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Why did Executioner fall off?
With all the complaining about Wesker it made me think about the other horror gaming franchise in DBD and how despite the massive amount of hype at the time you don't see Pyramid Head all that often these days and I really can't figure out why that is.
He's from a well known popular game series.
His power while the description is long it's not that complicated you just get people tormented then when you down them you send them to a cage and you get to ignore half the perks in the game. Oh and also you get a ranged attack the goes through anything and can hit multiple people.
He's not even weak he's basically the best tunneler in the game and even if you didn't wanna play that way his power is extremely good at loops so getting downs isn't that much of a challenge. Hell at the time of release people were suggesting he could be the 3rd best killer in the game behind Nurse and Spirit which while clearly not the case now also isn't terribly far off either.
By all accounts of what we know about what gets popular in DBD Pyramid Head should be up there with Wesker, Blight and Huntress and yet I really see him maybe once a week.
Thoughts on why this is?
Comments
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Probably because it is hard to play him effectively if you are bad at landing his punishment of the damned. We see so many weskers because he has a really low skill barrier.
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There is new toys to play and PHead addons needs to be reworked to add more flavour and ways to play.
PHead is the same since its here. Well now the egg last 3 seconds (impresive).
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He is harder to use than other Killers who are stronger or of similar strength. And while he is not weak at all, you can basically always go for Nurse if you want to win, since learning her does not take too much time to win the majority of your games and her skill ceiling is lower than e.g. Pyramid Head.
Also, we nowadays have 32 Killers. We are at the point where basically every Killer (aside from very few) are rare.
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A cool power and concept is once again gated behind an extremely clunky mechanic. Watch videos of how fluid his sword to the ground was in the olden days, now its very clunky. He is still very strong, as a proud Pyramid Head main I can vouch for this, but his power is not exactly plug and play and even with experience survivors can dodge many punishments quite easily.
If you invest the time to learn his ins and outs, he is a very strong and rewarding killer, but he is really hard to master. Oh, and before the BT basekit, you don't know how many survivors DCed when you did a double KO at an unsave unhook from 10m away with double range add ons. So many survivors didn't know about this, tried a risky unhook and ended with both of them on the floor, again. That was very fun, but I don't mourn it, as this must have been such a downer and joy kill.
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His chase power is strong but is kinda clunky and I also don't like tunneling with him, so in a way whenever I play him I feel like I'm handicapping myself just because I want to play nice and don't have an interest in tunneling from the start of the match using a built-in mechanic that feels designed for tunneling. He also has one of the worst addon sets in the game.
He's not really fun to play against either imo, even the ones that don't tunnel. And I tend to play killers less (or not at all) if I don't enjoy seeing them as survivor.
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His power is too easy to dodge and you get relegated to getting most your hits with it only when they are locked in animation in a lose/lose scenario basically. That's boring and predictable game play.
His ranged attack in locked animations should be nerfed in some way while simultaneously rewarding him more for hitting his ranged attacks by predicting survivor movement.
They should've given him the Torment on ranged hit back as well.
Think of it like playing Wesker except less skill expression and your only hits with his dash are at locked animation windows and pallets.
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Clunky mess thats it.
And no map pressure, suprisingly.
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clunky and 99% of his addons are cheeks besides range
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While I agree with everyone about PH being super clunky, popularity of the characters outside DbD probably has something to do with it.
Specifically talking about Wesker and Nemesis, they're from a much bigger franchise. I personally prefer Silent Hill's brand of horror, but Silent Hill hasn't seen an actually relevant in a very long time. Resident Evil is pretty damn big right now. It has more fans in general, I think. I'd say it's the same for a large portion of the other licenses.
Also, yeah, Wesker is just easier, more enjoyable, and stronger. That's not even including the other high tier killers.
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I dont remember him being ever even good, as soon as everyone found out how to reliably avoid condemned, he was straightfoward when it comes to dealing with him.
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I think it is more because pyramid head has no counter-play towards hold-w. Wesker has counter-play toward hold-w. Wesker does not need to tunnel but can tunnel very easily. Pyramid head is forced tunneling to be effective. I find him boring to play so I do not play him.
his gameplay is too binary. I agree with your analysis.
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Hes one of the hardest killers to play effectively and takes forever to learn.
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Hes harder to play, considerably so, besides while popular, Silent Hill isnt on the same level as Resident Evil, RE is far bigger and well known.
