Can we look back and have a serious discussion about the past, current and future killer reworks?
Let's be real, the past reworks are absolute dog piss. The killers I'm mentioning are Trickster, Hillbilly, Twins, Knight, Freddy, Sadako, and now Skull merchant.
How many times did Sadako and Skull Merchant received a rework AND still failed miserably?
The only outlier was probably Hillbilly. Mind-blowing, right? No, because survivors absolutely despise the Hillbilly after his rework and he's about to get his nerfs on October due to complaints. The nerfs in the PTB received negative feedback by Hillybilly mains and based Survivor mains alike. It's the same way how the Skull Merchant got complained about her power but the nerfs made her the worst killer in the game. Yes, worse than Freddy Krueger, Trapper and Michael Myers. None of the killers received such hefty nerfs before. We all know Freddy got reworked and then nerfed to Hell, then they left him for years but this is new because Skull Merchant gets a huge nerf and then she gets reworked in late 2025. You leave a killer to an unplayable state for more than a year, Behaviour. Do you realize that?
The Twins is a sad case. She was getting a rework but ultimately got scrapped and left Charlotte and Victor in the bin. People have waited for a long time only to become disappointed. Also Twins power can become disabled permanently thanks to a bug.
Trickster rework is not successful either. Nobody likes his power now. Why would you pick him over Huntress where she does 1000x better than Trickster?
Knight has so many bugs and restrictions that's it's not fun to play as him. 3X depletion rate? What. Not one power besides Knight has a power that does that.
I'm not looking forward to Freddy, Skull Merchant and Myers rework. (Confirmed by bhvr but they haven't said when they are getting reworked)
Comments
The Freddy rework is, by far, the worst of them.
First of all it was completely unnecessary, reverting the nerfs from patch 1.8.1 and adding something similar to the Incapacitated status effect or Madness 3 during the Dream Transition would have fixed him. The rework quite literally deleted my favorite character from the game, and replaced him with a killer that was boring, uninspired, bereft of his unique identity and extremely unhealthy for the game.
And none of that has been fixed. Over five years without my favorite character in the game and Freddy is still in a terrible state. Yes, he can be deadly in the right hands, but those high kill rates are meaningless if you aren't having fun when getting them. And if his upcoming rework isn't a "dework" as I like to call it, if we don't move away from his post-rework mess, then nothing will be fixed. Because the rework was just THAT bad.
Freddy's rework is one of the worst changes ever made in DBD's history.
I almost agree with you but Freddy won't be the worst killer anymore. Skull Merchant is going to be unplayable after this at least Freddy is somewhat playable especially with fake pallets addon but she is done for.
He never was ;)
Weak? Yes, undeniably. But never the worst.
Skull Merchant, if the changes aren't reverted despite all the feedback, will be a contender for the title. Playing her in the PTB was miserable, they really left her with almost nothing to work with.
I don‘t consider Knight a rework, he only got some nerfs and buffs.
Twins thankfully didn‘t get reworked and I think they should focus on the current version.
Skull merchant needed to get changed, because of how miserable she made the game.
I really dislike the Sadako reworks and they should have kept the first version, which was a lot more fun for everyone. They only needed to give that version some buffs. Alone the buffs from the reworks would have made her first version great. Sadly I will never be able to play my favorite killer again.
Hillbilly will be fine and the last rework was good. He is only a bit overtuned right now. Depending on how much of an impact the nerfs will have, I will call this rework a success.
Trickster wasn‘t in need of a rework and they ruined the character for those who enjoyed him like they did for me with Sadako. He went from quite common in my matches to never be seen again like Sadako.
I would add legion to the list who was probably a good rework, but I have no idea what they exactly changed. I only know the majority of people found his first version extremely bad.
I haven‘t played when Freddy released, but I think his rework wasn‘t good. I would love to play as and against his first version, because in concept it sounded a lot more interesting than what we have now.
I really hope they focus on buffs and nerfs instead of reworks in the future. They just ruin said character for those who liked them after they reworked them. I hope Myers gets some buffs instead of a rework and the Freddy one will hopefully be good or a revert. Same with Sadako hopefully she will get her Orginal mechanics back.
