Jason is an great example why ranged killers should never be 4.6

This is why I miss old school DbD (right before the killer-sided patch where total design philosophy permanently changed), before there was heavy focus on forced game play and 40/60 rates. I miss the old 50/50 philosophy. Yes, it had its own flaws, ESPECIALLY with the pipping system, but it allowed everyone to have fun. Survivors could run less sweaty builds and loot chests or do other things and killers didn’t feel so inclined to run a ton of gen slow down.

Yes, if killers really wanted to sweat they still had to, but the game as a whole felt more party game-like, how it was designed. Ever since they’ve pushed for this competitive aspect, I’ve fallen out of love with the game.

Many of my games would include me memeing or messing with people somehow, whether it is trying to befriend the killer towards the end of a match, letting myself die during end game, or even spearing people as Deathslinger and nodding while reeling. I don’t see that stuff anymore and so many less players participate whenever I try to play more relaxed. They would rather take the competitive advantage of me “throwing”, essentially. Just not really meant for me anymore.

best part is that Jason being 4.6 wouldn’t even be the worst thing if it weren’t for his teleport ability with just a 12 second cooldown. When he misses his single ranged attack then it would be high-risk high-reward, as you’d be forced to chase on foot as a M1 killer until you can loop around a hook or scrap pile to reload from. Instead, there’s basically zero downside to missing.

“What’s that, you missed your one spear on hand?”
Just go invisible, grab another from a nearby hook/trash pile, and reappear on the pallet the survivor was running toward which blocks it for the animation duration and a few seconds after so you can get a free hit, which often flings the survivor into a dead zone so you can two-tap them.

“oh, I missed and need to try again?” 12 second cooldown

Just get to do it all again, every 12 seconds, until it works and you get the hit

Mostly survivor out of the 100 games 63 were on survivors abd 37 were on killer. Was trying out new build for survivor at the time.

Yea its weird seeing them morph into what they used to criticize (comp dbd and treating normal matches like life or death).

I also miss when everyone didnt immediately have access to the same meta perks on new characters. It was fun for the first couple weeks to work with whatever perks you managed to unlock. It made me try different builds. Playing vs a new killer on day 1 with everyone already running 4 hexes or pain res/grim/dms gets old pretty quickly.

Blight is now in a good state in my opinion. Nurse however, would require a complete rework to her power overall. No amount of balancing can really make a character whose whole design is "i teleport straight to you" truly fair.

What you're missing is the proper perspective. Blight and Nurse are the lowest common denominator. When survivors of all skill sets load into matches against these characters, with only some variation in perks and maps, the outcomes are statistically measurable. The top tier killers are considered top tier for very good reason, they give both the highest chance and highest potential for winning with the lowest amount of relative effort. There are killers that vary among those factors, though. Trapper has a low chance of winning, high potential, fairly low effort. The Cannibal, known for snowball potential, but also a low chance of winning, easy to learn as well. Ghoul is so problematic because he is high win chance, high potential, and very low effort. BHVR went about balancing him on release by tackling the ease of use aspect, which was definitely his best trait, and is now somewhat fair to face. Nurse may just have to stay how she's been for years now simply because you cannot lower her ease of use any further without ruining the character. You'd have to lower her win chance or chase potential which is not easy with such a simple killer power.

I believe I understand what you mean, and I agree that balancing shouldn't be done centered on the lowest common denominator (the average player), but the stats BHVR uses is often a measure of everyone, all levels of play and not just casuals. If a killer is stomping very skilled players, then the devs can obviously conclude that they will stomp newer players too. We can only hope that, given the last year of reworks and balance changes, that the days of "nerf Pig" and Sadako reworks are behind us, and they can focus on making the killer roster more evenly capable. Which, you might not like, means both knocking down killers like Jason, Nurse, Ghoul, The First, Dracula, all just a smidge while lifting up the rest of the roster just a little.

How would Nurse need buffs if you were to balance around high level survivors? Or even average level survivors for that matter. She overperforms in anything outside of the tier with newer players. I also said specifically "I agree that balancing shouldn't be done centered on the lowest common denominator (the average player)." I am advocating BHVR consider the top level of play, the highest a killer can achieve, whenever they make balancing decisions. I feel like they took this approach with Blight, by leaving his kit untouched and lowering his base speed, he is now harder for new players but more or less the same for the high level players. There is a lot of reward from mastering the character, and not just learning them.

