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Hot take: Unviable killers is a myth
The title alone will make most people not read this I'm sure but I'll explain my opinion anyway.
I'll make a brief comparison to another game and then I'll get to my point. In Apex Legends (yes I'm aware it's not an asymmetrical game). certain characters are just naturally stronger than others. I main Wattson and Lifeline but I know characters like Octane, Valk, Pathfinder, and Wraith are considered "higher tier" for their mobility and ability to take high ground. Do I think Wattson should be buffed to be able to get high ground and compete with those characters? No, that would be silly. Her playstyle is different and her skill cap should be different.
Going back to DBD, I always see comments about buffing certain killers to the level of the likes of Nurse, Blight, Huntress, etc and I personally don't think they should. Their playstyles are different and they should perform at their current levels based on what type of character they are. Myers should never have the map pressure of a Spirit. Clown should never have the same camping control as a Hag. Killers should not be on the same levels in what they're able to do.
Additionally, just like there are people who play in Masters and Predator ranks in Apex with low tier characters, there are people who play DBD who can pick up ANY killer and do well with them. Which means that the issue isn't actually the characters, it's the skill level of the majority of players and I think that's a harsh truth most people aren't ready to accept. The majority of DBD's player base (and this is directed at survivors AND killers) are just not as good at the game as they think they are. Plain and simple. Your inability to 4k with the Wraith doesn't make the Wraith bad because someone else using the same character against the same team COULD get it done. Therefore, the issue is the player, not the character.
MAYBE Myers needs a slight buff to get out of tier 1 faster but that's literally it. Every killer is fine as they are and should not be buffed or nerfed. (Except the Nemesis tier up sound. that thing is too loud and needs a heavy nerf)
Comments
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About 75% of the roster is dead in the water going up against a 4 man SWF with even the tiniest amount of cooperation.
Whether that is because the 4 man SWF is too powerful or the 75% of the killer class is too weak is a moot point for me as a killer player when dealing with the 4 man SWF.
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At your skill level though.
Again I'll restate, if someone else can use the same killers that you can't and can perform well with them (whether it be Otz, Scott Jund, any top tier DBD player), then the issue is not the killer. It's your current skill level
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I do agree, but I just think that the kind of play it inspires might not be good for the game in general and something on both sides may need a hard change.
Like I've had fun games against really good survivors, but I don't think they would have considered it as fun as I did. Because I will camp, I will mass slug people ( to the point where people have bled out entirely on the ground) and I can't imagine them doing nothing is fun for them, but it is what it is.
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Yeah not like those players dont sit in the game 60-80 hours per week.
Sure, we are all that level!
/cringe
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So all a killer player needs to do is become a professional level player in order to play as 75% of the killer roster?
Well that sounds easy enough, brb, I'm gonna go do that.
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Which means that the issue isn't actually the characters, it's the skill level of the majority of players and I think that's a harsh truth most people aren't ready to accept.
No, the game isn't hard to play or all that skillful, certain Killers just aren't viable, and that's the harsh truth a lot of people already accepted
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No one said you're at that level. In fact, I think I said the exact opposite. Most of us (myself included) AREN'T at that level and that's okay.
But when playing against people on your level, you losing with certain characters has more to do with your skill level with that killer than it has to do with the killer itself because a better player can come along and run the same perks against the same team and do better than you.
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That's your opinion and I simply disagree. There is a steep learning curve and better survivors and better killers can come along and run the exact same loadouts we use and do it better. That's a skill issue, not a character issue
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The gap between killer strength is really large that at a certain point you just don't have the tools to deal with what survivors are capable of with some killers.
There's a very good reason tournament play doesn't see a lot of killer variety. You can make the argument that for average skill level this doesn't matter, but you would be completely missing the point of unviable complaints.
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Agreed.
Killer mains should be required to devote their life to the game and become a full time streamer.
Also Otz, Scott, and all the top tier DBD players never get steamrolled by SWFs. Ever. They always 3k at least. There has never been a 4 man escape because they are so good at the game with all killers.
