Nurse Rework Concept - Incorporate Jenner's Last Breath into Base Kit, remove second blink otherwise
Edit: Was hoping I wouldn't have to make this clarification, but apparently I do. I have several hundred hours in Nurse. That is basically all I play. She is my favorite killer to play against as well. This is not a salty survivor main post.
Reading criticism of Nurse, I see these main complaints:
- She circumnavigates the survivor's core mechanics too well
- Her patrol range is oppressive
- The diversity of her ability's application allows her to be too good at too many things
- The game must be designed around her, and what new perks can be released have to always take her into consideration
My solution revolves around the premise of refocusing her purpose into an anti-loop killer. Like artist and pyramidhead, there is a place in the game for anti-loop killers. The main concept I think that would take her from being obscenely oppressive and give her a proper place in the game would be to remove her second blink unless it's being used to return to the original start position, rendering her an anti-loop killer. This idea essentially incorporates Jenner's Last Breath as part of her base kit. Here is a link to a few clips showing different applications of Jenner's Last Breath (do not judge the perk choices, these are old clips from when I was first learning the game haha) if you're not familiar with the add-on. In order for this to be effective, an apparition of nurse should remain at her start position to indicate to survivors where she might return to, which disappears when she succumbs to fatigue.
First, I'd like to discuss the secondary blink.
There are five main uses for the second blink:
- Closing loops around terrain--jumping to one side, then back to the other
- Using the second blink to fixes mistakes made with the initial blink. The better you get at Nurse, the less you need the second blink.
- Similar to the above in fixing mistakes, you can correct a good survivor juke by just blinking a second time. (not fun for the survivor, who is not rewarded for their juke)
- When not using the second blink to fix a mistake, you use it in this scenario: You anticipate survivors being in X location behind terrain, so your initial long blink ends up slightly to the side to give vision of what's behind the terrain. You use your second blink to close the gap accurately on the survivor - bonk
- It grants additional distance traveling for patrols, especially with range increasing add-ons
Other than the first reason listed, the only reasons to have the second blink are not fun for the survivor and do not improve the integrity of the game. If you are good and accurate with your first blink, you don't need the second one as its present uses either (1) correct mistakes and reduce counterplay or (2) give her additional strength in patrolling/vision, neither of which make sense of an anti-loop killer.
Let's examine this scenario:
When a survivor sees Nurse has a charged blink and releases it, as a means of counterplay the survivor can begin to run toward her knowing that she has to blink as it can't be cancelled (assuming you didn't start running towards her too early and she just blinks into the ground). Whether using your second blink or the Jenner's add-on, Nurse can still blink again to capitalize on the survivor as long as she has two charges for it.
Once Nurse has blinked in this scenario, Nurse's options are: (1) blink back towards survivor with normal capacity of second blink (2) predict survivor moment and blink somewhere to cut of their path with normal capacity of second blink or (3) Use Jenner's to instantly return to start location. Jenner's movement is instant, but the location is fixed. When running this add-on, it feels cheap to use against survivors who know how to play into nurse don't ever expect anticipating the Jenner's, and it removes counterplay options by adding one more method I can close out the chase.
- If Nurse can no longer use a second blink except to return to start position, the survivor knows that they can run perpendicular to the start/end blink line as a means of counterplay, and attempt to break line of sight. This provides more predictability and reliable methods of escaping
- Survivors can see her original start location (indicated by an apparition) and anticipate how Nurse plans to break the loop and move accordingly
- This solidifies her place as an anti-loop chaser, and removes long-distance (omegablink) patrol options.
There are a couple add-ons I would thereby change as well:
- Plaid flannel should be removed, and the range indicator should be built-in. At higher levels of competitive play, the blink distance becomes muscle memory and you don't need plaid flannel anyway. As it stands now, all this mechanic does is artificially increase her difficulty and make her inaccessible to new survivors. Pinhead's portal range indicator is built in, it makes sense here too. Additionally, stronger add-ons could come with the cost of revealing the range indicator to survivors.
- Heavy Panting and Kavanagh's Last Breath should be removed. There is no longer any reason to change her base blinking distance. She is not here for patrolling, she is here as an anti-loop killer. Potential ideas for replacements include: further increasing the time before Nurse succumbs to fatigue (similar to the Pocket Watch) giving you more time to strategize with the Jenner's mechanic, decreasing recharge rate, increasing lunge range, or perhaps increasing her FOV during fatigue
- Torn bookmark lets you use the active ability button to return to the original blink location, after you've already returned to the start location. It would switch the location of the apparition and Nurse upon the first return to start location. This is just an idea, of course
- Matchbox could reveal survivor auras within X meters of the Nurse or the start location apparition while the apparition is active (a blink has been used).
Lastly, with the above changes, I would suggest:
- Change Nurse's difficulty to Moderate.
