The difference between win rate and kill rate (calculated from Nightlight)
Interestingly, many of the killers typically ranked high on tier lists have average or below average win rates. For example, Billy, Nurse, Chucky, and Artist are near the average. Oni, Wesker, Spirit, Pyramid Head, and Huntress are below average.
Killer | Win rate | Kill rate | Difference | Win rate ranking | Kill rate ranking | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Skull Merchant | 64.1% | 69.0% | -4.9% | 1 | 1 | 0 |
Plague | 61.2% | 64.8% | -3.6% | 2 | 4 | 2 |
Blight | 60.6% | 65.1% | -4.5% | 3 | 2 | -1 |
Nightmare | 59.0% | 60.6% | -1.6% | 4 | 8 | 4 |
Onryō | 58.4% | 63.4% | -5.0% | 5 | 6 | 1 |
Twins | 58.3% | 64.8% | -6.5% | 6 | 3 | -3 |
Lich | 58.2% | 64.0% | -5.8% | 7 | 5 | -2 |
Dredge | 57.0% | 62.2% | -5.2% | 8 | 7 | -1 |
Unknown | 54.9% | 60.4% | -5.5% | 9 | 9 | 0 |
Cenobite | 54.2% | 58.3% | -4.1% | 10 | 15 | 5 |
Wraith | 53.7% | 58.8% | -5.1% | 11 | 13 | 2 |
Doctor | 53.5% | 59.7% | -6.3% | 12 | 11 | -1 |
Pig | 53.0% | 58.0% | -5.0% | 13 | 16 | 3 |
Dark Lord | 52.3% | 58.9% | -6.6% | 14 | 12 | -2 |
Nurse | 52.3% | 57.8% | -5.5% | 15 | 17 | 2 |
Hillbilly | 52.1% | 60.3% | -8.2% | 16 | 10 | -6 |
Cannibal | 51.8% | 58.5% | -6.7% | 17 | 14 | -3 |
Singularity | 51.7% | 57.8% | -6.0% | 18 | 18 | 0 |
Good Guy | 51.5% | 56.9% | -5.4% | 19 | 23 | 4 |
Overall Average | 51.4% | 57.7% | -6.3% | 20 | 19 | -1 |
Artist | 50.9% | 56.2% | -5.3% | 21 | 26 | 5 |
Nemesis | 50.8% | 57.3% | -6.5% | 22 | 21 | -1 |
Shape | 50.0% | 57.5% | -7.5% | 24 | 20 | -4 |
Oni | 50.0% | 56.9% | -6.9% | 23 | 24 | 1 |
Trickster | 49.8% | 57.3% | -7.5% | 25 | 22 | -3 |
Demogorgon | 49.7% | 54.7% | -5.0% | 26 | 30 | 4 |
Xenomorph | 48.9% | 54.5% | -5.5% | 27 | 31 | 4 |
Mastermind | 48.8% | 56.5% | -7.7% | 28 | 25 | -3 |
Legion | 48.5% | 54.1% | -5.5% | 29 | 33 | 4 |
Hag | 48.1% | 54.8% | -6.7% | 30 | 29 | -1 |
Spirit | 48.0% | 55.1% | -7.1% | 31 | 27 | -4 |
Executioner | 47.8% | 54.8% | -7.1% | 32 | 28 | -4 |
Knight | 47.2% | 54.0% | -6.9% | 33 | 34 | 1 |
Huntress | 46.7% | 53.4% | -6.7% | 34 | 37 | 3 |
Deathslinger | 46.6% | 53.5% | -6.9% | 35 | 36 | 1 |
Clown | 46.4% | 54.0% | -7.6% | 36 | 35 | -1 |
Trapper | 45.8% | 54.3% | -8.5% | 37 | 32 | -5 |
Ghost Face | 42.9% | 50.5% | -7.6% | 38 | 38 | 0 |
3-4k is considered a win.
Comments
Starts getting real interesting at that middle of the pack… Actually helps make a lot of sense of the 60% killrate, since it results in approximately a 50% win rate.
