Nurse mains (and opposing survivors), what do you love about her?
=== GUFF =============================
It's pretty hard to deny that one of the most controversial characters in DbD is the Nurse. A power that at its core has the potential to (in the right well practised and honed hands) decimate survivors with little counter play, espeically in maps that don't offer a lot of line of sight blockers. At her best she creates a whole unique style of play to survivors that force them to combat her outside of standard gameplay mechanics, and variety such as this IMO has to be good for the game... right?
From what I gather the Nurse seems to be in a more reasonable spot now after her blinks were made special attacks for the sake of certain perks. That said she is still extremely powerful in capable hands, and any new aspiring Nurses are forced to practise a HELL of a lot just to even start seeing basic levels of success... this means that her kill rate is among the lowest in the game simply because of just how hard it is to use her.... but with a stratospheric skill ceiling.
This difficulty is especially prominent on console. As a console player one has to accept you're never going to manage the crazy flicks on Billy or Blight, the ridonkulous axe snipes on Huntress, and spin juke techs are the bane of your existence...
However on console Nurse... you have to do things akin to these precision tricks just to basically function... it's absolutely brutal to try and blink to survivor location, then turn with any accuracy on a stick, and blink again within the time limit to actually score a hit on a half competant survivor. Nurse to date is the ONLY killer I've player where I ended the game with 1 hook and 4 escapes... even my first 10 games as a new player were not even close to that bad a performance. For me to use her I actually run her Matchbox or Spasmodic breath add ons so I only have to be a blink god 1 time, and then follow up for a down as a regular m1 killer, where I can fall back on bloodrush so I don't get these horrible 1 hook and all escape games xD
=== TLDR ============================
Given her poor accessibilty and kill rates on console and low MMR players, I find myself exploring, mostly just out of curiosity/game design interest, ways of making her more accessible while still retain the elements that make her unique and most importantly FUN for people who already like to play Nurse...
So my question is, what is it that Nurse mains actually love about playing the Nurse?
I enjoyed the very rare situation where I actually hit a 1-2 blink down across a loop and successfully guessed the right side of the pallet... but I suppose this loses its charm when you master it, and I've seen many high level players describe the Nurse as boring once you master her cause she is so easy... Thoughts?
Comments
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As someone who plays against nurse sometimes(as I play solo q survivor) I love the fact that games end in under 5 minutes.
The pain of dealing with her is much lessened by the fact that the game is so short. It also makes playing a 45 minute SM game right after make you miss playing against the Nurse.
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Nothing. I don't hate her anymore since she can't just run stupid builds like Agitation + Starstruck and her best addons were changed. I think since then I don't have much problem with her. Its just it is not much interesting match, even tho she is very unique killer.
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The best thing about nurse is how fast the games end against her.
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I'm not a Nurse a main by any standard but I appreciate that she feels unique. DBD can feel stale after a while, so it's nice to have some killers like her, that are very unique in how they are played and how you play against them.
Other than that, not there's not much I do enjoy about her.
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I know literally everyone in this post is just gonna talk about how their happy its over quickly, but I find shes very engaging for both sides. People only even think shes overpowered because they dont understand how to counter her effectively. If you lose to nurse 1v1, its because shes the better player.
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The fact that the second I hear the harpy screech I know the game will be over in less than a few minutes.
Hate playing against that thing, imagine if survivors could dash though walls and floors.
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I can't play Nurse because she makes me motion sick...
But I love going against her ! (at my level, which means casual/rather bad players)
She changes the way survivors chase, needing to juke more, hide, confuse. It wouldn't work against very experienced Nurses, but it's really fun to try.
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Nurse and "reasonable spot" in the same sentence... Lol. You better be a delusional Nurse main.
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It actually hurts my soul how many times I see and hear the whole console players can't do this and that argument. It is definitely more difficult but you can do practically everything with high levels of consistency. Blight is hardly any different between the two platforms, people just can't play him well and probably spend 50- hours on him and blame the fact they're not Lilith Omen or V1rtual on console. Flicking Blinks and Hatchets on Huntress and Nurse is a good bit harder especially flicking for Huntress hatchets though. The only killer who is legitimately seriously hampered imo is Oni on console as his flicks are tied most strongly to DPI increases and specific mouse movements that cannot be replicated on a controller.
