17 games in and my 2v8 stats are concerning

I took notes on all my 2v8 matches today, and I'm not liking the results.

Playing survivor only (queue times are too brutal for me to try killer), either medic or guide.

Game 1: Blight + Billy. Yamaoka. 8K, 5 gens left. Miserable game. Killers raced around the map and racked constant downs, were always zooming over to cages to harass them and instadown the healer as well as the uncaged person. Killers slugged last 3 survivors for the 8k.

Game 2: Trapper + Deathslinger. Dead Dawg. 2k. Both Trapper and Deathslinger appeared to be skilled with their killers, with good trap placement and accurate/well-timed shots, but it wasn't a combo that had very much map pressure. First death was at one gen left and the other was a gate catch.

Game 3: Spirit + Deathslinger. Campbell's Chapel. 0k. Neither killer player seemed very good at their killer, and they spent a lot of time teaming up together, which allowed gens to fly across the map.

Game 4: Wraith + Deathslinger. Autohaven. 1k. The Wraith player seemed very new and didn't use lunge attacks, so the Deathslinger carried most of the weight that match. Not an especially fair match. Saw a Maria in the lobby and had to pick James so I could follow her around.

Game 5: Trapper + Huntress. Family Residence. 4k. Very balanced match. Killers spent a lot of the early game tag-teaming, which may not have worked out very well for them.

Game 6: Trapper + Huntress. 5k. Autohaven. Was a wild game, everyone started dying at around 2 gens left and 3 survivors powered through the last gens and managed to sneak gates open in the midst of some long chases. Killers would've gotten a 7k if they slugged instead of caged at the end.

Game 7: Wraith + Blight. 8K, 1 gen left. Asylum. Blight was very aggressive about returning to hooks to tunnel, but wasn't nearly as good at it as Billy is. Slugged last 3 to avoid hatch, but this went on for about 3 minutes with Unbreakables and stealthing so they eventually gave up and caged someone, then camped hatches. Major medic abuse this game where two injured medics would tag-team mid-chase and simultaneously activate their abilities to fully heal both of them.

Game 8: Blight + Spirit. 2K. Autohaven. Killers spread hooks and didn't get their first kill until lategame, but did have a lot of 2-hooked survivors for most of the game, so gen speeds were out of control. Constant positive modifiers while solo repairing gens.

Game 9: Huntress + Wraith. 5k. Yamaoka. Got their first kill at 2 gens remaining, which is the same issue – these players would have done better if they'd played meaner. I had a positive repair speed modifier for most of the match.

Game 10: Wraith + Billy: 7k, 1 hatch escape, 4 gens done. Coldwind. Another very unenjoyable match. Less drastic slugging this time, but Billy kept focusing cages and going for one-two punches on the unhooker and the uncaged player, so people went out pretty fast.

Game 11: Wraith + Trapper. 1k. Autohaven. Gens flew; the Trapper spent the first 4 gens setting up traps and the Wraith didn't even get a down until 3 gens done. A lot of Scouts restoring pallets this game, which neither killer dealt well with.

Game 12: Spirit + Huntress. 0k. Yamaoka. The Spirit didn't know what they were doing and got maybe 5 hits all game, so the Huntress was basically forced to solo. Was the first game where I consistently had negative repair speed modifiers.

Game 13: Spirit + Blight. 5k. Dead Dawg. Spread hooks near-perfectly (first death occurred at 15th hook, 1 gen remaining – 6 players 2-hooked and 2 players 1-hooked), but performed better than previous teams due to strong killers with high map presence.

Game 14: Huntress + Trapper. 3k. Mother's Dwelling. The killers weren't very experienced and got totally outmatched – only 7 hook states were achieved before gens got done, and most the ones that followed were from survivors taunting at the gates. The lobby progressively turned into more and more Scoops Ahoy Steves as time went on, which is extremely important, because Steve Squad.

