So Scott Jund also thinks that Hillbilly is hardest killer in game

It took the devs years to nerf keys and moris. That alone proves they don’t know how certain things affect the balance in this game.

Solo queue, low tier killers, SWF, and then nurse/Blight. All at such different power levels, and very little being done to truly fix it. Taking the devs at their word, if they ever even said that nurse isn't a bottleneck (which she very obviously is), is quite naive.

Now back to the topic of Billy being harder than Nurse.

Billy was the gold standard on how a good killer should be balanced. Both sides agreed that he didn´t require changes/nerfs (which is usually rare). There where just some issues with a couple of addons but his basekit was perfectly fine. Now his rework went totally overboard with the heat mechanic and he suddenly became a very rare sight.

But honestly, Nurse and Billy are not really comparable.

If we're talking about a buff more in the flavor of being easier to handle rather than straight-up stronger, there's probably a simple way.

With a caveat: purist old-school Billies won't like it. But let's be honest, there's fewer of them than Twins mains. And we're talking about making the power more palatable to encourage more players to try it out.

What I'm alluding to is to change how 99'ing works. Basically remove the necessity of tapping to keep the chainsaw at 99. It would work somewhat as crossover of Plague/Huntress/Demo.

You just charge up by holding down m2 and when the bar is full the saw stays at 99. Want to start a sprint? Press m1. Want to de-charge instead? Release m2. Want to sprint as soon as the saw is ready? Spam m1 while holding down m2 to charge.

Want to keep the saw charged at a lower percentage. Well, you're out of luck there, you will still have to do it the old way by fast tapping. But that won't be that big of a deal.

This will remove those awkward situations where a sprint accidentally goes off or the bar is not actually 99'd and it takes that extra millisecond to start sprinting.

That's what I can think of.

Billy for me personally is way harder than Nurse but one thing people conveniently pretend to ignore every very single time Nurse is discussed

Billy without a chainsaw like everyone else can chase survivors normally

His power unlike Nurse's is INSTA DOWN, you need to hit survivors twice to down them with Nurse, so yeah I do think his power should be harder to use. That's why everyone plays Bubba instead - way easier to use with far less effort.

Every killer who has insta down without perks/add ons should be hard to use

Learning survivors’ pathing is something you should be learning on every killer. Not just Nurse.

What’s different about it? Survivors being more “unpredictable” (the normal Nurse “counterplay” people bring up)?

if you actually need to learn loops and tricks especifically for a killer then i agree it is a hard killer to play/master, a true game is about learning not relying on perks and op powers. Most nurse players just have muscle memory and bring some good perks that snowball easily because its a nurse... they arent good, the same for survivors remove the "small pp build" and boom almost like a brand new player

I actually like being able to take perspectives from Scott, Otz, True, and other similar streamers who have a lot of experience. Not because I take any of their words as infallible, but because they have different experiences and different perspectives. The big thing that separates the 4 and 5 digit+ hours players who play this game for a living is that they tend to have a lot of both theory and field testing that incorporate a lot of their opinions on a lot of aspects of the game. They are an extremely useful resource for a game's health, both from a development/balancing perspective as well as an educational one for players.

The best part is that they don't always agree on everything while still having very solid arguments for many of their opinions within the game. They can outright disagree on things and have neither side be wrong, just having free radical variables that affect how they formulate their opinion. The sample set is a big part of why their arguments tend to hold more weight for this very reason: if you were comparing variables between 10/100/1000 matches, the larger the sample size the more possibility your perspective will adapt based on what is experienced over the set.

If you have a situation where people can respectfully disagree while exchanging information formulated from their own well researched perspective, it creates a very healthy exchange of ideas. Its a refreshing change from "I dislike x so please change it"

• I consider his statement way more valuable than just some random guy from dbd forum

He literally is just a random guy from dbd forums.

I actually think that Cenobite is the hardest killer for similar reasons. Cenobite has all of the mechanical challenges of curving, blinking, and Clown-bottle-style anti-loop all in one package, plus he has a little bit of Pig/Onryo style macro skill expression at identifying and pressuring a vulnerable survivor.

Yes, you could play Cenobite as just 4.6 m/s man with an m1, and that's why the skill floor of Cenobite is down there with all the other 4.6 killers, but the ceiling of skill expression is astronomically high. He has great (but complex) build synergy with hex totems, hemorrhage, passive regression (e.g. Ruin, Oppression, Jolt), stealth perks, and even chase perks. On the other side, he can nicely counter many items, the endurance status effect, and stealth-based strategies.

The highest level of skill expression for a Cenobite is absolute insane in both the micro and the macro game.

It was really nice when he was playing Elden Ring because we went off for months not hearing about him especially on these forums. The streak needed to end someday though. :/

I think I agree.

Hillbilly and Blight are very difficult to master but not very difficult to pick up and do okay with. If you slap four slowdown perks on either of them, you're gonna do fine against 95% of players.

Nurse is very hard to pick up and do okay with. Even with 4 slowdown perks, a new Nurse is going to lose against 95% of players (the other 5% are my solo q teammates). However, Nurse is not necessarily hard to master.

As I grow more cynical and jaded with this game, I discover I agree less and less with things I may have whole-heartedly endorsed years ago. I fear this is one of them: Nurse isn't a Killer that belongs at her current strength.

He's not the hardest kill in the game at all. He's "hard" if you play him like old Billy mains used to play him, by curving and ACTUALLY using your power at loops. This was even more common because people used charge addons. Now it's incredibly difficult to time well without them.

Just because using a power that probably was never designed to be used like that in mind is ridiculously difficult to use in some loops with curving does not inherently make him the hardest killer. At the end of the day, these days, you're just gonna get pre-pallet dropped like LF has happen to him.

I mean I get it, a skilled curve Billy was fun to play against because there were mindgames you could play, but only a really skilled survivor is gonna play around a curve Billy and not because they have to, but because they think it's fun. But I mean.. do enough curves at an L T wall so you realize that.. maybe it has too much counterplay. But hey, it's fun, and hard because you're making it so.

This might be true. Never bothered to dig up the past comments of someone else. So no idea.

People assuming that everyone just appeals to authority. Your no better then the appeal to authority person. Most streamers agree on obvious stuff? Is that appeal to authority since we agree on the same opinion?

I share a good bit of similar opinions with streamers because surprise its the right opinion to have sometimes. Like with perks and balance updates. Please counteract the points instead of just assuming its wrong because someone quoted a streamer.