So, hearing BHVR's logic about the Twins nerfs really shows that they don't understand the problem.
For those who didn't catch it, someone asked the question of why BHVR nerfed Killers who are underused or weak. BHVR's response was to exemplify the changes to Twins in the midchapter PTB. They said more or less that "Twins' play rate and kill rate are low in lower MMR, but absolutely monstrous in high MMR, so we nerfed their best addons."
As a Twins main, this hurt me so bad. It is painfully, disgustingly, blisteringly obvious that BHVR has legitimately no idea what the problem with Twins' kill rate is, because it has NOTHING to do with the addons they changed. The entire reason Twins has such a high kill rate is exclusively one Twin's ability to camp hooks while the other Twin applies pressure elsewhere. That is, far and away, their biggest factor in performing so well, is their ability to camp. It's not some secret slowdown build or superslug strat or hidden tech that people don't know yet; it's camping. Twins are one of two Killers who can camp while simultaneously doing normal Killer things elsewhere, the other being Hag.
Twins is strong because they can camp. And not a single addon that BHVR touched affects their ability to camp in any meaningful way.
The fact that they targeted addons purely because they're Twins' good addons shows their complete lack of understanding of the problem. BHVR have accomplished NOTHING in the way of balancing out Twins at this supposed "high MMR" bracket because they did nothing to address the camp-heavy strat that people who are hell-bent on winning utilize. All they've done is further pigeonhole Twins into being played in this problematic, oppressive, overpowered way while the people who are interested in doing literally anything else with the Killer are shoved into a wall and kicked like their name is Victor Deshayes.
The Twins change are going to cause the exact opposite effect than they should. Twins' play rate is going to go down further because their most fun addons are worse and BHVR has demonstrated that there is no hope for this Killer, and the people who are left are the sweats who abuse this strat, so their kill rates across the board are going to go further up when the people who deliberately play in a suboptimal way for the sake of HAVING FUN no longer sully these ultra god-tier camping gamers with their peasant kill rates.
TL;DR: BHVR has no idea what to do with Twins and the Killer will continue to be both miserable to use and disgustingly strong at the same time.
Comments
Thing is - Wraith had a few weeks of being really enjoyable, but then ate a one-two-three punch of nerfs that dropped him basically back down to his old 'weak killer' status.
The only motivation around his nerfs was seemingly that he was difficult for new players to deal with, and his new numbers - factoring this in - probably mean that he's one of the worst killers at intermediate and higher MMRs. Combine this with the logic of the Twins nerf and...yeah. I don't like that. You have to pick one or the other I think - balancing around gross kill rates, or balancing around a handful of crazily good high MMR monsters. Doing both at the same time is going to result in a lot of killers being crap at both.
The changes Wraith received were plenty good, like the addon pass, basekit Windstorm, letting him break stuff in cloak, starting the trial cloaked, et cetera et cetera. They were not; on their own, BAD changes. The issue is that was Wraith was so hilariosuly bad they just weren't enough at the time. It's like if Legion got buffed to move at 135% in Frenzy and then three months later got buffed to have a 3.5 second fatigue. More absolutely needs to be done, but to call these changes bad is some crackhead level insanity.
It took them way longer than it should have to make Wraith worthwhile, but as long as that road was, they never really deviated from it. The only real issue with Wraith now is that he's the epitome of a hit-and-run Killer in a game where a) That's supposed to be Legion's job, and b) Healing speeds are overpowered as all getout. I'd prefer if Wraith were turned down a path of being more about his unique lunge boost to make him a 1v1 Killer that's more akin to Pig or Spirit than generic ranged zoner clone seventy-four, but he's not the worst thing in the video game right now by any stretch.
They have also stated they can't instantly fix some issues. Reworking/addressing killers takes time, and you need people to have the time to work on it. Even if you hire an entire studio just on reworking/addressing killers, some killers will have less priority.
Its faster and easier to simply nerf the strongest add-ons to buy survivors more time to avoid such a scenario, than it is to keep the scenario the same for what could be a few months. Ghostface and Legion have been on the list for longer and are played more often. They quite simply have priority over Twins.
If you're gonna use info against the Devs, at least use ALL the given info. There simply isn't enough people to keep all killers updated. Heck, even games like League of Legends, they just adjust the numbers if a character is too strong in higher ELO untill they have time to rework their most powerful ability. No one really shits on that.
DBD has a community with heavy double standards, pointing to other games when certain things could be done better, but ignoring other games when they do the exact same thing.
