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Houndmaster will have the lowest pick rate
Even If the bugs were fixed Houndmaster would need extreme levels of QOL Devs would have to add major QOL and buffs patches to HM for the next 5 patches.
Currently I don't even expect HM to even have any Mains ATM when every killer can do what she does but better and not buggy shes high effort or low reward.
Comments
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I mean, a low pickrate isn’t inherently a bad thing. It’s fine—unavoidable, even. It’d be silly to design a killer for the majority every single time.
Every killer will have its dedicated mains, even current SM.Other than that, I think it’s pretty unanimously agreed that HM needs some more love from the devs.
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I don't find that initial statement to be particularly compelling, personally.
If we were in a perfect world with no weak or buggy killers, someone would have the lowest pickrate, and it'd probably be one of the killers designed to focus on something other than an M2 mobility power, since those tend to be the most popular. That wouldn't be a problem in that scenario, so I don't think it's what we should lead with when talking about any particular killer's design.
On the topic of the video in particular, I don't know, I think Scott's dismissing a lot out of hand. The idea that Houndmaster has nothing beyond either skillshots with the Chase ability or moonwalking on the scent trail strikes me as a little bit reductive- her power does more than just that for sure. Just off the top of my head, I had some success with totem defence builds, and she's got addons that'd allow playing around Houndsense as much as the Chase ability.
Hell, just Houndsense alone can make her an "empowered M1" type killer, and that's not nothing, that's a perfectly worthwhile way of playing killers.
I do think Houndmaster needs some QoL because some things just feel bad - Scott's right on the money when talking about the dog dragging survivors away from you making logical sense but not being well designed - but I really think people are overblowing just how bad of a spot she's actually in. She's a versatile killer whose depths and nuances aren't immediately obvious like they would be for a simpler-designed killer like, say, Wesker or Hillbilly. At the very least, we should give her time to settle before claiming that she's just "high risk low reward" or what have you- we should focus on the stuff that's obviously wrong, like QoL problems and literal bugs, imo.
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if a new killer has one of lowest pick rates it is actually a problem lol
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Eh, I doubt it means much beyond what we don’t already know.
Remember, we’ve got 38 killers as of now. Even if it was all evenly split, you’d still see every killer just 2 or 3 times in a hundred matches.
The vast majority of the playerbase will have settled on who they “main”, and won’t be all that interested in trying something new. Plus, mobility killers will always be more popular than “macro” killers, and we all know how popular Huntress is.If the new killer is then also buggy to boot, they’re obviously not gonna attract many new players.
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I main her 😅
And my other main is……well….sadako
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I feel like after the bugs get worked out, she'll be alright. I WANT to like this killer, but the bugs and abit of clunkiness is the only thing kinda ruining it for me.
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You’re right 💯 though. She needs to be ironed out as I have mentioned before. QOL/small buffs.
I’ve had lunges from the dog where snugs sniffer was in their butt and he still didn’t grab lol
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You are right that not every killer will have a large pick rate and it's honestly fine for killers to have low pick rates BUT imo the biggest issue with HM and one of the reasons she will have a rather low pick rate is her skill floor. I think we can agree her skill floor is set pretty high and imo that is a bad thing bc Im a strong believer that skill floors for most killers esp dlc ones should be set where ppl can pick up and play them on day one. The reason why I say this is because killers aren't really free, they cost money and there is a way to try them out or have a demo of them, so if I spend money on a killer who I can't even have fun time with bc their skill floor is set so high it will take me 50 hours or more to just be decent on them, Im not going to be too happy. In fact that's what happening now with HM. I got her since I really wanted to like her(I love the idea of her power, her lore and her design) but Im starting to regret getting her bc I just cant do anything with her. I have played every night since thurs and I still haven't gotten a single kill with her…Im getting to the point where she's not worth the time investment and I should just go back to nemmy or Legion at this point.
This why I say skill floor is just has important as skill ceiling yet most only care about a killer's skill ceiling.
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Or so your a bug addicted lmao
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Problem is they are creating complex killers with a variety of powers and shifting abilities that cater to PC. I know this is a hard concept for some but Singulairity, Dracula, The Unknown, and HM are not controller friendly. There are a massive amount of console players that will continue to use their easiest killers because it's a fast pace have. We don't have time to remember what needs to be done for each of these killers. These new killers are to controllers what the finishers moris on Mortal Kombat are and at least we get to pause to look at them first. The less complex the better especially with squads or a soloq with gen builds.
To further but the Blight can't quite turn as on PC and the Oni is horrible as he can only go in a straight line on console and it feels like your trying to control your car while driving on ice.
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no it is not. it is extremely low reward for insane effort. she needs a lot of buffs to feel worth investing time into.
Like off-top of my head, i'd say she still needs
- bigger hitbox on her chase attack → I suggested this in PTB.
- Houndsense should instant down survivors that are grabbed by wolf → killer suffers from lack of lethality and low reward for landing the ability. Risk of losing lots of distance doesn't meet rewards unless your game plan to never use ability unless survivor is like cornered into the map where you get unlimited tries to succeed. Houndsense debuff is like after-thought mechanic. Wow killer sees me. big deal?
