History of: Sadako Yamamura

GrimReaperJr1232

Samara, you are not

Sadako Yamamura comes from the Ringu franchise (pronounced like "Ring"). This is NOT Samara Morgen from the American Remakes.

One significant difference? Sadako died when she was 19. And we don't know if this is the Sadako from the films or the novels (yes, it was the novel first), the latter of which comes with a lot of weirdness. A lot. There is too much to list, so I'll skip it and let you know that you can draw your fan art without judgment.

Original Sadako

Like many modern killers, Sadako has many weak powers that are meant to work together. Let's break it down into three parts: TVs, Cloak (Manifest/Demanifest), and Condemned.

TVs

When cloaked, Sadako can teleport instantly to a highlighted TV. Any survivor within 16m of that TV gains 1 stack on Condemned (more on this later). You also move at 6.9m/s for 1.5 seconds, but this was mostly a nonfactor despite how good it sounds.

If you teleport, that TV goes on cooldown for 100 seconds. A survivor can disable that TV, gaining a tape that will passively build Condemned until delivered to another random TV. This lasts for 60 seconds.

Yes. You were punished more for using your power.

(De)manifest

To simplify this, I will refer to his as cloak/uncloak since it functions almost as Wraith's power, at least in principle.

When cloaked, Sadako loses his TR. However, she GAINS a 24m directional lullaby. What's the point of a stealth mode when you have a lullaby with a tiny radius that tells them you're nearby? There was none. Except when you were cloaked, and unlike Wraith, you had no collision to bypass body blocks, which was/is nice.

Okay, that's not entirely true. Instead of going translucent like Wraith, Sadako "flickered" in and out of visibility within 24m. Outside that 24 radius, she was invisible completely.

What good Sadakos could do was use that "flicker" to mindgame certain tiles and either force a drop or get a hit. Of course, when they were willing to give you every pallet, you're an M1 Andy with nothing. It was niche and didn't amount to much of a chase power, especially without add-ons.

Important note: For whatever reason, you did not lose Bloodlust. A chase did not end while you were cloaked and could still start, so you never lost Bloodlust. This was not a bug either. It's just a bizarre design choice that makes her an outlier in the "power breaks Bloodlust" rule.

Condemned

This was the problem with Sadako.

Condemned did nothing until you gained 7 stacks. If you earned 7, when you downed, you could be killed. That's it. You're killed. Done. Game over. 0 Hooks? Too bad because you're dead.

Much like Pig's RBTs, Condemned was not meant to kill people. It was meant to be a threat they had to address/manage to avoid dying.

The problem is that this mechanic was tied heavily to her TVs. Those TVs had a strict range to inflict 1 stack of condemned and a massive cooldown. That is, unless they took tapes from TVs and held onto the tape to passively build condemned.

The only way to remove condemned stacks was to take a tape (which would still inflict 1 stack of condemned, for some reason), then deliver it to another TV, which would remove 3 stacks (and disable the TV, too, for some reason).

Counter with ignorance?

How did you defeat Sadako? Ignore her. By that, I mean to ignore her TVs. Unless she teleports back to back on TVs you were next to until you gained around 4 stacks, you were better off ignoring her TVs. Why disable them when her cooldown is much longer when teleporting? She's not a good chasing killer, and disabling them requires you to do a runaround to avoid dying.

Condemned Sadako

This is when people discovered how to make Sadako work in the worst ways.

I won't name-drop here, but a certain content creator created a playstyle tailored to inflicting condemnation and not hooking survivors. This largely centered around two add-ons: Iri Tape and Ring Drawing.

Iri Tape: Hit a survivor within 6 seconds of Teleporting or uncloaking, and the last 4 TVs disabled by your teleport instantly turn back on.

Ring Drawing: When a survivor with condemned is healed 1 health state by a survivor, the healer is inflicted with 1 condemned stack

So, the idea was simple. Spam teleports while refreshing your TVs, and instead of hooking, you slugged survivors on the ground. This turned matches a nightmare.

Now, I've gone against this. The same person that made this playstyle; I've versed him with my friends. It was rough to go against even if you 100% knew what you were doing. A lot of survivors loathed this playstyle. It was very mechanically different from other killers, which might sound good, except DBD does not have a good history with those types of killers: They're either pathetic (OG Freddy), extremely powerful (Nurse), or have a power filled with so many holes that entire power had to undergo major reworks (OG Legion).

Too Strong and Too Weak

Basekit Sadako was one of the worst killers in the game. There is no way to sugarcoat it. She was awful. Oh, she had her fans—a lot, actually—and she has a surprisingly dedicated player base, even at her worst. But she was, objectively, a very, very weak killer.