The issue isn't with the time they budgeted to make these changes. The issue is that the changes they made and, more importantly, their justification for doing so, egregiously show that they have no idea what they're doing for this character.
It’s like the underlying issue of Twins being one of the strongest killers in the game is being ignored by this thread. You are fighting for a brown add on. Why? Cause it makes a busted killer more busted.
They buffed the iridescents and not one of you cares. Just the brown add on “please devs.” They should delete Toy Sword and knock us all off the nipple.
Making a killer who is entirely build around slugging and camping is the problem.
Even if you play against them with boon, these matches take forever and are just BORING.
It's like you didn't even read the post. The problem has nothing to do with the nerfs themselves. The problem is not the what, but the why. The nerfs are meaningless and only serve to demonstrate that BHVR doesn't know what the root of the problem is.
Also, for the record, the Iridescent Pendant buff is a joke. 45 seconds isn't enough to justify the drawback of having to surrender your entire power to both activate and get value out of it.
Last sentence in OPs first paragraph: "They said more or less that "Twins' play rate and kill rate are low in lower MMR, but absolutely monstrous in high MMR, so we nerfed their best addons.""
It's your thesis statement.
And you clearly didn't read anything beyond that because the entire rest of the post is talking about why that logic is faulty and fails to solve anything.
I can think of a time that Twins as a camping killer was addressed: Twins are likely the reason (emphasis on THE REASON) Borrowed Time was buffed to no longer include hearing the killers terror radius. Camping isn't unique to Twins. Having one of the strongest brown add ons in the game is unique to Twins. And they barely nerfed it.
But tell me straight up that you do not want Twins 0.05 seconds back for Toy Sword. If you somehow don't, your whole post falls apart.
I think they do have the root of it and this thread is like we're supposed to pretend that Twins is a bad killer and undeserving of these minor nerfs.
What I want to know is how many high mmr players actually play twins without it being a part of something?
"Twins are likely the reason (emphasis on THE REASON) Borrowed Time was buffed to no longer include hearing the killers terror radius."
Actually, if you look at the April 2021 dev update, the reason they buffed Borrowed Time was "to remove some confusing intricacies with how Borrowed Time interacts with some Killers and the Oblivious status effect." So wrong again.
"But tell me straight up that you do not want Twins 0.05 seconds back for Toy Sword. If you somehow don't, your whole post falls apart."
The nerfs in and of themselves have nothing to do with my post. I don't even give one about any of the nerfs because, as I've already said, they are meaningless. Again, it's not the WHAT, but the HOW and the WHY that is problematic. BHVR has it in their head that the addons are the problem with Twins' kill rate at higher MMR when it most assuredly isn't.
"I think they do have the root of it"
They don't. That's what this whole thread is about. It's not about Twins being too weak or Toy Sword being unfairly nerfed or whatever theories you dreamt up. It is about BHVR not having the root of the problem.
"this thread is like we're supposed to pretend that Twins is a bad killer and undeserving of these minor nerfs."
That is so far form the truth it's insane. I literally stated in the OP that yes, Twins is extremely strong. My issue is that Twins' addons are NOT what makes Twins extremely strong and the changes to their addons do absolutely nothing to address the issue, and if BHVR thinks it does, they have no idea of what actually needs to be done with Twins.
Their kill rates are high also because many players, to avoid the possibility of getting slugged for the next 4 minutes, take their chance and yeet themselves to the next game as soon as they're hooked
Me top of the list
It's similar to how they've "nerfed" COH (not really, a whole 2 seconds longer to fully heal is a joke) because they've ignored the actual issues which are the massive area on multi-level maps in particular, the infinite nature of boons and the madly overpowered ability to grant multiple perks to all the other survivors.
Its like the devs are trying to prove the memes about themselves right. They do not understand their only IP and rely only on raw stats with zero context. Take a look back at recent changes on killers and survivors. Not one of them gets to the root of why something was problematic in the first place. Pinhead has a high killrate for the same reason pig does: he's a Solo Q stomper by nature of his box. Did they take that into consideration when they nerfed him? Nope, they just tried to kill his best addons and called it a day. Same situation with Twins. Twins can be devastating in the right hands due to them being able to pressure two people at once with Victor and Charlotte. Did they look at that? Nope, its clearly the addons that are the problem, not the playstyle Behavior themselves are encouraging with COH among other things. People's biggest problem with dead hard wasn't exhaustion on the ground, it was that it gives out distance on demand with no drawback for the user. What was Behavior's response? Introduce validation to give it consistent i-frames AND distance! And now we have a Boil Over buff that literally no one was asking for when there are far more pressing concerns on both sides that need addressing.