DBD Problems and Potential Fixes 8/10 Strong and Weak Killers, Items, and Add-ons
This is a series of recommendations to hopefully change the game for the better. I am posting each section separate, but a lot of them are connected and work much better understanding the other changes. Some are more Killer sided, and some are more Survivor sided, but overall I think it levels the playing field in a positive way.
If you want to read the draft I am posting the sections from you can follow this google doc link.
With that said, here is part 8.
Killers and Survivor’s Items/add-ons performing vastly above and below the norm
Nurse and Blight are ridiculously lethal compared to their counterparts. Here are some ideas to help tone them down without gutting them, among a few others. Ideally when the killers are closer in potential to one another we can receive better basekit changes or perks without the extremes preventing it for the lesser killers as seen with Awakened Awareness for example.
Nurse
Nurse currently starts to recover blink charges when the fatigue starts. I would propose she instead starts to recover after the fatigue is completed. The green recharge add-on would instead lose the 20%, and make Blink charge recovery work how it currently does, on fatigue start. The yellow recharge could be buffed to .5s, from in between the .4s and .6s the yellow and green currently give.
Another commonly quoted nerf would be making Blink attacks count as Special Attacks, instead of basic. This would be fair considering they nerfed Awakened Awareness almost exclusively due to Nurse being able to abuse this, especially when paired with Starstruck.
There are claims that the Nurse would be worthless without basic attack blinks. To counter that I say Huntress thrown Hatchets, Demogorgon Shreds, Blight Rushes, Pig Charges, and Oni Blood Fury uncharged M1s all work fine without being basic attacks. Plus she still has basic attacks if people attempt bodyblocking hooks when carrying survivors, when you have someone cornered on the edge of the map and can hit with the lunge, and when using the Spasmodic Breath or Matchbox add-ons.
Another possibility to help normalize map resource utilization for the Nurse, is to have windows and dropped Pallets delay the blink arrival. If a pallet is dropped or in the process of being dropped, then the connected walls are augmented. If the Nurse blinks through an augmented wall her blink is slowed by .5-1s (numbers WIP/need testing). If a survivor vaults a window then the connected walls are augmented to a lesser degree, for .25-.5s for once the vault is started, and lingering 3-5s after vaulting. A final related change would be returning the Stun/Fatigue combo. If a Nurse was stunned mid blink/blink swing, she would take the stun, then get hit by the fatigue after the stun ran out.
I think the above is good enough, but an additional idea would be to lock the camera when blinking, so that you cannot turn until you reach the blink destination. This would be disabled when using the Campbell’s Last Breath addon, re-enabling moving the camera during blinks. (Personally I think this would be too far if combined with the above nerf/nerfs, but the more ideas to play with the better.)
Blight
For Blight I would recommend a similar change with his base recovery and the Alchemist Ring add-on. Currently if Blight hits a pallet/wall with a Lethal Rush he starts to recover tokens on hit, as opposed to after the fatigue/hit recovery with every other type of rush. I would propose normalizing all Blight token recovery to occur after the fatigue/hit recovery, including walls and pallets. Alchemist’s Ring would be changed to start the token recovery to the start of the fatigue/hit recovery for all types.
Secondly, I would drop Blight’s base speed to 4.4, and boost his rush speed boost to two and one twenty second or one eleventh depending on how the speed formula works. ([209.09% or 200*1.045] from 200%). This would keep his Blight Rushes at 9.2, and slightly tickle nerf down speed add-ons if the formula works one of the two ways. His terror radius would remain 32m, same logic as Deathslinger.
Finally missed rush swings gain an extra second for recovery, from 2.5 to 3.5s.
Those Blight changes are also assuming “bug tech” is removed as well, fixing his hit geometry on map objects to prevent face sliding except when swinging.
