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Dead by Daylight really, really doesn’t like trap Killers. Let’s talk about why.
0:00:00 Intro
0:01:41 Defining a Trap Killer
0:08:23 Diagnosing Trapper
0:12:40 How Bad is Hag? (w/ GummyPeachRings)
0:21:49 Old Merchant VS New Merchant
0:26:00 Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
0:33:35 Are Trap Killers Extinct?
0:41:02 Fixing Trapper’s Inefficiencies
0:43:56 How to Buff Hag? (w/ GummyPeachRings)
0:55:40 Skull Merchant: Major Changes
1:00:05 Skull Merchant: Minor Changes
1:01:27 Wrapping Up
WITH THANKS TO: GummyPeachRings, who gave his takes on Hag throughout: https://www.twitch.tv/gummypeachrings
Vars III, whose video on trappers in Smash can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8_h58z5rcM
The Fake Banette, for putting me onto Vars’ video: https://www.twitch.tv/the_fake_banette
joy_unending, for reading the patch notes: https://www.twitch.tv/joy_unending
OhTofu, whose yap session with me can be found here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2290362387?filter=archives&sort=time
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Music credits to IdioticSugar on the Discord! Link to the audio is here: https://youtu.be/DIQTF93TIy0
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I IiteraIIy stopped pIaying the game because I Iove trap kiIIers and BHVR refuses to make them decent or fun. I don't want to pIay one of the dozen "twitch" kiIIers where you have to sprint at mach speed and fIick your character at a .05 degree angIe perfectIy to get a down.
I want to be a kiIIer not a 12 year oId with Mountain Dew for bIood.
And the compIaints against aII trap kiIIers is that they don't pIay to their opponents advantage and require their opponents to modify their tactics and behavior sIightIy.
Often times the skiII expression of trappers is mistaken as "Iuck" or "random happening" because the peopIe faIIing for the traps didn't see aII the work being done to put them in that position. Trap are aImost by definition unfair. That's the point. When I meticuousIy Iay out a web of traps and then intentionaIIy chase you towards them, I am knowingIy coraIIing you into a pIace where you can not win. And I did the work before hand to justify that.
Bro made me remember some big mistakes at 33:43
i genuinely don't think trap killers can ever work for dbd, and it's because of player sentiment. when you're fighting a trap killer, there's never a point in the match where you as the survivor feel like you've outplayed them. either the killer has made a mistake by chasing you somewhere they haven't trapped or the or you have made a mistake by not having perfect knowledge on the killer's location and by being physically unable to see the trap in the case of hag and trapper. no matter what choice the survivor makes they never get to feel any kind of personal victory, and that feeling is important to keeping survivors engaged. nobody likes playing the macrogame on survivor.
the skull merchant is a more unique and genuinely more frustrating case: you can see the trap and know exactly how the trap works and it just will not matter because she is bloodlusting you while impeding your own movement (i.e. forcing you to crouch) for literally no effort. it doesn't matter how bad the skull merchant gets, the design of her power forces survivors to make obnoxiously tight movements in chase while she doesn't appear to be doing anything at all.
there's also the added frustration that comes with all trap killers, the fact that they force survivors to engage very actively with their out-of-chase movement. if you glance at your phone, if a scan radius is obscured by grass or a wall, if you get distracted by your cat out-of-game, you risk a free pressure to the killer, so you as the survivor have to lock in and watch paint dry. it's not fun.
i won't say trap killers don't take skill. i play a lot of winston in overwatch, who is largely reliant on engagement timings and cooldown tracking instead of actual mechanical aim, and i can appreciate that there are non-mechanical skills people can specialize in. but the assymetrical nature of dead by daylight means there's virtually no actual satisfaction in outplaying a trap killer. the survivor gets the experience of constant invisible pressure cracking them apart and no catharsis for playing well, unless they take pleasure in knowing that the killer's not having a fun time either if their power's not working, like an asshole.
Removing all of these killers would be optimal thing to do. Keep Trapper, but rename him to Rapper and instead of traps he disses the survivors with ranged attacks.
Call me crazy, but I think Hag should be 115.
The biggest thing that isnt talked about, and is the main reason, i believe, why bhvr has moved away from trap killers is the Survivor side of things. Playing as a trap killer can suck due to how weak they are, though the reward of planing ahead and predicting movements is rewarding enough for people to really love them.
None of this translates to the survivor PoV. What they see is you just walking after them and either getting a bloodlust hit, or they suddenly walk into a trap on a loop they didnt/cant see and cant play the loop around and going down with no visible skill from the killer. There is a reason why trap killers are the most hated types and put up there with all the genuinely powerful (or op) killers, even when they are awful. This is really the biggest roadblock the style of killers have to overcome, and i really dont think there is a way that they can.
