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Plague being forgotten

I know everyone talks about this killer here and this killer there but why does no one ever mention plague? Nothing in the archives are ever said about her despite having one of the most interesting backgrounds and cosmetic wise she doesn't really have much. Also she has a constantly low pick rate along with a consistent low kill rate to boot. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that she probably has the worst mobility in the game. Not as in she moves slow but rather she has to wait for survivors to give her, her own power and she has to walk to said fountain. I think a good change would be something like oni where she can activate her own power from where she is standing.

Comments

  • Ribbles
    Ribbles Member Posts: 117
    edited January 2021

    Depends on survivors actions to get her power, and as slow as your grandma getting out of the car. Recipe for being ignored.

    She should be able to turn into vomit or a swarm of flies at a fountain and teleport to another fountain of her choosing.

  • VexTheHex
    VexTheHex Member Posts: 1,009
    edited January 2021

    Her design is a bit messy. I tried playing her a match or two recently and didn't enjoy it. As a Survivor, I hate playing against her. She removes healing from the match and makes it so your character is loud and visually loud. There also seems to a bug that causes your character to never end vomit while doing a gen. It's flat out obnoxious.

    She has a great theme and design. Her game play is however lacking both as and against.

  • konchok
    konchok Member, Alpha Surveyor Posts: 1,719

    I'm not sure what needs to happen with plague but I do feel that she's the weakest killer in the game. I think she's a bit like Nurse where if you're really good she becomes better, but unlike Nurse that skill ceiling is much lower. So she's probably somewhat balanced, but only if you're really really good with her.

    Overall, in my opinion she's just too difficult for too little reward.

  • TWiXT
    TWiXT Member Posts: 2,063
    edited January 2021

    A few Buffs I recommend for Plague to streamline her ability without making it too Oppressive:

    1. Give survivors the Hindered status whenever they vomit for the duration of the vomiting (roughly 1.5-2 seconds). This is a small and periodic de-buff to survivors that makes the Plague more of a threat in a chase but not so much that she becomes OP or too oppressive.
    2. Also while a survivor vomits, give them a 6m AoE that infects everything within its radius. This allows the sickness to spread throughout the maps less predictably and reduces the workload on the Plague herself. Currently survivors spread the sickness to each other by rescuing an infected survivor, working on a gen with a fully infected survivor or healing a downed infected survivor, all of which require direct interactions, otherwise the Plague has to infect them and objects herself every time. Adding this will make the sickness spread feel more like an actual Plague, apply more pressure to the map for her, make the add-on's that increase infection time on objects more noticeable, increase the chances of the sickness spreading to other survivors, and help her gain the contagious (25bp) scoring events more often.
    3. Allow her to channel corrupt fountains from afar. Like Freddy's Gen Teleportation power, but I can't decide If I like the idea of her Teleporting to corrupt fountains which uses it up without giving her corrupt purge, or if she should simply be able to gain Corrupt Purge from across the map at the expense of her movement speed for 5 seconds. On one hand, If survivors cleanse they give her either incredible mobility or the best ranged attack in the game making it her choice in how to use them, on the other, she doesn't have to go to the fountains anymore and can gain her Corrupt Purge right after initiating a chase while giving survivors a small window of time to try and find cover, or gain distance from her. Either way would be a buff saves her precious time.

    With these 3 changes, she would make life a little more difficult for survivors and really emphasize the choices survivors make regarding whether or not they cleanse, and when to do it strategically. With the first 2 buffs, infecting the whole team and chasing survivors is given a stronger edge that would encourage them to try and cleanse asap, but then with the 3rd buff, they are either giving her the ability to traverse the map quicker, or gain Corrupt Purge at more ideal times without having to go out of her way to obtain it. I Like these 3 buffs because they keep balance in mind and allow her to focus more on the chase and keeping up pressure on the map, instead of how it is right now: where she spends the majority of the beginning of the match trying to infect as many survivors as possible so that she'll be able to apply more pressure by the mid-end game. This is incredibly time consuming and frustrating for the player, and the infection mechanic itself doesn't really pose enough of a threat to survivors that would encourage them to cleanse vs remaining sick.

    It's why I came up with these suggested buffs, but please tell me if you think they would make her too strong to go up against, because while I believe they have balance in mind, I also mained Plague for about a year since she initially came out... so I admit I am a little biased because I just want to see my go-to girl match up more evenly with the better designed and streamlined killers like Spirit, Bubba, and Blight.

  • Nosferatu3145
    Nosferatu3145 Member Posts: 542

    It's sad to see good ideas like these and know that will never be implemented cause every single minor change in this game takes 3 to 4 months to happen

  • 6yXJI0
    6yXJI0 Member Posts: 589

    She is annoying, but i would straight up dc each time if they buffed her like that.

