Why the Ghoul is still not well received, and how I'd fix it
I recently came up against a few Ghoul's yesterday and got caught on a number occassions that really grinded my #########. I'm not gonna lie, I caught myself really raging a number of times... and generally speaking I'm not too upset by losing in DBD, and lose often, so I was trying to take stock of why is got under my skin so badly.
I went watching videos, mostly JCGlitchmaster, to work out what I did wrong, as he is an avid Ghoul defender and does give some good tips on how to counter Ghoul. He is not wrong in his assessment at all, but watching his videos carefully, in conjunction with my own experience, there are a few things that stuck out...
I think the biggest problem with Kaneki being so hated is he is really REALLY obnoxious for console players. Let me explain:
- Kaneki is a killer that is punished for breaking pallets, on a map like Gideon, where you often have another pallet in range you can make it to, you can put up a better fight... but if you lack access to pallets, against a decent Kaneki you just lose outright, especially if he takes the likes of Bamboozle or Blood Favour.
- Even if you have a lot of pallets not blocked by Blood Favour, Kaneki is a killer that makes many traditionally strong tiles very unsafe. Your "counter play" in a good number of tiles relies on you getting the stun. If Kaneki lands near you at a tile with vaults in hand, he recovers so fast that you can't greed cause you won't make it round a loop, and you can't throw because he will grab you and vault, your only chance is get the stun, and if you don't, then you just lose at many tiles.
- If the Kaneki misplays, grabbing you when he shouldn't and not grabbing you when he should, you can give him a lot of headaches... (this is a problem for the Kaneki player as well, because often the hitbox grabs when he doesn't want to grab). Point is though, if he knows when to grab you with his vault, you're basically cooked at any strong tile, and often even mid tiles...
- Weak tiles are your only shot really vs. that vault cause he doesn't have time to pull up… but, its a weak tile... if you make it, you take the vault and likely get caught on the other side before you can vault again. Even if you win the 50/50 you are stuck here playing 50/50s on this tile unable to leave... if you don't take the vault, you still often can't leave and you will go down l in a pretty short time.
All of this might be managable... but you get injured for free by his auto grab, and it ALWAYS feel crap to get hit by this thing...
Now as say... I am on console, so I have to deal with input lag caused by the forced V-sync... so this combined with need to get a stun or die in 1 hit makes Kaneki feel awful and extremely oppressive to play against. The need to land a stun is very VERY hard to time as a console player because you simply just can't react... you have to guess... and as I say, if the Kaneki isn't stupid... you just lose majority of the time.
I have looped bad Kaneki's a few times, but every time I have, I never felt like it was me playing well, more him playing bad... and a Ghoul who can slide around tiles repeatedly and pull up his grab at the right times... you just get rolled over.
The Fix Proposal
This is with the goal in mind that you are trying to make less Survivors quit the game.
The only fix I can think of for Ghoul to get rid of these issues is to just bite the bullet, remove the auto lock, and make Ghouls grab an honest to God skill shot. Put the reticule on terrain if his grab is in range, but otherwise just make it a skillshot. This would remove all the frustration of being injured against him, and even give us the rush of watching his tentacles fly past us.
While I realise you want a killer more accessible on console, as a console player myself, skillshots are not that bad. Yes against truly cracked Survivor gives you skillshot troubles, but as a console killer you can often adapt your builds to be more effective, and they usually play in lower MMRanyway.
If you wanna make it easier to grab the player, give the tentacles 2 hitboxes, with larger hit box on Survivors and a smaller one on terrain.
Comments
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Oh as an aside this is a very good video for Ghoul's counterplay:
However I think you can see how short the windows are for the Ghoul's counterplay, and why input lag from vsync is a problem here.
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I hate Ghoul, but I can see some adjustments to make him more fair and more skillfull.
→ Revert leap distance to 16m
→ Revert 1 token lose when breaking pallet
→ Remove deepwound from grab attack
→ Increase time it takes to vault when enraged by 0.2s
→ Increase cooldown before retaining full movement speed after canceling leap by 0.5s
→ Rework mori to be shorter and less punishing throughout the game
→ Cut in half the time a Ghoul can hold tentacles charged
→ Decrease grab attack maximum distance to 6m
At the moment Ghoul is very easy to play and capable of achieving great results without much thinking, which isn't good design.
