Kill rates and stats for Hen's "The Lawless Trial" tournament
This tournament caught my interest because unlike usual tournaments that have major restrictions to keep it balanced, this one had minimal rules, which made balance similar to normal and it possible to see top-level gameplay under those conditions, but there were still some major differences:
- both teams knew the map in advance. This had a major impact, which is discussed later
- the maps were on average somewhat killer-sided, and there was only 1 map that was very unfavoured for killer
- the players were playing for hook stages and gen completions, which wasn't necessarily the same as kills and escapes
- each team could not pick the same killer more than once per set
- each team could ban 1 killer per map (resulting in 1-2 total bans per maps applied to both teams)
The overall kill rate was 50.3%, but killer only won 26.3% of the time, which was 11.8% less than survivor. The lower win rate compared to kill rate was due to killers being far more likely to 4k when they won, as shown in the 2nd table.
Day 1 had similar results to Day 2 + Finals, so the stats didn't change much later in the tournament, which had higher skilled teams.
For all tables, win = 3-4k, draw = 2k, and lose = 0-1k.
Kills Occurrence rate
0 6.6%
1 31.6%
2 35.5%
3 6.6%
4 19.7%
MapsThe map data was mainly useful for seeing which maps were played. NightLight kill rates and kill rate rankings were included for each map to evaluate how killer/survivor-sided the maps were. The average map was ranked 17.6 out of 44 maps in kill rate (40.0%), so the average map was somewhat killer-sided. Dead Dawg Saloon, which was one of the most killer-sided maps, was played the most. There was only 1 map that was very survivor-sided, which was Azarov's Resting Place, and it was played twice.
The map data wasn't useful for kill and win rates since the maps were known in advance, so an optimal killer and build was typically chosen for each map and it was more so showing how the best killers for each map performed. For example, 83.3% of Hillbilly's matches were played on Rotten Fields. 100% of Singularity's matches were played on Dead Dawg Saloon. 100% of Dredge's matches were played on Midwich Elementary School. The map data for each killer is available in the "Killer by map stats" sheet.
KillersMainly only top tier killers were played. The less played killers were typically picked on optimal maps. For example, Singularity was played on Dead Dawg Saloon 100% of the time and Dredge on Midwich Elementary School 100% of the time.
As previously discussed, the optimal killer was typically chosen for each map, so the kill and win rates were less useful since they reflected the performance of killers on a good map. Regardless, Nurse and Singularity were practically the only killers with much higher than 50% kill rate. Blight, Ghoul, and Krasue achieved approximately 50% kill rate. The rest of the high tier killers mostly performed poorly. The Hillbilly and Henry stats were much worse than they seemed since they were only played on extremely favourable maps. Hillbilly was played on Rotten Fields, one of his best maps, 83.3% of the time. Henry was only played on Dead Dawg Saloon and Midwich Elementary School, 2 extremely favourable maps.
Note that this tournament was played about 2 weeks before the Nurse and Blight nerfs in patch 9.6.0.
Individual players and teamsKnightLight was the main player that sustained a very high kill and win rate and performed far better than most players. KnightLight actually carried killers quite hard. If KnightLight's killer matches were excluded from the data set, the stats for killer were much worse, as shown in the 3rd table.
ConclusionThis tournament demonstrated that under balancing similar to a normal DBD match, a 50% kill rate can be achieved when playing the top tier killers on their optimal maps, but killers will still lose 12% more than survivors. Though, kill and win rates would be much lower under fully normal conditions since:
- the killer wouldn't know the map in advance, which would prevent them from choosing the optimal killer, perks, and addons.
- this tournament featured maps that were somewhat killer-sided on average and practically no very survivor-sided maps, so killers would normally get worse maps
- mainly only Nurse, Blight, Ghoul, and Krasue were able to achieve >=50% kill rates on their good maps. These are top tier killers and people usually play much lower tier killers. Also, this tournament was played about 2 weeks before the Nurse and Blight nerfs in patch 9.6.0.
