Some data on Legion's performance since the Oni update
Hi!
We've got enough data since the Oni release to make some comments on Legion's performance after the speed update.
For all platforms, all maps and all ranks, from Nov 2 2019 to Dec 2 2019, the Legion's average killrate was 61.99%, ranking him 12/17 in killrate. For reference, Nurse is at the bottom with 43.9% and The Nightmare is at the top with 70.83%.
In the same period but just looking at ranks 1-4, Legion is ranked 13/17 for kill rate. It's still Nurse at the bottom and Nightmare at the top.
If I switch to all platforms, all maps and all ranks from Dec 3 to Dec 19 (The Oni released on Dec 3), Legion's killrate is 62.5%, but that ranks them at 10/18 for killrate.
Just looking at ranks 1-4, the killrate is 71.2%, ranked at 12/18.
These are not massive changes, but they are noticable in a statistical sense given the sample size in terms of number of games played. We can conclude that the Deep Wound change (running stops the timer instead of TR) combined with the speed change (restored vault speeds and 5.0 m/s -> 5.2 m/s Frenzy run speed) were a net buff to Legion, both in terms of raw kill efficiency and in relation to the other Killers.
EDIT: Typo. It's out of 17 Killers the first month, then out of 18 after the Oni release. Apologies.
Comments
I've never seen Nurse in this month. Please disclose how her usage rate changed. I feel Nurse nerfing was completely failed.
And what do you base her “doing well with” on? I have played against like 2 Nurses at red ranks on PC since her nerf.
TBH I feel like anything between 60 and 70% can be healthy depending on how hard the killer is. I think the reason why it's consistently above 50% is because all survivors escaping is pretty rare, at least in my experience. It's easy for a killer to secure a single kill in the end game, so in my observations at least 4 kills is a far more common scenario than 4 escapes. So what would generally be a 50% average ends up being like 62,5% maybe? I feel like a number around that would be fine too.
I see what you are saying to an extent. However, you are missing something that nurse mains have been trying to say and are being ignored. Why spend a million hours learning nurse and have an UNFUN experience but not necessarily do any better than Freddy? Or Spirit? Huntress? Hillbilly?
Data from hardcore nurse mains is still not good data unless you compare it to hardcore survivor mains. And hardcore survivor mains in SWF against a hardcore nurse player. Neither was considered when nurse was thrown under the bus.
I think that 62% would probably be too high - I'd be fine with anything around 50-60% because you're never going to have perfect balance.
Something we should both keep in mind is that 25% is basically the floor for killers and 75% is something of a ceiling due to the hatch.
But again, I think they need to adjust the emblem system first for sure.
Yes, we have no data of hardcore killer or survivor means. All we have is red ranks data which means very little. Which is why you shouldn't have drawn any conclusions about Nurse balance from these numbers anyways.
And please notice I never talked about how fun she is to play - and neither did you beforehand. That's an entire separate discussion from balance. What you did was say a killer was underpowered based solely on data without context.
And why are you saying that they didn't consider that data when Nurse was changed? That data doesn't even exist in the first place. How on earth were they supposed to consider it?
That doesn't mean people can't do well with her. It just means she's not freelo anymore. Not everyone can play Nurse, and honestly the vibe I got from Nurse players here is that they prefer it that way. I get it, she's meant to be the high skill cap killer you have to dedicate your time to be good with. However, that comes with a price. She's inevitably gonna be hard to pick up and get results with if you don't put in the time and practice.
Beforehand you could be a mediocre Nurse and still get consistent 4ks. That's just wrong considering the difference between a mediocre, hell, even a good Nurse player from a great Nurse player.
Because the OP, which is a dev, was strictly looking at the killrate which was only fair to apply it to nurse as well. Nurse shouldn't be exception just because she is so hard to learn.
That's my whole complaint: she was ruined when the data didn't even exist. They strictly made a knee-jerk reaction to the loud collective voice of the survivors and some killers that didn't care about nurse. This happened in 2017 that left half of her addons useless because survivors could not handle the fact they couldn't pallet loop a killer for five gens as they were doing to Wraith, Hillbilly, and Trapper. Now we have a double-nerfed nurse that is so underperforming and with a handicap artificially in place so she doesn't outperform other killers such as Freddy, Spirit, Huntress, and Hillbilly to name a few of the better ones. Nurse, being the difficult killer she was, deserved the slightly higher killrate than the other killers. Before the nerf, she was only slightly higher at red ranks.
