Sorry Devs, but we need to talk about The Nightmare once again
Hello devs,
the new patch is coming and I am really looking forward to it. Especially with the Deadhard-Change, the games should become more balanced.
But: With a lot of changes ahead, there are unfortunately even more Nerfs for Freddy coming.
Allow me to explain my sight of things:
Freddy is a killer, which has abilities, when survivors are asleep (and only if they are asleep). Therefore, he has, for example, a lullaby instead of a Terror-Radius.
Perk-Issue
This in mind, you will propably be well aware, that he cant use a lot of perks, because this perks are only available if u have a Terror Radius. For example the new Dissolution, Septic Touch, Coulrophobia, Distressing, Infectious Fright or Starstruck.
This are some "Chase-Perks/Anti-Healing-Perks", who arent usable as The Nightmare.
Whats left is Gen-Protection and Gen-Regression. Well, Gen-Protection like Corrupt Intervention, Deadlock etc. is what he has left (what every killer has by the way, so no speciality), while Gen-Regression like Pop goes the Weasel (with works perfectly with his teleport in combination with Pain Resonance at the moment), Overcharge (what will become useless with a start less than a regular kick) or Hex:Ruin are getting nerfed or even completely unplayable (Hex:Ruin).
So at the end he cannot use a lot a perks by default, his only strengh, which is the Dream Projection, becomes more useless because u cannot combine it with good Gen-Regression-Perks (well, besides Call of Brine for now) and his antiloop is doing nothing at most tiles. Well, u can outplay some tiles with the snares, but for the most part, they cannot help.
Dreamworld
In addition to this problems Ive counted here, he has a major weakness, which is the Dreamworld itself. If u take a look at The Dredge, which is well designed, thanks for that, you will see, that the Dreamworld is, compared to Nightfall, doing almost nothing. I dont want Slowdown-Addons like old Jumping Rope back, dont get me wrong, but what reason should a survivor have to walk to an alarmclock, when Dreamworld is literally doing nothing?
What is the Dreamworld doing? Well, you replace the Terror-Radius with a lullaby and survivors can interact with Dream Snares and Dream Pallets plus you get your Dream Projection a little bit (1-2 seconds at best) faster back. Thats it, unfortunately. So there is no danger and therefore no reason to waste time for waking.
Lets compare this with Nightfall: While Dredge has his antiloop at any time, he can teleport 3 times in a row MUCH faster and has decent addons to reload it a lot faster than Freddy with Nancys Masterpiece or Sketch in their current state.
Addons
Now lets move on and look at his addons. He has one addon, the Red Paint Brush, which gives survivors at least 1 time they actually need to use a clock (at least 1 of them) for staying awake (if they want to). Besides this addon, I think everyone in the community will agree, he has nothing in his addon-pass. Hearing things louder is, sorry, not worth running, inflicting hemmorhage only when several parameters are in place (being asleep AND interact with a trap) or Blindness isnt really good. Besides that, he has 3 4%-Penalty-Addons for failing skill-checks. But: when survivors fail a skill-check, they wake up, if u dont use Red Paint Brush and the addon is doing nothing. In my games, I can say, the survivors trigger the penaly once per game AT MOST.
Last but not least: Fake-Pallets (3 addons)
A fun part of his kit, but I think 1 addon would be more than enough, you dont need to use 3 of them just with different aura-reading. The aura-reading means absolutely nothing, because when(!) they interact, they are in front of you in a chase. I dont have to say, that in higher skilled games, literally no one falls for them anyway.
Conclusion
In my conclusion, Freddy is nothing but a very weak Dredge-Copy (or Dredge is a better version of him), having no power at all when survivors are not asleep, he cant defend clocks or anything, because he cant see their auras (compared to pig for example) and besides that his antiloop is too weak to be a real problem for survivors or being respected at all.
The extremely low pick-rate compared to high kill-rates (january-official-announcement) comes, because you will see Freddys most of the time in low MMR I assume, but u will very rarely see him in higher mmr. I would be wondering if thats not the case what I wrote down here.
Im really begging (yes, Im at this state now) you to rework him once more or at least giving him decent addons. His Dreamworld needs, in my opinion, a look too.
Thanks for your attention!
Comments
Freddy had a 4% higher kill rate and got nerfed. Did he deserve what he got? No. The weakening of his snares was way too much in my opinion. They could have just nerfed the teleport timer (making it much longer - and punish teleport "faking").