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Thanks for agreeing :)
Now putting your sarcasm aside, you don't have to put in much more (if any) time into learning ONE killer than a survivor does into mastering the survivor side of the game. Notice I said ONE killer because learning separate killers requires completely different playstyles and mechanics. The same way you have to learn all the tiles on every map, learn about the 80+ perks the opponents may be using, understand gen spread and keeping certain gens safe, the GOOD survivors put in that same effort and same time.
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Give me an example of "getting punished" for using your power or playing correctly. (Also I explained in the beginning that I was aware the two games are different but my point still stands that all characters in a game don't have to be able to perform at the same level or have the same strengths to make up for their weaknesses and that point is not invalidated whether we're talking about a Battle Royale or an Asymmetrical game)
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I think what the original post it getting at is the great majority of players are at tournament levels and that the reason they lose games isn’t balance differences in characters but skill difference in between them and the groups that beat them. And that the definition of “viable” for a lot of people seems to mean “viable for average matches”, not “viable for tournament play”, but in fact all the killers are currently perfectly fine for average matches. Those balance gaps only really matter when both sides aren’t making mistakes, if either side is making errors those far outweigh character and loadout selection.
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”Any killer is fine if the top 0.01% of players, who literally play the game for a living, can do well with them.” This is how I read your argument.
So the rest of us who don’t play the game as our job should just purge whatever other responsibilities we have so we can play the game 12 hours a day to git gud? To judge the viability of killers based on what you see on Twitch or YouTube is such flawed logic I don’t even know where to begin…
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I agree that the gap between S tier and bottom tier isn't as wide as people think. It's a gap of a kill or two at times, but it's not the difference between a 4k and a 4 or 5 stage game until you get to comp level play. No, you aren't running into that in a public match.
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This isn't a very good argument.
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That's game knowledge, not skill. With most Killers, once you reach a certain point, you can't get better. You can always however, gain more knowledge
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I was waiting for someone to say something like this. Now that wasn't my point but let's run with this argument for a second because isn't this EXACTLY what most people on the forums ask for?
Every post I read, someone says something along the lines of "Killers should be balanced around the EFFICIENT 4 Man SWF team" (which by the way is NOT even close to a majority of SWF team). So do we want balance around the top or not? Make it make sense please because I thought high tier balance is what yall wanted?
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So what do you do when you dont play at peak time where games are watered down?
Or what do you do as a basic attack killer against safe or god pallets?
While I'd love to spend all day just gaming DBD at peak times with an expanded pool so I get more chill players.... sadly I dont, I'll play off peak time where people actually play sweaty.
I'll have 4 survivors stacking meta and actually know how to loop, they wont just give me free downs... but if you think they're all viable lucky you, I'll avoid killer till I can have fun, verse more chill players or perks like DH are changed.
Edit: no one is asking all killers to be nurse level, just better than they currently are. Alot of issues are maps, tile setups and some perks but apparently they wont change huge maps so...
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I can see that be punishing but that also seems situational as well. What I mean is there has to be a 2nd person there to kick Victor and heal said survivor AND your main body Charlotte has to be far away enough to not make it there and interrupt the heal in time which also varies depending on the perks said survivors are running and whether they have a medkit or not.
My point being that The Twins power CAN be detrimental but it is not ALWAYS detrimental. And in fact, Twins has almost the strongest slugging and camping potential in the game if a team is all injured and Victor is able to down multiple people. It's all situational
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The problem with this and my entire point of my first post here is that when you DO go up against those good squads, there is nothing 75% of the killer characters can do about it as we're all just average players going up against other average players. The differences between someone like Trapper or Doctor versus someone like Nurse or Blight is immense against a team with even baby levels of coordinating.
There's a reason why 75% of the killer characters are so rarely picked in this game. Sure, you might not be going against a 4 Man SWF every single game in the average match but if I choose to play as Trapper, I risk running into one of those squads and getting absolutely manhandled the entire game.
It might not happen every single game but all it takes for most players I imagine is one bad night where you get a few of those matches in a row (especially if you get a Bully Squad SWF) for players to either just swear off the 75% or as we've been seeing, swear off playing killer period.
