The Nurse is a very poorly designed killer.
The Nurse is a great example of how to not make a killer, but because she is bad, but because she is overpowered and is the best killer without a doubt. If you can use her.
As anyone who has gone against one can tell you, a god nurse will destroy you regardless of what you do. Meanwhile, a newer nurse player is as scary as a pillow case. The first problem with Nurse's design is that is forces you to use her power, as she moves too slowly to catch up to survivors normally. This means for newer players, you are out of luck, especially with the lack of a practice mode to learn her power.
The second problem is the lack of counter play. If you are out in the open and you see a good nurse coming at you, you are going to get hit. A good point of comparison is Demogorgon's shred, as both let each killer close the gap quickly and get a hit off. However, while a good Demo's shred can be dodged as it is rather predictable, the nurse can pull of some crazy shenanigans to make it impossible to predict her. My personal experience with this was letting a survivor vault to trigger "I'm all ears", teleporting to the basement, before popping back up to hit them. There was no way for the survivor I was facing to predict my movement, which left the survivor getting rather stabbed.
So how do you fix these problems? I am not sure if you can or even need to. I think Nurse is weird spot. She is clearly broken, but the amount of skill needed to make her broken is so high that almost everyone, even myself, are fine with her almost limitless skill ceiling.
In the end, I think Nurse is fine where she currently is. She is broken, but only a select few can take advantage of its true power. But please, BHVR, for the love of the entity, do not make another killer like the Nurse. It is already hard enough to learn/play against the Nurse, I don't need another killer with a similar design to make the game even more broken. I mean at the very least they have not added a killer with a similar power that is also very broken but ten times easier to use- oh wait.
This girl. This girl right here. They tried solving the issue of a high skill floor, and did not realize why it was there in the first place. Spirit was designed to be similar to nurse, but they did not realize that nurse was more powerful than any other killer, and, I personally think, that they underestimated just how powerful Spirit was as well.
I have been dancing around what exactly the design behind nurse was, but I will state it what it is now. A very powerful ability, but with a heavy cost any time you use it. But there is always a way to negate the cost. A Nurse that does not miss never has to deal with the stun, and a spirit can just run stridor. This design always fails because it ignores a core part of Dead By Daylight, adaption. If it can be abused, it will be abused. Players will always find a way to cover their weakness and that is just a fact. Luckily, BHVR has seem to have learned from their mistakes and have avoided using this model for any new killer, but just give them time. They will try to make another killer like them, and we will have to suffer once again.
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The Nurse is the only killer that turns a chase into skill vs skill. If you're better than the Nurse, you win. If not, you lose. Just the way the Entity intended.
If you get caught in a bad position, you should get hit - it's called a consequence. This is not a point against the Nurse so much as it is a point in favor of buffing the Demogorgon's Shred.
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Nurse is actually good design.
Since this game lacks a competitive aspect to it (No real ranking system), the only way to really judge good design is whether the killer is fun to play as and against.
As a killer, you feel a lot of satisfaction if you can land blinks accurately, something which requires a lot of training. As a survivor, you feel as if you have input against most nurses (much more than many other killers in the roster), and you are also statistically most likely to win against Nurse.
You can argue that she's overpowered in really trained hands, but I would disagree about it being bad design.
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Like I said, I am fine with Nurse's Power. I think she is in a great spot, the problem is that they tried to make a similar character to her in spirit and I think I can say comfortably that quite a lot of people dislike the spirit. Nurse is not the problem, but the design philosophy behind her is the problem. They also do need to buff Demo's shred so that I don't need to run rat liver every dang time.
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The design problem with Nurse is that her ability goes against everything the survivor have to against a normal killer, pallets,windows,walls,loop, it all means nothing to her because of her power, she can't ever be in a place where most survivor will feel good against her, because her kit goes against what 99% of DbD is about.