In the period between 2 Nov and 2 Dec what was Legions kill rate at Rank 1? You said after the 2 Dec their kill rate was 71.2% which we don't know if it's up or not from the previous period.
I love seeing stats so thanks for this.
You were never able to do well with Nurse if you were mediocre, barring omega blink.
This x10. People love using the data to say Spirit is over performing, but then ignore data when it comes to Nurse. Spoiler alert: people only use data when it supports their argument.
For those concerned about the Nurse's killrate, I'd just like to put it out there that Peanits said (about a month ago) that her kill rate has been steadily climbing back up since the changes, at least on PC, as people get used to the new Nurse.
So if we're basing her quality on killrate alone, she may yet turn out perfectly fine.
She's not underperforming by a long shot. She has 65% kill rate at red ranks. If any numbers are gonna matter, it's those ones. Even though they're not that important either.
And yes, she SHOULD be an exception when analyzing data because she's hard to learn. That's how any PVP game with data works. It's not that complex of a concept to grasp.
And honestly, if it was a "knee jerk reaction" it would've happened years ago because Nurse had been to strong for a long while. And no, you can't say survivors "can't adapt" to her. The game has been out for over 3 years. Telling people who've played this game for years to "just adapt" is exactly the same BS as telling killers to "just apply pressure" vs SWF in big maps. It's a dishonest argument. At the very least her add-ons had to be changed. A huge part of the playerbase also thought her base kit should be changed. and unless you happen to secretly be lowkey among the best killer players in the world or whatever, your opinion that people should "be better" is worth just as much as the opinion of people who thought she should be nerfed harder than she was.
This community would be a lot better if people were more willing to accept balance changes. Not everything is "nerf survivor, buff killer" yknow.
No one credible was using only that data to say Spirit was overperforming. Again, context matters. Using a dishonest argument to fight another dishonest argument doesn't really add anything to the discussion.
And yes, you could absolutely be mediocre with her and still do well. The fact that non Nurse players used her to climb (sometimes without Omega Blink or extra +range) was enough evidence. You're not supposed to do that well with a high skillcap killer without putting in the time and effort. If that happens, it means the killer is overtuned. Like she was.
My point wasn't about whether this study is good or bad. My whole point is more data taken over time is better than data taken in a short time period. That's statistics 101. The medical example was just a method to explain this point.
I understand nerfs need to happen, but doesn't there need to be some line in the sand where survivors need to grow up and not DC if they don't get their way?
They're already testing DC penalties so that line is already there, you just missed it
Um... the devs themselves said Spirit was over performing based on data. Please show me a mediocre Nurse who climbed without omega blink. Or is that argument based purely on speculation too?
It was an argument based both on observation and personal experience, since I did exactly that back when she was busted. I know it's anecdotal, but it's still better than claiming no one did that because you hadn't encountered that.
And they said they took the data into account, but they have many more parameters to make decisions like that. Please find a dev post where they claim to have used exclusively those numbers to say she was oveperforming.
The issue is DW, its literally nothing now
On the stream, they directly referenced the numbers. How else are we supposed to interpret that?
I love how, when the community uses BHVR's own stats and data to make an argument about a killer/suvivor performance, there's the inevitable dev comment of "well stats are just that, there's a lot more that goes into it, don't take it too seriously".
Now we get another dev using stats, and only stats (barely a months worth, at that), to basically conclude a killer deemed unfun and ineffective by those who play them most, to have ACTUALLY received a buff! And here everyone who got to test the changes and found them detrimental thought they were nerfs! Silly us, what we feel and experience is wrong when there's DATA!
Oh, but only some data. The data that supports dev's decisions. The other data we shouldn't read too much into.
I'm not liking theses mixed messages and double standards.
On stream, they referenced the numbers, which suggests they were a factor.
On the forums, they stated the numbers weren't the only factor.
Therefore, we can interpret that the numbers were a factor, but far from the only one. Which only reinforces what I've been saying in this thread that we shouldn't analyze data without context. The devs have context, we don't necessarily have.
Under-performing in comparison to other killers considering her difficulty. She should be higher. Also, those numbers are the entire population while ignoring survivor skill.
This is why you see almost no nurses. There is no reason to spend numerous hours when your results is not necessarily going to be higher than other killers.
The second nerf was simply delayed because survivors being satisfied with nurse losing 1/3 of her basekit in 2016 eventually forgot that and the noise became louder and louder until they had to nerf her again. Remember, she originally could have 6 blinks and could move at normal movement speed. Now it is maxed at 2 blinks (the 3 blink addon is actually useless and doesn't count) with two penalties, and move slower than any other killer in the game. She can't even hit a survivor without blinking. She's lost about 66% of the original power! I haven't played every game out there, but I have never seen a character in any game nerfed that much before just because players got good with a character.
