What even are these balance changes?
We say Freddy's fine, he gets nerfed. We say buff Demogorgon, he gets nerfed. We say Huntress is mostly fine, she gets half her add-ons changed. What is going on? Let's break it down a bit.
Freddy was overated as #########. His slowdown add-ons did basically nothing, and his snares could be countered by running away from the loop or dropping the pallet early. But people whined that they did things 3% slower and don't know how to loop or improvise, so that's where those changes came from. His snare and pallet count shouldn't have been touched, because literally nobody was complaining about that aspect, especially not his pallets, which according to one of the devs is stronger than his snares, which I took for a jest at first. And they made clocks way stronger for some reason. He's basically a Clown without the range now. These new sound add-ons of his are a joke also. Same problems that happen with Stridor are gonna happen with these: if the survivors don't have Iron Will, it's gonna make them sound overly loud instead of setting them to normal volume, which will confuse you. And the black box is useless.
Demogorgon's best add-on is rat liver because it makes you not have to slow down massively to charge your shred. We say, "make it basekit" and they nerf it. He also gets a joke add-on now. Can't wait to waste hundreds of thousands of bp on those as I go through the bloodweb. The passive killer's instinct add-on sounds nice but it's just gonna be constant and annoying like tier 1 discordance. And they increased his stealth coming out of portals by a single second. Amazing.
The Huntress changes are the least offending one of the bunch, but I do have things to say. Iri heads being limited to 1 is perfect, so good job. Her other pink add-on is garbage, not because of its effect because the effect is actually good, but the fact that it's a pink. Reminds me of Demogorgon's useless pinks. An effect like that should be uncommon or something. Her exhaustion add-ons were also perfectly nerfed. They're still in, but they only give a few seconds of exhaustion not the ludicrous 30-90 seconds anymore. These projectile speed add-ons are somewhat worrying. I feel like they're gonna be an auto-include anytime someone is playing Huntress, similar to her wind-up add-ons which make her busted in my opinion, or like a bag add-on for Trapper, or the old chainsaw reach add-ons for the chainsaw killers, or pre-nerf rat liver. In essence, it feels like if you're not using one of those add-ons, you're missing out on the killer's full potential, or like those add-ons should be basekit and they're not. But what I fear more is that the projectile speed add-ons will make her absurdly powerful from a survivor point of view. These are essentially a substitute for wind-up add-ons but better because the hatchets give you less reaction time, and imagine stacking both projectile speed add-ons or combining one with a wind-up add-on. Maybe change them to a 5% projectile speed increase, but I really don't like the direction of these new add-ons in the first place.
And then there's other things like the button mash to skill check hook change, which I'm grateful for but it doesn't stop hook suicides.
In my opinion, not enough diamonds and too much rough in this set of changes.
Comments
I think the devs are really reluctant to make changes that the community suggests. I don't think they like the idea that we know their game better than they do. They want to make their own changes.
I don't think they understood that they were nerfing Demo
I don't think they even realise what they have created with Lucky Break.
The community reads these proposed changes and knows whether they are bad or good without even needing to test them out.
Iri heads, moris, DS, OoO, button mashing on hook, colour blind mode and keys could have been changed a long time ago if they listened to us but they do not want to give in to the community.
The change to the button mashing was never about preventing deliberate suicides, you can still do it even with the changes. People were accidently suiciding because of how fast you had to mash the button. It probably only really affected older players and those with physical disabiliies. I accidently suicide very frequently.
No one said Freddy was fine, he was the highest output killer with the lower input. He consistently retained the highest kill rate across the board, including red ranks which should be reserved for killers that are notably harder to play, like Spirit, Nurse, Pyramid Head, Hillbilly or Oni. The fact that one of the easiest killers was also the best was a problem. And in terms of the clocks: They were never worth it. You never sat out your entire waking time contributing to objectives without being caught and slapped once by Freddy, especially due to his map pressure, which meant that clocks never actually did what they were supposed to. I started this game trying to wake up whenever I could, towards the end, I'd get annoyed with other survivors trying to wake me up because it was such a massive waste of time for no gain. Now at least the clocks guarantee SOME value.
Huntress was fine-ish (Hitboxes ahoy), -except- for the Iri Head + Belt combo which made her a one-shot machine with little to no downtime. Now Iri Head has been changed so that its drawback is immutable, to offset its unbelievably powerful boost. She got a different add-on instead that plays with Iri head to mitigate its drawback somewhat if you want to change up your style, and that's fine. Not every add-on needs to be instawin.
I agree with pretty much everything you've said about Freddy. I don't exactly think that he was "fine", but that is just me being salty that I cannot play as Old Freddy.
As for his "new add-ons", they are literally useless. I've tested them and it was the same thing as playing without add-ons. One of the worst changes I've ever seen.
As for the other changes, I don't even know what to say. Lucky Break OP, Demogorgon nerfed, Victor Decisive Striking himself, Coldwind problems were not fixed, Breakable Walls... It is sad, to be honest.
That's something I didn't mention but am also mad about. So not only does Victor still get kicked after a successful down on someone, but he's vulnerable for 5 whole seconds now. He did not need that. What he needed was a change so that he didn't override Dead Hard, and also more accurate kick timing for the survivors, because it seems like they would be halfway through the kick animation and then it would get cancelled. This time increase on his vulnerability I feel is just a plaster fix so that it's less likely we'll see that janky-looking cancelled animation. I recently started having fun with Twins too, but if these changes go live they're gonna be as bad and have as many drawbacks as Trickster.
At this point, there isn't a single balance change that I truly understand.
Freddy is what we call a noob crusher. Noobs can't beat him, but then again, they wouldn't beat any other killer. I feel that people weren't understanding his simple counterplay, like with Spirit. If he teleports, let go of the gen. If he places snares, run away from the loop or if you can't, drop the pallet early. Whenever he places a bunch of snares at 1 loop, he's losing the other snares he's placed around the map because of the cap, which will be even lower now. The slowdown add-ons, annoying as they were to see, didn't actually add up to much, similar to Thanatophobia and Dying Light. These noobs were also probably running cross map to get their clock, which you shouldn't do. You should use it if you're in the area. I didn't like that Freddy ignored Borrowed. It's an advantage that he has that few killers have, and he gets it passively instead of having to go into a stealth mode and camp the hook. Speaking of passive things, his slowdown add-ons weren't overpowered as I said, but I didn't like the direction those add-ons were in, because he'd basically get slowdown on survivors who he was not even chasing or pressuring just by being Freddy. And I did think he needed some slowdown on his placing of the snares, but not going down to Nurse speed. That was just a stupid nerf. Simply make him go 110% when he's placing them.
Freddy was not some unbeatable killer, and we know this because SWF bullies him, especially compared to Nurse and Spirit. And solos, when they see Freddy or one of the top killers, they either rage quit easily or they freak out and act like they forgot how to play. It is the survivor's errors that allow Freddy to beat them as easily as and as consistently as people are saying.