Parallels between the Legion situation vs the Deathslinger situation
There are similarities between the two that make them relate, but also differences that make the Deathslinger situation more debatable.
The main points of the old Legion
- Could not be countered.
- It took ages to down a survivor in comparison to a standard Killer, but the fact that a down was easily guaranteed is what made old Legion "Boring"
- Minimal penalty to a bad usage of the power. Swinging would not end the power and it could be activated earlier.
- Legion was a 110% Killer who relied on their power to secure downs. The lower speed made sense, and made for weaker map pressure, but made up for it in chase power.
The main points about Deathslinger
- The Deathslinger cannot be countered, instead, he only "makes mistakes"
- Cannot down as fast as a Huntress, and the reel mechanic with the cooldown and reload means he takes longer to down on average, but he can secure hits in areas that other Killers cannot.
- There is a penalty for missing shots (can be eased with add-ons), but the penalty is not huge if a minimal amount of mistakes are made, Too many mistakes is very punishing.
- Deathslinger is a 110% Killer who relies on his power to secure downs. He has weaker map pressure but makes up for it in the chase.
I wouldn't be surprised if BHVR did something to Deathslinger to try and appease this vocal part of the community who find him so extremely boring to face, despite the fact that he is harder to play than the old Legion and is punished for making mistakes. We have a Killer with weak map pressure and a powerful chase ability to compensate. If you're good with Deathslinger then you are rewarded. If you face a good Deathslinger then it is your job to waste as much of his time in the chase as you possibly can by using LOS blockers and objects to attempt to break the chain. I personally find a god Nurse very boring to face, because i know that as soon as she finds me, I'm done for. Deathslinger however, I enjoy facing, even if he is good, because even then it doesn't entirely feel like a death sentence. It is most likely that because there are fewer god Nurses lurking around, she isn't seen as a huge threat to the games "enjoyability", but because Deathslinger is more common, he is under fire far more often.
Comments
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Now Legion back then had absolutely no counterplay. I don't agree with that when it comes to Deathslinger. Blocking line of sight is one counterplay, and trying to guess when he shoots and dodge at the right is another counterplay. Breaking the chain is yet another counterplay.
The problem with killers like Deathslinger is that even though he has counterplay, it's not a lot at all and the counterplay isn't engaging or particularly skill based. It definitely is possible to dodge his chain, because it isn't hit scan, but you are pretty much always just guessing when he is going to shoot as long as he has line of sight on you. And since he isn't slowed down, you just have to pray and hope that you'll be able to guess the second he shoots perfectly. It's not very skill based and not engaging, since the odds that you will guess right is extremely low. Breaking the chain and blocking lin eof sight on the other hand is not really proper counterplay either since it's incredibly situational.
Huntress is the great comparison here. You always know when she is about to throw a hatchet, so that's when you need to try to predict when she is going to throw the hatchet and where. She is also slowed down while holding a hatchet ready to fire. Deathslinger doesn't have that visual cue if the player playing Deathslinger know how to quickscope, it's much more of a guessing game and praying you'll guess right.
People that complain about Deathslinger simply want more engaging and fair counterplay. Unlike the braindead belief of some people on these forums or in this community in general that whenever people talk about wanting a bit more counterplay to a killer, they actually just want to run the killer around loops without the killer having any counterplay at all. I honestly don't understand how some people could be that stupid to just not understand the points people make and just accuse them of wanting easy M1 killers to counter. That's some next level stupidity.
I guess the problem with a nerf to Deathslinger is is that he isn't overpowered, despite the little counterplay he has, because of his terrible map pressure. So nerfing Deathslinger would kinda alsomake him need a buff in a different way. With Spirit something like this seems much easier for example. If survivors get fairer counterplay against her while she is phasing, and she would actually need a buff to compensate for that, though I honestly don't think she would, her power could be buffed in a different way, such as giving her more speed during her phasing, increasing the duration of her phasing, and/or reducing the cooldown of her power.
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And that’s why I said if people want to be able to dodge him like they do Huntress, then he is going to need to be able to carry more than one shot at a time... while making him a faster killer.
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The thing is old legion had no counter play, at all. Deathslinger can be stopped by prethrown pallets or dense areas at least. Old legion could mooonwalk or just follow you til you died wth 0 issue, there are honestly no parallels between amazing 1 v 1 vs OP, broken not fun chase where you will go down
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The biggest weakness of deathslinger is his chain. Make sure to always stay near walls and avoid windows, pre-drop pallets and most important of all, try to break LoS as much ass possible.
