Why are the devs showing so much favoritism for Nurse?
And no, this isnt a post about balancing or Nurse being too powerful(at least, not directly), there are plenty of those. What I am talking about is decisions made in the past that were logically sound for being either too powerful or being too unfair on killers, yet never applied that logic to Nurse:
- The easiest one: making her blink attacks M2 because its an M2 ability. Spirit and Wraith are technically also guilty for this one, but we have Legion and Pig who had their power turned into an M2, when it was basically an amplified M1.
- Fatigue. We dont have many killers with fatigue, Legion, Blight, Wesker(its not exactly a fatigue, but it might aswell be). Legion was the second killer since Nurse to have addons that reduced fatigue significantly, these addons were nerfed because there wasnt enough time for survivors to react in certain cases. Blight's fatigue addons were kept to take away at most 25% to be safe. Nurse is capable of reducing her fatigue with 50%. Thats not even including that stunning her takes away her fatigue entirely. Leading me to point 3.
- Legion fatigue addons were nerfed partially because they lost it on pallet stun. Nurse was assumed to have had this feature removed because she kept her fatigue addons and stunning a Nurse was difficult, but they slapped it on back.
- Charge addons. Seriously, look at any other killer that deals with charges. What killer is capable of reducing their charges? You have Blight, but that took quite a bit and other parts of his basekit have been altered or nerfed to accomodate to that. The rest? Wesker has to wait 6 seconds, while he closes a similar distance to Nurse(as they have the basic concept for gap closer, except Nurse can go through obstacles where Wesker can vault) AND has a bigger terror radius, at most a . Bubba takes 14 seconds to fully recharge. Spirit? Legion? 15 and 20 seconds respectively. And yeah, I get that blinking is Nurse's main method of transportation, so letting her wait on her charges too long is going to make her extremely boring, but from a chasing perspective, basically being able to spam a gap closer by reducing charge time with addons even further means hat literally the only thing holding her back is vision blockers.
- Having basically no punishment for messing up your ability. With every single other killer, missing your attack after using an ability increases the distance survivors can gain. With Nurse? Go ahead, swing, while she technically does get punished for missing it, being able to trigger fatigue faster practically cancels it out. So why not swing? Now only do you not have to deal with a spamming gap close ability, but one that constantly puts you in danger of getting hit, without ever giving you the chance to actually gain distance. There is not a single killer other than Nurse that benefits from missing an attack. Even a strong gap closer like Blight allows survivors to gain a relatively significant amount of distance before he can try hitting them again.
Seriously, why not apply the same logic to Nurse? Is there a bigger plan that requires Nurse to stay the way she is? is there an unannounced change coming? We didnt forget that Twins and Blight were both considered higher priority in terms of making changes back in January, yet I would argue that having double standards for any killer should put them on the highest priority. Why are mechanics considered unfair on certain killers and need alteration, but when talking about Nurse, those same unfair mechanics are considered fine to the point of being untouched for years? The only answer I can think of right now, is that Nurse only really flourishes in the higher skills where other killers flourish in lower skills. But that answer would have existed for a very long time by now, with the root of the problem being arguably known since 2018(massive potential performance gaps between solo survivors and swf, and a massive potential performance gap between Myers and Nurse).
And yeah, I might have been a bit misleading by making my question rhetorical, its time to stop favoritism. Apply the logic to killers equally.
Comments
-
Nurse has been nerfed to death multiple times and has a low kill rate. Please pipe it with the Nurse complaints. We've read it all before. You're not bringing anything new.
9 -
I'm not asking for a nurse nerf? I just wanted to know why they changed the subject to gen regression perks? I just think, however, nurse could use some add-on changes do you not agree? :)
3 -
I think the main reason they aren’t nerfing her is because she’s a free killer. They don’t want people to say this game is P2W because it will scare away new players. This is just my opinion
9 -
Nurse has a low kill rate in all MMRs. At high MMR she's above the median but not even in the top 5. The data released doesn't support any nerfs to Nurse.
In terms of the M2 attack, I'd rather see Pig get her attack changed back to an M1 if we want consistency. Legion is a different matter since their M2 applies Deep Wound but Pig's is just a straight movement speed buff and nothing else.
4 -
After a cripplingly long delay that presents almost no advantage over the regular M1, on top of that.
2 -
Because she’s the only killer that can go toe to toe with well coordinated SWF who know what they’re doing and bring as much stuff into the match to stack everything in their favor.
