Deathslinger feels super sluggish
The nerf was 100% uncalled for. I like how I give the survivors a super big terror radius, that the killer wasn't intended to have, so they can hold forward before I even get there. The chases are something else entirely. Survivors can just hug walls and obstalces, even the ones you can shoot over, because his ADS is garbage. Quickscoping is the only thing that made him a threat in chase, and stopped the survivors from hugging walls and immediately turning corners, a weakness Huntress shares. You not only have to lead with your shots, but you also have to anticipate the survivors' dodging patterns, which they can easily do now that he can't quickscope. The zoom in feels so unbelievably slow. I can't believe these survivors are actually letting me get kills with him. He's bad enough even when you play him perfectly, but when you're rusty and miss a bunch of shots like I do, that should definitely be a 4-man escape. If it wasn't for my daily, I wouldn't play him at all. What was once my favorite killer is now a complete joke. Way to ruin a killer on the behalf of an unskilled but loud minority.
Comments
I'm seeing a lot of numbers here, and the 0.15+0.45 for an 18 meter shot doesn't seem too bad.
Unfortunately, we're not accounting for ping. At 60ms ping, it's not too bad, only 0.04 seconds of a difference. If you have a higher ping, like 150, you might entirely miss the Deathslinger pulling up his gun to fire before the harpoon is in you. Ping is a factor, and some people don't have a choice on their ping.
Was he probably over nerfed? Yeah. He does feel pretty bad to play. Almost as bad as Hillbilly.
But giving him back his quickscope probably isn't the play. Faster projectile, faster camera ADS movement, and longer range would do loads to make him feel better. And being able to ADS without a bullet.
"In other words, you gain literally nothing from faking ADS. all it gives you is something you already have without it:"
By faking ADS, The survivor will wiggle side to side anticipating a shot that does not happen. Since the survivor is not walking in a straight line, The deathslinger is catching up faster because he had no cooldown exiting in and out ADS thus maintain 110% m/s. I explained this in my opening post. You do gain something from faking ADS. You gain distance and unpredictability.
Something deathslinger lacks now a days, unpredictability.
"The counterplay to Deathslinger is to keep him at a distance and break LoS to him, because the second he is close and has LoS on you, the chase is over (considering they can hit their shot ofc)."
You realize that a killer that has 0.15 second ADS time is by far one of hardest killers to LOS. He has near infinity amount of possible shots that he can leverage. LOS merely gave very brief breathers. In fact, I would go as far to say that a big reason of why he had strong chase was in part for his inability to be LOS. You cannot cheese his old power with LOS like the other ranged killers. you had to win a bunch of 50/50 continuous coin flips in regards to predicting his shots and doing singular wiggles on either left or right side. Looping old slinger took a lot of Survivor skill. The Current one? Not so much.
By faking ADS, The survivor will wiggle side to side anticipating a shot that does not happen.
and the exact same applies when you are not faking ADS.
the fact that you could whip out your gun and shoot almost instantly meant that they had to treat you like you were in ADS at any point in time, for as long as they remained in your direct LoS.
So once again, you dont get anything from faking it, as Survivors had to treat a Deathslinger in his ADS the exact same as a Deathslinger not currently in his ADS. The punishment for running in a straight line, taking a vault or entering a pallet or doorway is the exact same in both scenarios, whether the Deathslinger had his ADS pulled up or not - they get shot and hit.
The only effect ADS had on them was to show them that you were ready to shoot them out of those places, meaning they would not take them and therefore extend the chase by making you walk up to them and hit them instead of quickly taking a shot.
the only scenario where i would even consider faking ADS would be when the Survivors are a decently long distance away from me and i want to zone them away from a specific area - in which case a slight M1 attack cooldown after dropping out of ADS is not going to affect me anyway, due to them being too far away.
thats the whole point i am trying to make here: there is no (realistic) scenario in which you would gain more from faking your ADS than by simply not doing it. therefore this nerf to faking ADS is extremely insignificant to the point where it literally wont affect the gameplay of experienced Deathslinger players at all.