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What is it with this vocal minority and their inability/unwillingness to change their M.O.? Seriously? Each thread they complain in boils down to
'I don't want to adjust my playstyle to what killer I'm facing/map I'm on, I want to genrush and get out of the gate and get to the next match as quickly as possible to get as many ranks/bp as possible to feel good about my gam0r skillz!'
Things is, I don't thing they will ever shut up until bhvr decides to completely overhaul the objectives, add more modes etc
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Well, a huntress that misses a long range hatchet technically made a mistake too. She couldve predicted that the survivor knows it and will dodge.
The deathslinger discussion is BS, because he obviously got counterplay, just like spirit basing on a mindgame.
Just like looping a LT. Just like running any loop basically.
I know why people are discussing this rn, Scott made a Video with lots of weird made-up arguments about it, just like some time ago with oni.
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Quoted for the truth. It's not just deathslinger though - most killers have a very boring pattern (Cough Counterplay) about them but that's really the nature of this game. Honestly completely fine with where he is - if anything the only thing I would adjust is his pink addon or his maximum reel range to be more than 18 meters (his pink addon atm is 15 meter+ shot but his harpoon barely goes further than that so its too percise).
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Part of the reason Legion was changed was because they were not being used as intended by the majority of players.
That issue isn’t present with Deathslinger.
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I'm not sure console players can run with their camera fixed on Deathslinger? I personally haven't seen them do it.
I personally don't mind if the rifle gets an audible click cue if in return it becomes hitscan or at least much faster fire/easier hit validation, but then that just becomes huntress with less ammo so what's the point. I don't really enjoy the reel mechanic on either side of survivor or killer.
Spirit phasing is fairly easy to counter. In an open space I'm never caught by spirit because she can't see you and relies on scratch marks and sound, just double back and walk away. Around pallets/windows its more of a guessing game, just don't make the mistakes of making noise.
A lot of the complaints against killers comes from survivors who don't bother learning the killer's mechs and just feel entitled for an EZ game without putting effort into it.
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People claiming there is no counterplay needs to actually learn the game and the definition of counterplay.
Just because he can down you in the open or when you do predictable vaults dont make him uncounterable.
If he has no counter then literally every perk and killer is uncounterable.
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Do you mean moonwalking, forcing deep wounds to go down? When i played Legion during that time period, I NEVER abused that exploit. I played them the standard way, chase and stab multiple times to down. That was the main issue. Regardless of if you played them normally or exploited deep wounds, it was boring and BS regardless.
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Deathslinger is midtier btw.
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How is zoning a made up argument? Because of his ability to zone, the only way you can reliably counter him is by being in the right place when he shows up, but that's not a reliable strategy when he has a 16m TR with Monitor. Other stealth killers pay a price for easy first hits. Pig moves slowly. GF can be broken out of stealth by any survivor and has no tools to help him in the chase once his stealth is gone. Wraith has loud foodsteps and has to ring his bell before coming out of stealth, and he also has no tools to help him in the chase after landing the first hit. Michael has to stalk before he can even move at a normal speed, and he also has nothing to help in the chase unless he's in Tier 3.
Meanwhile, Deathslinger has a ranged attack that can be fired before a survivor can react to it. He can zone survivors by spamming ADS while chasing. If they dodge, he walks forward and M1s. If they don't dodge, it's usually an easy shot to land. The only way to actually run him is to be in a relatively round loop that he can't shoot over when he shows up, or to find one nearby after taking the first hit. Good luck with that on most tiles.
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Reel mechanic needs work. Otherwise it's fine. Fighting a reel if you're not already behind something feels pointless.
Old Legion could not fail in using his power. He was also incredibly fast. There's no comparison there.
Post edited by Tactless_Ninja on0 -
Most loops got certain spots where he can/will shoot. You can learn those spots and duck in the right moment, but you can also complain about no counterplay.
He got a TR, so he's not a stealth killer. Additionally shots from max range are unreliable without certain addons. On top of that we are in a spine chill meta.
He definitly got counterplay like every other killer. If you're caught out of position by a billy/bubba your down. If you're caught out of position by a deathslinger you're injured.
What the frick are you complaining about?
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Again your suggestions aren't worth a toss if you don't compensate the killer for his glaring weaknesses your only legitimizing killers opinions that survivors are entitled. You want counterplay but don't have any suggestions to improve his inherent weaknesses. Maybe longer ads with an exposed effect for holding it x secconds more shots in his capacity better range? Nope nerf gun instant ads to stronk. If your contribution is just nerf and criticism no one should take you seriously. Instant ads is problematic but id rather rework and re balance by adding mechanics or improving capacity of his gun then nerfing the killer into the ground cough legion cough. Because when a nerf comes and it shoves the kiler down to d tier youeeffectively saying any future killer will get the same treatment.
