Opinions on the whole "Nerf Nurse" discussion?
So I've been seeing a lot of topics about Nurse being 'unbalanced' or 'unfair for players', and that she needs a nerf. And I decided to create a master thread for a whole discussion about the topic to see what everybody really thinks in general.
For me, I have 5 reasons as to why Nurse is fine the way she is, and an example of how I would balance her if it were really needed;
1.) Nurse is only as good as the player who's using her.
Nurse isn't too powerful if the person who's playing as her doesn't know how to read survivors or maneuver her in a way that a higher-tier Nurse would. If you're a beginner at playing as a Nurse, it'll be noticed right off the bat, and survivors already have the upper-hand.
2.) You really need to think when it comes to playing as that killer.
When playing as good ol' Sally, you need to consider the amount of thinking that goes into playing her as well; between learning how most survivors move, how to handle range and get to areas quicker, learning how to control and apply pressure, handling your character if there's perks or add-ons applied, tracking wounded survivors, etc.
There's a lot that goes into this killer.
3.) She isn't actually as powerful as people think she is.
While good Nurse players can karate chop you as soon as they see you, and that it's hard to lose a good Nurse, she can only do so much with her blinks and movement. Blinks have a fatigue time for a reason, and there's certain areas in a map that she either can't reach, has a hard time blinking onto or constantly comes in contact with when blinking, or can easily lose LOS on a survivor on. She has a bunch of counterplays that people aren't aware of. Pallets are also good against the Nurse if you're able to read the killer as well. While looping isn't technically an option against a good Nurse, you're still able to put some distance between you and her while she's getting ready to blink.
She's also able to be juked. Quite a lot, actually.
You rarely see it with good Nurses because of how well they can perform, but even a "God-tier" Nurse can have a hard time with a survivor that knows how to break her non-existent ankles.
Also, pacing of the game is incredibly important when going against a Nurse. She can either be up to speed, or falling behind depending on how quickly objectives and totems are being done. Immersion in-game is also important if you know your maps. It's all in knowing your pressure and timing. The quicker you get things done, the slower the Nurse becomes.
4.) Most of the time, her add-ons aren't as useful.
This is a big one. Yes, some can help in a chase, and some can cater to another person's playstyle depending on the Nurse, but lets be honest here;
the only incredibly useful add-ons are the ones that assist with her blinks (lower fatigue time, increased range, time between blinks, and occasionally additional blinks themselves).
Depending on who you're playing against, her add-ons can actually be her downfall, so it's good to pay attention to what she might be using. Does she have multiple blinks? Is her range a lot longer than a normal Nurse? Is her fatigue time more quicker? Does she chain-blink quicker than usual?
These are questions you have to ask yourself when playing against a Nurse. Then, you have to learn to adapt to the add-ons depending on what she has. You can come up with a lot of chase plans that are efficient if you consider the playstyle. The same can go for perks too!
5.) Because of how hitboxes and map layouts are, she's not as accurate as she used to be.
Self-explanatory.
How I would balance the Nurse if it were really necessary?
The only thing I could really think of when it comes to nerfing the Nurse, is to rework some of the add-ons she has. Extended range paired with the stopwatch can be a bit too much to work with, and either reducing or removing the ability to affect the charge time of a blink would help reduce some of the pressure she would apply in a chase depending on how its used. Also, adding a bit more counterplay to her would be suitable. Maybe something that could increased her fatigue time slightly or make her lose control of a blink would be interesting.
Though, these are the only ideas I have. I can't really think of much else due to how fine the Nurse already is.
If you have any comments, feel free to mention something below! This is an open topic, so I'm definitely listening to all sides!
Comments
Personally I'd like to see her stunned if the pallet is dropped on her, regardless of whether she's currently blinking or not. Make it override the fatigue, there's no need for both, but pallets SHOULD hold some form of strength/defense for survivors. Insane map mobility and avoiding most obstacles is already an overwhelming advantage without literally ignoring a well timed stun.
