My suggestion/fix for the Ghoul.
The Ghoul is currently at the top of the list for most hated killers next to Clown (I suggest reading my suggested changes for Clown). He is in an awkward state where killer players tend to love him and survivor players tend to hate him. The thing is that he wasn't considered that annoying or strong during the PTB before his release. If you guys remember, the Ghoul's slide duration after performing a Kagune Leap (I think that's what it's called if I remember correctly) was only half of what it is now. You can quite literally try his old version right now by using the Anteiku Apron add-on. This add-on during the PTB increased his slide duration by 100%, which very quickly became considered his best add-on. He was able to traverse the map much quicker, get more tags with his grab attack, cutoff survivors between loops better, bodyblock, etc. This add-on by itself bumped Kaneki up a full tier in terms of strength. I remember during the PTB I assume they were going to make the add-on partially basekit, and then significantly nerfing the add-on. Little did I know that they were just going to make the whole thing basekit, and it was this one little change that made Kaneki become what he is today. So, before I discuss my very simple solution to Ghoul's current state, I first need to address why he needs a change in the first place.
To put it simply, for how strong Kaneki is, he is very easy to play. A foundational reasoning on killer design for DBD is that if a killer is going to be strong, they need to be difficult to play to some degree, whether it is some form of difficult mechanic or game knowledge required to play the killer well. Billy is very strong, but has one of the highest skill floors in the game. Same can be said for Singularity, or Blight, for example. Kaneki however, is just not that hard to get the hang of. This is another reason why he is so annoying to verse, as while you might verse a Billy who is struggling to land a curve, Kaneki just flings himself towards your direction, gets his free tag, catches up again, and hopes he can win a 50/50. To put it simply, he is too easy to be this strong.
So, the problem? While Kaneki has a few things about his kit that is considered "unfair" or "annoying", I think they all wrap around what I said earlier: Anteiku Apron should of never been made fully basekit. Ghoul having this much slide makes him way too oppressive in all the wrong ways, and can makes survivors feel helpless in quite a few situations.
Solution? Decrease his basekit slide by 25-30%. This is a very simple, yet very effective fix for Ghoul. This removes a lot of the cheap cheesy things he can currently do, while not gutting him to the ground. Survivors now have a bit more wiggle room in chase and transferring from loop to loop, and Ghoul players can still do the same things they could before, but on a smaller scale. I would say Ghoul would probably still be a top 10 killer in the game, and considering he is probably not a top 20 killer in terms of skill floor requirements, I think this is quite reasonable.
Comments
-
Remove slide, make his "free grab " a whip like Nemesis that doesn't stop survivors movement and needs to be aim with his tentacles. That simple he can still zoom zoom have a damaging ranged ability but require some brain power to hit.
-4 -
I think sliding is perfectly fine and it made him more fun to play, issue is the ability to fully cancel both his dash and slide at any point, which means it's pathetically easily to end your dash next to a survivor.
-1 -
The slide addon was added to his base kit because that's what people enjoyed playing with more. The devs set it up that way because:
- They wanted people to have two addon slots, not only one
- They were internally conflicted about whether the slide addon should be basekit or not, and so allowed the community to decide. It was unanimously chosen to be the slide-addon.
They aren't going to remove something that makes the character more fun.
This is similar in concept to why he can "hit through walls" with his power.
It's called "favor the shooter", which is a very important aspect of first person shooter designs.
I said it back when he first came out to the ignorant masses and I will say it again: It will feel infinitely worse for the Ghoul player to "miss" an attack that landed on a Survivor before they rounded a corner, than it does for the survivor to get hit around that corner.
Removing that safety net will singlehandedly neuter the killer's gameplay consistency. 100%. It was playtested for a reason. They realized this was necessary — and it is.
To put it simply, for how strong Kaneki is, he is very easy to play. A foundational reasoning on killer design for DBD is that if a killer is going to be strong, they need to be difficult to play to some degree, whether it is some form of difficult mechanic or game knowledge required to play the killer well.
Disingenuous argument. Kaneki is an M1 killer. He cannot catch you without outplaying you at a loop. He MUST win a mindgame to catch you (and yes, vaulting onto you through a window is mindgaming because it has to be his second leap, giving you time to react.) You can injure people easily, yes, but so can Legion but you don't see anyone complaining about Legion being too strong. Ghoul and Legion have extremely similar chase profiles. Easy injure, while they have to work for the down.