Post edited by Yyys2ee3 on0 -
I have mixed feelings. I feel a sense of pride when she leaves me to go chase someone else but then my teammates die soon after. For some reason Nurses really fit my style, more so than M1 killers, but that's probably cause not that great and they cannot rely on Bloodlust for the most part. Just yesterday this same thing happened and we all died. Claud also threw cause while in chase she decided to farm meg, when she could just leave and let me save.
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I like her uniqueness and design (skins and sounds).
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I'm guessing you stopped reading there, cause my very next sentence then says she is still extremely strong, despite the fact that her kill rate is the lowest in the game because of the absurd skill floor/skill ceiling she has... ;)
Also dude... I'm a newb in case that wasn't clear, that's why I'm asking other peoples opinions. :D
I have only ever played against low level Nurses, or Nurses on console, you can imagine how effortless she is to beat at those levels... When I tried it myself I was blown away at just how hard it is to land anything on console Nurse. I can see how she has the reptuation has... if I COULD hit my blinks accurately, she'd be unbelievably strong... which very much seems to be the case for well practised PC players according to all evidence... this thread included.
I am getting better on her... I am getting odd 2k and 3ks in my games... but usually that is cause my opposing survivors were not very good, and didn't make it hard for me by turning constantly as I blinked, or hugging tight loops and exploiting my slow movement speed and forcing me to blink accurately. I have simply heard that she is slightly less oppressive now given blink is now a special attack, meaning a number of perks that function off of basic attacks (such as STBFL or Jolt) she no longer gets benefits from. I've also heard from high level players that without her increased blink distance add-ons she loses a lot of her potency...
However this thread does demonstrate that survivors generally don't like Nurse, and want her nerf batted or advocate for completely reworking the Nurse. Her identity as a blink killer is very interesting, but the goal of such a rework would be to make her more fun to play against, and much easier to pick up and play... but you don't want to completely demolish the skillset of the people that have put in the time, so posing the question of what elements of the burse should be preserved (if any) surely has value right? :D
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That is very much the impression I get considering mutiple sources and points of view. The consensus is she isn't as bad now as she was in her hey day, but the hatred seems to have stuck.
I see what you're saying, and you are of course correct, given enough time you can get consistent on console, however as you elude, playing a game like this on console is a lot harder than on PC. This is pretty common for FPS games, RTS game and alike, cause they all require quick and accurate aiming... PCs are better for this simply by virtue of how the controllers work... and given the Nurse is all about accuracy in all 3 dimensions, the right tool for the job is gonna win.
On a mouse you simply move your invisible pointer far/fast enough to where you estimate you need it to be and stop; it's effectively mapping you mouse movements to your proprioception. On a controller on the other hand you don't have proprioception to help; you have to press and hold your stick in the direction you want to go and then let go when you think you've moved far enough for it to stop. The latter cannot be accelerated or deccelerated as you need, it's all timing based on the baseline movement your settings allow.
There is a reason why a lot of games incorporate pretty strong aim assist and other tools to help bring console gamers up a couple of notches. If you've ever seen any organised competitions between competative teams across console, the PC players typically demolish the console players, and it isn't even close...
So sure, a console player can get pretty good with practise and time, but take any time frame to practise like 100, 500 , 1k, 4k, 10k hours, and give them to both a PC player at DbD vs. a console player, the PC player will be stronger every single time. I have played console for all of my game time on PS5... I have played 1 game on PC and the ease of basic play and actions is night and day... ^^
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Now this I agree with, PC players given enough time assuming they are at relatively similar skill levels should always be ahead of controller players when referring to these killers. An in depth analysis between PC and Console that is very true.
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I like that she introduces a unique chase. She changes how you path as a survivor and how you use every tile. It's where most players go wrong against her. It's difficult to understand how to play against her unless you actually play as her at a good level. Most survivors try things that will never work and use that as evidence that nothing can work. It's like trying to hammer a nail with a screwdriver and then claiming there's no tool that exists to drive the nail in.
She's a charged projectile. It's fun to use cover and try to dodge her.
And I like playing as her because she's not tuned around complete baby survivors as opposed to killers like Singularity. There's a solid skill cap to hit with her, especially if the survivors know what they're doing. I'm not going to get screwed over by half the maps in the game, just the indoor ones.
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Honestly, I like her because she is different.
While most of my friends hate Nurse, I think looping her is more interesting than other Killers because you have to run her completely different. I think people need to finally bite the bullet and accept that they need to learn how to actually counter her, especially now that her Blinks are now Special Attacks and no longer Basic Attacks.
