http://dbd.game/killswitch
Kaneki could use a few nerfs, here's how I would go about it
I've been enjoying Kaneki a lot, and I was very thankful that BHVR didn't change him outside of making the slide addon basekit when the Chapter went live. But while I personally haven't really seen any issues with him outside of general jank and hitbox problems, it's not exactly much of a secret that Kaneki is highkey one of the strongest killers in the game. I don't really have a issue with this, except for the other fact that Kaneki is incredibly easy to pick up and get good results with.
Let's just quickly compare Kaneki's ease of use to the other big top-tier strongest killers.
Hillbilly has to play around the existence of objects, understand what he can and can't curve around, play around loops in a much different way to a standard m1 chase if he wants a chainsaw down at a loop, can be juked in areas with elevation by ducking under him when he's above you, and has to get used to the Chainsaw's turning.
Nurse is very overrated in terms of how "difficult" she is since you can just slap on the Flannel addon and some aura reading perks and let them take care of 90% of the work for her, but she still has to learn the distance of her blinks, what the best ways of blinking in chase are to actually get a hit, and how to handle survivor mind-games when they break line of sight.
Blight has to learn what he can and can't bump into, how best to line himself up to get a hit at loops, what loops he can and can't use his power at, and can also learn things like bump logic or whatever nonsense "tech" the community finds. I do hate Blight a lot ever since they made his power extremely sticky and clunky but I can't deny that his skill ceiling is pretty high.
Wesker has to learn how to line up and use his bounds at loops to get hits, hitboxes of objects to actually slam survivors against, when vaulting with his power is worth it, and how to use his power in areas with low amounts of objects so that he doesn't just throw a survivor and waste his time.
Kaneki, in contrast, is able to get around the map almost as well if not better then Blight or Hillbilly, gets the first hit practically for free because of his incredibly generous lock on, can cut survivors off from resources at the push of a button with minimal effort required, gets a faster Bamboozle for free because of the Red Centipede addon, can vault over pallets and windows faster then Manual Scamper Chucky when Enraged, and doesn't even need to care about Endurance perks because he inflicts Deep Wound for free, at the cost of having to deal with MFT in every chase.
While I do think people overblow exactly how strong Kaneki is, one thing that is definitely not overblown is how easy he is to play and how little effort is required to actually get good results. I still say that Kaneki is weaker then Nurse and Blight and probably on par with Hillbilly, but there is no denying that he is way, way easier. Which poses a bit of a problem, Kaneki has both a high skill ceiling, and a low skill floor, which is fine, however he suffers from the SM 2.0 problem of being able to get good results with minimal need to actually get good.
I don't think this means we should just make Kaneki much weaker, a strong killer that's easy to pick up is not a bad thing, but he should have to actually work for that strength just like everybody else does. So with that idea in mind, here's how I'd change Kaneki.
- Remove the auto Deep Wound and make it something that only happens to already injured survivors that aren't Kagune Marked. This gets rid of 2 problems, Kaneki's ability to ignore Endurance perks, and his weakness to MFT. I'm not a fan of how easily Kaneki can tunnel, nor am I a fan of the idea of picking a perk specifically to counter one killer, so getting rid of the instant Deep Wound would solve both of those issues and make him need to chew through two health states normally like everybody else
- Make it so that Kaneki can't cancel Kagune Leap in mid-air. I feel like Kaneki currently is able to negate a lot of his intended slowdown by cancelling Kagune Leap while he's still jumping, so just making it so that he can only cancel it when he's done leaping and his feet are back on the ground would give Survivors a bit more room to breathe.
- Increase the cooldown of Kagune Leap, currently Kagune Leap's cooldown is either 8 seconds outside of Enraged, or 7.5 seconds when Enraged, I'd change this to 10 seconds outside of Enraged and 12 seconds while Enraged, just to give Survivors more breathing room.
- Make the lock on less egregious. I completely get wanting to make a power like this easier to use on Console, but currently Kaneki can hit people he isn't even looking at after getting across the map in 10 seconds. Plus there are so many instances already both online and that I've seen personally of a Kaneki accidentally grabbing a survivor when he meant to grab something next to them to cut them off, making this less forgiving would not only make Kaneki less annoying to play against, it would also promote actual skill expression and let good Kaneki's not accidentally grab survivors they don't want to.