A key difference between legion and dadslinger is his aim adds difficulty legion could not be punished as his ff gave him 100% cd on missed attacks. If your advocating giving the legion treatment to dadslinger then I would advise avoid creating buyers remorse. I understand if a character needs a change or a perks need to be re designed but when you nerf character from b tier to d tier your going to earn a lot of hate. You sell someone a product dont create in built obsolescence.
Going forward they should nerf his instant ads but give him another mechanic anything mentioned above would help. I'm sure there are more ideas to play around with stronger chain faster reeling anything that efffectively buys him time and allows for greater advantages if you choose to risk a longer ads time.
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Deathslinger is midtier.
Old Legion was low tier.
New Legion is midtier.
The Legion opinion is backed up by official bhvr kill rate stats. I don't like to talk here much about all the storys some people make up. But a killer without counterplay would have been not a low tier killer and that is again approved by bhvr official stats that someone, if intersted, can for sure still find somehwere in this forums.
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Are you trying to say old legion had counterplay, because his kill rate wasn't high? Because that's far from true.
There was nothing survivors could realistically do against Old Legion in a chase, but Old Legion took forever just to down 1 guy which meant everyone else was free to do gens.
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Part of the counterplay of survivors is, as ugly as it sounds, that someone keep the killer busy while other do the objective. If possible, the best looper of the team.
Also there are videos online on YouTube with counterplay to the Legion.
Comon... I don't like to talk much about this topic. I can already yet say how it goes out: You stay by your opinion and show me as evidence 1-2 videos of some Streamer that shows the Legion with op addons and/or exploits.
While I also will stay by my opinion and can also back my opinion up with videos from streamers and the official bhvr stats.
At the end, we both waste time and no one of us gain something by it.
It is just in my nature, that I can't let something like this stay, without saying something to it and sometimes I hate myself for it. I know how stubborn some survivor are in this forums.
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You can't afford to dodge unless you're right next to a safe pallet, though. Otherwise, if you dodge, he will walk right up to you and M1 you.
He's not a stealth killer in that he can't get Undetectable, but he's effectively a stealth killer because of his TR. It's the same as Myers in Tier 2 with Monitor, and every Deathslinger under the sun runs Monitor.
Other killers, with the exception of Pyramid Head (or Demo with Rat Liver, but he's tame in comparison), cannot zone with their power. That is the specific piece that I find uncounterable, in that the best you can do is hope the DS misses. In my opinion, a killer with a ranged attack should not be able to gain ground on the survivor while readying their ranged attack. If they can do that, the survivor is forced to either dodge when they ready their ranged attack, and lose ground rapidly, or not dodge, and make themselves an easy target while also losing ground, just less ground than if they had dodged.
Billy and Bubba can't zone because they are slower than the survivor while charging their chainsaws. Can you imagine if Billy could move at 110% while charging his chainsaw, and how broken that would be at loops? Or if Huntress could move at 110% speed with a hatchet up? That's basically the problem with Deathslinger and Pyramid Head.
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Not THE problem. YOUR problem.
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Mine and many other people's problem, yes. I don't think it's fun to play against killers that need to mess up for me to have a long chase. I think there should be ample room for survivors to make a good play to extend the chase, and for killers to make a good play to shorten the chase. I don't want the length of the chase to be mostly dependent on whether the Deathslinger played enough MW2 to hit his quickscopes.
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Yes certainly, he would need some kind of buff for compensation. Your suggestions sound good.
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Actually it's kind of a mindgame that the Huntress lost in that case, because the survivor could also predict that she will predict that the survivor will dodge and then not dodge or dodge into a different direction.
And these aren't just made up arguments. If you disagree that's fine, but at least try to understand the point that people make that think differently, instead of just trying to belittle any arguments made on their side. When people say that certain killers don't have good counterplay, there might actually be a reason as to why they think so. Trying to just make them look stupid is the classic, laughable way of trying to win an argument without giving actual arguments.
Sadly it's not uncommon to find people that have this immature mindset when it comes to balance discussions.
Scottjund is simply a killer main that is still capable to at least trying to understand issues that survivors have and tries to consider the enjoyment of the survivor side as well. Unlike some killer mains in this community.
Also, do you really think that Oni was fine the way he was in the ptb?
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Scott complained about oni after he got released with a ~90° flick. He was one of the reasons oni got crippled for a month. I don't forget that.
