I think now it's safe to say that Pig, Doctor and Hag buffs didn't help them at all
I was so excited about these buffs, because I wanted to play these killers more. And I can say these buffs are nice to have, but they didn't change strength of these killers at all. They definately need more than this.
Doctor
I used to think 20% of Discipline addon will be good, but it barely changed anything. I'm good with timings on him, but I feel like I still need to bring Discipline to not watch how survivor vault or drop pallet a second after I shocked him. Yeah, it's also ping thing probably, but mine is always ~50-60 on average, what is not bad, as I know.
And after all, Discipline and Electrode are his best addons anyway, because 80% of his addon either garbage or just repeat themselves with different numbers. I think he is definately in first half of killers who needs addons rework.
My suggestion: I think time to charge up Shock Therapy should be reduced by 15% or/and his speed while charging Shock should be significantly higher, maybe 3,5-3,6m/s (Definately needs testing, it's hard to say just on paper). And another 10% of Discipline should be added to basekit. He 100% deserves it, since his kill rate is by far lowest in the game.
Problem with Doctor is that he waste too much time to have one hit, you still need to run like 4-6 circles around semi-long loop to land hit with perfectly timed shocks. You sometimes make it faster without using your power at all on some loops.
On top of it, I think Doctor is very flexible killer in terms of cool ideas on him. At least he could see some work on his addons, which will make his basekit more interesting. Fake pallets, illusions, screams, he has so much interesting to add to make his gameplay more various and unexpected.
Pig
Buffed dash feel completely as before: since you start crouching, survivor already on another loop. Maybe there are 10% of new loops where Pig can use her dash, but difference isn't noticeable at all. Only good thing about new Pig is her crouch speed, I definately started to use it more.
But I started to play more on her because of this addon combo:
This combo is what make her power actually viable and very fun to use. Problem is: you can't use only Last Will, because it's awful addon on its own and you forced to bring Grease to make this addon work.
My suggestion: add 5-6% movement speed during Dash to her basekit. If you think it's too much, at least, PLEASE at least remove this stupid downside from Last Will addon, so I won't be forced to bring two addons just to be able to use her power. Also, will it be too strong if we will buff her crouch speed to 4,0m/s? I don't think so.
Hag
I think Hag is extremely outdated killer on par with Trapper. Her buffs feel nice, but playing this killer still feels terrible. And same as Doctor, you still use range/setting/shackles addons just because there is nothing better and reworked addons are lame. As I said 4 months ago, Hag is still rarest killer in the game.
And this with keeping in mind that 80% of Hag I see on streams and in my match are just different killer: Chase Hag with Iri Shoe. So amount of people who actually play her I don't think is bigger than 0,3%. If this is not signal that something wrong with this killer, than I don't know why. Here is comment of only Hag main I know after her buff:
My suggestion: I don't think we will see her big rework any time soon, so I strongly believe she SHOULD be 4,6 killer. And since you force killers to not play territorial and defend some space on the map, what is clearly Hag's playstyle, I think she should have some buffs in this way. Many people claim that wiping traps did Hag weaker and I don't know how to improve it and left it still balanced. Left her without counterplay at all will be, probably, too strong in some situations, but right now she definately has too much counterplay. Maybe make wiping last something 7-8 seconds?
Appreciate if you made it up here. Thanks!
Comments
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I personally like doctors addons. He got the coolest ones in the whole game (I wish we would have more addons like that). It would be a shame if they remove the different illusion types from his addons. I would want them to make his illusions move by imitating what you do (like mirage from apex legends). This means you move forward/turn around/make any animation the illusion does the same.
Pig got still nerfed. The coolest part about her are her traps and since she lost the auras, she became a lot more boring. For pig I have multiple things I want:
- Box auras back
- Traps timer reduced by 10-15s (without nerfing the addon)
- Huntress lullaby works for boxes or they make the skill check addons a lot better
- Faster crouch speed (without nerfing the addon)
- Smaller terror radius(like she once had: 24m) to make stealth better
- Better addons
- Faster charge of the ambush basekit (without nerfing the addon)
- (Bringing back how the box search used to work, where every survivor had a physical key, but to prevent afk-killing by making that there are five boxes and that the fourth guarantees it)
Hag is very strong. I just don‘t like playing her. I don‘t want her to be 4,6m/s. A buff I can think of would be to bring back light burn.
