Ringu's Sadako Yamamura, known in-game as The Onryo, was known by fans for a long time as one of the game's weakest killers on most tier lists, but a series of buffs by Dead by Daylight's development team seek to change that.
Following the Nicolas Cage PTB, developers published an update outlining a series of further buffs to Sadako, allowing her to teleport around the map more quickly than before and thus increase her pressure on survivors. Her Condemned status effect will also be easier for her to apply, and will be more impactful.
Dead By Daylight Onryo Buffs And Changes
Here are the buffs coming to Sadako's kit:
- Projection now has a 10-second cooldown (was 15).
- TVs disabled by projection now remain disabled for 45 seconds (was 100 seconds).
- TVs disabled by Survivors now remain disabled for 70 seconds (was 90 seconds).
- Survivors who are hit while carrying a tape will now gain 2 stacks of Condemned, destroying the tape in the process.
Among the buffs is just one small nerf:
- Being hooked while carrying a tape will no longer inflict other Survivors with Condemned. The tape will still be destroyed.
Sadako has arguably needed a bit of a buff since her release, so it's nice to see this lesser-picked killer rising up in the ranks of tier lists following the changes.
This developer update also included changes to the hardly-used perk Hangman's Trick; what many considered The Pig's worst perk is now a Scourge Hook perk with an increased range to account for the change.
On top of that, developers posed slight animation changes to smooth out slight killer gameplay balance issues during the PTB, with all killers looking down to wipe their weapon rather than being able to see which direction the survivor is going during this time. However, with this causing motion sickness in some players, the feature will not be implemented in the live game.
The Onryo buffs will hit the live game alongside new survivor Nicolas Cage (complete with all of his amazingly avant-garde voice lines) on 25th July, with the Hangman's Trick changes coming later on.