This should be a red flag to developers (Freddy OP!!!)
The fact that Freddy has a relatively low pick rate but a SIGNIFICANTLY higher kill rate should be a major red flag to BHVR that he is too strong.
IDC what you want to say about Nurse or Spirit, but Freddy is objectively one of if not the strongest killers in the game and there are multiple reasons for it.
I must preface this with...
- I was an old Freddy main at rank 1. I played him without Ruin or NOED and was still quite effective with him. However I would acknowledge that he was, at the time, the weakest killer in the game.
- I play new Freddy regularly at rank 1 and I find him to be hands down the most oppressive killer to play. Consistently. Like I win games regularly with 3 or more gens left, AND I rarely have to camp or tunnel.
So why is Freddy so strong?
First is his teleport. He has the best map pressure in the game because he can instantly go to the gen you are working on. No other killer can do this, save for Demo and Hag but they have to set up first which greatly reduces their pressure. Every single gen slowing or gen tracking perk is borderline God tier on Freddy. BBQ, DIscordance, Surveillance, Tinkerer, Thana, Ruin, Pop (especially Pop). Yes these are good perks for many killers, but on Freddy they become exponentially more powerful.
Second is his snares. He has an anti-chase that is very similar to Clown. Say what you want about Clown, but a good Clown will catch you CRAZY fast. Freddy is just a slightly weaker Clown in this aspect, as he can't plant a puddle in front of you during a chase. It is damn near impossible to run a good Freddy for very long around most loops just as it can be a good Clown. This is a minor issue however.
Third is Dream World, or rather the fact it automatically gets Oblivious. This means that he gets a free BT counter, or any perk requiring a terror radius. Sure this hurts him too, but the perks he can't use aren't that great anyway (Unnerving, Insidious??? LOL). Infectious is probably the only TR perk that is good, but guess what? IT STILL WORKS FOR HIM! Yep try it, Infectious will make dreaming survivors scream. Oblivious doesn't stop that for some reason but it negates a lot of good survivor perks.
Fourth is stealth. He has built in semi-stealth due to him being INVISIBLE to awake survivors outside his TR and even sometimes in his TR. This means he can get really close to you while awake without you having a reasonable way to react. He is basically a Wraith.
Finally, he is the ONLY killer in the game with add-ons that affect gen speeds. This is the big one. He has 3 add-ons that do this, and while they were nerfed that is not good enough. They shouldn't exist, period. Don't get me wrong, at first I loved them because my main tactic with old Freddy was to use range add-ons and tracking perks like Surveillance and Nurse's to permanently keep survivors asleep for that sweet 50% action penalty. It was a strong tactic, however since I had to put them to sleep myself it was fair since I had to be active to get that reward. But now you just fall asleep in 60 seconds OR when he hits you. You are going to be asleep more than 50% of the game easily, and usually without any action on the killer's part. Basically he just gets this stuff for free by equipping an add-on.
Let's summarize... Freddy is basically a combination of Hag, Wraith, and Clown with built in BT counter and passive slow down that no other killer has access too.
My entire point here is that Freddy just has WAY WAY too much in his base kit, and that is why he has such a significantly higher kill rate compared to other killers. You can say "don't draw conclusions from data alone" remember that I told you I play new Freddy at rank 1 and my experience is that he is oppressive. Furthermore, as survivor, a good Freddy with a strong slow down build is one of the most difficult killers to beat. Literally your only chance against a killer like this is to run in a 4 man SWF, which anyone who plays this game could tell you is already broken, but I digress.
So what is the solution? How do we fix this? I'm not just making this post to complain, I'm making it to offer a suggestion. Now I have been writing down my ideas for changes to Dead By Daylight I would like to see that I believe would improve the game. It's a lot, I will just copy and paste what I wrote for Freddy. Let's take a look...
NIGHTMARE
- Survivors no longer passively fall asleep at the start of the game and do not see the sleep clock until they are hit and put into the Dream State at least once.
- Dream Snare radius reduced by 20%.
- Oblivious removed from Dream World.
- Nightmare can be always seen by awake survivors within 32m.
- Remove stacking penalty on Snap Clap wake up action.