I share your absolute despise towars the Hillbilly and the Blight. I play both survivor and killer equally, and i play multiple killers. This might be a hot take but idc, I genuinely believe there should be no S-tier killer. Wdym the Nurse goes blink and the Hillbilly goes brrr and the whole team is dead? They are here, they are there, oh!, they are everywhere!!! Why the fuck are there killers whose win condition is not based on outplaying the opponent but on the sheer oppressiveness of the character. When you play against nurse, billy, blight and dracula the only thing you can do to win is capitalise on their mistakes. And they need to make a lot of mistakes in order to lose. This takes the agency away from the survivors when it comes to winning a match because if an s tier killer is good with the character there's zero you can do as a survivor to win. So, no matter what you do, you lose. This is true especially in this meta, where there are tons of really sweaty killers, who play s-tier characters ofc, with an oppressive build (i am tired of seing only billy, dracs, blights and nurses with 4 slow-diwn builds, or plaything-penti). Nowadays solo-q is really unbearable, there's no enjoyment left in it.
When i play killer, the highest tier i ever go is the spirit. I don t go higher because there is no challenge with em really, they are so boring and easy to play with i might just get brain-damage.
I think other things that could help trapper if we can have him start with all his traps is to have the random traps on the map start opened. Another thing they could do instead is to make him a locker killer where he can reload his traps from them which would delete the oldest traps set if the amount set would exceed his refill. Although I don't think we'll ever get any decent changes for trapper, because he's probably a load bearing killer that holds the game up and if they did a significant change it would just break everything.
My personal thought on it is that trap killers are almost impossible to balance properly because of SWF and solo queue. As a Trapper main, it's a 50/50 that I either stomp or get stomped, never do I get a "fair and even" match. Making trap killers strong will make them usable against a strong SWF, but absolutely nuclear to solo queue. I've seen many balance ideas for Trapper or even Hag, and even though they're either slight buffs or tweaks, they'd make them so damn difficult to play against solo or if you don't know every in and out on the killers.
As a Hag player, I even avoid the "teleport range increase" addons because I feel they cheapen the killer for me. My favorite part of Hag is taking those few seconds at the start of a match to go "Okay, WHERE will I win this game?". I want to be the spider. I want to spin my web. With purpose. I want survivors scared of stepping onto MY turf. I also LOVE playing AGAINST Hag. She's my favorite killer to go against. The strategy of knowing where the danger is, where safety is… Allowing her to make the whole map her web removes the absolute best part about Hag, I'm sorry. Is it frustrating when survivors know what they're doing and constantly run out of your web to reset?
Eh.
To most, yes. That's why they don't play the killer.
To me? No. Hag is the only killer in the game where I love to lose. Because every loss with Hag feels like it happened because my opponents knew what they needed to do, and did it. Sometimes, knowing what to do is all it takes to beat Hag, as Gummy says. And I get how that makes you feel powerless as Hag but. This is DBD we're talking about. I'd argue Hag's ability to win or lose based only on who has better game knowledge is MILES above the general determining factor.. which is just.. RNG. At least, as Hag, I never load into a map and go "Well, guess I lose". If I load into Badham as Trapper then lol, I'm screwed. For Hag, NOTHING MATTERS. No map, no set up, nothing the game just SPAWNS is gonna beat me. It's always GOTTA be the PLAYERS on the other end.
And I love Hag for that.
Vars and Pixel Brush lowkey colabing wasn't on my list but I'm all for it
x
I wonder how Skull Merchant would have fared, if they kept her original kit, but only nerfing the gen-kick and its associated perks.
It felt wrong playing her after the first major rework (7.3.0), since she got many of her previous add-ons "for free" with the reworked kit, so that she got objectively stronger for no reason at all.
Cooper Adams in my DBD video?!? … Yes please 🥺 🧡
Trapper traps should just reset by themselves after a few minutes.
Basically iri stone, but with an audio cue for survivors, so they can leave a loop before a trap resets.
Would make trapper so much more fun to play because you don't have to actively maintain your traps.
Also, all traps should start set, just for shits and giggles.
Edit:
I actually wrote this before I got to your segment on trapper buffs.
Glad to see were basically on the same page xD
yup, they really need to make it so trapper sets his trap much faster than survivor disabling it. If having the carry limit removed is too much, at least let trapper carry half of his total traps.
Devs: We keep making trapping Killers while not bothering with them.