So yeah, that's how I'd change Kaneki, like I said, I think he's fun and don't think him being strong is a bad thing, but I do definitely agree that he should be harder to play in exchange for that strength, and these given nerfs would be how I'd make that happen.
G'night
Comments
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Just #2 by itself would be a massive nerf as well as ruining a lot of what makes them fun. Without this his ability is now just a map traversal.
IMO just drastically reduce the bite hit box and its range as well. Also remove the deep wounds. Let’s just start there. While his skill requirement is lower than some of your examples I think people are vastly exaggerating how little skill he requires.
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No idea what you're actually trying to say with #1, since there's about three ways to take it; #2 would probably get rid of any skill ceiling that exists by itself (because everything will always be full distance); #3 creates a bizarre situation of punishing the killer with a longer CD for using their power (if you got it the other way around, it'd make more sense); #4 is generally a good idea.
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He seems quite easy.
I am relatively certain I could pick him up and win with him despite A) Not having ever played him and B) Not having played DBD in 9 months
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Not saying he’s ultra hard or anything but let’s be honest a lot of the killer roster are extremely simple. He would probably make it above half the group.
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The killer is way, way, way too easy relative to their power level. The hit scan needs to be reduced by at least half in size and range. The cancel into M1 needs to be looked at to. I'm not sure why we're going down this road again, considering we've already been there with killers like PH (if anyone remembers his initial release). The cancel into M1 has always been nerfed, historically. So I don't know why we have to go through this again.
A killer can't have an impossible to miss ability that injures in addition to the best mobility in the game.
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Maybe, but they also don't get nearly as much of a reward as he does.
This is like Alc Ring Blight levels of reward for Plague levels of skill.
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If the killer is weaker than nurse, then why nerf him when they never nerf nurse?
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Because unlike PH he can't down with his power.
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0) Blight USED TO need to worry about the collision of every angle of every object… but his secondary collision detection was completely removed, and now he just bounces off of like 99% of the objects in the game. Current Blight is way easier to learn than pre-nerfed Blight.
2) Ghoul already waits until he hits the ground before cancelling. Yes, the game allows him to press the cancel button in mid-air, but it doesn't actually start the cooldown until he reaches the ground.
4) If his leap turns into a skill shot, then people will expect to be able to use it to knock people to the ground, since at that point, it would be very similar to Blight or Wesker.
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Oh my god. A killer main with their head on straight, thank the lord. This is a place where i can drop meaningful criticism and not be snarky as per the norm.
I Do agree with your take of Kaneki being an S-Tier killer, I'm not sure why people insist on downplaying his strength when they know the truth. He's incredibly oppressive and far too easy to play, get downs with and anti-loop with. He has too much mobility and too much pressure.
Unfortunately, though, I have to disagree on the take of "A strong killer that's easy to pick up isn't a bad thing." That's a bad thing, that's an extremely bad thing for the sole purpose that as you admitted in your own post: Nurse, Blight & Billy all have a relatively high skill ceiling , So Kaneki should get the same treatment without question. (Besides the fact that we still have to deal with killers like Dracula, and i don't need to explain that vampiric pile of trash.)
I do agree with some of your nerfs, but personally, I think it should be a bit Heavier than that.
1. They need to remove his auto-aim. It never should've been added in the first place and that opens grounds for them to add auto-aim to killers like Huntress, Deathslinger and Trickster, and that would get annoying really fast. Additionally, this would force killers to actually have to AIM at survivors if they want to land their M2 like the killers I just mentioned.
(Additionally, even console players can make use of killers like DeathSlinger, Trickster, Huntress, and like all killers, they just have to learn how. Kaneki should be no different, period.)
2. They need to add more slowdown to Kaneki after he leaps. The same way Legion slows down after exiting his power, allowing survivors to make distance to another tile is the same way that Kaneki needs to be treated, so that even if he DOES bodyblock, Survivors can actually manuver away. (2 - 3 Seconds would be good.)
3. He can only mark one person at a time. While he can put other players into the deep wound status by using his M2, he can only MARK one survivor at time which would make it more challenging for Kaneki to stay in his enraged state. (Of course, add-ons can be used to extend his Kagune Mark Timer or extend how many PEOPLE can mark.)
