What is going on with the Nurse
Time to make a post out-lining what I think has actually shaped the discussion of Nurse since she emerged as 'the best killer' out of nowhere(following the most severe nerfing of any character which made her for a short time 'the worst killer'). I've made it in a new thread because it's long even for me. You were warned.
So just to outline my views on the Nurse: depending on what standards you measure her by, she is the best and worst killer in the game. Almost every discussion I get involved in about her revolves around the ability of one side to ignore this and the other to force them to look at it, like the creatures in Birdbox. Both know the Nurse needs adjusting, but the former group understand that if they consent to this then survivors will continue to enjoy being balanced on a different standard; that of 'how most players who are in lower-ranks play', which if it was applied to the Nurse would mean she needs several significant buffs. The nut-shell of everything now:
- Her addons have never been changed.
- This makes the sudden recent focus on them suspicious.
- The consensus that addons hindered blinking never went away, it just got drowned-out.
- This needs explaining by those pushing for changes to Nurse.
- Survivors having become worse at the game is currently the best explanation.
- That isn't being acknowledged because it undermines the case for changing Nurse.
- It instead supports the case for changing survivors, in a way they have resisted for 3 years.
- As they will not support that, a compromise is reverting Nurse changes in patch 1.9
TL;DR version below
Other than that is a more specific issue: there have always been complaints about the Nurse, but why have they only recently become fixated on her addons? I could say that 'survivors have found a wedge-issue, a point of least-resistence and the devs are cooperating with them'. Even killer-mains after all are saying 'her basekit is fine, it's just those addons'.
My own thoughts on that are: "Am I the only person left playing this game who doesn't have a goldfish memory-span?"; the Nurse's addons have not been changed at all since she was released, none of them. There hasn't been any listed changes to the game which would have affected them either in a way that reflects the drastic change in focus that complaints about her have had. Why was no one complaining about them in 2017? Why has it only become a thing since then?
I'll reiterate something else I've already said: if you told a Nurse-main in 2017 that people would be complaining about her addons making her over-powered, they would reply "Oh I wonder what buffs they'll get to cause that?". The answer is none; they haven't been changed, nor affected directly or indirectly by any other balance, design or mechanical changes beyond the superficial. That Nurse-main would then make the obvious conclusion: "What happened that made survivors so bad then?".
One narrative pushed is that Nurse's extra-blink addons give her multiple chances to react and course-correct during a blink-chain, limiting the ability of survivors to evade. This means you no longer have to be good with the Nurse, merely adequate.
IF this were all there was to it though, I would expect Nurse to have made great strides in no longer being so weak at low-ranks and another killer to take her place as the weakest. This doesn't appear to have happened. Also, was it the case in 2017 and people just didn't realise it was the addons when they made more generalistic complaints about her? Why were Nurse-mains at the time saying they preferred not using them because they interfered with muscle-memory? Did they just not realise the utility of extra blinks?
I think survivors have stumbled over the truth but not noticed: it's not that the Nurse has extra chances to succeed because of extra-blinks, but that survivors have extra-chances to fail. Blinking with addons remains as hard as it was in 2017.
With all the focus on addons though, we're out on what has changed about blinking itself. In Patch 1.9 from January 2018, substantial changes were made to the function and appearance of her blinking, as well as the way her lunge-attack out of a blink. Killers discussed these changes and the consensus was that the changes were mostly neutral. I have now partially changed my mind on this.
I now believe survivors failed to adapt to those changes. I don't think they realised the implications of this one in particular: "Duration of the blink now depends on the how long the player charged the blink for, rather than the distance traveled during the blink. The time required to fully charge a blink (2 seconds), the maximum distance traveled (20 meters) and the time required to cover that distance (1.5 seconds) remain unchanged."
