Which balance mechanic would be the best for Nurse?
Nurse is, atleast with the last Blight nerf, clearly the strongest killer in the game.
Some other killer have different mechanics to keep their power in check, which of those would be in your opinion work for Nurse without making her awful to play?
- Infect first/triple hit (for example Nemesis, Unknown)
- Limited Power (for example Oni, Myers)
- Items to reduce the power (for example Singularity, Xeno)
Comments
After seeing their rework for Myers, it is probably for the best they don't rework killers ever again.
That would be interesting with the right numbers. But it could be frustrating to play if survivors keep disappearing.
TBH, I don't think that even changing her like this would ever make the survivors "happy". The only way they'll ever be even close to "happy" with her is if:
Added to the aforementioned proposed nerf of "Can't blink to where she has no LoS," then, and ONLY then, would survivors say she's "ok".
These changes would make her completely nugatory to the killer player base, but even with all of these nerfs… I'm sure they'll still complain until she's deleted entirely… Because that just how survivor mains who start threads like this think.
Absolutely, but grass movement plus forcing them to walk, you could still hit them, which injures them and burns the photograph faster, and of course this puts the invis on a long CD so she can consolidate the down quickly and hook to remove it from them until she gets at least one 'World Breaker' event (Agonal Breath? Nurse's Lament? Big Scary Time?). Plus, with the limited duration, risk of giving a loud noise notification, Nurse could stay nearby so the survivor is forced to come out of invisibility. If they haven't gotten far enough away, didn't hide at all or went invisible too early, they're far more likely to be caught, and going down would be hugely punishing.
I guess it'd make Nurse feel entirely different. Much more survival horror than competitive tag. From the Nurse's perspective, it'd make her much much harder and more complicated, but Nurse starts the game without any disappearing survivors so if she finds her stations first she can play around their locations to prevent survivors even getting that far, or go full aggro early and get some hooks/injuries spread so they're less effective once found unless the survivors reset first.
The point of this thread, as OP has stated, is not "What nerf does Nurse need."
It's about a balancing mechanic. A chance to spitball something additional that would make her less complained about but also not dumpstered.
OP even said that they weren't engaging with their own thread because it pivoted quickly to a nerf discussion and not a mechanics/game design discussion.
Not every post on the internet is in bad faith, despite evidence to the contrary.
You will never make everyone happy but I think that the los restriction would be a great way to try and balance her, we could see if it works or not and go from there if she's still awful.
Exactly, the problem with killers like Blight, Spirit, and Nurse is fundamentally their design. Nerfs are just patches for a bigger issue, which is the character's design itself.
In Nurse's case, you could give her the three-hit system (infect, injure, and down), but all that would really do is make the same survivor take the first three hooks. It would change how she's played, but it wouldn't solve the underlying problem.
The same applies to Blight. Being a 4.4 m/s killer is something he should have been from day one, but that alone is not a solution for a killer whose design is fundamentally flawed. The same goes for Spirit.
In cases like these, patches are not the solution when the design itself breaks the systems the entire game is built around.
What is clear is that if the game has a core methodology and a set of fundamental rules, then it would make sense not to introduce designs that completely, or almost completely, break them.
Tbh blight is now ok I would say maybe speed addons need some attention but he in his basekit or without them is fine. He is way harder and depends more on his power plus pallets now do something to him he can break them fast but looses power which he depends on so it slows him down. Good killer now sadly it took so long. Spirit desing is more flawed then blights but in current state I would say she is ok or manageable especialy with DBDs buged sounds and now less grass being on maps wich is great indicator for her that helps her locate survivors directly more then scratch marks.
Nurse is totaly must rework because her desing is just her being all about depending on her power and she cant function without it.
Now theres too many things that some desings that were wrong are ok now I would say like blight or spirit but nurse is total opposite she was ok in old days in that form more then just like this nowdays, still I believe she isnt that hated mostly because half of player base is bad with her still in 2026 like she newer had good success in kill rate on average mmr or in total and only good results come from top mmr now from her so I dont think she will get changed soon especsialy when devs dont talk about her and reworks are taking longer then getting 4 new chapters.
Well i think it is relevant though. You are asking for nerfs to nurse. Which i have to simply ask WHY. By every available metric she is one of the worst killers in the game. The only time this isn't true is when she is played by someone with 4k hours. So it brings me back to my point. If we think its a problem when in the hands of 4k hour players, you MUST also by definition think the same of survivors.
