I've never considered Wesker's kit to be bloated. His original infection mechanics and 8% hindered were a problem but that got the nerfs it needed. I feel like Wesker is completely fine the way he is right now, he is a very interactive killer for both sides, has a strong chase power with fair counterplay, and the infection mechanics are quite lenient for survivors now after the changes which I think is okay. He is in my opinion one of the most well-designed killers in DBD.

I also think capcom had a lot of design say-so which is why his kit feels cohesive even though there’s a lot to it.

Wesker is powerful...yet also powerless to deal with a mere fire barrel.

Fwiw - Killer Instinct is probably the one thing I could see being unnecessary in his kit. Not saying it's overpowered or problematic, just that it might not be needed is all.

The Deep Wound when 2 survivors collide has always been there if the non-thrown survivor was already injured (because it never downs you, so it deep wounds instead) but originally on his PTB that actually wasn't a thing for healthy survivors - they would just become injured. After the PTB I remember them saying in their dev update that they were changing it to always cause deep wound simply to make it more obvious what had happened to the survivor that hadn't been thrown (and that sometimes on the PTB it wasn't clear enough what had happened), so that's why it's like that now.

Well, he is one of the most popular killers for a reason and I wouldn't say he is too strong for survivors. I like to play against him, there is a lot of room to outplay him.

Maybe? infection was problematic before but it’s been severely reduced and I think in general the only thing he has going for him is his ability to throw survivors. He has stuff in hit kit but it’s hardly oppressive and he has to hit you with his power which Killers should be rewarded for. He’s a well designed chase Killer whose reward for hitting his power is displacing a survivor and then later a small amount of slowdown and info.

Calling his kit bloated when Dracula is right there with a sidegrade as 1/3 of his power would be silly to me.

Are you actually suggesting nerfs to one of the most balanced killers in the game?

You're implicitly implying that his kit is bloated therefore should have things taken away, lets be real.

He's not bloated because survivors only need to do two things to counterplay him:

1. Don't get hit by the speedy megalomaniac.
2. If you do get hit, use the spray, and try not to get hit again.

That's it. There's a lot of little details concerning Wesker's power but they don't matter to survivors most of the time, they're just fluff and fringe cases. As far as survivors are concerned, just dodge the smug jerk who wears sunglasses at night, and you'll be fine.

Are people really upset about first aid sprays giving 2 seconds of killer instinct? Really? All the other problems in the game? You realize you can just wait to first aid spray until a pick-up or if your teammate is just being chased. Wesker has arguably the most balanced power in the game.

You think that his kit is bloated and that is a problem because you think he is too strong - This is where many people are going to disagree with you.

Bloat is not a problem unless it causes a problem, and many people including myself think there is no problem, so thats why trying to make this thread about wesker being only bloated isn't going to work.

Also, infection does reset to 1% after hook. If you're suggesting that infection should be removed on hook i think that would be ridiculous.

He's really not an issue. It's okay for killers or add-ons to have multiple things going for them. This was my biggest complaint about the push to nerf Adrenaline Vial on Blight. "He has ALL those advantages!" Yes, but in exchange for severely limited turn rate, which PC players ignored because the devs refuse to fix mouse flicking during killer powers.

Almost every survivor perk that comes out these days has multiple effects, and they power creep killer perks. Lethal Pursuer by itself gives you 1 aura read at the start of match, and with other aura perks gives you extra seconds on their effects. Eyes Of Belmont gives an aura read every time a gen is done (5), and with other aura perks gives them extra seconds.

Wesker is yet another killer that's super overrated. His charge time on his power is almost always enough for the survivors to react and get somewhere safe, even if it's just behind a random obstacle, because for some reason killers slow way the heck down every time they try to use their power. He really wouldn't be much without everything he has going for him now. Dash attacks without infection? Who cares? The survivors can potentially be downed fast in chase, or be caught up to fast, but then he loses his slowdown and can just be gen rushed. Or infection without the health states taken. We've seen how well that works with Nemesis (sarcasm), and how often people ask for him to infect + damage with 1 whip attack. And he's got lots going for him as well, the zombies, his ranged attack, and his pallet break with that attack.

I hate to default to this every other time, but you're simply not seeing these killers y'all are complaining in tournaments constantly, or at high MMR. They're not good enough to be played but once in a blue moon at that level. I'm really just waiting for y'all to start complaining about Nurse and Blight again, because I don't know how you can keep complaining til nerf about subpar killer options like Pig, Freddy, Knight, Chucky, and Wesker... when those 2 still exist.

Fair enough. Here's my counterargument to your post….

Not all killer powers need to be super simple. In fact, I'd argue that this would make DBD very boring in the long run. Now, I'm not arguing for killers to have Skully 2.0 levels of stuff in their powers, but a power that has a few things going for it is hardly a bad thing. Looking at the list you made for Wesker and what he has going for him, I'll admit its got more then a few things, but all of them are fairly easy to understand and all of them can be countered by good survivor gameplay, so in the grand scheme of things, I think Wesker is more then fine as is.

My final thought is that we need more killers as engaging as Wesker, not less. And his kit is hardly bloated

His power is basically a worse version of nurses power in that it can't go through walls. In return he gets:

• Built-in slowdown in his kit, if you ignore infection you could get insta-downed thus you generally have to spend time to do it as the time efficiency lost from being fully infected is worse than just not cleansing it
• Some small detection when they remove the infection
• Eventually survivors run out of resources to remove infection, meaning that there is also a clock.