- fixes to many bugs and improvement to her game fluidity. Like her chase attack if you cancel incurs nasty m/s reduction that is off-putting. Her houndsense is for click gens is not fluid, i don't think i should need to put marker if i didn't select ability, i should be able to just press her search ability and look at gen and it will go the gen. if i want to use it on specific object like a totem or use it in front of me, than i should use nurse-type marker for specific actions. The trail for chase for UI is slow like i can release ability before i can see the marker sometimes.
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?
What are you referring to when you say "no it is not"? I made a bunch of statements in that post lol
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he's a versatile killer whose depths and nuances aren't immediately obvious like they would be for a simpler-designed killer like, say, Wesker or Hillbilly. At the very least, we should give her time to settle before claiming that she's just "high risk low reward" or what have you- we should focus on the stuff that's obviously wrong, like QoL problems and literal bugs, imo.
refers to entire last part of your post. her depth isn't meaningful. her kit too unrewarding for any of her actions to have any impact.
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Gotcha.
Well, I obviously stand by that. Her power has more going on than some others, so we should at least wait like… a week, bare minimum, before making sweeping definitive conclusions about her overall strength.
There's stuff to figure out here. For instance, her power works better with perks than some of the simpler M2 dash types, so there's at least gotta be a period of experimentation to see what works best with her in that vein. I don't think she's so easy to figure out that we can have day 2 conclusions.
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the stuff that works best for her is instant down perks and stbfl+rapid. they currently bottle-neck her perk load out and put you at significant disadvantage for not using them. it's not really mystery. Devour hope+standard support hex defence perks is one variation of exposed perk and only other form variation is Make your choice+Friend till the end. the other perks supporting her are fluff choices based off killer preference.
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she is a huge shame, shouldnt bhave been released
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Her biggest issue is how useless the search feature is and how long the dog takes to come back to you. Ive had some trouble switching between the modes too. the next thing is using her power slows you down too much. Finally the pathing for the dog being sent out needs some improvement and the dog bite can be incredibly janky causing you to miss attacks or drag them into a pallet for a free stun
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- Twins has a very low pick rate, but is definitely not a weak killer. On the contrary Wesker has a high pick rate, but he doesn't seem like the most lethal killer in game . choosing a killer is more complex than simply "this one is strong, this one is weak". there will always be killers who are more popular than others.
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I agree that the pick rate doesn't matter that much but a new killer shouldn't be in a state where people already think that nobody will bother playing them because that implies that the devs wasted their time on that killer, since people are not interested from the start.
More importantly, what is said in the video is true. This killer isn't just a little buggy and a bit undertuned. The devs definitely have their work cut out to fix this killer. The dog AI needs a complete overhaul, Houndmaster will probably need some number buffs, the haste effect is applied in a way that basically incentivises you to play like original Legion and moonwalk after a survivor and there are a lot of small bugs and clunky parts of her power that need to be looked at.
I have played this game since the Twins' mid chapter and in that time I don't think they had a single release that was this bad (even Nemesis was better and from a technical perspective that was horrible). It will probably take quite a while for them to get this killer into an acceptable spot and by then the next killer will have come out, so they can get started on a rework, if they want to generate some buzz to sell the killer.
This may sound overly pessimistic but I really don't see how they would turn this around. Not because I don't trust in their ability to fix a flawed design but because there are too many things wrong here.
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I mean, you’re not hearing me argue she’s fine. Far from it.
My point is admittedly largely pedantic, but OP saying that she won’t have any mains is likely not true. Like I said, even current SM has her mains.
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Also, add the fact she was released right before a major holiday where the devs will be taking multiple weeks off from work for their vacation so the chances are she wont see any major fixes for a while. My best guess mid Jan into Feb. We may see some small adjustments before their Christmas break but I don't think we see anything that will completely fix her.
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Usually even killers for money have good online at the start, now we have a free killer(shards) in release week with scanty online and you say that this is not a problem?
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I fully intend on maining her so you're at least half wrong.
That being said she does need help. When I get more experience with her I fully intend on making a thread about exactly what she needs but for now the most glaring issue is two things, the fact the the detection zone for grabs is so small but everyone knows this I'm not saying anything new here.
The other change I'd like to see is increase the dogs speed run it runs back to you in either mode. Chasing a survivor and not having the dog available even though it's running two meters behind you is insanely frustrating. 5 seconds is already a long time to wait on a hard to hit power but it's often much longer because the dog can take a long time to catch up to you in chase and with how fast DBD is now that's rather unacceptable. I don't think 5 seconds is a crazy cool down although it would probably be fine at 4 seconds but what I'd really like is a 20 to 30 percent increase in run back speed so that 5 second cool down is actually 5 seconds.