There is never a red rank survivor without DH. She can't bait that DH like other killers can so on top of her difficulty you have to hit every survivor 3 times! Nobody considered any of that when the nerf hammer was coming down.
Why on Earth should she be higher than 65% when Freddy, who is a powerful killer with a ridiculously easy learning curve, has 10% more?
If a difficult character in any game has the same win rate as a powerful easy character, they are overtuned. It's as simple as that.
I didn't miss anything bud. This penalties did not exist for prior nerfs and my point still stands that sore losers shouldn't determine who is buffed or nerfed.
Yeah it’s a lot of double speak and cherry picking. I love the game and think the devs are doing a good job. But I appreciate honesty and transparency. Which I think there could be a lot of improvement. I want to know hard facts like
-the ranks of the killers and kill rates and what ranks their at. Same goes for survivor ranks.
-when do kills happen most in the game. ( I tend to think swf teams fall apart at the end when they throw themselves at the killer to save folks)
-I wanna know what ranks d/c ing is the most popular.
-how many gems get done before the first kill occurs and what ranks are they at.
-how often do survivors escape through the hatch, and how often does this happen at high-middle and low rank.
these are some examples.
Because one of the parts of game health is, indeed, evaluating things that frustrate people the most and adjusting such things. It's a basic concept on any game, not just DBD.
And it's very hard to implement DC penalties when 1. you don't have dedicated servers and 2. you have a buggy mess of a game that randomly kicks people out of matches or leaves them stuck in places for no good reason. Point 1 has been adressed, point 2 hasn't. It was clearly an awful time to implement DC penalties. Now it's a better time, so they're doing it. There's literally nothing inconsistent in the way they handled the DC fiasco, you sound just upset that stuff that shouldn't even be in the game in the first place got removed.
We don't know anything about the players actually playing her. With Freddy there is a lot of players while there is only a tiny amount of nurses I am only assuming. How do we know that the only nurses trying to play her now are experienced? And that paints even a darker picture. Experienced nurses not doing better than new Freddys. Don't know for sure unless a dev can give more specifics. We're both speculating.
Thing is, you shouldn't analyze data without context. I don't understand how people can't grasp that.
The devs have context, we don't. Would it be nice to see more context in this post? Yes, it absolutely would. But that doesn't mean we can go and interpret the raw data to our heart's content without thinking about what it means.
It's disgusting behavior by the devs and downright insulting. They outright tell people their opinions are wrong too when explaining the killer isn't fun.
Look at the data. There are more Nurses on red ranks than Hags, Bubbas, Doctors, Plagues, Clowns, Demos and Pigs. Are you telling me that there's a chance on Earth that there are more hardcore Nurse mains than players from any of these killers? Are you telling me that 5% of the killer playerbase in red ranks is constituted by hardcore Nurse mains?
They're most definitely not. Great Nurse players have always been a rare sight because of how difficult she is. So no, it's not only very experienced players who are playing her. So it's only natural that she has a lower kill rate.
So if I'm playing an NBA game and my opponent always plays as the Lakers or the Bucks, I should just complain about it until they nerf the teams? You missed my overall point. The Twitter and forum mobs should not dictate how changes are made. There is a difference between fixing a bug that is frustrating and simply playing an opponent you don't like.
Killers are trying! Regardless of her performance, killers are going to try her when they get sick of pallet looping at red ranks. They can give her 1 blink with zero chance of killing anyone and people will try her. I know there has been a significant loss of nurses at red ranks since the nerf and that is telling.
That takes me back to my defense of the nurse before the nerf. If a good nurse is a rare sight, why was she even nerfed? A good looper and a good genrush team is way more common than a great nurse player. A really good looper can put almost every killer on the roster on a dogleash.
That's a dishonest comparison and you know it. Nothing in an NBA game completely changes the way you have to play the game the way different killers do in DBD.
A more honest (and accurate) comparison is how devs on League of Legends shift power on champions from frustrating points to less frustrating points.And obviously nerf what deserves to be nerfed, like Spirit and Nurse did.
Any flat buff is going to increase the kill % value by a constant unless there's something going on in the background like the killer skewing the data by farming (farming usually means a 0K and making a buffed killer appear weaker than they are).