Tbh current Hillbilly is a blast to play against. But in good hands, he is the god of destruction.
I feel bad for yall knight suffers now too because of dework.
Calling the Twins rework as "sad case" is uhh, certainly an idea to have.
The PTB where Twins got reworked, they were beyond busted. No counterplay in chase and could down Survivors in literal seconds, all while having the ability to remain at two places at once. On top of all of that, it destroyed the gameplay that Twins players had formerly enjoyed, leaving her in a state where the people who played Twins were not happy and people were not happy to play against Twins either.
They didnt leave "Charlotte and Victor in the bin," after their rework they received a lot of buffs and were in an amazing spot, and a lot of Twins mains I know were already expecting Twins to get nerfed following the whole "rework" since some of the changes made were just a bit too much. Twins is in a good spot now, definitely not a popular pick, but a Killer can still be good and healthy while remaining unpopular.
"Also Twin's power can become disabled permanently thanks to a bug," a bug is a bug. They will get fixed. This quite literally has nothing to do with the rework itself and just feels like a moot point.
He isn't the worst killer already. Ghostface is.
The Twins rework was a massive failure, because the main point was supposed to be making the killer MORE FUN TO PLAY AS. Instead BHVR made the killer feel even worse, by raising the amount of time survivors can hold their power hostage… and then later they added more nerfs that made Twins feel even more clunky to play.
The Twins rework was a massive failure, because a team of game developers took over a year to come up with that PTB, and honestly they thought they did a good job, and that PTB Twins weren't going to be a problem. The entire new theme of PTB Twins had to be completely reverted… that's a failure.
And still…. years later, Twins still feels bad to play as, because BHVR can't figure out how to make them fun to play as, without making them massively overpowered. That is a game design failure. Some of the Twins streamers don't even want to play them anymore because they are so unenjoyable to play as. And that's how you know the Twins rework was 1000 times worse than the Trickster rework. We often see people complain about the Trickster rework….. but they are still playing Trickster a lot! So we know the Trickster rework really wasn't "that bad" or they would stop playing Trickster, just like how some of the Twins streamers have switched to barely ever playing Twins anymore.
they're even nerfing twins further by increasing cooldown for getting kicked. old twins had like 8 second kick punishment or something. like one of the reason why twins is unpopular is because she is extremely anti-newbie friendly. new killer player have no chance to pick up twins as killer because she is way hard. No killer get punished so hard for failing their ability. Like yeah they receive a cooldown but they don't teleport -30 meters away from target for dying with victor.
Than you also have victor get PUNISHED for being successful. Twin is currently punished for successfully using the power and punished for failing the power. poor combination that needs to be re-visited. there is no chance that holding victor hostage for 30 second for hitting healthy survivor is good. literally only survivor bias player will ever defend that mechanic and same is true for having large cooldown for kicking victor.
these two mechanic are only there to repress slugging. a fundamental play-style for Twins. they're hard trying to make slugging as unviable as possible dbd so they're nerfing twins as hard as possible to suppress twins gameplay and slugging as hard as possible. as a result, it makes killer feel like trash to play because win condition as unfriendly as possible as well as the killer itself.
most of these rework weren't reworks. they were nerf's appease survivors for survivor excuse of unfun play-style. I
Twins → Slugging
Skull merchant rework is successful for killer but the survivor disconnects/entitlement survivor problem got her nerfed. Now she's taking a break for 6 months.
Knight initially got buffed to be more focused on Assassin and less on Zoning/Pincer. now they nerfed assassin and kept all his other nerfs making him weaker. This is not talking about distraction deleting his ability.
Sadako also got nerfed. hard-nerfed. the irony for sadako is that Sadako is like freddy where…. even when killer is baby spoon fed for survivor, the killer has high kill-rate and high win-rate…
in summary, Survivor said. "These killer are unfun to play against, Please nerf all these killer to the ground." Bvhr: ok.