  • TWiXT
    TWiXT Member Posts: 2,063
    edited January 2021

    I don't see why you would have such a strongly negative response to them.

    For the Hindered effect, survivors vomit once every 10-16 seconds, which would only slow you down a little bit for 1.5-2 seconds when it happens. During a chase, that's nothing a good escape perk, pallet drop, juke, or dead hard can't compensate for. It only gives her a slight edge at catching up when chasing on open ground, or around a long loop, and any decent survivor shouldn't find it too hard to work with.

    For the AoE infection, this does give her an edge in tracking a lone survivor since you'll leave a trail of infected objects behind you, and you have a higher chance of infecting your allies which will make them want to keep their social distance from you, but it doesn't do anything else that interferes with you or your teams ability to do objectives, and If everyone's infected and leaving infected object trails everywhere it'll be much more difficult for her to track the survivors exact whereabouts.

    Finally as for the third possible buff. 1 allows her to choose to either use the fountain normally for gaining corrupt purge, or teleport to it instead. It doesn't give her corrupt and allow her to teleport, it's 1 or the other, and as the current strategy goes right now, if you are infected and want to cleanse you are completely free to pick a fountain that is no where near your team or any gens you're working on. The other proposed buff slows her down to a crawl for 5 seconds so she can power up Corrupt Purge, and I can see this being used 1 of 2 ways: she'll either channel it right before approaching a gen survivors are working on, or she'll charge in, vomit on everyone, and then channel it before commencing the chase. Either way, the survivors are all given a 5 second head start before she comes at them with all the fury of her indigestion. With that caveat, I can still see killer and survivor players complaining that she's still weak, because while Corrupt Purge is a menacing ranged attack, it's also completely avoidable, and good survivors often take it away from her with a hearty pallet slam.

    Like I stated, I kept balance in mind when coming up with these, because even though she's "annoying", you have to admit she's far from powerful. These suggestions are just minor tweaks with counter-play and work arounds, so while they will make her stronger, they won't outright make her broken. I wouldn't DC against that.

  • beached
    beached Member Posts: 303
    edited January 2021

    As somebody who LOVES playing plague I completely agree with this thread. I’m a rank 1 survivor and I could probably count on one hand the amount of times I’ve gone against her the past two months. Her vomit takes much time to get used to and if you get a map like Lery’s it doesn’t really matter how skilled you are when survivors can just keep cutting corners and entering new rooms. Her inability to have an actual ability to use corrupt unless the planets align and there’s a pool nearby as well as being completely at the hands of the survivor’s choices to cleanse or not.

    She continues to get shadow nerfed as well like with the increased height of walls on the Macmillan maps after their rework. Getting vomit over these insanely tall walls is much more difficult than it used to be before the rework. It’s like the devs saw how low her kill rate was and we’re just like “but clown” because he’s more popular but not the most desperately in need of a buff. In this community the only killers that actually receive some love are the ones people actually talk about, and since nobody really talks about plague she is forgotten over and over again. Hopefully this will change but I guess only time will tell.

  • Zozzy
    Zozzy Member Posts: 4,759

    Giving her that power mid chase would be to strong so i would go with the teleport idea.

    It gives her nice map pressure at the expense of vile purge. This would only work if being sick actually did something other than being injured so it needs to be detrimental to repair or looping in some way like you said (the devs will NEVER do this to their top paying customers though.)

  • Aven_Fallen
    Aven_Fallen Member Posts: 16,287

    To your points:

    1. NO Movement-Speed penalty. Hindered is 3,75%, this means a Survivor drops to 96,25%. This does not sound much, but would almost be permanent Bloodlust 1 for the Killer, roughly the same Speed Increase for the Killer (relative) like NOED. You dont want to mess around with Movement Speed too much, having 3,75% Movement Speed would mean that many Tiles dont become playable, making it quite easy for The Plague to get a Survivor there. In the end, the game is balanced around 4,0 m/s on the Survivor Side and 4,4/4,6m/s on the Killer side, except for Bloodlust and certain Perks which either have requirements (NOED) or are quite weak on their own (PWYF).
    2. While this would indeed remove workload from the Plague, it would make her even more boring IMO. Currently, if nobody cleanses, you use your M2 for a while and afterwards, you are an M1-Killer. This would just decrease the use of M2, which would result in more M1-gameplay. Yay. Also, for Survivors, it would be really annoying if you get infected by someone running around next to you. Now you can easily avoid being infected (not going for Unhooks of sick Survivors, not working on a Gen with a sick Survivor), but this would make it way harder and more out of control for the Survivors (yes, like a Plague, but eh).
    3. I dont think that every Killer now needs a Teleport to an Object. It is not that Plague is weak or anything, so she does not really need the "Freddy-Treatment".