She's Bae too and they did good with the ######### huge ass skill floor she's at. You can't make her any easier tho and you can't make her even harder to play, i think she's in a fine spot. Praise Sally
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In any game, I feel if a character is very powerful in skilled hands then that is a well designed character. A bad character is someone who can be picked up and immediately do very well.
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Like freddy ;)
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Nurse is not op, you just don't understand that.
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The Nurse is one of the best Killers in the game, albeit one with a steep learning curve. You should rethink your commentary a bit. I think there being a great Killer that takes effort to master is great. Someday I'll try to learn her and go from zero to hero with her. Only time will tell.
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Before or after his rework? lol
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Yeah, the idea behind the post was to state some issues with Nurse's design, but then show how the two problems actually solve each other. After that, I would then use spirit as an example as a killer that shares a similar power to nurse but is considered by the community to be annoying to face. I could probably rewrite the post so it is more clear with my points, but I do think that the nurse is in a good spot.
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Eh this logic falls apart due to if you have no characters people can pick up and play well then the game will die due to most people not being able to play it.
Elitist mentality like this dooms many games/ game generas.
Look at arena shooter genera to see the consequences of this mentality.
Also I am NOT saying every character should be easy or what not its just you'd need to have good entry level characters if you want to have a proper player base.
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Not only that but as a nurse main I'll tell anyone who complains about swf to learn her before they complain, I don't care how good the survivors are if you have an infectious fright nurse that knows their ######### those guys are going down , yea calm spirit can counter that somewhat but she's definitely leaps and bounds above any other killer on a tier list, if I could put her above S tier and leave S empty I would as a show to how strong she has potential to be compared to the rest.
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True you want some characters that are not difficult to use so you get an audience but having a few characters that excel once mastered isn't bad either. A prime example is Overwatch's Sombra. She has almost the lowest pick rate but in like the top 5% she is in most games because the team knows how to take advantage of her ULT.
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The devs are never going to make another killer as OP as the nurse. Remember that she's from WAAAYY back when there were a lot of infinites. She was made so that survivors couldnt mindlessly bully you. The problem is, by fixing the reasons that she was created, they ended up making her TOO strong. The devs will never make another killer like her ever again.
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As a fellow nurse main, I can tell you that she has her own tier called "nurse". Spirit does too, but not as high as Sally's, called "disgustingly angry sewage girl who sounds like a crunchy Minecraft villager".
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She's absolutely poorly designed. Imagine you created a racetrack and told everyone else they had to drive in a circle.
Then you have one driver that drove horizontally across the grass and over the audience stands, and it still counts as winning the race.
They play chess and ask them to king me after making a touchdown after passing GO for $200. YAHTZEE!
That's Nurse. And the only justification is gen rush and newbies who can't aim.
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Strong ability, useless base stats🎵
She's fine. And contrary to popular belief still affected by pallets.
Its funny how people talk about her like a 115% killer that can walk through walls.
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So the title is “The Nurse is a very poorly designed killer”. So I start reading your novel to see what facts you include and your suggestions for changes. Instead, you conclude with “In the end, I think Nurse is fine where she currently is”
???
Well that was a giant waste of time, not going to bother reading the rest.
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I wish I went against more Nurses that played the prediction game. Maybe I'd understand where everyone comes from with this "Nurse is balanced" stuff. It's like people genuinely forget that she's too fast to react to if she plays well and just reacts to the survivor instead of allowing them to mindgame her.
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The only thing that's badly designed are her add-ons. Her base mechanics are fine.
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How is she not?
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I do think for casual play ( anything outside of those Hexy tournaments) Nurse is completely unnecessary so I have little respect for power tripping pubstomper Nurses.
That said the game kind of needs her for that level. An good and I mean GOOD team will still ######### all over a great Nurse even if the chases themselves are very short, even with all her meta perks as they just have too many second chances.
And, yeah. Agreed on Spirit. Don't get me wrong I like playing her, but I think she is actually extremely unfun and unfair to play against. At least with Nurse I know shes teleporting towards me. Spirit just makes me not want to play the game anymore. Especially the goddamn Corrupt, Undying, Ruin Spirits I keep getting who are power tripping on solo queue. You don't even NEED slowdown on Spirit.
