http://dbd.game/killswitch
Figuring out why Doc is weak
So, I used to be a Doc main and started playing a few games these days to try and find out why he has gotten weaker despite very few changes, and here are my conclusions so far:
1. The 2.5 seconds blocking items, vaults and pallet drops is too short these days. Blinds having gotten a slightly bigger room where it still counts makes using an m2 on a survivor with a flashlight kinda worthless because they can use flashlights quickly enough during the pick up animation to still hit the blind. A similar issue exists with loops, even a perfectly timed, perfectly placed shock gives survivors enough time to do another loop without much consequence, because loops have on average more distance between windows and pallets in the jungle. Meaning if you get the shock on 1 obstacle, they can often reach the other obstacle which you cannot afford to use another m2 in a row due to the slowdown.
2. The slowdown to 77% relative movementspeed while charging your m2. Just as a comparison, Freddy, who SLOWS survivors down, gets to be at 100% relative movementspeed while charging, and by slowing down survivors by 12%, giving him a relative movementspeed of 130% afterwards, while Doc just loses quite a significant amount distance unless its a dead-end(and his range is not even comparable to Freddy).
3. His Static Blast doesnt have the same effects as his m2 other than interrupting on-going actions. Despite survivors screaming for it. On top of that, unsure if it still applies, but items could not be used at all prior to the Unreal Engine 5 upgrade while survivors were in t3 madness, while nowadays, flashbangs, flashlights and fog vials can be used despite being in t3.
4. Pre-dropping and pre-running away from generators is exponentially stronger against Doc than most other killers who are not Trapper.
5. The hit recovery after a shock therapy is similar to Wesker and Kaneki, despite losing distance, despite the ability not dealing any damage. Since the blockage is 2.5 seconds and the hit recovery 1.5 seconds, you effectively only have 1 second to hit.
I think most are simple to fix to improve his gameplay:
1. Increase the 2.5 seconds to 3.5 seconds, that should fix the issues surrounding flashlights and current tile layouts.
2. change the slowdown from 3.08 meters per second while charging shock therapy, to at least 4.00
3. Give the static blast the same interaction blockage as shock therapy.
4. Give Doc an increase in gen kicking and pallet breaking speeds based on total madness levels (2% speed increase per level, giving a minimum of 8% when everyone has been shocked once, and a maximum of 24% if everyone is at t3. And personally, if everyone alive is t3 madness, I believe his m2 should be able to break pallets, its relatively easy to prevent that situation by hopping in lockers)
5. I think this should be dropped to 1.25 seconds recovery. The amount of misses that happen last second because a survivor knows they cannot get hit and vault instead is a punishment on top of a punishment
And all of them combined might be too much, but I do believe these weaknesses are far too much for a killer with no gap closer and no basekit ability that breaks pallets
Comments
-
He's strong in a way that gives people seizures if they dont ever change his static effects.
-2 -
They did some changes with it recently, but imo they should just hit it behind a toggle, and on your first start-up of the game they should give you an accessibility screen to pre-select toggles like color blindness, epilepsy etc that will disable those effects.
2 -
goes to show they didnt learn after the whole trickster debacle a couple years ago and just make changes for those who have epilepsy.
0 -
Agree with the general ideas why Doctor is weak. When reading your suggestions, I have some concerns tho. I have played Doctor a very long time and after I played him recently, it is quite obvious how much he has fallen off (I learned him back when you had to switch stances and played him a lot after the Rework and always quite regularly).
To your suggestions:
1 and 5 should obviously not happen together, but I cannot currently see if this might not be too much Shock Duration. It sounds really long, but in reality it will probably be fine. However, if either of those happened, they should do something against his camping potential since you can interrupt Unhooks very reliable with the Shocks.
2 Fully agree on the Slowdown, it is too much by todays standards. 4.0 at least sounds reasonable, I dont think he should be full speed, but not losing distance or only losing a very bit of distance (when being slightly lower than 4.0) should be fine.
I dont like suggestion 3. Simply because with Shock Therapy you at least have to aim, while Static Blast would be an action block without anything you really have to do except for pressing one button.
Suggestion 4 is interesting, but a few things here. I dont think that a permanent 8% breaking Speed increase would be too strong, even when paired with Brutal Strength. Because it will be at least 8%, since you should have people in Madness 1 very quickly. But I dont know if 16% paired with Brutal Strength is not a bit too much, since you cannot go down from Madness 2 as Survivor. But this is just a feeling. Not a fan of Pallets breaking instantly when using M2 when all Survivors are in Madness 3. It will be a once in a blue moon-scenario, but the Survivor in chase would be the one screwed the most, even if they are the one who cannot snap out of Madness at all, so he basically has to deal with it because the team is not snapping out of it fast enough.
3 -
I actually think 1 and 5 are not too bad together, 5 only really happens when you miss an m2 and 1 is really annoying because both the slowdown and the m1 being locked. But the combination of 1, 2 and 5 does worry me. I think at least 1&2 or 2&5 should happen, but 1, 2 and 5 together do need different values.
