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Killers by ease of use
I thought it would be fun to rank killers by how easy or hard I’ve felt they were for me to learn to learn to play. Obviously these are just my rankings based on my experience with them (and a guess on the Artist)
Notes
- Nurse is her own category. She really feels like a character that if you don’t play her regularly she’s pretty difficult to use. I hate her stare at her feet playstyle though so I have no desire to bother with her, I just never found her fun at all.
- Both the 110% move speed ranged killers feel like ones that if you don’t play them enough to be really consistent with their ranged attacks then you’ll really suffer because of their terrible movement speed. I usually play killers randomly though so needless to say I’m a terrible shot with both Huntress and Deathslinger. I don’t dislike them (other than Deathslinger’s turning speed feels really slow), I’m just not putting in the extra time to improve my aim.
- The middle tier are killers whose special abilities are fiddly enough that it can feel a little rusty if you haven’t played them recently. I played Oni again his week after a stint of not playing him for instance and had serious trouble with my cornering with his ability. Wraith is unusual in this bucket because his controls aren’t hard but getting into the right grove of cloaking an decloaking and blocking survivors, etc, makes a big difference with him so he’s not likely to do well without a pretty firm understanding of general gameplay.
- The second highest tier are killers that I feel like I could play out of the box and get the gist, but they have some odd strategic points that might take getting used to. For instance, Trapper is super simple to understand how his ability works, but knowing the best places to put traps for various scenarios is something you have to pick up with experience playing him. I put Artist in this tier as well, just a hunch.
- And finally the top tier are the ones that I felt could be played pretty smoothly straight out of the box more or less. Mind you, that doesn’t mean they’re the most powerful killers, many killers in the lower tiers are probably more effective once you get good with them. But they can all be played decently even if you haven’t played them in a while or never really played them at all. Clown isn’t the best killer among top players, but it doesn’t feel like he needs much practice to at least play ok with him and not feel like you’re making a bunch of mistakes.
This list is also a snapshot, I could easily swap a couple killers up or down between the top two tiers. (The “newer” dual gas Clown is more complicated than the original that only had pink gas, so I’m half tempted to drop him to second tier.)
Comments
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I would put Blight, Plague, and hag in the next tier up honestly.
Blight is a killer that takes a while to get used to for most people, he is definitely a tricky one for new people for two reasons. Mechanical skill and map knowledge which both take time to become familiar with. An already experienced player would learn him faster since they have much better map knowledge, but this only makes him easier for experienced players; not new ones. And most people just honestly aren't exactly good at the game.
Plague is a killer that is incredibly hard to play depending on the skill for survivors. it takes very good judgement, strategy, and mechanical skill to play her well. And good plague players are definitely hard to come by.
Hag is a killer that takes good map knowledge and strategy to play well. And like blight an already experienced player would do much better than a newbie with her (not great, but good for sure assuming they somewhat know how to play her). She needs a player who is great at setting up webs of traps that are consistent and unpredictable.
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Did... you say that Pinhead has easy controls? Wat?
His ranged attack is a bizarre combination of Nurse's blink followed by one of those steer-the-missile flash games from ten years ago.
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Pinhead is way too low. Hitting consistent chains is so hard.
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Pinhead? Hag? Spirit? Twins? Artist? Blight?
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Blight is literally the hardest killer to learn dawg… You won’t win if you only use your power for map traversal
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Hillbilly is not someone you get used to in 1-2 games
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I'll never agree Bubba is anywhere near as easy as people want to believe he is unless you feel face camping is the only way to play. It's like since the character is canonically "simple" that means the character is simple to play. Every single M1 killer is easier to use. Blight belongs either hard to use or extremely, unless we're pretending people who slide off everything and just use the rush just for movement are how blight is meant to be played.
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Pinhead placement... What?
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This is the last tierlist I ever looked at. Thank you.
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funny pig being EASY TO USE right away but all noob pig players give up straight away when using her dash power.
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You need to move Pig out of that Tier, mate.
And current Freddy is so pathetic that you might as well move him to.
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I had very little trouble hitting with his chains actually first game with him. The key differences that make him easier from my perspective are
- He has a built in indicator where the chain will appear. Nurse does not. (You can use her add-on to get one but that uses up an add-on slot that could improve the ability another way.)
- Because his chain is steerable it’s easier to hit with than Huntress’ or Deathslingers shots against juking targets. It can also somewhat curve around obstacles.
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That’s why I have him below most of the killers in the list.
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I agree, he’s borderline between the bucket he’s in and the next one down.
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This isn’t about how effective the killer is at top level.
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I don’t get that really, it’s not like her Dash is hard to use if you actually try and use it. It’s just that it’s not that useful outside of certain situations.
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- I agree Blight is tricky for me personally to use, that’s why he’s below most of the killers
- I didn’t have much trouble using Plague out of the box, other than figuring out her strategy. Once you get that though you can play her periodically without having to practice using her ability. (Compared to, say, Deathslinger where I can understand the tactics but if I don’t practice with him somewhat regularly I’ll continue to be a terrible shot and will still do poorly.)
- As I mentioned in the top post, this isn’t about skill ceiling, it’s about skill floor. You can pick up Hag and play with her reasonably ok out of the box. She has a decent skill ceiling, but even if you don’t practice using her regularly once you understand the basics you can do ok with her. So it’s about learning the strategy, which once you figure out you remember it, versus someone like Deathslinger or Blight that it takes some practice to be able to use her ability itself.
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Really? Why did i get constantly 4ks right away with him?
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I think you’re both right in a sense. Blight’s power for map traversal is super easy to use, and that’s helpful. On the other hand, being able to actually hit people reliably with his Lethal Rushes is difficult, I think, without playing him a fair number of times, and even then if you don’t play him for a long stretch you can get rusty. That’s why I have him below most of the killers.
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Um...skill?
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Yes, he has a built in indicator, but you're still stuck with the same hold-for-some-amount-of-time and look up/down mechanic that makes Nurse fiddly, complete with the thing occasionally getting stuck in walls, stuck in pallets, or on the wrong side of a wall you wanted to phase through. Ditto for saying the steering makes it "easy", when that's the easiest way for everything to miss.
And once people are aiming to juke (the same situation that you seem to be using for declaring Huntress or Deathslinger to be difficult) then the way steering speed ramps and the need to land the portal right on top of someone, plus the CD before it can even fire, makes it one of the most fiddly powers to use. Particularly as it's not meant to be used for straight-line shooting or anything, it's an anti-looping tool.
Like... if you're describing skill floors, it feels bizarre to say this two-stage firing step with its CDs and camera shifts and ability that does so little is harder than Huntress's "I throw hatchets that go in a straight line".
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This list is a troll.
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What can I say, I hit really easily with Pinhead but not with Deathslinger or Huntress or Nurse. 🤷♂️
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Just my personal experience. Feel free to disagree.
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Pig is not easy, using the ambush correctly in loops is very hard.
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Yeah, she’s probably borderline for me between that top level and the second one. I didn’t find her ambush to hard to use, other than that it’s situational.
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That you're really bad without a crosshair of some sort? xD
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Never said I wasn’t. 🙂
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