PTB feedback regarding Knight changes, Nurse changes and Soloq improvements.
Knight: From playing knight in PTB, I did not notice any real tangible impact on the changes. At longer distances, The guards were unable to deliver a hit on their own and I was too far away to utilize the guards to my advantage. when drawing path at long distances.
Here is some rough math that I looked at.
Carnifex movement speed is 4.l(102 m/s). He chases for 24 second at 0.1 m/s. In total, when moving in straight line, he will only catch up the survivor at 2.4 meter away when the hunt starts.
Assassin movement speed is 4.4(110 m/s). He chases for 12 second at 0.4 m/s. In total, when moving in straight line, he will only catch up the survivor at 4.8 meter away when the hunt starts.
Carnifex movement speed is 4.l(102 m/s). He chases for 12 second at 0.1 m/s. In total, when moving in straight line, he will only catch up the survivor at 1.6 meter away when the hunt starts.
When a guard activates the chase, they take 2 seconds to start the chase which is 8 meter of distance. None of these guards can catch up within 8 meter of distance. The guard chase reduction reduces the activation time by 25%. This reduces guard chase start-up time to 1.5 seconds. 1.5 second is 6 meters of distance. I think the knight gaining 5% haste does not help the killer because he is giving up the max distance to draw the guard. 5% haste does not help knight catch-up.
A possible change to fix this issue to make guard 5% faster when drawing a patrol line longer then 10 meters instead of Knight(The killer)
The result of 5% faster guards would mean the following: Carnifex will get 4.8 meters of distance extra(7.2 meters). The assassin will add 2.4m (7.2m). The jailer will add 2.4 for total of 4.0. 2/3 guard will a chance at hitting the survivor if a patrol path is drawn further 10 meters.
Survivors will be more encouraged to use flag or encouraged to try avoid the guard patrol chase from activating on them in chase as the guard will be more deadly if sent out from further away.
Overall, I think knight changes trending the correct direction but they are a little bit underwhelming currently. As a result of changes being a little bit off, I do not think knight will change his play-style of instant-dropping guards at loops because current arithmetic in balance does not reward the knight for doing so. With single change to to increase guard movement speed by 5%(for drawing path up to 10 meters), this would completely change how the knight uses his power but currently it is not there yet.
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Nurse: I think nurse power-level has shifted from a fast and deadly killer to a slow and deadly killer. Her overall ability to down survivors remains unchanged however the speed at which she is able to down survivors has decreased significantly.
Overall I think nurses will lose more games on average leading to nurse's pick-rate to decrease. I think only dedicate nurse mains will continue to play her for those who enjoy her gameplay over competitive killers that typically picked her for her high power-level.
she is still consistent at winning the chase, but she is a lot slower at doing winning the chase. For first time in dbd's history, nurse will have unwinnable games like other killers. I also predict that Blight will become #1 killer while Nurse will become #2 killer in the game.
In term of changes, The nurse changes heavily relegate nurses to running generator regression perks and aura reading perks. so I expect nurse builds to look like Eruption+Scourage hook pain res+Nowhere to hide+SC: Flood of rage. My only fear for nurse is fun-factor. Nurse might be really dry to play as her perk variety will be heavily reduced after the changes.
The add-on changes seem ok but I think the base-kit being a special from basic might be little over-board. Only time will tell if these changes were too much or just right.
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Survivor UI changes: While I think these UI changes are step in the correct direction in improving soloq, I believe the soloq UI changes give information in imprecise form where the Information becomes inadequate to equalize soloq to swf.
To illustrate, Here a few examples for how soloq UI does not help.
Generator icons: They tell the survivor that their teammate is working a generator, but they do not tell what generator are being worked on.
This prevents survivor from utilzing the information to go to the most completed generator where survive by friends could easily communicate which generators should be worked on.
Healing Icons: Healing icons help notify the survivor when a another survivor begins a healing action, but they do not give information for where other survivors are healing.
They also do not provide information for where to find other teammates to heal.
Totem icons: When another survivor begins cleansing a totem, there is totem indicator that is shown to the survivor. If a killer finds a survivor and interrupts their cleansing, other teammate will not know where the totem location is.
This prevents the survivor team from working together to cleanse a potentially dangerous hex totem.
Chase icons: When the killer begins a chase with a survivor, a survivor is icon is shown to the team that a teammate is getting chase. Knowing when a teammate is in chase is great however it does not tell survivor which pallets are being dropped and broken. It also does not help the survivor who is chase to know where to loop because the soloq teammate may still accidentally bring killers to working generators where this not very common in SWF teams(Looping away from killer is standard practice to maximize generator efficiency).
Chest icons: Shows when teammate is doing nothing for the team. not very useful icon.
In conclusion, the survivor icon do help bridge soloq and swf but the icon are incomplete bridge. SWF will still have many advantages perk slot advantages as they will not need to kindred, Rookie spirit, Window of opportunity, bond, Empathy, Small game and so on to play the game efficiency. I do not see killers able to become more challenging to play against(enjoyable to play) when most survivor struggle with said killer due to inability to perform basic survivor actions to win the match.
I still think Icon are very good, but they miss the mark by a little bit.
This concludes my feedback on PTB.
Thank you for reading my post.
Comments
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A couple of thoughts on this feedback:
--If the Nurse ends up being nerfed a good bit, I am 100% ok with it. In my experience currently, from a Survivor perspective, playing against a Nurse is an 'all or nothing' situation. If the Nurse isn't good, the Survivors will walk all over her. If she's any good at all, it's a 4x most of the time. I am fairly decent at juking a Nurse most of the time, unless/until the Nurse can anticipate my juke or otherwise get wise to me, but that is not the case for most other Solo Q survivors. I see more Survivors DC the moment they learn that they're up against a Nurse than I do against any other Killer. So as much as I really do respect a player that has mastered the Nurse(it really is not easy to do), a smack from the Nerf Bat is needed and welcome.
--On the Survivor HUD changes, I'm going to have to disagree with your main thrust. I'm all for being able to see on my HUD what my fellow Survivors are doing in general so that I can plan my own game accordingly. I think also giving info as far as what generator/what totem/what their location is while acting/etc is potentially really unbalancing and a bad idea. There are perks available that will give a Survivor info on most of this(though not all of it), so Survivors can determine whatever perk build will work best for their game, given the HUD info that they'll also be getting.
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