@miaasma
You know why Nurse is strong? It's because survivors don't use their first line of defense, stealth and they resort to their second line of defense, looping. The clip below shows you what will happen if you don't use stealth against a Nurse AKA her counter. Btw, Nurse isn't easy mode either, especially when I'm a console Nurse main.
Also, props to the survivors in this clip, they took the loss like a champ and gave me great compliments about my Nurse! They are amazing players in my opinion. :)
no, nurse is not strong because survivors try to loop her. no smart survivor attempts to loop a nurse. nurse is strong because survivors have no real option against her in a chase besides break line of sight and hope she screws up. it's similar to why spirit is strong, but nurse can more reliably down survivors in chases and has far better map pressure, putting her in a class of her own (this is why every killer tier list worth discussing puts nurse in the S tier above every other killer)
"stealth" is a shaky topic in this game; you can hide from a nurse until she finds you with a tracking perk, but while you do so you aren't accomplishing anything. you can't both stealth and do objectives, go for saves etc. and if you're stealthing, the nurse is on someone else who isn't
this game is largely based around a cat-and-mouse version of balance. killer chases survivor, survivor employs whatever tactics they can to stall the chase for as long as possible so that their team can do objectives. sure, there are times when hiding is smart, but a lot of the time it results in wasted time that you could be using for completing objectives. nurse is the only killer that doesn't adhere to this sense of balance, because any decent killer who knows how to track, nurse or not, isn't just going to lose you mid-chase unless you do some incredible houdini trick with a perk like quick and quiet + have iron will since survivors are now loud again, so using stealth once a nurse has found you isn't a realistic possibility. and like what has already been established, a good nurse cannot be looped. this results in a good nurse downing survivors extremely quickly once she has found them with little resistance, because a survivor's options once they've been found by a nurse are extremely limited
the best way to play against a good nurse isn't to hide from her, it's to do generators as quickly as possible. unhook as quickly as possible, don't bother healing, do generators and hope that the map allows you to break LoS from the nurse as much as you can (maps like blood lodge are a big RIP)
NUrse is controversial. just leave her and spirit alone until we see what happens with these map reworks and if they buff every other m1 killer. Although i wouldnt mind Nurse's broken addon COMBOS adjusted.It sucks that devs balance for low casuals and passionate fans of this game get treated like dogshit.
Base is fine. Addons could do some adjustments if not reworks.
When would low casuals even run into good Nurses? I hardly ran into any Nurse from Rank 16 to 4.
I mno tsaying talking about nurse when i said low casuals get the best treatment. I meant people who play this game more than those casuals get to experience dc's, lags, anything else you can think of that is not good for the game more than the casuals and killers just arent balanced at high ranks so people play nurse fro that reason
So spending hours playing a certain character , learning their strengths and weaknesses , muscle memory attack/actions and becoming too good with them isnt allowed .....
LUL
imagine if other game developers would nerf pro players best played character in any game just because they were too good.
That's literally what youre saying, good thing the devs don't read your comments
i don't "accuse" you of strawmanning, you strawmanned people's arguments into simply wanting things to be easy for survivors, rather than fixing things that break the game. it's reductive and belittles people's positions. the MYC point was just an example of nurse turning something that is normally reasonable into something completely absurd because of how she's designed
nothing you have said contradicts the problems with nurse, just more insisting that she doesn't break the game and that needing perks to win vs her is fair and balanced
the depip squad reference completes the picture
okay i tried my best
typing on this forum is as useless as always
Ikr but it gets annoying when people bum rush when your doing a blink as they negate it they should tweak her power like the cannibal and let you cancel it while charging to show those players cheap tricks dont work anymore
Ha ha ha hmmmmm ;)
Stealth ?
Now u can hair survivor breathing so easy from changed sounds lol. and u say stealth. That is not possible.
i'm pretty sure all they said they were going to do is tweak her addons...
-sighs- people take QnA's out of context...
Her addons are the only thing that needs changes, not nerfs, changes. Its kinda starting to get sad now of how all survivors now want the viable killers to be not viable anymore, first it was billy (But glad they didn't do anything to him), then Ghostface and now Spirit and nurse
Every single killer has had survivors clamoring for nerfs, including the Wraith.