- Cat Block, Z Block, Pill Bottle, Paint Thinner, Outdoor Rope, Jump Rope, and Swing Chains reworked.
- Cat Block inflicts Haemorrhage on sleeping survivors. Healthy survivors that are asleep will bleed.
- Z Block inflicts Mangled on injured survivors that are asleep and blocks the aura of their dream clock outside of 32m.
- Pill Bottle makes the Nightmare; disappear intermittently to awake survivors; invisible to sleeping survivors outside of 32m.
- Paint Thinner reveals the survivor's aura for 4 seconds upon falling asleep.
- Outdoor Rope greatly increases interaction time for each successive Snap Clap.
- Jump Rope causes the survivor's dream clock to move to a new location every 30 seconds.
- Swing Chains causes Dream World to inflict the Oblivious status effect.
- Garden Rake and Prototype Claws Dream Tokens reduced to 8.
- Prototype Claws aura reading removed. Prototype Claws inflict Hindered for 10 seconds on survivors that interact with Dream Pallets.
- Kid's Drawing adds 5 Dream Tokens.
So let's unpack this.
The first line is actually a slight nerf and buff to Freddy, as one of his only drawbacks is that you KNOW it's a Freddy right when the game starts. This would give some leeway at the start of the game for survivors, and also give Freddy more element of surprise opportunities. Though of course once he hits someone they would see, but the point is he would have a bit more spook at the start. Once you hit them the clock appears and it functions as normal.
Making Dream Snares smaller means it would take better planning in their use. I feel like I can just spam them without care and they do more than what I need them to do. At least require me to use to skill here.
Next. we basically take away all the "fluff" from Freddy's base kit. The goal is to shift most of them to his add-ons. Pill Bottle is a bad add-on IMO, it does nothing for him. This new version would do something for him. Notice how for most of these things while I offer to take away something from his base kit and move it to an add-on, I'm actually buffing it in the process because it now requires an add-on and therefore can be a tad better.
This all opens up new builds for Freddy. I enjoy add-ons that change how a killer functions over straight up making something they do faster or stronger. It leads to more interesting emergent gameplay.
The dream pallet add-ons I feel are redundant. You don't need 3 of them, hell 1 is enough. So let's take Paint Thinner and do something else with it, what I suggest is reminiscent of old Freddy and I would enjoy this as both killer and survivor. I only kept 2 dream pallet add-ons because I honestly couldn't think of another thing for Claws to do.
All the slow down add-ons are gone and in it's place are add-ons that are still really good but not stupid to play against. Giving Oblivious in Dream World as an add-on is acceptable. Base kit it is not.
Finally we make his lame BP add-on a bit better. This is just to offset the fact his snares just got worse.
These are just my suggestions, obviously they won't be implemented but something like this would be a good change for Freddy. If you guys have suggestions you are free to put them here.
Be aware I'm not looking to argue with anyone about whether Freddy is too strong or not. He very much is and the chart above confirms it. We need to discuss ways to fix this.
Comments
while i agree on the general topic that Freddy is a little over the top, i dont necessraily agree with your suggested changes.
i agree that the passive sleeping should only start once a survivor has been dragged into the dreamworld once before andi also agree that some of his add ons need changes, namely those that reduce a survivors action speed while in the dream world.
but thats it. other add ons dont need touching and other base aspects of him are also fine.
If you didn't mention the chart, I bet not so many people would be commenting right now lol. Most of what I see here is that the chart is far from being exact. And although that is true, it doesn't really matter here. You made your points obvious and clear, the chart was just something of a confirmation, something that made you even more confident in your opinion. But as said, even if the chart was somehow reliable, it wouldn't matter! You probably would have made this post anyway. I'd not mention the chart at all next time, as it tilted a lot of people (though you can never fully avoid that).
Imo, Freddy is a very strong killer. Because of his passive abilities, both good and bad players will play him well. Playing survivors a lot, I can confirm that playing against Freddy is much more difficult than against other killers. Wth is that lunge range???
Wish you get some more valuable feedback and not the 100th comment "cHaRt nOt rEliAblE." Yes, we know, we know.
I also main freddy and 100% agree he is op I dont tunnel/camp and end up with everyone on death hook with 3-4 gens left it is def op killer
Always, much like Freddy, Doc, Leatherface, and Pig.