Data: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dJGx60jg1G2Y4jCsMJ5rnqj1spDf-H26?usp=drive_link
Day 1: https://youtu.be/39gl0ZjHxgo?si=QapViuynf-1HwlXp
Day 2: https://www.youtube.com/live/1cLOnhiWvQ8?si=96Z5CvC1BqsSAz6W
Finals: https://www.youtube.com/live/r-ahq1FjPL4?si=82-H7cQxnSzkWO2-
Wiki page: https://liquipedia.net/lab/Dbd/The_Lawless_Trials
Tournament: https://challonge.com/t13j56y4
Rules: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x7Ub8Mx6_LfVQrzgvj8hN3GTsvUOpcx6/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=113681222888425721113&rtpof=true&sd=true
NightLight map kill rates (06 Jun 26, 02:00 - 04 Jul 26, 02:00): https://nightlight.gg/maps/viewer?compact=true&sort=kill&shown=kill
Comments
Now do it again with casual players, I never want to see this game balanced around the comp scene personally.
I want to see the stats there, also it's not really "lawless" if we are banning killers and preventing repeat killers, is it. Not to mention map rng and the like can vastly impact a match for survivor, it's very different if it is predetermined.
It's somewhat useless data as it doesn't apply to you average DBD match at all, most of the playerbase is way more casual.
This is such a low sample size that I wouldn't take too much from it other than Krasue isn't as bad as people think, she's clunky yes but she's still A tier.
Otherwise they'd have to do this every weekend for at least 3-4 months before we start having data we can really pull from. Also I know what conclusion you're trying to get at with this and do this tournament with no comms allowed and see what happens.
We already have stats for pubs and in general, which indicate it's killer-sided. The stats I posted just show that the closer you get to the top level, the more survivor sided the game becomes. Basically, DBD is balanced around players playing casually, as you say, but breaks at the top level.
Without bans, it's just going to be the same killer every match. As shown in the data, the top 5 strongest killers are already being played in almost every match.
I think having the maps pre-determined reduces RNG, and the maps played were already killer-sided on average.
Do people really think krasue is bad?
Pretty sure the opinion is she is boring and repetitive in gameplay
I've seen people complain she's as low as C tier somehow on here and Reddit. I've seen more people say B tier which isn't bad placement but she's far better than that.
A few months back, I personally hosted a shitter tournament, which saw 19 players from across all skill levels (and I do mean every skill level). Every player played 2 killer matches (and one player 4 matches because of availability issues). The 'goal' of our tournament was to find out who our worst player was, although with some guidelines to prevent inting.
I personally drew the map beforehand form a predetermined pool, and players didn't know what map they were playing on. The only things they knew was that there were certain maps banned from appearing, and every map in the pool appeared at least once.
The killer player was free to pick any killer they wanted. Although not a written rule, it was silently agreed that Ghoul was banned from play. Additionally, Legion was killswitched at the time, and Wesker was buggy.
The first match was what I dubbed the 'dealer's choice' games, where ALL players were free to pick any loadout. In the second game, ALL players went in 'naked', so no perks, and no add-ons.
And lastly, since it was a friendly tournament, tunnelling was also banned, as was bodyblocking with Endurance immediately after unhook.
For the dealer's choice games, we landed on an average killrate of 2.15, or just over 50%. For the naked games, we landed on a killrate of 1.6, or 40%.
WOULD be interesting to know what killrates/win rates would look like if everyone was actually TRYING to win. So many things skew game results terribly. You have some people who ragequit early or even sandbag their own team instead of trying to win until the end. You have ppl who went into the match with a troll build not really aiming for a win (insidious basement chest defender bubba for example).
You also have things like friendly killers who LET ppl escape. I myself was letting ppl go after 2 hooks if they brought me a BP offering just last night. I think I got like 3 kills all night and 1 of them was on accident (sorry Bill...).
This tournament also saw extensive use of Fast Track before its most recent change and it clearly had a large impact on the tournament with almost every survivor running it plus a BNP in the finals. If you re-ran the tournament today would we see the same results? Probably not. Its kind of the way it is for live service games, the results of a specific event are only relevant until changes are made. You can look at longer running stats for general trends but patch to patch could see very different results.
Comp matches going for hooks are also just incredibly different from normal matches (as you noted). Sometimes a killer will camp a single player to death because three hooks with only one fresh is their win condition. The only thing they have to care about is securing that single kill and if every other survivor escapes it doesn't matter, they weren't playing for a win in the pub match sense.
Sad part is if you make it a regular habit to play DbD or decide you want to get good and you practice at it, you're doomed to eventually get stuck in the monotony that is 'advanced' DbD (The same META perks and killers on repeat due to the strange refusal to perform any balance changes through the lens of what advanced players are capable of).
