It's sad that Killer design now always gotta include a strong mobility ability to be viable
In high level gameplay where the Survivors are both good at looping and be efficient on gens, playing Killers without mobility built-in is very difficult to get a win with. It's sad that we no longer seem to be able to make new Killers without some form of teleport, or fast speed ability to get across the map, to be viable in high level gameplay. Because gens fly by so fast, really no matter if the Killer is efficient in pressure and chases.
It's been like this for a long time, but the game keeps getting more competitive and sweaty for each new year. And that means this problem will get bigger and bigger.
This makes coming up with unique Killer designs more and more restrictive, because you always gotta keep that in mind.
I think we will no longer see type of Killers like Trapper, Clown, Bubba, Deathslinger, Huntress, Trickster and Ghostface. Which might be good because today's standard is different and has to be met with different solutions. But many people like to play with simple powers and not have that many things in your kit. If you are a high level player you can't really play with those simple powers if you want to win.
But it's insane how much this game has changed over the years. I don't think the game should be balanced around high level gameplay, I think it should somehow be balanced so everyone can play and have a good time. But we can't forget the players who play at a high level, where seconds spent doing something can be the reason you lost.
I'm not really sure what I really wanted to say with this thread but yeah. Just some random thoughts.
Comments
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This is what happens when people optimize a game and the Devs don't give any sort of compensation or changes to older map design, unfortunately. Twenty billion filler pallets and Killers with high mobility.
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This
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True, a lot of the earlier cast who mainly play as M1 killers tend to feel pretty badly power creeped depending on the map you get.
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I don’t think they necessarily have to have mobility. What they need is map pressure, that is what they’re getting from map mobility. You could hypothetically have a killer with no map mobility if they had like a built in game slow down that put survivors on side objectives. This would give them pseudo map pressure. Think Pig with her traps, but if her stealth and ambush were actually good.
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Every single killer in the game is viable. Next question.
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In your level, sure. Also it wasn't a question 👍️
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True, I feel like they need to do that as well. I'm getting tired when there comes a new Killer with a teleportation ability. Not all Killers need to have that, just built-in slowdown in general, don't have to be mobility in that sense. If the solution is to give all Killers teleport abilities, there would not be any unique Killers left lol. There is also room for more creativity with built-in slowdown rather than teleportation.
Post edited by AggressiveFTW on1 -
The biggest problem is that the match nowadays are simply too fast. Most of my matches finish under 10 minutes.
So to counteract this, the killer either has to be very oppressive in chase, or having strong mobility. Obviously the former is out of question as Survivor will complain about no counterplay, so mobility is the only answer.
Anyone without mobility is basically dead.
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They have been literally halving 90% of the maps for years and also adding trash tiles/tiles to them as sort of compensation but ok, maybe this community will never be able to be satisfied until the map is bigger than the shack.
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Yeah I wish they’d get a bit more creative on ways to give killers map pressure. I feel like at least half the killer rosters are pseudo the same abilities just with a different splash of paint to make it look different.
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I am curious then. How would you fix the issue posited in this thread? Do you think it's one at all?
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You don't always need a strong mobiliy, all that slowdown powers are also pretty good
I mean, you'll just get all those killers with mobility or teleport, or maybe pinhead box
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I agree slowdown powers are also pretty good. If we look besides performance wise tho, mobility powers nowadays are just copies of each other with just a different visual to it. It's a lack of creativity, I wish we got more slowdown Killers instead of the simple teleport ones.
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I mean, we have ranged killers with teleport like unknown and alien, weird anti loop killers with teleport/fast moving like liches and dredge, camera killers with teleport like singularity, stealth killers with mobility is a onryo/wraith,
I don't think they are just copies of each other, I just think most new killers will get a power AND mobility nowadays
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Skull Merchant, the 0 mobility Super Saiyan m1 killer says hi.
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She is nowhere near viable, just a noobstomper
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I agree with this but survivors generally hate it if it's strong enough to be worthwhile i.e. pre-current rework Sadako.
Even though survivors keep asking for side objectives, not sure what's going on there.
It also immediately makes a killer a noob/pub stomper as we have seen with Pinhead, Pig, and again Sadako lol.
I don't think these are reasons not to do it. Just something to keep in mind I guess.
Post edited by MrPenguin on1 -
I mean Cenobite doesn't really have mobility but is still good because his 4v1 pressure is insane against soloQ teams. I think that's the real issue is very few killers have actual good 4v1 and we need more killers that can bother multiple survivors at once.
