Understanding The Judgement (NEW KILLER)
Fewer times has a killer so controversial in terms of both being called the strongest killer or completely dogwater bad. A killer with real and unique mechanics that influences gameplay in a way no other killer has before. In my opinion, a masterclass in DBD Killer design.
In this post, I am going to help you truly understand what this killer is. How you should estimate their power level, and help form your overall perception of this killer from a position of deep analysis. After this post, you will understand what makes this killer strong, understand her weaknesses, and you will be able to spot and correct systemic mistakes other Judgement players make as they are learning this killer.
HIGH SKILL CEILING:
First of all, one thing that instantly blurs perceptions about this killer is the high skill ceiling. A high skill ceiling often is created by killers who have unique gameplay mechanics where the skill needed for that killer isn't passed over well through experience of other killers. Nurse of this is a prime example. Therefore, you, as a 10+ hour Nurse, should feel no shame losing to a 3000h+ survivor, even if you have 3000h of killer experience yourself.
Therefore, we can already dismiss the experience of people who have simply failed to master the Judgement. In judging the Judgement, we will assume true technical mastery of this killer as a baseline to measure her overall strength.
HER ABILITY:
The way her ability works is, you charge it up (around 1 second), then it starts shooting out a position that will increasingly move faster. If you then fire it, it will fire in a straight line, but won't damage instantly for a small grace period as it fires. The longer you've charged her ability as it was moving, the shorter that grace period is.
This means that you won't be able to instantly shoot out the ability in front of you expecting to hit a closeby survivor. Originally, while they designed this killer, there was no grace period, and you could instantly position the beam on top of someone and fire it. This of course was too boring, and the strategy very effective, but even now, as we have the grace period, we can still charge up the power more and THEN place it on top of a survivor, as there will be little to no grace period after charging for longer.
Well.. so? Does that make her ability un-counterable at the highest level? Nope, not necessarily. Because the design is brilliant. Due to you needing time to charge up, the survivor will have time to block vision between themselves and the killer. When the killer no longer knows where you are, what they need to do is "gamble".
You can perceive gambles as 50/50%, but in reality they might be more like 33/66% or different number depending on the place that blocks vision.
This is key to understand; The number 1 counterplay against The Judgement is blocking vision as she's charging up, and forcing her into gambles.
So what does the Judgement have to do in response? Not many people realize this, as they love shooting out her beams, but as a true Highskilled Judgement, you need to be VERY deliberate with when you pull out your power.
The number 1 question you should ask at all times is;
"If i trigger my ability here, will i have vision over the survivor by the time I have to shoot?"
Once you understand that question, you will have one of the most important qualities a high skilled judgement needs. This is the difference between a Gambler Judgement and a Pro Judgement.
TECHS:
We want maximum vision over survivors then… So how do we achieve that?
The number 1 mistake Judgement players make, is not understanding the stages of her abilities; There are actually 3.
Stage 1: You charge the ability up, and there are no moving parts
Stage 2: The ability starts moving around the map as you aim
Stage 3: You shoot the ability
Many Judgement players will resort to what I will call the Backflick tech. Where they look behind them as they charge the ability, to get rid of the grace period, and then look at the survivor again to shoot it.
The big problem is; they are looking behind them during Stage 1 AND Stage 2.
A Pro Judgement is what i call a "Death Stare Judgement". As they press their ability, they will continue looking straight at the survivor for maximum vision during stage 1, like a disciplined death stare. It is only, and exactly, at stage 2 where they look backwards for the backflick until they look forwards again to shoot it.
I highly recommend you practice this, because this is a habit that will serve you well! Don't be one of those silly Judgements that's already looking behind them before the ability even starts moving! The earlier you have this habit down, the better.
GRACE PERIOD:
Due to Judgement players wanting to charge away the grace period, they will have to look at different directions many times as the survivor. Which will always make them lose vision. Not only that, but it makes certain dodges survivors can do harder for The Judgement;
The Judgement ideally wants to place their ability on top of a survivor so its impossible to dodge. However, as they are moving the increasingly faster ability to the survivor, a survivor who is dodging towards the Judgement forces The Judgement into a last second correction flick that may have to make them look backwards again. Therefore, dodging towards the Judgement is typically the strongest choice, as its the hardest to correct for.
THE FINAL QUESTIONS:
But remember, we don't care about hard in determining the Judgement's final strength, as we assume mastery.
That means that the final question of whether The Judgement is an incredibly strong killer all comes down to these 2 questions:
1. Can a judgement in an open field guarantee hitting a survivor (assuming they've charged away the grace period), which ultimately depends on the Radius of the beam and how that's balanced.
2. Can survivors consistently enough find visual obstructions to force the Judgement into gambles, or is The Judgement able to force enough "Checkmate Scenarios", where their position of charging the ability makes it impossible for survivors to force Gambles.
For question 2 to matter, question 1 must be true. And if question 2 is also answered in favour of The Judgement, then The Judgement is a true unstoppable beast (which doesn't automatically imply imbalanced). However, if those 2 questions are answered differently, based on the favourability of the gambles, the Judgement becomes weaker. Due to her low cooldowns, this wouldn't instantly mean it's over, but would mean there'd be less consistency in guaranteeing certain results from a match.
Similarly, although very long ranged shot are often not guaranteed, once The Judgement starts anticipating survivors hopping off a gen to dodge, they can also turn those scenarios into 50/50s, or 30/70s, however what you believe the optimal odds to be.
Calculating those chances in combination with her cooldowns ultimately determines the True strength of The Judgement
I hope this post helped form your perception on how to Judge the Judgement ❤️
Comments
do you have any comment on the Zealous window buffs?
I find this killer fascinating for the same reasons I do Henry. What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? A good judgment shouldn't miss, but a good survivors should dodge, too. Only difference is you can't really run away from Judgment much, so there's no physical exhaustion from running after people all game its purely mental exhaustion trying to get reads on people.
I think that's best to answer through the Henry theoretical power question;
For henry, the question of whether he has absolute power is fully determined by the Radius of his ability. If that radius is big enough; meaning that if it's placed exactly on top of a survivor, it should be impossible to dodge. This is what i call the "Perfect Radius".
However, at the perfect radius level, only a Tool Assisted Henry would be able to guarantee hits, because us humans deal with a minimal reaction time of 150-200 ms. So we would be unable to perfectly place it on top of the survivor, even if our placement was perfect. That's why there's also the "Mastery Radius", which is bigger and accounts for the minimal human reaction time. At that radius, the ability should be 100% hittable for humans who play at levels of perfection.
But inbetween the "Perfect Radius" and the "Mastery Radius" is where the human reaction radius sits. I think that's currently where Henry might be at, (though I haven't personally tested to measure it with any Tool Assisted program ofc)
So on that assumption, I would say that Henry isn't an instoppable force. And if he was, he should have his ability's radius nerfed in between the Mastery and Perfect radius, so that it keeps the human element.
But as for Judgement, I think she can be balaned WHILE being an unstoppable force. One of the reasons being is that she has no mobility (assuming no addons), so if we assume her Checkmate Scenarios to be true, it might still take her time to get close enough to survivors to be able to pull those Checkmate Scenarios off, and with survivors prerunning, she cannot pull those off from a distance in many scenarios, so just from that catch up time, perfect survivors and a perfect Judgement might already find themselves in a balanced match.