how I think the strongest killers (mainly Nurse) can be succesfully reworked.
I recently made a post about the latest PTB, and concluded that killers changes that affect the whole killer roster won't work until the gap between the weakest and strongest killers is way smaller, with knocking the power of the strongest killers (blight, nurse, ghoul) down being more important.
straight up nerfing a killer can end up backfiring, E.g nerfing the nurse so missing a blink is more punishing or hitting a blink is harder wouldn't make her weaker, just more frustrating to play as and give her a higher skill ceiling.
A killer that has both strong map traversal and the ability to down survivors quickly is the oni. He is a very solid killer, but why he isn't among the strongest is because he has to build his rage by collecting blood. A lot of killers that in theory have very strong mobility and/or mobility are actually held back in the same way.
That design philosophy of BHVR has been like that especially with the latest killers, which I think is a good thing. Here are a few examples of killers with strong mobility and/or ways to injure survivors that are held back because they:
- need to apply cleansable effects first (unknown, singularity, krasue)
- need to grow stronger first (nemesis, shape, oni)
- can be shut down by survivors (Singularity, Xenomorph, plague)
- have to make a risky commitment (Twins, Krasue, lich)
Maybe the same idea as oni, or the previous ideas, can be applied to the current strongest killers, to rework them in a way that doesn't necessarily nerf their numbers, map traversal or way to injure survivors. I'll finish with a bad idea from me for the most problematic of them all, the nurse. i'm no gamedeveloper but it makes sense to me:
- The nurse 'channels energy from a powerful and violent last breath' to blink. Maybe she could start the trial as normal movement speed killer and like the oni have to fill a power gauge first somehow (collect breaths instead of blood? force-pull them from survivors in line of sight perhaps?), and then be able to activate her current power for a while or maybe even permenantly, idk. She would still be hella strong but I think this would be a step in the right direction.