Post edited by Elan on5 -
They tried Ghoul without the auto lock and it was actually almost impossible to play him, especially for console players. No one could land the skillshot.
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Reticle stickiness has to be the most annoying feature for survivors and skilled ghoul players. Sometimes you grab something you didn't want to because your reticle lingers on the most recent surface for a bit, or you accidentally grab a survivor instead of the environment. Overall, just a stupid feature for everyone. Let it go
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Good ideas. I had one myself, maybe that would be worth to think about as well?
The Ghoul needs to be withing [6?] meters of a survivor to be able to injure them with his power.
ATM Ghoul only needs to land within 14 meters of a survivor after a first leap to be able to bite and injure that survivor. Which means, he can use his power for mobility AND injuring at the same time.
If he had to leap himself to within 6(or so) meters of a survivor to be able to injure them, he actually had to be somewhat precise with his power.
Consequences:
It can still be hitscan, so people would still be able to get hits at all.
Since he needs to start this hitscan from up closer, it would automatically look less ridiculous, bc he needs to travel less distance between "hitscan happens" and "biting animation happens" - - > less "hitting through the doorframe" moments.
Being enraged becomes more valuable (one additional leap for positioning).
If a survivor gets locked on while further then 6 (or so) meters away, the Ghoul just catches up to them (as it is now when you latch onto a survivor with the first leap)
My two cent.
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P100 high MMR Ghoul main here. I'm seeing a lot of opinions from people who are either very average at the game, or do not fully understand intended design. I want to clarify some of these suggestions and explain why they aren't the best possible solution for Ghoul.
Revert leap distance to 16m
Yes. The initial leap distance reduction was unnecessary. I've been saying this since that change was implemented. All they had to do was reduce the range in which you can grab survivors by two meters, not the range of the entire power by two meters. Hopefully they do this some day because 14 meters does not feel nearly as good to play as 16 did. (It also made Ghoul addon-reliant on Handkerchief, and making Killers addon-reliant is never a good thing.)
Revert 1 token lose when breaking pallet
No. Losing tokens on breaking pallets is designed to counterbalance his ability to catch you outside of loops with his power. If you outplay him at a loop and force him to break the pallet, you should receive a payoff for that. Two tokens is the perfect sweet spot and it is the best alternative to increasing his cancel cooldown (which would be a horrible change because it would remove all the cooler plays you can do with his power if it had a longer cancel cooldown.) Cancel cooldown in this context is referring to the amount of time he has to wait before he can basic attack. You want this to be at its current value because it encourages him to use his power offensively and to cut off Survivor pathing rather than purely for mobility. Losing tokens on pallet break is the best compromise for this mechanic.
Remove deepwound from grab attack
No. Multiple reasons for this.
- From a game design perspective, it "feels weird" to attack an Injured Survivor with your power and for it to just…not do anything. Applying Deep Wound solves this weird feeling problem by still doing some form of "damage".
- As an M1 Killer, Kaneki is extremely vulnerable to Exhaustion perks but especially ones that result in Deep Wound such as Dead Hard. Smart Kaneki players have the option of Deep Wounding an already injured Survivor to shut down their Dead Hard, rewarding intelligent play. Removing this ability will lower Kaneki's skill cap and also make him significantly more vulnerable to exhaustion perks for no good reason as he is already an M1 Killer.
Increase time it takes to vault when enraged by 0.2s
This is by far the worst suggestion here. Absolutely do not do this. His enraged vault is literally his only anti-loop, and it isn't even consistent anti-loop (some loops require some trial-and-error to find out which ones you can actually catch the survivor at if you enraged vault.) The vault itself also has counterplay by staying out of Ghoul's sight if he's on the other side of the pallet so he can't lock onto you to vault. Nerfing the vault just lowers the skillcap of playing against Ghoul for no good reason while also significantly increasing the number of loops in which this maneuver is effectively useless/a time waster for the Killer, and it lessens the value of becoming Enraged. Literally one of the worst possible suggestions.