There are too many killers who have a match potential that is capped lower than the floor for other killers. An incredibly inexperienced Bubba, for example, can outperform an experienced Hillbilly in some cases due to the ease of use. Bubba infamously can get guaranteed kills from face camping, like in the endgame. A Hillbilly, on the other hand, has a much more complicated kit that will be harder to get such guaranteed kills. If you measure from the top level of play though, Hillbilly will outperform Bubba by leagues because of that same complicated kit. Where Bubba is usually forced to break pallets, Hillbilly can play around them with his chainsaw sprint.

I'm not sure how you read my comment and got the exact opposite interpretation of what I was saying. I want BHVR to stop balancing around new players, on killer or survivor. Its already hard to pick up the game, they should just accept that and focus on making the game fun and fair for once the new players get the hang of it.

You obviously didn't read my comment. There is 2 choices:

1. You balance around the highest level players
2. You balance around the average player

If you balance around the highest level players, then by definition you need to contend with the fact that the vast majority of the killer cast is massively underpowered, and you have maybe 5 killers that can compete at that level and survivors as a whole need a massive nerf, or killers as a whole need a massive buff.

If you balance around the average level players, then by definition, you must look at the AVERAGE level players, and what do you see in the statistics around killers like nurse and blight? They are often in the lower half of the killer cast, in fact nurse is often the LOWEST kill rate killer in the game when you look at average kill rates. Thus by definition, she would need some buffs.

My point is, you are saying that Jason shouldn't require people to be coordinated (in a team game btw) because most people aren't. Thus you are advocating for balancing around lower skill and average level players. If so, then are you willing to live out the truth of your statement and claim that nurse and blight need buffs and that sadako and pig need nerfs? I don't think you are. I think that you would say that nurse needs nerfs.

Take the literal best player for each killer in the world, and pit them against the best survivor team in the world and play 10 matches in lets say a perfect world where they can play a balanced map that has no map RNG and all 10 matches have the exact same spawns and layout.

Now think about that, and tell me how many of those killers do you think would win even half of their matches in that scenario?

If he is not fun to play against then 80% of the players in a match are not enjoying it. Personally I have only had one or two fun games against Jason, mainly because they were playing more chill and not the most cheese 4k guarantee build.

There also seems to be a kind of mismatch between when Jason appears for survivors, and when the killer player "arrives" with the knife swing animation. To the survivor he appears almost instantly as has a very fast movement speed when vaulting a window on arrival, for example.

I agree that Jason definitely has certain aspects about him that are overtuned, but man this thread feels like one big survivor circle-jerk.

Survivors have had plenty of buffs recently, and them being stronger than killers was already the status quo since DbD came out, barring the CoB, Overcharge, Eruption meta from years ago. Stop acting like Jason or Krause or Ghoul (both of which have been nerfed) just invalidates all that.

I've played against jason maybe 50 times now, Ive enjoyed around half of them (and yes majority of the ones I didn't enjoy were against the hex jason build). I don't hate playing against jason, It definitely is worse than the majority of killers, but IMO could be a lot worse, I feel like dodging is rewarding, and jason struggles against jungle gyms (if you can find one/get to one and use the tls you can just make his life a living hell).

And yeah I can also understand why people don't enjoy him, he doesnt get punished anywhere near as hard as he could given the other parts of his kit, so would like him missing his ranged attack/ a survivor correctly predicting where he appears to mean more. But I also don't want him gutted, like some have asked for, because he is enjoyable to play as, and with a few minor tweaks would be enjoyable to play against.

But yeah, IDK whats going on with those animation bugs, maybe they should give him a slower arrival, thats another smaller nerf that could be added to my list id be fine with.

I feel like alot of his jungle gym/pallet loop gameplay is similar to nemesis or xeno except if THEY miss, they can try again. Some of the people on here saying Jason ONLY has to wait 12 seconds after a miss to OE over to a reload spot to try again is kinda nuts for that. This is also ignoring that he has the same exact need to reload if he hits. You arnt just making misses more punishing but making HITS more punishing too if you do things like reduce reload spots.

I feel like alot of the nerfs ppl ask for is just so they can maybe see the killer less often. Right after the deputy badge nerf I had someone like "SEE!!! They nerfed it", meanwhile im just scratching my head thinking it basically changed nothing. The "bug" basically had no real impact since you could only do it 1 time per use of OE, but it seemed super impactful when a YouTube edits like 80 seconds of footage to show a 99% gen get regressed to 50%.

to be fair, only had the one here with em

 the issue is this isn't what happens with killers.

The thing is this IS a possibility that can happen no? Could they do this instead of ONLY the highest or average? Thats my point of contention.

That said i think they kinda do, they're just bad at it. The huntress movement (im assuming your talking about the movement speed when holding a hatchet yes?) allowed her to simply zone survivors instead of actually try to make a shot without any major drawback.