Game 15: Nurse + Trapper. 2k. Campbell's Chapel. The Nurse was quite good– match ended in 17 hook states – but the killers just didn't play mean enough. More medic abuse – last gen was done in Nurse's face with 3 people taking hits, and then 2 medics erased the health states. Offered Trapper a flashlight and a kill at the exit gate but he said no.

Game 16: Deathslinger + Trapper. 2k. Autohaven. Deathslinger was doing a neat Undetectable playstyle with the Shadow role, but this combo just doesn't have enough power to handle the gen speed. Only 8 hook states before gens were done.

Game 17: Spirit + Blight. 0k. Thompson House. Maybe 14ish hooks by endgame, but spread out too evenly, and survivors used their powers too effectively. Blight didn't seem too good at hitting his rushes.

Out of 17 games, 3 were a stomp in the killers' favor, 3 were close games, and 11 were stomps in survivor favor. So far, this has been very survivor sided, but it's worse than just that.

More than anything, 2v8 has been power-crept. And that's antithetical to what made 2v8 fun. While Trapper + Wraith was known to be pretty bad last time, and Huntress was queen, everything was... roughly in the same ballpark. Stacked Guides and SWFs using Escapist in a group were pretty rough, but there wasn't a lot of need for sweating in either direction. People enjoyed the fast, chaotic, and casual games.

Now Medic and Guide have been buffed to enormous efficiency, with rising survivor gen speeds baked in. Which makes the game passively very survivor-sided. But there's two ways to counter that - tunneling/slugging, and meta killers. When killers use either one of these strats, they can tie with survivors and their busted basekit - if they use both, it's a miserable stomp and there's very little survivors can do.

But also, when you look at more meta killers becoming available, the less powerful killer picks are falling off in capability. Billy was previously implemented, but in a heavily nerfed state, and while Nurse is as meta as they come, she's limited by the number of players who are capable of playing her through both the skill floor and the frustration/poor sensory experience. Billy, Blight, and Spirit are all more accessible… and in the current state of 2v8, Trapper, Deathslinger, and even to a lesser extent Wraith are much less playable, because the game just keeps getting harder and faster.

Tl;dr, killers are forced to play meta and they're forced to play mean.

So:

-Guide did not need buffs, full stop.

-Medic buffs are welcomed, but the group 50% flat heal is abusable in pairs and dangerously efficient in a group. This should either be tweaked or take longer to charge, because the only times I didn't always have it when I needed it was when the game was snowballing out of control in the killer's favor.

-The gen speed modifiers benefit survivors even in games they're winning. Gen speed reduction from competed gens is minimal and survivors have 3x the modifier potential. 7 or 8 survivors can still have a positive repair speed modifier on the last gen when this is clearly a survivor-favored gamestate.

-The gen speed modifiers punish killers for spreading hooks. Survivors should not get speed boosts from cage states, it should be strictly from dead survivors. Or better yet, just get rid of the gen speed modifiers entirely. This isn't just rewarding killers for tunneling and slugging, it is actively hurting the ones who don't play in ways survivors traditionally despise. If you don't tunnel, not only do you have more survivors on gens, but they individually get faster repair speeds AND they unlock extra bonus perks that make them even more powerful.

-As such, in every game I played where killers won, killers were tunneling and using at least one high mobility killer. If killers did not make an attempt to tunnel people out early, they usually lost and occasionally drew.

-Even discounting the significant survivor repair boosts, gen speeds per gen completed don't slow down the game in a linear fashion. If 2 gens are done and 3 are being worked on, it's not 10%, 15%, and 20% delay in sequence for those next 3 gens; most of those three gens will be done at a 10% delay, with only the last bits of those gens getting a further speed penalty.

-Billy is probably overpowered, though I will admit 2 games is not a big enough sample size to judge. He's the king of map mobility in outdoor maps, which all of these maps are, and more importantly he's the only killer in this mode who ignores health states. Trapper is still underpowered, and with matches going faster than ever, he can't cope with his early game picking up and setting traps. But Deathslinger is even worse and desperately needs buffs.