I'm glad the trend of anti-fun killers we got for a while seemed to go away with Blight but The Twins are leaving a lot to be desired despite their power actually being really fun to play against.
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All I get from this drama is that you are a salt factory, just take a break from the game bro :D
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If we all stop playing killers becouse they are being turned in an unbalanced mess, you will get a taste of your own medicine by waiting 40m in queue to find someone who likes:
-Being mindlessly looped;
-Being mindlessly genrushed;
-Being mindlessly trolled;
But wait, I think no one likes this treatment so goodbye.
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she needs a buff BADLY
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I mean, as much as I see lot of people complain about it, proper looping does require at least some level of alertness, knowledge of lunge distance and being able to call a killer doing a red stain mindgame or not. Not super high mechanical skill but at least some against a good killer. If you're being "mindlessly" looped that sounds like you're just following the loop and getting ######### on then complaining about it.
Also I have no idea what you mean by that first paragraph. Nurse is still far and away the best killer in DBD by a significant margin. The nerf was unnceccesary but it didn't hurt good Nurses who didnt need the crutch extra blinks at all.
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Nurse has a high skill ceiling for sure and that is a good thing. It takes time to learn and a lot more to master. Most of the games will be polarizing for sure but that doesn't make the killer bad, that means the high skill killer was matched with inexperienced survivors or vice-versa.
Also, Nurse has plenty of counterplay, unlike spirit. An advice on learning how to play against the killer is actually playing the killer, learning their highs and lows, and see what good survivors do against you. I highly recommend you do that.
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Maybe because anyone other than top tier killer mains cant play her well.
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Survivors can apply pressure on most killers by just focusing gens, forcing you to run certain perks like Undying/Ruin, Corrupt, PGTW ecc. Well pair this if they are even good loopers, you lose. Change my mind. If you do not agree, you played against potato/play just as high tier killers/or you just play survivor. That's it
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Omega Blink Nurse was too fast. Current Nurse has enough tells for you to predict her blink to react to depending on distance. Of course her fast close range blinks are still deadly fast, but it's more about trying to avoid such situations.
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You can pick up Spirit with Stridor and still do very bad if you don't know how to adapt on extended noises range, altered noises by Iron Will or Fixated users. It's always a guessing game, as well as she was designed. And honestly, if they keep releasing killers who take high skill but with low reward as the Twins, you will wait in queue for days. No one wants play killer to be trolled.
Post edited by Wesker on0 -
This is true. Too many survivors wait for the killer to be close by before running. If you watch good survivors outside of trading a hit to complete a gen they'll usually start running to the farthest possible loop they can make it to before the chase starts proper to stop the killer from also pressuring the gen aswell as significantly lengthening the chase.
Too many survivors get greedy with their gen repairs.
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If you're within range of her first blink, there's nothing to be done except hope she's a bad Nurse and will try to predict your pathing, which opens up the counterplay that everyone insists exists. If she's going for hits at the very edge of her first or second blink, she's taking too many risks.
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Nurse is fine. High skill ceiling Killers with counterplay is a good thing.
Spirit needs a slight nerf so that she offers a bit more counterplay. Maybe a slight shuffling sound to indicate her movement while phased.
Killers shouldn't be mindlessly easy to go against, and should reward the skill of the player. On the other hand, Killers shouldn't be mindlessly easy and hand the player a lot of free power. Freddy is an example of an easy Killer with lots of free power. Nurse is an example of a Killer that rewards high skill.
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I'm a mediocre nurse who only play her for daily. She the one killer that survivors don't like especially if it a damn good nurse. Nurse as of now require more patience to use and her design was executed good. Remind me of movie killers due to them going after the survivors. The only problem was the whole add ons she has. Omega nurse got gutted and so did the rest of her in exchange for a charge meter.