The Dreamworld is not to debuff survivors but rather just a visual indicator that they are vulnerable to his powers. The rework is somewhat punishing in that using an alarm clock makes you immune to being asleep for 30 seconds.
Freddy is still an "ok" killer. He will however get worse when Tinkerer gets nerfed as that perk absolutely carries him right now.
Overall the dream pallets are dumb and it's worse that you have to use an addon to make your power worse.
Well, I welcome you to the fight.
I've been here the longest, almost 3 years as a matter of fact.
Wish I could tell you that it gets better.
It doesn't.
one thing I d like to see is Dream Pallets being base kit. Instead of changing your power and taking 1 entire add-on slot you should just always have them.
Think of it like old doctor who had to switch between shock mode and hitting mode but instead you switch between dream pallets and dream snares (no slowing down while swapping)
that way you can swap to dream pallets, place them while going around the map and as soon as you find a survivor you switch to dream snares and can use them mid chase.
Both of these have seperate Tokens so you cant use up your dream snares by placing pallets or vice versa
after that, add-on rework, they mostly suck
after that, make the dream world threatening/give people a reason to leave while not making it absolutely miserable (think old rusty swings and jump rope; never again)
He was an "Ok"-Killer. With the patch, he is bottom 3 for sure, because of everything I wrote down. He will fall into D-Tier for sure.
Freddy's whole power doesnt even make sense because the while thing is hes supposed to be a powerful dream demon
Have freddy only be able to hit survivors while they are asleep like in the movies and how he originally was
Have survivors actually be asleep and in a dream
Have the dream world FEEL like a dream and instead of unhooking someone who was hooked in the dreamworld, all the survivors get a notification to wake up that survivor before they die
I think that would overall be more interesting than what he currently is, AND thematic
Freddy is literally the only liscensed character i regret buying
Freddy got super overnerfed, nothing new.
Just fixing of borrowed time and removing forever Freddy was enough.
Well, do you have Onryō?
Yeah, thing is, this is DBD, not the movies. Freddy needs to be adapted to DBD. You get stuff like RPD if you follow source material too closely.
"Have freddy only be able to hit survivors while they are asleep like in the movies and how he originally was"
Do you want me to present a video that shows off why old Freddy was actively unfun to play as, and a snoozefest for Survivors? Old Freddy was considered to be the worst killer in the game, for very good reason.
I wouldnt watch the video but yeah im just saying that would be more *thematic* but not as balanced, while the other idea would be more balanced, but less thematic
Also one of the main reasons why he was bad was because survivors could get unhooked during endgamr and he couldnt do anything about it because they weren't asleep
Yeah but even onryo is 10x more cooler and interesting than freddy
Plus the secret easter egg was a nice bonus and honestly creeped me out a lil lol
Freddy was one of my most played killers long ago, I stilI remember playing him day 1 when they released him on Xbox. People say he was weak, or strong depending on who you ask. After all the hours put into him my opinion was he was not weak, and he was in fact the best hit and run killer in the game, even to this day. His game plan revolved on keeping everyone asleep as much as possible for the 50% gen slowdown.
You couldn't hide from him because he was invisible with nearly no indicator of how close he is (You could still hear his footsteps but they were quiet), and even though he needed LOS on you to actually put someone to sleep, Dream Demon's projection would lock onto people through walls, so it was super easy to find even immersed prestige 3 Claudettes. With range addons you could put people to sleep from 32 metres away so even when someone woke up, you could just put them back to sleep from nearly anywhere since your aura reading gave you perfect tracking.
Only once you had 2-3 survivors asleep would you then start going for hits, and even then if you heard someone wake up the best play was to disengage chase to put that person back to sleep, even if whoever you were chasing was injured. Doesn't matter, you know where they always are, you can get them later, probably cut off their pathing with your aura reading. Then you start snowballing slugs, and eventually you would win through attrition.
I was happy playing Freddy this way since it was a strong and unique way to win, but my only issue with it was it was extremely boring for survivors because they would never get chased unless I felt I would win that chase, and they couldn't do gens because they had to keep waking up over and over.
dream pallets could appear dropped like the doctor ones, and when survivors go through them the auras could get revealed, the TR perks are a huge problem and i cant say an easy fix sadly