Spirit
Spirit’s Mother Daughter Ring has strange functionality compared to similar add-ons. While it claims to have scratch marks no longer be visible once in use, it only prevents additional scratch marks from appearing. Dried Cherry Blossom uses the same descriptor but removes all scratch marks once used. To make Mother Daughter Ring less oppressive, I propose to make the scratch mark feature the same as Dried Cherry Blossom. Additionally it would also deafen the game, making you rely on visual clues only, once entering phasing. It doesn’t need to fully deafen the game, just make the only audio the phasing sound effect. - A friend I asked to review these changes suggested adding the hallucinated dying cries of Rin’s Mother haunting her as the only thing audible when using it instead.
I think she could use more to normalize her, but I cannot think of any basekit changes that are fair for both sides.
After further thought one possible way is always deafening the killer when phasing, this would force the killer to rely on following scratch marks and movement in blades of grass. Less bruteforcing of power use would be possible.
Artist
Artist is a ranged wall piercing killer. To normalize her with other ranged killers her base movement speed should be reduced to 4.4. Same logic as Blight above and Deathslinger, her Terror Radius would remain 32m. (Personally I think she could use more nerfs, but I am unsure how to without gutting her entirely.)
After further thought, I think changing bird cooldowns would be good. Firing 1 stays at 5s, 2 goes from 9s->11s, 3 goes from 12s->18s, 4 goes from 14s->20s, and 5 (which is in the code but not currently possible) goes from 15s->21s. (This would change the cd from 5/4/3/2/1 to 5/6/7/2/1, to not penalize the add-on additionally) Additionally, the cooldown for birds timing out would be raised from a flat 2s, to 2s per bird fizzled/charge used. The idea would be nerfing shotgun spams of birds, but not chase usage for single bird area denial. The Oil Paints add-on would be changed from Killer Instinct width to subtracting 1s off of the cooldown per bird beyond the first. 2 at 10s from 11s, 3 at 16s from 18s, and 4 or 5 at 17s from 20s and 21s.
Freddy
Freddy could use some love. He now gets 15 tokens, and can toggle between Snares and Pallets. Snares cost 3 tokens, pallets cost 2. This makes it so if you used the max number of the current version of tokens you get the exact same number, but now you can mix and match. While holding the power button you can press the secondary power button to toggle, and if you need to set a new trap when you don’t have enough tokens, it will delete the oldest trap(s) whether oldest snare, or the oldest 1 or 2 pallets to give the needed tokens. The deletion AI priority is up for debate for best QoL.
The Freddy add-ons associated with pallets now give +1/2/3 tokens, and the aura reveal for 2/4/6 seconds for trap interaction (from 7 Pallets only and 0/4/6 aura reveal on Pallet only). This would be a placeholder change for until a more proper add-on pass can be done.
Clown
Clown Yellow bottles are underloved, and just as Pink bottles slow survivor vaults maybe Yellow bottles should speed them.
Yellow Bottles now also grant a 20% action speed increase for all actions the Fire Up perk also increases (Picking up and dropping dying survivors, breaking walls/pallets/gens, and vaulting windows). Alternatively they could simply increase all action speeds by 20%. I would recommend the Fire Up selection since that could only help survivors vault in chase if a Clown misplays, as opposed to weird scenarios like boosting gen times or cleanse/boon times.
As a Clown enjoyer I also have plenty of ideas for an add-on rework/pass. The brown throw cooldown now combines the effect with the yellow add-on as well for 90% bottle throw cooldown. Throwing more bottles is typically bad as you waste your precious ammo. The yellow cooldown add-on now gives Oblivious for 60s on purple bottles. The blind add-on for purple bottles is also extended to 60s. The purple gas spread add-on is changed to damage 10% current gen progress and start regression on direct purple bottle hit against a gen. This would not function if a survivor is currently working on the gen, or if it is currently regressing, so you can’t throw a bunch of bottles and tank completion. You could however throw a bottle directly at a survivor working on a gen, and that would damage the 10% and entity block the gen for 5s. (Similar to Ghost Face’s Driver’s License add-on) The yellow spread add-on would decrease the time for yellow gas to activate, I would make it instant. The yellow rarity yellow gas duration is buffed to the purple rarity 2s. The purple rarity would be changed to double the action speed bonus when affected by yellow gas.