Ghost Face only winning 42% of the time on a 50% kill rate 💀
I agree. It's potentially because he's a noob stomper, which is how Onryō, Dredge, Cenobite, and Pig have always ranked high too despite being considered low to mid. His Dream Pallet addon is actually very effective against baby survivors.
Ma boi ghostie needs some love.
so ghostface buffs when? shrug?
Interestingly, many of the killers typically ranked high on tier lists have average or below average win rates.It's because these killers have powers that can be mastered, but also screwed up. It's like how Wraith starts off feeling like a broken S+ tier unstoppable killer for new players, but he really drops off the more play people have.
The only problem here is that this isn't a complete picture. For example, even a 50% killer win rate does not in any way mean that survivors are winning the other 50%.
Survivors are getting a win (0-1k) about 35% of the time. So this isn't capturing draws, nor is it indicating that killers are still winning considerably more than survivors on average.
People are reading 50% win rate and assuming that it's 50/50, and it's not.
On the top end, the higher kill rate killers are winning twice as often as the survivors they face, and that's actually a problem for a PVP game.
From when are the behavior kill rate stats? The bottom kill rate stat is from behavior or?
I‘m really looking forward for him getting some long awaited buffs. Hopefully they continue buffing the weaker killers.
Nightlight's userbase represents a fraction of a fraction of the total userbase that plays the game. The stats are fun to look at but don't necessarily mean anything.
You also have to keep in mind Freddy has one of the lowest pick rates in the game. Each individual match with him will have a bigger impact than, say, a match with Blight.
Not to mention Freddy is often picked by experienced players, because there is little reason to play him unless you like the character.
2K should be counted as 0.5 win, not as 0 win. Winrate formula is not N_wins / N_matches, it's N_wins + 0.5 N_draws / N_matches .
Doesn't change the fact, it's best we have. Whenever devs release stats, Nightlight is usually quite close to their numbers.
Stats don't mean anything in general.
Thing is though people have been trying to get across that kills != skill for ages and this statistic does support that argument. If you consider how games play out around around gate, kill rate doesnt tell the real picture, the killer MUST HAVE failed to defend gate for 2 or more to escape...
To try and explain, assuming the 60% killrate gives a 50% win rate for killer, that means 50% of the time 2, 3 or 4 survivors are winning (or in other words, the gate must have been opened and those survivors escaped). The other 50% of the time 0 or 1 survivors are winning... and more often than not the 1 survivor escape is from getting hatch or the hatch close into gate (the gate is almost never successfully opened in a 1 man escape via gen repairs).
If you look at the gates being powered and opened as the primary win con for both sides, then this 60% kill rate does make a lot more sense... I'm sure you would agree the bulk of a killers win rate doesn't (and shouldn't) come from the end game scramble... what usually decides how many survivors live and die is whether (and when) the gate gets opened or not.
It's pretty definitive that if the killer manages to prevent the gate from being opened, that is undeniably a killer win. If the gate is opened the killer might have still been able to get the 4k... but more often than not it's a scramble at the end and the game can swing wildly between a 0k and a 4k depending on perks and mistakes on either side... is it fair to say for the killer to win, the killer has to rely more on scrambles in end game? If a Bubba turns a 2 hook 0k into a 3k cause of a survivor blunder vs. NOED, do we say Bubba won that game? Or do we say he got lucky/is crap?
Whether gate opens or not makes sense as the definitive divide between wins/losses. End game is a crazy crap shoot, and if we make the killrate lower at 50%, thus making the win rate 40%, the killer is in an end game scramble more often, and the survivors are completing their primary objective 60% of the time.
Looking at these numbers, it looks to me like the kill rate should be maybe 55% or so... but does that argument at least make sense?
Not surprised about Spirit's placement, IW meta wrecks her.
The goal is to just see who wins the most because I care about winning not getting a 2k. Kill rate, which is shown, is best for factoring for the whole kill distribution.
I agree for some of the killers but not Chucky, Wesker, PH, and Huntress. Their skill floor isn't high. Spirit probably plummeted due to the Iron Will buff. Nightlight's historic data shows her kill rate was much higher before Iron Will was buffed.
All stats are from Nightlight on the day of the post.