You realize that a killer that has 0.15 second ADS time is by far one of hardest killers to LOS. He has near infinity amount of possible shots that he can leverage. LOS merely gave very brief breathers.
yes, that is why he was such a balanced Killer. like i said, he used to be an absolute monster in close range 1v1 chases, creating multiple lose - lose situations for Survivors and making escape pretty much impossible. Therefore he was lacking in a multitude of other aspects, namely the 1v4 game (map pressure, tracking, interactions with more than 1 survivor, ...).
and there is nothing wrong with that.
i honestly dont get why you keep bringing up new Slinger. We both agree that the TR increase and forced .4 second ADS time were horrible changes, there is really no need for that.
"the fact that you could whip out your gun and shoot almost instantly meant that they had to treat you like you were in ADS at any point in time, for as long as they remained in your direct LoS."
Your assuming survivor is not able to react to any shots but that is not entirely true. This goes to back to @Leachy_Jr post which I explained in the past in regards to countering deathslinger. The 0.15 gun pull out animation is not exactly the time you had to react to his gun. this is the time it took for him to shoot. Deathslinger's gun is not hitscan. He doesn't just fire it and it instantly hit you. His gun had maximum range 18 meters meaning that it took 0.5 seconds travel time before harpoon travel its max distance.
Let us rule out few distances. Shoot between 0-8 meters on old deathslinger serves no purpose because... why shoot when you can just m1. Shooting between 17-18 meters is risky because the chain durability will run out by the time you pull survivor in and there bigger chance for the survivor to get hooked on object which might result in not getting the hit. This leaves us to middle distances of approximate 10-16 meters. This leaves his effective range for using his gun between ~10-16 meters for travel time of approximately 0.2-0.4 seconds. Average human reaction time is about 0.3
At close ranges, Old deathslinger shots were nearly instant. Like between 9-10 meters, they were pretty much almost not reactable to naked eye. The funny thing is that a deathslinger at near m1 range(but not quite M1 range) did not need shoot at these ranges because all he had to do was ADS->cancel and If survivor respected his shot at all, He would make up distance and get M1 hit.. At middle effective ranges, Survivor can react to when he shoots as the 0.15+0.3-0.4 from first 10 meters gave survivor about 0.4 seconds to react to him shooting. They do not need constantly respect his shot, but they only get a single movement wiggle left or right by the time they realize he fired. The deathslinger player can anticipate the wiggle by leading his shot.
Problem with current system is that survivor get wiggle continuously with no real drawbacks. Reacting to his gun is just stupid concept overall. Its part of larger issue for why safe pallets in DBD are bad design because they allow the survivor to react to pallet slides which derails to different discussion.
Conclusively, zoning by existing is not really accurate. Its only accurate if the survivor play it poorly. Keeping Deathslinger at distance is important to countering deathslinger and that is not very difficult as he moves at 110% with no special pallet break. Apart from NOED and his useless instant down add-on, Health states were also effective at extending the chases for making distance. The only real lethality perk you had to watch out for was most of the time was STBFL as it allowed him to do m1->m2 combo.
I do agree on your window point that windows are lose/lose for the survivor from animation lock. Pallets I am unsure about because I have dodged shots in tight pallet areas but as you say, it could be the deathslinger making a mistake. I will leave the discussion at that.
Smart survivors won't use windows against Deathslinger unless they know they're safe to take at the moment. Same with Huntress. The survivors who complained about quickscoping who kept giving Deathslinger a free option select at a window are still doing it, and the smart survivors who never did that now have a much easier time against Deathslinger because of the nerf.
You can play a killer wrong for a long time.
His quick scope WAS DS. He's a different killer without it, not the worst in the roster but extremely pointless and mediocre. He's literally "just play huntress", and unless they were willing to commit to stealth slinger, they basically just scrapped the most important feature of this killer
His quickscope was "DS"?
I'm saying Quick scope was DeathSlinger, as in that was a major part of his kit.. I'm guessing you thought I meant BS?
Yeah I was confused. I guessed either that or you meant like a Decisive Strike equivalent.
Idk i almost never see a Spirit tbh.
But tbh i also didnt saw that many Spirits before the nerf.
I mostly see Docs or Leatherfacer
Why play as a college kid with massive debts when you can play as someone with a diploma in meat processing.
U forgot that ass tho.
slinger has pretty much nothing going for him any more. no map pressure, no lethality, no stealth and he feels horrible to play.
I genuinely think he should be 115% movement speed. Pyramid head has less range, but can hit through walls and actually down people without having to reel them in, and he has 115%. No reason for slinger to be 110 now they've neutered him.