Could also mention that people often like speedy characters, and PH is the opposite of that.
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He's iconic but he's from the PS2 era. Younger players are probably not familiar with him at all.
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He’s not as easy or as smooth to play as Wesker.
He’s about as strong as Wesker but it takes more effort to get the same results and it doesn’t feel as good to play him.
As others have already said, he’s clunky.
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He stopped seeing play after the nerfs they did to him. He currently feels really clunky with his turning and delay on power. There simply is zero reason to pick the killer up since there are a plethora of strong killers that are more fluid and fun.
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Well, when he was released PHead could pretty reliably force lose/lose situations on survivors. Either they vault and get hit with Punishment, or don't and get sword slapped. The Devs nerfed his recovery when pulling his sword out of the ground which did fix the problem mostly but did so at the cost of making him clunky and annoying to play as. Other than tunneling a condemned person, I don't really know of anything he does better than Huntress or Nurse.
Oh also... one of his main upsides was being able to tunnel in spite of DS + unbreakable that people used to play constantly. But people don't run DS anymore really so the ability to ignore it is kinda irrelevant.
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There's a bunch of new Silent Hill projects coming. I'm sure he will see a surge of popularity again, especially with the SH2 remake in which he features heavily.
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I do like Pyramid Head, but his power as others have said is definitely a bit clunky. If they could iron it out without making him oppressive it would do him huge favors. His power is also probably the only one that can hit multiple people.
I'm sure if he got an add-on that made his special attack's warning delayed for a bit , it'd benefit him immensely. His add ons are pretty bad.
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He's harder to play. Your effort in learning him rewards you less per hour than other easier to play killers, a la Whiskas. People want to feel like their time wasn't wasted so don't want to commit for ages to a single character when an easier option who's also very strong is right there.
I'd say Pyramid Head is stronger in theory but the time required to reach that strength is just too massive for anyone to want to bother when you have easier options elsewhere
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Another vote for clunky to play lol and add ons are boring.
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Cuz you get dunked on in the gates and endgame chat if you ######### up with his clunky, nerfed ass. Also, he does not fit into a locker like Dredge.
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The Torment Trails he places don’t feel impactful to place, as oftentimes they’ll dissipate before you can chase a Survivor into them, and any slowdown they add through a Survivor crouching through them is rarely seen by you. Their only purpose is to apply Torment. Kind of bland.
It’s cool that Survivors can crouch over them to avoid Torment and Killer Instinct, but it means that it’s just something else that is variably effective that is already time-limited.
Punishment of the Damned ignores walls (Line of sight blockers) and can be held while still moving, so counterplay assumes that the Survivor is always in the open and running away, by giving them enough warning of where the attack will land and taking time to travel over the point at a distance. Making distant hits more reliable only when the Survivor is anim-locked, as has been mentioned already.
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Unfortunately when you sacrifice the "good FEEL" of a character for what you think is more balanced as a developer the result is a lower pick rate imo. The way that Pyramid Head "FELT" in the ptb was perfect. Now many of his animations feel sluggish and as others have said..just clunky. When playing as the Killer the last thing I want is to feel restricted by some invisible force when doing anything. For example.. In ptb he was able to M1 out of M2 which just "FELT" good. When something "FEELS" as good as that you don't remove it... You come up with other ways to compensate for that "good FEEL" without removing it.
Same with Deathslingers gun.. The old aiming down the sights "FELT" amazing..and now..he feels much more sluggish and slow which boils down to just not being fun.. I don't care if I have to hit the Survivors 3 times to down them if the Killers in the game "FELT" more fluid and less sluggish to simply pick up and use. Maybe the Devs will get to a point some day where they realize that, but until then people like me just have to wait for that "FEELING" to return. How good something "FEELS" in a game is actually hard to explain.. It's more of a if you know, you just know type of thing.
Whatever they have to do to make Killers feel less hindered by game mechanics, animations, cooldown times, I've always been for it. I'd much rather have every Killer feeling so polished and have them compensate in other areas of the experience to make up for it then it be the way it is now.. A Killer like Wesker is a perfect example. The majority of Weskers animations and kit just flows and goes together perfectly. He is quite polished whereas other Killers like Pyramid Head were just kind of left alone after being nerfed in the worst possible ways.
