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Does spirit take the same skill as nurse?
I'm just curious on hearing what the community thinks. I personally think spirit is a low skill and a high reward killer. On the other hand, I think nurse is high skill and high reward. I mainly think this because spirit is basically an m1 killer with an upgraded wraith cloak + hillbilly sprint combine. I also think she doesnt have much counterplay / feedback to the survivor to counter her. Whereas nurse has a completely different playstyle to learn which can take quite a lot of time to master and is not always reliable. She also has counterplay by losing line of sight and other things.
I was looking at old statistics again, and I noticed that back in November spirit, billy, and freddy had the highest kill rates and spirit was the most picked. These stats were shortly after the nurse nerf, so she was quite low on the charts: 65%. I noticed that before the nerf she was at 72% kill rate meanwhile spirit, billy, and freddy were around 75+% kill rate. Before she was nerfed she also had omega blink, extra blinks, and less limited blinks, yet she was still apparently not performing as well as the killers i listed above. Recently they slightly nerfed billy and i feel as though he is a high skill and high reward killer as well. So i'm just curious why a killer like spirit is not getting a nerf or "rework" when apparently she is overperforming. Also, if they are not using statistics to adjust and balance then what are they using.
I'm just curious what you guys think.
Stats:
Comments
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You ask why Spirit hasn’t been nerfed despite overperforming in November 2019’s stats, but the simple answer is that she was nerfed.
In November, around the same time those stats came out, she had nerfs to remove her collision, add a window vault animation, reduce her post-phasing lunge, and several of her add ons were also changed. You can find the relevant patch notes here: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/105387/patch-notes-3-4-0-ptb
Her kill rate back then was 75% but that was the Spirit who had a much stronger base kit. Freddy also had some add ons nerfed around the same time. So all of the killers you point out as having inflated kill rates have been tuned down since that time.
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I certainly do not agree with people that say Spirit takes no skill, i do think it‘s not that easy to Master her, but she definitely takes way less skill than nurse, that‘s for sure. What i personally dislike About Spirit is her luck based counterplay, when playing against her its more just guessing, skill doesn‘t really affect the counterplay in a chase against her. And when injured you don‘t really have any counterplay at all. At least when the game‘s sound works.
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A Spirit player who can't use her power well is still a functional killer.
A Nurse player who can't use her power well is practically harmless.
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I'm aware of these changes. I don't really consider them a nerf, maybe a small one at most. I don't think they really changed how efficient she is. She is mostly the same. It might seem like i'm complaining like some survivor main but i'm actually not. I'm frustrated that nurse was nerfed because i feel as though spirit takes a fraction of the skill for the same reward.
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Hell no.
Spirit is way too easy to play well imo. It's boring to play as and against.
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Removing her collision during phase was a pretty massive change. Before they removed it, literally all you had to do to play her was use your power at a loop and run around until you bumped into the survivor. People complain about loops being a 50/50 against Spirit but before that change it was a 0/100 lmao.
I’d be extremely surprised if the changes they made didn’t drop her kill rate. In any case though, I’m not really trying to disagree that Spirit is too strong or anything, just disputing the idea that she wasn’t nerfed despite having a high kill rate. The changes they made were objectively nerfs.
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Spirit is a lot easier than Nurse. I play both of them and while sometimes as Spirit I catch myself thinking, 'I'll just blink past this wall and get them. Oh wait, crap, I have to walk around it', it still feels like a lower base skill that you need to have to do anything.
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I'd say Nurse has the highest skill ceiling. Spirit just requires you to have a good headset/pair of good ears. Nurse doesn't vanish and leave the survivor guessing. Once they know how many blinks you have and they can time that dead hard you're playing a different game entirely in the chase.
Nurse has more importance on map knowledge and survivor routes. If you know where they're going you can blink ahead of them. Spirit just follows you but at high speeds.
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When anyone asks this question this is really the only response they need. Every other killer (maybe Hag and Huntress?) can always default to m1 playstyle and at least win some chases. Nurse can't do that unless they're tripping over themselves.
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No killer is as hard to master as Nurse. And that before Cooldown Nurse, wich is a huge load of cold water into the face of the old Nurse players.
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I play both at a high level. There's a lot that goes into it, and it really depends on who you're playing against too. If we're talking a solo queue non-competitive environment against average bots, then no, Spirit does not take anywhere near the same skill as Nurse. Like not even in the same stratosphere for the same output. Nurse takes a lot more mechanical skill plus a similar amount of prediction and pathing knowledge. Nurse has to know all the things a Spirit player has to know, plus a Nurse has to have the blink mechanics down. It gets a little murky in a competitive scenario though when a Spirit can't afford a perk slot on Stridor and has to play against elite survivors using Iron Will. Spirit on hard mode is very different than Spirit on easy mode.
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Spirit requires a fundumentally different kind of skill compared to Nurse and Huntress.