Freddy rework got nerfed for same reason. "Forever freddy is unfun, killer is stacking anti-heal+game delay, nerf please". Old freddy had forever build as his base-kit. I suspect the entire reason why freddy is still unchanged is because they don't want to buff his "unfun" play-style perceived by survivors.
every part of freddy was perceived as unfun by survivor mains
→ Snares slowing you down at loops, continuously with no drawback → see skull merchant drones that just received said nerfs
→ waking up clock as secondary objective, wake up using teammates, failing skill-checks
→ Unlimited wall-hack reading.
→ Undetectable+invisibility
→-50% repair penalty or 20%+ -repair and heal in iteration #2.
When every single part of killer kit is complained about, there isn't anything for bvhr to buff. So we have freddy for 2 years with crap ability because what his abilities are suppose to be are lock-in vault with a key.
I am not sure if this is what happened to Freddy, to be honest
Back in 2021 I was against the idea of nerfing him because it wouldn't fix his actual problem, which was and still is the fact he's uninspired and simply not an interesting killer. But his reworked power really wasn't healthy for the game. Spamming Dream Snares and getting your Dream World slowdown for free with Jump Rope and Swing Chains wasn't fun for anyone involved.
With Old Freddy it was different, because he doesn't get value simply by existing in the trial. You needed to pull survivors into the Dream World, and that is how it should be.
Well it is true for all of those except of Billy and Sadako. Billy was nerfed and most people disliked the change before the first rework and Sadako might be true with the second rework, but the first one was majorly a buff even tho I disliked the rework. Sadako was also not majorly played with slugging. Skull merchant on the other hand needed changes. The sad thing is this Sadako is only good against people who have no clue what’s going on now.
Don't forget he got reviewed bomb due to the fact people had issues .
the only reason I even play knight in his bad reworked state is cause he’s the closest thing to having a Black Templar in DBD
Indeed, my friend.
It is extremely unfortunate that people chose to complain instead of learning how to play against him and understanding why it was different than playing against the other killers available at the time. As a dedicated Freddy main, actually taking the time and reading the complaints from back then was genuinely one of the worst DBD-related experiences I've ever had and I don't want to look at those Steam reviews ever again.
There is a good reason why even Mathieu Cote himself said in a interview that he regretted that nerf. We can only hope Freddy will finally return to his original and fun iteration after the next changes.
I really hope they revert him, so I can test him my self. His former self looked so much more interesting
And he was! Way more fun, unique and fitting for the character of Freddy Krueger!
You would've loved him if you were playing back then, and I'm confident you'll have a chance to test him. I'm confident I'll get my killer back.
When looking at Sadako I’m not that confident. They will probably make a new version of him. The best you will probably get is a mix of both versions or they give him a complete new power.
I hope they give him more skins when he returns.
well in my opinion, SM didn't need any changes. that is a lot of other killer mains opinion as well. even those that play survivor agree that skull merchant is not an issue but survivor complain enough to get her nerfed just like all these other killers. the good news is that unlike these other killers that have no scheduling for any changes, bvhr said that there might be some rework at some point, so perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately for these other killers like Sadako, there is no light at the end of the tunnel for her as no changes have been schedule for her. At least none that we know of.
Yeah, there is always a chance it won't end well.
But I've been doing this for over five years, and not just on the Forums. I'm allowing myself to have some hope this time, because I think I need it.
I meant skully’s first version which was a problems for the game as we hadn’t the anti 3 gen feature. A killer you can’t win against isn’t good. For the current version: I think removing the haste is good and making her a bit weaker, but they went way too far.
Haven’t you lost hope at some point? 5 years are so long. I have almost lost hope after asking for a Sadako revert for a year or longer.
Where else are you asking for Freddy changes? I might try it there for Sadako too.
For a while, yes. Late 2022 - Early 2023 I was barely playing DBD and Freddy hadn't even been mentioned by the devs in so long that it was hard to have motivation. But not anymore, those defeatist days are over.
Well, I've shared my concept on Discord servers that I have with friends, in the actual game talking to other players (someone even recognized me as the "Forums Freddy person") and I even have it on my Steam profile!
Do the devs go through discord and steam?
Hopefully you get your Freddy, you are the person that deserves the most being happy with him.
