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Lets talk about the Elephant in the Room: Killers are not being designed with hard numbers in mind.
Going on 2 years now, DBD has made a lot of progress on fixing a lot of balance issues (removal of infinites, pallet changes, and so forth), but it still tolerates a lot of design imbalance and inconsistencies. Lets talk about killers. Specifically, lets talk about how indirect killers, those who should have more utility and x-factors over direct killers, are somehow given less. And it baffles me why this is so.
For the longest time, there has been the generally agreed upon trinity of nurse/hillbilly/huntress being regarded as the only consistent viable killers at high ranks. As evidenced throughout the various tweaks and reworks (cubes?) from various patches, I don't think the developers grasp the humongous magnitude of the chasm between the strengths of these killer's hero powers in comparison to the rest of the killer crew.
Killers like nurse, hillbilly, and huntress when played to their fullest potential end chases within 5 to 30 seconds. Other M1 killers are spending 30s to 2 minutes consistently being pallet looped, but on top of that, these other killers are the ones who are being given extra restrictions and extra drawbacks for some unknown reason.
Let me do some comparisons to drive home how deep the gap truly is.
Wraith vs Hillbilly:
Wraith is supposed to use stealth as a superior form of patrolling generators and starting chases closer to people. The problem is that Hillbilly does those 2 things better.
Wraith has extra movement speed when cloaked to patrol generators.
But hillbilly has even more movement speed to patrol generators and it 1 shots people simultaneously.
... while poor wraith must resort to M1 chasing people over the course of a minute at best around a few pallets.
Wraith is not fully invisible. High ranking survivors often see him coming and can react. Sprint burst away before an M1 chase even begins.
Hillbilly can cover his terror radius in mere moments and then start an M1 chase. In practice, he gets to start a lot of chases really close. Closer than wraith actually in a lot of common instances.
Yet for some bizarre reason, it is wraith who is punished with extra restrictions like flashlight lightburn and not on someone like nurse/billy/huntress who have direct chase ending potential. They should be the ones with huge drawbacks to reign in the advantages of a direct killer power.
For crying out loud, wraith walks around slowly ringing a bell for a few seconds, but billy can exit chainsaw almost instantly and begin the chase.
Trapper vs Huntress
Huntress starts with multiple axes. They do direct damage at range.
Trapper starts with 1 trap. It might do indirect damage.
Huntress reloads everything with any one locker opening.
Trapper must scour the entire map to pick up 1 trap at a time.
Huntress winds up and moves slower to line up a shot.
Trapper is completely still and his animation takes longer.
Trapper can trap pallets loops and it might do something.
Huntress can force guaranteed damage hits on pallet drops/vaults within loops.
Who is spending several minutes getting loops and must invest several minutes to use their power to put and end to various loops vs who is instantly ending chases and getting free hits in mere seconds?
It gets worse when you consider that even when trapper's traps which only might be triggered do actually trigger, its still not a guaranteed kill. Unless you're there the survivor escapes the bear trap.
And then who has the sabotage vulnerability? Huntress can't have her lockers sabotaged. Its the poor trapper with the extra downsides.
And to keep beating a dead horse, guess who has the superior addons on top of that:
[url]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBi5ew19WHo[/url]
What I'm afraid is going to happen given the track record with rework and balance changes in the past is that the upcoming mid-chapter killer re-balance is going to have a laundry list of little things like we reduced wraith's uncloak time by 0.2 seconds and sped up trapper's animations by 5% and then pat themselves on the back. That's not going to cut it. Being forced to be M1 killers spending time in longer chases multiple times over, things like Wraith and Trapper need to have the upper hand in utility. Wraith needs to be faster than billy when stealthed. Wraith needs to be fully invisible to match billy's ability to ambush people with his speed covering his terror radius. And even then, one has to wonder if that is enough to justify being an M1 killer over one who can consistently 1-shot people. If that sounds very powerful, its because the top tier killers are for some reason given so much power in multiple areas beyond their instant-kill potential.
My point is, these gaps in power are so massive that entire reworks are needed. Not just small number changes. I've talked a lot of about clown vs huntress in the past, but these are way bigger chasms that need to be bridged sensibly.
Comments
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As a thought experiment, imagine if Huntress were like trapper.
She'd start with 1 axe and could carry one at a time.
Each locker would only have 1 axe. Addons would let her carry multiple.
She'd be almost stationary when throwing them.
Survivors with saboteur could sabotage lockers.
