that it's not just exposed perks that are linked to basic attacks - stuff such as sloppy butcher for example would also be rendered unusable for nurse. Perk diversity on Nurse isn't exactly the most interesting out there, you usually see the same few playstyles but it'd still suck.
My gripe with Nurse and Exposed perks is when you have an oppressive chasing power, your two health states (And DH) are usually all you have to work with. Instadown perks skip over this and I'm not gonna go as far as to call it unbalanced but it does feel cheap. I understand why people dislike it having been on the receiving end of it many times.
Like the whole "just mindgame her" argument aside, it's the killer who is in control of the chase and that's why many people are so adamant to defend nurse because to them she's one of (arguably) two killers who are in control of the chase.
What the game would look like if every killer could ignore pallets and windows as much as nurse can is up for debate.
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As a nurse main, I don't think it's really necessary. If blink attacks were special attacks it wouldn't really change much, starstruck wouldn't be viable anymore so I mean, go for it
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I think making blinks a special attack is a fair trade for the massive amount of power Nurse has. I mean, she literally invalidates most survivor defenses (pallets, walls, multi-floors, ect). It would definitely make her more balanced if you took away some of the exposed/basic attack perks that make her THAT much more powerful.
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Yes if any other Killer is not allowed to be able to make use of exposed for their powers why does the nurse then? Its not like it would hurt her anyway... she will still be the strongest Killer and still annoying to deal with.
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They thought object was balanced and even said so in a stream.. The only reason they changed it was because they got massive backlash afterwards.
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Problem, if m1 perks don't work on nurse there isn't much of an excuse to run most perks besides slowdown, there would be ~12 odd perks that are the only ones that would be viable on her and nurse would probably be mostly if not all slowdown since there isn't anything else to run,
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It's not always consistent actually. It's just dictated by practical reasons, which is not a bad thing in and of itself.
Spirit has a speed boost after reappearing with a duration which is dictated by her power. Add-ons can modify that and add-ons affect POWERS.
Wraith, similarly, has a speed boost that is dictated by his power. He even slow downs below 115 when uncloaking and then accelerates BECAUSE of his power.
The biggest offender is probably Myers, as he literally has a different lunge because of his T3.
Nurse is an oddball, because otherwise she wouldn't be able to use basic attacks essentially. But in between blinks she's arguably in her power and she will eventually fatigue. She's almost as if a Blight could pull off a basic attack during a slam. It's not like a Hag, where she teleports and then she's done. I guess she's in one of those situations that could be interpreted either way.
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Same reason. Surge is my go to regression perk on her, it's free blood points and saves me the kicking time + it's not as oppressive as other perks while playing her. I'd hate to see it not working anymore.
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You'd be surprised. Last Saturday out of 7 solo queue games, 3 were blights, 2 were nurses. ALL of them had either corrupt/pop, PR/Pop, PR/DMS.
I can't physically understand how this is fun for them - having short games with people giving up immediately (me for starters because I honestly can't be bothered). But if they want to play like that, there's nothing we can do about it. When I play nurse though, I really hate using strong stuff and my go-to perk is Surge so I can just avoid kicking gens and get free blood points. Honestly I would hate seeing it removed from my options
However, I agree with what @Brokenbones said in his comment (I read it after replying to you)
In general, I'd be ok with the change if they buffed Surge to not count for M1s only. Just don't take it away from me
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On the contrary, we play PR/DMS to avoid having short games. See this very far gen you know 2 survivors are trying to repair asap, with PR/DMS you can block it and make it explode. With any other gen regression, you may not have the time to defend it.
Also, my favorite part of DBD is chasing, and kicking a gen for pop or defending my ruin is annoying. With PR/DMS I don’t have much to do, it’s a passive.
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No. You cannot make Nurse’s blink attacks considered special attacks without making several perks unviable on her. Leave her base kit alone.
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I think all hits with a main weapon should procc on attack effects.
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Thats a lot of dead perks in the bloodweb for nurse. The special attack clause is and still is a massive restriction on build options. Imtroducing into nurse will homongimise her builds. I d rather a nurse running two game delay perks and carrying starstruck agitation then just 4 game dealy perks.
If you think special attack clause are good for dbd you need to play huntress and see just how many perks simply take up pointless space on the bloodweb. I ll come out and say it, balance is pointless to work towards if it kills build variety and expermentation. Nurse is the definition of excellent game design both sides have agency and counters with no clear answer or strategy to win.
The games are always dynamic never the same mindless looping tripe that many dbd players believe is somehow exciting? Your always making reads on where she will blink and increasing the difficulty of those blinks by denying los. But hey go on push another awful change it worked so well for slinger after all.
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Exposed Shred?
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