If they nerf Nurse they will have to do something about SWF. They won’t do anything about SWF because it would seem like they’re punishing people for playing with their friends and fact of the matter is that SWFs are their main money maker so they wouldn’t want to upset those players. If they touch Nurse without touching SWF then it’ll upset killer mains and cause a backlash they definitely don’t want to deal with.
They’re basically stuck until they decided to make it where SWF can’t abuse maps with an abundance of strong loops that most killers can’t handle.
7 -
It's not that long.
0 -
About point 2, the green addon that reduces fatigue does it by only 0.3 seconds, only 10% of a 2 blink chain with no hit. No combination of addons can reduce fatigue by 50%.
About point 4, that's because Nurse is the only killer in the game that moves slower than survivors. Blight, Spirit, Wesker, Legion, etc can all chase survivors normally while waiting for their powers to recharge. Nurse can't.
About point 5, she does get a longer fatigue if she misses a blink attack.
3 -
Wow, imagine believing that the best killer in the game actually has the lowest kill rate in the game
8 -
Eh, I think it's just... BHVR and y'know...not too fast to the draw to get down to important stuff, lol
0 -
Someone with actual knowledge to bring and to talk calmly about this topic? Impossible, lol
1 -
1. Her blinks are basic because she physically cannot chase survivors conventionally and functionally has no basic attack, and her attacks were designed to emulate basic attacks as closely as possible.
2. Her fatigue doesn't affect her recharge. No matter what, you'll always make distance because Nurse is slower than survivors.
3. I have no idea what you're saying here, tbh.
4. It's not just main method of transportation, it's her only means of chasing.
5. No punishment for missing? You have a 0.5 sec attack animation followed by an entire extra second of fatigue. Assuming you blinked twice, that's 3.5 seconds of looking at the ground while slowed to a crawl. You can say Nurse isn't as difficult as people make her out to be, but it's disingenuous to say she's not punishing if you don't know what you're doing.
3 -
nurse does basic attack out of her power. her power is going from point A to point B. Nurse using basic attack perks is same logic as Deathslinger using instant downs perks when getting hit by his redeemer. Even though deathslinger inflicts deep wound with basic attacks, the action of lunging is consider a basic attack because his power is pulling you towards you, not the the act of basic attacking. it is not a double standard.
Fatique does not matter for nurse. what matters is her token recharge. she moves slower then survivor. you shouldn't be getting hit by 96% m/s killer.
Nurse does get punishment for missing but the problem is that most of common loops in dbd have windows and lack of consistent line of sight blockers. Just because nurse cannot see you does not mean that nurse does not know approximately where you are. she is only need 1-2 seconds of vision to predict approximately where you are across the wall. the distance between you and nurse in regards to the wall is not very big. nurse can sort of outskill her weakness of line of sight blockers by blinking strategically. In some sense, nurse abuses outdoor maps instead of being countered by outdoor maps like other killers.
0 -
There are tiles in the game that you can use against a nurse that would be an easy hit for a m1 killer. For example the walls/ tiles on the edge of maps.
I believe basic kit nurse is fine. It's only range add-ons that wreck the counter play of nurse.
0 -
No dev has ever gone up against a nurse who knows how to play. Only explanation that makes sense. Would explain other balancing decisions pretty well, too.
9 -
Her second blink attack really should be a special attack. It would make it kess common to have situations where perks get nerfed because of their potential on Nurse, and it would not significantly change their regular gameplay orherwise.
0 -
1.) She's a free killer so her being the best avoids the "pay2win" argument a bit
2.) She released in such an old era of dbd that her design would and will never come back concept wise yet they seem sentimental with it
1 -
shes tough to balance, and with swf as broken as it is, nurse is perfectly fine in comparison
plus lowest kill rate :P
3 -
Because she has the lowest winrate. It doesn’t matter if 1% are good when 99% don’t win games…
2 -
I think the big problem is that nurse isn't easy to nerf.
When you make her blink attack m2 you need to speed her up because it's not realistic to hit anyone without a blink but all perks should work for all killers so you need to compensate.
Same goes for fatigue. When you want it to be punishing when she messes up you need to speed her up because blinking is her Form of movement and in the end we want to make her more fair not just bad so no one plays her.
So nerfing her isn't that easy because you don't want her to just run down survs and the blink on them and you don't want to end up with wesker but her can go through walls.