She would get her 115% movespeed but her lullaby would stay if we consider the directness of the hatchet as a damage dealing tool as something to be included in her power budget vs trapper's single trap doing damage in a generally less direct manner.
She'd have a bunch of useless addons that increase locker sabotage time but increase her windup time.
Survivors would be saying l2aim in the end-game screen still.4 -
I find this interesting and I agree. Do you have any Ideas on what they could do to these killers? I'm not saying that YOU are the one that needs to come up with changes, but I'm just wondering if you have any ideas.
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@LittleWolf said:
I find this interesting and I agree. Do you have any Ideas on what they could do to these killers? I'm not saying that YOU are the one that needs to come up with changes, but I'm just wondering if you have any ideas.I don't have a comprehensive list but addressing some soft advantages that these killers should have, here are some random thoughts:
If M1 wraith is to be the superior scout over billy who can 1 shot ppl, wraith needs to be moving at like 200% to 250% (use imagination on the numbers) movement speed like this but slightly transparent:
It could have a cooldown so it couldn't be spammed as a chasing tool but a wraith needs to be THE patrolling scout to check all generators within 20 seconds every 35 seconds for example or through some other mechanic. Weak chase, but you are always afraid of his ability to cover ground to find and start a chase which is not the case right now.
Trapper's traps need to put people in the dying state at least, not wounded. All that time spent doing a setup needs to have a powerful effect especially since it can be disarmed with little consequence.
It'd be a good time to brainstorm what exactly they need to be the kings in utility and x-factors and cover the power gap between direct and indirect methods of killing.
Post edited by Doomsaki on4 -
This is all very true.
Nerf billy and nurse considerably
Nerf huntress slightly
Buff pig and Myers slightly
leave doc and hag where they are
buff trapper, wraith, and Freddy tremendously3 -
How to make wraith super viable, guide by Jack. Buff ghost speed. Increase regular speed to what cloaked speed used to be. Instant top tier.
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@Jack11803 said:
How to make wraith super viable, guide by Jack. Buff ghost speed. Increase regular speed to what cloaked speed used to be. Instant top tier.You do know that increasing his speed to 6 m/s will make him THE best killer, regardless of other changes, including lightburn without cloaking, etc?
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@Sarief said:
@Jack11803 said:
How to make wraith super viable, guide by Jack. Buff ghost speed. Increase regular speed to what cloaked speed used to be. Instant top tier.You do know that increasing his speed to 6 m/s will make him THE best killer, regardless of other changes, including lightburn without cloaking, etc?
.....YUP!
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@Jack11803 said:
@Sarief said:
@Jack11803 said:
How to make wraith super viable, guide by Jack. Buff ghost speed. Increase regular speed to what cloaked speed used to be. Instant top tier.You do know that increasing his speed to 6 m/s will make him THE best killer, regardless of other changes, including lightburn without cloaking, etc?
.....YUP!
my bad, apparently it's 5.04, which does not change anything
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@Sarief said:
@Jack11803 said:
@Sarief said:
@Jack11803 said:
How to make wraith super viable, guide by Jack. Buff ghost speed. Increase regular speed to what cloaked speed used to be. Instant top tier.You do know that increasing his speed to 6 m/s will make him THE best killer, regardless of other changes, including lightburn without cloaking, etc?
.....YUP!
my bad, apparently it's 5.04, which does not change anything
It’d make make him strong. He’d always have nearly the speed of NOED on base wraith.
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@Jack11803 said:
@SariefAnd if it isn’t too strong... then let’s put it in the game! The idea of it makes my loins burn
don't let your fantasies run wild, it's going to turn into smth terrible
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@M2Fream said:
leave doc and hag where they areI was going to do a section of hag vs nurse: setting up time to blink vs unlimited blinking at them.
But a long story short, the comparison is going to fall under the same conundrum of spending so much time setting up something counterable for even less a chance of a guaranteed hit.
I'd argue hag needs a moderate buff.
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I think you made a lot of good points here.
Another point, the Nurse/Huntress/Billy’s drawbacks are all self-caused (poor aim/direction) that skill and experience will reduce. Hag, Trapper, and Wraith can all be sabotaged by an uncontrollable force (survivors) in comparison and these cannot be as improved by skill and experince. Trapper/Hag can always be countered by survivors with specific items (or perk) regardless of how well their traps are placed and Wraith needs to hope he can destealth before being lightburned.