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That doesnt make her balanced, that makes her hard to play
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while I do like high skill high reward we also have to remember that even if they require a lot of skill to play they shouldnt be allowed to curb stomp every time someone is good at them. That being said i'm not here saying "NeRF NuRsE REEEEEEEE" but a killer ignoring survivor defenses comes with its own issues in terms of balance. But Nurse will be one of my fav and I hope they never make another one like her!
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That only counts in open field scenarios. All killers are designed, that you have no chance to avoid hits on open field. Otherwise you could run her forever. And while Nurse can ignore objects, they still influences the spaces she can blink. Breaking LoS forces Nurse players to either predict or blink to corners to catch you. Pallets are even parly usual against her. I'm not saying that you can stun an experienced Nurse player, but they limit her blinking position as well. In general it's about building distance and use objects against her. A Nurse player who doesn't try to predict your movement and only safely blinks for catching up, will waste their timer trying to catch you at some point.
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The bad decision is spawning on the map in the first place.
/s
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It counts in all scenarios. A good Nurse will not predict you, they will blink to the last place they saw you. Only bad ones look at LoS blockers and go "I think they're HERE!" and blink through with a moronic grin on their face, because that does actually work most of the time, only to find that the survivor did any number of things to bamboozle them.
I am so sick of people calling Nurse a prediction killer. She's not. That opens you up to counterplay. If you blink to where the survivor broke LoS, your second blink will hit them if you can see them. If you can't, you float around a little without wasting it til you find them again. Does it take slightly longer than an amazing prediction? Yes. By maybe 7 seconds, because the survivor cannot leave the tile and will make a noise you can hear moving around the walls. But how much time is lost if the survivor gets in your head?
Or, to put it another way: You've closed in on a survivor. The survivor runs around a wall. You blink to the corner of the wall where they broke LoS. And now you hold all of the power - if they double back, you blink and hit them. If they vault a window or drop a pallet, you blink and hit them. If they keep running, you blink and hit them. What other options do they have? Did I miss something?
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I actually see a surprising number of really, really good killers say they hate Nurse.
Even Zubatlel, probably one of the best killers in DBD, and one of the best Nurse players hates Nurse and thinks her design is stupid and terrible.
Personally I'm neutral. I've tried getting into Nurse but I don't find her ignore everything playstyle enjoyable. Landing a long blink is very satisfying but not enough for me to put up with everything else.
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Of course the survivor can leave the tile. Scratchmarks might lead her back towards you, but they still have to regain orientation. That gives you enough time and space to gain enough distance to avoid her first blink and start the whole thing from a different tile.
I personally think you still miss that Nurse still has a lot of tells of her ability. You can hear how long she is charging, you can see and react her blink. And keep in mind, that her charge time actually influences her blinking time, not the distance, if she looks down to blink closer. E.g. Assuming a killer doesn't predict and strighlty blinks towards your position, you should avoid moving behind LoS blockers before she starts her first blink. Do it during her blinktime, so she can't blink towards that corner. Of course avoid unnecessary animations that slow you down like a vault or pallet drop. You drop pallets against a good Nurse anyway only after she started her second blink, when you are sure to which side she will blink. And that it's something you can predict at the start of her blink etc.
And all of this is just considering we are facing a 100% perfect blinking god nurse and 100% perfect moving survivor, which is under real condition truely rare. Actuall impossible.
In reality, even on red ranks both side make big mistakes or actually play the prediction play. I'm also sick of argument in favor of the perfect optimal theoretical play which is quite far from reality. Especially when we have much more boring killer in the game. Nurse is the biggest game changer in the game who is actually quite fun to play against, if you accept that chases are different against her.
Post edited by Gay Myers (Luzi) on0 -
Make it make sense how you want a killer that less than 10% of the dbd player base can play effectively.
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I hate Nurse because she takes everything skillful about playing survivor in chase, throws it out the window, and turns it into just holding W and moving weird when you break line of sight while hoping she isn't a god at Nurse.
The way you have to play against her is the same playstyle that makes people hate Midwich imo.
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