What makes you hate Deathslinger?

Because I don't want to juke 24/7 because of his instant ADS. You either don't juke and get hit or you juke and lose all your distance because he can just wait until you're done juking and then quick scope you.

Pre-throwing pallets works sometimes but you'll run out of pallets quickly and this playstyle only works on a few specific pallets with large LOS blockers around them. This is also an incredibly boring way to play, because it doesn't take any skill whatsoever.

He's a blast to play and has been my main for a long time now, but he is a complete snoozefest to face. The threat of him being able to insta ADS basically allows him to zone just by existing and puts the survivors into a lose lose situation. This is what makes him frustrating to some players.

He's anti-loop and leaves little room for counterplay.

I don’t like his breathing and guttural sounds.

There it is.

For me it is how no matter what happens when he harpoons you he gets value, like you can shoot someone then if they manage to break the chain, sure you get stunned but, they still get injured and deep wounds, you can also harpoon someone and pull them and then, instantly drop the chain with no stun and hit them, and also the instant ads, like everyone else, has said is also really really silly. (Please correct me if I'm wrong on anything)

A lot of the counterplay for Deathslinger comes into play when he's reeling you. When you're running a Deathslinger, yes you are going to get shot. What you need to do is get shot in a spot where you can hook yourself on a piece of level geometry or fall through a drop down or whatever so the Deathslinger can't follow up and actually down you. If you can successfully do that, you'll waste a ton of his time, time he flat out does not have.

What you need to do against Deathslinger is twofold. First, be HYPER aware of every single bit of the level around you. Things as benign as a random tree stump on the Swamp can save you from going down. Second, keep as much distance as possible. While Deathslinger does have range, he is more deadly the closer he is to you because he's less likely to miss and it is less likely you'll be able to get something between you when he's reeling.

I think he would be fine if his terror radius was +8 on what it currently is. His hitboxes feel very fair though I feel like with him its either you know how to aim or you don't.

Once you master the quickshot with Deathslinger I don't feel you can really improve yourself all that much with him as you often run loops the same way.

I would rather face a Deathslinger than a Huntress with the way hitboxes are.

The only difference between his ability and an actual gun is the downtimes he gets and the fact that he cant down you through a pallet (but still can injure you). You can't do anything against him, you have no information on when he is going to shoot unlike Huntress, all you can do is try to juke around and pray he misses, which also loses you distance so he can literally walk up to you and hit you. His ability is like Nurse but remove the prediction part, remove map mobility and add a lot of downtime. You don't have chases with him since there is no way you run him around for more than a few seconds if he is good, you slam gens while he is reeling in/reloading/patrolling/hooking.

there are two types of people people that want something and hate it when they get it and others that didn't want it and loved it when they got it

Exactly. When you're injured, give him an easy shot where you're somewhere you can get yourself behind something and prevent the hit.

I'll admit, pulling this off when you haven't played as him is probably difficult and this flat out didn't occur to me until I had played him a lot. But yes, Deathslinger has a lot more counterplay than people give him credit for. Most people don't see it though because they have a really bad habit of thinking getting shot is the end of the encounter. It isn't, but people think it is.

The most often used argument is that your skill vs any good slinger doesn't matter which couldn't be further from truth. It's the same as saying that your skill doesn't matter vs good nurse which is equally foolish to say. They both drastically change gameplay fom reaction based looping to prediction based dodging which is shifted in killer's favor when they are really good at playing these characters.

Properly blocking LOS, making correct predictions on when the killer uses his power, smart pathing etc all that is very different from your general midless M1 looping so people aren't used to it in other words, they are bad at it so they don't like it & complain about it. With nurse to lesser extent as nurse bypasses survivor defences are more then slinger so she is also harder to play and less often seen thus less complained about.

Chasing a really good survivor, who knows how slinger works and is properly adjusted to him, can take ages to catch, even to amazing slinger, compared to someone who just runs straight, not thinking about single juke or LOS blocker at all.

The ability to instantly fire at any moment is pretty stressful and incredibly frustrating to deal with. The chain is incredibly forgiving and basically is a nonexistant mechanic unless you're on the other side of a pallet. To top it off, breaking the chain injures you so he doesn't even have to be able to hit you after his shot the first time in a chase.

Imo, they should give him the Pyramid Head treatment of making him have to aim for half a second before firing but they'd have to buff him in some other way to compensate. Or they could just make it so that if he's walking backwards the chain doesn't give the survivor zero control over where they go which gives them more opportunities to snag on things.

That's...a take that I've never heard before but hey, the forums never cease to amaze me. Without add-ons Huntress' cooldown for a missed hatchet is 0.5 seconds longer than Slinger's (technically it's the same, it takes 0.5 seconds to actually shoot and the cooldown is 1.5 seconds). I will agree that her hitboxes are bad, but in terms of both killers missing a shot, it's basically the same.

I'm aware that Deathslinger is very good at catching out Survivors. Deathslinger is a ranged stealth killer after all. That's actually the primary reason to pick him over Huntress. Huntress has more range, can down faster, has more shots before reloading, and is just overall way more lethal than he is but... he doesn't have a 40m hum. The other reason is that he can actually use M1 perks. The main way to deal with Deathslinger potentially catching you out is the same as dealing with Wraith or Ghostface. Stay healthy and run to a loop at the first sign of him.

As for the UE thing. It depends on whether I'm firing over a loop or not. If I'm not firing over a loop, I'll be aiming roughly center of mass. When firing over a loop, I often have to aim at shoulder/head height. I don't think crouching will prevent a hit aimed at the middle of your hitbox, but I have absolutely missed shots over loops from Survivors ducking. The problem is that if I do shoot at you over a loop and miss, I've already slowed myself by ADSing, the miss cool down, and probably reloading... and since you're on the other side of a loop and I don't have a bullet anymore, you are free to stand back up and be faster than me for a few seconds. Though I suppose if I faked the shot, crouching to dodge would lose you less distance.

Honestly I've not had enough people try to use UE against my slinger to have any concrete experience with that. I would suspect that the classic options for handling Stealth Killers would serve you better. Spine Chill, Sprint Burst, healing perks, etc. I suspect I don't need to list them all.

I don't like shooting games, so it bums me out that he turns this into one -- that's the main reason I don't like him. If he even just threw the harpoon instead of shooting it, I'd be happier.

Outside of that, the small terror radius is annoying, and his sounds are annoying, but, if you go against a Deathslinger who's only intermediate level, you can often dodge just by wiggling while you run, so it's not that big a deal.