I’m waiting for a post where you show us your feddy ideas.
Probably not, I used it to get other players' feedback and see what they think about it. A suggestion for Freddy cannot be done simply with what I want for him in mind, I wanted to come up with a concept everybody would enjoy.
And thank you for your kind words, my friend, I sincerely appreciate it <3
If you'd like to see a post with my ideas, here it is:
Just disregard the suggestion for Black Box, I still need to come up with a different effect for that add-on (also thanks @UndeddJester for pointing out the oversight with the suggestion, I appreciate it!)
I will read through it the next days, maybe I can help you out with your addon
Freddy isn't the same after his nerfed. I knew his rework was gonna get him butchered especially with the whole 5 pallet/snares things.....
Yes, his post-rework power is really unhealthy for the game.
Back in 2021 I was against the idea of nerfing him because I knew it wouldn't fix his actual issues, like the fact he is boring to play and is missing his identity, but he really couldn't be allowed to remain the powerhouse he was. Just wish they had gone for the "dework", instead of leaving him in a terrible state for years.
the worst rework of all was Freddy, the other killers didn't lose their identity, the only one who lost was Freddy, no matter what anyone says, nerf or buff didn't kill a character with unique power in the game like Freddy Krueger , let's be honest.
All good mate!
Jesus was that me 10 months ago? How did you have the patience to listen to my crap? Lots of talking out of my rear there, but at least one thing was useful xD
I wasn't around during the years Freddy was around so I don't truly know how he played/was played against... but now I look back at it the RNG of skillchecks is not really a big deal. I would prefer something different but for lack of a better idea, it's not really a problem.
However looking at the wiki, his old power seems to have been removed...
So for anyone wanting to know Freddy's original I thankfully copied it down, though I have a feeling it had some mistakes/is missing some details, so do please correct me:
Original Power
"Death won't accept him and thus he remains, a calamity, indisputable master of his victims' nightmares.
Dream Demon allows The Nightmare to pull Survivors into the Dream World."
Survivors who are awake:
Once in the Dream World:
Original Power Trivia
Update 1.8.1
Patch 1.8.2
""Once in the Dream World: Survivors suffer an action speed penalty of 50%"
"While Survivors are in the Dream World: Applies a moderate (-6%) Action Speed penalty to Repair, Healing, and Sabotage actions"
"Survivors suffer from an increased Action Speed penalty of 60% after 30 seconds in the Dream World"
This sounds absolutely miserable.
I used to think so, but you just miss a skillcheck and away the penalty goes as you come out of the dream… this was what made old Freddy pretty darned bad
You also need to remember that if you're not in the dream, Freddy can't injure you until he spends 7 seconds pulling you back into the Dream.
That said I do have concern about Hex builds in this regard. Considering Freddy can incapacitate a survivor by pulling them into the dream, and totems take 50% longer in the dream... I imagine a Hex Build with TotH, Undying, Devour Hope and Pentimento would be rather evil....
Miss one skill check and the penalty is gone. It isn't bad, it never was bad.
So you're well aware that original Freddy got a lot of complaints, that a lot of people really hated original Freddy, and he was nerfed because of the number of complaints?
What changes did you make to original Freddy, that you think are large enough for him to be accepted by the community?
He was nerfed mostly because of complaints from people who had never played DBD before. Mathieu Cote himself regretted that nerf, as people didn't even have time to learn how to play against him.
There was never a need to change his power extensively.
What I did was keep the teleport and add the Incapacitated status effect during the Dream Transition, which in my opinion as an Old Freddy main fixes the few issues he had.
The wiki didn't remove the old power, it moved it to its own page: deadbydaylight.fandom.com/wiki/Dream_Demon
I'm guessing it'll do that for other killer powers too down the line.
What are survivors supposed to do, if this Freddy decides he wants to hard tunnel one person out of the game, and only pulls that one person into the dream, which means that Freddy is invisible to everyone else? Do you think the average survivor can help bodyblock, when the killer is invisible? Do you think the average survivor would know how to flashlight save, when the killer is invisible?