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One of the problems with your take is that Otz , etc are just that much better than the survivors they play against for the most part. Against survivors of comparable skill, I expect a chance to win instead of losing at the character loading screen and, against survivors of comparable skill to Otz, if Otz picked Clown he would lose more often than not.
As an analogy, if I'm playing an FPS and my opponent has the exact same awareness, reaction time, etc as me but their rifle fires twice as fast and does twice as much damage I'll get stomped most of the time due to game mechanics.
Currently, the low tier killers do get stomped a lot more due to game mechanics. This is a video game and a reasonable expectation for a video game shouldn't be I have to totally out class my opponents in skill to have a chance at winning. If your argument were valid, you would see, at high MMR and tournament level, Trappers and Clowns. The reason you don't is because against opponents of comparable skill the lower tier killers will quite often lose due to game mechanics.
Someone may be able to sometimes pull off a victory just as, in my FPS example above, I might get off a lucky ambush but being able to play with a killer I enjoy should give me a somewhat equal chance at winning against opponents of equal skill. Right now, that is only true for a select few killers and every killer that is below them should be buffed to more closely approximate their level.
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Learning killer fundamentals will help you with all killers significantly. There are only a few mechanically difficult killers - Nurse, Blight, Oni, PH, Billy - are about as complex as there are in terms of mechanics.
The rest of the roster just sees significant increases in success just from concepts like zoning, pressure, mind games, 3gens, routing, etc...
Unfortunately most of this roster just sucks at high levels. That's the problem, not the effort required to get good between survivor and killer. No matter how good you are with Freddy, he is just incapable of dealing with 4 competent SWFs and even 4 competent solos. They need updated mechanics to compete.
BHvR can't continue balancing around solo when 40-50% of the survivor playerbase is in a SWF. It's a bad target to have.
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I do actually wanna bring up your apex part as this goes into dbd, both of the characters can't be changed in the mobility department as they aren't based around mobility, hence why Lifeline is a support and Wattson is a Defense, however its harder to buff Lifeline and Wattson due to how they have to be balanced around their fellow subclasses, buffing wattson too much will turn her into a better caustic for example, buffing lifeline's ult too much could make it more worth it over her fellow support (and only other support for some unknown reason) Loba. Now into the dbd part
All killers in dbd have a similar system to this that isn't told to you, if you buff Myers too much then why would you want to play Ghostface when Michael is a better version.
For the Wraith part, Wraith is in the "hit and run" category and certain loadouts on the survivors end (CoH in particular) actually trucks this playstyles existence, sometimes it actually is the character, not the player (This was actually apparent multiple times in Apex as well as some mobile characters are actually still considered weak, Pathfinder is one of the only legends in apex without a proper passive and its constantly brought up in balance conversations, Crypto is also brought up in this as Crypto's drone is his passive but also his tactical)
To bring up even more, some dbd killers are designed as if they were only intended to be used on PC (Trickster is a huge example for this) while Apex all characters are usable on all platforms (You can flick at pathfinder and slingshot yourself large distances on controller) so while sometimes it is the player, it can also be the killer in alot of cases
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Actually the reason 75% of the killers are rarely seen is mostly that there are 27 killers so the average pick rate for a given killer is 1 in 27 matches. Some killers are picked more than that, others less, but the mathematical average is if you play twice a night you’ll only see a given killer about twice a month or so. Even the popular killers aren’t as popular as some people think, if I remember right Huntress was the most popular overall at something like 8%? (Huntress being used frequently isn’t surprising since she’s pretty decent and also a free character.) Among the dlc killers I think Blight was next most popular but that’s still less than 1/10 matches. Unfortunately I haven’t noticed a data pull by a high MMR survivor of which killers they faced and it would be interesting to see how those percentages compare to the broader numbers.
Anyway, getting off that tangent, yeah, you will probably get beaten by a full swf of solid survivors. But unless you’re an exceptionally good killer player you will get beat in that scenario regardless of what you play. And if the survivors in a swf are only average players and you are an above average killer player you’ll probably win regardless of your loadout. These balance differences really only alter the outcome much when both sides are making few misplays. The great majority of the time if someone loses playing as Legion it’s because they got outplayed, not because it was Legion instead of Blight or Nurse.