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I don't think they will ever make timer smaller, since they wanted to make it bigger on PTB. I'm sure they want to make RBP less as kill tool and more like not oppressive slowdown tool and remove any strategies that make it harder. I agree, but instead they should make her second power stronger.
Hag is very strong, yeah, sadly not in the game called Dead By Daylight, where she is just punching bag against semi-good survivors, since her power somehow works only on survivors mistakes.0 -
Doctor: I don't trust any stats from the Doctor because in asia many players use him as an afk bot to farm Shards which always results in lower killrate. However, I agree that he still does not feel good to play. You have to shock, and shock, and shock, and shock until you get the hit. It feels so boring and draining on both sides because it is more a question of time. There is also the problem that what you see on your screen and what happen on the survivor screen is not completly the same. Year, Doctor should get these buffs (or something similar) to feel smoother and better to play. Yes, his Addons could become more intersting and unique. Doctor has the problem that his Madness is extremly strong against new and average players but rather okayish/weak against the experience players and everyone beyond that (they can hit Madness skillchecks, they don't get tricked by fake TR or Red Stain ect.).
Pig: I feel like her Dash Attacke should break dropped Pallets because her Power is not the strongest and other killers like Blight or Demogorgon can destroy Pallets with their power, so why not Pig too, especially when her power isn't the strongest antiloop or zooning tool in the game. However, I agree with your suggestion: The basekit buffs made Pig much more smoother to play but they only help on middle/small loops. On rather bigger loops or when the survivor tries to leave the loop, you need these Addons to have a better chance to get the hit. Leaving the loop feels so boring and it would be much better when has the right power to force a 50/50 on both sides, which is much more interesting. In general, I like the idea of the developers to buff her chase and antiloop power while making her RBT more of a slowdown instead of a kill option but Pig still needs some buffs in her chase power.
Her Addons could also get some tweaks: Rusty Attachments and Utility Blades are rather useless Addon because they are basically Sloppy on wish. They should get a rework. Could be okay when one Addon applies both Mangeled and Haemorrhage for 90sec when she hits a survivor with her Dash or when she puts a RBT on a survivor but the other one should get a rework. The downside of Jigsaw's Annotated Plan could also be removed. Interlocking Razor is such a useless Addons. Slow-Release Toxin sounds good in theory but is awful in praxis because a survivor with a RBT is useless and you don't want to chase an already useless survivor. Would be cool if she had an Addon that would give her Untedectable for a few seconds after she stops crouching or that reduces her TR by 8 meters for each survivor with a RBT - don't have to be exacly that, that's just some random thoughts.
Hag: Making her a 4.6 killer won't solve the problem. The reason why she is the least played killer in the game is because she is not like any other killer: You have to use her power in the right direction: Shut down an area that you want to defend (Generators or a Hook and then you have to chase the survivors deeper into your trap network to down them there). Not many players like this - they want chases and action. Many players play her like this and lose their matches and won't touch her ever again. Hag is completly different and every experience you have from other killers, won't help you that much when you learn Hag. Making Hag a 4.6 Killer would result in that players would still dislike her playstyle and play her like trapper: Strong loop → place a trap so the survivor has to leave the loop → chase them to another loop → repeat → hit → repeat. This will still be a rather boring interaction which means Hag will still be the least played killer. There is also the issue that Hag is rather weak once you have this one survivor that harass your traps because it is so easy to spin Hag's Traps and to make her completly useless (It is still easy to spin her traps and avoid a hit when she teleports. She needs both decreasing range Addons to get the hit when a survivor spins her traps but at this point your traps are useless in a different way). If a survivor team is missing this survivor, she is strong but if you win the match it is often a they lost the game and not I won the game (If you know what I mean). Wiping her traps had the result that now rather weaker players (the ones who cannot spin her traps) can disarm her traps, but this takes a while. In my opinion, Hag should get a bigger lunge Attack when she teleports to a trap so it is no longer possible to spin her traps and survivors are forced to wipe her traps, which slows the match down - still very boring but at least Hag has now a power. Yes, you can make her a 4.6 Killer instead so she can chase this one survivor that knows how to disarm the traps but this will still be very boring - let's be honest, a survivor who knows how to spin Hag's trap and how to harass her will be good at looping. But she still needs other buffs and QoL to make her stronger. However, I think even with the right buffs, players will still refuse to play her because her playstyle is very special. Maybe she needs a hole rework. Idk In my opinion Hag is a very special case but also a very interesting one because she is so unique in her playstyle.