4. Reduction of his Kagune Leap (By at least 15m) This one is purely optional based on the slowdown he'd get after making his leap, but he shouldn't be able to traverse across the map faster than a Billy, a Blight, or a Nurse. Most people completely and wholeheartedly disagree with that notion and so do i.
Not to mention, he can flick his direction like a Blight can to control the landing spot and area and if he can do that, then his Kagune Leap Range needs to get cut. (Or, they just remove his slide and not make it base kit, lmao.)
Personally, I don't know why the devs decided to push out this update DESPITE knowing that these problems existed and even BUFFED HIM, but this update was NOT it.-1 -
While I’d generally agree with your point, I’d also argue that most aren’t rewarded enough for what they do rather than Ghoul being too much.
Like I said before though, I’d still give Ghoul some nerfs, I just think people are looking to hit them a little too hard.
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This is actually a really interesting point lol. In general if a killer isn’t S tier I don’t see why they’d need nerfs unless it’s a fun factor.
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So your idea is that the power should be as hard to land as Deathslinger despite not downing and being done at speed, have the same range as Deathslinger, the mobility should be gutted, should have no ability to play around loops, and not usable in chase because it's been given a long CD too?
I think your idea of balancing is just a little out of whack, because you have basically proposed that it should be the mutated, malformed baby of Legion and Deathslinger with the only strong point being vaguely decent map traversal before you're an M1 Killer.
This is on top of the weirdly privileged idea that nothing good for a Killer should ever be easy to pick up. <_>
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There's since very questionable issues I've seen with Ghoul. That's he probably really shouldn't have.
- Only killer in the game that uses a hit box function instead of a projectile and the size of the targeting box is massive.
- Has more range than DeathSlinger!
- Has a massive window of time between leaps before it's forced on cooldown.
- Has an autoaim function!
- Lacks a fatigue after using power.
- Lacks any real punishment for messing up their power.
Few changes I would make if could.
- Change power to work like a projectile similar to huntress hatchet.
- Reduce the range about 30% but try to keep the distance you send yourself flying about the same it currently is.
- Reduce the window time between dashes and half and slightly reduced movement speed while holding power. Similar to Wesker.
- Reduce the size of the powers hitbox and get rid of the auto aim.
- A fatigue after using power for leaping around so can't hit them with a M1 so quickly.
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Nerf/rework Umbrella, look at enraged vault speed, reduce the bite box a little. I think that's what they should start with. But we'll see if they've already got stuff planned for next week.
Messing with base cooldowns seems iffy, and reducing the grab range seems really iffy the more you think about how grabbing objects & survivors are interlinked, and how it's probably not possible to reduce just the survivor grab range without introducing new readability issues.
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People are just big mad that they can't use Windows of Noobertunity to hold W + pre drop this killer
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I think Deathslinger's hitscan, there's just a slight delay after firing.
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Removing the midair cancel takes away skill expression
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It is most definitely not hitscan, the wiki says it moves at the same speed as a fully charged huntress hatchet. You can also… you know visually see it moving, especially if you move at the same time, giving the illusion the harpoon is moving sideways.
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No problem, I got your skill expression right here. What if we, wait for it, made him need to actually aim with his power to get hits?
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Windows needing a nerf is a separate, long overdue issue
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I agree with this, kaneki is one of the most OP killers ever released IMO other than og nurse
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Ive only played the ghoul since launch day and almost every single survivor ive gone against have pre dropped against this killer, to get insta hit after they tried to w key away... only a handfull have actually tried to loop
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I am in favor of removing the overly generous hit region, both for survivors sakes and so I can have an easier time skillshoting around them,
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Ok but if you're for making the grab a skill shot why are you for taking power away from the M1 cooldown (other than Umbrella & enraged vaults which IMO go too far)? Because if you do that his power becomes a whole lot weaker at a bunch of loops against good survivors unless you're an absolute god at bodyblocking (or you run Bamboozle/centipede), which I predict has a lower skill ceiling than people are thinking it does (and would have an even lower skill ceiling with an extended cooldown).
Like the killer needs some amount of downing potential. A killer that can't down consistently (or takes a ridiculous amount of skill to down consistently) will fall behind even if they do have some of the best map mobility in the game. See overheat Billy, though overheat Billy at least had a 1 shot.
