http://dbd.game/killswitch
On Blight
Hey, four digit hour-count gigasweat back again. This time about blight and my general dissatisfaction with his current state.
Why should you listen to me?
- I have several thousand hours spanning pc, console, and even mobile (lol)
- Top 100 1v1 player
- Very experienced comp killer player
- Very experienced comp survivor player
- 500+ hours on blight in public matches alone
- P100 Blight Main
- Consistently coach players on both killer and survivor
So what are our goals with these changes? Without a concrete idea of what we aim to fix, these changes cannot possibly be accurate.
Blight is intrinsically strong in many ways, and many of his stats are borderline impossible to tweak.
For example, you can’t make blight any slower or his power is completely incapable of outplaying loops. When this happens, he is relegated purely to zoning to guarantee free hits.
You also cannot change his turnrate much. If you buff or nerf his turnrate too much in either direction the killer simply stops functioning. If you remember his ptb turnate addon, you will remember why vividly. You can also use current adrenaline vial and see that despite the spreadsheets list of benefits, they simply don’t compensate for how awful blight feels to play with heavily reduced turnrate.
In both instances, these lead to blight being not satisfying for the killer, and not fun for the survivor.
To summarize this first point, blight is fundamentally strong in many untweakable regards. This is why bhvr rarely touches this killer in terms of balancing- it's very hard to know what to change. This is also why many of the changes to blight historically have been wildly controversial.
So what can we realistically aim to do?
Nerf his zoning
Add more ways to outplay loops on the killer side
Add more ways for the survivor to outplay the blight
Make blight more difficult/Punish his mistakes harder
Make blight weaker without impeding what makes people enjoy him
So we know generally what we want to do, but why are we doing this? In general, all of these changes aim to do one of three things.
1: Make him more fun and interesting to play against
2: Make him more fun and interesting to play
3: Make him more fair and balanced (secondary)
Starting out with nerfing his zoning.
Blight has the strongest zoning in the game and frankly it's not close. Zoning is fine as a mechanic, but if a killer becomes too good at it survivors lose much agency in chase. The obvious solution is to simply make blight lose two tokens on kick.
We can see as with the myers rework that giving a power that breaks pallets full movement control during the break animation typically reduces survivor agency too much to be fun.
We can also see with kaneki that losing two tokens on kick leads to far more engaging gameplay on both the survivor side and killer side- as both are impossible to dodge in the open In both cases, we are aiming to add four seconds of downtime after kicking a pallet.
This also makes blight chew through pallets less efficiently, which means he is more enjoyable on maps with fewer pallets. We want killers to have to OUTPLAY tiles, not either walk around the tile mindlessly for a 50/50 or to instantly get a hit with no interaction.
Next
So blight is now forced to outplay loops instead of mindlessly breaking them for a free hit in more instances, how do we make playing around those tiles more fun?
The obvious solution is to re-add hugtech. Hugtech has more counterplay than bump logic, is incredibly satisfying to avoid, and incredibly satisfying to perform. In addition, it makes blight far smoother to play on indoor maps.
All hits in this video are either a guaranteed hit with bump logic anyways or very obviously counterable.
Hugtech is the equivalent of curving on billy, and removing it has the same consequences removing curving on billy would have. It would just encourage him to feather his saw and zone instead of going for cool plays.
Being given many different versatile tools and being told to figure it out is very fun. Removing advanced techniques and alternative ways to outplay loops is not fun. I don’t have a blight playstyle anymore- blight has a playstyle. And to be completely honest- that sucks. Its just not fun. And games are supposed to be fun.
Additionally, blight is infinitely less fun to play against without hugtech. I am not alone in the opinion that blight went from my favorite killer to verse, to one of my least favorite because of just how much more boring he is now. I am not alone in this opinion. Other high level players such as Carol/Davood have also expressed this opinion. There is one objectively correct way to play most loops now and doing anything else is just a waste of time.
