http://dbd.game/killswitch
your opinion about current killer state
I'm new here on the forum, but I've been playing the game for a while now. I'd just like to discuss how most people play killer. Not in the sense of endless complaints (which I might), but more of a question - what are your impressions of the last few months of the game?
My killrate has dropped significantly, after 600 hours of play I'm starting to have more and more mixed feelings. Have I just gotten better at playing and am I forced to confront people who have been playing dbd since 2018, or is this a mistake of the mmr system? I don't like tunneling or slugging, but the more I play, the more I feel like the game forces me to do it, because gen efficiency is off the charts and many of the perks for protecting genes have been nerfed, as I know. I can play fair, but that will probably just mean 4 people running away from me on death hook. If regression of one gene is forbidden more than 8 times, does it make sense to cut the numbers like of the old pop goes, while buffing perks for genrush at the ptb stage?
As a pyramidhead main, I also have mixed feelings. I am happy with his addon rework, I don't care that survivors were given an endurance base kit after cage, not really happy with making him 4.2(cause it doesn't actually solve the issue of zoning, that's just make using m2 less favourable in many situations and affect new players on him), but his ability feels weird. Flicks are just broken, input buffering spoiled the impression. At the same time, the problems with m2 for example on nostromo or 2nd ormond lake variation are not solved. And I feel other killers faced with same issues.Like The Knight, who got a huge nerf yet his bugs (which I was usually complaining on when playing against him) wasn't actually fixed.
As a person who also plays solo queue, I support attempts to make the life of survivors less miserable, but why do I feel solid improvements for the only part - sfw? New perks at the ptb stage aimed at anti-slug are useless if you do not have a friend in the team (or plot twist), with good solo you don't need it anyway. But when you have three friends, it all looks so broken that it is perceived as bullying the killer.
I would like just hear opinion of others, either it's survivor or killer, with more or less experience in game as me.
Comments
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My experience as killer varies widely because of how non-functional the matchmaking is. I’ll get multi-thousand-hour SWF in one match, and then nearly-brand-new players the next. And everything in between.
Depends on the time of day playing too. If I ever get to play during the day (which isn’t often), it’s a lot more solo queue and more random skill level - games seem generally easier. Peak evening times has a lot more 3-4 man SWF teams and even solos seem to be more skilled - games seem generally harder. In general, it seems that most of the survivors that I chase know what they are doing and can loop pretty well, making killer reasonably challenging to play most of the time if I don’t camp or tunnel.13 -
I'm in practically the same boat, its like i hit a stride and win most matches one day, and I just get absolutely wiped the next. I've been a killer main from the start but now I kinda enjoy survivor more.
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Hello friend, welcome to the DBD Forums! I hope you enjoy your stay.
In my opinion, the current state of the killer role is alright, though this will be perceived differently depending on which killer is your favorite. For example: my favorite killer right now is Skull Merchant and, due to her extremely severe and completely unnecessary nerfs from last year, playing her creates a different experience then, let's say, playing Dracula, a killer that a friend of mine plays and who is a stronger character than Skull Merchant.
However, outside of character-specific issues, and the matchmaking that has rarely ever worked properly, there isn't much being stacked against the killer role right now, I would say. The meta is getting a bit stale with Pain Res and DMS almost every game, but it is strong. Survivors don't really have anything that stands out as particularly powerful in their current meta that could make the game unfair for killers. And the new mechanics that will impact killer gameplay, such as anti-tunneling or anti-slugging, have yet to be made available.
Post edited by GeneralV on7 -
Killer is horrendous at the moment. The gens will fly in just a few minutes, even with a full regression build. Every survivor will loop almost perfectly, and you'll lose every mindgame if you're an unlucky person. Your reward for your suffering is being made fun of and ganged up on by 4 people post-game.
Only option for killers is to bring S tier. Anything else and you're just getting genrushed.
They need to make the gens take roughly 1.5x the time they take at the moment for 90% of the killer roster to stand a chance against good survivors.
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Gen efficiency has been insane lately
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The killer role feels fine for me presently, but as a casual player just returning it's perhaps because my MMR is lower. However, there are moments when I do face a coordinated team that can be a struggle.
The better you become, the more good results you get and the higher up the MMR you go, so the opponents become harder. Granted, it isn't always to plan because of how the system works, yet it's natural to get tougher trials. One either gets better then hits another block, or starts losing more which brings them back down to a more manageable level.