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Oh dear, Oni was not as good for a month, Scott sure is a traitor.
Please reread your post and think about how that sounds, lol.
Also, the 180 degree flick was pretty insane, a 90 degree flick is much fairer. The fact that the Flick got completely destroyed was not his doing, he even complained about the flick being bad after that change.
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Bruh he had a 180 degree flick he was nearly impossible to defend against. Then they way overnerfed it and I hated that.
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Yeah exactly. Live flick wasn't 180° flick btw.
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The after-PTB flick was nothing near 180°. 140° at max, more likely less. You tried to make people believe "oni is op" a little too much at that point. Especially because we both know that got a terrible early game since ever and denying him his first hit is still a very good strategy to counter him.
If you're in the mood to discuss, why do you think guessing as killer, let's say as nurse, is totally fine, but guessing as survivor not?
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The Deathslinger cannot be countered, instead, he only "makes mistakes"
I completely disagree with this. People should stop repeating this mantra just because some popular streamer said it. I'm too tired of this argument to stay here explaining how (I'm sure a quick search would give all the answers about it) but the Deathslinger can be countered, period.
On the other hand old Legion literally had no counter. Missing attacks didn't have any repercussion and the survivors' only defensive tools, windows and pallets, couldn't stop them. Plus people abused the moonwalking exploit to avoid the chase, for the survivor it was just a countdown until they were down. That's completely different.
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I don't understand the question. What Nurse guessing are you referring to?
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For example a survivor running out of LoS. Will he double back or not? And at which point?
That's a bit simplistic, but i think you know what i refer to now.
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Who cares, you blink once where they were last seen and use the second blink to correct which way they went.
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And when they double backed early? Or not even at all?
I play enough nurse to know that only range addons (with good guesses) or CD addons can guarantee you a flawless chase.
Anyway, my point is that it's a guess after all too.
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Agree with all of this. On your point about a spirit rework i think it would be cool if she became a listening and observant killer so that u have to listen not just playing her but also when vsing her. Do this by basically removing chase music and dulling down the phase sound whilst she is phasing whilst making her footsteps far louder. This means that you could make judgements about where she is and listen rather than just guessing where she is.
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Well that doesn't seem to be the case because the worst offenders of boring play style are the two most recent killers. So i would argue killers are actually getting more and more boring and the marker for when a killer becomes boring is constantly being pushed up, meaning that we could potentially have far worse killers in the future. Look at doctor, everyone used to complain about him. Now there are far worse offenders than him (not that i think he was ever too bad in the first place but u get my point)
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I was gonna say something on the lines of this but you've probably just said what i was going to say a 100 times better than i could ever have done. Well Spoken.
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The issue there comes back to the vocal minority as well in some way:
Their vicious unwillingness to nowadays do anything new in the game. I mean, i don't play for long, but I know that killers like the doctor introduced new game mechanics.
Nowadays? just look what the same people that cry bloody murder in these complaints say/do whenever someone suggests complete new game modes or a shake up of skills. when the devs ask for feedback on a new feature they are trying out.
it's always negative, dozens of threads how much the idea/feature sucks, how the devs are just greedy and not even trying blahblahblah.
Like, there's so many good ideas, but this specific group does everything to prevent them from taking hold.
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Deathslinger's hitboxes are pretty tight and every missed shot hurts him, because he has a very low gen pressure. What makes him better than Huntress in one point is, you can not hear when he aims at you like she does, but when the survivor is allready hurt and can break out, he does not go in to dying state, hence he got pierced with a freaking harpoon. It makes no sense at all.
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Ugh. I just wrote out an entire rework idea and my ######### cat hit something on my keyboard and sent me back a page, losing it. I'll try to rewrite it in as an edit to avoid it happening again.
Basically. the idea was to make Deathslinger slightly less unfair/cheap-feeling "what was I supposed to do there" in a chase but increase his map pressure and also give him some tracking aspect to him. The main complaint from killers is that he's overwhelmingly strong in a chase, but is terrible in patrolling and map pressure. While survivors find him random and uncounterable outside of the Deathslinger just being bad. Overall my plan is too keep him just as strong overall
Firstly, the idea is that if the Deathslinger reels someone in and hits them, the harpoon stays stuck in the survivors chest, activating an un-mendable deep wound timer that removes the survivors ability to use ANY interactions but having it removed. If the Deathslinger maintains the chase it would play out pretty much identical as a chase does now. A survivor breaking out and stunning him would activate the current deep wound timer and play out like usual. Adrenaline WOULD NOT heal it.
