Is Deathslinger Weak?

Deathslinger has been one of my favorite killers since his release and honestly the only tweaking I think he needs is just a bit of pressure. He lacks it entirely due to his slower speed and smaller TR but makes up for it by being lethal in chases. Still, if we were to do anything to our boyo Caleb, I'd love for him to have some secondary ability.

Is he weak in a 1v1? No.

Is he weak in a 1v4? Sort of. Depends on the survivors. He won't have many answers for spreading out and doing gens.

Even all these weeks that he has been released into the live build I feel like people are still very unsure where Deathslinger goes in a normal tier list. I definitely don't think he's full blown weak but there are some flaws in his ability that he has no map pressure

I think the comparison with Huntress however is a very interesting one. Ignoring all the other killers and just thinking about Deathslinger and Huntress there are a lot of things that these two killers do that's different from each other but similar. Obviously both killers are ranged which is what introduces this comparison in the first place but there's so much more nuance to this question than I think people who just say "huntress is better - end of discussion" give it credit for.

Huntress benefits / the start of the conversation

The most obvious point in Huntresses favor is that she deals a straight up state of damage with her hatchets, you land it and that survivor is injured or downed. Whereas even if you hit with Deathslinger it's not a 100% chance of a hit because you actually have to reel them in or let the chain break in which case survivors gain a little bit extra distance while he's stunned. Not to mention Huntress has more or less range that can cross most of the map and skilled huntresses can hit shots all the way from one side to the other. Where Deathslinger has a finite limited range of the chain which can only go as far as 18 meters.

The give and take how these characters are balanced differently

However this isn't where that conversation ends because there are a lot more factors to consider beyond their range and how they deal damage to balance them out. While Huntress does have an extremely long potential range of attack, she has a lullaby that extends beyond her terror radius make her presence the most well known out of any killer as survivors can hear her from as far as 45 meters away. Whereas the Deathslinger not only has no lullaby, but a reduced Terror Radius that only extends for 6 meters beyond the maximum range of The Redeemer (his harpoon gun) at 24 meters. Which only provides survivors with a few meager seconds before they are well within range for the Deathslinger to land a shot, even less so if you run perks that reduce your terror radius even further to the equivalent of your terror radius or even lower. Allowing you to either hit survivors before they even realize you're there, or straight up sneak up on survivors for a normal m1 down. This also makes the survivors far more susceptible to being caught out in dangerous positions or areas of the map where there might not be many pallets or windows, or they got caught on the way to do an objective such as saving a survivor or doing a generator.

Hitboxes

Looking at the tools being compared themselves, the hitboxes of the harpoon of the Redeemer and the hatchets Huntress throws are entirely different. The hitboxes for the Huntress are giant rectangular cubes, whereas the hitbox for the harpoon is essentially a much smaller cube (the length of which don't matter because it only ever travels horizontally, parallel to the ground). This is much more detrimental to the Huntress because the larger hitbox (which is also traveling on a vertical plane as well as a horizontal plane because the trajectory has a bit of an arc) is subject to collide with the many assets and obstacles scattered across the maps. Whereas the hitbox for the harpoon is so small that you can actually fire into small spaces between objects and land a shot on a survivor on the other side such as the boarded up windows on different maps, or between stacked hay bales. Generally it's much easier to be clumsy with the hatchets of the huntress than it is with the fine point of the Redeemer's harpoon, and you're much more liable to accidentally hit something on the trajectory toward your target as the huntress than you are with the Deathslinger.

ADS time

On top of this the Deathslinger quite simply has a much faster ADS time than the Huntress, it takes a lot more time for the Huntress to wind up her shots to maximum power / range than it does for the Deathslinger to quickly raise up the iron sights of the Redeemer making him much more easily able to make quickshots as well as generally being unpredictable: will he shoot? will he not? Making mindgames with the redeemer a more viable strategy than the slow windup of the huntress and slipping it back into her belt. As well, it makes it a lot easier to land shots around corners and tall loops for the Deathslinger than for the Huntress who is slowly winding up this hatchet and also slowing her movement speed, where the deathslinger is really quickly raising the iron sights and making the shot OR deciding he can't make the shot and quickly continuing the chase without slowing down too much. Not to mention the flow of the Deathslinger is far more reminiscent of popular FPS titles, which can allow a decent amount of skill transfer that might not be as possible with the Huntress.

Other important details

One of the biggest detriments of Huntress is that she also has a finite number of hatchets, regardless of whether she lands those hatchets or not she will eventually have to take time out of applying pressure on generators, or even worse disengaging from a chase to restock her hatchets. Though he is slowed when reloading, the Deathslinger never has to concede any of this pressure as he can easily maintain a chase while at the same time reloading his redeemer to make the next shot.

At the same time the Deathslinger has access to a form of aggressive potential that the Huntress does not have: which is the deep wounds status effect. It's not a huge game changer but it is a factor that contributes to how successful a Deathslinger can be, slowing down the progress of survivors and forcing them to mend over continuing a gen rush or saving / healing their teammates. It gives the Deathslinger a bit more direct slowdown potential outside of just applying pressure to the survivors.

Concluding

So which is better, Huntress or Deathslinger? I'll be honest I have my suspicions but regardless of what they are I think the answers are far closer than people expect, and that is a huge voucher for how powerful the deathslinger truly is, and where he fits on a tier list. If it's anywhere close to the Huntress, then he's in a fairly good spot I'd like to say.

Seeing how I've had someone today say that he's an "unloopable killer", I'd say he's pretty good.

I would actually compare Deathslinger with Doc, since they're really similar in anti-loop aspect.

Doctor actually wins in every way except the charge up time. He has no cooldown, AOE effect, 115%, etc. Also, shocking through objects.

Also, hit over window is NOT guarantee a hit. If survivors know what they're doing, you don't get the hit.

So, i do really think Deathslinger needs a buff.

Simply put, Deathslinger is bad FOR YOU if you're not experienced with FPS aiming.

He's weak in the sense that he can be genrushed and that's his n1 counterplay. In chases, there's not much for the survivor to do other than making distance and breaking line of sight, which is tricky given his wacky TR and the fact that he can spam ADS to zone the target, and putting down the pallet instantly. Vaults are a death sentence.