izigame.me

There are two sides to the coin when it comes to this chapter. On one hand, having a D&D chapter is fucking AWESOME. Very fun idea, and a welcome addition to the game. On the other side, however, we once again have an example of BHVR COMPLETELY fucking up a balance decision only a few DAYS after the live release.
(For anyone reading this, btw, I am someone who almost exclusively plays Killer. I don't often play Survivor unless I'm with friends because Solo Queue honestly just isn't fun to me, but that doesn't mean I don't understand any Survivor frustrations when they're brought up to me. With that said, here are some of my thoughts.)
In the PTB, Vecna's entire kit was slow as fuck, and you had to try your heart out to get significant value out of any of it without running Add-Ons (Which I typically don't do because I prefer learning timings on the base kit.). Overall, everything felt really clunky and people were hoping he'd get some good buffs on Live, which, big surprise, he did.
Now in Live, everything feels much faster and more fluid to use, giving him more opportunities to actually use his power to keep the game fairly controlled. Flight of the Damned was made faster and less react-able so you'd have more chances to hit it without Iri Book of Vile Darkness. Fly was made slightly faster to cover more distance and gained a collision box on landing so you could use it to bodyblock. Dispelling Sphere was made faster and overall better to use. And Mage Hand...oh BOY, where to begin...
The Main "Issue"...Mage Hand-
From PTB to Live, Mage Hand received a LARGE buff to its pallet lift speed so it could actually be consistently use-able in chase as an anti-loop tool. Rather than taking half a second to lift up a pallet, it now took around .35 seconds instead. Now, this change may *sound* small, but believe me, it isn't.
By itself, Mage Hand was finally a useful tool rather than essentially useless on larger loops, which significantly hurt its value. Where the problem begins is with *another* aspect BHVR said was included in this Live release...an Add-On Pass.
For those unfamiliar, Add-On Passes are essentially BHVR's way of saying they're going to go back to change/rework/adjust Add-Ons for the sake of balancing. In the PTB, almost all of Vecna's Add-Ons had *some* use, at the least. In my opinion, only one or two I'd consider bad. Now, getting a Pass for him following these base kit changes sounds great, right? Well, hate to burst your bubble early, but spoilers, HE DID NOT GET ONE. From what I've seen, almost NONE of his Add-Ons were changed from PTB to Live in any significant way. And thanks to this decision, one set of two Add-Ons became a staple in Vecna kits everywhere...Boots of Speed, and Ring of Telekinesis.
With Vecna now getting MASSIVELY rewarded for using Mage Hand thanks to these Add-Ons, Survivors understandably voiced concerns that Mage Hand was a bit of an issue. However, from what I'd seen, people were more concerned about the *Add-Ons*, not Mage Hand itself. Namely, Ring of Telekinesis, which took the already fairly quick lift speed and cut it down FURTHER by a flat 35%. Tack on Boots of Speed to give him 5% Haste on cast for 10 seconds, and it obviously becomes a little crazy.
Now, bear in mind, all of this was happening in the span of a few days after the Live Release. This means that Survivors have barely spent any time learning how to counter Vecna specifically, instead of just applying the same general strat used for a solid chunk of the Killer roster. All that said, what is BHVR doing after seeing all of this? An easy answer, really...they've decided to REVERT Mage Hand's lift speed back to its PTB state of taking half a second to lift a pallet. And on top of that, Ring of Telekinesis is now being changed to no longer affect pallet lifting whatsoever! This effectively means that Mage Hand is now WORSE than it was in the PTB, and is now back to being completely useless. Even without a bunch of knowledge on how to play Survivor, I at least know enough to see that Survivors typically prefer to milk a loop dry for as long as possible before moving to the next. However, against a Killer like Vecna, THAT DOESN'T WORK. But instead of simply changing strategies to chaining loops to run him longer, Survivors just kept being greedy and trying to run a single loop against him. And since their main strat doesn't work, rather than simply learning to adapt early on in Vecna's Live state, they're instead begging BHVR to nerf Mage Hand.
BHVR, word of advice...STOP FUCKING GIVING THE SURVIVORS EVERYTHING THEY WANT! If you want to make proper balance changes, LISTEN TO BOTH SIDES! Hell, you have MASSIVE content creators like Otz and SpookyLoopz who have tried to give you good feedback for YEARS, and yet, you refuse to listen to them despite the fact that they probably know more about the game in practice than a decent chunk of your team. Your Fog Whisperer program is a fucking joke. They shouldn't simply be what essentially boils down to a public marketing team, they should be some of the people you take feedback from as trusted members of the community. Either make an effort to seriously listen to all parts of your community, or stop being so god damn quick to make the DUMBEST fucking changes imaginable. This is your 8TH ANNIVERSARY CHAPTER, FOR FUCKS SAKE. DO BETTER!
Simply looking at this chapter from the lens of the atmosphere and cool ideas it brings to DBD, I still recommend it. But when you look at it solely from a balance perspective, maybe consider waiting on it until BHVR gets their shit together.