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I wish they'd knock 10-15s from the cooldown of static blast
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I agree that Pig shoud be buffed.
I think the trapped survivors should always see the auras of all the boxes, as before, and not just those in which they have not yet searched. So they can get confused and repeatedly search in the same box. The reverse traps should be reinforced so that they can be triggered more often, because this is a feature of the Pig from the movie, its uniqueness.1 -
they did help in making killer less reliant but they didn't solve issue to why those killer are weak.
→ The real problem with Doctor is that his Madness passive is garbage.
→ You get no detection from it. 1 second illusion base-kit is very bad
→ Skill-checks in madness are too easy
→ Doctor lacks any catch-up towards health-states/healing. Maybe they should make it that you get no sprint burst if your in tier 3 madness. I am not sure how you go about fixing poor lethality killers.
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Pig Her dash went from garbage to only useful with add-on's.
her stealth went from garbage to only useful with add-on.
John Medical file needs to be base-kit.
Workshop Grease needs to be base-kit.
Her traps used to mori consistently before with pre-nerfed ultimate weapon. Perhaps revert ultimate weapon would improve pig's ability to mori survivors.
——Hag nothing changed. They made her range and setting speed add-on base-kit making less add-on reliant but her issue is that her power is not good enough to be 4.4 m/s. She needs to be 4.6 m/s. It is not versatile enough power to be lower than that. Buffed but did not fix issue.1 -
Many Hag mains did videos and discussions on how to fix Hag. I think making her 4.6 will solve a lot of her problems, as she could at least chase as a m1 killer.
Another issue with Hag is the "S Tech" - you can turn your camera around, run backwards and trigger the trapper, running away in the moment the mud clone appears.
Maybe with a little bit more tweaks she can be in a great spot.
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as an ex-hag main (havent played this game since hag's "buff", i was summoned after hearing that the 2v8 mode excludes hag despite her being one of the first killers 🙄), she needs to be either fully removed from the game or completely reworked. new killers get multiple powers, meanwhile hag only has lousy traps that can easily be avoided, destroyed and countered, everything about her is either meh or wah. After the flashlight nerf to hag, and yes it is a nerf imo, the last "buff" was really just to pull over a wool over the player's eyes, nothing has changed
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Regarding all of these killers, it depends what you want to achieve.
Even though I myself am a Pig main, the problem with all of these killers is their mechnical skill is quite low... which means the upper bound of their potential is also quite low. The majority of skill for these killers is expressed by the ability to read survivor behvaiour, mind game successfully, and understanding/exploiting the limits of your power... however the actual execution required in each case is not that difficult.
Compare this to all the top killers, who have significant mechanics requiring precision and aim to reach their potential, and is the main factor that pushes those killers into the top tiers.
- Nurse blinks
- Hillbilly dashes/flicks
- Blight rushes/flicks
- Wesker dashes/techs
- Huntress hatchets
- Pyramid Head PotD flicks
- Oni flicks
You get the idea, all of these killers have a lot of precision requirements in their kits to reach their max potential.
So if you buff these killers sufficiently to match their A-tier counterparts, their relatively low skill floor and low skill ceiling means they become kinda brain dead OP to use... I suppose the question is, is it OK for lower skill requirement killers to be limited in how far up the tier list they can reach?
A lot of players are casual players and struggle mightily with these killers, and I would argue the buffs you would need to push simpler killers to the top of the pile would likely remove very large portions of their counter play, and does more harm to the game than good...
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Love your big and interesting responses as always! I honestly doubt that stat from NL includes many matches like these, me myself saw afk bot 3 years ago last time. Doctor always had pretty low kill rate. Madness is also part they can play with, I think it's a big field for ideas. I don't think it's weak or strong, I just think it does its pretty meh job.
Well, break pallets with dash is interesting idea, but it won't work anyway, and I don't think it should be in base. Firstly, this will work only in loops, where Pig can use dash, so it barely useful, until dash will buffed. Secondly, I think it will remove 50/50 from these loops, where Pig can dash and it's my favourite interaction with her. I'm not against it as addon, but I don't see it as her buff. I personally think if they will add 5% to dash and tweak her addons (I agree with your points about her addons), she will be in a perfect spot. Yes, still is not A tier, but I don't think it's possible to make her A tier without being too oppressive on low level.