Now you could go and say we'll then we rework her completely but bhvr don't really like that. On one site it's money cause it costs to rework her but you can't really sell her and on the other hand you risk to lose player and after Freddy bhvr don't want to take a beloved character away from the players that lover for what she is op or not plus it's a money thing again
0 -
Going from blatantly OP to OP still makes her too strong
3 -
If they actually decided to balance maps this problem would go away
The main reason nurse is so strong is because she ignores the biggest weakness most killers have being bad maps
By making maps balanced the average killer would be much stronger and you would actually be able to nerf nurse without backlash
3 -
Even more reason to rework her...
It gives me no solace knowing that at low mmrs people think nurse is fun to face, when the Nurses I face have practiced enough with her to negate the skill of those she faces.
They have been slowly removing/reworking "I-win" buttons (keys, moris, super OP addons, syringes/haddonfield map offering). Nurse is just next on a long list of things that players can/could use to easily win the game.
1 -
Simplest explanation I can think of is that the balance team tends to focus more on the average/low MMR skill level and much less on the upper ends. Most of Nurse's problems aren't going to show up until someone is pretty good with Nurse. Same reason Alchemist's Ring and MDR/Cherry Blossom somehow exist on Blight/Spirit
3 -
Since the range addons don't speed up the nurse's tp's anymore, they've become very good again.
Don't forget that the first blink is only used by the nurse to get closer to the target.
So yes, if the survivor had the bad idea to go in a deadzone, the nurse will be able to put him down in 1 shot, of course... and even then, if the survivor was already wounded ...
But otherwise, if the nurse has 2 range addons, her blink only gets 10M longer, and if she only uses the purple addon, her blink gets 6m longer... 4m in the case of the green addon.
This allows her to go further, but it doesn't go from "not bad" to "monstrously efficient and totally impossible to dodge".
Let's also not forget that during the 30m run, the survivor is not blocked, he can think about his next move, and reach a safer place.
It is up to him to observe the nurse, from a distance, and to pay attention to what she is doing.
Let's not forget that at the end of the day, as soon as a nurse is 20 meters away from a survivor or less ... her range addons are no longer useful, she becomes a nurse with 0 addons.
3 -
Not that I am disagreeing with your reasoning but Blight and Spirit are both very capable of going toe to toes with well coordinated SWF groups, blight is arguably better than nurse on any map that doesn't have verticality as one of its main features.
2 -
Honestly though, I have faced a lot of killers lately who run nothing but gen control perks and it becomes very oppressive and an absolute chore to verse. I am starting to think that more gen perks should not be able to be stacked as games can be won simply by doing this and grinding down survivors with continual passive regression.
I am facing more Nurses running such builds with at least 3 slowdowns and as a Nurse main myself I feel it is absolute overkill and makes the game very unfun and borders on unfair with high mobility killers.
1 -
No more than 2 regression perks.
What is the composition of the build with which Supaalf is doing his marathon of chain victories, currently?
One anti-gen perk, one aura perk, one "exposed" perk and one terror radius perk.
So, everything should be forbidden, on the nurse...
The problem is not so much the perks as the people who face the nurse.
Even if of course, there are combos which are fatal. Ex : Midwich + Darkness Revealed 😫
1 -
The problem is, you always have to accommodate the lowest common denominator - that person who will ruin things for everyone and exploit the strength of a killer like Nurse by running insanely OP combos on her.
I cant name anyone but some of the builds well known people use on Nurse are a great example of the problem of making her completely broken. I honestly understand why people complain at this point and it sucks as Nurse was my favourite killer to play but I don't even want to play her any more as I just feel bad (I know I shouldn't) as survivors hate it and just give up a lot of the time.
I am not sweaty and I rum meme builds that often have absolutely no slowdown and even then I often just let everyone go as I really don't care any more. But the sweat lords ruin it for everyone
0 -
Are you thinking of the classic use of "Make your choice + Floods of rage" on the nurse?
Even if that wasn't what you were thinking about, it raises an interesting point.
When Amanda came into the game, the nurse already existed.
So the developers knew that, potentially, Amanda's skill could do something very dangerous with the nurse.
Although, if you think about it, just using Make Your Choice is pretty effectively dodged, where it gets very complicated is when it's combined with Floods of rage.
2 -
I don't necessarily disagree, but that's not why I responded tongue 'n cheek to OP. He has a thread history that reeks of critical misunderstandings, false equivocations, and honestly just pedantic nonsense.
