Knight main returning after a year
My first impression was positive after reading about the Knight changes, they make him much more flexible and interesting to play, but my praise ends there.
Solo Survivor feels like it's barely changed, yet Killer feels far more difficult to do well at than it did a year ago (Vecna patch was when I last played), and that was already a pretty high baseline.
Unless DbD just doesn't reduce your MMR when you haven't played for a long time, something's wrong with Killer. I started to get nervous after reading the patch notes, and sure enough, I felt it in the actual game; I've been fighting tooth and nail just to secure 1ks with a handful of hooks. I only do moderately well against Survivors that are clearly just bad.
Survivors have received tons of cumulative buffs over the past several major updates, while Killers' general tools have largely either stagnated or been nerfed. The extra 10 seconds on hook, the many miscellaneous buffs to Survivor perks (Healing/repair speed perks in particular), the nerfs to Mangled, Grim Embrace, Pain Res, Pentimento, and Pop, with little to no compensation given in return.
Now, given what I've seen of the new Killers, I'm sure if I was playing a high-tier or top-tier Killer, most of this wouldn't matter; I'd still do well. But the gap between low-tier and high-tier Killers feels wider than ever. And I hope I don't have to say, Killer as a role shouldn't be balanced around a relative handful of high-tier outliers. The likes of Trapper and Ghostface shouldn't have to suffer for the sins of Blight and Dracula.
And no, buffing the likes of Trail of Torment or Dragon's Grip isn't compensation- in the end, it barely matters how much you nerf gen control perks and buff other perks, weaker Killers will almost always gravitate towards gen control- losing gens is just too devastating, and other perks are usually just too inconsistent, especially on weak Killers- who cares if BBQ and Chili reveals the Survivors' auras 40 meters away if you're playing a Killer with no mobility or ranged attack? Who cares about Exposing a survivor for 30 seconds when you might not even be able to get a hit in that timeframe? Yet even gen control perks often exacerbate the gap between high-tiers and low-tiers; most modern gen control perks require you to get downs/hooks- which means they'll naturally always be stronger in the hands of characters that can get downs faster and more consistently. At this point, almost every aspect of the game works in favor of high-tiers and against low-tiers.
Now, don't get me wrong, it can be very difficult to see the effects of this if you play Survivor, because you won't be playing against mid- to low-tier Killers much, and you'll often be playing solo Survivor (Still easily the weakest role). But my Killer matches have been an uphill battle- the gap between low-tier and high-tier killers has never felt bigger. And if this keeps up, we are, at the very least, going to see a lot less people playing Mid- to low-tier Killers as time goes on. So I hope you like Kaneki.
It's ridiculous that a Killer like Blight exists in the same game as a Killer like Trapper. And the notion that Killer as a role can be truly balanced with both characters existing at such vastly different power levels is just as absurd. We need some serious nerfs targeted at the top-tier Killers, nerfs to Survivor (Particularly the stuff that only really shines in SWFs, like Background Player), and buffs/new perks targeted at low-mid tiers- not just making them easier to play and pick up (In fact, that might be a net negative for the game, given the new player/solo surv experience), but giving them the ability to actually compete against Survivors who know what they're doing.
TL;DR: Killer has gotten much worse to play overall in the past year- top-tiers need nerfs, low- and mid-tiers desperately need buffs.