250 2v8 Killer Winstreak and Balance Opinions

Hello!

My friend Weldo and I would like to share our 250 game killer winstreak and balance opinions during this iteration of 2V8. We have just over 11.5k hours between us. Wincon was 6K no gate, we feel this is the most realistic for the mode. Curious how we got so many games in general? Read on!

After the first 30-40 games, we felt the roster getting a little stale, so we decided to use a random wheel generator with each killer on it and let RNG choose our killer. From that point on, the killer we played was randomized and we chose our class.

This led to 97 unique killer combos.

I will also my Nightlight (although stats are private). The 2v8 stats on Nightlight have a rough UI to say the least, so I will post the streak as best I can.

https://nightlight.gg/u/Codester/stats

This shows all 250 games if you're interested:

Here are some of our top combos ranked. Nightlight only shows 8 at a time. I main Huntress/Blight but we did swap every now and then when we felt like it.

We both want this post to be centered around the suggested balancing and surv/killer/class changes rather than focus on the winstreak. It doesn't mean much when the MMR was in the state that it was this during this iteration, but we do hope it shines more of a light on that particular issue so we get better games. We just hope our thoughts are at the least seen after grinding the mode so much.

Below are our opinions on the current state of 2v8.

General Balancing:

- Indoor maps make 2v8 aura reading and hook prediction too strong (especially rpd)

- RPD needs removed, there's no other words for it. Games on this map are an absolute mess for survivor side, especially if Nemesis is in the match. Brute + Nurse combo is unplayable against on the map, gen grabs easy, hooks way too easy to predict, can cut off anyone rotating mid-map, and any Shadow killer gets insane value. See first point.

- Tonics could be removed (and were at one point). The Purified Tonic (cage state removal) should have a much longer interaction time for survivor at minimum. The Haste effect for killers is ok but could be changed to something more useful, possibly a shattered hope-style full aura read for a small duration, and/or survivors should get a visible effect on the killer indicating they're hasted by a tonic, possibly similar to a serum. (the Purified Tonic has also had a spelling error since they were introduced which is yet to be fixed. It reads "Purifed Tonic" in-game)

Killer Balancing:

- Gen regression. The base rate of gen regression is too strong. The Wiki states 200% in 2v8, but quite frankly this feels incorrect and is anecdotally more. Pressuring a high progress gen gives simply too much value. Our suggestion is to reduce the base regression, but give Killers a Pain Resonance equivalent on each fresh hook. The current system encourages killers to kick generators instead of chasing (there was a 2 year period of dbd on why this is a problem) which boils a lot of close games down to hitting regression limit, or survivors getting too bored that they give up. It also increases the disparity between killer strength. High mobility killers are great in dbd (no surprise), but they're especially great in 2v8 as they can apply this regression much more efficiently, while also being able to traverse the much bigger maps in 2v8. Additionally, killer mobility has TWO unique strengths in 2v8 as it allows the killer to quickly aid their teammate in chase directly, or helping corral survivors into their teammate which can snowball into downs/hits. The other benefit is being able to go cross map to protect an uncage after hooking someone, and due to survivors often resetting in groups, this is a great way to make pressure as long as you predict the cage spawns. Meanwhile, low mobility killers such as trapper, huntress, chucky, etc. don't have ANY of these benefits, so they generally get the short end of the stick in the mode which can make them feel quite bad unless specifically paired with a high mobility killer. Having a pain res equivalent would encourage killers to commit to chases more often, discouraging tunneling as fresh hooks will have a large benefit, and make killers who excel at close range such as nemmy, slinger, or chucky feel rewarded in winning their chases.

- Blight, Spirit and Nurse are all S tiers that are also giga buffed in the mode with a long list of buffs. They could all use slight nerfs (mainly phase time on Spirit specifically).

- Trapper NEEDS to start with all traps without the "Trapper Sack" downside. Frankly unbelievable that BHVR thinks it's okay to double map size and keep Trapper's power acquisition the same. Also, please bring back trap setting haste applying to your teammate. (that was cool)

- Oni's movement speed in dash needs nerfed, it's honestly ridiculous. Splintered Hull would also feel better overall, but possibly too strong.

- Billy could use Engravings but still feels ok. Doesn't need changed.

- Ghostface feels ok besides the amount of bugs between object leaning and the reveal mechanic. There's a bug with bots that instantly reveals you no matter what, cross-map for the entire game. Very strong 1v1 chase while chasing a stalked survivor and not revealed, possibly too strong. Haste could potentially be reduced, but could argue he needs to be that strong 1v1 in the mode.

- Huntress could use Deerskin Gloves + Babushka for sure, and possibly Rose Root.

- Executioner basically doesn't have a power in 2v8. In fact, he's punished using rites cages while using the Shadow class (doesn't get the undetectable), but the survivor still gets their unlockable skill. He needs length addons. Changes we would like to see are applying torment with M2 hits and the killer teammate being able to do the old 2v8 stomp on tormented survivors.

- Xeno is ok but has some tunnel bugs preventing access to certain ones occasionally. The tail attack cooldown is extremely short, but he does need some sort of buff like this for 2v8.

- Nemesis zombies could be reduced by 1 and still be strong, and he could use a buff in compensation such as whip pallet break cooldown or even Marvin's Blood. (this killer is also complete torture for survivors on indoor maps because of the 4 zombies)

- Chucky needs Jump Rope.

