Dead By Daylight is home to many killers, and the community has strong feelings about most of them. Last November, developers on the official forums shared stats from all the killers detailing which are most deadly, which are picked the most, and naturally which are least deadly and least picked. For the most part, these stats were not very surprising but did come with one particularly interesting upset. The deadliest killer in the three months leading up to the reveal of the stats was none other than Freddy Krueger, who for a time was notorious for being one of the worst killers in Dead by Daylight.
For those unaware, Freddy Krueger of A Nightmare on Elm Street fame was considered one of the worst killers in Dead By Daylight for a very long time. Several nerfs, a power which was limited in its use but also required for him to be successful, and more came together to make this killer less than appealing. Against players who didn't understand his power or who weren't well versed in some of the more advanced survivor tactics in the game, he could be devastating, but not at the higher ranks. Since the stats released in November are based on games from red ranks, it is very interesting to see Freddy here.
DBD Killer: Freddy Krueger
The reason Freddy has ranked so high among all the Dead By Daylight killers on this most recent report is because he had a major rework done on his gameplay style. Many things about his powers have changed, and obviously for the better. In the past, Freddy couldn't even hurt survivors that were awake,and was required to use an active ability in order to put them to sleep. This brought along many problems for would-be killers who wanted to play The Nightmare, as he is called in Dead By Daylight.
Now, Freddy's sleep powers happen passively instead of as an active ability, and he can even harm survivors who are in the lowest stage of sleep. This change along with many others make his toolkit much more viable to be used, propelling him from the very bottom to the very top. It is worth noting, though, that he was not the most picked killer, despite being the most deadly, as that honor goes to The Spirit for red rank gameplay.
Freddy's kill rate was approximately 77%, meaning that, on average, Freddy manages to kill three of the four survivors every game. That's a pretty good to be sure and says something about the nature of balancing competitive multiplayer games. Although the developers could have had no way of knowing ahead of time that Freddy would do so well, it does seem that the buffs he received might have been somewhat of a knee-jerk reaction that boosted this killer far more than it should have. On the other hand, this could also be viewed as a sort of redemption for Freddy, who by all rights should never have been such an underdog.
Ideally, the goal of balance changes in Dead by Daylight is to do just that: balance characters. Buffs and nerfs shouldn't be administered with the intention of making a character over or underpowered, but instead should be used to try and level the playing field between options, thereby creating characters which play differently but on average can achieve the same results. It's possible that the goal for killers is around 75%, in which case more buffs may be on the way overtime. Only time will tell, but if anything, fans of Freddy Krueger, The Nightmare, have much to rejoice about as long as these statistics remain viable.
Dead By Daylight is available now for Android, PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.