I'm hoping to join the ranks of The Elite Four, someday.
Unrelated to your previous post, but I hope the game runs better on it.
Yeah T_T
*blinks into boxes*
*looks at fatigue + cooldown*
*looks at kill rates*
Best Killer :3
he can slow at loops, he can teleport and have synergy with a ton of perks, he can slow down your progress, but trapper can't start with two traps by default. But wait, trapper has near 60% killrate, which means he's perfectly balanced. You guys know how strong Trapper is, right? Right?
This is an amazing and well thought post.
A+ criticism, and matches my experience facing Freddie as a survivor, if I win, it's only because the Freddie was bad.
BHVR said to be careful (i.e. don't misinterpret things).
Not being able to draw any conclusions means that the data set is worthless and should never have been published, so using data from the graph to back up an argument should not be frowned upon.
I mean, I look at the Doctor's kill rate and go, "yeah, that's because (among other things revolving around how his power interacts with the game mechanics) I kill myself on hook immediately when playing against Doctor, so that fits in with what I already know". That doesn't mean he should be purely nerfed.
What about pig getting that second spot? I play mobile so I don't know what people put up with in freddy. But can you tell me what to expect if he comes to mobile?
I quoted Peanits straight-up saying "don't draw conclusions." Granted, it was from a different chart from a while back, but same thing.
Freddy is not OP. There are better killers, the thing with Freddy is he is WAY too easy to play with no downside to snare spamming. Bubba, Myers and Pig are pretty ######### killers yet have high killrates - so what's common between this set of killers, and pretty blatant from the statistics in general? How easy a killer is to play is more important than how good the killer is, most people who play DBD play casually and are not very good - all this data does it show the obvious that Freddy is extremely easy to play with a bloated kit, slap Pop on him, spam snares, ez rank 1 even if you are dogshit (seen this in practice too, had a friend who was stuck in green rank and wanted the rank 1 achievement, told him to play Freddy and slap on pop, rank 1 in 3 days, Freddy + Pop is enough to carry nearly anyone vs average players) - Sadly it seems the devs also misuse this data (it's actually utterly useless because of the fact the strength of the killer isn't the most important factor in killrate) - but it'll be interesting to see what they do. Pretty blatant to any experienced player Freddy is strong, but he is not OP. He is just really braindead easy to play and has synergy with Pop which is probably the most braindead strong killer perk in the game too. If there's any changes to be made to him, it's just to make snare spam not a thing and make him a bit more difficult.
These stats are not for balancing purposes
Seems untrue in dev practice though, such as how Almo made the absurd claim Pig is A tier, while she happens to have a high killrate due to being simple to use, they were also used in reference to Myers who is clearly a killer that needs a few adjustments to make him decent in 2020, again, simple to play killer. Unfortunately, these stats which are pretty much useless appear to be being used for balance by Almo at the very least, but like you say about Freddy, your problem with him (which I agree) with is that he is so easy to play as. He's strong too ofc, but this is what mainly gives him a high killrate, and virtually the entire chart backs up the fact that ease of use is more important than strength.
Edit: Also, irrespective of what you think of Object as a perk whether it's OP as ######### or fine, it was also again clear from Almo's look into the perk he used stats to influence his opinion that it's fine, but pickrate/escaperate stats are not useful metrics whatsoever to determine how strong object is.
I’m also an old Freddy main, did very well at red ranks, and I agree with almost everything you said.
I loved old Freddy, and I genuinely wish they’d never changed him. (Only true dedicated old Freddy mains would understand why).
Thematically, the rework was excellent. Gameplay wise, he’s a bloated unfocused mess.
I’m gonna take a big stab in the dark here that a strong factor in doing the rework was that purchases of The Nightmare on Elm Street DLC weren’t great, not enough to justify the licensing costs anyway. And I’d also guess that a significant influence on far from optimal DLC purchase was word of mouth. I.e. the far reaching perception that Freddy was a weak killer (which was far from the truth).
Anyway, nothing reinvigorates interest and purchases of old DLC like a killer that significantly increases the players chances of winning a match.