There's no arguement there, but I think what others are saying is that, you barely increased their kill % value with their buffs. However, their buff is definitely a great start for sure, and I appreciate you being completely transparent — the community loves to see statistics and transparency! 🤗😁
It was a very honest comparison. Maybe you don't understand sports. If I'm playing someone whose team has great three point shooters, I'm going to play different then if they are a team with a dominant big man.
Legion feels less enjoyable to play now because you have nothing to work for when using his power. I don't think Legion will ever be an amazing killer or anything but he's not fun to play now. If anything he feels more boring to play than before. STBL and Sloppy allowed him to stand out more because it allowed him to deter healing to get instant downs later in the match and faster attackspeed at quick rates than other killers. These advantages were not really gamebreaking, they just added fun factor to the killer. legion's fun factor is kinda dead. I don't think he'll receive any changes but I wish his power were somehow more interactive for the survivor and more rewarding for the killer to use. It feels a bit dull now. In his case, it is not about effectiveness but more about lack of uniqueness. Just lack of satisfaction. Just my 2 cents on it.
It still doesn't change the fact that in most online multiplayer games that are a bit more similar to DBD, the devs do change things that are overly frustrating all the time. There's nothing wrong about that. It is, in fact, good game design.
Games are supposed to be fun. Anti-fun stuff gets changed all the time. Get over it.
Again, the over time component is not the important part of this. Bad samples taken over a long period of time are still bad samples.
What you should do is make sure you take a representative sample, and a months worth is probably good enough to compare to the previous 3 months, for purposes of this conversation. It's *probably* a bit premature to be declaring it a buff without other contextual data (did other killer kill rates go up too) but like I said in the other message I assume good faith.
I never said they gave the stats in bad faith. And yes, a bad sample is a bad sample. In a case like this and similar ones though, the bigger the sample the better.
So if tomorrow everyone said that sprint burst needed to increase speed 5 fold or they will dc, the devs should do it? I don't think so. I'm not even angry bro so there is nothing to get over.
Love me some false equivalences!
The moment people start saying things like this is the moment I know they're no longer worth debating. So have a good night bud.
Anti-fun by whose standards? Yours? Survivors? The reality is that people say something is not fun because they are losing to it. This doesn’t mean they should be acknowledged.
Nice counter argument. Your post is the sign you have no more evidence to back up your claims. You should run for office if your go to argument is "the other guy is saying something I disagree with so he's not worth talking to."
By the overwhelming majority of the playerbase's standards?
Every single reasonable person I know supported the inicial Legion changes because your skill mattered very little against them. Most reasonable people acknowledged Spirit needed some changes too. We're at a time when developers can listen to player feedback and tune their game accordingly. They're not gonna stop doing that just because you think people's opinions aren't valid.
Okay then, so now that it’s almost universally agreed that Nurse base kit change stinks, why not change it? People are voicing their opinion.
I usually tend to have a similar opinion like you (similar, not the same), but here it is were we seem to distinguish massively in our opinions.
-1) If I can't do anymore the same actions with my character like before, it is for me a nerf. From case to case, the stats -or killrates- stay maybe stable, but still... - You can't do anymore, what you could have done before.
A lot of fun could come back to the Legion, with a few small changes, btw.^^. *insert advertisement for a new Legion patch here :D*
-2) I would never care what dcing people think. Don't understand this now as a accusation towards you from me. It isn't. It is just my standpoint to never give toxic people (and dc'er are imo toxic) any turf. If someone is annoyed by something - he can write nerf threads, or threads that he is unhappy about the path, the game or programm is going.
If he starts being toxic, I immediately don't care anymore what he is saying, or what he is thinking.
Especially as a "honest" Legion player (that has never exploit and son), I had feel me betrayed on 2 fronts, to that time. 1x because of the exploiting Legions that have do anything in their power, to make a nerf necessary and then a second time, because it had look, as would a companie also see "dcing" as opinion.
I see "dcing" as a ban reason - no matter about which game we talk and that is everything I can say about dcing.
Really the only reason why old Nurse had an high average killrate, was because of her busted add-ons. Range add-ons with no downside, and additional blinks. Without those, you needed to be actually good to get consistently good results. All while she was still fun, because of how much freedom she had with her power. Kinda like how people love Hillbilly with how he can use his chainsaw at all times on demand with no restriction. Its fun for the user, and offers counterplay from the survivors.
The add-on changes were needed, and justified, as they made even bad Nurses get easy kills. However the cooldown .. slapped on another cooldown just makes her unfun unless you are already ridiculously good with her.
For me, it's getting stunned for missing. Absurd. Especially since most misses are due to framerate issues.
As long as it's an adjustment and not a buff, just go through with it.