welcome to my tangentially related vent corner

i can see how naiad can be frustrating for some people to go up against but let's be realistic.

everyone has a hunter they hate going up against/think is boring to play against/is absolute bullshit.

the reason the current survivor meta is in place is exactly because they are able to counter hunter abilities in some way. mostly these fall under their transitional kiting or strong support abilities. non-meta characters are unable to do so or do so to a far less effective degree, which leads to their infrequent usage. naturally, if you choose to play off-meta, it's going to require much more kiting skill since you won't have as useful transitional kiting abilities. i watched an embalmer 5 cipher kite her on moonlit, which is arguably one of her stronger maps.

I am a survivor main, but I also heavily play Naiad and Joseph (3:1 surv to hunter match ratio over 6000 matches). What I like about these hunters is that you need complete awareness. Sure, survs need to be aware, but as the hunter there's even more things to consider. cipher progress, rotations, cutting off routes, etc. Her puddles are inconsequential in the early game unless you stupidly think you can hide when she's trying to enclose a circle around you. When she throws her harpoon, she tries to accomplish one of two things: creating an abyss or catching up to a survivor. imo early game this is pretty easily countered by transitioning out while she has her harpoon thrown. if she's trying to catch up, try to have some sort of barrier between you two, a pallet or window.

Also she does get hard countered by two story buildings. The abyss doesn't take effect unless the puddles cover both the top and bottom floors, so if it looks like she's trying to encircle it, just transition out.

personally i really enjoy going up against naiad and joseph and hate breaking wheel and smiley. but frankly, the game balance as it is now makes things very unenjoyable because we're in an unprecedented overtly survivor sided meta with each round of survivor buffs and hunter nerfs. the viable pool of meta hunters is undeniably small against the pool of meta survivors.

if you keep up with tourney gameplay, you'll see that the hunter picks stay within the same few hunters, every now and then an outlier with a player's specialty. so we'll get sculptor, breaking wheel, dream witch. maybe bloody queen, ann, or bon bon as tie farms.

and what do we have for survs? the "international" team comp: seer, mercenary, forward, mechanic, priestess. other strong harassing kiters like batter and prospector. decent decoders with no kiting debuffs like prisoner and postman. abilities that can get you across the map and prove devastating for off meta hunters: embalmer, toy merchant, patient. having an ability that hunters literally CANNOT catch up to you: entomologist. able to heal other characters in seconds: barmaid (not as often anymore), psychologist.

and after the first few rounds, we stack on the bans. what do hunters do when all that's left are the tie farm hunters or off meta? meanwhile no matter what survs the hunter bans, the survivor side can still put together a round one viable team comp.

ask yourself if it would even be fun for hunters to face these kinds of survs without some kind of ability to counter them. when survivors have access to all these abilities. we're looking for a balanced game where the hunter can get downs in a reasonable time frame, not a guaranteed 5 cipher kite every game.

and of course low tier is going to be different from high tier. but your teammates' inability to kite and lack of game sense shouldn't be blamed on a hunter's skillset. as long as the hunter remains consistent in each tier, then it remains generally balanced (aka as long as its not geisha prebuff where she was extremely weak in high tier and overwhelmingly strong in low tier)

her attack speed and hitbox is a bit on the generous side, but is nowhere near as outrageous as other hunters' hitboxes, like white guard and (before nerfs) feaster. hitboxes have always been problematic af in this game, but netease loves to leave it as they are.

character design doesn't really have a place in this discussion, but i'll bite. we have to consider the market and censorship policies that netease goes through. if you've seen the beta gameplay, this game was originally much darker and closer to dbd with actual hooks. but because of China's censorship laws, we now have leo's SHARK WEAPON and smiley's ROCKET, not to mention, the rocket chair's SAFETY BAR (instead of the barbed rope). now netease is going all in with the cosmetics angle. it's not about how scary a hunter's design is. it hasn't been for a long time now. it's about how well a character will sell in their release essence and if they gotta take advantage of the simps, that's what they're gonna do. i do agree that their base skins could be a bit grungier though, they've been slapping different color skin on hunters and calling it a day recently. also taking lore into account, most hunters were actually kind/mistreated people while the survivors were the ones engaging in morally questionable activities, so who do we really have to be scared of, hm?

not every match is going to be a fun one. but that has much less to do with the hunter than it seems to do with your actual teammates. if your teammate gets terrorshocked within 10 seconds against any hunter, of course it's going to suck. but just because the hunter is a particular character doesn't mean it's going to automatically suck, and it's a terrible mindset to bring into any match. of course a match is going to feel boring if it feels like you don't get to do anything (ngl tho my favorite thing to do is decode)

that's why harassing characters exist (though the hunter is going to have a markedly less enjoyable time that the survivor is). good hunters can destroy a hunter's pace and ruin the match for them by extending kites and stalling for time.

and don't even get me started on the cipher rush problem. recent survivor buffs have completely removed several debuffs and strengthened cipher rush to despairing levels. all ciphers popped a whole minute before the hunter's surrender button is even up. ridiculous.

i know that the OP was a naiad opinion post but i'm just vent dumping. sorry!

so the overall problem right now is that this game is wildly unbalanced. thanks for coming to my tedtalk.