Would it be nice if everything was balanced to the point that even at tournament level play it didn’t matter character or loadout you have? Sure, who wouldn’t want that. It’s probably a pipe dream to expect that level of refinement though since there’s so many interconnected parts to a game like this there’s always going to be some things that work better than others in perfect play settings. The most you can really hope for is tweaking things enough so in the bulk of the games there aren’t things which really sway matches too much either way and hopefully keep that gap to a minimum. Continual adjustments over time are still useful but the game will always have something to tweak, it can’t be the only thing the devs do.
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I can work with this. So as you said, buffing Myers (who a lot of people argue is outdated and arguably the weakest killer in the game) would make using Ghostface relatively useless.
So from there, if we go and buff some of the killers, how would we want that done so that it doesn't make other killers in the same category obsolete? That's not an attacking question or anything, I'm genuinely curious about what you think on that.
Because I agree that there are certain balance issues in Apex as well and how certain Legends are just always situationally better to use than others which is why Rampart, Wattson, and Crypto have such low pick rates while others have higher pick rates. But at the same time, I don't think those characters should get huge buffs because they're already good at what they do. I've seen a Crypto clutch a game by using his drone to Revive 2 teammates in a situation where any other legend would've been screwed. I've seen Wattson ults save a team from a Gibby ult where anyone else would've got destroyed. Yes, they have deficits and aren't always able to compete with those "higher tier characters" but they still have their strengths and I think it's the same for "lower tier" killers in DBD. How do we go about buffing them without also buffing the strengths they already have (and they all have their own strengths)
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See, I completely disagree with the "reason why 75% aren't chosen thing"
I've had nights where I played as Pinhead and got absolutely manhandled. I couldn't do a damn thing against the SWF (and Pinhead is absolutely worthless against a SWF as that stupid box is the only thing that makes him remotely bearable to play as for a M1 killer).
After that match, I played nothing but Leatherface that night because I didn't want to deal with that again (at least with LF, if I run into a bully squad, at least one of them are going down with me no matter what *Happy Chainsaw Screeching Noises*). As much as I'd like to pretend that I'm a special little flower in a world of weeds, I can't imagine my experience is all that unique to me. I still do flip flop back to M1 killers at times but I can't imagine it's a stretch to think that at least some of the killer base gets into a few matches like that and decides "F this" and not do it again.
Ultimately it's not impossible that you're right and the pick rate is this because of the sheer amount of characters, I just have a hard time believing it because I constantly get Nurses and Blights. I can't even tell you the last time I saw a Spirit or a Pinhead or a Demodoggo or Doctor. Though I'm sure there are other factors in there too like region or time or whatnot.
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My first question would be did they TELL you they were a SWF post game or did you come to that conclusion based on their gameplay? If it's the latter, I can promise you I have made perfectly coordinated plays with randos and coordination does not equal SWF. If you got confirmation they were SWF, then carry on.
To the latter point, the last time I played for about 5 hours, I ran into 3 demogorgons in that time so I honestly just think it's region based, time of day, whose online, etc.
I also think DBD has a large echo chamber issue where people in the community go with what they hear a lot either through the forums, from big streamers, from youtube videos, etc.
- Someone finds out you can sit in front of the Pig's trap box and get free RNG kills, posts about it on the forums, all of a sudden everyone is running into killers doing the same thing.
- Someone complains that "X killer" is too weak, makes a youtube video about it, all of a sudden less people are playing X killer and also think X killer is too weak even though they were just fine playing said killer a week ago.
Every opinion on the forums is taken as objective truth by people with similar experiences and then that gets echoed into the games
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They did not but you realize that's even worse then, right?
If they were not a SWF, a four pack of strangers was able to completely neuter the powers of a killer. Pinhead was turned into the most basic of basic M1 killers by a group of strangers who were just good at coordinating who goes to pick up the box and who stays on the gens.
I'm assuming they were a SWF based on the sheer level of coordination they had but you make a good point, it doesn't have to be a 4 Man SWF to render 75% of the killer base unviable as long as they're all doing their job as survivor.
