My Deathslinger buff suggestions after playing him a lot

DoritoHead

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been playing a lot of Deathslinger and paying close attention to what kind of QoL changes or buffs would help him feel better to play.

First of all, it’s very important to remember why Deathslinger was changed in the first place. His capability to fire almost instantly and cancel aiming quickly made him very dull to play against, and his changes were made to alleviate this without nerfing him. (Which failed, of course, which is why i’m surprised Deathslinger hasn’t been mentioned as a killer with balance changes in the works) It’s for this reason that I don’t think he should just be reverted, and instead I think he deserves buffs to other parts of his kit, in addition to changes to what was nerfed to make him less clunky.

Before I get into that I want to say why I disagree with a lot of suggestions people have been tossing around.

”Make him a 115% speed killer”- I feel like this is just a lazy argument people throw around without actually thinking about its implications. Making Deathslinger a 115% speed killer would make faking his power incredibly effective and allow him to close the gap insanely quickly for a ranged killer.

I already said why I wouldn’t want to revert him, and increasing his sensitivity when aiming down sights would do almost nothing.

Now let’s get into what changes I do think are a good idea.

BASEKIT:

-Reduce ADS time back to slightly more than what it originally was. I couldn’t find the exact time anywhere, but it’d probably be anywhere from .1-.15 seconds more. Obviously that’s not much at all, but it may make a difference. I’m scared it would still be clunky, not sure what number would be best.

-Reduce Terror Radius to 24 meters. Deathslinger is the only ranged killer who can have a survivor completely out of range of his attack (at a reasonable distance anyway) I guess this is why people want him to be a 115% speed killer, but I think the stealth provided by using M&A and just by not having a lullaby was a good trade-off that should return.

-Reload time is reduced by .5 seconds, but only if you successfully spear the survivor. I’m worried this could be a tad too strong, but with this change I’d make Warden’s Keys .25 seconds off reload time as opposed to .5 and rework the brown reload speed addon.

-Reduce Movement speed while aimed down sights to what it was originally. I had to do this to compensate for the ADS speed.

-Stun time when a survivor breaks a chain is back to 4 seconds. If the chain was broken through a wall and the speared survivor was at least 15 meters away, the stun time is 3 seconds. The stun time is increased so that the killer can’t follow up the injure with a speedy reload and a quickscope, but this shouldn’t be as much of a problem if the survivor is behind cover and a decent distance away. I’m afraid 4 seconds might be too harsh, maybe 3.5 would be a bit better? Or even 3.3?

-note that I’m not changing the penalty to canceling aiming down sights. This is to make faking a shot more punishing.

ADDONS:

Hellshire Iron Rework: When the Redeemer is not loaded, the Deathslinger moves at 115% speed but reloading takes 1 second longer and cannot be adjusted by addons.

Bayshore’s Gold Tooth: Increases reeling speed by 15 percent (up from 9)

Snake Oil rework: Increases the maximum range of the Redeemer by 3 meters. Chain durability adjusted accordingly for this addon.

Honey Locust Thorns rework: Survivors that break free from The Redeemer Are inflicted with the Oblivious and Mangled status effects until healed. (Changed to purple rarity)

Prison Chain: changed to green rarity

Next, I’ll be doing something similar to this but with Sadako.

RonMan32

Very interesting. I've gotta say I agree with a lot of your takes here.

It is worth noting though that part of his nerf was increasing his terror radius FROM the 24m you're suggesting. So you are reverting some of the changes a bit. TR and ADS.

But I agree they were nerfed TOO hard. In my concept it's moved to 28m, still greater than the original but not as bad as the 32m he currently is. And to balance it off add a western whistling tune as a "lullaby" equivalent.

Please, check it out. Let me know what you think!

@RonMan32 said:

I'll start off by saying I'm pretty new to this game and it's community. I yoinked it on the last day of the Steam Summer Sale (2022) and have been playing it almost everyday since. Currently at 89 hours according to Steam so I won't claim to have an at all expert level grasp on the game's mechanics or balancing.