Also Devs: We just made another "AI Companion" Killer knowing that the previous ones we've made are still pretty buggy.
your last section about merchant made me think of trickster so fuckin much…everything you said about merchant applies to him too…why should people who hate my killer and will never like him no matter what get a say in how he plays? now my main that i spent hundreds and hundreds of hours on is dogshit and unfun and a shallow void of what he once was because bhvr felt like being silly.
also. BHVR apparently don't have the balls to give Myers 115 speed in Tier1. So I really doubt we will ever see a day when Hag will become 115
I am not gonna not to be able to see/play Larry glowing in overdrive and not hear the star power music now, so thanks for that.
I love Trapper to be honest, I can't help but feel like the balance philosophy BHVR has is backwards for him, every other killer just has their power. New players who pick him are going to spawn and see tons of white specs on the floor and probably not understand how they work, which traps are armed vs disarmed over the course of a match, etc. There is nothing intuitive or "at a glance" about his kit for someone just starting compared to like Wraith.
I would love differentiation between armed vs disarmed traps using aura color. I think having Trapper start with all of his traps might be too good for people like me who already play Trapper a lot, but I do agree he shouldn't have a carry limit.
I absolutely love the weak vs heavy disarm idea, I hope they consider that for a PTB.
My personal favorite part of Trapper is when people are mad about it, despite his lacking power.
I'll never not think about a survivor telling me "My traps did more than I did."
Like… Yeah? That's the point? Are you okay?
I agree with everything you say, but thats not gonna stop me from running padded jaws regularly. Honing stone as well if im feeling spicy. Yes they do stack which is funny as hell
what if i trapped you in a box with a typewriter and forced you to write jonah tome lore for the rest of your days
Am I going insane or was the bgm in the skull merchant section a bardcore version of hips don’t lie???
Honestly, love this video but I feel like there’s one other category of killer that needs help just as much, OK, maybe not just as much because trap killers are miserable to play as but pretty close. Please, for the love of God someone save the stealth killers.
Also with mint rag hag. Please step out of the kitchen, but respectfully, i know you mean well.
Part of the reason mint rag is fun is because its an addon that has a significantly noticeable effect on her power. Compared to killers like ph or nemi, whos addons you have a harder time noticing unless you're doing math. It stops hag from being reduced to number tweaks with addons, and have add ons that say "oh thats a mint rag hag" or "thats the shoe hag". Personally number tweak addons a usually good but usually boring, where as some of the power change addons might not be the best (pallet freddy, or debatable item infection only plague) but they do have the tendency to not be boring.
People over hever complaining trapper is bad still like 5 buffs later and legion is still drowning in the shallow end of the pool vs any swf.
Again, one more time breifly, you multiple times mention how weak legion is, yet there's no big cry out for a legion buff. Play legion at high mmr. Hop on and pub stomp for your first easy 50+ 4ks and then see how many 0-1ks you get once you hit high mmr. Ruined playing killer for me. Unless you want to slug and tunnel and run the most meta perks legion is basically unplayable at high mmr.
But people are still crying about buffing trapper again.
I think you focused way too hard on "set and forget." It wasn't personally targeting you, however it was said cuz most sm did in fact set and forget her drones. They'd put them in places where survivors would run, and forget they were there until it hit someone.
Also I think the main reason trap killers aren't made anymore is mainly cuz theyre too volatile. If they're weak they wont sell well, if they're strong no one will like them, and if they're annoying then we'd just have SM 2.0. There's def ways to make trap killers balanced and fun but it would take too long and be too much of a gamble money wise.
Demogorgon slander 🙁
Never thought I’d see Vars referenced in a dbd vid
I think if you ask the vast majority of people what exactly they dislike about Skull Merchant, they wouldn't be able to provide a great answer, other than "she's not fun" or "she forces you to leave loops". Which, by the way, every single killer can force you to leave loops eventually, many quicker than SM. I genuinely think most people, especially new players, have just been conditioned to hate her from content creators. Load into a map with a Merchant? DC, because that's just the thing people do. She's never been very strong, and right now she's one of the worst killers in the game, but people STILL DC against her much more frequently.
I do totally agree with this and points out one huge glaring issue which i have been saying for years now – BHVR do NOT play their own game and by this i mean on the actual servers with real players. They play in their own special sandbox where everything to 100% perfect and with rose tinted glasses.
Every single time they play with actual gamers – like the fog whisperers on special games etc they get royally pounded on and its very clear they dont actually have the skill int he game that actual players have and they purely rely on stats and players complaints to try and make changes.
Until BHVR have people who actually play the game properly and have their voices herd more on BOTH side the game will never be balanced in a way that is actually based on real game play and not just the top 5% of fog whisperers and the loudest whining players on Twitter
Unless you are quite kill
I dropped dbd like 2 years ago because of how slow and clunky trapper and hag felt since I wasn't willing to drop a bunch of money just to compete as a dlc killer