Killer GBU

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After finishing my Survivor GBU (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) I am very excited to get to the article everyone has been waiting for. Let's talk about Killers. I hope you all enjoy these posts as much as I enjoy writing them, and we can only hope the developers are listening. After reading comments on my survivor GBU, I do want to let everyone know that when I say "killers/survivors are doing this or doing that" I am not generalizing and saying ALL killers/survivors are doing it. I almost am always talking about something specific. I usually answer comments and try to work through any confusion by explaining my angle. Don't pick a fight, its a civil conversation. I preach compromise above everything else. There is always a middle ground, people just have to stop screaming over one another long enough to find it.

If you are new here, then I want to explain my philosophy when it comes to looking at game balance from a players perspective.

1. It must be constructive and unbiased. I often see balance posts that propose fixes that make it better for the writer and their chosen side rather than the community as a whole.
2. It should create meaningful in game decision making and add depth to the role. I have never been a fan of lazy killer/survivor mentality where players think the devs should just hand them the answers. The developers should not be playing the game for you. Neither role should play itself.
3. Changes made should be possible within the current framework of the games identity and current state of balance. Something I see a lot when people write this kind of post are sweeping changes that would require too much work or redefine the games original identity. Additionally this also covers things that are related to the business aspect of the game. Ex. Decisive Strike being a core counter to tunneling yet soft locked behind DLC. The reality is that Behavior has to make money and they still make it available in the shrine.

Now lets talk about the killer role and hopefully bring to light to some of the problems. The community is split down the middle on a lot of things and there are a lot of player dynamics to attempt to please. Keeping everyone happy is not realistic but I hope to offer reasonable compromises. This is also a good time to site any of my sources for the facts behind my opinions.

Dev Data Sheets: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/61114/

DBD community vote tier list: https://dennisreep.nl/dbd/

Ghostface GBU: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/66706/the-sadface#latest

Survivor GBU: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/525075#Comment_525075

============================================================================================================== THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY. ============================ ======================================================================================

-The Good

• The killer cast for the game is phenomenal. Behavior has really delivered with the amount of killers they have given us. The fact they were able to even get licensed killers to begin with is a feather in their cap. The unique killers are engaging and interesting and the licensed killers are as iconic as ever.
• Killer at its best makes you feel powerful and in control of the flow of the game. I will never say that killer isn't fun to play because it is.
• The lore for the killers is incredible. They each feel connected to the entity and equally trapped in its realm as the survivors. All the killers appeal to a different kind of player and the backstories really elaborate on their personalities.
• Killer is generally in a good place balance wise. There was a time when killer was nigh impossible to play but there have been a lot of changes made such as the "End Game Collapse" that puts power back into the killers hands. Things like old decisive strike were fixed to counter something specific instead of tormenting all killers across the board. The role still has problems but they are not as severe as they used to be. (the role being in a good place and the individual killers themselves are not the same thing.)

-The Bad

• M1 Killers are generally regarded to be in a bad spot. I don't believe this is a fault of balance but a fault of the tier system (I spoke about Nurse and Billy balance briefly in my survivor GBU) and bad map design. If everything is compared to Nurse and Billy then it will never amount up. Often times people say that all killers should be brought up to Nurse and Billy's level, I believe those two should be brought down to earth just a little bit and then all other killers receive some quality of life changes across the board. The killer role is hard to balance because everything you do to buff the other killers inadvertently skyrockets Nurse and Billy even further. Nurse and Billy have insane mobility inherent in their designs. In a game all about chasing, their powers stick out for a reason. It is impossible to bring many of the other killers to that level without blatantly reworking them, its an unrealistic request. My quality of life changes for m1 killers are as follows.