And you know what the worst part is? Blight is even stronger than before. He was the 2nd strongest killer back when he had hugtech, and now he is inarguably the strongest. If this was intended to be a nerf, then it objectively failed by every single metric. Hugtech removal makes him less fun on both sides and doesn’t even function as a balancing change.
So bring back hugtech, please. If there are any two changes that are objectively fantastic for blight in every way it would be to make him lose two tokens on kick and to re-add hugtech
As for other more minor changes, i would like to see his base movespeed be reduced to either 110% or 107.5%. In either case, blight will have to actually use his power to get hits which is completely fair given the strength of said power.
Then, I would like to see his maximum flick angle increased to 180 degrees (from 160.) this would just make him more fun and increase his skill ceiling without meaningfully impacting his balance.
I understand that development time is limited as BHVR is trying to switch to publishing games instead of creating them, so i’m simply asking for the reversal of a previous change, two basic numbers tweaks, and a copy pasting of a mechanic that already exists. Ideally wouldn’t be an unreasonable amount of work given the dramatic benefits.
Counterpoints:
“Blight hugtech is an exploit though”
Yes. You are exploiting the fact that blight’s rush collision check used to move alongside blights camera to start a rush in a traditionally invalid position. However, something being an exploit does not make it an inherently good or bad mechanic. Looping is an exploit that abuses the differences in Environmental Collision Boxes between survivors and killers. Crouch tech allows survivors to dodge powers in unintended ways by exploiting killer power hitboxes not extending far enough vertically.
We can even look to other games or sports, dribbling in basketball is an exploit. You cannot run with the ball and must instead pass it, so what if you passed the ball to yourself over and over? Additionally, members of the governing rules committee at the time stated that “We [The Rules Commite] believe that the limitation of the dribble is a necessary change…” Despite that, we can all agree that this dribbling is practically inseparable from the greatest parts of basketball and is one of the most fun and interesting parts about it.
There are exploits that undeniably make games worse. If you can remember the potential energy exploit that let you have infinite charges on a toolbox. Obviously, there are no interesting mindgames, decisionmaking, counterplay, or skill on display here. Its just a MASSIVE flat bonus to gen speeds permanently. Therefore, this is an exploit that only serves to detract from the game.
We can also look at other games which remove exploits such as impact tricking in Siege. These got massively nerfed to the point of being effectively removed. And the community got extremely mad at their removal, similar to the outrage from blight mains when hugtech was removed. In my opinion, removing fun and engaging mechanics is a bad decision, regardless of intentionality.
The pros and cons of an exploit should be determined on a case by case basis. Therefore, I do not find this argument convincing.
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So in conclusion (or, if you just want to skip to the TLDR instead of reading the entire yap session)\
1: Make blight lose two tokens on kick
2: Make blight 110% base movespeed (From 115)
3: Re-Add Hugtech
4: Increase his maxmimum flick angle to 180 (from 160)
Comments
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I figured it might be helpful to leave an addon tierlist aswell. Although, my tierlists always consist of too many tiers (I can't help myself)
Speed addons are fine. They encourage blight to outplay tiles and use multiple tokens to get hits. Encourages a fun playstyle, not overpowered.
Shredded notes is *arguably* overtuned. The only annoying part of shredded notes is oftentimes you can't know it is in play until you lose to it- but that is moreso a conceptual problem with the addon system in general.
Alch ring gives blight even more mobility. Good effect, cool design that encourages multiple rushes. Perfectly fine from survivor PoV and very fun and interesting from killer pov. Fantastic rework.
C21 is the prime example of an addon that you cannot know is in play until you lose to it. It removes much of blight's engaging counterplay and lobotomizes his gameplay loop. Ideally it could be reworked, but the simplest change to make would be for it to reveal itself whenever it effects a survivor.
Soul Chemical and C33 give blight things he wants, but in such small amounts it isn't especially relevant. Oftentimes with soul chemical its effect will never even happen if you Instant Lethal Rush- as is common for good blights. Okay synergy with blight tag.
Every remaining addon is completely incosequential and provides nothing meaningful to a semi-competent blight.
