Am I going crazy or does Xenomorph feel way worse to play?

Survivors are just dodging left or right when they hear the tail's audio attack warning (or when they see the visual tail warning), and Xeno is forbidden from adjusting the attack to follow the survivor.

Nemesis being able to adjust the whip by strafing left/right is far more useful than Xeno being able to adjust the tail up/down.

for whatever reason, using directional keys to strafe with the tail attack doesnt work like it did before this patch. i actually had an easier time strafing when the tail was bugged, ironically. can still move the camera to adjust the attack mid launch, but the tail definitely isnt back to what it was on release. im also having difficulty consistently hitting over things now as well. its a shame this killer hasnt been in a non bugged state since its release, because id really like to enjoy xeno without adjusting to three different versions of its attack power.

Its been difficult to test the changes, because the only two options are survivors I can control by asking them to do or not do things, or public matches.

Controlled matches give a biased experience so it feels just fine under those conditions. It also strips away time pressure.

But in public, so many matches have a cheater or 4 now, its hard to separate what's intended from what's a manufactured outcome.

In an actual match all things considered I find no reason to drag the tail, and very little reason to use the tail between tiles. The drag weather over an object or to hit aside a survivor and drag through via strafe just doesn't hit often enough to make it worth the risk of the cool down. Added to that, in the open, its max range is extremely poor, its better to wait the fractions of a second and M1.

What it does do very well is hit animation locked survivors, survivors that check look the killer at a downed pallet or vault, and denies use of most clean short walled tiles(of which there aren't all that many) either via threat of an accurate tail hit over the object or simply because the survivor passes on the loop and feels forced to push toward a more traditionally strong looping structure.

It feels broken around window vaults when approached from a non-12 o'clock angle(so anything beyond about 10 degree deflection), these hits always seem to be rejected by the window tile.

If the tail had its range increased a touch, and it favored a strike on the survivor over object collision, I think it'd be a much improved experience.

That's just the tail concerns. The tunnels often spawn in messed up places when generator location is considered, it'd improve the mobility aspect of his kit if that was fixed. The tunnels are outright silly on maps with two floors, generator spawn dependent, I often just stop using them, its too slow on those maps. Maybe this could be fixed by letting the player control his orientation on exit of a tunnel, increasing speed in the tunnels or if nothing else increasing killer instinct duration on exit.

There are still places where you can see a survivor 100% in view and be unable OR be forced to take some wonky angle to hit the survivor. I think this is just the nature of DBD map objects.

I really like the turrets, they are powerful, they open up a lot of loops that were denied but they require either communication to use OR thoughtful consideration of their location AND the survivors predetermined path to an escape loop. I'm not sure if the time invested in placing them well, is worth it match timing considered from the survivor side(Its very hard to find a Xeno to match against in public games.).