The killer rankings are comparable to the official stats released in Jan 2024. The killers that got buffed or nerfed changed rankings, but most of the ones that were untouched are similar in ranking. Meta shifts, perk changes, and inaccuracies are responsible for the other differences.
It shouldn't because a draw is neither a loss and a win. Counting it as 0.5 instead of 0 implies that the outcome was 0.5 in favour of the killer, which it wasn't. They also don't count as 0.5 wins in win streaks. They end the win streak.
Man, look at all these killers who average a draw.
Dead by statistics.
I'm still not a major believer in Nightlight as a stat tracker due to it being a user-submitted tracker and can consist of folks who only upload wins or losses. I know it's been pretty accurate in terms of perk pickrates, but I do need to wonder about stuff like killrate/winrates if not every single match is being tracked.
You're probably just saying that because Onryo was highly ranked. Onryo always had high kill rates regardless of any rework. For example, here are the official stats from Jan 2024 and Sep 2022.
Yep. Her kill rate declined significantly since IW was buffed in 8.1.0. See https://nightlight.gg/killers/Spirit
Those stats were tracked when Onryo barely got out of her 2.0 phase at the end of January.
And no, I don't say that out of bias because it could very well be the opposite.
Blows my mind that chucky has a low kill rate. I find him pretty strong and easy
Counting draws as losses is straight up dishonest and makes most of your statistics misleading.
An average person seeing your table will think that a killer with "50% winrate" has a balanced count of losses and wins, when in reality 50% in your table means the killer wins a lot more than he loses - about 50% wins, and 35% losses. Most people would agree that if you win 50% and lose 35% of your matches, then your winrate is not 50% but more like ~60%, and that's why the common winrate definition counts draws as 0.5 wins to factor that.
Well, at least your stats show a problem with Ghostface, right? He has 40% winrate so surely he must lose the majority of his games, and he's underpowered? Well that's not true either, quite the opposite. In fact Nightlight shows Ghostface loses 43.9% of his games, draws 12.8%, and wins 43.3% - ie. an almost perfectly symmetric result. We see here very clearly what is the problem with your statistics - Ghostface has a balanced result, yet your stats don't reflect that because you show only the "43% wins" part, completely omitting draws. Common sense would be that when the result is symmetric, then winrate should be 50%. And, you guessed it, if we use the common winrate definition, that's what we obtain 43.3+12.8/2 = 50%.
Finally, one thing you "omit" to mention, is that with your definition, the survivor winrate is 35% - ie. much lower than every killer in your list, even Ghostface. So, you make it sound like Ghostface is severely underpowered and borderline unplayable with 40%. What should we conclude for the survivor role who has 35% then?
Always another trial of the "dont trust any statistics you didnt personally faked". The win rate scenarios are always pretending there is only win or loss. But there isnt, there are still draws to be taken into account when you want to make something out of this scenario. Also in the kill rate you have to factor into the hatch escapes which are literally random outlier screwing the statistic in itself. I really hate those statistics, cause nothing good ever came out of them.
My post just said "3-4k is considered a win." No where did it say 2k is a loss. As I said, the only purpose of my post was to capture which killers win the most and least (by standard DBD definition). My post is accurate. You're getting salty over your own misinterpretation. Also, I already factored for 0-2ks. I showed the kill rate which factors for the whole kill distribution.
No one counts 2k as 0.5 wins in DBD. As I said, 2ks always end win streaks because they aren't wins. If people followed your logic, it would add 0.5 wins to the win streak.
I tend to agree. Nightlight may be all we have to go on ourselves, but to me it's just interesting for the trends of the game and that's about it.
Anything that relies on the players themselves choosing what info to put there is flawed from the get go. It naturally draws sweatier players mostly, and is just in English too. And I highly doubt many on the consoles mess with it either, which is by far most of the playerbase.
So it greatly lacks global coverage. It's why it doesn't show Self Care as still being very heavily run. That perk is looked at as bad in say the NA and Europe regions, but in the Asian servers it's a staple of most builds, as their preferred playstyle is so different from the other areas.
Nor do official rates, really. Those stats say more about the playerbase than about the characters themselves.
I've had this discussion with someone else before, and similarly you're only looking at the killer side of things here.