She is an information denial Killer first and foremost, that means you need to be good at predictions and be good at saying somewhat unpredictable, with the former being more important for chases and the later being important for ambush hits you sometimes get. The chase usage being the most most important obviously.
Nurse is more about precision by comparison. She does also require predictions but not nearly as much
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Put on Stridor, and play for a few hours so you get used to her then you’ll be wiping out most survivors.
Her nerf didn’t do much. It was more like an add on nerf (rightly) while slightly nerfing her base kit (who even relies on collision while phasing lol?)
She still has some extremely powerful addons compared to most killers.
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I've played nurse since the day she came out. I've been through all the nerfs and always adjusted. I feel like her most recent one is a bit much, aside from her addons of course. I played spirit in PTB and a whole lot after. I don't feel biased when I say she is low skill and high reward compared to most of the killers in the game.
I personally don't think spirit takes any special type of skill compared to the next m1 killer. In a chase as spirit you have a huge advantage over the survivor because even the bests survivors are left guessing. You can literally hear the survivors or have a straight path to them with scratch marks when they pretty much have nothing to go off. Don't get me wrong, I don't think shes op. I just think she requires a lot less skill for what she is rewarded compared to most killers.
You said that nurse does not require predictions as much as a spirit does. Thats nurses whole thing. I would argue that spirit doesn't even need to predict at all. When you can hear a survivor right in front of you injured and scratch marks follow then it's not even a prediction at that point. Nurse has to predict almost every blink because her counter is line of sight. If a good survivor is running her then they will be using that to their best advantage.
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Nurse requires you to spend weeks or even months to learn her.
Spirit requires you to have ears.
But yeah, you are correct, Spirit has quite a low effort for around the same outcome as Nurse. Thats why Nurse is probably not worse learning, since you can get the roughly the same results with Spirit.
She will probably be nerfed once again, at least there is no reason why Billy should get a Nerf (which was justified) and Spirit not. Yes, her Add Ons were touched and she got collision and a vaulting animation (latter should have been the case all the time), but at least when we get the Early Game-thingy the Devs have been talking about, Spirit will get a Nerf (in my opinion).
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I disagree with you. Nurse on indoor maps is a prediction show every time survivor breaks LOS.
I don't think any killer except Huntress and Deathslinger compares to Nurse's skill ceiling. I use to say that Nurse and ranged killers have infinite skill ceiling, but in particular, Nurse has a skill floor far above any killer in the game.
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I was not aware of those charts. Those are cool, why aren't there more/regularly updated ones? Maybe which show more stats too.
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At first, spirit seems a lot harder than nurse. But as you take a bigger look at it. Nurse is way more harder to learn than spirit, by a long shot.
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Not even close. Nurse requires a ton of mechanical skill and muscle knowledge, not even taking into account the almost unbearable bugs on the newer maps. Spirit requires good headphones, a couple decent add-ons and some prediction, and you are pretty much set.
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spirit is hard to play with. a lot of people forget that the sound are still bug and spirit cant see the survivor when she use her power
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I buy spirit and i smash my SWF friends that has like 400 Hours of game when they was playing seriously
I almost dont play as killer i think that i had played like 15-25 times in my hole life
If you has and fone its super ez
ok that i had all the perks and addons that i wanna to put but in the same way i NEVER play as killer and if i was abble to smash an SWF you can think what is gonna happen if someone that play as killer play with her
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No. Nurse is not only fighting the survivors, but she is also fighting the way the game works with bugs and dead zones.
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Spirit is slightly harder than average to learn to only play by ear but that’s about it. Nurse is by far the hardest killer to learn in the game, it’s not even close.
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The dead zones are the absolute worst. That & how sometimes you blink directly onto someone and smack them and the game is like, 'no, no hit.'
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No, not even close.
I think Spirit is quite average in regards of how much skill she requires - not too easy, not too hard.
Nurse however has a rather high skill floor.
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it's guessing if you have zero clue how spirits usually move. You could call every mindgames guessing if you did not understand how killer/survivors tend to move when you don't see them in the loop.
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Absolutely not.
As a Nurse main who went from rank 1 to rank 8 before learning her I will tell you this... When ever you go against a nurse who has thrashed the team without a sweat and the team are not all yellow ranks I can guarantee you that nursed endured a lot of punishment from survivors before grasping her skill. She is on another level of difficulty and the 'hard' learning curve given to her is an understatement. Spirit learning curve is simple in comparison.
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I always feel such shame when I make a bad read or loop and literally walk into a hit from a “walking,” nurse UGH LOL
Yup, her learning curve is the only reason you don’t see more of her. If someone really wants to “win,” then learning Nurse well is the only way to practically guarantee that. I’ve tried a few times and have become passable as her, but I can’t keep the muscle memory when I swap killers and swap back so she’ll never be my “main.”
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No.
Nurse takes skill.
Spirit takes headsets.
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Harder than average how? Learning to consistently 4k with Clown is harder. Or Legion, Pig, Wraith, Trapper, Hag, etc. The only people easier than her are Freddy, Pyramid Head and, if you already have decent FPS skills, Deathslinger.
