Why are (Western) killer tier list placements based solely on the lack or presence of an M2 attack?

I do agree with that.

There was one build I had that had a 75%+ kill rate which consisted of Forced Penance/Starstruck/STBFL/NOED with Trapper Bag and Makeshift Wrap, but the anti-facecamping feature killed it. And that was admittedly cheap.

It's not just Otz. I use him as an example because everyone's familiar with his work, but a lot of these opinions are held by the DBD community at large.

I don't even disagree with his individual takes in and of themselves - "plague is just okay, but can be really good with the right build" or "Myers is weak, but he can be OP with the right build" - so much as the fact that Plague gets better treatment than Myers on his list because the DBD collective consciousness dictates that Myers has to be lower than Plague, even if it means applying different criteria when ranking either killer.

I'm not necessarily arguing that Myers should be higher than Plague on a tier list taking each killer's general strength and consistency into accound, but it's clear that we're just applying different standards to different killers based less on their actual potential strength and more on what broadly-defined "category" they fit into.

Yeah. what I gathered from looking into Japanese DBD players is that their strategy is much worse, but their technique is much better. Western players would do well to study their emphasis on self-reliance and microcounterplay against different killer powers (and Japanese players might do well to play more aggressively).

Also, Self-Care is still a good perk when combined with Botany Knowledge. I've had roughly a 50% escape rate for a couple of weeks now as a solo queue survivor, which, for me, is very high, and those two perks have been a staple. I don't have to bother someone completing an objective to get healed, and it's almost as fast (even faster if I don't have to run around looking for everyone), I get extra time in chases when I would otherwise go down for being injured, and Botany doubles as one of the better general support perks in the game.

EDIT: Also, can run a good toolbox instead of a medkit without having to gamble on whether or not my teammates are going to bother healing me.

Yeah, I've definitely run into some Trappers who were able to just inexplicably steamroll everyone even though we were ostensibly playing pretty well.

I already addressed some of that in this post above, but worth noting that this tier list is specifically geared towards general play, not tournament rules (which are apparently very killer-sided); I know this for a fact since the point came up in the Reddit thread I stole the tier list from.

Also, Otz specifically lists one build that is the entire reason for Plague's A-tier placement, and it's one that changes Plague's basekit as drastically as Tombstone Piece does for Michael.

I think it was something like Iri Seal, Tinkerer, Deadlock, and some other stuff, turning her into a killer who has her power active basically the entire game and knows where and when to target survivors at all times, making for a very different playstyle. He also mentions Prayer Tablet Fragment as being good, which is another addon that completely changes Plague's playstyle.

Plague is not as versatile as Myers, but what versatility she does have is specifically used to justify her high-level placement.

I have mixed feelings about him. A lot of his basekit is pretty horrible, but his real strength comes from his mobility. I don't think he's really very strong though, but I almost exclusively play Pallet Freddy (weak) or, on occasion, Black Box Freddy (only strong if you get lucky).

He did used to be a lot better than he is now, though.

No, because you're not wasting two perk slots for one effect. You're using two perk slots to get three effects: Self-Care allows you to heal yourself, Botany Knowledge allows you the heal other people much faster than usual (almost a necessity that someone is running one such perk in solo after the medkit/healing nerfs), and then Botany Knowledge makes Self-Care almost as fast as getting healed by another survivor (faster in many cases since you don't have to go chase someone down).

What other perks allow you to do what that combo does?

Strength in Shadows is a stealth killer perk. Every other time I run it, the killer figures out exactly what I am up to and checks the basement next time I'm injured, and it's only good if you spend the majority of the match near the basement. It takes longer to heal than Botany and Self-Care if you have to run from the opposite end of the map, especially if you're trying to mindgame the killer into not figuring out exactly where you're constantly running off to to get healed.

Plot Twist is okay, but it only works once, can't be paired with Unbreakable, and if the killer has an aura perks, you just got hooked instead of getting healed.

Oh, and the name of the one that requires you to cleanse a dull totem first and hide in a locker escapes me (Inner Strength or something like that?) is objectively worse than any of the above in every way just because of the sheer amount of time it takes.

And none of those let you heal another survivor quickly, which is just as important as being able to self-heal in the current meta.

Eh. Kill rates don't tell the whole story, but they are a part of the picture. Blight has low kill rates at low MMR because he's very hard to learn, but in high MMR, he's nuts.

Sadako had high kill rates at both high and low MMR very consistently. She was a strong killer across the board. But your argument is a perfect example of what I'm talking about: Sadako just has to be a weak killer in your mind; you're not capable of classifying her anything else, no matter what the numbers say.

If there were statistics that showed her as the most consistent killer in the entire game, some people would still be repeating the mantra, "Sadako is weak. She's an M1 killer. She has no antiloop. Sadako is weak. She's an M1 killer. She has no antiloop. Sadako is weak. She's an M1 killer. She has no antiloop."

On and on and on until the sun burns out.

That's my entire point here.

That version of Sadako doesn't even apply to my argument because she really wasn't using her M1 to get most of her kills, if we're going to be technical. I don't know what the equivalent of R1 is for people who play with keyboard and mouse, but that's the button I got 75% of my kills with, not R2 (M1).

I feel like you're just grasping at straws since Sadako was about as much of an M1 killer at that point as Spirit or Nurse (who technically get their downs with M1, but we don't call them M1 killers because they don't play like M1 killers).

If you don't think that being able to heal yourself at almost full speed and being able to heal others quickly and effectively are two different effects, then there's not much point continuing this conversation, because I don't think you're actually giving this any thought. Botany is worth running on its own just for the extra healing speed, and being able to heal yourself on top of that is at least one other effect (I'd argue that being able to do so at a much better speed counts as a third).

>Plot Twist

Twice? No, once, at least until the main match is over, at which point hiding in a corner of the map and using Self-Care/Botany would be every bit as effective since the first thing the killer is going to do is run over to the exit gates and/or facecamp whatever survivor they managed to hook to begin with. You won't be interrupted unless you pick a stupid place to heal. Botany is also more useful in that situation since healing others quickly after hook trades becomes a primary concern.

OTR or Bite the Bullet can solve your Self-Care sound problem if you're just especially bad at picking a spot to heal. If you're one of those people who turns around two corners and starts healing, Plot Twist might solve your problem, but only if the killer doesn't bother looking for you and doesn't have any aura perks. I would and I do.

>Inner Strength

Finding a totem can take anywhere from ten to thirty seconds (seriously, time yourself next time), and then it's another 20 seconds to do the totem, and then another ten seconds to get to a locker, and then another eight seconds to heal…

With Self-Care/Botany, you take ten to twenty seconds tops to find a place to heal (not even that much if you just took a protection hit and the chase went to another area of the map), and then, boom, you heal and you're done.

You're really not "almost silent" inside of a locker. No. No. If you're in a locker near me, I will hear you just as well as if you were healing out in the open.