My thoughts on the Nurse

It's been a while since the Nurse has received an update, and I suppose I just want to throw out what I think about her and how I think she could be improved to be a bit more fair.

For context: I enjoy the Nurse. I enjoy playing her, and she is one of my favorite killers to play against. I feel that Nurse brings something to the game that no other killer does - she is unique and completely changes the way chases are played. But having said that, she is the strongest killer for a reason, and I think there are a few problems with her and things that should be changed. Those are:

• Add aura-Blindness while charging a blink and while blinking. Basically, the fact that she can see survivors' auras while using her power is problematic. This is a significant change, but I think it's necessary, and this is why:
  • There are really 3 main strategies to counter the Nurse in chase:
    • 1. Making distance and getting as far away from her as possible since she is slower than survivors.
    • 2. Breaking line of sight.
    • 3. Being as unpredictable as possible.
  • These 3 forms of counterplay work well enough together in tandem, but effects that let you see survivors' auras basically remove #2 as a counterplay option entirely and make #1 much more difficult. Since the way the Nurse attacks survivors is different from pretty much any other killer, it makes aura reading particularly powerful on her, to a degree where seeing a survivor's aura is often just an almost guaranteed hit that the survivor doesn't always have a fair chance to predict or react to. This change is not intended to eliminate aura reading on her completely - she will still be able to use information perks like BBQ to find survivors, or use aura perks in chase to see where survivors are going BEFORE beginning to charge a blink, but she will no longer be able to perfectly react to a survivor's movements behind walls while charging and using her power - and this is something survivors can keep in mind as well when deciding their next move (there would no longer be a question of "I broke line of sight, can she still see me or not?"). Aura-reading ability would be restored once the Nurse has fully gone into fatigue (ie. once the Nurse player's screen has shifted all the way down, she can see auras again). This reduces the power of aura-reading on the Nurse, but without removing it as an option entirely and preserves the ability to use those perks in some capacity, rather than restricting her perk choices even further than they already are.
• Make stuns result in losing all blink charges, with recharge not starting until the stun ends. While pallet stuns are fairly rare in Nurse games, the occasional pallet stun isn't even that impactful since a lot of the time she can just blink on you immediately after. This change makes those stuns a bit more rewarding and also makes Decisive Strike more effective against her. Even if you use DS on a Nurse, she'll get her power back while picking up and during the stun animation and be ready to go as soon as the stun ends, so it's not uncommon to go down again almost immediately. With this, she has to wait an additional 6 seconds after the stun before getting both her blinks back.

Then, for addons, I'm focusing here on 3 of her best addons as well as her #1 worst addon.

• Heavy Panting is easily one of the Nurse's strongest addons, giving her a 30% increased lunge range after any chain blink. This can be thrown onto pretty much any build and give good value every game, making the Nurse's chain blinks even more forgiving and easier to hit as it allows her to be less accurate, and is overall too strong. I think it would be best to rework this entirely and not give out any amount of extra lunge to her so unconditionally, Nurse's power is strong enough as it is and she should be required to be fairly accurate with it.
• Fragile Wheeze is a quite reliable source of healing slowdown on an S-tier killer. Inflicting Mangled for 70s on every blink attack is a fairly consistent way to slow down healing given the Nurse's fast-paced nature, and while this addon isn't very different from some similar addons on some other killers, I think given that Nurse is the strongest killer in the game her addons should be a bit weaker than most other killers. With that in mind, while I don't think this addon needs a huge nerf, I would like to see its duration reduced by 10 seconds to bring it down to the lower end of the timer durations generally used for mangled addons; most of them don't go lower than 60 seconds, and I think that's more appropriate for this addon in particular combined with the fact that unlike most other similar addons this one does not have hemorrhage (which is a good thing, it shouldn't have it).
• Torn Bookmark gives the Nurse an unconditional 3rd blink charge for not enough of a downside. Getting 3 blinks is an absurdly powerful effect even for an iridescent addon, and while it does increase the blink recharge time by 30%, this is only an extra 0.9 seconds per blink which is not really enough to justify its power. Personally, I don't think 3 blink Nurse is fair at all (it makes her way too easy) and I'd be perfectly happy to see this reworked as well, but if not, then it should at least have a bigger recharge penalty, if you miss a survivor with 3 blinks there should be a severe consequence.
• Last but not least, Dull Bracelet is a terribly weak and uninteresting addon and should be reworked. This is the yellow meme addon which reduces the maximum blink range by 20%. The Nurse has 3 meme addons - the other 2 can be fun to use on occasion (4.6 walking Nurse) and/or offer a way for extremely good players to willingly challenge themselves (reduced blink lunge which requires more accuracy), but this one does neither of those things and we really don't need a 3rd meme addon. I'm not saying make it strong (again, Nurse's addons shouldn't be that powerful, and certainly don't make it an increased range instead, we all know how unbalanced that was), but it should have a more interesting effect.

So that's it, that's a list of changes I'd like to see made to DBD's most powerful killer, and I think these changes tone her down a bit but still keep her as a strong killer and preserves her identity and the things that make Nurse the unique character she is. What do you think?