My advice is to keep a look at your stats. Use what info is available to find what you're up against, but also keep a note of what the results were. Sometimes it's easy to remember the bad trials which then end up being the overall view on most trials, when it actually may not be.
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I tend to have zero issues playing Killer. Getting 4Ks is insanely easy and I don't even use add-ons. And this is with every Killer (that I own, anyway).
EDIT: In case anyone is wondering, no I don't slug, tunnel or camp - I'm a very casual player. Heck, even though I let about 20% of the Survivors I encounter leave (cause I simply don't care enough to be sweaty all the time in a game like this), I still have a Kill Rate of 65.02%. I'd share a screenshot, but I frankly don't know how to take a screenshot on a laptop - I'm not good with technology (no, seriously someone please help - I may be 27, but I'm basically an old man when it comes to technology). Also, I'm aware this is just my experience, and that everyone will be experiencing different kinds of matches, this is just my personal anecdote.
Post edited by kosaba11 on-3 -
Too easy still.
No tunnel/camp/slug
People with low scores ran at me or tried weird head-ons and flashlights last night.
Was a really close match on a …. hadonfield which I misplayed like crazy. But still won.
Evidence that downvotes dont matter on this site. A nobody like me, a regular player can get 18 wins in a row and post data and still have detractors.
Killer is the easiest its ever been.Post edited by ChuckingWong on6 -
I've had some very rough games today. No or very few hooks, but then I have been playing at SWF O'clock with a D teir Killer and that's how my games usually go if I get Survivors that can actually loop and do gens. Things were so bad I hopped into some Survivor games to join in with the Survivor win streaking but nope, Killers are still winning all their trials in my Survivor games, so I just can't win today (literally).
The very long Killer queues are not helping matters. Makes it look like there's absolutely no MMR in this game. But then again I've always been sceptical about DBD's MMR system and believe it's so poor that most of the time it may as well not exist at all. You either stomp an opponent or they stomp you and there is very little in between.
Despite the success of the FNAF chapter, I think a large portion of the usual player base are missing from the game at the moment. I'm not sure why that is, but I think multiple patches of buffing Killer, buffing SWF and punishing players for getting into bad match ups can't be helping.
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Match making (like always) has been a mess. I've also noticed I'm getting alot of survivors with high ping. Not sure if I've been getting people from the wrong servers or what is going on.
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Depends who I play with if its some mediocre killer like springtrap and I have good teams who understand how to push gens then without some gen defence game would be super fast, miss few axe shots and this can make difference in the outcome of the match. Play some better a-tier killer feels better but gens are flying too only difference is that killers tools to get survivors and across the map are much better and doesnt feel that limited but non less even with strong killers I have hard times like hardest gen rushes I have when I play as ghoul, with singularity Im getting sabo squads more offten than on other killers (I play him vere rarely) and even when he is one of the better sluggers these teams are crazy in dennying hooks and doing gens which is scary as hell. Then I have evening when Im getting teams that I shouldnt even play against (weaker players they struggle a lot) but thats mmr plus player count when theres less players on one side you will get better or weaker than you so both sides woldnt wait 30+ minutes for the match on their mmr.
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I've been seeing ALOT of players during the event from korea, china, australia, japan and the general east side of the globe in UK/EU servers, feels like lots of people are VPNing during this event tbh.
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Might be that. I know I was getting extremely frustrated because alot of hits I know should have landed weren't.
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The game as Killer in general feels a little sweatier than average but fine, Killer itself is not in a bad state. But the general vibe has changed; I feel maybe that MMR has become more screwed up than usual because I am seeing a lot more of the "babies or tryhards" situation since Springtrap released. I'm also seeing a BIG increase in toxic players, TTVs, and toxic TTVs. My Survivor games feel completely normal - a mix of some chill Killers, some normal Killers, and some toxic Killers.
Gen efficiency is extremely high right now and if the Devs wish to continue improvements for Survivor they should probably look at what's going on with this. I'd also suggest a soft reset of MMR for everyone just to iron out any weird kinks or bugs with it.
There's definitely an increase in weird ping for Survivors I get; I am seeing many cases where hits I should make don't land or hits I shouldn't make DO. I'm also noticing it feels like pallet stun distance may be broken again as it feels like it's hitting from further away than it should in some cases, perhaps ping is messed up.
I have noticed very long wait times for Killer, sometimes rivaling 2v8 wait times, but very quick Survivor queues. I ironically think maybe, just maybe, the anti go-next may be overly punishing more casual players, and this may be contributing to long match times and sweatier team-ups. Either there are too few Survivors so they are all SWFing, or too many Killers.