I'm a Database Admin, when I see apples to oranges, I have to call it out. This guy just does it too frequently for me to even want to keep up with.
If it makes you feel better, I use one gen regression perk on Nurse. But as long as SWFs can slammajam gens and W the moment they hear a terror radius so that you're stuck blinking across the entire map to get into a chase you are going to see Nurses that feel like they need to play with more.
3 -
No I am more thinking of Starstruck Agitation on Nurse, or really any selection of gen slowdown perks stacked together.
MYC isn't a perk I really like on Nurse, it just forces survivors to play immersed which is very annoying
1 -
Ah okay, I have no context of post history but with some added... yeah fair enough then.
1 -
She's been nerfed multiple times... six years ago. Everyone that is not a complete potato at the game always noticed that this never was close to be enough.
4 -
Her second blink should not count as m1 and that idea I heard from nurse main.
1 -
Aren't the potatoes the players being slaughtered by Nurses and not the ones who can can do a chase against Nurse?
1 -
The problem with the range add-ons is if the nurse makes a mistake or wrong prediction the survivor doesn't make much distance when the nurse uses the range add-ons.
1 -
I stopped reading at this point:
making her blink attacks M2 because its an M2 ability
Nurse, unlike literally every other killer, has no way to catch and hit survivors other than blinking to them (unless they're being really stupid and giving away free hits). She's the only killer that's literally slower than survivors.
If you're going to ignore the basic mechanics that justify her blink attacks counting as basic because she cannot reasonably be expected to get them otherwise, and mention this as your first point, then I've little reason to believe anything else you've got to say has any serious thought behind it towards balance.
2 -
There just doesn't seem to be a consistently good way to tone her down, I don't think.
Like others have been saying, making blinks secondary attacks sounds innocuous enough and is a solid idea on paper, but it has all kinds of deep-rooted issues and caveats. For one, it would completely kill her lethality. She would essentially go from decent to unplayable in most MMR ranges (idk enough about high MMR to comment on that one, though, but i assume she just wouldn't change at all up there).
To compensate they would likely want to put her in line with other killers, which might include upping her walkspeed which would end up making her lethality feel roughly the same to a large part of the group of people complaining about her, and it seems like her lethality with certain builds (primarily Starstruck with Aura perks) is generally the issue people suggesting this change have with the Nurse matchup.
Not to mention the slippery slope that would cause amongst the more entitled parts of the player-base. People would be asking for Deathslinger's harpoon follow up to count as an M2, then they'd be asking for Spirit lunging out of phrase to count as an M2. These killers aren't as strong as Nurse but they annoy lower MMR players just as much.
You could argue that since Nurse doesn't play around loops normally that she shouldn't be rewarded normally, and, I mean, I guess. But that doesn't really sit right with me. I don't know how to explain it, I just don't think it's the right way to go. Maybe making the secondary blink count as an M2 but not the first blink, or perhaps only applying the M2 thing as a debuff for range addons, but those changes seem a bit obtuse and probably wouldn't quell complaints.
I dunno. I don't play Nurse enough to make an educated call, but the least I can say about it is that "Make Lethal Blinks M2" tends to misunderstand the nuances/ramifications that change would have. It's really not that simple.
This really sunk into the realm of stream-of-consciousness, and I almost definitely do not make sense anymore, but I figured I'd leave my thoughts for the maybe 4 people who can understand what the hell I'm even saying.
1 -
She doesn't negate skill, but I agree that she can be unfun to face, especially if you face her often at high MMR...at the same time, going against SWF over and over is not fun either. She is the final boss of the game and that's a good thing.
1 -
I didn't understand the meaning of your sentence.
The range addons only make a difference from 21m+.
And at this distance, a survivor has time, if he watches his environment and the nurse's movements, to go to a place where he can lose sight of her (ok, unless he notices it too late, and then he is in an area with almost no structure).
The range addons are really only used for movement; the real chases are done at close range, where the addons don't come into play.
0 -
By turning the nurse's teleported attack into a special attack, it would force to modify the whole game's skills working on attacks.
Because if we turn her basic attack into a special attack, she would not be able to use any skill based on the hit, which would be completely stupid.
The problem with making your second teleported attack a special attack is that in most cases, the hit is actually made during the second blink.
The first blink is often used to get closer to the target.
Sometimes you can hit the survivor on the first blink, but it is quite rare, and the more experienced survivors you face, the more anecdotal it becomes.