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Either Mobility to pressures gens fast enough, Stalling/slowdown to survivors from progressing gens, Hindred/instadown to down survs faster then gens
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his passive chainhunt is good but his chain power is hot garbage
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thats kinda telling that new killers need 1 main powers and 2 side powers just to keep up in current dbd
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ill say a hot take its cause survivors always want a safe zone If theres ever a deadzone they cry about map balance. Pallet and window chaining is to strong every 10 meters has a pallet or vault.
Maybe if Devs dont add 30 pallets on big maps and put 30 meters between each loop it'd balance it out but no gotta have no deadzones even if you waste the entire map resources
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And I definitely won't deny it, considering all that new killers, pretty much all of them have 2 or 3 powers with their main power
Also pretty much all of them has to be 4.6, too
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Yeah im starting to think M1 killers need to be 4.7 for like Trapper and a few others. That or Trapper can just throw traps that auto setup
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I mean, nurse, spirit, slinger, artist, etc exist with no mobility and theyre still quite strong
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Calling spirit no mobility honestly feels strange
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it shouldnt
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Nurse and Spirit are strong mobility killers.
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Not so much for nurse, she is equivalent to 4.6 killer who can ignore walls, her mobility only works in double floor maps
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Every killer is viable, but some of them are more viable then others.
A Trapper will never become as strong as a Blight, because Map Mobility is the most important thing a killer has - or has not. As long as Pallets dont respawn, its always about depleting the enviroment as fast as possible.
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Good chase is better than good mobility on average. Usually killers who have good or even great mobility won't even get rated over B tier(prebuff Billy, Dredge, Sadako). Yet there is a decent amount of killers that are considered higher tier without having much or any mobility at all(Artist, Pyramid, Slinger, Chucky, Plague). Even Nurse doesn't have actual mobility to traverse the map, although she has vertical and burst type mobility to be able to catch up and control a small area.
Mobility is obviously a strong tool that is featured in the S tier killers such as Blight, Billy, and even Spirit(to a lesser degree). But by itself it doesn't mean much if the killer can't end chases quickly. If anything, the strongest part of having mobility in a killer's kit is being able to circumvent the hold W process to reach the survivor which is why "raw" mobility(Oni in power, Wesker, Blight type) outclasses "preset" mobility(Dredge, Sadako, Demo, Xeno).
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I don't see any issue here. As someone already said all killers are viable but at the same time some of them are more viable than others because you can't expect all (+30) to perform equally, you will never be able to bring them all to the same level, you can reduce the gap but no matter how small it is it will never be 0, and honestly I don't see a problem.
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For sure. If we take Knight as an example. I think it would be good if the devs decide to keep the guard bug from the PTB. BUT, the 1st guard doesn't disappear and you just make it so the 2nd guard can't chase the same survivor. Basically, you can use the 2nd guard to pressure a different survivor while in a chase.
I've always wanted multitasking to be apart of Knight's kit, because this is a case where it would make sense to have it like that. It wouldn't be too weak or too strong, I think it would be a good change.
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Maybe if the survivors are Ai, there is no way you can convince me 4 human players that kniw what they are doing can lose to a trapper on springwood, its impossible unless the team throws on purpose.
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People are saying "viable" a lot here.
The problem with saying "Killer [x] is viable" is that, depending on MMR and game level you're playing at, "viable" means different things. For the average player at low-mid MMR or casual MMR, ALL Killers are viable and some are overwhelmingly too strong. For higher MMR, only about half the roster is viable. For Comp, which has serious restrictions on what people can bring, nobody at D tier is viable which is why you never really see Comp Myers or Comp Freddy, but do see comp Ghostfaces and Legions - the definition of "low tier killer" is different there.
So depending on your definition of "viable", either only half the Killers in the roster are, they all are, or nobody is except the absolute strongest and it also depends on your style of play and goals in the game. Do you wanna win? Do you want to have fun? How casual or comp are you? That changes how viable a Killer is too.
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Eyrie, Garden of Joy, and Badham are all still around.
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"But it's insane how much this game has changed over the years"
More than it should have, thats for sure.
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This I felt my friend, right to the soul. 😕
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It is a tough situation, my friend, most certainly.
We could never have expected the game to remain static, but there are SO MANY things that should have been left unchanged.
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No they are not
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i do not think it is the mobility. it is time efficiency that makes a killer a killer good.
4vs1 objectives for killers is sort of an indirect form to deal with poor time efficiency in a killer. This is because for every gen defence perk/time waste mechanic, you can trade X # of pallets for said slowdown.
For example if you run corrupt intervention and deadlock, you can trade your game-delay perks for x pallets on the map. so let''s say you break 3 pallets and the pallet waste 60 seconds, the corruption intervention and deadlock eat the brunt of generator efficiency for those pallets.
