Would you rather have a killer start strong or weak?

I'd prefer on the weaker side, because getting buffed into a better state plays out better.

If you start too strong you get Legioned; "Here, have every nerf ever suggested by anyone online AND your power is gutted as well and now does nothing except mildly irritate people." Then they're not the shiny new toy anymore so they don't get another balance change for like 2 years.

Weak. It is easier to buff weak things than to nerf strong things. Also, less complaints in the Forums.

I mean, Legion is a failed concept. They dont even need a Buff, they need a full Power Rework to actually be good.

Honestly Legion just needs a few tweaks. They wouldn't be top tier or anything, but they'd be alot more tolerable.

It depends from what perspective you judge 'weak/strong'.

Take for example Nemesis:

He (as well and leon and jill) are very, very likely intended and designed as 'starter' characters. They all have perks to make learning the basic gameplay elements easier, which is great seeing a lot of RE fans that never played dbd before got into the game due to them.

But as a killer Nemesis is decried as 'weak' by people longer in the game. But for what he's there for, he's great. (even though they oughta stop the zombies from facecamping)

Nurse is a strong killer who could even do with a slight buff, as she's only really 'strong' once you learned how to play here. Similar with Oni.

Lotsa of people declare Deathslinger to be either too weak or too strong, but similar to Nemesis he (and some others) fill a specific spot: He's one of the killers for people that aren't good at chases, on either side, and take no real fun out of it. He's for the people who want to show their skill at a game of cat and mice, and at that he's good. His perks and addons need an overhaul, however, and he oughta be barred from M&A, but aside from that, he's fine.

I thought the options were : strong into weak and weak into strong.

But honestly i rather have a weak killer buffed into mediocre. At least it brings joy and excitement where as seeing a character nerfed into weak is just sad :(

Strong then get nerfs. Behavior has a pretty bad track record for buffing weak killers(trickster, nemesis).

Trickster has had almost 6 months of being terrible and has absolutely zero prospects of being good in the future. Nemesis is in the same boat, his buff that he is receiving next week will do absolutely nothing to help his lower than average kills in red ranks. Pinhead is another killer who is looking terrible as well. We will see how his changes shake out from the PTB to what we get Tuesday but his chains where laughably bad on the PTB to the point that his power could actively hurt you. Name one killer released in the past year that has been good outside of Blight. By good I mean can stand a decent chance against high skilled red rank solo players / swf.

My question to the people who propose weak then get buffs to strong...how long should that take? years? I would love to hear of an example of Bhvr doing a good job of buffing a weak killer and how long it took them to put those changes in place.

Starting strong would be nice. After all if they start weak then the buffing process will be riddled with bugs and take 3 years. But jokes aside I'd love to have a strong killer other than the few we have. Even if its only for a little while.

I wasn't playing when Legion was released but hear they got gutted pretty hard. What was old Legion actually like?

He could continue to chase and stab you multiple times in feral frenzy until you went down. It was basically throwing the game as the other survivors would be able to bang out gens while you did this and it took awhile but for that one survivor it was absolutely zero fun. You had an extremely mobile killer who could vault pallets who just stabbed you over and over again until you deep wound's to the dying state with no way to deal with it.

I remember how people calles spirit weak, until she got a slight change. Rember her?

Remember the first incarnation of freddy into the second one?

Dont just cherry pick what fits your argument.

I'm not a programmer but I find it's easier to tone down something strong than try to bring up something weak. If a killer is strong at release they can always adjust some numbers to make it more balanced. If a killer is weak sometimes adjusting the numbers won't be enough. An entire rework may be needed.

Although one draw back of releasing a new killer strong then nerfing the piss out of them is the suspicion the devs did that on purpose. Remember when old MoM came out? When word got around how broken that perk was EVERYONE bought Ash. Then it took them months to finally nerf it. I can't help but wonder if someone in the meeting said "This perk is broken. What should we do?" "Wait for the sales to die down then fix it"