I've been here since Doc came out, i've personally seen and experienced the BS of both sides. Killers are generally the target of nerfs because most the BS survivors could use are gone (Working on a gen with DS and Unbreakable, infinites, instant heal medkits, etc) or are minor/have a decent cost (having 5 second heals after an unhook [and before you whine about this: It costs at minimum 1 perk slot between 2 different survivors and a hookstate with a relatively safe unhook), and many killer nerfs aren't even that bad.

"If the survivors don't do the play you think is best atm, does that mean they're less skilled?"- of course not, people make mistakes ect or are just chilling after a long day at work.

Here is what Reinami said which prompted the question:

My point is, you are saying that Jason shouldn't require people to be coordinated (in a team game btw) because most people aren't. Thus you are advocating for balancing around lower skill and average level players.

Since not everyone can be coordinated nor perfect, but they arent lower skilled players, are we actually balancing around the lower skilled by reducing the level of coordination needed against Jason? Or is it something else?

Personally, idc as i think jason is almost perfectly fine, but its something nagging at me. Also why are you answering for Reinami?

The deputy badge nerf was essentially nothing. It was just a note people could point at and say "look, a nerf happened" that doesnt actually effect gameplay. They could reduce the range to 0 and it wouldn't matter since the whole point was you can regress gens while in OE, not that the range was somehow helpful. I promise you no one that used it before saw the changes and switched off because of it.

I agree, but if they take the same sort of philosophy for the nerfs in the future they'd be good. Minor nerfs at the stronger parts of his kit until he feels better to play against for survivors.

I'd argue a lot of the complaints about certain killer perks arent BS killer perks, theyre just strong.

Which doesn't change the fact they're gone now. There's nothing really extreme or even big to complain about without sounding silly. And again most the killer nerfs aren't even all that much. Batteries got less speed for more range and machine learning went a similar route with more time less speed for 9.0. They got a little tap.

I'm more than happy to balance both casually, but often people ask for this when asking for nerfs targetting killer, and that kinda rubs me the wrong way.

I agree when people ask nerfs just to nerf that's stupid, but that's why we'd ought to keep an ear on why they want something nerfed and if it's reasonable.

To be fair you sounded a lot like how I expected them to answer (and I got a decent track record with that) so apologies if I indirectly offended.

You are missing my point entirely.

I AGREE WITH YOU. I am a nurse main with thousands of hours in this game. Why do i main nurse? Because i like to win, plain and simple. I'm not hiding that. My point is I AGREE nurse is a problem at the highest levels of this game. But the BIGGER PROBLEM is that we have 1 killer that is probably way too strong, maybe 1-2 that are a little too strong, another 2-3 that might be "balanced" and then the entire other 35+ killers are completely trash tier and useless at that level.

To me the BIGGER PROBLEM is not that 1-3 killers that might be a little too strong, but the 35+ that just can't hang.

The 35+ are the bigger problem that need to be dealt with first either by massively buffing killers as a whole or nerfing survivors as a whole, while then taking those killers who are too strong, bringing them down a peg.

I literally said that. Please read my post, my god.

Also, there ARE ways you can nerf survivors or buff killers without actually hurting the "average" level player. For example, if you nerfed killer shack to be mindgameable (I.E. remove the check spots, maybe give it a breakable wall like the one of dead dawg, remove the holes so survivors can't see through it etc.) that is going to make the structure far weaker when going against a survivor who knows how to properly exploit killer shack to its full potential. But the "average" survivor, is probably not even looking behind them, doesn't know what a check spot is, and probably predrops the shack pallet anyway.

So if you nerfed killer shack in this case, what you would be doing is, nerfing survivors as a whole, while not hurting lower level players.

I suggest watching this video:

It is quite old, i post it here frequently, and it is about TF2, but the logic still applies here. Specifically that middle case where they talk about the BASE jumper item.

You can nerf things in ways that don't hurt lower skill players because they aren't actually even using that thing properly to begin with.

BHVR actually has one example of this that is the single greatest balance decision they have ever made. And that was old ruin, and by old ruin i mean old old old ruin, the one that made it so if you didn't get a great skill check it would damage the gen by 5%.

That one was really really hard on lower skill players who had problems already hitting skill checks to begin with, but didn't really do anything at the highest levels where hitting a great skill check was super common and easy to do. So when they reworked it to be the one that regresses gens, it did multiple things, it actually nerfed it for "average" level players, but buffed it at the highest levels of play. Because now at the highest levels of play, the perk is much stronger, but against average players as an average killer, it is harder to pressure the gens and get the full value out of the perk whereas before it was just "free"