I’ve said in another thread that I am all for play and counter play options but it only works when everyone has equal number of play/counterplay options. And I think you’ve revealed that isn’t the case.1 -
@GhostEuant said:
Another point, the Nurse/Huntress/Billy’s drawbacks are all self-caused (poor aim/direction) that skill and experience will reduce. Hag, Trapper, and Wraith can all be sabotaged by an uncontrollable force (survivors) in comparison and these cannot be as improved by skill and experince. Trapper/Hag can always be countered by survivors with specific items (or perk) regardless of how well their traps are placed and Wraith needs to hope he can destealth before being lightburned.I’ve said in another thread that I am all for play and counter play options but it only works when everyone has equal number of play/counterplay options. And I think you’ve revealed that isn’t the case.
What I suspect is happening is that during the design process, killers are designed by what feels intuitively overbearing or not. An actual evaluation by how much time is invested or needed with a killer power is not being factored in at all. Aimed abilities seem to be given a pass because it feels better to be killed as a result of skill rather than binary mechanics with no room improvement.
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@Jack11803 said:
How to make wraith super viable, guide by Jack. Buff ghost speed. Increase regular speed to what cloaked speed used to be. Instant top tier.If killer power reworks take too long, some kind of band-aid fix might do temporarily.
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@M2Fream said:
.....
Nerf billy and nurse considerably
Nerf huntress slightly
.....The question of how powerful killers need to be, should also be addressed.
I talked about how huge the gap is between wraith and billy for example. But is billy where other killers should be at? Or is billy too strong?
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@Doomsaki said:
@M2Fream said:
.....
Nerf billy and nurse considerably
Nerf huntress slightly
.....The question of how powerful killers need to be, should also be addressed.
I talked about how huge the gap is between wraith and billy for example. But is billy where other killers should be at? Or is billy too strong?
actually Billy is OP, but considering the fact that survivors even more OP, he's the only viable option.
Killers should be a little weaker than Billy, so Billy would need a nerf, IF match time was adapted properly. 3 min genrush by SWF leaves killers eat dust no matter what they do.ps: when someone flashes wraith, you should not uncloak but instead strafe to evade flashlight. You will get point, waste their flashlight, and in worst case you're out of cloak anyway
2 -
I agree that trapper could use a buff however wraith when used correctly is in no need of help. Too often I see a player play wraith as a tank as if charging at a player uncloaked on a generator will work.
The only thing that makes Huntress good is her one shot addons. High ranks can easily avoid her hatchet throws by moving. Much like Billy except he has addons for movement that make him OP.
Pig and Myers are in no need of a buff. Both are silent with almost instant attacks. Pig can distract survivors with reverse beartraps while chasing another hindering their ability to finish gens. Myers has an instant down and no terror radius at specific levels.
Hag, Clown and Doctor are just fine. Only downside to hag is her starting perks are all hexes which when found become useless and traps are easily avoided with survivor perks. Also her trap radius is small to the point it encourages camping.
Spirit needs a nerf due to her phasing during normal walking. It becomes almost impossible to get out of chases and confuses survivors. She has the traveling ability of nurse and Billy with a small warning when with an addons is no longer there. She easily combats pallet loops and downs high rank survivors when used correctly.
The nerf to nurse is what I believe to be her difficulty. It takes a while to get the hang of it and the amount of people who stick with it long enough are few.
Freddy is just a mess without good perks or addons.0 -
As someone who only played Wraith for three weeks straight and was essentially a laughing stock at rank 1/2/3 games, told to change to another Killer by both the people I lost against as well as my friends, I do not think that Wraith is in a good spot. High ranked Survivors saw me when invisible even out of the corner of their eye, and I had only just spotted them. Am I supposed to be playing even more stealthily while invisible too? I avoided hitting grasses and the like but that didn't help, they can literally see me (honestly it's not that hard, I can spot a Wraith coming fairly well too lol).
I've already made adjustments that I think could help Wraith become more viable via his addons in this thread (https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/29685/quick-fix-wraith) as honestly he isn't too too bad at a base level in my opinion but just lacks the extra oomph to 4K most of the time, and is the 2nd ranked worst Killer behind good ol' dream boi.