You are right. Current Freddy has WAY too much. Particularly Swing Chains, Outdoor Rope, and Jump Rope. These are outdated add ons. Freddy already has built in stall and lots of reasons to motivate survivors to regularly wake up to help stall the match. Add ons with built in gen slow down are unnecessary, and are a relic simply to appease old Freddy mains.
His Snares are definitely far too strong. I.e. not enough restrictions and drawbacks.
Here’s what i’d change:
The point of a quote is that it's directly from the source, so although quoting him there does bring some credit it doesn't entirely give just to say that the same could be same about this chart, as the other chart/graph that the quote is from could be something entirely different.
It was also in reference to a chart detailing kill rates (among other things). Every time the devs release a chart detailing kill rates, it always has to eventually be said not to take the charts seriously because people read way too much into them.
I agree that the charts shouldn't be read so on the nose, as the problem with stats in a game like these is it doesn't consider all of the variables, however not taking anything from the chart would be a waste and it probably wouldn't have been posted then like with what Kind_Lemon stated.
@Maperson Except the devs themselves said she doesn't need a buff, she just has a high skill cap and some people who play her aren't as good with her to that drops her stats. You have to take that into consideration and the op made a lot of valid points that tbh you can't argue against.
Freddy rn takes barely any skill to play and get good results. Unlike the nurse where if you take time to learn how to play her you can become unstoppable. At least that way you earned it. I'm a survivor main and play killer here and there and tbh I play Freddy because he's a breeze to play as, ESPECIALLY with the right perks.
It was only meant to be a little fun fact thing, not something to use as evidence of game balance or lack thereof. It was posted as-is because the devs weren't trying to prove anything with it. It's fine for what it's trying to be; it's simply not trying to be meaningful data.
@TAG it’s also worth noting that @thesuicidefox proposals and conclusions are borne of comparison from being both a seasoned old Freddy main and a seasoned current Freddy main.
Like thesuicidefox i mained both versions of Freddy, and the devs went too far and bloated Freddy’s kit. It’s been echoed on these forums before by other old Freddy mains that the rework is too much.
I'm not arguing for or against Freddy being too strong. I am arguing that one should not use the chart as evidence. That's it.
I used to be an old Freddy main as well, and he really was truly weak.
Sure, he had some underrated aspects, like his slowdown, aura reading and invisibility but he just sucked.
He had nothing to chase with, and it was far too easy to get out of the dream world.
He really did need a rework, because he literally negated stealth and took it out of the game, and was extremely unfun to play against whilst being the worst killer in the game.
Not to mention, the fact that he couldn't hit survivors without them being in the dream world is such a god awful feature.
”and it was far too easy to get out of the dream world.”
This was kinda the point though. The aura reading, although extraordinarily useful, and the direct action penalty, were “red herrings”. Old Freddy is meant to be intentionally playing around this knowing that the true stall is survivors wasting time waking up (or ruining their own repair progress). Hence why it was so simple and easy to put survivors to sleep again, so that survivors have just wasted their own time and now need to do it all over again. Repeatedly.
I agree that the chart shouldn't have been used as evidence, but judging how the op was asking for a discussion about Freddy maybe not the best place to say it without any context as it comes of as you trying to denounce the whole argument. Sorry for making mountains out of mole-hills though much love.
I'm literally still roasting :(
Your point? I play him and play against him. I beat him probably around 50/50, and for a person with over 4000 hours consistently at rank 1 that is pretty damn balanced to me. All the while in the games I am against him he normally only takes out 1-2 people (that one could be me). That's how the game is supposed to be balanced.
He is going to normally wreck on mid to lower tier players, because they are mid to lower tier in regards to skill.
Low pick rate and high kill rate mean he’s a specialty pick, the few that use him mastered him. But for the wider audience he is not OP
With all respect,but there's absolutely nothing on freddy that you could master
Just here with popcorn please continue gang.
if anything i just think this shows that freddy has an extremely low skill cap. his power is extremely easy to master and he has a ton of stuff in his basekit... he his pretty much a noob friendly killer.
Most of the people that play dead by daylight don't have 1000 hours let alone 4000, and he also stomps pretty good players as well obviously he doesn't stomp the best, people with thousands of hours, or swfs. The problem with Freddy is he is a low skill floor, low skill ceiling killer, and if you win against him 50% of the time great but the general public doesn't hence the op and him stating his opinion both as a killer and a survivor.