I generally feel my Survivor games are going better than my Killer games; I'm escaping more and having better quality matches. But for Killer, as per kill rates, not been seeing any sort of weirdness. I'm still 3-4king if I run a stronger Killer but getting the expected mixed results as weaker more casual Killers. My Dredge pulls 3-4ks or 0ks, my Ghostface pulls 2k or better usually, which is in range. I definitely in both cases have to play harder to win right now, because it feels like Survivors are playing super hard. I don't feel like I am allowed to show much personality, unlike the pre-Springtrap release days.
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I've randomly been getting high ping despite having no issues on my end. I'm sure Survivors are getting shuffled off to random servers to meet demand.
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I had one survivor who had Asian characters for their name so I think at least some of these are VPN people.
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There are lots and lots of Chinese players in the game that use VPNs to play on western servers. They make up the majority of AFK Doctors in my experience.
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Yeah it was incredibly frustrating. It was the first time in a very long time I got truly pissed off playing DbD. I couldn't understand what was wrong. Only later did I realize the likely cause.
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It’s just not fun sometimes. You barely have room for variation anymore. Against decent groups, you’re constantly up against pressure and efficiency — and once you try to keep up and play to win, it becomes super one-dimensional.
It’s dumb and kind of paradoxical: the moment you fully adapt and commit to "sweaty" play, you start winning most of your matches.
But if you give them too much space and don’t push back with pressure, you often get destroyed — even if they’re not playing well.
They make huge mistakes: bad positioning, poor movement, sloppy camera control, weak micro and macro plays... and yet you still lose if you don’t sweat.That’s why most killers play the way they do nowadays. ( heavily depends on the killer you’re playing, of course)
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My killer games have been pretty normal tbh. There was like a week or two where it felt harder for some reason, so I took a few days away from the game and my games have felt normal since then.
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Easy role.
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I play both and I still think the game is super killer-sided. The issue is you can be a garbage killer and do okay or good by being cheap, but there's no similar out for bad to just okay survivors. If a survivor team isn't solid and team-minded then they're usually screwed.
I spend more time on survivor currently, am better at it, and genuinely try. I regularly get killed by absolutely terrible killers who panic at the end of the game and start slugging or tunneling. Egregious, multi-person slugging happens in at least 1 out of 5 of my surv matches. Since the change to be able to mori the last surv, I encounter almost no fun or merciful killers.
On the flipside, I put pretty much no effort into killer. I play super duper fair. No camping, no tunneling, swerving on recently unhooked survs, lots of mercy/hatch-giving, and only slugging if there's shenanigans. I still steamroll people much better than me. I've been playing as Micheal, who I have like no experience with, for the last couple days. 4ks almost every match with no red add-ons. I legit feel bad and sometimes apologize to people. They're better than me and I'm just crushing them.
I'm never going to feel like I have to play dirty. If people are better than me than they deserve the win, but people seem incapable of taking a deserved L. I'm all for killers getting hooks and kills as a surv when they earn them, but a massive chunk of my deaths are undeserved.
For example, here are some of my monthly stats. Note the insane difference in hours played versus how things have gone for me. My survivor is a p100 just barely being average. My Micheal is like a p5 lol
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You’re one of the only people on this forum that actually backs up their “killer is too easy” opinion with proof, which I respect. Many others who claim that claim killer is too easy will deflect or make excuses when challenged to do the same because they don’t play killer at all.
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Can you back that up with stats? There are a couple others who commented here that posted stats to back up their opinion. I’ve never seen you do the same.
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You put in 84 hours in a month? Damn.
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Way too easy to win against bad survivors, way too hard to win against good teams.
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Just outting myself as having no life.
It's 91.4, actually 👀
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Easy role given the current state of balance + MMR, but still naturally more stressful than survivor so any losses feel particularly bad, whereas getting 4ked by a Kaneki running the same generic Friends to the End + regression + centipede combo for the 5th time in a row just makes me feel numb.
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killer is a casual noobstomper role, yeah
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Stats don’t really say anything about how a match feels or how it plays out. The moment you go in with a win-at-all-costs mindset and stop caring about any sort of "unwritten rules" — and instead bring everything your killer kit has to offer — you're going to face very few teams that can actually keep up.
The question about the current state of killer heavily depends on how much breathing room the killer is willing to give survivors. Because against really strong teams, the moment you stop applying constant pressure, the game flips super fast. And I mean really fast.