I realize this makes the From the Void She Kills achievement impossible essentially. I'm sure there's a solution around this, but limiting her game design because of a legacy achievement is just bad design choices. I have a couple other ideas as well, but they are needlessly complicated for this post.
Would love to hear your thoughts!
Comments
You are about to get "your opinion is wrong'ed" by all Nurse Mains here.
Many people have good ideas for nurse nerfs/ a rework. And people are rightfully saying nurse needs to get nerfed because she is overpowered.
Your ideas are good too but the question is, when will bhvr take action?
Your version of nurse seems very easy to loop / bully and not fun for either side.
I would play Blight over this. But the next step for "balance" would be for Blight to have only 1 rush right ? To allow for more counter play, right ?
Get good and be less predictable.
I am a nurse main. I think she needs a completely rework. I also think this isn't it. They need to basically nerf her chase power, while allowing her to retain her map control.
Then leave her and play Dredge. He is exactly what you are asking.
TL;DR I lost to a Nurse and now I'm sad, here's how to delete her from the game without actually deleting her
So my job is a product manager and I think about these things for a living (although, unfortunately, not for video games). It is extremely difficult to accurately judge what is OP or not with access to limited data. The fact that BHVR doesn't have a match history nor a public API for datamining win/loss builds at various levels of skill, maps, etc. is atrocious. Honestly, even the add-on system with them being consumable means that even if we had access to the same data they do, there is a lot of integrity lost in that being able to run the most competitive build is limited by how much you've grinded the bloodweb. There is no meaningful way to ascertain your skill, much less apply that with regards to conversations like these online. But for whatever it's worth, I do have a couple hundred hours in exclusively nurse.
Many people have good ideas for nurse nerfs/ a rework. And people are rightfully saying nurse needs to get nerfed because she is overpowered.
I honestly think the main reason for the need for a rework is that she limits what perks can be released for other killers, because they would be OP on her. I think classifying her into a particular general role of type of killer (anti-loop, as opposed to stealth killer or some other) would fix this.
Your version of nurse seems very easy to loop / bully and not fun for either side.
I would play Blight over this. But the next step for "balance" would be for Blight to have only 1 rush right ? To allow for more counter play, right ?
Not sure I'd agree with this at all. I linked to a clip that showcases how Jenner's cuts off loops the same way having her second blink does. It just restricts the flexibility of what you can use that second blink for. If you didn't check out the video I linked, that might help make things more clear.
Ah yes literally kill the killer and make them useless. Amazing idea. Fun is irrelevant to balance. Range indicator is literally a distraction. Landing a hit with a first blink is literally impossible unless the survivor misplays extremely hard. Learn to mindgame Nurse. Getting hit means you lost the mindgame.
Nurse is my favorite because she feels the most rewarding to play, there is the most skill expression available with her. When you are rewarded for being skilled, that is fun to me. However, more importantly, she is too diverse and establishing a set role for her would make her presence less of a problem when developing new perks.
Strong disagree on range indicators. Trickster, Huntress, Nurse, Cenobite, etc... they should all have range indicators. "Show Range Indicators" should be a toggle-able option in settings. Again, at competitive levels of play--you're right, it is a distraction. Because once you've sunk hundreds of hours into mastering the ability, it's all muscle memory anyway. So if it's not needed at higher levels of play, not having range indicators only adds artificial difficulty.
I do not have the same experience with regards to landing hits with first blinks. It would possibly make sense to bring her speed up to at least par with survivors, depending. Again, it's unfortunate that there is no public API or publicly accessible data to be able to make these predictions from a hypothetical place.
She isn't a problem for developing new perks. BHVR releases and buffs perks that are good or amazing for Nurse regularly. That misconception is a myth.
Removing her second blink literally kills the mindgaming. Landing first blink hits never works without a survivor misplaying, which is bad design. Return to original location is crap.
Ok but blight already has counterplay. Windows, pallets and bad tiles for him all already work as counterplay against him. It's like if me as a blight main said just wiggle or spin blight every time. It's something that works initially but then stops working. All killers are supposed to have a lack of counterplay at some point, blights is if you are in the open or hold w wrong there is nothing you can do except wiggle and spin but after you do that to me once it won't work again. Nurses counterplay is essentially the wiggle and spin vs blight but every time.
Yeah I would not say nurse has the most skill expression.
We already have Dredge with a base kit Remnant power, I don't think we need another one. Also Spirit has a "return to husk" addon as well. Plaid flannel should not be base kit, remember it used to be a purple addon.
Before they consider reworking Nurse I would like to see these changes:
I'd also like to have walls and/or floors she can't blink through worked into newer or remade maps. This would allow the creation of smaller multi-floor maps that could be fun for all killers, while being able to put up Nurse barriers so she doesn't stomp like she does on Midwich.
remove 1 blink charge is way too harsh. I think good solution is on PTB. What if nurse's blink had 50% more blink duration if nurse blinks through an obstacle? She would still go through objects but would be less powerful at loops and indoor maps.