We both know that "tweaking" means "nerfing".
Nerfing her 5 blinks so it doesn't turn into an impossible match? I'm down.
Tweaking doesn't just mean Nerf..
Like, I can Tweak my Username (Buff my Username) so it actually says: Michael_Myers
So it can also mean buff.
So... still taking the QnA out of context.
EDIT: another example of tweaking meaning buffing, is that Call of Duty can Tweak their gameplay and Mechanics to make something new and better! Which is buffing the overall experience of all players.
So you're claiming that they're gonna buff her add-ons, or at the very least that it's within the realm of possibility?
Indeed. When playing survivor, it feels like all the killers have M&A tier 4.
Sure if you want to be technical she is fundementally broken as her skill ceiling is in outer space, but with some practice it's still fun and very different to play against her in my opinion. I guess if someone has a very binary "escape/4k = fun, anything else = not fun" mindset she wouldn't be fun to face though lmao.
I feel the +range add-ons could either have the absolute joke that is """blink accuracy""" replaced with a charge speed malus, or they could instead let them increase the charge cap so you could charge for longer to reach what would basically be 150% charge or something instead of 100%. Make it a tool the Nurse has available to close a big gap or navigate the map instead of something that will ALWAYS help to some extent you by giving you extra range (and indirectly faster charge speed as a result) no matter if you charge your blink 15% or 100%
I feel she has a lot of very underused add-ons that could get new effects to be more interesting and appealing too. I don't even know their names or what they could do, but could be interesting to see what they'd come up with.
Exactly, we won't know until they actually do tweak her.
Like starting with a 5 Blink nerf. It's really unbalanced especially during Rank reset, if the nurse knows how it works while the survivors hate her for using it.
But, tweaking the Power? could mean less of a cooldown, or wind up time. (Cause Nerfing it wouldn't make sense especially if they nerf the 5 blink Addons.)
So a buff and a nerf is in the realm of possibility.
But, it is uncertain because we ourselves are not the devs, we are on the sidelines. So only time can tell TBH.
EDIT: Also sorry for being late, wasn't on the Forums for awhile. @Orion
I mean, he's not wrong. This is pretty well written and makes a lot of solid points.
nah it doesn't
it's just more wordy "survivors need to git gud" nonsense typed by another clueless killer main who doesn't understand how the game works at large and even goes so far as to reference "chase mechanics" as they existed in 2016, as if that has any relevance at all to nurse's place in the game as it exists in 2019
his post can be boiled down to "pallet looping is the problem and nurse is the answer" which is why i didn't bother typing a reply. such a person isn't worth engaging at all
"Nurse is only as good as the player who's using her."
Using the same logic, a survivor is as good as the player who is playing him/her. Therefore, the devs should stop nerfing survivors (perks, loops, vaulting conditions ... etc).
"You really need to think when it comes to playing as that killer."
Just because it takes a lot of time to master her, does not mean it is ok for her to remain broken. If I play survivor for 5000 hrs, does that mean it is ok for me to have the potential to demolish killers?
"She isn't actually as powerful as people think she is."
- She is as powerful as the player who is using her (as you said earlier).
- She is one of the most used killers in red ranks for a reason.
“Most of the time, her add-ons aren't as useful”
I don’t have a lot to say here since most people agree that her addons need to be reworked.
"Because of how hitboxes and map layouts are, she's not as accurate as she used to be."
Yes, hit boxes are broken but not in favour of the survivors. I got hit by nurse many times while I am behind her back.
The bottom line is, a killer that ignores all the survivors' defenses/mechanics should not exist in this game regardless of the skill required to master that particular killer.
I play killer ans survivor at Red ranks.
(Actually rank 2 killer and 3 survivor)
On some map nurse is just insane (blood lodge) but on some map this is just unplayable (lery).
I enjoy play nurse at red rank because we can counter the genrush and swf with full insta heal.