For example, you're really just saying that a 2k is a loss here, using a lot more words. You aren't arguing about wins, because clearly it doesn't matter if the gens get done (or gates are powered) if the killer still gets a win with a 3k or 4k. Which is a possibility for the killer, especially with things like blood Warden or noed. (You can't win as the survivor team without completing all of the gens though)
So we're switching to a 'killer didn't win scenario'. Which is exactly what I was saying before: the 50% win rate does not mean survivors are winning the other 50%. That's effectively what you're saying here though.
I'll just limit it to the 2k/draw scenario. In your argument the doors are powered, so the killer somehow loses. The survivors didn't escape as a team, so they lose as a team (which is why the devs use kills and not win/loss btw).
But in a draw, it's a close game for both sides. Survivors might've won if they got lucky or played a bit differently. Alternately, the killer could've gotten a 3k and won if they got lucky or played a bit differently. You can't just say "well it was a stomp because the gens are done". The gens aren't the killer's objective.
And I'm ignoring your underlying implication that the game is 1v1v1v1v1 here too. We're taking about teams on both sides, only that the killer team has one player (usually). Trying to imply that "the survivor who got hatch won" isn't the point of this post, and completely misses the mark.
You are right, we are effectively arguing if a 2k is a tie or not, and I don't consider it a tie from either the killer or the survivor perspective…
To be honest, I don't think there is a way we can come to an agreement on this, what we're effectively arguing here is what we typically want the game experience to be, so we are debating opinions. So to give how I look at it...
You are looking at it with a more competitive mindset, as though the survivors are a true team, and a 2k is a draw for survivors... to my mind it is not. 2 survivors lost and 2 survivors won (and that idea extends to the killer), and yes there is some semantics there, but I don't really view me dying for 2 others to live as "we the survivor team tied", I view it as "I sacrificed myself, but at least my 2 teammates got out alive". To my mind I lost so my teammates could win. That is how the game presents itself to me, and I how I would view a horror scenario... would I be willing to get sliced up in a basement and turned into chilli to save the lives of 2 children? Yeah I like to think I would... but I don't tie in that scenario, I sacrifice myself for sake of others, and to me that distinction is important.
How does this relate to balance in DBD? Well to my mind this notion of sacrificing yourself for others is important for the theme of the game. Are you willing to leave your teammate to die for yourself to escape? That decision must have risk to have meaning and this notion of "2k is a tie" greatly diminishes that part of the theme. Why would I risk my life if my teammate dying is a tie for them and me? Answer it isn't... they lose. If escaping is something skewed slightly more to the killer side, the decision to save a teammate is therefore more meaningful.
In a 3 man scenario, the killer has found me, I know its very unlikely I'm gonna make it out alive... but if I last long enough I can maybe at least sacrifice myself to get the gate open so my teamates can leave, that's a 2k. If they come back for me, that is their decision, and one most players make because we're human, but this is what I mean by the scramble at end game. If a 2k was a true tie, the much smarter play is don't come back for me and risk a 3k or 4k, and in comp DBD that's what they do, they don't risk it, they take the 2k because for them they are a true team and it is a tie due to the rules of the tournament.
Survivors in non comp games however do come back for saves, because we are not a true team… if I die I die... I didn't tie, I lost. The decision to come back may result in a greater number of players escaping, but it may also result in more players dying. There are a lot of factors that go into that, but I would say the most common outcomes are usually equal or worse trades... and this is fine, this is the theme playing out beautifully in the game...
Basically the point I'm making is the survivor game is enhanced by the game being balanced so that the gate doesn't open 50% of the time. It adds weight and meaning to survivors trying to save each other as much as possible. If 60% of the time 2 players or more make it out, sacrificing yourself and being altruistic doesn't hold anywhere near the same weight, because the end game scramble is more common and the decision to come back for a save or not becomes the status quo.
This is why I prefer the game where it is centered around the gate opening or not. The killer fails their objective if they let a survivor out through gate, survivors succeed their objective is they escape through gate. A 3k is an acceptable win con for killer due to hatch mechanics and alike, but a 2k means you failed to hold your objective, and I think that perspective is what serves the theme of the game the best.
He's hard to master.