Survivors are not able to judge how far the Nurse is blinking based on how long she charged each blink; they can react, but not anticipate. A Nurse can fully-charge a blink, then aim lower at the ground to shorten the distance. This reduces the uncertainty and inaccuracy that extra-blink addons introduce. It reduces the require muscle-memory for a Nurse blinking towards a close survivor. Killers though have become so accustomsed to adapting by now that we don't realise when we're doing it; the Nurse-meta following her initial nerfs happened almost by accident too.
It turns out that she has in fact gone through a second evolution in her meta, due to being able to short-blink on a full-charge. The patch notes for 1.9 say that "The following points will address the additional balance changes that should counter balance the improved Blink", but none of the following points address blink at all, or seem to have any relevance. It's just changes to pallets, STBFL, map changes, scratch-marks and an exploit fix(listed under balance rather than bug-fixes for some reason).
Changing the Nurse on the pretense and manufactured consensus that her addons are a problem is absurd. There is nothing to explain how this could have changed since 2017, save for 1.9 changes which are really about killers adapting instinctively and survivors not at all. If it just seems like survivors really can do nothing against post-1.9 blinks, then there is the option to revert the 1.9 changes, not knee-jerk nerf the Nurse, because that is what it would be. Nothing has been learned from all the previous mistakes if this is on the cards.
Comments
First of all, you used quotes for this: "chosen not to adapt because they only want to loop and are lazy". This is not something I have said, nor relevant to anything I have discussed here. Who are you quoting and why are you doing so in a reply to me?
What you call my 'narrative' isn't a narrative; it's an argument. False narratives override facts by subsuming them to context, rather than letting facts determine context. An argument accepts the context as provided by facts. When I say "Nothing has changed that would warrant current talk of Nurse addons being broken", that is a factual statement: it is either true or false. I am not constructing a narrative, but inviting counter-factuals.
You claim it is wrong, but then don't do a damn thing to show why it is when it would be extremely easy were it the case. You just need to point out what changes are relevant to Nurse's addons that would take them from being detrimental in 2017 to becoming what they now are at some point since then. I am so far the only person who had bothered looking into this. I pulled out the one relevant patch and you could maybe have talked about it and argued that it was in fact directly beneficial to Nurse addons, but you didn't. I did half your work for you.
You instead for some reason want to talk about when you first started playing the game; around early-mid 2018, after that patch. The point you're trying to make remains elusive.
Nurse is not, has not ever been, nor will she ever be a normal killer. Her power will stay the same. She will always have blinks and be able to go through walls and pallets. You will never be able to loop a Nurse like a Leatherface.
Sorry about it but there isn’t anything to really do about the Nurse to make her like every other killer, her power doesn’t work that way. Unless they remove Nurse, which will never happen.
Base-kit Nurse is in no way overpowered by the way. Her add-ons make her stupidly strong, but baseline Nurse? No.
I have no idea why this post is in reply to me.
And I have no idea why there has to be 50 threads complaining about Nurse but here we are again...
Let’s be honest with ourselves, what is REALLY going to change with Nurse in the upcoming patch? Her add-ons. I’m doubtful they will touch her base-kit, as they shouldn’t.
Was quoting a common argument used by people defending nurse's current state. It should have been obvious in context.
Why do I have to say this a third time? My point is that even when I first started, there were many discussions about both base Nurse and her addons, B-O-T-H. From that time until now, I never saw any discussions about how her addons were a hinderence. What you say is a factual statement is just..not.
You set great store by 'even when you first started', but I keep having to remind you subtley that this was according to you just last year.
Half the game's lifetime. Half the game's lifetime, all the while with people claiming something you claim they weren't. Perception of nurse and her addons have been the same all this time. You say differently. I'm still waiting for your factual statements..
The factual statements being that in 2016 and 2017, Nurse's addons were before and after her nerfing regarded as liabilities. I identified the key potential change to the game as being patch 1.9, which was released in January 2018.
Is that before or after you started playing DbD?
The fact that I tend to prefer the Nurse without addons and I can still do good is indivitive enough that the addons aren't what's making her powerful.
I feel like these addon alterations aren't going to change anything.