It's like a loaf of bread that's perfect at the beginning, fine in the middle, but incredibly stale at the end. The more anybody plays, the closer they get to that stale end.
Hey now, it's not somewhat useless, it's entirely useless.
Shes not bad just boring and doesnt do anything better then the other top tiers so people just dont play her I would say shes low to mid a tier.
So even in the tournament the killer cant reach the devs 2.4 kills a game goal.
I really wish we would stop using 10k hour noteworthy players as examples of things. Why don't we assemble a group of normal players and do this exact same thing and see how it goes? I'd be in, and then maybe you'll have some more realistic information.
And if they were playing for hook states why aren't those what we're going off of? If I was playing for hook states I wouldn't be trying for kills at all.
krasue is bad against comms because she's extremely weam to bodyblocking and altruism against the average survivor she's good but feels bad to play
Reading these comments, it seemed like more data was needed from another tournament, so I collected more data. There was actually another minimal rules tournament hosted on 9 Jan 2026 (3 months earlier). The 2 main differences with this tournament were that the teams were lower level (no top level teams) and killer variety was much larger. The average killer played was A/B tier, which was lower than the other tournament where it was mainly top tier killers. As expected, killers performed far worse, with an overall kill rate of 37.5% and win rate of 16.7%, which was 50% less than survivors. I doubt that in the current meta, A/B tier killers will ever achieve >50% kill rate in no restriction tournaments. For A+/S tier killers, I can see 40-60% kill rate being achieved depending on the skill level of survivors (with higher skill resulting in lower kill rates). Though, note that these tournaments primarily feature maps that are roughly even and almost never feature maps that are very survivor sided.
Tournament stage
Games played
Average Kills
Kill rate
Win rate
Draw rate
Lose rate
WR-LR
Overall
30
1.50
37.5%
16.7%
16.7%
66.7%
-50.0%
Map
Games played
%total
Average Kills
Kill rate
Win rate
Draw rate
Lose rate
WR-LR
Nightlight map kill rate
Nightlight map ranking
Suffocation Pit
6
20.0%
1.17
29.2%
0.0%
16.7%
83.3%
-83.3%
48.8%
25
The Temple of Purgation
6
20.0%
1.67
41.7%
16.7%
16.7%
66.7%
-50.0%
49.2%
23
Ormond Lake Mine
3
10.0%
0.33
8.3%
0.0%
0.0%
100.0%
-100.0%
48.2%
30
Coal Tower
3
10.0%
2.00
50.0%
33.3%
33.3%
33.3%
0.0%
51.0%
18
Father Campbell's Chapel
2
6.7%
1.00
25.0%
0.0%
0.0%
100.0%
-100.0%
48.2%
29
Fractured Cowshed
2
6.7%
2.50
62.5%
50.0%
0.0%
50.0%
0.0%
41.2%
44
Dead Dawg Saloon
2
6.7%
0.50
12.5%
0.0%
0.0%
100.0%
-100.0%
54.5%
4
Blood Lodge
2
6.7%
3.50
87.5%
100.0%
0.0%
0.0%
100.0%
48.7%
26
Wretched Shop
2
6.7%
1.50
37.5%
0.0%
50.0%
50.0%
-50.0%
44.6%
39
Wreckers' Yard
2
6.7%
1.50
37.5%
0.0%
50.0%
50.0%
-50.0%
48.4%
28
Average
3
10.0%
1.57
39.2%
20.0%
16.7%
63.3%
-43.3%
48.3%
26.6
Average (weighted by match count)
48.6%
25.7
Killer
Games played
%total
Average kills
Kill rate
Win rate
Draw rate
Lose rate
WR-LR
Cannibal
6
20.0%
1.67
41.7%
16.7%
16.7%
66.7%
-50.0%
Nightmare
2
6.7%
1.00
25.0%
0.0%
0.0%
100.0%
-100.0%
Artist
2
6.7%
1.00
25.0%
0.0%
0.0%
100.0%
-100.0%
Huntress
2
6.7%
0.50
12.5%
0.0%
0.0%
100.0%
-100.0%
Hillbilly
2
6.7%
2.50
62.5%
50.0%
0.0%
50.0%
0.0%
Unknown
2
6.7%
0.50
12.5%
0.0%
0.0%
100.0%
-100.0%
Blight
2
6.7%
3.50
87.5%
100.0%
0.0%
0.0%
100.0%
Clown
2
6.7%
1.50
37.5%
0.0%
50.0%
50.0%
-50.0%
Ghoul
2
6.7%
1.50
37.5%
0.0%
50.0%
50.0%
-50.0%
Dark Lord
2
6.7%
3.00
75.0%
50.0%
50.0%
0.0%
50.0%
Doctor
2
6.7%
1.50
37.5%
0.0%
50.0%
50.0%
-50.0%
Mastermind
2
6.7%
1.00
25.0%
0.0%
0.0%
100.0%
-100.0%
Animatronic
1
3.3%
0.00
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
100.0%
-100.0%
Wraith
1
3.3%
0.00
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
100.0%
-100.0%
Average
2
7.1%
1.37
34.2%
15.5%
15.5%
69.0%
-53.6%
Data: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dJGx60jg1G2Y4jCsMJ5rnqj1spDf-H26?usp=drive_link
Tournament: https://youtu.be/24efHBYOwYU?si=_whtSgzU4bNMvCQd
For Hen's tournament, the variance was drastically lower than normal due to:
Killers also had a massive advantage knowing the map in advance and the average map was killer-sided.