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1. Wraith: Bing Bong boi got some love awhile back and still has an avid fan base in the community. I find the hate on him to be quite biased and unwarranted. Wraith ensures the first hit if he can sneak up on survivors and his windstorm passive actually helps with looping quite a bit. But one thing I would like to see for him is a change to one of his sounds. His footsteps are VERY loud. If they were muffled it might actually bring his power level up a bit. I don't think outright removing them is a good idea though. But wraith shouldn't be stomping around going "FEE FI FO FUM" while he is cloaked. He should be sneaking up on you.
2. Doctor: Carter is almost always in a weird place because there is an avid fan base that understands him and all 5 of his obscure builds. The main thing that he really needs is comprehension. Rewording his add ons may help people grasp his builds a bit better. Doctor is a tracking killer with some disruption in his kit. I would like to see his base shock distance buffed so he doesn't need to be right on the survivor to hit it. Honestly you could make rail gun doctor his base kit and it probably wouldn't break him. Shocking to create madness does not feel like a good use of time in a game where time is everything. Buff his shock range, maybe make survivors go mad a little faster when in his passive radius, make shocking a worthwhile time investment not just an action disruption.
3. Trapper: I love snap daddy trapper and he is the most deserving of some quality of life changes. So one of the biggest issues with Trapper is that he has to go around picking up all his traps in a game where time is everything. Allowing him to start with more of the traps on his person instead of needing add ons may fix this. Huntress has 5 hatchets on her person at base. Why can't trapper have 3-5 traps on him at base. Trapper can't pump out traps like hag so he devolves into just a guy with a machete. Yeah hes faster than hag but that doesn't cut it for his gameplay. Also the time to disarm his traps needs to be increased by a few seconds at base. Survivors just follow him around and disarm his traps faster than he can set them. Even with full disarm time from add ons, it tends to feel faster than it should be for amount of time they take to collect and set. Just adding a few seconds might remedy this.
4. Pig: Pig recently had a rather hard hit to her kit from the End Game Collapse changes. It basically removed her ability to hold the game hostage. This is the right move for the game but it now puts her into this really weird spot. I am a long time fan of the Saw series and Amanda Young's character was supposed to juxtapose that of Jigsaws. Jigsaw wanted a philosophical redemption for his victims and his traps were survivable. Amanda's were rigged in her favor. One thing I have always wondered about Pig is if she puts a trap on someones head would she know which box has the key. I think Pig should have a notification when a survivor is close to getting their key lets say when they are on the box containing the key and after they hit the first or second skill check she gets notified or sees their aura. This will prevent the randomness of her power and might be a nice buff. I hear a lot of people complain about her dash attack but that noise is in line with the movies and I disagree with changing that. The dash is long range and having no warning on it at all = free hits.
5. Meyers is in a good spot, so is Hag, and Spirit.
6. Clown: Clown is actually relatively strong as a chasing killer should be. I think just allowing him to carry a bottle or two more at base might help. He is generally in a good spot. He can stack status effects and has an edge against looping. With combat perks and a decent pilot hes probably one of the strongest M1 killers in the game. Huntress can carry 5 deadly hatchets. Clown could carry a bottle or two more at base. I doubt it will break him. Perhaps giving the bottles a further throw range may also be an interesting buff for him.
7. Legion: I am not a big fan of Legion but from what I have seen their rework is a lot more healthy than their former state. They are guaranteed the first hit and then force mending. One issue I have with them is that people rarely ever go down for not mending right away. It seems that timer is way too long. Also breaking the mending action isn't punished at all. I would like to see mending feel a bit more urgent overall and punishing if you are not mending in a safe position.
8. Plague: Shes been one of my mains since she came out and I have no major problems with her. I would like to see her visual bug where her thurible is stuck upward when she loads in fixed. Balance wise i'd like to see about having puking disrupt the survivors actions similar to doctors shock. Making the puking less frequent to compensate may be appropriate.
9. Leatherface: Tum Tums is not as bad as people make him out to be but I would like to see him get a dash attack similar to Billy. Make it shorter and unreliable. A dash with his current aoe chainsaw on it. Make it harder to handle than the normal version. In the movies he was always running at people swinging the chainsaw above his head, this might help bring that feel to him a bit. Right now he just kinda doesn't feel like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I do not play a lot of Bubba J so don't take this one too seriously.
10. Freddy: I will post a separate article for him like I did for Ghostface, after his rework.

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• Bullying the killer is a very stigmatizing event that happens at all stages of the game. SWF is not the main problem but its a sense of over competitiveness that gets taken a bit too far. Especially looking into the past there have been a lot of issues that have created what I like to call "kicked puppy syndrome" in a lot of killers. There is now a distrust and general hatred amongst some killer mains. Some killers will defend their position vehemently not because it is right but because they hate the other side and want to get them back by crushing them. Bullying and disrespecting the killer should not be happening at all. Some things are going to far. One major thing is SWF. Dev Data has recently brought up that parties of 3-4 are actually rarer than people think. The problem is that full parties are more common at higher ranks and they tend to win more. Communication is a valid edge, I would like to see the pip system or the bloodpoint system compensate for when SWF squads do happen. Because when they do happen it can feel unfair and they are always memorable in a negative way. Another example of outright bullying is last second item switching. This is a flaw of the lobby system that I mainly see SWF groups abusing. They will swap to characters with all flashlights or all toolboxes last second and the killer will have no time to change his build to compensate. This is being abused by some of the scummier survivor groups and needs removed entirely. It is not ok. A chat filter at end game is needed alongside a limit to how many messages a player can send in a row so the killer isn't spammed by ignorant asses in the end game lobby. The player should be allowed to speak its BS when either side does this. All my toxicity changes from my Survivor GBU apply to the Killers side too.
• Totem placement!: Lord in heaven help me, this one gives me conniptions. Why are any totems spawning next to the objectives or out in the open. Totems need to be hidden better. I would like to see lit totems take a bit longer to cleanse and dull totems a little easier to cleanse. As of right now you can't really defend your Ruin or Devour Hope or even NOED once you know its being cleansed. Or it pops 3 seconds into the game. It is very frustrating as a killer. All totems need to be harder to find. There is plenty of spots on the outskirts of the maps that never get used outside of the swamp map.
• Spawn locations. Survivors should never be spawning with the killer in their general vicinity but they should never be spawning next to a lit totem either. I would also say that survivors should not spawn right next to each other without a shroud of union. This may help prevent some of the gen rush problems. When 3 survivors spawn next to each other near a gen its kind of annoying because that first gen or two can easily go off before you find your first chase. Spawns are a general problem in the game that effects killer the most. It can be frustrating for survivor as well. Probably could make the whole game better by getting this fixed a bit. Procedural generation is a bit tricky.