Increase cooldown before retaining full movement speed after canceling leap by 0.5s
No, for similar reasons as above. At least your suggestion isn't saying to lengthen the delay before his basic attack, but in a similar vein movement is all Ghoul truly has, so reducing his movespeed in any fashion and for any duration is incredibly crippling to his ability to catch up and cut off, which is what he's all about. This is how his power is meant to work. You shouldn't nerf his ability to move in and cut off survivors because that's the aspect of his kit that actually takes skill.
Rework mori to be shorter and less punishing throughout the game
This is mostly a matter of personal taste rather than opinion, and therefore doesn't really belong in a list of balancing suggestions. Additionally, the devs do not balance the game around mori's because they're just for fun/flavor. They don't provide a massive power boost to the Killer. It's just theatrics. Mori's don't need to be something they fine-tune on a razor's edge. It's fine as is (I really enjoy the animation as it is anyway.)
Cut in half the time a Ghoul can hold tentacles charged
No. He needs that time to figure out his pathing to cut off the survivor. Making it harder to do that (by reducing the time he has to plan out his route) disincentivizes using his power in skillful ways. This lowers Ghoul's skill cap (seeing the pattern in your suggestions yet?)
Decrease grab attack maximum distance to 6m
You have to be joking.
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Well, I'm sorry. But Ghoul is truly not healthy at all. Not only because his skill floor is non-existing but because he can do everything with no effort. Let me explain the most frustrating stuff and it's not about skill of survivor but a pure gambling.
→ Ghoul get's free injure on you, that itself is fine for me. The issue is the stun that cancels exhasution perks, has insane range and is still gitting through objects.
→ Ghoul leaps to you, instantly cancel and follow with M1 hit in about 1s that is also not healthy as all catchup killers have cooldowns - Wesker, Krasue, Blight, Nurse, Chucky etc.
→ Pallets are completely gamble and mostly a lose-lose situations - not only that pallets got massively nerfed but Ghoul can:
- Just hold W and hit you,
- Fake tentacles and instantly m1
- Scamper, hinders you for 50 % and get a guaranteed hits on 80 % of pallets,
- Leap over loop nad bodyblock,
- etc. So there is no standard counterplay because you can't gamble 20/1 options he will do.
→ Apply deepwounds on top of mark and can hold power for about 8s, which is ridiculous.
If those things are adjusted, which they announced that they will touch Ghoul eventually with another nerf. I'm truly sorry, but Ghoul = effortless win. That's why I don't play him. And that guy who posted here the same video where he leaps multiple times around pallet to block it is something I haven't seen and I play against P100 Ghouls and Ghouls overall in about 5 of 9 games.
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Ghoul cannot just "do everything with no effort" and if you really believe that you haven't played him for any real length of time.
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Ghoul leaps to you, instantly cancel and follow with M1 hit in about 1s that is also not healthy as all catchup killers have cooldowns - Wesker, Krasue, Blight, Nurse, Chucky etc.
Okay. Now name the difference between all of those killers' powers and Ghoul.
It is a very important, key difference.
I'll give you a minute to think about it.
…
All of those killers' powers can down you. Ghoul's power cannot. That's why Wesker, Krasue, etc. have long cooldowns when they end their powers because they're balanced by using the power to try to down you in a lethal manner rather than catching up. Meanwhile Ghoul's power can ONLY catch up or cut off, IT CANNOT KILL YOU, so it has a shorter cooldown (which, by the way, is NOT one second) in order to encourage the Ghoul player to use it in intelligent ways (by cutting you off at a loop or by simply catching you in an open area.) You cannot give him a high cooldown AND limit him to only being able to M1 down you. He's already an M1 killer.
Every single one of those comparisons you made are fallacious. Literally all of them. You are comparing the cooldown of a killer whose power cannot down you, to half a dozen who can.
And this is why I don't like discussing the game at a high level. Very few people are equipped for this type of discussion
Also, no, Ghoul cannot just "do everything with no effort", that's incredibly disingenuous. His leaps require precision if you're against decent survivors. If you're against weaker survivors then he's super easy to play but that applies to literally every killer so you have no actual point. Survivors that know how to move and know how to make their pathing unpredictable are incredibly tough for Ghoul to go against without just following them around. You only get cut off if your path is predictable (because that is, by definition, what "cutting off" means)
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