    @Topic:

    In general, when it comes to Plague, the biggest flaw is that she is boring and her design is kinda flawed. On the Survivor-Side, it lowers the amount of BPs gained because Healing is no real thing anymore, you are a constant oneshot and if Plague gets her Corrupt Purge, she has a stupid strong ability. And I think, running around as noise-making Oneshots is a good sign that Corrupt Purge is strong, if Survivors prefer that over Plague getting her Power.

    When it comes to the Plague-side, she is just boring. Like I said, some M2-action and if nobody cleanses, you are an M1-Killer with Instadown. I am currently grinding her (got a Build, except for BBQ 3 so far), and one game was super-boring (nobody cleansed), another game was more fun (because they cleansed).

    IMO she should have some incentive to cleanse for the Survivors, some action speed debuff (even tho, nothing too hard, we know the Devs dont want this since the Freddy-Rework) or that Survivors go down after a certain amount of time being sick (while not in Chase). Just something you want to cleanse, but dont have to do so immediatly. Also her Corrupt Purge should be slighly weaker, maybe let only a certain amount of it deal damage or something like that.

    When it comes to cosmetics, two reasons - first, she is indeed not very popular. This means that the Team will more likely focus on Cosmetics of Characters which are used more often. And second, her Design is nothing which allows that much variation I guess, because every Skin so far released looks roughly the same. Plague has a great design by default (I am using her complete Prestige-Set, since I think it looks awesome), but evey Skin created so far is like "Yeah, looks like Plague".

  • Chchchcheryl
    Chchchcheryl Member Posts: 1,531

    pffft nooo! Trapper/Wraith/Clown are the weakest killers in the game

    Vommy Mommy still has a high skill ceiling (but no skill ceiling is as high as nurses!)

  • Chchchcheryl
    Chchchcheryl Member Posts: 1,531

    Plague is completely balanced and actually one of the stronger killers in the game! She has alright mobility and a powerful but balanced ability with a no win scenario for survivors until they use every single fountain!

    Also, not being easily tracked and not being broken is certainly incentive enough to cleanse, you go back to full health and won't be found by the plague every time you touch a gen!


    Skin wise Vommy Mommy does need more attention for sure! All her skins are basically the same thing, very lacklustre, prestige III is cool though

  • Zozzy
    Zozzy Member Posts: 4,759

    The only reason survivors would cleanse is if it is detrimental to looping or gen speed. Everything else is irrelevant.

  • Chchchcheryl
    Chchchcheryl Member Posts: 1,531

    It is detrimental to gen speed, when everyone is infected her gen pressure is insane!

    Giving her higher mobility or more detrimental effects when sick to survivors just pushes her way over the balanced line, short of maybe a 1 second hindered effect while vomiting! I for one wouldn't slow down whilst vomiting if I was running from a killer that wanted to kill me!

  • Zozzy
    Zozzy Member Posts: 4,759
    edited January 2021

    Then she is back at square one with no reason to cleanse and her fountains are useless.

    She is the tallest killer in the game and shows over many loops that the other killers don't. this makes mindgames with her impossible and stealth is impossible.

    Perhaps survivors being infected should activate her ability to teleport to any fountain? the more that are infected the faster she gets to teleport?

  • Mooks
    Mooks Member Posts: 14,802

    I LOVE those ideas as concept.

    Obviously they need testing and probably tweaking, but overall they all make sense while not making her too OP.

    maybe the vomit of survivors can even stay as infectious puddles for some time, that kind of work like Freddys snares

  • xcross
    xcross Member Posts: 10

    That is sort of incorrect tbh just looking at the charts alone she has one of the lowest kill rates even lower than that of clown, and clown is still getting a rework before her. Plague just isn't that strong not because she is mechanically difficult but rather on top of her having to deal with with her preexisting objectives she still has to go out of her way to get her power. I would say even clown is more mechanically difficult than her but it's just the simple fact that they kind of ignored her. She is never talked about and no one seems to mention her on the forums because no one wants to play her since she isn't strong. Setting aside her kill rate you look at her scoring and that's a mess as well she needs a reworking system to score her correctly. This is why like oni I think its better if she can just activate her power from a distance once an active fountain is up. Plus this wouldn't be too strong because it already exists with oni and his is an instant down compared to plagues.

  • ZaKzan
    ZaKzan Member Posts: 544

    This game has so many glaring issues with bugs and balance, that lesser played killers aren't a top priority.

    The devs do seem to spend exorbitant amounts of time changing absolutely useless and random things that we may see her changed in the future, though

  • Zozzy
    Zozzy Member Posts: 4,759

    eh... ONI is also mechanically restricted while using his power and is all about angles.

    Plague can freely aim her power and shoot over structures making it way more powerful.