With that said the Deathslinger in his current state is my favorite killer I've tried. I think he's really fun to use, it's really rewarding to pick your shots and shut down simple loops. But apparently he's not worth using anymore. I've only faced him as survivor once and we won all 4 in that game.

I won't pretend to know exactly why that is but I've boiled it down to people despising the nerf he got last year. So maybe he could use a tiny buff. Some people are just calling for the nerf to be removed. As someone who never used old 'slinger I don't see the big deal with the quickscope nerf (maybe the ADS animation could be a TINY fraction of a second shorter but I think that was a necessary change). I get about 2/3rds of my shots in a game with clearly experienced players. So instead of making a call to revert that change I have a different proposal:

What if he could move faster (perhaps just slightly, and not while carrying a survivor) if he kept The Redeemer unloaded. This would give him an option to search around the map with more haste, at the cost of not being instantly ready to chain someone should he come across a target before he reached his destination. I think it would be a decent way to give him back some "Map Pressure" if I'm using that term correctly.

In addition to that, give him *some* of his ambush-ability back. Reduce his terror radius to 28 or perhaps even the original 24 meters and give him a non-directional humming huntress equivalent sound outside that with him whistling some western or Irish tune.

That's it for the buffs. Finally I'd like to propose a small nerf to the chain of The Redeemer. In my experience it's way too hard for the survivor to break off if you catch them in the open with no objects to use. I think the struggling on the chain w/ out any props to break off of should progress slightly faster in general, with the object collision break being left alone.

And that's all. I think for the most part everything else about him is good as is. *Maybe* it would be nice if The Redeemer projectile was a tad faster so a longshot is harder to dodge. You can kinda only get those if you're lucky or the survivor isn't even trying to dodge and is just W-ing foward in a straight line. Although that might be best left alone as that's probably the intended drop off at range.

Vets and fellow newbies alike, please let me know what you think.

P.S. I copy pasted this from my post on the reddit just because I figured it might get more interaction on here.

Steel_Eyed

I think his original ADS time was around .15 seconds. That’s takes a quicker reaction speed than is frankly humanly possible. It is now .40 seconds and it doesn’t feel bad. It’d be nice to reduce but I do not expect it to go down much more nor convinced that it’s necessary.

Making him 115 would discourage players from using his power to end chases. I also disagree with this suggestion. Players suggest 115 because that would put him back in line with other 32m terror radius killers.

Terror radius is my only gripe with nerfed Deathslinger. I think it should revert to 24 meters and nerf M&A accordingly. Post nerf it went from a strength to practically a requirement.

I believe he does need an addon pass. But he’s one of those stronger basekit killers imo. Top five chase potential of the killer roster.

Brix

28m TR would be perfect for Slinger. Not too strong with M&A so you can hit outside of TR but still strong enough to get close enough and get in chase without needing 30 seconds to catch up to W gaming.

RonMan32

@Steel_Eyed said:

I think his original ADS time was around .15 seconds. That’s takes a quicker reaction speed than is frankly humanly possible. It is now .40 seconds and it doesn’t feel bad. It’d be nice to reduce but I do not expect it to go down much more nor convinced that it’s necessary.

Making him 115 would discourage players from using his power to end chases. I also disagree with this suggestion. Players suggest 115 because that would put him back in line with other 32m terror radius killers.

Terror radius is my only gripe with nerfed Deathslinger. I think it should revert to 24 meters and nerf M&A accordingly. Post nerf it went from a strength to practically a requirement.

I believe he does need an addon pass. But he’s one of those stronger basekit killers imo. Top five chase potential of the killer roster.

I've gotta agree. Making the ADS .35 seconds and reducing his TR to 28 or even the original 24m is imo the bare minimum he should get. Doubt that'll happen tho.