To remove the harpoon the survivor would need a teammate to pull it out or find some sort of object around the map to remove it. Obviously a teammate would be faster, maybe about half the speed of the object to remove it. This would allow the Deathslinger to perform better in situations where he comes across multiple survivors on a gen, or realises he needs to break chase to quickly reach another area of the map whilst still giving him some net gain from the chase.
Using a station/object whatever I have no concept for what it would actually be, would be a 20 or so second action but have no skillchecks. The survivor would make loud, pained noises while removing it. With another survivor it would be 15 seconds with skillchecks, that, when failed will alert the killer and lose 25% or so progress (I was going for a Freddy wake up style thing here, although unlike Freddy there would be an actual incentive to use it).
I think this would also allow more interesting builds for him in regards to perks as lets face it. 90% of builds you see for DS are slowdown focused for good reason.
The tradeoff for this new pressure would be making him commit more to ADS ability (lets be honest, this alone is the main offender for why he is so hated not because of his ACTUAL power) enough for a survivor to at least see the gun raised before they're hit and potentially nerfing his base reload speed whilst buffing his reload speed add ons accordingly. I feel this would encourage people to actually try to be 'git gud' with his power as opposed to using the M2 trick for every hit.
The justification for this is that currently, there's no downside to clicking M2 for a split-second to trick the survivor into expecting the shot, causing them to try and juke said non-existant shot and lose ground. I've never actually seen anyone defend this aspect of his design but it's never mentioned positively when people are talking about his power, even DS mains.
It should still be able to be usable to mindgame at pallets and vaults, but it shouldn't reward mindless spam as it currently does.
At the end of the day I feel like killers like DS with his design philosophy (among others) are unhealthy for the long term health of the game, and the negative feedback and constant DCs I get when I play him or am playing against him show that people are frustrated. I see the "mad you can't loop" argument used a lot to counter this, but when you're removing counterplay without adding any new form you're just encouraging the gen-rush meta even further!
Other killers currently have problems, but a lot of these are small changes that could be made. I feel Deathslingers problems come from a much deeper aspect of his design.
Anyway, those are my thoughts coming from a primarily killer perspective. Constructive feedback appreciated.
Post edited by gibblywibblywoo on0 -
Nah, I love facing Nurses. They've given me some of the best games in my DbD experience, and Deathslinger has single-handedly given me all of my worst experiences. I'm not playing the game solely to waste time for other survivors to do gens. I'm playing so that I survive, hopefully without being downed at all (I dislike the meta of "hook efficiency" for survivors). If I wanted my input to just equal wasted time for someone, I would go play cookie clicker or something. At least that's less annoying.
And you, have you ever played a game against The Deathslinger where he never shoots? Or a game where all you want to do is not be chased/escape from chase? Any of those experiences would show you why people say "Deathslinger has no counter. He just makes mistakes." That's what people said about Nurse when she was more fun to play and hence more popular, but that statement is far more true about Deathslinger than it ever was about Nurse. Wiggling your butt away from openings where you think the Deathslinger is going to shoot is not a counter, no matter how you portray it. Dropping pallets early is not a counter. It only seems that way because you might not tend to play that way normally. The same can be said for Spirit (a killer I don't actually mind).
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If he had an actual animation of lifting his gun it wouldn't feel so cheap. At least he can't just instantly shoot again like his humming sister. He is actually punished for missing.
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If you expect that a counter to Deathslinger's power is to make him never shoot you have crazy unrealistic expectations. The Deathslinger's power is being able to end chases quickly, but if it takes him 30 or more seconds to get an opening to shoot at you, and/or if you manage to anticipate when this opening will be and make him miss, you effectively countered his power.
Also why should go into a match expecting to never being chased or being able to escape every chase? That's just being entitled.
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No one should "expect" things such as not being chased. But goals exist, and most people don't view goals as inherent expectations. And regardless, I'm on the side of "there's no counter / running away and avoiding LOS can be performed by bots just as well", so I'm being misrepresented when you say, "you expect that a counter to Deathslinger's power is to make him never shoot you". On top of that, I think using the word "counter" when talking about DbD is misleading because that implies a surefire shutdown of the other side and leaves no room for gray area and nuances.
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Kind_Lemon
An advocate of place-able totems, a priming-pallet interaction, and the removal of Exposed from tier 1 Devour Hope.
Also supports changes to how many survivors need to be present to start repairs on a generator.
#revertNurseaddons #reverttieroneDevour #reverttieroneBL #nofreechaseresources #placeabletotems #revertBillysounds #workwiththemusicyouhave
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