Pretty sad to see it, but until they realize people want to play a Killer that "FEELS" good to play then we'll always be stuck in this infinite loop of these developers going: "Hmm so many people are D/Cing against Wesker.. Why is that? He must be too powerful. Let's nerf him!" Take some time out of your busy schedule and just bring the other Killers up to that level. It isn't hard to understand. The answer is right there.
Post edited by EQWashu on5 -
Tbh had they not nerfed his actual ass I think he'd be more popular but since they shut down his bakery people have moved to sweeter pastures
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Not really getting what you mean by counterplay being in the open. The point of his ability from what I understood was anti-loop, so yeah ofc it's bad in an open area, that's why you don't use it there. Because you're supposed to use it at pallets an windows. Kind of like Huntress hatchets.
The thing that would make it feel better is if they added add-ons that delayed the warning that appears to survivors or making an Iri that removes it all together. Since atm his add-ons are bad.
His power can also hit multiple survivors so it cannot be body blocked in cramped spaces.
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100% agree. Too much bun control in the bakery has tainted the product and sweeter pastures there are👨🌾🌽🌾🍃. Glad someone picked up on that 😁
Post edited by Nun_So_Vile on2 -
Please I've been with my boyfriend since the PTB I've noticed every subtle change to his pastry range
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As in, given it can go through walls, every survivor is effectively “in the open”. There is no guaranteed inherent counterplay like Line of Sight (apart from slopes, but that seems more like a technical issue, and drops, but that isn’t available everywhere) so the counterplay has to be baked into how the Power performs the damage. In this case it’s the warning, as well as the propagation delay, as the counterplay should be possible while in an open area.
Personally, I’d like if like Huntress, you could charge PotD for a faster, longer, shot that has less counterplay at the expense of movement and provides more opportunity for skillshots if predicting movement through walls, and a quick PotD that is best used for loops but slower and shorter.
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unless you want to zone, his power is bad. might be the easiest special attack to dodge. i was gonna say he isn't all that appealing if you aren't interested in tunnelling but i don't agree he is any better at tunnelling than any other killer after the ds nerf, so i'd say his tunnelling aspect is non existent now. so he is just a worse nemesis imho. (p22 pphead here btw) i just want to be a demon pphead but he is just hard to play, i lost countless of i'd say free games just to go for shots. they are super easy to dodge, it moves slower than a snail and ground level differences are everywhere and screw him over so bad.
Post edited by EQWashu on0 -
He has bad addons for the most part, has a tiny bit of a learning curve, and actually can has perk synergy issues because of the way his power works.
Wesker's got all round decent addons, but can be played without them. He's slightly easier to just pick up and play because his power is much more tactile, he talks which for as many people hate it makes him extremely enjoyable to a lot of us. Like the silent or non verbal murder machine types are nice, but having a character that expresses their personality goes a looooooong way. It's hard not to have fun as Wesker because Wesker himself is having fun. Trickster is enjoyable for the same reason because he vocalizes his enjoyment of what he's doing. I wish Skull Merchant also had voice lines because who wouldn't love a sultry voiced people hunter dropping some manga level one-liners.
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I heard something about him getting nerfed, a while back. That is probably the reason.
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I enjoy playing as The Executioner, but admit his power sometimes feels like controlling a tank, albeit I love the feeling of strength that comes from it.
If there's a reason why The Executioner is not as popular, it's that his add-ons are completely uninspired and are possibly the dullest in-game. If the add-ons were reworked into something diverse and varied, I can see him appearing more often.
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This nerf was 4.3.0 btw
Post edited by GoodBoyKaru on1 -
I've actually been seeing a resurgence of him lately. Like, I went from 1 Pyramid Head in a couple of months to seeing him several times my last few sessions.
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And which version is the current one?
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Consider yourself lucky. Pyramid Head is one of the killers I get multiple matches a day of. I would prefer not to see him so much.
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We're about to hit 7.1.0 in a week and he hasn't been nerfed since 4.3.0 except for moving the distance that his cage teleport to 10m instead of 5m recently to make sure that you couldn't camp at 7m with your power ready lol
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As a console player it just feels awkward to play him. He was great on release but the nerf kind of just ruined him for me. As others have said he's too clunky.
I can barely tolerate playing a few matches with him before I put him back on the shelf.
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Way too clunky but otherwise fun. It’sa shame he feels that way though
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