Just because you're winning a lot doesn’t mean killer is in a good spot, in my opinion. Against strong SWFs, it’s more like: you either dominate early, or the moment you give them space, you get absolutely steamrolled. There’s rarely an in-between.
And if you’re not playing a strong killer, most of the time it all comes down to the endgame anyway.
(I’m only talking about really strong teams here. Against weaker or more casual groups, killer becomes a total power role if they go all in.)
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but stats don't really show what actually happens during the matches.
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The demand for “proof” usually isn’t about evidence. It’s just a way to put the burden entirely on the other person while never actually offering a counter.
Ive never seen the opposite shown from the killer side of things, not one poster has had any stats to share for killer that would suggest they are in such a dire state. Or video, nothing.
The only thing I ever see in return is, “Well here’s team elysium”. Which is essentially telling people to "just get good, steph curry hits 25 points a game" while everyone here is playing pickup basket ball at our local gym.If we’re really talking balance, the thing we all engage with when we press the "Play" button on our screens for dbd, then both sides should be bringing something to the table.
Not speculating on tournaments we dont take part in, the games not balanced around, and not where the skill level any of us are probably even close to.Otherwise, it's just a bunch of what if's until someone wins an argument on the internet.
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- It's fine for me. Many killers have a solid kit that allows them to manage the game well, perks help a lot, and the maps are (not all) fairly balanced. It's also realistic not to ALWAYS win... that is, when I play killer, I don't expect to win every game.
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I don't really know what the rules are in this forum, but I'm guessing it's probably not allowed to share POVs – or more likely, most people just don’t record their matches to begin with. I think that’s more what it comes down to, not that people are generally unwilling or anything.
/edit:
the big problem I see personally: As soon as you're willing to go all in and play efficiently, you usually win. Sure, if survivors played perfectly and without mistakes, maybe not – but most teams do make mistakes. And as killer, you’re in the position to punish those – sometimes really hard.
And that’s the thing against stronger teams: you need those mistakes. And most groups will give them to you – sooner or later. At the end of the day, both sides are just sweating it out.
We’ve simply reached a point where both killer and survivor squads are pushed into this efficiency meta that only allows for a certain type of playstyle. And once you’re forced, as killer, to pull out everything (even the stuff people hate and consider "unfun") just to keep up – then killer doesn’t feel all that great, even when you win. (As long as the only way you win against many groups is by using stuff that’s generally frowned upon, then yup – that just means: nope. The killer role is not in a good spot.)
Sure, people say "just play soft" – but that’s not what most survivor groups are asking for. They don’t give you a single. damn. inch.
Neither side gives the other anything anymore. That’s just DBD in 2025.
Because of the current state of the game, you queue up as killer, go in, do what you need to do – but it’s just not always fun.
(and sometimes not for anyone this match xD)
Post edited by oecrophy on3 -
Current state is strongest killer has ever been for me especially the event. Most games are really easy and I can 8 hook before finishing anyone off and collect some totem rewards and still win comfortably. Ideally though I finish someone after 6 hooks as sometimes I lose my pressure. I have 5000 hours in the game.
My soloQ games killers dominate most of the time however they employ tunneling/camping often and finish off survivors quickly as possible. At least there are some better games still and luckily some killers are beginners. I usually point out in my mind their mistakes when they lose and how they could won.
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Pick a Killer and I'll try to win 18 in a row.
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Dw then they'll say the survivors sucked and ask you to play against 10000000000000 hours swf as m1 killer blindfolded with one arm
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If anyone posts killer stats with low kill rates they’ll just be told it’s because they’re bad.
Plus it’s super easy to swing the stats either way without seeing the actual gameplay.
I could slap NoeD on and run the best addons and get 2/3 kills even though gens might’ve been done in 5 mins. Or I could run no perks as stand in the corner until all 4 escaped. I could get random solos not doing gens trying to flashlight and head on, or I could get a full 4 stack on a win streak.
Stats don’t have value imo as so much could happen during the match, plus the matchmaker is all over the place and often feeds newer players to better players or feeds those better players to 10k hour mains if it feels they’ve won too much.3 -
That’s an impressive kill rate - you are definitely a well-above-average player! I have no doubt that there are others like you on this forum that have a very easy time playing killer (especially if you get really good at S-tier killers like Nurse). I don’t think that’s the experience of the typical average player, though. The average kill rate is 60% which means that obviously most other killer players are not as good as you and have a harder time winning (3-4K) consistently.