An alternative or simultaneous buff would be giving clown 1 more basekit bottle, and nerfing Redhead’s Pinky Finger, in order to keep it at 2 bottles without extra bottle add-ons. I would only do this if you kept one of the extra bottle add-ons and reworked the other, depending on which rarity the new add-on would be. A new purple rarity add-on could be undetectable while under the effects of yellow gas.
Pig
The Pig has no real chase power, just extensive slowdown. I would recommend buffing the Charge attack to be able to break pallets in 2s, the same speed as Demogorgon shreds. Also her Last Will yellow charge attack addon will also silence the charge preparation until completed. Last Will makes the charge take longer to prep, so it would hopefully be fair enough to put on that.
Another change I would recommend is increasing the Pig’s Crouching speed after being crouched for a duration. I would say after 5-10s of crouching the base speed is increased to 4.0, and the add-on for crouch speed buffed to 4.3 after the boost. This is more a QoL buff however.
Trapper
Trapper Makeshift Wrap (unable to set off your own traps) and Coffee Grounds (5% haste for 5s on trap placement) are now basekit.
Traps now spawn in lockers instead of on the map, with the same max limit. You can only reload one trap per locker per 30s. You can reload two traps from two lockers side by side, but you have to wait 30s to get another trap from the same locker. A locker you reloaded from will show up as white (or any different color) until you can reload from it again.
Makeshift Wrap’s replacement add-on would remove the reload timer. Coffee Grounds’ replacement would remove the oldest closed trap (or oldest open trap without a survivor in it if no traps are closed) when reloading at a locker and capped on traps for the map+carried. Bloody Coil add-on reactivates Trapper’s ability to step in his own traps, just so Survivors have a tell that he is running that addon, and to not waste the modeling and rigging work done for stepping in his own traps (plus some people like to step in their own traps for the memes).
Myers
This is a bit difficult. In one sense he is the only killer who can run out of their power, at the same time he can always have a 16m terror radius and faster vaults. Also his tombstone add-ons are absolutely ludicrous.
I would first start the game in T2, with a speed penalty for Scratched Mirror to set him back down to T1 speeds. Now either the first T3 can require the 5 extra stalk points that would have been gathered from T1->T2, or we can just give it to him for free. I think a change to tombstone add-ons would be to require the survivor to be fully stalked in order to insta-kill them. The tombstone add-ons will now allow you to stalk in T3 in order to finish up the stalk. Finally I would replenish 5 stalk points split evenly among the remaining survivors when dropping from T3 to T2, in order to help keep T3 always possible in fringe cases when you either killed someone early, or miraculously got 8 stalks off with no kills and the game still hasn’t ended. This also gives survivor’s a bit more of counterplay against the tombstone piece, because if they wait out the T3 then they need to be fully stalked again to be killed.
Sadako
The tape mechanic is either entirely ignored or abused similar to the old AFK pig style. Hopefully with these changes her basekit will be effectively increased without resorting to abusing fringe cases to be remotely effective.
First, I would have condemned progress at half the rate of active tapes when within range of an active TV and not in chase. This doesn’t stack if you are in overlapping fields, or are holding a tape. The Videotape Copy add-on now removes this passive condemned instead of TP condemned. Secondly, like the AFK pig change, the 2 furthest TVs are selected as tape return locations instead of only one. I think this might be enough, but if she needs more love then perhaps give survivors debuffs at levels of condemnation. I would have a simple hindered condition with 1 or 2% per condemnation level, except when fully condemned. I would then buff the iri Remote Control add-on to keep this hindered when fully condemned. For reference Clown bottles and Dream Snares are 15%, so the max possible slow would be 12%, or 14% with the iri add-on.