Her skill ceiling is so low for her utility. The only things you really need to learn on her are the same tricks you learn on any other killer.
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Don't forget dead hard being meta means survivors are usually a 3 hit down most games. This means you need to guess correctly 3 times behind cover for every single hook.
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No, if we compare Nurse against Spirit, Spirit is a low risk high, reward killer and Nurse is a very high risk (part of her being ther hardest is because the map has dead zones and she is bugged), very high reward. Spirit is tied to the map laws. Unable to go through a pallet, window or wall, wich guarantee a lowest reward than nurse. Nurse can blink through walls, windows, pallets making the entire map a mined zone to survivors. She is literally very fun to play since you can really feel the killer substance with her, there's no place to hide, no place to run to avoid her. And even that, she has counterplay.
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Yeah when they run around the corner right into me I always lol.
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No if you think u can take 4 SWF friends with only headsets u have bad knowledge about the game u need train her ofc less than nurse but still and alot of mindgames to playing her
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Objectively, Nurse takes more skill than Spirit.
This doesn't mean that Spirit is a braindead killer. It changes your gameplay completely, and you have to get used to that.
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Collision always caught me off-guard and made me mess up the lunge coming out of phase. I was trilled to see it gone.
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You have to learn to exactly judge distances by ear and be better than average at following visual cues like grass moving and crows, etc. Other killers use audio cues but don't normally attack based solely on them. Learning to play her at a basic level is therefore trickier than learning to play, say, Clown at a basic level since he's literally just a basic killer with gas you throw to block people off. Sure, once you've learned both Clown and Spirit I agree that Spirit is more effective than he is, but we're talking here about brand new killer players. Clown's entry level usability is definitely lower than Spirit's.
But hey, good for you being a savant who picks up everything immediately!
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Absolutely not, Spirit is one of the easiest killers in the game if you have decent headphones.
Consistently got 4Ks on her every time I played spirit, being a newbie on her.
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no, spirit is EZ mode.
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Not really. You don't have to be exact at all with the sound. You just have to hear them. You know they're pretty near if you hear them and you come out with a speed boost and extended lunge so it really isn't hard at all to hit someone. The key isn't skill, it's just some sort of L/R hearing like a hedset or heck, I use my phone earbuds.
The grass moving isn't subtle. All you have to do is have eyes. Especially if you play on low graphics that makes it all the more obvious.
I love when someone writes a big reply then finishes it off with a condescending remark as if that somehow makes their point any better; though, I'm pretty sure you're using the word "savant" wrong. She's not hard to learn. It doesn't take anything special. It just takes not having impaired hearing or vision. There is a reason 90%+ of the playerbase considers her easymode and overpowered.
Maybe you just have a harder time picking things up?
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I can. I have. Nope. She's easy.
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Lol, no I'm not using "savant" wrong, savant means "person with detailed knowledge or exceptional skill in a specific field". As in you're passively bragging about how easily you picked up learning Spirit because it's child's play to you and implying that new players should all likewise learn it just as quickly and all they have to have is eyes and ears and a headset. And I'm saying you're overestimating how good brand new killers are and the relative speed it takes to learn Spirit versus most killers who can rely as much on sight as they do on sound during a chase. Hence me calling you a DbD savant.
(And then to top it off you called me "condescending" while simultaneously mocking everybody who can't learn Spirit as easily as you did. Maybe you should look up the definition of that word too while you're at it.)
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LoL the spirit is easy as hell, almost always I play her for rituals I have good games despite I have trash perks learned and use bad addons. The only thing you need to play her fine is using decent headphones and equip stridor.
The ppl who say it need skill? #########.
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No. Nurse has the highest mechanical skill floor in the game, and as I have come to realise she also has a decent tactical skill floor as well. Don't believe me? Look at all the people talking about her "prediction." She's a reactive killer. Prediction doesn't matter.
That being said, Spirit at base is by no means a simple or easy killer, mechanically or tactically. Stridor and tuned audio settings, however, make her far simpler and, by extension, considerably easier, since you no longer have to predict/mindgame and can simply react to everything.
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Spirit is pick up and play, although with practice she's lethal. Played 8 games with her and yet to lose a match. Had 2 rank 1's escape and 1 crawl to hatch. Spirit sometimes requires a bit of luck and fast reactions.
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Absolutely not, Spirit is one of the easiest killers I've ever played. Her also being one of if not the strongest killer is absurd with how easy to play she is.
She really needs to be adjusted.
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NO.
...no.
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There are spiritguides less then a minute learning you she requires one thing good headphones
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Prediction doesn't matter on nurse? Have you played nurse? Do you even play DBD? So when a survivor is lost in line of sight at a jungle gym and a nurse blinks to try and cut them off is that not predicting? Most survivors are not going to be running in a straight line when in a chase. They will be back tracking around corners, trying to block her sight with objects, running towards her to mess up the blink. You are taking a chance because you doesn't know where they are : predicting.
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