A little comparison between "ranged" Killers.

Each of these killers play MASSIVELY different from each other. This isn't like comparing ARs in Rainbow 6 Siege. It's not a math game.

Deathslinger is mostly about winning mindgames and going for pinhole shots. Many loops that are difficult for Huntress or Trickster are death traps against Slinger. His reeling mechanic also make guaranteeing follow-up hits very easy, since you can drag survivors away from strong tiles and force them to run through a dead zone.

Not to mention he has perk synergy with Save the Best for Last and with stealth perks, which are useless on the other two. Slinger also doesn't have to reload at lockers, meaning he is never forced to drop chase for running out of ammo (a major downside that holds Huntress back).

His projectile is also the most consistent and most accurate, due to zero drop-off and always travelling at maximum speed. His fast wind-up means you can see a survivor for a split second and immediately get a health state out of seeing them, while Huntress and Trickster would have lost sight by the time they are able to attack.

Huntress hits like a truck, and also handles like a truck. Her projectile has a slow, lengthy wind-up and you are massively slowed down while using it (and you must charge it up for it to move fast enough to be undodgeable). She relies pretty much entirely on aim skill, since she can't really mind game with how many audio cues she has. She is also the only ranged killer that can snipe.

Trickster can chew through health states extremely quickly, and specializes in dealing with survivors that are grouped up. Although he struggles at many loops, the loops he doesn't have trouble with are death sentences for the survivor. Due to his main event, he can clutch a down when he normally couldn't due to running out of knives.

The ranged killers are different enough that comparing them doesn't really work, I wish people would stop doing it since it's never a productive conversation.

Slinger has a very high skill floor, which is why you don't see him. If you watch someone play Slinger for the first time, they miss every single shot for 5 minutes straight and then lose. Most people play him once and say "this killer sucks" because they can't aim.

I can forgive console players for saying he is terrible though, he's really bad with controller.

He doesn't even feel that bad to play, especially compared to other DbD killers. You completely dodged that in my other reply, which was entirely about how Slinger is not as clunky as every says he is. Instead you latched onto "skill issue," which is still a true statement about Slinger's performance btw.

400ms wind-up with minimal movement speed slowdown is VERY smooth by DbD standards. Spamming ADS also feels pretty smooth, despite being slow.

Take pretty much any other killer in DbD with an M2 that has a significant wind-up and they will feel like you constantly lurching around and stopping and starting.

Wraith, Doctor, Huntress, Pig, Spirit, Plague, Demo, Pyramid Head, Twins, Nemesis, Artist, Wesker, and Knight. Honorable mention to set-up killers and teleporting killers, who are also clunky and awkward. The moment you try to start your M2 with most killers, you either basically stop moving or your camera stops turning (or both), then you often have to manually cancel or once again stop moving for almost a full second.

Whereas Slinger can enter and exit ADS relatively quickly without having to stop in place, and can also stay in ADS with full movement control and complete camera freedom.

My point is that if you are complaining that Slinger is clunky, then you are either so used to dealing with the slow, clunky awkwardness of the other killers that you don't notice that how awkward they are to play, or you have pretty much never played Slinger after the nerf. I usually assume the later.

You can't provide a meaningful counter-argument to something anyone actually says to you, so you just dodge and ignore every single valid point instead of engaging and trying to have a real discussion. I showed that your point was just cherry-picking everything negative about Slinger while ignoring everything good about him, and that it's an extremely easy argument to make and also extremely easy to dismantle.

Every time I say "he's not that clunky" you say "that's just your opinion, he's still bad and the other killers are better." Every time I counter that with "he's not bad, he's good but requires skill" you say "no, I never said I do bad with him, he's just clunky".

If all you can do is ignore arguments you can't counter by making character attacks, or cherry-pick and make weak arguments and then counter again with character attacks, then you don't actually have an argument that is sound enough to actually survive in an exchange of ideas.

My take is "Slinger is fine, even quite strong, just more takes more practice than other ranged killers", and I can make supporting arguments for that all day.

What is your point, again? That Slinger is dogwater, but also not dogwater because you can win with him, also he's clunky, even though you're ignoring that most killers in DbD are clunky?

It's impossible to reason with someone that just wants to look at everything bad about a killer while completely ignoring everything that is good about that killer. If you just personally dislike playing Deathslinger, that's 100% valid. But don't come out here and say "this killer is bad because I personally don't like him".

I elaborated on my comments for your benefit, clearly a mistake.

I explained why there's more nuance to this than just opinion vs opinion - not taking that well is on you.

Good talk, indeed.

I took the L the moment you demonstrated you weren't actually reading. I agree.

If me taking the L means you have to have the last comment, well, that's a you thing.

You veered off track, just like the other guy. I don't have to follow your tracks.

I don't know why this is such a thorny issue for you two.

There's far more nuance to it, however. He's not just taking multiple time outs, he's getting resetted mid chase anytime something goes poorly, sometimes even when things don't go poorly too - the difference between a missed hatchet, dagger, and redeemer shot is quite extreme in terms of the distance a survivor makes. But unlikely the others, even when he lands the shot there is multiple ways in which he's punished for it by, you guessed it, more waiting.

This is one of the few scenarios where I would promote homogenization over diversity. Moving some of Deathslinger's waiting to before or after the chase would be better design, even it made him more like Trickster and Huntress.

Writing that makes me want to throw up.

They could also instantly appease me, in spite of my current issues with his design, by adding several QOL adjustments like:

• Normalizing his sensitivity while shouldering
• Moving some of the time on his shouldering/unshouldering to instead having a lockout period so he can't spam it (The guys been using the rifle his entire damned life, why is he slower than literally anyone with a few hours of practice on a .22 LR?)
• Terror radius rework. I don't care what the tradeoff is, good survivors know they can W him to death. Take something else and let him actually be the stealthy hunter he's supposed to be

TLDR: Poor Billy mains.