Medkits and Healing
In general medkits are too effective at self-healing, and should still promote altruistic healing over healing yourself. These number changes are so that in general, altruistic medkits are more time efficient than self-medkits. The Green Medkit should still fit the niche of self-healing, but at a reduced rate than currently provided. Also co-op healing should be incentivized for its risk of grouping 3 people instead of 2 or 1.
Co-op Healing is done with an additional multiplicative 33% bonus(basekit 8s->6s). Plague has an additional mechanic for Survivors to transfer the infection to an uninfected survivor. The uninfected survivor “heals” the uninjured or broken infected survivor over 4-16s (based on 1% infected and 100% infected, and affected by heal speed modifiers), and the infection is swapped, giving altruism points. Once those 2 survivors do that, neither can participate in that same action for the next 30s, but they may cleanse at a fountain as normal.
Medkit self-heal rate dropped to 66.66% from 100% speed(16s->24s). Altruistic healing rates from Medkit sources are doubled. The new numbers are Brown Altruistic, 12.8s->10.66s, Yellow Altruistic, 11.85s->9.4s, Green and Purple Altruistic, 10.66s->8s, and the new Green self-heal rate is 10.66s->16s. Event Medkits match their basekit counterpart. Medkit add-ons that affect healing speed give the same additional speed boost to altruistic healing, with the exception of Needle & Thread and Surgical Suture (eg. Butterfly Tape now gives +5% all heal speed, +5% altruistic heal speed, for a net +10% on altruistic healing.). Abdominal Dressing no longer gives a -8 charge penalty. (We no longer have heal efficiency perks, only heal inefficiency perks, and this wasn’t updated to match those changes.) Also note that the Anti-Haemorrhagic Syringe speeds will match these updated speeds, with base self-heal taking 24s, and base allied being 10.66s.
Toolboxes
Toolboxes, when used to pump gens, can be quite egregious with synergies. They aren’t a problem when used to sabotage hooks however, due to the risk-reward nature of the action. Charges of all Toolboxes and Toolbox add-ons are reduced by 25%, (8->6, 12->9, 16->12, 20->15, 24->18, 32->24) gen repair speeds are also reduced by 25%, and sabotaging a hook is dropped from 6->4 charges. Also when the killer attack cooldown was reduced, the sabotage cooldown was not changed correspondingly. Sabotage base speed is now 2.7s, from the old 3s, which matched the old killer attack cooldown number.
Keys
Once the hatch spawning logic was changed, keys and their add-ons have become a dreaded item in the vast majority of survivor bloodwebs. Broken Keys now start with 30s instead of 10s. All keys now have the 24m survivor aura basekit for using the key, and the Eroded Token add-on instead adds 24m to survivor aura reads. The Gold Token add-on now is a copy of the current Blood Amber, but only for 24m. Blood Amber loses the increased Key Depletion rate. The Unique Wedding Ring add-on is buffed to additionally reveal your aura to all survivors if you are the Obsession while carrying a key with this add-on. The reduced Obsession rate is unchanged, so you will have to bring an Obsession perk to swap it to you somehow, or donate the item to your ally.
Maps
The basic Map is a bit weak, and could use some love. The basic map now tracks chests and totems by default, but at a reduced 4m range. Red Twine add-on must still be used for Hooks, and killer unique features like Traps or Jigsaw Boxes. Also, add-ons that allow you to track specific things already granted by your map, extend the range by 16m for that type specifically. This is to make the three add-ons not worthless for the Rainbow Map (or if looted with them on it). Red Twine used on a basic Map only sets the range to 8m for totems and chests, and doesn’t get the benefit of the extra 16m.