To all of you, guys: Yeah, like I said, I don't think any buffs will make Hag viable in current game, only slightly less outdated. And since we 99,9% won't see her rework any time soon, probably not even in 2025, 4,6m/s is just band-aid to her. It's not even Trapper level, where you need half of his addons basekit just to be somehow viable killer, Hag won't help this. Her design doesn't fit in current game anymore. Sure, she can be fine against clueless soloq players, but let's be honest, it's not measure.0 -
I am not sure how you go about fixing poor lethality killers.
Good start is to read my post, where I suggested how to fix Doctor's poor lethality.
her stealth went from garbage to only useful with add-on.
I mean, Combat Straps is nice to have, but I started to use her stealth more often and it's way better than before. Still can see buffs, but I don't feel like I need to bring addon for this.
Perhaps revert ultimate weapon would improve pig's ability to mori survivors.
I think many players mistakenly think that "second way to kill with your power" should be consistent, when it's obviously shouldn't. Pig's and Onryo's powers designed that way, that they force survivor to do something to remove danger to be killed and only actually kill if survivor continue to ignore it. So there is nothing to improve, even if I agree it's a fun way to kill survivors. And super unfun for survivors, if it become somehow consistent.
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Holy… all these letters just to say that it will hurt the game if low tier killer won't suck, because they don't deserve it due to not too big complexity.
At some degree I agree with you, it's nice to have killers like Blight, Singularity and Billy, because strength of these characters is directly correlated with the player's experience and time spent on them. Amazing killers to show skill expression, but who said every killer should be insanely difficult to master just to have right to be good?
We have Nurse, where you need to spend day to begin destroy most people in public, we have Spirit, where you need good headphones to be at 80% good at the killer. We have Chucky, which probably most easy killer to play in A tier and one of the easist killer to play in the game. Somewhere near is Xeno. We have not mechanically complex Plague pretty high in tier list. And you know, they somehow exist with all these killer you mentioned. Thanks Entity we don't ask here constantly "buf if they deserve…"You know, I can say your words in other way and I think we will agree here: all killers have their own ceiling in strength due to their designs, where they can still be fair, takes at least some skill, interesting to play as and against. If we brake this ceiling, then we obviously brake something in this pattern. But buffs I suggested don't brake it and I believe but these killers in B tier at best anyway.
Doctor doesn't have very high skill ceiling, but he also doesn't have low skill floor. Hag imo is very hard killer to play in current dbd. But as always, my lovely point here: "casual" survivors can struggle against these killers, if we will buff them. Casual killers don't exist, if anything, and if they exist at the end, they should from very begging to play super mechanically hard killers, ask them to spend 500-1000+ hours to begin achieve something. And god forbid they want to play something easy, they only allowed to play C or D tier killers forever, because killers need to get better on hard killers to deserve win, while survivors will stop low tier killers from buffs only by existing, we definately won't ask them to get better to not struggle against low tier killers. Holy f, when we will stop with this biggest hypocrisy in community?0 -
Doctor already outplays loops very well. He doesn't snowball very well. In some ways, i don't think he is suppose snowball very well but rather be slowdown killer that focuses on making survivors miss skill-checks which slow generators down. He is just ineffective at that role.
I mean, Combat Straps is nice to have, but I started to use her stealth more often and it's way better than before. Still can see buffs, but I don't feel like I need to bring addon for this.
Combat straps is faster crouching. I am talking about her movement speed when in stealth is still slow.
I think many players mistakenly think that "second way to kill with your power" should be consistent, when it's obviously shouldn't. Pig's and Onryo's powers designed that way, that they force survivor to do something to remove danger to be killed and only actually kill if survivor continue to ignore it. So there is nothing to improve, even if I agree it's a fun way to kill survivors. And super unfun for survivors, if it become somehow consistent.
I disagree especially in regards Onryo. her ability to instant kill should absolutely be consistent. As for Pig, I don't think her mori power is fairely designed because i do not think survivor has enough counter-play to reducing effectiveness of traps. At same time, her current mori iteration is easiest way to buff pig's power-level.