- Slinger could use iri coin to help promote not 2v1ing for easy downs which people probably find unfun. (fun to do though >_>)

- The rest of the killer roster feels mostly good/balanced.

- Shadow is objectively the best class on every non-stealth killer besides Huntress, with argument being made for Fearmonger on any 110 killer and Brute on blight/nurse/wesker (more discussion on Brute as a whole later)

- Enforcer is objectively, by far, the worst killer class, and we didn't play a single game with it during this iteration. Needs reworked entirely. The extended lunge should be much more obvious that you even have it available (screen vignette possibly), and the window last 4x as long. The aura reading is often bugged and you don't receive it. We would like to see this reworked to something else entirely. the 3% haste chasing an injured survivor is pretty meh compared to what the other classes offer especially given which killers are available.

- Fearmonger good, needs no changes. 5% haste unseen lets any 110 killer get a faster start especially, and applies in chase when survivors aren't looking behind them. Also acts as a pseudo Whispers for locating survivors. Helps prevent beam saves. Helps Huntress get to a locker.

- Brute is a bit of a weird one. This is how the main cooldown skill of Brute works currently, per the Wiki:

Whenever you perform the Break action while this Skill is active, the following effects apply:

Increases the Breaking speed by +25 %.

Damaging a Generator will highlight it in yellow. When the highlighted Generator is repaired past its regression point, the Generator explodes, triggering a loud noise notification and causing any Survivor interacting with the Generator to be afflicted by -5 % Hindered Status Effect for 12 seconds.

This Skill has a cool-down of 60 seconds after use.

The issues with this skill, in our opinion, is that "Increases the Breaking speed by +25%" one, only applies to pallets/walls and not gens, and two, this ability goes on cooldown when you kick a generator. IOP, it should apply the 25% breaking speed to gens as well, and rather go on cooldown when you break a pallet/wall. Generally, you only want to run this class on a high mobility killer for the break speed in chase, and not for the Hindered off a gen, so just the core mechanics of this skill are backwards in our opinion and is not used what it was designed for. S tiers don't care that you get 5% hindered off the gen. They just want the faster break and extended aura read. The extended aura range applies regardless of cooldown.

Survivor Balancing:

- See tonic suggestions.

- Hook placements are too easy to predict making it extremely easy to attempt a tunnel or interrupt resets, especially on mobility killers.

- The Anti-Camp mechanic needs to apply even with other survivors near and possibly even at a further range. This is often an issue even if not intentionally going to a hook to interrupt.

- Escapist sprint needs to not be on a button. A very strong survivor is essentially untouchable with this class and it makes any survivor mistake easily recoverable. Make it proc similar to Sprint Burst and it would be fine.

- Other classes fine. Starting with an item is good, and good for the killer side as you can see someone's class at a glance.

- The Endurance given to other survivors by Torchbearer is ridiculously long. It should be 1/3-1/4 of current time. Otherwise a very fun class.

Queue Times:

Somewhere around the middle of this event, queue times were extremely bugged, and this allowed us to get such a high number of killer games. We had multiple days where we were able to get 5+ killer games per hour, sub minute queues, which was unheard of in previous iterations. When queue times weren't bugged, we could do 1 play-while-you-wait survivor game between each killer game, which rose to 2 survivor games for each killer game later on when queue times were fixed and became worse. We don't have exact numbers, but we would say our average normal killer queue time is around 20-25 minutes on East servers when queues aren't bugged, but we have had as long as 45 minutes very rarely.

A big slightly unrelated point we would like to make for this is to possibly allow customs (for 1v1s), 1v4, or inviting other survivor players to our play-while-you-wait lobby while queueing for 2v8.

MMR (the big one):

MMR was quite simply a mess during this iteration (admitted by BHVR as of their Twitter post Sep 29) and the only reason this streak continued the way it did. It was by far the worst we have ever seen, and we have played as a duo during every iteration of 2v8. We would get an alarming amount of players that simply don't understand that killers have basekit gen kick aura reading in the mode, spend a lot of time edgemap, run past resources, not look behind them (this is huge on Fearmonger as you just have perma 5% haste in chase without them looking at you), unhook survivors in front of the killer (this is also a massive reason for most game pressure), generally unaware of killer presence, not spray/vaccine, and just seemingly very new players in general. This is a failure on BHVR's part.

Clearly there could be a lot done to improve new player knowledge and their experience in general. Another point I will add to this is that specific 2v8 innate killer skills are NOT included in the F1 menu that all survivors are prompted to open on first chase or injury. I would absolutely guarantee this leads to new players being completely unaware of things such as Drac's wolf form 3rd pounce, Wesker's 3rd dash, Ghostface's haste, what the Tonics do for killers/survivors, etc and being caught out in a bad spot.

Out of the 250 games, we only had 3 that we considered close, and only 1 where all gens were completed before the wincon. In previous iterations, we would generally play 20-30 games between losses, and players in general were simply better with more hours. We would often get players with sub 50 hours in DBD in this iteration.

Hopefully this is better in the next event, we actually much prefer having good/close games with strong players.

Overall, we really love playing 2v8 and hope it keeps coming back better. Feel free to post any questions/comments, would love more discussion around this mode!