after my long break. What has changed and what's new?

Survivors have new buggy and bad animations.

New hud is terrible when you are playing killer.

Clown was nerfed (very minor buff with bottles and terrible nerf with addons)

OoO is going to be changed, same with DS

They added a new tile (greenhouse), oryginally it didn't have collision for the killer.

Game has a terrible desync right now

How long is a long break for you? That would help to know. I just got back in a few weeks ago after a 2 year break

Play killer unless you are a masochist.

He was buffed lol, you're not wrong. Clown now has a faster reload and an additional bottle type that speeds up any player that goes through it. He can use this to traverse the map more quickly, bait survivors into unsafe areas, mindgame them into thinking he's coming from a different direction than he actually is, etc. His add-ons are still extremely good, and I wouldn't even say they were nerfed on the whole. He lost his exhaustion add-on, but his add-ons are better over the whole range now and he has some cool new ones, such as getting aura reading on people who run through his clouds. He still has Redhead's Pinky Finger too, somehow.

As for OoO, someone else might answer this, but the devs have proposed changes for it - it hasn't been changed yet. Here are some details: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/224303/feedback-on-proposal-for-object-of-obsession/p1

Balance hasn't changed much in the past 5 months, meta remained pretty much the same.

What's new is that the devs have started the graphics update they teased during the anniversary.

• MacMillan, Autohaven, Ormond, Springwood, Yamaoka, Gideon and Asylum maps were reworked
• New models for gens, chests, lockers, pallets, breakable walls, fire pits, etc.
• New models for the Killer shack, which change with the realm

Clown received his rework, which is not much more than him getting a secondary power in addition to his old one, which he kept.

You probably remember how the forums were negative then. Nothing changed.

I always take a break from this game but whenever I get back to it I have fun. I am having fun now too after not playing for a year.

Just try playing and see for yourself.

bug one more time bugs oh i did i mention bugs

Basically survivors hitboxes are massively messed up where killers get lots of easy hits. Survivors are also not getting the final emblem unless you survive which has messed up survivor ranks a lot. Being survivor just is super difficult right now. Thats the short way to explain some of the bigger issues

There's a set of conditions to pip. The system is currently not following those conditions. Survivors are not to blame for meeting these conditions and not being rewarded.

The only good thing about him is faster reload, which isn't really important because you never reload unless survivor is cornered or he is on the hook.

New yellow gas, it's bad. Not because it's bad in itself, but because it doesen't adress any of the clown issues. You can't really use it for map traversal becaue of its long activation time and it still have a cost of one bottle.

So it's the best used on the loop to get this 10% speed, while slowing down survivor with normal tonic. Thanks to that you can force survivors to throw pallets faster... excatly the same thing that clown always done, but with a twist. Now you need 2 bottles because he lost one of his best cheap addons (vol 10%), that increased hindered status duration... now you are only left with vol 15% (purple :/) and bleach.

They also butchered make up kit.

Cigar box was changed from an addon that allows you to spread gas on a whole loop, to an aura reading of 16m, that is good only against survivors, who sneak hard... but 1, you already have to know they are there, 2 they usually either hide terribly or use sprint burst... exhaustion addons could be useful in that scenario.

And because of an old buff, that changed how throw cooldown works (buff) now he only has a few addons that do much.

"He still has Redhead's Pinky Finger too, somehow."

If they removed it, he would lost everything that makes him viable on better ranks

TL:DR

1. Reload speed increased +
2. Addons nerfed -
3. New tonic that you really shouldn't use

If they make antidote use separate bottles, that are reloaded together with the main power, it will be better, but still not great. They should really remove an activation time, they added it to avoid using it on loops... but quess what... it's the best use that you have with them thanks to exactly that.

Well uh, unless you're a killer main, you've come at the wrong time. Anyways everyone else should have mentioned everything, however Clown did get buffed, the only addon he lost was the Exhaustion bottles addon which was honestly just a ridiculous addon. He still has the yellow faster reload addon and his base reload speed is 3 seconds, oh and speedy bottles so that's cool.

If you're a survivor main wait a few days for the 4.5.2 patch and it'll be better.