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The easiest way is buffing the killers in a manner that matches up to their playstyle, making myers more of an evolving stealth killer will distinguish between the two better while Ghostface is a killer who you can go in and out whenever you please as long as the power is ready, making it to where ghostface is an insidious stalker and myers is a relentless slugging stalker distinguishes better between the two, preventing them from becoming useless, buffing myers is very obviously needed but at the current moment of how Ghostface and him work, they both need more adjustments to make them more than the stalking bros. The easiest way to change every killer to a proper level that doesn't cause power creeps is by making them actually represent what they are supposed to be, rather than make them branch off of older killers (imo Deathslinger needs some tweaks to his power to make him different to huntress, make him more of a silent threat rather than a ranged zoner like huntress, his low TR he used to have supported this as it allowed him to be a ranged threat with a low terror radius, compared to Huntress who technically has a huge terror radius (if you consider her lullaby) of 48 meters iirc, letting you know when she is nearby easier compared to slinger), that all prevents the killers from being merely branches of other versions, which prevents the situation of a nerf happening and people stating that other killers are just better versions of this killer and so on
And in apex's case in this, as someone who does play rampart, she has a low pick rate due to her not having a strange kit, yes she can completely reverse the tides of war with her ult but her whole kit is based towards a gun class and not all gun classes (its why whenever I complain about her, it tends to be me whining about how she is based around only LMG's though she made the BP skins for the wingman and Flatline) to me, they all can do with teeny tiny tweaks but not big ones like weaker characters as in Apex the balancing is different compared to DBD's balance due to the differences in the gameplay
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No...I disagree.
Yes, it's not possible to perfectly balance a game - but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try.
This reads as 'Don't buff weaker killers because...' and then I lose the thread of the argument. I think you're trying to say that different killers are good at different things, but I'd counter that the Trapper is objectively weaker than the Nurse and while not everything needs to be Nurse level (frankly, not even Nurse), everything should be at around the level of Artist or Plague.
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Devs posted their own stats before and it showed over 70% of all matches have SWF in some form or another. Whether 2 man swf or 3 swf and 1 rando, its pretty much almost in almost all games. And that was awhile back, it's probably more now.
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You've done it, you've solved DBD, killer enthusiasts just need to get good. They will now return and finally queue times will be fixed. I can now go back to playing survivor on a regular basis again.
It's your fault you're being bullied and mocked all the time playing your goofy low tier killer, you just need to get good. Trust me, one day you'll be good, but please keep queuing up so I can humiliate you until that time which, by the way, I guarantee will come, you just have to try hard enough. SMILE.
Sorry I'm having a moment.
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Honestly, I'm good with everything you said aside from the Deathslinger's lower terror radius. I've always thought that was BS and a killer shouldn't be able to shoot me before I can even hear them coming. I make an exception for the Huntress because there's more skill involved in cross map sniping and Artist because you can usually hear her set the birds up before she sends them. The way Deathslinger was able to run Monitor and Abuse and be in damn near melee range (let alone speargun range) before you could hear him was dumb
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I can tell you're having a moment. Maybe when you're done, you can participate in the actual constructive conversation that's happening. I know that's a lot to ask for from a majority of the people on these forums though
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I never got to encounter that I believe so I sadly never know how bad it truly was, but I personally thought that a low TR slinger fit him perfectly as a surprise sniper, just wish he had more of a stealth sniper side to him with a better downside if the chain broke instead of you melee'ing, i'll probably look way more into it as I always thought slinger could get punished via reload speed if the chain broke rather than the melee landing
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You've not really made any constructive points in your main post. You're making it so everyone except the top 1% needs to get good in order to have fun/succeed. In a game with active MMR (supposedly) I shouldn't have to constantly be belittled by my opponents with no way to fight back, I should have equal opportunities to outplay them but that simply doesn't happen with the majority of lower-tier killers because they have less options. Other killers are higher tier because of their options and their strengths, which something the lower tiers don't have and you're trying to push for them to never be fixed/buffed/looked at.
Edit: A killer's success should not be indicated by survivors making mistakes, they should be allowed to be pro-active.