-The Ugly

• Generators: Gens are one of the hottest topics of these kinds of posts. I typically don't use the term gen rush lightly because survivors have only a few objectives. Gens, Loop, Gens, Loop some more, then Door, heal and tea-bag at exit gate. Gen-rushing does not become a real thing until tool boxes or teamwork become involved. Ruin and Discordance are the current inhibitors of gen rushing via having several people on a gen. Toolboxes in general need to have their power evaluated if gens don't ever get looked at. Toolboxes should be more geared towards Sabotaging (which is bad because hooks seem too close together right now and there are just too many of them) and provide less of an edge on gens. My fixes are subtle. Have more dangerous gens. Good example are 1 man gens and gens near basement/ dead zones. Putting these spawn areas into the generation like double pallets may help the situation. I would also like to see tapping gens, not gen tapping in response to ruin, but tapping a gen in response to it being kicked to remove the debuff looked at. Currently kicking a gen takes too long to yield any effect and killers only do it when a gen is close to being done and they end up paroling it. Consecutive kicks should take a small chunk out of the progression to discourage the boring tap/kick war. 99% gens should never be a thing. This being in the game makes gen oriented powers like Pigs a little irrelevant. When a survivor is not working actively on a gen its progression should slowly degrade. This number would have to be just right, a small (5% maybe higher or lower) amount every 5-10 seconds. This would reward the killer for chasing them off gens and actually patrolling. You could even link the percent it degrades to how many survivors were working on it last. This can then be reset or removed by a single survivor by tapping it every so often, so tapping is still in the game but less annoying. Gens going too fast seem to be a problem against good survivors and this is hard to pin down without ruining the lower ranks.
• Map design: Okay so this was addressed recently in the Dev talk for their anniversary so I won't spend too much time on it. Basically they are looking at trouble maps like haddonfield and badham and redistributing the value of certain loops. Which is acceptable. I would really like certain structures hot fixed until they can be looked at. No loop should be a 100% uninteractive and safe for the survivor. I am not saying neuter looping. It's the core defense survivors have. I am saying move certain God Windows and slice down some of the unwinnable loops. Right now I see too many survivors bee line towards the most abusable structure even if its got some distance away they know its guaranteed safety. Lower the 100% safety to about 80%. Make winning those loops unlikely, not impossible. Trimming down certain structures could help this. On the other side, there are pallets that are 100% killer favored so much that you can actually leave it up and entice survivors to try and loop you there. All loops and pallets should be more skill oriented than what they are. I think behavior has the right idea of redistributing the value. Another complaint I have is CORN. CORN IS DEVIL! seriously though there are a few maps that are entirely corn and its like walking through nonstop blindness. Its not even pleasing to look at. CORN IS THE REAL KILLER! Some open spots in the corn or having corn fall as you walk through it might make this less irritating. Especially for ranged and stalk killers. I would like to see keys to maps currently being reworked be disabled. Survivors are only sending you to Haddonfield and Badham to exploit the maps bad design with exhaustion perks. If its up for rework it shouldn't be intentionally exploited. The devs have the power to disable offerings and add ons or outright threaten bans. Its not as annoying as infinite mending add ons but I see a lot of people dodge those offerings.

========================================================================================================================== Closing Statement =================================

I hope everybody is enjoying my nerd rage posts. I will probably do more of these down the road as things pop up. I really don't think the Killer role is in an awful state like a lot of the kicked puppies out there. Most of it is quality of life and indirect changes. M1 killers will be in a much better place overall once maps get fixed. Spawning is a big part of the overall frustration with a lot of things and getting a handle on the generation will probably come in time. I would love to hear other peoples ideas about what they see as wrong with the role. It starts with small healthy changes and a little bit of time and effort on the devs side to actually listen to us.