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@Doomsaki said:
Going on 2 years now, DBD has made a lot of progress on fixing a lot of balance issues (removal of infinites, pallet changes, and so forth), but it still tolerates a lot of design imbalance and inconsistencies. Lets talk about killers. Specifically, lets talk about how indirect killers, those who should have more utility and x-factors over direct killers, are somehow given less. And it baffles me why this is so.For the longest time, there has been the generally agreed upon trinity of nurse/hillbilly/huntress being regarded as the only consistent viable killers at high ranks. As evidenced throughout the various tweaks and reworks (cubes?) from various patches, I don't think the developers grasp the humongous magnitude of the chasm between the strengths of these killer's hero powers in comparison to the rest of the killer crew.
Killers like nurse, hillbilly, and huntress when played to their fullest potential end chases within 5 to 30 seconds. Other M1 killers are spending 30s to 2 minutes consistently being pallet looped, but on top of that, these other killers are the ones who are being given extra restrictions and extra drawbacks for some unknown reason.
Let me do some comparisons to drive home how deep the gap truly is.
Wraith vs Hillbilly:
Wraith is supposed to use stealth as a superior form of patrolling generators and starting chases closer to people. The problem is that Hillbilly does those 2 things better.
Wraith has extra movement speed when cloaked to patrol generators.
But hillbilly has even more movement speed to patrol generators and it 1 shots people simultaneously.
... while poor wraith must resort to M1 chasing people over the course of a minute at best around a few pallets.
Wraith is not fully invisible. High ranking survivors often see him coming and can react. Sprint burst away before an M1 chase even begins.
Hillbilly can cover his terror radius in mere moments and then start an M1 chase. In practice, he gets to start a lot of chases really close. Closer than wraith actually in a lot of common instances.Yet for some bizarre reason, it is wraith who is punished with extra restrictions like flashlight lightburn and not on someone like nurse/billy/huntress who have direct chase ending potential. They should be the ones with huge drawbacks to reign in the advantages of a direct killer power.
For crying out loud, wraith walks around slowly ringing a bell for a few seconds, but billy can exit chainsaw almost instantly and begin the chase.
Trapper vs Huntress
Huntress starts with multiple axes. They do direct damage at range.
Trapper starts with 1 trap. It might do indirect damage.
Huntress reloads everything with any one locker opening.
Trapper must scour the entire map to pick up 1 trap at a time.
Huntress winds up and moves slower to line up a shot.
Trapper is completely still and his animation takes longer.
Trapper can trap pallets loops and it might do something.
Huntress can force guaranteed damage hits on pallet drops/vaults within loops.Who is spending several minutes getting loops and must invest several minutes to use their power to put and end to various loops vs who is instantly ending chases and getting free hits in mere seconds?
It gets worse when you consider that even when trapper's traps which only might be triggered do actually trigger, its still not a guaranteed kill. Unless you're there the survivor escapes the bear trap.
And then who has the sabotage vulnerability? Huntress can't have her lockers sabotaged. Its the poor trapper with the extra downsides.And to keep beating a dead horse, guess who has the superior addons on top of that:
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBi5ew19WHo[/url]What I'm afraid is going to happen given the track record with rework and balance changes in the past is that the upcoming mid-chapter killer re-balance is going to have a laundry list of little things like we reduced wraith's uncloak time by 0.2 seconds and sped up trapper's animations by 5% and then pat themselves on the back. That's not going to cut it. Being forced to be M1 killers spending time in longer chases multiple times over, things like Wraith and Trapper need to have the upper hand in utility. Wraith needs to be faster than billy when stealthed. Wraith needs to be fully invisible to match billy's ability to ambush people with his speed covering his terror radius. And even then, one has to wonder if that is enough to justify being an M1 killer over one who can consistently 1-shot people. If that sounds very powerful, its because the top tier killers are for some reason given so much power in multiple areas beyond their instant-kill potential.
My point is, these gaps in power are so massive that entire reworks are needed. Not just small number changes. I've talked a lot of about clown vs huntress in the past, but these are way bigger chasms that need to be bridged sensibly.
The gap between nurse and freddy is small if we compare it to the gap between solo and SWF at the moment (especially as long as rank doesnt mean anything)
The problem is that the devs designed the game for casual players, just liek themselves. The whole game needs a rework basically, but that will never happen sadly
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@Master said:
@Doomsaki said:
Going on 2 years now, DBD has made a lot of progress on fixing a lot of balance issues (removal of infinites, pallet changes, and so forth), but it still tolerates a lot of design imbalance and inconsistencies. Lets talk about killers. Specifically, lets talk about how indirect killers, those who should have more utility and x-factors over direct killers, are somehow given less. And it baffles me why this is so.For the longest time, there has been the generally agreed upon trinity of nurse/hillbilly/huntress being regarded as the only consistent viable killers at high ranks. As evidenced throughout the various tweaks and reworks (cubes?) from various patches, I don't think the developers grasp the humongous magnitude of the chasm between the strengths of these killer's hero powers in comparison to the rest of the killer crew.