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Weirdly privileged is wild, but I'll humor it to answer the question. Yes. I believe that nothing should come free or easy for both sides of the game, I care little for the excuses Killers might come up with to defend their overpowered titans and Survivors excuses for keeping extremely busted perks in game.
The same way Survivors have to work to survive is the same way Killers should have to work to get kills, and as you can see, Kaneki has it too easy for him to do so. (Meaning that whole "Killers are the power role" BS killers like to spout doesn't apply.)
Additionally, What you just told me, by the admission of your own words is that you're aware he's basically a glorified, souped up version of Legion and Death Slinger. (But you forgot to add Wesker.)
So, that means you're aware Kaneki is extremely busted.
And yes, i am of the belief that he has too much mobility and that killers should actually have to AIM to get the desired hit. (Or as you put it, making his power as hard to land as Deathslinger, or Huntress, or Trickster.)
Everything else, though is a statement taken by exaggeration. Nowhere in my statement did I say "Kaneki should have no ability to play around loops." and in fact, I made no mention of it.
What I said was that he needs more slowdown after he makes his leap, and I went into detail on why I thought that.
I don't play Killer, and I don't play Deathslinger, so I don't know how far his Harpoon shot can reach (Nor do I know how far Kaneki's Kagune can reach either, I just know it lets him skip sections of the map at a time and that's not remotely fair.) but, i did suggest they drop his reach by 15 meters, so anyone who knows the math can explain that to me.
His power would still be usable in chase, so I'm not really sure where got that notion from, the difference with my suggested nerf is that he wouldn't be to hardcore bodyblock pathing and easily gain guaranteed hits.-1 -
Kankei can't stop perks like off the record or dh, i was swfing when my friend has otr, got hit by power and still had endurance. Its there to make tunneling harder still
His cancelling power mid air is fine, but his attack cooldown needs to be increased and his speed should be increased to compensate
Don't change his cooldowns, they're long anyway
Aim assist to vaults and survivors should be reduced alot (hurts the killer and survivors)
-1 -
Kaneki is a B tier killer, A tier if you're really good at him. He doesn't really need any nerfs, bugfixes are the only thing he needs as of now.
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Whatever they do I'm hoping they get rid of deep wound on the grab at this point. Because being forced to abandon chases against every single survivor you hit with it because everyone is catching on to how good MFT + resilience is against him is poor design on both fronts. You shouldn't need 2 specific perks to have a chance against him.
And on the flip side, the deep wound is something that's giving him a lot of extra macro & tunnel potential for no good reason. I don't know what I'd replace it with, if anything, but it needs to go.
E: Actually, idea. Make hitting the QTE apply deep wound (and thus the enrage pause), make not hitting the QTE not.
Post edited by ControllerFeedback on0 -
No, it's perfectly fine that some things are easy to play. This might be a strange concept, but not every Killer should have a high barrier to entry before you can have fun with them, and there is no reason aside from snobbery to go "well, if it's easy to pick up, then it should suck long term". I don't even follow how Survivor perks come into it; perks that are easy to use don't need to be weak (the problem with old DH wasn't ease of use, it was how many effects it basically had at once).
And no, right now Kaneki's a weird beast, because he's more like a legion-blight-deathslinger mix, but doesn't really do the same thing as any of them. More Blight than Wesker, and the vaulting just as easily fits under Legion. Your proposals basically take out the Blight aspect (mobility and can use power to manoeuvre to get downs) and would leave us with a nonfunctional version of Deathslinger+Legion.
Mmm, I think Ghoul's current range is 32m, whereas DS is 24m, so -15 would be nearly half. For a power centred on grabbing objects to use as mobility, limiting that part so drastically guts it: the actual distance traversed compared to walking is quite low, and the ability to latch onto things becomes very poor. DBD has really weird distance judgement sometimes, but to put it one way: the smallest tile is 16x16m; you'd require that you be basically in a tile before the mobility aspect of the power is usable. That's terrible.
A massive cooldown before you can take action after using the power for mobility makes it even worse: no matter where you stop, that's plenty of time to get away, and because of your cooldowns and short range, that's no beating someone to another tile (or using it around a tile, because this kills both aspects).