  • Chchchcheryl
    Chchchcheryl Member Posts: 1,531

    Not every killer should have the ability to teleport, plus that would completely break plague, she teleport to a newly corrupt fountain for an instant chase against a survivor that probably recently escaped from her or got unhooked

    It strengthens tunnelling on her, plus teleporting is quite broke as it is, Freddy barely gets away with it, but only because its a main objective he teleports to and you get a massive visual warning before he appears!

  • Chchchcheryl
    Chchchcheryl Member Posts: 1,531

    "kill rates this kill rates that"

    Nurse has the lowest kill rate of any killer

    so she's bad?

    incorrect, just not often utilised properly

  • Altarf
    Altarf Member Posts: 1,046

    Plague has been forgotten because she is difficult to play well, has a high skill ceiling that depends on survivors giving you your power which is not consistent, has a design that's not to everyone's tastes, and came out at the same time as the Ash leak so people forgot about her immediately.

    She's good against solos, not so much against SWF which makes her a gamble at higher ranks.

    Twins will also be forgotten like her because of similar reasons. If Deathslinger didn't have his infamy/he was drastically nerfed, he would be too.

  • Uistreel
    Uistreel Member Posts: 634

    I don't know, I just find her really boring. Which is weird, because she has one of most unique powers in the game

  • ManyAchievables
    ManyAchievables Member Posts: 667

    Because they barely pay attention to her and she isn't even incredibly strong. Honestly the only reason I'm glad she's in the game is because of her teachables all being really good (or at least unique, in Dark Devotion's case).

  • SeannyD115
    SeannyD115 Member Posts: 583
    edited January 2021

    If plague had these changes she would be in a better spot.

    1. Revert the minimum charge time nerf. Before you could charge your puke to any amount and not suffer a cool down penalty for not charging to a certain amount.

    2. Landing hits with puke not doing anything. With the introduction of deticated servers you can hit the survivors with puke and make them scream/ go through the animation of getting hit and nothing happens. Most of the time the only reliable way to get survivors sick is to puke on something they have to interact with.

    3. Drinking from fountains not insta healing. I saw this in another thread and I think it would work great for pressure. But I think it should only heal survivors that were broken by the vile purge not if they were hit by a m1 then got sick.

  • lagosta
    lagosta Member Posts: 1,871

    IMHO, change her fountains interactions.

    1-She starts the game with no corrupted fountains.

    2-Whenever a gen is completed a clean fountain is corrupted.

    3-Survivors can consume the corruption of the fountains, cleansing the fountain in the process. By doing so, a healthy survivor becomes sick, a sick survivor becomes badly ill for 1 minute.

    4-Badly ill survivors take damage from Vile Purge.

    5-Sick Survivors (but not badly ill) can cleanse on clean fountains, corrupting them in the process.

    6-Plague can consume corruption from fountains too, gaining Corrupted Purge as usual.

    The idea is to create another objective for survivors, making them fight to reach and ingest the corruption before the plague, so they can partially suppress her power. I am still not sure what could be done when all fountains are corrupted tho.

  • Canas
    Canas Member Posts: 1,021

    She has several problems, at this point only a rework can salvage this killer.

    1. Lowest killrate among with Blight and Nurse (extremely high skill ceiling, very unforgiving to play as).
    2. Lowest pickrate in the game, constantly forgotten and without any skin-releases since 10 months.
    3. No map pressure, gets genrushed to hell by survivors who do not cleanse. Being sick SHOULD reduce action speed at least.
    4. Smoke trail and enormous size give away her position far too easily, a smaller terror radius should be at least base on her.
    5. Fountains favor survivors due to restoring their health fully, tend to be in locations that are too far way for the Plague. Your effort of infecting someone is immediately undone and you have to start finding people all over again.
    6. Extremely unreliable hitbox on her projectiles, your vomit particles can touch people and still not infect them. The inherent slowdown from her channeling needs to go, at least it would make it easier for her to hit her torrent of puke. Loops completely shut down your power since survivors can simply hug a wall to avoid your puke.
    7. Many bad addons which don't even alter her gameplay. She should receive addons which add different downsides to being sick, those could range from aura blindness to even being hindered. Only her red addon which gives her aura-reading is decent.
    8. Godawful bp-gain and emblem-scoring, struggles with pipping and gets far less compensation for her actions than any other killer in the game. Infecting objects should give at least twice as much bp (50->100). Her playstyle of infecting people and then dropping a chase hurts her chaser emblem while her brutality emblem suffers from merely hitting people once with your censer. Her gatekeeper emblem is equally terrible due to gens popping like crazy against her.
  • Axe
    Axe Member Posts: 1,060

    IMO Plague needs a rework, her power denies survivor autism points from heals and she deny herself from pippin cause the way her power works with deviousness and brutal category.