"You could argue that since Nurse doesn't play around loops normally that she shouldn't be rewarded normally"
That's why the survivors have to adopt a radically different behavior than if they were facing a "walking" killer.
Because the nurse is not impacted in the same way by the game environment, the survivors must use the environment differently.
0 -
50% fatigue reduction? Where'd ya get that number from?
1 -
statistically she does, but that implies that the stats actually mean anything so take it as you will
0 -
That's just because the newbies try her out like 3 times, fail with her, and say "I quit" and move on to some brain dead like Bubba
4 -
For sure, if exclusively players who were good at nurse played her, her killrate would at bare minimum be around 90% or so
0 -
Guys, look here, someone cherrypicking a single sentence removing all the context of the entire post!
I still stand by that notion. You can buff gen regression perks massively if they are treated like exhaustion perks. Overcharge starting at 100% going to 500% over time? Not an issue anymore since Call of Brine cant be stacked ontop of it. Ruin being at 300%? Doesnt matter that much, cant be combined with Pain Res and Jolt. Pop stacking power instead removing up to 100% after 5 hooks of not kicking a gen? It cant stack with CoB or Overcharge, so the overall slowdown is less. Thanatophobia reducing generator speeds by 10% per injured survivor? Cant be used together with Ruin, so overall its fine.
Genspeeds in general arent an issue anymore. Its the perks dealing with gens that are. On their own, they are often too weak to do anything significantly, giving you reasons to run more than 1. But then you can run 3, and at that point, especially for survivors without comms, its overkill and basically a guaranteed 3k.
Seriously, how could you possibly be against that idea when it opens up room for more perk variety while in general having the same regression as 2 perks combined? You could still run perks like Ruin and Call of Brine in the same logic that you can use perks like Dead Hard and Balanced Landing together. They simply no longer synergize.
1 -
At high MMR her killrate is above 60%. No other killer comes close to Nurse.
She is still by far the most lethal killer in tournaments too, the only one coming close is Twins due to Twins being able to slow down the game massively through slugging.
The biggest reason why Nurse gets dealed with in the top 5% MMR is due to tournament SWFs and Nurse not having prepared a tournament build.
Seriously, every single high mmr survivor and killer would agree that Nurse is the strongest killer in the game. Plague makes an edge due to 3 man swfs and 1 random high mmr survivor, just a slight edge in comms. Thats not due to strength. Add comms to the game as a baseline, and Plague will drop. Same with Dredge and Wesker. 3 killers where not being able to share info between teammates that benefit heavily from it.
0 -
This is exactly the reason why I consider Nurse to be the issue. The fact that a lot of perks have been nerfed because Nurse exists cant be counted on 2 hands anymore.
0 -
I mean, hitting an m1 with a Nurse without blinking would only have that much more effect. Making her Spasmodic Breath a lot more dangerous for example. Even now, the biggest reason why Unrelenting is so underwhelming, is because of Nurse.
Lets look at the perks that Nurse wont have access to normally if her blink is an m2:
Sloppy Butcher, a scourge hook can solve that issue
Franklins Demise, which honestly, she doesnt really need anyway
Jolt, a Nurse with Pain Res and/or Ruin doesnt really need that anyway
Knock-out, no one really uses this as Nurse anyway, comms either negate the effect, or she can slug faster against soloQ with other perks
Save The Best For Last, not the main choice of perk for Nurse in general as Unrelenting would have more value, altho, I would argue that this would make Spasmodic Breath Nurse all the more lethal. So actually a bonus?
Exposed perks, which again, Nurse doesnt really need anyway. Starstruck is extremely oppressive on such a mobile killer(and Starstruck Nurse is the reason why Awakened Awareness was nerfed, so that would be really nice to have buffed again. NOED on Nurse is overkill(and Terminus would basically have the same effect as it overrides Adrenaline). Make Your Choice, for the same reason as Starstruck, would help a lot. I'd say the only shameful perks that would be missed are Devour Hope and Haunted Grounds. But again, this would give room to make Spasmodic Breath Nurse extremely dangerous.
Yet what do we get in return? A lot of killers and/or perks being able to be buffed. Buffs that M2 Nurse could benefit from too. Like Jolt being applied on special attacks too. Or some exposed perks being turned into a perk that instead of doubling the damage of an m1 into a perk that doubles the damage on m2 too.
0