They defended Nurse for how long? And Spirit? (Who I mained and confirmed for myself was utterly brokely eaasy.) Killers will always make an excuse. I see far more survs willing to have a fair conversation about balance than I ever do from killers. And anyone that dares to say a killer needs a nerf is completely shut down.
I honestly think killer mains are just lonely bc they can only voice an opinion to an audience online. Us survivors get to vent to eachother all the time and don't need reddit to feel validated for crutching on bad mechanics like Spirit. Anyone that defends spirit or old nurse is 100 percent rotting in bias.
Why does every argument on both sides have to be "hurr durr killer bad" or "hurr durr survivor bad"?
Both sides are equally #########.
Yep, both killers and survivors are unreasonable, not just killers.
That's kind of the problem which we're trying to address. If no one says anything nothing is gonna get change which is why this whole discussion thread exists, to discuss things in the game including problems. It's useless comments like these that add nothing to the discussion, don't address anything, and waste people's time that's the real issue and why at the end of the day nothing changes.
Preach brother 🙌
So what i'm gathering from all this, Nurse and Blight need buffs
While I agree that the statistics need to be taken with a grain of salt, I also agree that Freddy should not stay how he is.
I am sure many would agree that his kit is overloaded and could use some toning down. If he really needs all these powers, they could be weakened a bit so he doesn't have a good solution for everything. Deathslinger is specialized for chases, so he has low mobility to compensate. Freddy however, has both chase and mobility tools, that are very good.
The term "Jack of all trades, master of none" is a thing for a reason. If you have a wide variety of skills, you should of course be out performed in one category by someone who only focuses on that category. If Freddy is going to be able to do everything, he should not be able to do certain things as good as specialized killers.
Examples of changes:
I ain't a Freddy main or anything, so I don't know if these are good. Just throwing ideas.
This is not how you draw conclusion about stats. what you need to look for in stats is patterns. Do you see a pattern with stats? I certainly do. All the killers that have high killrate have powers that are all about slowing the game down or speeding them up(from instant downs). Freddy & Pig are both killers specifically designed to slow the game down with dream world and bear traps. Leatherface has instant down so his chases are half as long. Doctor has snap out and two killers after are ghostface & myers who also have instant downs.
Spirit is actually statistical outlier. She's a chase killer and yet if you look at where all other chase killers are at, they're at lower end of the graph where nurse,huntress are. My guess is that Spirit's power has something to do with how its perceived from survivor point of view.
Billy,Oni and legion statistically under perform. Billy and Oni are instant down killers and if you look at where all instant down are, they generally seem to have high killrate and Legion is killer all about injuring multiple survivor quickly and slowing the game down with heals, so he's suppose to be where pig/Freddy are but for some reason falls way behind.
In any case, these statistics are not really important unless your game balancer or something. The reason why killers that have instant downs or game-slow mechanics have high killrates is because these killers generally stomp bad survivors/newbie friendly killers(On average). The killers on right have a high mechanical skill-ceiling and therefore very low margin error, so on average, they lose more often from player error. I'm curious what average total hook count is for each killer. It might show a different story.
And where exactly is the game balanced around then?
Freddy is 200% fine where he's at. The game is allowed to have strong killers ya know.
Stats say that nurse needs good buffs. You cannot just cherry pick the statistics to fit your narrative
Yeah Idk what people are smoking when they say Freddy is fine. He's way too overtuned for his own good. The ruin+undying+tinkerer combo with good add-ons on him is completely busted too, which is probably another reason why his kill rate is so high. I think if all they did was limit the free pressure he gets (survivors should NOT passively fall into the dream world without some kind of interaction from Freddy. Make it so Freddy at least has to hit survivors to pull them into the dream world) he'd be fine
Yeah fredbo is a bit op. One of the first killers I got and I thought I was gonna have to go pro because everyone always says how hard it is for a killer to win but I had like a 90% win rate with him. Hes just that good
Okay just gonna say right off the bat I agree freddy atm is too strong. However I think the nerfs you list out for him are to overly complicated and unnecessary. Here's what I mean. When I or many survivors go up against a decent freddy my first thought isn't Oh god it's freddy, it's more like Oh God I bet hes got such and such add ons. Cuz he has the best addons in the game.