Statistically, she was fine. However, this was likely due to the condemned playstyle and because the best means to counter it was to ignore what was meant to be her counterplay, which meant it was very nonintuitive.

Condemned Sadako was despised, but everyone collectively groaned and had to admit it was functionally the only way to play her. You could ignore it, but you were so weak in so many aspects that it was almost like you were punishing yourself.

Sadako 2.0

I'm going to break down her changes in the simplest way possible

TVs

• Cooldown after a Teleport reduced to 45 seconds
• Survivors disabling a TV lasts for 70 seconds
• Added a 10-second cooldown after a teleport (so you couldn't spam)

Condemned

• Survivors no longer passively gained condemned when holding a tape
• All survivors NOT holding a tape when Sadako teleports gain 3/4 of a condemned stack
• Tapes can be delivered to ANY TV to remove condemned stacks
• When hit with a Basic Attack while HOLDING a tape, the tape is destroyed, AND you instantly gain 2 condemned stacks

Cloaked

• Chase ends when cloaked, so you do not gain/keep Bloodlust
• You cannot be stunned while cloaked. To be clear, YOU DID NOT GO THROUGH/BREAK PALLETS. You just ignored the stun animation. A lot of people didn't understand that at first.

Uh-Oh…

How do I put this? Sadako was a mess after this.

Oh, she performed well—very well. But everyone hated her. Even Sadako players hated her. They hated having their teleports restricted. They hated how they didn't increase her flicker duration to do more mindgames (in fact, they nerfed an add-on that helped in that). They DESPISED losing Bloodlust, considering she was already a pathetic chaser.

Instead, she was a hit-and-run killer. Unlike Wraith, who also hit and runs, her goal was inflicting Condemned until you died. It often meant you got slugged on the ground, despite Ring Drawing getting nerfed to only work when healing a survivor from injured to healthy.

Iri Tape was reworked, but it was broken. It made it so that instead of any TV, you had to deliver your tape to a specific one again. Except for a random TV, and even though the game didn't say it, it was the furthest TV away—I don't think it was supposed to work like that, but it did consistently in my experience. And, combined with the newly reworked Mother's Comb that notified when a tape was taken, you could not deliver that Tape because Sadako would cut you off and instantly apply 2 stacks.

Oops…

A few months later, BHVR outright said Sadako's rework "missed the mark." That's basically a way of saying they f###ed up, so they put her in line for another rework.

Sadako 3.0

Here we go again. I'll try to keep it simple.

Disclaimer: This isn't exactly how 3.0 launched, as there were changes a week later due to A LOT of backlash from disliked PTB changes. So, we're ignoring that and just looking at her post-buff.

Cloaked

• You gain Bloodlust again
• You still cannot be stunned
• Increased invisibility duration when she "flickers."
• When uncloaking, she moves at 4m/s instead of 3.68m/s (so she no longer loses distance)

Condemned

• Condemned is now inflicted whenever Sadako teleports and a survivor is within 16m of an active TV (any active TV, not just the one she teleports to unlike her original iteration).
• Tapes are no longer destroyed when hit by a basic attack, and they no longer cause you to gain additional stacks. (There's no downside/risk to holding a tape now, essentially.)
• When a survivor with condemned stacks is hooked, 3 Condemned Stacks become "locked." Thus, if Meg has 4 condemned stacks and Sadako hooks her, she can remove 1 stack, but she is stuck with 3 for the rest of the game. (and don't worry, they can't lock in stacks you don't have; a survivor with 1 getting hooked won't suddenly be locked in 3 stacks. Just 1). This repeats if you get hooked again (locked in 3 —> locked in 6), but if you got hooked twice, you're dead anyway if you get downed.

Side note: ring drawing was changed to inflict 1 condemned stack on all OTHER survivors when hooking someone with a tape, and Iri Tape was reworked into something so useless I can't even be bothered to type it down. Just don't bother. It's a downgrade.

TVs

• Um… nothing? They added a VFX to display their range clearly, but that's it.
• They also made reduced the time to insert/take a tape from 2 seconds to 1 second. Mostly meaningless, but they REALLY wanted to kill off Condemned Sadako at this point.

How is she now?

She's… fine?

Sadako is still a noob stomper and decimates teams that don't know what they're doing. Against competent survivors, she's lacking in several areas, but I don't see that changing. Sadako is about as good as she will get after everything she's been through.

But Sadako, I feel, highlights an important rule we should all take to heart: Insta-kills are ####ing dumb. Let's not do those again, please.