The pig traps replace corrupt intervention deadlock with incapacitation on the survivor with head trap. you can do gens with trap on but it is not good idea because of the mori. It is indirect incapacitation. saying that killer need slowdown just says that every killer needs better base-kit generator game control. 5% generator kicking certainly is not cutting it. most killer really need automatic game-delay that reward kill for not tunneling and punish the survivor for playing chases poorly. The 5% manually kicking game delay is insufficient because kicking generators as killer consumes the killers time. the reward /= time used up by the killer to kick said gen. In most cases, the killer loses faster by kicking gens than he does for kicking the gen. This said be seen in 3 gens where killer eventually loses a 3 gen in most maps. the maps where killer is most resilient at staying alive in old unlimited kick system are the maps where kicking gens had any merit otherwise it is a strategy that long-term losing preposition.
The major form of mobility for why i think mobility is good two things.
- Counters pre-running. If a survivor is ahead of the killer and spots killer ahead of the time, pre-running is one of strongest form of time waste for the survivor. Virtually all strong killers have anti pre-running tools. This is arguably one of the most important tools for a killer.
- Devalue health's. The fact that being healthy in dbd for killer amounts to +20 seconds of time waste just running forward is massive. Most killer that are good either have instant down capacity or Pseudo 15 stacks of stbfl to machine gun survivor's health-states. Cutting chase time is massive increase in killer's time efficiency. that is why the type of the mobility that rains supreme is Mobility-in chase. For example, Demogorgon has mobility BUT it is not mobility in the chase. it doesn't allow him to machine gun survivors in chase. Yes he can use the perk STBFL+Rapid but it is nowhere near effectiveness that a killer power bring to the table. Dredge and Sadako and Alien all fall into this category of mobility that controls the map but doesn't really help the killer machine gun health-states. Billy for example has base-kit instant down, a 1 hit down ability. He is perfect representation for why there should be more killer that have instant down because instant down is one of the best forms of devalue health-states. Wesker is another example where he can m1 a survivor and then combo his dash after speed boost to get a hit. Killer need Wesker type mobility for machine gun or direct instant down. Nurse, Spirit, Blight, Chucky. all of them just have machine gun mobility.
The other important aspect for a killer to be good is Anti-loop tile-set play.
Safe loops and God pallets are main time-wasters for a killer in chase. the ability for killer to be outplay or ignore these design is massive advantage to the killer. The more god pallet there are, the more important it is for a killer to have anti-loop tile set play. Nurse is high-tier because she ignores bad loop design. God pallets are not an issue for nurse. Apart from Old chucky, None of killer counter god pallets effectively and consistency. Some killer power provide some aid in getting a hit at safe pallets but in the end, most of them are subject to huge counter-play. High speed mobility in a loop allows the killer to outplay loops. Going back to Billy, Billy can curve loops and this allows him to outplay dropped pallets/undropped pallets.
The bottom line, time efficiency is what makes a killer good and most killer are not time efficient at dealing with survivor's gameplay. The major 3 being Pre-running, Devalues health-states & Safe/God pallet loops. Those that have all 3 of these tools are always the best killers in the game because their time efficiency exceed that of killer with no such tools.
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Every time I see the Coldwinds I cringe at the brightness, and I still look around for landmarks that aren't there anymore. Yes they were much larger and not conducive to excellent loopers, but man they were so fun. Kinda feel the same about the old blue and green realms as well. Guess that's why I still love the Swamps.
Some of the guts of those maps are in there somewhere, but not the soul. Time for another trip down the Puppers YouTube rabbit hole, need to feed my nostalgia now.
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You can still win with low mobility Killers. You just need to play a bit smarter and shrink big maps by only defending a cluster of 4 or 5 closer together gens and by choosing your chases wisely.
Granted, it's a lot harder to do since BHVR nerfed the 3 gen play style (thanks to Skull Merchant), but it's still possible to win. And there's always proxy camping hooks and tunnelling to fall back on if necessary. I'd rather lose than employ these two strategies, but they're there for the players that want to use them.
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This seems to have better visibility than what we have now…
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Isn't that something? This was prolly during the second or third year of the game. I lament the character and charm we've lost on the older maps since then. As straight up unfair as many tiles were on them, I still miss them terribly.
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Don't forget, that DBDs posterboy is "in a good spot right now". Everytime I play him, I am so frustrated and quickly resort to unsanitary tactics and changing killer next game.
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I’d love for the devs to challenge themselves by creating another Killer that is as slow as the Nurse or even slower.
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The problem is survivors want unexhaustible tiles like Vaults like badham and garden of joy
This is why i stopped playing trapper and only play Killers whos power isnt controlled by survivors
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On god they are not. Only viable ones are S tier, which means Nurse and Blight.
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