In survivor you need to think like a nurse for counter her. It's hard but possible.
Don't nerf nurse. It's viable killer
Pls mate don't play survivor, it's soul crushing experience
Did you use one guy to explain her power?
"I play survivor for 5000 hrs, does that mean it is ok for me to have the potential to demolish killers?"
You can. It's very possible with that much experience to pallet loop most of the killers for 5 gens.
"The bottom line is, a killer that ignores all the survivors' defenses/mechanics should not exist in this game regardless of the skill required to master that particular killer."
This is because most survivors believe pallets are their only defense. The counter to nurse is not pallets but stealth, breaking LOS, and Iron Will. Distortion is actually also quite strong but I almost never see it.
I've been playing this game for 3 years, and I've never had a single issue with Nurse, even when she originally had 3 blinks as part of her base kit.
Just sounds like my fellow Survivors need to get better at the game. And that's a fact.
Look, I said it's a fact. That means it's a fact right, I dont even have to provide evidence?
I've faced only two decent Nurses on PS4 where they got more than a 1k. Almost every other time she gets bullied which tilts her who then tries to tunnel. When gens start popping the Nurse disconnects/gives up.
It was fun playing against the decent Nurses though my teammates relied far too much on looping when they realized this one can land a hit. As for myself, I'm terrible at looping but great at escaping a chase and hiding so I faired pretty well.
From a killer's perspective: I would love more methods that don't rely on looping to stall a killer. It's incredibly dull.
From a survivors perspective: I'm bad at looping and don't care enough to learn as I find it abhorrent. So, again, more methods that don't rely on looping would be great. I do well enough, as is, in trying to avoid chases but If I'm found I try to lose los and escape as soon as possible rather than attempt to loop.
Nurse has a high skill ceiling and can act proactively, which makes her INCREDIBLY strong in comparison to other Killers. However, I would argue that she's also ideal for these traits, as she can still be outplayed, and in fact more dynamically than other Killers.
Obviously, people used to just looping everyone else will feel weak when their stock technique doesn't work, but I blame the rigid, punishment-based gameplay other Killers are saddled with.
Why don’t we meet Wednesday hillbilly and spirit to so you survivors have notebooks of an easy asylum time to escape because you guys want a 100% escape chance every time wow I can’t pallet loop wow I can window loop I’m so good at this game survivors are op aredy and most killers you can’t play high rank because you surviors say nerf this killer and that’s killer now the devs just want a fun friend chase not a challenge for you survivors or any skill for a a chase that shouldn’t last thans 30 secs so you guys can gen use a amd leave you know 70% of survivors escape high rank that isn’t and you guys still ask for nerfs
Honestly?
The only unbalanced part of her is her add ons. Otherwise, she's fine. Survivors only say she needs a Nerf because she puts them out of the power role.
if any killer is getting looped for 5 generators it's because the killer is playing poorly, full stop
I think nurse needs to be buffed, for console that is
They really need to tweak her addons, and that is about it.
I always say, every killer should be viable without addons being needed, addons should give you a boost or change the way you can play the killer, similar to Spirit, but not to the extent of what it does with Nurse who is technically worse if you get used to using addons.
But survivors can help, by not treating Nurse as if she is counter able similar to the rest of the cast I.E. Looping. I'm not saying don't play ring around a few times, but don't depend on it. Break LOS, do anything besides run in a straight line, and take advantage of her fatigue.
"omg nurse destroyzz the game I cant loop her"
Nurse doesnt break anything. Nurse bring another experience to the game. If you want to play against her like you play vs the rest of the roaster, thats up to you, to me you're lazy and don't want to adapt your playstyle.
I hope we have more killer like her. Different for the game experience and interesting for the skill and gameplay curve of learning.
Instead of thinking about nerfs and other negative "to the ground" mindset, one may better think about diversity of experience and richness for the game.
You want a roaster with 40 115% killer that bring nothing to the game ? Fine. Watch this game die then.
don't try to fight them that good and their good is different
or even possible to think they are console players