So deathslinger is unplayable now

Half the point of Deathslinger is that you basically couldn't loop him. Survivors could outpace him in several different ways and beat him that way, but not loop him. To be honest he used to feel like a glacier. Slow as hell but he will run you over if given the chance. That was the power fantasy that he fulfilled. That and him being the only Ranged Stealth killer. Now? Now he feels like a tortoise. Still slow but not nearly as dangerous.

Why is it a bad thing that we had 1 Killer that standard boring looping doesn't wreck (who isn't Nurse)?

I honestly see no reason to play as him ever again. Legion with Trail of Torment and Coup stacks fulfills both being stealthy and being difficult to loop better than the current version of Deathslinger.

Absolutely! He was hated by a lot of people... I hated him too.

I was just thinking about this too.

In most cases that I've witnessed, the injured survivor won't be in a good position to utilize their environment since a good deathslinger won't attempt to shoot if they're the ones at a disadvantageous spot. The possibility of breaking the chain is there, but it's usually so low to even consider.

diagnosis: skill issue

...Yes it does? Hitting a healthy survivor injures them, that's damage on hit.

Regardless: While obviously survivors shouldn't be gifted protection when they're out of position or playing poorly, they should always have the ability to avoid the killer's power, and the fact of the matter is that you do not have an ability to avoid the killer's power when it's a quickscope that comes out faster than you can react to. All you can do is hope the Slinger misses.

That part of the change was obviously fine. The problem now is that he feels way too clunky to play, which imo would be fixed with a simple buff to the ADS speed. Raise the gun faster, but still can't shoot until it's up, and he'll be in an ideal spot. (Save for the TR increase, which I'm still on the fence about.)

Sure, they can, but that's only realistic if there's some object between them and the Killer. Slinger has more than enough time to reel someone in without something else breaking the chain for the survivor, base wiggle time just isn't enough.

It does not. It inflicts Injury and Deep Wound on the chain breaking. If Deathslinger shoots, M1's and the M1 doesn't connect, they remain healthy. Now idk why a Deathslinger would ever swing and miss vs a healthy Survivor and not just break the chain, but technically getting speared does zero damage.

Also, the solution to Deathslinger's uncounterable shots wasn't ever to nerf his ADS. That's just going to cause annoyance, frustration, and people dropping him because playing as him became a chore and not fun. It was to nerf the fact that if Deathslinger walks backwards with you while you're speared... you're moving at 6.12 m/s. To put that into context, outside of stacking an exhaustion perk and the on getting injured speed boost... that is the fastest a Survivor can move. Even if you do plan ahead and try and get shot next to a bit of level geometry, the odds of you getting behind it when you only have a 3.0 m/s movement speed to work with and are flying towards Deathslinger faster than you can sprint burst are vanishingly low. Fix those odds to "fix" Deathslinger. And, you've fixed it in such a way that's still interactive for both parties.

Also, the TR increase is actually worse than the ADS nerf. Deathslinger's primary upside to the numerous delays baked into his power was his fast downs. He can't get fast downs anymore because Survivors with even half a brain can start running earlier and Deathslinger has to hold W after them for +10 seconds per chase. It's bad. Also it guts one of the primary reasons to run him over Huntress. Huntress can do a great many things... but stealth is not one of them. Deathslinger is capable of stealth and could partially do it even without investing perks and add ons. Now he practically has to run M&A.

You're missing the point. Why should a difficult to aim ability which you are heavily punished for missing with give survivors a chance to react and avoid the damage both before and after the shot lands.

Because they don't realistically have the ability to avoid damage after the shot lands? If there's something between the survivor and the killer, sure, but any good Deathslinger either isn't gonna go for those shots or will go for them with the intent of having the chain break for strategic reasons.

Slinger is very good in the 1v1 because of this- his ability is hard to dodge even when you have the actual ability to do so, and it's basically a guaranteed hit unless the Slinger's being greedy or you get lucky with terrain. Which, like, it should be, that's perfectly reasonable- he got the shot, he should have a solid chance of getting the hit too.

If they don't have the ability then what the ######### is the point of the reeling mechanic? Yes, he can back up and remove interactivity, do why did the nerf ignore that unfavorable of making him clunky as #########

The reeling is a balancing mechanic to make sure the Slinger can't get crazy weird shots on off angles and around scenery, it's to shape where he can get a hit, not if the hit results in something. At least, so I'd assume- it's definitely working that way currently. It also weakens him further against teamwork, since a teammate can walk into the chain and break it faster.

I won't lie and say I do play a ton of Deathslinger, but that's hardly a requirement for talking about his balance.

Regardless: I really and truly believe there's a middle ground there. Some number shuffling to make it not feel like an eternity to raise his gun, without making it too quick for survivors to dodge. Hell, maybe the animation just needs to be tweaked to trick the brain into not thinking it takes forever, since his actual balance is fine right now- outside of the TR change, anyway.

I... really don't think that it does injure if you miss your swing, but tbh this was just me being pedantic so I'd be ok with dropping this.

Why are you or anybody else expecting to be able to reliably dodge a gun? I don't get that. He did probably need a bit more counter play, but that's why I think they should have left Quick Scoping alone and messed with the chain. So yeah you're going to get shot but the chase with DS becomes all about jockeying for position around terrain where the Survivors are trying to be in spots where they can't get reeled and Slinger is trying to get them into a position where he can reel them. I do agree that the ADS fake was dumb and making him unable to swing for a bit after lowering the gun was a good call. Fully on board with that nerf.

Response to side note: There was in fact reasons to run old Deathslinger over Huntress. Deathslinger can use Stealth, can use M1 based perks, and can handle maps like Hawkins and RPD significantly better than Huntress can. Is Huntress overall stronger than old Slinger? Yeah probably. Is Slinger stronger than her on her bad maps? Honestly, I would guess the answer is yes. Also... remember how I said he could do Stealth? Old Slinger was arguably more powerful than all the other Stealth Killers in the game. He was definitely better at it than Myers or Pig and probably Ghost Face too. The only one who was close was buffed Wraith but even then, it was debatable.

Response to Lastly: Honestly their rationale for that sounds like they don't realize he was a ranged stealth killer. Surprising and getting free hits is what Stealth killers do. Deathslinger is 100% one of them. If you don't like how M&A makes Slinger's Terror Radius smaller than his range... maybe change that so it is +/-25% of the Killer's Terror Radius. Then it's still 8m for 32m killers, 6m for 24m killers, and 4m for T2 Myers.

Edit: Actually that sounds like a perfect fix for M&A Slinger. Change M&A and then if necessary, nerf Deathslinger's max range to 16m. Heck even leaving M&A alone and making his max range 15m would probably be preferable to what they did do.

To anyone who says this Deathslinger change is fine just picture yourself when playing shooters from now on thats how your ADS works AND you can't shoot at all until you are fully aiming. Even in Overwatch with Widowmaker they have it the longer you ADS you stronger your shot gets so you can still at least quick shot to some form of extent to at least do some damage.

Removing quick shot from the shooter genre entirely will definitely kill off a lot of the shooter playerbase

Negative press is still press.

Slinger was gutted and can now join Wraith in the “wee bit OP” category of B tier killers being nerfed for no rational reason.

Limited range. Slow TTK. Terrible map pressure. Countered by holding W, pre-dropping and body blocking. Can only deal 1 damage state per reload/has to reload after every shot. Successful shots can be countered by objects/structures/survivors in the environment. Feels clunky and awkward to play. So on so forth.

Very poorly conceived changes that break the killer’s fundamental design.