And while I originally would agree with your stance on 3, there is a very simple argument against it:
Survivors can dodge it by jumping in lockers, it has a 45 second cooldown and a longer charge period.-1 -
I think a big problem with Doctor is the fact that survivors can press the vault button as they're running up to the pallet/window. This effectively means that from your perspective, you can shock a survivor before they start the vaulting animation, yet they will still vault over anyways because them running was actually apart of the animation.
This is rarely a problem for other killers, but it feels horrible for Doctor, especially when latency is factored in. I think the simplest fix would just be to have his shock cancel the vault unless the survivor has reached the point in the animation where they are actively touching the interactable.
2 -
His biggest problem is the slowdown while charging the shock therapy. You basically just extend the loops by yourself, even if you know what you're doing
3 -
Besides the doctor is getting buffs in the next update, so maybe they already looked at the issues that we have with him?
1 -
Well his power is dependent on using addons called discipline which makes his shock more usefull and he is very ping dependent, he can denny survivor a vaulting or other many actions but he slows himself down a lot which makes him worse than clown in general only where doctor shines more than clown I would say are very long loops like these you could saw in 2v8 because doctor can shock less and reach the survivor faster and doesnt need to worry about survivor reaching pallet or window so often as on shorter loops.
His info from shock is nice but his slowdown with madness 3 is joke for everyone who can hit skillchechs and it doesnt do much as slowdown, it would be nice if his tier 3 madness caused more illusions of like pallets or red stain and high terror radius but these do some addons and I dont see him getting more buffs maybe some range and discipline into his basekit.
Doctor maybe annoying as merchant is but they are actualy weak, they arent best in what is their power set to do (antiloop for doctor) and their other qulities of his power arent that great either like antiloop is kinda like freddys but I would say weaker on more loop types and only stronger on longer and safer loops but deffinitely worse than clowns, his slowdown is there but very minor thing compare to weskers infection even krasue has bit better slowdown with shrooms I would say, his info is best thing he has and probably best basekit killer info right after dreadges nightfall detection. Thats doctor in his all colors I would say.
0 -
While his ability is effective at disrupting Survivors during medium- to short-range pallet and window loops, recent spawn patterns have resulted in pallets and windows clustering very close together. As a result, even if the Doctor lands his ability, Survivors can easily reach the next object. Like other M1 Killers, he is a Killer whose effectiveness is heavily dependent on the map and spawns, which is unfortunate.
0 -
Is there a date for when we will see these patch notes buffs? I think they said these killers will get small number buffs but if it's in the right area it could help Doctor and the other weaker killers too. We have to wait and see.
1 -
I think they will just drop them on april 7th. I don't think they will share with us earlier
1 -
Doc is not weaker, he was always weak. You are facing better survivor who know to pre-drop pallets, hold W, and go for other vaults when they hear the charge.
The only strength to the Doc was shuting down gens on small maps. Well there are larger maps and a limit to how many times a gen can regress now. Since the ability to hold progress has been reduced, he is where he always was, a mid tier killer.
0 -
I think the buffs to 1 and 2 should be the focus and go through
0 -
Used to also main Doc I can agree that the problems with Doc is his shock blocking of 2.5s is too short and his Slowdown while charging shock is to slow and needs to be 4.0ms
0 -
He was a weak killer compared to the average killer, always has been, but he has gotten weaker. That's not because stronger survivors, because in general, due to how Doc has dropped in how common he is, I therefor expect less survivors to know all the weaknesses. Which is true. But the counterplay to each weakness has been increased:
More lockers, meaning easier to dodge static blast
More jungle gyms where the window and pallet are on opposing sides
On average bigger pallet obstacles that are not only affecting Doc, Huntress is the biggest example other than Doc that has gotten weaker because of other balancing things. Huntress was pretty much always in the middle of A tier, but I can give you names of quite a few Huntress mains who will say she's mid B at best. Not because survivors have gotten stronger, but because tiles have changed.
I would have considered Doc somewhere between top C-mid B. Now, the only reason I wouldnt put him into D is because static blast does give him quite a bit of info.
Doc could shut down killer shack within 3 loops with well timed m2's, he can still do that. Doc could shut down most other loops within 2 loops or at least force a pallet drop. He can no longer do that, it is mathematically impossible and the average lies around 4 loops before a pallet is forced to be dropped. Like, imagine a killer who was designed where survivors needed to go from tile to tile because they couldnt loop a good doctor, not because they were bad, but because staying at 1 tile would mathematically guarantee hits for doctor within 2 loops.
So just in short, before, on average, it was mathematically impossible for survivors to loop any tile more than 2 times without getting hit if both sides played perfectly. They needed to drop the pallet and move on, or risk a hit.
Now, its mathematically impossible for Doc to get a hit within 3 times if both sides play perfectly, and while mathematically possible in the 4th loop, that will depend on ping.
It doesnt matter if survivors got better, mathematically speaking, doc got weaker.1 -
I think he's been power crept by newer killers who's got better abilities, faster cooldowns
0 -
I wouldnt mind this tbh, this is annoying to figure out, but overall not too bad as you can really use it against survivors too.
What I do think could be a QoL in that scenario, is that windows would be blocked for X amount of seconds if you were shocked mid-vault. You can break dropped pallets and use pallets to block survivors in, but windows are a different story.1 -
Yeah I think Doc when he shocks needs to cancel pre queued up animations from survivors
1