Kaneki just flings himself towards your direction, gets his free tag, catches up again, and hopes he can win a 50/50. To put it simply, he is too easy to be this strong
This is also a disingenuous argument. You can literally apply this same thought process to every killer in the game. Legion injures you for free, eventually catches up to you, and hopes to win a 50/50. "He just plays to win the 50/50" is an argument you can apply to literally every killer and even survivor. It doesn't strengthen any of your points. Killers who play intelligently don't allow their plan to boil down to 50/50's, and survivors who know the correct loops to kite a killer towards also will not be beholden to 50/50's. It's about playing the game intelligently. "He just plays for 50/50's" is just an even more bad-faith way to say "all he does is camp" "all he does is tunnel" it's a moot argument.
Besides, he pays actual tradeoffs for his ease of injure. He has more mobility than Legion but can only injure one person at a time instead of potentially everyone. He has more chase power than Legion but less than Dracula and Nurse because he has more mobility and Deep Wound. He's balanced as-is.
Solution? Decrease his basekit slide by 25-30%. This is a very simple, yet very effective fix for Ghoul
No, that's a very simple and effective way to totally break the Killer. His design is based around finding the opportune moment to dash around obstacles and cancel your power at the right time to catch your prey. Making him slide less will simultaneously reduce his chase power and his mobility, both of which do not need more nerfs (they were already reduced from 16m to 14m which to this day is still the worst change they've done since all it really did was make the cursor turn white more often because it can't latch to terrain as much anymore which is incredibly annoying.)
That is absolutely not an issue. If you remove his ability to cancel then you remove all the skill expression from his kit. You misunderstand how the Killer works. You're literally arguing for something that will lower his skill cap while misperceiving it as something that will make him less easy to play. Removing cancels won't make him less easy, it will make him unable to express mastery over the character at all. Knowing when to cancel your power is a huge part of Ghoul's skill cap and what separates bad Ghouls from good Ghouls. He NEEDS to be able to cancel his power to:
- Reward precise positioning of the dash
- Punish out-of-position survivors
You wouldn't reduce Deathslinger's projectile travel speed, right? Even though that would make him "less easy" to play? It's your same exact logic. You would remove Deathslinger's reward for precise aiming in catching his prey because you think it'd take "more skill" your way. No. Killers are supposed to be strong.
BHVR needed to choose between removing Ghoul's ability to cancel (making him extremely clunky and awkward to play, removing reward for good positioning, etc.) or adding a cooldown to his power when he breaks pallets (to retain his high skill cap and reward precise dashes while still allowing Survivors some breathing room if they manage to safely play a pallet.) Obviously the latter is what they went with and it is infinitely better than anything I've seen people suggest here.2 -
Ah yes, let's make an M1 killer 110% movement speed.
Surely a great and well-informed suggestion.
It's so disingenuous to claim that his downs are easy. The only time it's easy is if you're out of position and he dashes and cancels on top of you, with no windows or pallets nearby. You want to have less of that? You want that to be more forgiving? Position better, loop better. The "solution" is not to neuter the thing the killer is SUPPOSED to be good at doing.
I'm losing my mind on these forums.
There's so many people that think they know what's actually best for the game when in reality it's their personal preference underlined by subconscious personal bias. The reason why you're frustrated when he catches you out in the open is because you're OUT IN THE OPEN, not because he catches you, but subconscious personal bias causes you to lean towards suggesting ridiculous nerfs like making an M1 killer 110% movement speed instead of facing reality.
Increasing the fatigue duration is NOT a viable option either because then there is no incentive to use the power intelligently in a chase and it becomes a pure mobility tool, making the killer piss weak.
Post edited by Leon_Loves_Cheryl on1 -
My only beef with ghoul is the BS first hit being literally guarenteed. been hit thorugh walls and so much. Other than that theyre pretty easy to loop.
However i think a lot of the hat comes from the fact that every ghoul ever tunnels
-1 -
That is absolutely not an issue. If you remove his ability to cancel then you remove all the skill expression from his kit.
There is nothing difficult about pressing button when you are in positon of desired outcome.
With removing it, Ghoul would have to know where exactly to target his dash to end in position he wants.
If Blight/Wesker/Nurse could press a button to cancel their power in middle of it, would their skill ceiling increase? No, that doesn't make any sense. Fact they cannot make it possible to missplay their powers and give survivors ability to use those mistakes.
Ability to cancel power whenever you want makes it difficult to made a missplay using your dash, without it if you target location too close to survivor, it gives option for survivor to double back and even your low fatigue won't save that.
Right now Ghoul is way easier to play than play against and that simply should never be the case. Big part of it is his ability to cancel his power.His ability to cancel and low fatigue makes his dash quite strong chase power, which doesn't make sense to have for killer who has free injury. He also has strong vault on top of it for some reason…
-2