So, now that we have those numbers out of the way, let's revisit my conclusion: if we took all of your nerfs, we would have a character as hard to aim as Deathslinger, who can only get an injury when travelling at speed – so, already harder than Deathslinger to use just for that part of their power – who can't use their power to directly down anyone; this power can't be used around loops because the cooldowns are terrible, forcing you to be an M1 Killer; can't really use the ability for map traversal in exterior maps because the range is too short and is limited in indoor maps because oh hey there's a wall (same as it is now, tbh); and can't use the ability in chase to bodyblock because again the range and cooldown have been nerfed to hell.
This wouldn't be a character that's fun to play, let alone master, because every part of the kit will feel bad. If it counts as "fun to play against", then that's only because it'd be trivial to deal with. Avoiding the first hit? Well, it's deathslinger-level aim that requires the Killer to use their power on an object first, so that's super telegraphed and easy to avoid. Avoiding downs? Any loop. Any loop and you're an M1 Killer.
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Well, then we can simply agree to disagree. I don't agree with making things easy to pick up or play, and you do. That's the fundamental and quite crucial difference between us.
But I do thank you for giving me the math on things because you're right. 15 Meters is too much of a cut, so i take it back. My lack of knowledge on his reach gutted him a bit too hard, so instead, they should drop the range to make it equal with Death Slinger. (24m - 28m) So it's not so damning.
However, I'm going to stand firm on my belief that Kaneki needs to lose his autoaim so that Killers are forced to actually have to AIM to get their hits & that he needs a slowdown at the same rate as Legion or a bit more. (About 2 - 3 Seconds)
Everything else is somewhat trivial as long as those two happen0 -
Personally, I say give it a few more days (if not another week) so we have solid data, then reduce the lock-on* and dial down the grab-Survivors range. Incremental change, not starting a period of see-sawing rebalance-all-the-things.
*I don't agree with removing it entirely for the same reason the devs cited – it'd make the Killer almost unusable on console. It has more drawbacks on a miss than a ranged Killer, can't down, and is used at speed; "difficult" is one thing, it shouldn't be harder than ranged Killers because you've stuck their aim requirements on a mobile platform.
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Where exactly do you get the idea that having 3 different killers combined in 1 is not enough? So stupid.
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The devs just made that Statement to sate the community. That statement has no foothold in their argument when people have been playing on console for years and been getting kills with killers like Huntress, Death Slinger, Trickster and Clown (Where you have to aim your projectile to actually the desired effect.)
Adding that auto aim was completely unnecessary, and they know it; it's just an excuse to add a new system that if all goes well, they can incorporate into the very other killers I just named and god knows how that'll go if we allow it to root itself to the game.0 -
People have been getting kills, but there's definitely a gap in how it works.
I think it would be hard to fit the same sort of auto-aim in, because I will continue to argue that what Kaneki has isn't auto aim, not truly. So, they've said the power is hitscan: if it's under the cursor, then it can get hit. Fair enough. Now, the definition of "under the cursor" is a pretty broad one! All those other powers have hitboxes on their projectiles, right? Huntress is throwing entire beach balls, ffs – the pickiest is deathslinger, but part of the skill shot there is threading it through tiny gaps, so it has its benefits too.
Anyway, they could make the hitscan a single-pixel ray. That's doable, sure. But then it'd be too precise for the payoffs and downsides of missing, given this is a Killer expected to make grab attacks while moving really fast. That's not just skill, it's making it twitch gameplay that plays really nasty with any form of latency. So, the hitscan needs to be more of a tube/cone (FOV being what it is) to balance out the various requirements. They just made the angle it snaps to way too large.
The skillshot has no reason to be harder than any ranged Killer in the game if it can't actually down someone. Balancing is weird.
because at this point of the game's lifecycle, there are so many killers that any new Killer is almost certainly going to have elements of some other Killer. So, we can draw comparisons: ranged attack that puts you into melee, mobility power that's great in the open and a lot harder to use around loops, ability to inflict Deep Wound and vault etc. But it doesn't map 1:1 with any of them nor is it as specifically good at any one part of it.
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Free hits are gross…have fun playing with bots…I doubt there will be many survivors wanting to play this game now.
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