Killers like nurse, hillbilly, and huntress when played to their fullest potential end chases within 5 to 30 seconds. Other M1 killers are spending 30s to 2 minutes consistently being pallet looped, but on top of that, these other killers are the ones who are being given extra restrictions and extra drawbacks for some unknown reason.
Let me do some comparisons to drive home how deep the gap truly is.
Wraith vs Hillbilly:
Wraith is supposed to use stealth as a superior form of patrolling generators and starting chases closer to people. The problem is that Hillbilly does those 2 things better.
Wraith has extra movement speed when cloaked to patrol generators.
But hillbilly has even more movement speed to patrol generators and it 1 shots people simultaneously.
... while poor wraith must resort to M1 chasing people over the course of a minute at best around a few pallets.
Wraith is not fully invisible. High ranking survivors often see him coming and can react. Sprint burst away before an M1 chase even begins.
Hillbilly can cover his terror radius in mere moments and then start an M1 chase. In practice, he gets to start a lot of chases really close. Closer than wraith actually in a lot of common instances.Yet for some bizarre reason, it is wraith who is punished with extra restrictions like flashlight lightburn and not on someone like nurse/billy/huntress who have direct chase ending potential. They should be the ones with huge drawbacks to reign in the advantages of a direct killer power.
For crying out loud, wraith walks around slowly ringing a bell for a few seconds, but billy can exit chainsaw almost instantly and begin the chase.
Trapper vs Huntress
Huntress starts with multiple axes. They do direct damage at range.
Trapper starts with 1 trap. It might do indirect damage.
Huntress reloads everything with any one locker opening.
Trapper must scour the entire map to pick up 1 trap at a time.
Huntress winds up and moves slower to line up a shot.
Trapper is completely still and his animation takes longer.
Trapper can trap pallets loops and it might do something.
Huntress can force guaranteed damage hits on pallet drops/vaults within loops.Who is spending several minutes getting loops and must invest several minutes to use their power to put and end to various loops vs who is instantly ending chases and getting free hits in mere seconds?
It gets worse when you consider that even when trapper's traps which only might be triggered do actually trigger, its still not a guaranteed kill. Unless you're there the survivor escapes the bear trap.
And then who has the sabotage vulnerability? Huntress can't have her lockers sabotaged. Its the poor trapper with the extra downsides.And to keep beating a dead horse, guess who has the superior addons on top of that:
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBi5ew19WHo[/url]What I'm afraid is going to happen given the track record with rework and balance changes in the past is that the upcoming mid-chapter killer re-balance is going to have a laundry list of little things like we reduced wraith's uncloak time by 0.2 seconds and sped up trapper's animations by 5% and then pat themselves on the back. That's not going to cut it. Being forced to be M1 killers spending time in longer chases multiple times over, things like Wraith and Trapper need to have the upper hand in utility. Wraith needs to be faster than billy when stealthed. Wraith needs to be fully invisible to match billy's ability to ambush people with his speed covering his terror radius. And even then, one has to wonder if that is enough to justify being an M1 killer over one who can consistently 1-shot people. If that sounds very powerful, its because the top tier killers are for some reason given so much power in multiple areas beyond their instant-kill potential.
My point is, these gaps in power are so massive that entire reworks are needed. Not just small number changes. I've talked a lot of about clown vs huntress in the past, but these are way bigger chasms that need to be bridged sensibly.
The gap between nurse and freddy is small if we compare it to the gap between solo and SWF at the moment (especially as long as rank doesnt mean anything)
The problem is that the devs designed the game for casual players, just liek themselves. The whole game needs a rework basically, but that will never happen sadly
i want a trapper buff though so far one of the only ways i find him viable without mad trap setting predictions is running stbfl with 8 stacks and 115% movement speed you will leave everyone crippled and dying with in seconds
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The last time I suggested survivors be allowed to sabotage the huntress' lockers, I was assaulted (metaphorically). I still think it's a good idea tho...
...wastes survivors' time and all...
...and would be fun...0 -
You can't just sabotage a locker, that's where all the Dwights live :0
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