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He's been indisputably top 2 strongest killer in the game. He doesnt need compensatory buffs. Just nerf him down to A tier so he stops breaking the game.
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Lol…this just reads like a wannabe Momoseventh who is mad that his crutch exploit got removed and he doesn't have enough skill to perform without it.
Blight is extremely overpowered as it is.
Nerf his base speed, his power speed, his add ons, his pallet breaking, his turn rate, and let hug tech be dead forever.
He can absolutely still outplay tiles if he were slowed down, he just won't get guaranteed cheese hits that can be executed on autopilot with less than 20 hours practice.
One thing is for sure, never balance Blight around a "comp" Blight main's recommendations. Yeah, you want a cheese tactic reimplemented just like so many "comp" Kaneki's would love to have kidnap tech back. Not gonna happen, sorry. The video example is just so hilariously busted that it's obvious why it was removed.
Since you're struggling with Blight, take a close look at what you're doing wrong instead of asking the devs for exploits to compensate for a skill issue.
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1: Make blight lose two tokens on kick
2: Make blight 110% base movespeed (From 115)
3: Re-Add Hugtech4: Increase his maxmimum flick angle to 180 (from 160)
This seems like a better list to start with.2 -
Well I beat momoseventh in 1v1s and ended two of his winstreaks so… if anything i'm an Obii wannabe
I can still perform perfectly well in tournament and public matches with blight. These changes are not intended to "compensate" for nerfs. Though, blight would be worse with these changes implemented by a pretty significant margin [deservedly so.]
The goal of balancing is not to make a game "fair" (however one would do that in an asymetrical 4v1 game with heavy rng elements,) the goal of balance is to make a game that is fun to play and watch. Blight in his current state does not fufill either of those criteria.
You BUFF something to incentivize certain behavior (in this case, fast paced, highly technical, and counterable gameplay). Then, you NERF to discourage behavior (In this case, zoning/momo teching to get free hits with little to no counterplay)
"Blight is extremely overpowered as it is."
Correct! He is one of five killers i would consider overpowered in their current state.
(That being, nurse, blight, hillbilly, spirit, dracula)
Now, we must ask ourselves the obvious question- is this inheirently a problem?
Hillbilly is pretty inarguably overpowered, and people adore him from all angles. He's fast paced, technical, fun to play, fun to play against, and fun to watch. More mobile than blight, with a highly lethal instadown. His chase is just less consistent and more counterable. This is a point i adressed in my post.
"Nerf his base speed, his power speed, his add ons, his pallet breaking, his turn rate, and let hug tech be dead forever."
These points were all adressed in my two posts. In summary, I find this to be a poor idea because of how the encourage blight to lean into his obnoxious zoning for guranteed hits instead of doing interesting, fun, and counterable things. He'd be worse, sure, but i was there for the Twins Rework PTB. If you make a non dash-slop killer top 2 then there will be fire in the streets.
"He can absolutely still outplay tiles if he were slowed down, he just won't get guaranteed cheese hits that can be executed on autopilot with less than 20 hours practice."
I can gurantee i can loop your placebo talbet blight for over two minutes if you would like to put that to the test.
We agree that he should get less 'guaranteed cheese hits' that can be 'executed on autopilot'. That is the basis of pretty much my entire post. You can outplay survivors with placebo tablet sure- but only if the survivors have their monitors turned off. I don't find it reasonable to balance around survivors who don't know how to play the game though in any way though given thet the solutions to their problems already exist in-game.
"One thing is for sure, never balance Blight around a "comp" Blight main's recommendations. Yeah, you want a cheese tactic reimplemented just like so many "comp" Kaneki's would love to have kidnap tech back. Not gonna happen, sorry. The video example is just so hilariously busted that it's obvious why it was removed."
Most players in comp want kaneki's vaults to be removed entirely given that they do literally nothing against players who know the revault timing and just made cutoffs (the most skillfull part of kaneki) annoying to do. Kidnap tech was fine i guess? It had consistent counterplay in every situation it was just pretty linear and really unintuitive to learn how to play against. Kidnap tech was in this weird spot where it completely ruined casual play and was meaningless for competitive play. I, for one, am perfectly fine with its removal. Once again, I address this same point in the counterarguments section of my original post.