As previously mentioned, I doubt we will ever see it being killer-sided in no/minimal restriction tournaments. I think the sample size was sufficient for roughly accurate overall results. Day 1 and Day 2 + Finals had extremely similar overall results despite very different sample sizes. The 2nd tournament I posted also showed it was heavily survivor-sided. Though, when the data is broken down into by killer, map, and player, the sample size is much smaller, so those stats likely need more data.
I don't see the point of prohibiting comms since swfs in pubs have comms.
The 2nd tournament I posted was played 3 months earlier, had no Fast Track and saw similar results.
Playing for hooks is probably 70-80% the same as playing for kills since kills result in hooks. As you may know, successfully tunnelling a survivor out is highly favourable for killers. The priority is getting kills and hooks mainly only take priority when you know a kill is unlikely.
It is true that these results aren't applicable to most pubs, but it does address whether the game is killer or survivor sided at the top level and shows that the game becomes more survivor-sided the closer you get to the top. DBD is killer-sided in most pubs since survivors are playing casually, often not trying to win (due to doing challenges and trolling), matchmaking is terrible, and etc., but when you get 3/4 competent survivors trying to win, it's a different story.
Even if I were to take this tiny sample and analysis with its own rules and very specific players as gospel, what's the point then? That in 90% of matches the game is killer sided? Ok?
Comp players themselves have said this game should never be balanced around them too. It'll never happen
I already mentioned the point, which was that the closer you get to the top level, the more survivor-sided the game becomes. The average game is killer-sided in pubs because survivors are playing casually, often not trying to win (due to doing challenges and trolling), matchmaking is terrible, and etc, but if the survivors are high skilled and actually trying to win, the game is in their favour. I wouldn't call 90% of matches killer-sided, considering the kill rate is ~60% and that is heavily inflated by the aforementioned factors.
Being killer-sided doesn't mean they'll always win. The game as a whole is killer-sided. It's probably more than 90% of matches because for the scenario to occur, all the surviviors have to be highly-skilled. There are only so many perfect survivors playing in 4mans. And winstreaks on survivor are much less common and much less high in numbers than killer.
If the tournament structure is built to allow anyone to enter on days one and two, but only the winners from those days progress to the finals, wouldn't it show the exact opposite?
Because the finals would the logically be higher end play, and those skewed heavily towards killers.
Only top teams were invited. Saying "anyone" could enter is heavily understating their skill. Even the worst-placing players in this tournament were still some of the best players in DBD. For example, momoseventh, who had a 2k win streak on Blight, placed last.
The finals only had 12 games played, which was a tiny sample size. Tiny sample sizes can lead to erratic results, which was also seen in Day 2 where killers heavily underperformed. Due to the small sample sizes, not much can be drawn from the individual Day 2 and Finals results without combining them.
For the longest time I thought this game SHOULD be as balanced as possible, but now I don't even know anymore. A properly balanced DBD means a non-stop sweatfest against like-minded opponents, while current DBD is flip a coin: heads you get stomped, tails you stomp.
I'm not sure which I prefer. Probably neither, but what does THAT mean???