Everyone is going to have a different opinion about what the target kill rate should be, but 60% feels right to be for an assym horror game. Some players (like yourself) will be much better and some will be much worse. I’m a long-time but very casual player and my overall kill rate is just above the average. The difficulty for killer side feels about right for a player like me. I remember what playing killer was like when the kill rates were lower and it felt much worse (many others felt the same way given how long survivor queues were back then). If we get to a point where average kill rates go any higher than 60% I’ll jump on the “nerf killer” train too. I play survivor about half the time, so I definitely don’t want killers having too easy of a time.-5 -
The only “burden” I want to put on people is, if they’re going to come here and repeatedly claim that one side or the other is wildly OP or way too difficult, to back up their claims of based on their kill/escape stats (which are now available to everyone). It’s a very easy thing to do and helps separate those who want to have a real discussion based on the overall data and their personal experiences from those who exclusively play one side that are simply trolling.
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How can you say the game is super killer-sided if less than 5% of your playtime is on killer? Also those matches w/ Michael are obviously very essy when playing a new killer against lower mmr people.
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It's pickrate… And really low mmr excuse when you see he has a total of 19k matches and 84% killrate?
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Possibly.
That'd be a pretty obvious movement of goal posts though.
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What do you mean? He has 84 hours in this month and only 4 of those on killer thus little less than 5% of his gametime. We have no way to know how many matches he has played but quessing from P5 mayers no where near 19k.
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Oh, you are in a ride for a ride, my friend.
A difficult but very fun ride, I would say. Skull Merchant is my favorite killer in the game, but she is in a rather difficult spot. I have a thread of my own that might be able to help you:
I also recommend watching Pixel Bush's Guide on her if you have the time. It is really helpful.
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I got confused with another dude that posted stats. 5 hours this month is reasonable, with how long killer queues are.
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But we see this every single time your or someone else posts killer gameplay. The response is always "well, MY survivors would have had all gens done in 2 minutes. Your survivors are just bad, so obviously your gameplay doesn't count."
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Could be, but I'm going to take it in good faith until proven otherwise.
I hope they do the same if I manage it.
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The average kill rate is 60% which means that obviously most other killer players are not as good as you and have a harder time winning (3-4K) consistently.
I wonder how much of that average kill rate, especially at what they consider high MMR for their data regurgitation purposes, is brought down by console killers like myself (because their controller implementation is Dark Souls 2 levels of bad and killer just naturally plays better on MnK besides) and people who simply don't care enough to try all that hard to win but still end up winning a lot to the point of having an average/above average kill rate anyway because the MMR system is funny like that. Or worse, players who fall in both categories simultaneously.
If that's the case, which I'm inclined to believe because we know from past efforts that the MMR soft cap is (or at least was) pretty damn low, then the problem might not necessarily be that the average killer is having a rough time when they're actually trying to optimize their chances of winning. Rather, the problem in this scenario would be that BHVR's MMR system is inadequate at matching people who are seriously trying to win with similarly skilled opponents who are also trying to win as well as the opposite (casual goofy people with casual goofy people, although that's easier to force on the killer end of things by simply letting people escape, which is its own problem), so you'd end up getting a lot of noise in the data that really doesn't mean much outside of giving BHVR numbers to look at and try to manipulate a specific number out of. AKA the 60/40 target which I just disagree with given the likelihood of the reality described above.
I will say that real player skill is probably quantifiable by just looking at the data when you look at fringe cases like oecrophy. I don't know many people who could achieve an 82% kill rate on Myers with almost 167 hours on the lad. Like clearly oecrophy is just really ######### good at the game and tries hard to win. Which is awesome, I'm envious of that level of skill and dedication…but I wish we had an official system in place that would actually provide a good challenge to their dominance. Because you can't tell me 82% on Myers isn't absurd. Even by BHVR's intended target it's absurd.
E: The TL;DR of my take is basically that I believe MMR is so fundamentally broken (also the disparity between the input methods) that is completely breaks the meaningfulness of BHVR's stat tracking in nearly every conceivable way and outside of statistical anomalies it's really hard to gauge anything from said stats without discussing the match-to-match choices & experiences of the players who ended up with said stats. Which is to say, in a way, the statistics we're looking at probably matter far less than the intuition of BHVR's design & balancing people, which to be quite frank don't seem up to the task of making a fun & fair competitive environment, thus making the vast majority of discussions on the statistical specifics any given DbD topic pretty much pointless. Now isn't that just a fine and dandy grim reality?
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