And how is the tunneled survivor supposed to avoid being tunneled, if Freddy is invisible while they are awake, but Freddy can see their aura if they are asleep? How will an awake survivor know where to run, to avoid being pulled into the dream?
That Freddy will lose the game. By pulling only a single person into the Dream World, that Freddy would deprive himself of the slowdown, and aura reading. Besides, he lacks a chase ability because his kit is not meant to be used that way.
This is the same as playing Singularity and only using your power against a single survivor. A good killer wouldn't do that. At best you get one survivor.
Edit:
By paying attention to the lullaby, which is heard by awake survivors.
Survivors would avoid invisible Freddy by paying attention to a non-directional lullaby? After what BHVR did to Spirit and Dracula, they would surely give Freddy a very loud directional audio when he is invisible.
That seems a bit excessive.
Dracula and Spirit have powers that can be used in chase. Freddy doesn't, and he shouldn't have.
It isn't the same situation.
Survivors would need counterplay to being pulled into the dream, and a non-directional lullaby isn't good enough. Invisible Freddy would need directional audio.
Also, it would be likely that if BHVR ever did bring back original Freddy, the aura reading on sleeping survivors would need to be severely nerfed (or removed). Infinite duration aura reading outside of the terror radius is way too overpowered for modern DBD. BHVR would probably do something like nerf it to 3 seconds of aura revealing every 30 seconds.
And then BHVR would probably sprinkle the map with alarm clocks that any survivor could use, so that survivors can wake themselves up without failing a skill check. And Freddy wouldn't be able to see the alarm clock auras, but survivors would be able to see every alarm clock aura.
Can we add Chucky to this list too? Removed Manual Scamper as a whole to kill a playstyle that could've been 86'd by adding a 2 second delay between Manual Scamper and Slice and Dice. Annihilated half his add-ons in the process and the cooldown change makes him mostly reliant on his dash attack rather than encouraging trickery like before.
No, you are not supposed to spend the entire match awake, and that goes for every iteration of Freddy.
Eventually you will be pulled into the Dream World, and that is whole point. The lullaby is enough, as I know from personal experience.
It isn't. Not when it is designed to work with his power.
They wouldn't. Freddy isn't Pig.
Having an active RBT will kill you after the time expires, the Dream World has more to it than that.
The reason why survivors automatically get pulled into the Dream World, is because that feels a lot more fair, than getting chased by an invisible killer with a non-directional lullaby. The dream pulling mechanic was frustrating and non-interactive for the survivor, and it will never ever come back in its original form.
If Freddy gets his dream pulling mechanic back, it would 100% need to be interactive on the survivor side, so survivors would feel like it's a fair mechanic. Invisible Freddy would need directional audio, and the dream pulling range would probably get shortened to grab range. That would allow some sort of chase to be involved, where both sides of the game could feel like they are participating.
That wasn't the case, though. I do not know if you were playing DBD when his rework happened, but survivors passively failing asleep was not added because it feels more fair for survivors. It was added as a "QOL" change to make him feel better to play as, and make survivors more vulnerable to his Dream powers.
Same reason why he can hit an awake survivor, which in my honest opinion should have never been a thing.
Speaking from personal experience, the dream pulling mechanic was perfectly fine as it was, and no changes would be needed. I'm confident it can, and will, safely return exactly as it was.
Sadly more often than not the Reworks done are pretty bad. I am happy they are willing to fix it when they see it but more often than not it takes way too long to make the changes needed.
I'm sorry, friend, I got caught up in the discussion here and forgot to reply to your comment.
Please don't say these things about yourself, my friend, you were not annoying or anything like that. You saw an idea that was open to feedback, you voiced your thoughts and that feedback helped me! We had a good discussion about it, there is nothing wrong with that.
Don't be so harsh with yourself :)
If BHVR reworked Freddy to be closer to his original version, but gave invisible Freddy directional audio, would you be happy with that compromise?
The original concept but with directional audio?
Yes, yes I can accept that.
Don't think it is necessary, but it isn't the end of the world either. Huntress originally had a directional lullaby and she survived. Freddy can do the same.