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you don't have to be in the top 1% though. You (who I'm assuming is an average player) can do just fine against other average players at your skill level. 9/10 times if you lose, it's simply because you aren't skill enough.
Now that probably says more about DBD's faulty matchmaking system than anything else but A killer has the exact same chances of winning as the survivor team does if they are equally skilled. (Mind you, my idea of winning isn't a 4k or a 4 escape but that runs into a whole different argument that can go in circles about hooks vs kills being a better measure of skill and so on and that rabbit hole goes deep)
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But that's the issue at hand, the low-tier killers don't have the same chances of winning as the survivors or high-tier killers as most of their play is reactive rather than proactive. You'll make the argument "that just means they're different so play into it" but if you're up against a group of lil guys not making any/few mistakes it's a miserable experience that has you taken advantage of at every single inch.
A good number of killer enthusiasts aren't asking for Trapper/Myers etc to become Nurse, they are just wanting their decisions with that killer to have actual weight. For a good number of the roster the killer's success comes from generic understanding of the game (knowing when to drop chase, what areas of the map to empty/ignore etc) rather than the application of their ability (such as Nurse, Blight, Huntress). Both sides would benefit from having to interact with their funny powers for a unique chase/experience rather than the same tactics between games for success.
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Hot Take = Wrong Take
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Even the best killer players in the game cannot overcome a good swf when they are playing a mid-low tier killer.
This is just..... factual. There are many stressful otz games where he fails to do well because of this. Denying it is like trying to say water isn't wet.
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I've noticed no particular difference in quality of survivor team mates during or off peak, with the exception being that i see more swf at night.
I'll take the predictable unpredictability of solo q if it means I get 30 second Qs. I'm kind of over waiting 10 minutes just to get grabbed by a GF and get basemented 😅
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Mfw we get another Starstruck, Agitation, PR DMS Nurse after a 10 minute queue
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Well you also have your mmr, server and if you swf all impacting what you do. I know my killer games are more chill (still sweaty but not as bad) layer on so if I need to play killers I'll try do it as near to that time as I can.
But atm DH, map sizes, tiles and their setup is what holds alot of killers back atm. Who knows all killers could be more viable if that was to happen but we shall never know
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That's rough, buddy.
Those are the matches that are shorter than the time you waited x.x
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Just checked your threads/posts and everything is about survivor. You shouldn't talk about viability of killers if you never played any.
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I somewhat agree and somewhat don’t. Yes, a good player can do fine on every killer. This is in part due to MMR not giving good/god opponents often (due to how few there are in comparison to the average players). However, they are at a different starting line. Against very good survivor teams, an equally good Nurse or Blight player starts the race at the same line. Other killers would start varying amounts of distance behind. Yeah, skill can make up for the difference, which has been proven before. But they are still behind what is the equal standard.
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Win or lose depends almost entirely on the survivors and RNG, unless you play Nurse or Blight well and even then if you get say Lery's with Nurse you are going to have quite a hard time.
But the weaker M1 killers are most definitely not viable against a moderately capable SWF and the experience is likely to be pretty miserable. Hence why less and less people want to play killer and in particular the less viable ones...
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- I've played plenty of killer. Even got about half the adept.
- Does that mean that anyone who plays primarily killer doesn't have a valid opinion because they mostly play one side over the other? Your logic doesn't add up
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I do actually agree but not to that degree. There definitely are killers that are objectively worse and are hurt more when the RNG factors are more weighted against them. A nurse won't be that affected by unfair map offerings, but a clown or pig will. There definitely are factors that make some killers objectively worse, but they aren't ever so bad that they can't win. In fact, even on a really bad match, a 2k is still extremely easy to achieve.
I think the real problem comes from the fact that people think every round should be a 4k, or people think a 4k equals balance when that isn't the truth. A nurse and blight getting easy 4ks or being able to 4k with most factors doesn't mean they are "the only viable killers", it means they are the absolute strongest killers that can win the easiest.
I do agree with most killers being viable because, well, you don't need to 4k every match. If you don't like getting a 0k, surivors definitely don't like constant 0 escapes. Now in the top percent, there IS only a couple killers that are viable, but I promise you aren't going against the top percent every round lol. Play who you like
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