Edit: Clarity (killer rely -> killer to rely, and re-ordered the numbers for consistency in the healing section)
Comments
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Cool ideas. I think only caveats from what I read (I simply don't have the time to go through all of these), is the basekit of blight should be untouched, it by itself is actually pretty well balanced and I get punishing for misses should in theory happen, but a lot of even very good blights use a swing to cancel their power during travel etc and I feel like punishing this aspect is a bit unjust. I think we need to hit the addons if we wanted to nerf blight. Alchemy ring should probably recover say 2 tokens on a hit, the change you proposed I think is too small for a purple addon. I am surprised you left compound 33 untouched as well as this is arguably stronger and lower skill than the ring. Overall interesting ideas.
Of note as well I think the trapper idea is a very good one. Reloading at lockers would remove some of his rng related issues with map size and trap spawns as it would overall limit the amount of walking he has to do and would give some iron maiden synergy (probably not worth it but still nice).
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The nerfs targeted at Blight do not punish bounce logic at all, and Blights who use skill will largely be unaffected when it comes to match results. The only reason Blights currently swing is to juice a little bit of extra distance, and can easily learn to take the normal fatigue instead. My changes only punish failed power usage, and using no power at all in the form of 4.4 speed. I also made sure to target Alchemist Ring's excessive power, by the normalization of Blight fatigue with and without the add-on.
My personal goal was to eliminate S-tier and D-tier, and flatten the categories to A through C instead. By flattening all killers in basekit power potential, hopefully there isn't as extreme power difference between say Nurse and Trapper. This would also allow for further basekit changes, such as those found in 6.1.0, to be made if needed, without over-buffing the extremes.
I don't doubt all of Blight's add-ons would need adjustment as well, but I only wanted to make basekit changes. (With the exception of Clown since I believe I have enough experience to make reasonable changes for most add-ons.)
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Freddy needs an Addon-Pass asap and Snares/Pallet-Switch like Clown Basekit.
He can use them unlimited just like now, old Traps are replaced when runned out of Tokens. This mechanic is fine. 7 Tokens in total would be fine, the player choose which ability he wants to.use.
He should be able to use Terror-Radius-Perks like Couleophobia in Dreamworld too. Actually, he is even limited in using all perks of the game.
His Dream Projection is fine how it is.
OR: Rework 2.0
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I was only trying to make (hopefully) relatively easy basekit changes, and agree he needs a new add-on pass to make him more relevant. I simply don't think I am qualified with enough experience on Freddy for add-ons as I am with Clown for instance. The reason my version has the mixed cost tokens for Snares/Pallets is because currently Snares are limited to 5, and Pallets at 7. My method ensures the max single type remains the same, and mixing and matching is possible now. The pallet add-ons are given a short term fix until a full pass could be done.
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Ig my thing with blight is as a blight main I would not want to have the extra 1 second cooldown when I am simply cancelling a rush. I see what you are trying to do overall with the balancing and I think a killer like blight would still be S tier and be above the others even with these changes and further addon changes. But I think having killers which are much more capable than others is just fine, especially a killer like blight who truly shines if you spend time learning him.
Put it this way you would have to nerf a killer like blight considerably and buff trapper considerably to bridge the huge gap between that example (I think you would need to give trapper some kind of movement speed ability for example for him to have close to blight's map pressure).
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Well... I can see a lot of these changes come into the game
But given BHVR's patching it might take then a year or two... if they can even do some of those changes
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For the attack cooldown I think it would help make him a lot less oppressive when a survivor manages to actually dodge a swing, and gives them a bit of time to actually gain distance. I can understand wanting to end a rush early, running off into the void from butter surfaces, but I think the more practical case would help with counterplay.
I understand that Blight would likely still be among the best killers of the game, but I did not want to be like some posters saying "Blight needs to be 4.0m/s with 6.0m/s rushes with only 1 add-on slot." I was trying to keep reasonable levels of nerfs, and add better rewards for counterplay.
As far as the map traversal speed I did partially account for that in the tunneling section, as I give killers a speed boost for leaving hooks without using their power. A lot of the changes were not intended to be in the vacuum of their own section, but forums work best when I could cut parts up to discuss individually.
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Ok thats a fair point, again I did not manage to read all of what you put from what I saw it seems fine.
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