I'm not going to go into add-ons here but I will mention one that's particularly egregiously bad. Rework the yellow snapper BHVR it's pathetic. You would only need cooldown reduction on Chase mode but it only reduces it by .25 seconds so it's practically useless. I wouldn't buff it because if it's actually good I don't think you'd ever use anything else and I know BHVR hates add ons like that so please rework it into something actually useful.
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The problem is that HM is janky and inconsistent. Not that she has a low pickrate, which is a result of the problem.
And, again, HM was never going to have a high pickrate to begin with.
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🤣🤣 I always fall in love with the broken killers.
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I don't follow the logic. If a killer's not worth playing, nobody is gonna want to play them. And that's a bad thing. The current Skull Merchant mains are chumps for playing such a weak killer. And I can say the same for many killers, but I won't because that would encompass most of them.
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You don’t find them worth playing. That’s valid. Projecting that onto the entire playerbase and calling everyone who disagrees with you “chumps” isn’t.
Not everyone has your standards.
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I don't think it's projecting when you can find similar sentiments pretty much everywhere. This forum, Youtube, Reddit, everyone is saying and thinking the same things. The nicest comments I see are "Houndmaster is fun in spite of being a buggy broken mess" and that's not high praise.
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Using words like "everyone" or "nobody" is projecting, or at the very least generalising. It's not true either way, as proven by others in this very thread.
I'm just saying that, despite everything working against her, she will still have her mains. Not many, but some. Calling them "chumps" seems silly, when it's ultimately a matter of taste.
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I really hope they iron out the clunkiness of her power. The search command is REALLY bad on mutli-level maps, you feel like a drunk person trying to thread a needle when you're pointing at the dog to guard a gen or something, it's crazy.
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Somebody is going to have the lowest pick rate. It all depends on the reason why.
If its because they're weak and miserable to play then they need some attention. If its because their play style just doesn't appeal to a lot of people like Artist, Hag, or Twins then its just a case of acquired taste.
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In HoundMasters case it's Jank extremely buggy killer is weak dog is just broken
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Right now I have played her a lot, and honestly I do feel like a chump, like each time I get a hit with the dog I do not think "wow this power can be usefull", I think "I could have gotten a hit with slinger 30 seconds ago" while I still will keep learning her, as I do enjoy her chase music and animations, aside from those quite irrelevant details there is no reason to play her.
Like prob after the novelty runs out I will go back to slinger and unknown, she has nothing that makes her interesting in terms of gameplay.
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Gonna main her just to make an excuse people lost to her.
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Agreed. Some killers are more difficult than others so they'll have fewer players, and that's okay so long as the player is rewarded when they overcome that difficulty curve.
But Houndmaster doesn't have a difficulty curve because her power is complex, it's because it's buggy and poorly designed, which players shouldn't have to overcome. And even if they do? The reward is minimal.
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I gotta push back on this a little bit.
"I think we can agree her skill floor is set pretty high and imo that is a bad thing bc Im a strong believer that skill floors for most killers esp dlc ones should be set where ppl can pick up and play them on day one."
I'm gonna give you the benefit and assume that you're not saying that most DLC killers should be designed simple to use so people can just pick them up and play right away, regardless of the killer in question. With that being said, the idea that dlc killers should not have high skill ceilings is not something i can abide by. In nearly all cases, a high skill ceiling means multiple ways to play and more ways to achieve victory when you get better and better.
If most dlc killers are designed to be simple, that leaves them with less ways to play, and by definition, less ways to win. Not every killer should be super easy to use with little depth. There's a reason why we never really see people play Trapper these days, outside of new players and 2v80 -
I never said killers should have a low skill ceiling, I only purely talking about the skill floor. Look at my comment again and you see I never said the ceiling of a killer should be set low. You can have a low to mid-skill floor while also having a high-skill ceiling. That can be achieved and the devs have done it before. Wesker imo is the perfect example of a killer who has a good skill floor while also having a high skill ceiling. It's my opinion that most killers should be accessible no matter your current skill level at the game while also having a high skill celing. The reason I talked about this is bc HM floor is set up way to high and that will impact ppl who wants to play her like myself. I don't want to have to spend 100s of hours just to learn a killer's kit and just to achieve an even W:L ratio. HM is the first killer where I haven't been able to win a single match with her and have been on a losing streak with her since day one when she came out. Im not new to the game either, I have over 1500 hours in and game and can play every killer pretty decently other than Oni, Billy or any other rush/dash killer since I don't have the reflexes to play these killers.
On a little bit of a different note, this whole year has been kinda meh for killers for me. Unknown, Lich, and Dracula all been killers I just didn't like. I hated the bouncing projective of the Unknown, and I didn't like the powers of both Lich and Dracula. HM was the first killer since Xeno I've been excited about and I can't even enjoy her bc I getting my ass kicked EVERY SINGLE MATCH. Worst part I do not even know how to improve on her, at least with the other killers I knew how I could get better but Im at a blank with HM which just makes me sad and depressed.
Either way no I don't think every killer should have a low skill ceiling and be really simple BUT I do think every killer should be accessible and easy to learn the basics of no matter your skill level of the game, something HM fails to do imo.
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