The OP Litterally Labeled this thread: "Which balance mechanic would be best for the Nurse" Heavily implying she's unbalanced and in need of "correction".
Oh my boy, but it gets better, he then goes:
"Nurse is, atleast with the last Blight nerf, clearly the strongest killer in the game.
Some other killer have different mechanics to keep their power in check, which of those would be in your opinion work for Nurse without making her awful to play?
As if the only way they can "correct her" is to apply any of these 3 proven restrictions/NERFS, as done on other killers, to make her BETTER for survivors to go against!
Flipping HELL man, I even submitted my own "Joke" response about basically castrating her by making it so she can't blink to where she can't see, and Escalated upon it when somebody said it was a "good idea" by suggesting they nerf her even further, and only then did the guy, obviously not getting that my initial suggestion was a joke, say:
Like, What the hell?!
As suspected You guys really do want her deleted don't you? No amount of nerfs I suggest, no matter how horrible, or how useless they'd make her… not even the OP is arguing against. Sure the OP has since stated that this shouldn't be a "Nerf Nurse" post… but that's literally just him covering his own butt.
@TicTac If you really want this to end, just ask the moderators to close the post, because all you're ever gonna get now, is suggestions on how to nerf her. Attempting to balance her is the LEAST any survivor in this community is interested in. They're just tired of going up against her in the top tier. Even so, if she was nerfed into the ground, they'd just go after Ghoul, Spirit, or Huntress and so on… Just, let her be what she truly is: A challenge, that has a high skill ceiling, and gives equally high rewards for doing so. The survivor community Rarely, if Ever, comes across a "Good Nurse", and when they do, they flip out because she can feel so overpowering, but You literally won't get the same amount of commitment and rarity from any other killer, I promise.
You can't really say that this post wasn't about nerfing her, it's right in your initial Paragraph. Some killer has to be on the top, and there's an old Asian saying: "The nail that sticks up the most, gets the hammer." hence why few, if any, are defending her here… you invited them to come with their hammers raised. If not Nurse, then a different killer will be the next target.
This constant race to the bottom is one of the worst traits of this community.
DBD has gone a long way, but even now i would have to submit a 30-page-essay (complete bs-number its probably longer) if i want to list everything which is wrong with the game. Some things are bigger, some things are smaller, but if people want only discuss the full picture its necessary. But you cant have a discussion that way, bc everyone starts talking about a different aspect.
Like we could talk about the balance of nurse. Then i need to add her best maps like Midwitch. Then i also should mention the chance of getting those maps. Then we can discuss about map offerings. But at the same time others could discuss about pallet density or the buggy non-spawning of 100% pallets. Others about the combination of aura reads on midwitch or totem protecting. Then going on about scream totem builds. But at the same time about totem spawns on different maps. Or how one perk on one survivor (counterforce) can destroy an entire totem build. Then about the imbalance of solo/swf bc only swf can have a dedicated totem cleanser. Ah, and for scream builds we should mention every scream killer addon and people could discuss if its strong or not. Than of course someone needs to mention the real broken killer addon and of course also the broken items/addons for survivor, what brings us to bp economy. Someone needs to make the point that we should rate everything only with the best loadout bc everyone has enough bo to do that. But then we should highlight the discrepancy for new players and how hard it is to start. We should talk about better tutorials, but also about the perk bloat.
I could go on for hours, but i have no time anymore. Those are all valid discussion points, but they all deserve their own threads. It makes no sense to discuss everything in the same post.
Give back all her previous blinks, but shorten the distance from blinking.
The basis of the thread is that there are known issues with Nurse, and she absolutely is the strongest killer in the game by pretty much everyone's assessment, and KR just doesn't tell the full picture. If we go purely by KR, we really should be nerfing Sadako (We should not do that.) Even a middling Nurse doesn't really need to accomplish much to crush a lobby.
Ironically, what holds her back is mobility across maps with large surface areas and the ability to prerun to force multiple fatigues before the chase even becomes dangerous. If all survivors do this while slamming the hell out of gens and make sure they broke an early 3 gen, she's escapable. The problem comes from the fact that none of this feels like outplaying the Nurse. She's really not that interactive, especially if she's running full Aura and hitting you with insta-2nd-blink. Playing against Nurse is largely hoping she's not got the mechanics down, not actively outplaying her - and god help you if a Nurse with the baseline level of familiarity with her gets Midwich. The sheer degree of separation between how she plays vs how other killers play is likely a huge part of her wonky KR, especially given she's free.