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Well, you pretty much got my point yes. I suppose the angle I'm taking is that if you buff low mechanics killers into being too effective, you push them into the realms of Skull Merchant... SM is not really too unfair, but she is very easy to use, and is effective... if you make a low mechanics killer too strong, your counter play options become more limited. That's a trade off you can't really avoid...
I have said for a long time that I love Trapper, he is my second killer after Pig, and yes I want more buffs for him... however a lot of the buffs people suggest for him put him in danger of being rather obnoxious and becoming similar to Skull Merchant. It's mechanical skill expression that facilitates a stronger upper bound for a killers potential...
Like imagine a buff to Huntress where she has an auto aim that never misses; she would be insanely oppressive… and the thing is she has that potential…buts it's a human on the controls, and humans miss. They aim incorrectly, mistime things, make sub optimal decisions. On Trapper... you can't miss... so if you make him as strong as the upper end of Huntresses potential, you've got yourself an OP killer.
Regarding your suggestions for Pig and the hold W to loop problem, the main counter for this is the mind game of crouching and standing back up. You can bait a survivor into thinking you are going for an ambush and just stand back up to catch them as they leave loop.
I do think Last Will could be improved a little. You're right it is so punishing on its own, it needs Workshop Grease to work, but WG right now is one of her best add-ons... so thats not really saying a lot. It does kinda feel like this add-on was designed to only be used with Workshop Grease... having its longer charge removed would make it busted with WG though and would by far be her strongest add-on combo...
Perhaps if you set the ambush charge speed to her basekit charge speed (similar to how iri hatchet overwrites all add-ons to say you only get 1) so that it can work on its own, but can't be used with WG to become the default "use this and only this" add-on combo.
I'm a little on the fence for crouch speed. 3.8m/s is not great, but Pig does have JMF to go to 4.2m/s, which is very good and JMF feels like a substantial and noticable upgrade... and JMF is great for the aforementioned crouch/stand up bait vs. the hold W at loop issue.
The benefits of JMF are quite appetising compared to running Pig's nastier add-ons with her RBTs... Being 4.0m/s base would be nice, but 4.4m/s with JMF is starting to sound a little silly... so JMF would have to benerfed, and then using it becomes less appealing... meaning her nastier RBT add-ons don't really have a reason not to be run...
Not saying any of those changes are bad... I'd accept those changes, just I have a personal preference for JMF being as it is in Mandy's kit. 🤔
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I just don't get why Doctor gets slows so much while charging his power. I often feel like I could have caught up if I didn't bother using it at all. At most it should slow to 4.4 but realistically it shouldn't slow at all.
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This definately is NOT what Doctor needed. Another update to character without any real value.
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I think the buffs to Pig did help a lot actually. You are correct that to get full value from it, you need to run 2 add-ons; anyone playing ambush dash Pig likely would have been using those 2 anyways though. I play ambush dash Pig most of the time and have absolutely gotten a lot of hits I would not have before the update.
I don't really think her ambush can be buffed much more, unless to take away from add-ons and add them back into basekit. Pig's dash has a high degree of freedom of movement, and if buffed too much can make it very hard to counter leading to more hold W gameplay. If they increase the speed during dash or duration then it would become a bit too strong and often feel like free hits instead of skill. This could make her less fun to play for many.
If you are not playing ambush dash Pig then you still get the nice QoL buffs which might not be game changing but will still be nice to have. It is very likely that BHVR doesn't want to buff her headpop RBT gameplay at all, and I would agree with that. Her traps is in a good spot balance wise atm. If BHVR buffs them more and too many would die to unfair RNG, but nerf them and they become nothing more than slowdown. Right now they are in a good spot of either requiring Pig to spend time to ensure the headpop which allows the other survivors to counter by doing gens, or the survivor wastes time and then doesn't have enough to get the trap off with 4 searches. TLDR: To get a headpop either the survivor misplays or Pig has to actually pressure them, which is healthy for the game.
For now I think the best way to buff Pig is with small but meaningful changes since her kill rate is likely where BHVR wants it. Such changes would allow higher MMR skilled Pigs to get more use out of her power while likely not affecting the lower MMRs too much where Pig is much stronger as a killer.
For example, it would be a great change to increase her crouch movement speed to 4.0 m/s. Small buffs to how long it takes to charge ambush or perhaps removing the debuff on Last Will would be good too.
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