I know someone will mention "but what about insanely good Nurses?" but I literally could care less, I really dont care if I win or not in most cases.
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My MMR is right in that middle ground where, when I get matched against a nurse player, it's generally someone who has decent game sense but isn't an absolute monster player. Playing against people who are good killer players, but only mediocre nurses, is really fun because there's actually a decent amount of counterplay
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I enjoy going against a Nurse, going against one encourages a more stealth playstyle. When in a chase, Ive found the best thing is to just try and be unpredictable, sometimes turning around and running back at one, spinning, and just holding W. Nurse players have to predict what Im going to do, so if I try and be random I can extend a chase
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You said little counterplay ? I know that 5 blinks with no cd had no counterplay but godness me... she can be outplayed if you pay enough attention and I think after these all nerfs and slight buff which is removing flashlight interactions she is 100% fine and I can say that in some way blight can be way stronger.
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Console nurse is somewhat playable if you put the hours on her. I have 4K most my games with her before but she feels more limited. You can't cancel blink in middle of it and 2nd blink feels shorter it's like pc nurses still has range add ons compared to console that what it feels like. I did enjoy starstruck build on her before...
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From survivors perspective I don't mind her. I escape majority of my games agains't her and it has to be good pc nurse to kill me now and with other killers even bad killer can kill me so yeah I think she could be buffed at least on console.
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I unironically love going against Nurses. If it's a baby to average Nurse it's really enjoyable to loop her and if it's a good to God Nurse it's either a good challenge or impressive to witness (and quick lol)
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I like the mind games involved with her chase. At least for the first blink. Not a fan of the second blink that she can use to immediately negate any successful mind-game. But I assume it’s necessary given she’s a 97% movespeed Killer.
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I've played Nurse on console and she felt great to me. But I've never played on PC so I wouldn't know the difference.
I like her design. Her power is really fun and feels good to use.
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Her bypassing a good chunk of standard mechanics and basically playing according to her own rules is both curse and blessing. Blessing because it's a fresh breeze - curse because it also means that a good chunk of perfectly reasonable tiles/perks on other killers are kinda broken on her.
basically, any perk and any map needs get a "nurse pass" just to make sure it's alright when going against her. (Blight probs needs his own pass too but that's a different story)
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I have to admit, I have been thinking throughout my games that having just the single blink with 110% movement speed from the Matchbox actually makes her a lot less oppressive, while also making her far more accessible.
If you only have one chance to make a read with a wall clipping blink, you can get the players skilled at mind games and prediction to land their god dash, but you can't just blink to where you saw someone, then blink again on their face immediately.
However I'm reluctant to suggest that as a change due to:
- The "From the void she kills" achievement.
- Being worried about Nurse main backlash.
- A lot of reworking her add-ons would be very necessary...
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Good take. Even as a rookie Nurse I noticed that hopping windows and trying to use pallets gave me great windows to go for a hit. Even though I missed as many as I hit, avoiding predictable movement and being sneaky seems to be the way to go, and that makes her a special and interesting killer even to my uneducated opinion.
Would you therefore be against reworking her at all to reign in that skill ceiling and/or lower that skill floor? Or do you have any thoughts on how her kit could be improved so it isn't quite so cerebral to use her?
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Hard to say. She's an extreme outlier in terms of how you play the game. I didn't get good at playing against her until I started doing 1v1s and scrims. The problem with having such a unique killer is that players never get to practice against it in a normal setting. You have every other killer on the roster where there's an overlap with 90% of the chase mechanics, and then there's Nurse who throws that all out the window.
It doesn't mean there's nothing a survivor can do, but you might run into it a Nurse in 7% of your games tops. And of those times, you get a max of 3 chases in those games. By the time you start to learn, the game is over. If someone had 30 minutes in a custom lobby to just practice chases against a Nurse player with thousands of hours, they'd become shockingly good at Nurse chases very quickly. But a survivor isn't likely to see even 5 minutes of Nurse chase time in a month of regular matches.
I'd hate it if they reworked her and standardized her, but I'd understand it. It's not an intuitive thing to run edge map and use all those junk Z walls to block LOS. It would be silly against an M1 killer. Players wouldn't even think to do it against a Nurse until they saw someone else do it.
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I still think making her weaknesses more exploitable whilst keeping her offense intact would be a good idea. That way she still plays the same, but you get more counterplay against her. Like making her scratch blind after fatigue. So it's easier to get away from her. Something like that.
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