I don't want her deleted. I'm not part of this monolith you're arguing with. I think taking away her power and reworking her into a chase killer would suck for the game's variety, her legacy, and Nurse mains in general. Slowing her down too much via an infection mechanic would make some maps practically unwinnable unless she plays perfectly. I also don't think she should lose her ability to blink through walls. Just because someone I have no control over agreed with your joke post about a completely crippling nerf doesn't mean everyone's motivation aligns. Blinking through walls or up/down a floor makes for some of the best organic horror moments in the game. Her presentation is fantastic and is worth being in the game for that alone. Were I given a button to remove her vs keep her as is forever, I'd press the latter.
I spitballed an idea as a creative exercise, one that gives her troughs and peaks, while hopefully preventing survivors being able to freely brain-off gen repair. I don't claim it's perfect, it went from idea to post in the space of 20 minutes while I timed out the remainder of my work day. Rereading it a day later and I already see holes in it and how it would likely motivate tunneling. The hope was to see people engage with that and maybe build on what is admittedly a pretty barebones idea, from both Nurse player perspective and the survivor perspective.
I just think you were a bit quick to pull the trigger on this one. I'm not even a survivor main.
I'm just frustrated that there aren't more people out there putting up any defense for Nurse, because while she can be a complete monster in the right hands, she takes a lot more effort to get there with her compared to some of the others. When I made my joke comments, I can't believe I was surprised that anyone actually took them seriously, it made my heart sink, and made me realize that survivors really do want her to be nigh unplayable before they'll stop pestering the devs to do so. That angered me, and yes, I was quick to pull the trigger in my anger because this whole post read less like a list of ideas for balance in the current game, and more like a collaborative plan to assassinate a character. The only other Killer that has just as high of a skill ceiling as her is singularity, but he doesn't get as high of rewards for mastering him. Comparing that to2 a killer like Ghoul, who takes far less effort, and has just as high rewards, feels wrong to me because it feels so unearned. Yet here we are again, discussing ideas for destroying this particular character, and nobody is coming to her defense.
I guess I shouldn't make jokes in a post like this… the responses just make me feel like an idiot.
You're good, dude :)
I think it's mentality.
Survivors are not a hivemind, hexes notwithstanding. I think the most passionate (good or bad) voices rise to the top, which leads to these diametrically opposed factions that argue in endless strawmen. Balance discussions in this game just become tribal to a fault. Neither side seems to want to concede ground as that lets the 'tribe' down. Tell someone in the trenches of this that Nurse takes skill, you'll get shamed and mocked for justifying your 'free win' killer, likewise tell someone opposed that aura-read Nurse is cheap, you get told you want the game to handhold you and that you should learn to juke. Every disucssion gets shut down by this cycle; very few people engage in empathy. It's a case that both sides can be correct.
That's not a dig at you personally, just trying to read the room after reading plenty of threads like this end up with mudslinging.
Something will give with Nurse eventually. I really, really, hope it's in the form of giving her an interesting mechanic that is interactive and unique, without crippling her, turning her into a chase killer, or done with the enjoyment of only one role in mind.
Or maybe not!
Aaanyway… What if we made Nurse a 4.6 chase killer? Change her 2 blinks into 2 charges instead, where she can grab a survivor if she hits with the charge. We could even make a fun little mechanic where this charge gets the injury if it hits a survivor and then another object. To make sure she doesn't lose her whole blinking-through-things identity, if she charges a vault or pallet, she gets to scamper it.
Also, after grabbing a survivor, she gives them a debuff that builds over time, resulting in a hinder… Maybe 4%? Until it's cleansed by interactables on the map. You know, because she makes it hard to breathe?
We should also give her some quippy one liners. Maybe something about how the survivors' performance is poor.
if it makes you feel any better, i found your jokes quite funny and i feel ya
Yeah I do want her deleted in her current form. It's busted and has essentially no counterplay. I'd rather have something horrifically broken be removed and reworked rather than left in the game unless you think the devs should bring back the og brand new part.