"Since you're struggling with Blight, take a close look at what you're doing wrong instead of asking the devs for exploits to compensate for a skill issue."
Got my ass
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While I liked the hug tech I think blight with the J/Z flick was a lot more fun and interesting than the blight with hug tech. I think simply adding the adrenaline vial's increase to maximum look angle to his base kit in order to enhance his flicking potential to similar levels to what we saw back then but without all the other stuff associated with the adrenaline vial is good.
Instead of readding the hug tech speed addons should be adjusted and his base speed should be slightly increased. ie. Give his base speed a 10% buff, Make the crow and rat be a flat increase to rush speed of 5 and 3%, rather than 4 and 2% per consecutive rush to give other addons space to shine. Combined with enhanced flicking potential of more look angle the small increase to base speed will give him the potential to skillfully outplay most loops without needing the hug tech I think.
Other addons could use adjustments too though. c21 should use the old orange dripping vfx that c33 used to apply with its hinder to indicate to survivors its active for example
I agree with the nerfs though. Blight should lose 2 or maybe even 3 tokens when breaking a pallet and he should be 4.4 in order to heavily discourage just walking a survivor down using the threat of rushing to force a pallet drop.
I think he should get 2 more nerfs though:I also think the penalty to tokens should apply when he hits a survivor with a basic attack. This isn't as much of an issue on kaneki since he can't directly down using the power but it is a problem on blight because in a situation where a survivor has to repair a gen in a dead zone the blight can walk them down get a hit in the dead zone then as soon as their basic attack cd is over rush and down them in the open.
And finally, I think the base cooldown on his power should go up slightly. If you look at the likes of wesker he only gets 2 dashes and needs 5.5 seconds per dash to charge it. Blight has more dashes with a lower cooldown per dash and a lower cooldown on all dashes combined and a more effective cooldown reduction addon. The base cooldown could use another .5 second per token TBH.
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I appreciate that you actually read my post lol
I mentioned this in some of my later posts, but i agree wholeheartedly that the J-Flick was much better than the current Z-Flick we have due to the inability to correct your flick. In its current state bump logic completely overcentralizes all decisionmaking blight has.
For me, what made old blight so interesting was that at any given moment you could swap between three different playstyles on the fly. Good players could use one well. Great players could use two well, and the best players could switch on the fly between sliding, flicking, and bump logic in the middle of a rush chain. Personally, I would much prefer to have three weaker, but more versatile tools than to have two stronger but less versatile tools.
i would be fine with him losing tokens on M1, but at the same time if you get M1'd by a 110% killer i think the killer deserves to not have a cooldown for outplaying the survivor so significantly. You could make the same argument about nurse, but if you are getting M1'd by nurse then there are bigger problems than the balancing of the killer IMO.
I don't think balancing around a cooldown is an ideal way to balance a character tbh. I also don't find Wesker's cooldowns to be directly comparable, because his cooldown shortens depending on how many survivors he has infected. Feels a bit like apples to oranges to me- and even then i think wesker's cooldown is just too long in general.
IMO the ideal solution is to simply to encourage blight to use all of his tokens at once more often, rather than discouraging him from using rushes by increasing his base cooldown. Increasing his base cooldown would make him worse, for sure, but I don't think it would make him worse in a way that makes the killer more engaging. Not in the same way making him lose tokens on kick does, for example.
Players just respond better to being encouraged to do something, than discouraged from doing something. WOW used to have a system where you would have an XP multiplier that slowly decreased as you played more for the day. This was to discourage people from wasting their lives playing 8+ hours a day. But players HATED that, because being punished for playing the game how you want to play isn't fun.
So, the developers flipped the idea on its head and added a "rest" system which built up a positive XP multiplier while you weren't playing. It has the exact same purpose, and gets the same intended effect from the player base, but its framing really does just make all the difference.
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