Said add ons are what make freddy that little bit too op imo. Yeah he's pretty good with his base kit. But I think that's exactly how a killer should be. They don't rely on addons, and can feel like and oppressive force. It is a proper game of cat and mouse.
He's one of the only intimidating killers in the game and I think more killers should have decent Mao pressure. As for his snares whilst I agree their good their only as good as their user and I hardly ever see them used well, same with dream pallets. I also find them quite easy to avoid a lot of the time once you know he has them.
Anyway my solution to the problem is to do your suggested add ons. I think.they make sense and are quite responsible, in fact I'd say make some more interesting add ons that offer different ways to play freddy that will keep him from becoming stale.
However I do strongly disagree that his base kit is op. If anything id say it's mostly balanced and killers should be more of a threat like freddy. The gen and map pressure he and other killers should provide could help stop gens from appearing to be rushed. That or give the survivors a second objective That's fun.
Balancing the game around 50% IS Such a good idea.
Since 2k means depip in red rank for KILLERS, how can you see that as balanced?
Your balancing issue doesn't take into account this clear part of the game, nor does it take into account that dying as a survivor doesn't mean that you are not progressing in rank, rank being the sole judge we have of a survivor / killer's performance in the game at this time, making it one of the only winning factor statically worth taking into account.
One death in your team make the game exponentially harder, should we get a buff as survivor for each downed teammates? Like.. . Let's say more gen speed for each teammates who died? Maybe even a move speed buff too!
Dying being absolutely irrelevant to our only grading of "winning", the problem is the incapacity of killers to reliably kill survivor's since a high kill rate doesn't prevent survivor from doing their job. 3 survivor dying to save one is still a win, it was teamwork that allowed this one person to escape the grasp of the killer and the punishment from the entity.
But I like the idea of running around without a killer because they are too weak to do anything, that's my dream for a survivor game, my 3 friends and I strolling in a cornfield, jumping over pallets as we skip around cheerfully with out crown of flower, careless about the possibility of the physically disabled angry person too slow and too weak for being of any threat to us... This would be so much fun taunting a powerless killer as we do whatever we please, that's balanced, 4 people out of 5 having fun, a huge win !
TLDR : kill rate is bullshit as a statistic for balance purpose, as 50% is a loss for the killer in the current state of the game and a win regardless for all survivors if you are not a potato
The game get exponentially harder for survivors for each full sacrificed, hence higher killrate killers have a form of easy-ish insta down or slow in their kits.
Survivor being killed doesn't mean a loss, right NOW pips are the "winning" indicator and death DOESN'T mean depip.
It means depip only if you get 2 hooks the whole game and you camp those two hooks wile the others do gens. Fun.
Not even a 1k is a depip if it's your 9th hook, even at rank 1.
So I'm gonna skip the rest of your wall of text, you're clearly just bad
Suit yourself, I didn't expect to see many people able to put any effort in thinking on this forum to start with.
I still tried, thanks for confirming that you are part of the majority. =)
Unlike you tho, I will take the time to reply to your message, I call it a basic form of respect, I invite you to try it sometimes, you may even get some respect back for it.
Now if you play killers, you should know WHEN and HOW the majority of 2k games happen. A key that gives 2 free escape, game were we run the killer's around on strong loops were they can barely get any hooking done until end game colapse, were they defend a hooked survivor hoping to get their only kill/ have noed and make a small comeback.
I'm surprised you didn't realise that already and were unable to notice how easily hook states can be skipped with you clear tremendously higher experience of the game compared to mine. And that's without counting the constant suicide on hook by random who got their fragile ego shattered after being downed first.
Balance involve both side having fun not only one, try to remember =)
Yes, but to get that much hooks, you need to win chases fast. And every time a killer does that, ppl cry he is unfair in a 1v1 situation, and gets nerfed.
As a freddy main myself I can agree that he is the most powerful killer I’ve played. All of your points are good and thought out as well as the change ideas. Unfortunately, this probably won’t be implemented which is a shame as bhvr hardly listen to their community anymore