His terror radius being larger is a bit of a wash. It can confuse survivors more, but in return it makes it really easy to hide from him.

Given that nurse exists, he seems fine to me.

His kit is absolutely bloated. They should honestly remove the uroboros and sprays. Very little would change of his gameplay.

I'm opening up a conversation about a killer power I think is a little bit bloated to see if anyone has a compelling counter argument.

Reading through the thread, there isn't really an "argument". There's a feeling, basically 'doesn't this feel like too many things?'.

Without some standard way to define bloated, we're just going off feelings. To me, and it seems others, no, not at all.

He's got a couple of minor abilities that, as you said, if you removed probably wouldn't make much of a difference, but leaving them in doesn't make much of a difference either. Some killers can be A or S tier from just one ability (Nurse), others require a combination of elements.

Like is there some other killer that you would also say is bloated for comparison sake?

The KI on cleanse is to encourage Wesker to split targets.

Giving soft information like that is an okay way to softly corral some people into not tunneling a single person. If you cleanse, you're probably healed and in a safe place.

I guess my next question would be bloated for who?

Playing Wesker, the primary thing you have to worry about is the tentacle power. There are various creative ways you can use that power, but I think that's pretty normal for killers.

As survivor, you have to worry deal with the tentacle strikes and the infection. Neither seems bloated and have meaningful interactions.

I feel like you are counting multiple elements of the same thing in a way that would be true for lots of killers.

You break the tentacle strike down into: its ability to damage and its ability to displace. You break the consequences down into Hindered and Instadown, and then on the cure for giving notifications.

Breaking other killers down the same way will quickly make it look like bloat:

Plague

-Two types of attack, vomit that can hit survivors, gens, pallets, ledges, an infection that takes a healthy state and the survivor makes noise, a cure mechanic that makes noise and opens up a new power

Sadako

-A teleport, that also function as an infection, a slowdown (turning off TVs) that also works as an infection, a fully infected status that also gives killer instinct on top of death, a slow down mechanic (TVs), and invisibility and a lullaby.

I really don't think DbD killers have much of a bloat problem for either survivors (i.e. a killer which would have too much to learn) or killers. There are balance issues, and killers have bloat in that there are just so many of them for new players, but I don't think there's a killer I have an issue with because they are bloated.

While I don't think Wesker lives and dies by these "extra" things, be it balance or design-wise, here's a few things you may not have considered:

The Hindered is probably there because otherwise injured survivors would suffer no real drawback from being fully infected. And sure, then one may argue they should (or would) have only applied this effect if a survivor actually is injured, but the next argument is that BHVR likely wanted Wesker to be particularly powerful and in fact have what may be argued to be a "bloated" kit.

And that argument extends into the "identity" bit: Wesker is not only the big bad in a hugely popular franchise that BHVR had already made tons of money on collaborating with, but he is notoriously versatile, using different engineered viruses, weapons, gear, technologies, techniques of attack, forms, tactics, strategies, … - I think they simply wanted him to have a thing or two more going on that make things feel more loaded as killer and more stressful as survivor. Mind you, in that regard he still came out a pretty sorry excuse for his RE self, similar to Nemesis, but that was always going to be the case to some extent within the limited scope of DbD's gameplay. I mean, "Mastermind"? He's just hurling people around in one of the sillier animations and interactions we have in the (already plenty silly) game. Granted, I'm sure BHVR also kept both Nemesis and Wesker as simple as they possibly could from a baseline, killer player perspective because they knew it would attract a lot of new players to try them out, and they're both still some of the coolest killer designs in the game I find, but yeah, they are blatantly, almost comically neutered.

Either way, the identity thing also goes for the killer instinct: Wesker is an espionage and intel gathering professional, the notion that he would have a bit of an idea about what's going on around the map with regards to people "destroying" the virus he's interested in spreading makes sense from that perspective. And as I've laid out in my first post, I would argue that it makes sense from a gameplay loop/cohesion perspective too: if the killer instinct did not exist, you would simply feel too safe after spraying, because that by design would most of the time have you in about as safe a spot as you possibly could be. This way however, spraying is something you do not necessarily want to do instantly or carelessly, you have to think more about when and where you do, whether to heal first or afterwards, weigh the risks, and the sense of danger that he will and then does know about your whereabouts adds to how oppressive he - I believe - is supposed to feel.

That all said, I think this topic is a bit too "game design" for me. There's probably an interesting conversation to be had about these things, I'm sure BHVR had the one or other more or less good idea when they tacked these effects onto his kit, but personally I do care more so about the outright gameplay balance experience it yields, and in that respect I think Wesker is in a great spot (certainly comfortably one of the least urgent killers to need addressing, that time would be better spent on various other killers). With the only thing I would readily consider changing being the Hindered effect as I've mentioned, replacing it with something less superfluously, gratuitously tacked-on (not the first time that they resort to movement speed changes as a means of pushing a design over the top) and tunnel-friendly. Well, that and the lack of hit validation for bound attacks… but the entire hit registration issue is far larger than Wesker, it's a fundamental, architectural game flaw, even if Wesker's ability is one of the most egregious offenders in that regard.