The Nurse or Sally Smithson was the first DLC killer added to Dead by Daylight. This is one of if not the best killer in the entire game. What makes her great? The abilities are at her disposal? What perks work well with her? All will be answered in this ultimate guide to The Nurse. We will also go over some tips to make her play even better.
The Nurse has the hardest and most unique learning curves in the entire game. She plays like no one else, so you will have to invest some considerable time in perfecting her. It all comes down to utilizing her Blinking ability. The use of this power can make or break her in an instant. No killer relies on the effective use of their power as much as she does.
Here is a detailed guide that covers everything there is to know about The Nurse in Dead by Daylight to make it easier for you to decide whether to pick her or not.
Is The Nurse (Sally Smithson) good for beginners?
The Nurse is certainly not easy to pick up and is even harder to master. Her difficulty curve and skill ceiling are amongst the hardest in Dead by Daylight. Nevertheless, if you put in due time to understand her playstyle, she is the best killer in the game.
She has one of the slowest base movement speeds in the game and the only way to counter that is by the use of her Blink ability. Mastering this killer boils down to the effective use of her main power. If you can’t put the necessary time learning her right then it’s best to avoid her.
Are The Nurse Perks worth upgrading?
Of all her teachable unique perks, A Nurse’s Calling is one of the best to upgrade. This will capitalize on unsuspecting survivors who end up healing in a panic state.
You can easily track their auras while they are healing and blink next to them to finish the job. All her other perks aren’t that useful to her playstyle.
Other than that, she has tons of other perks that work really well with her.
Sloppy Butcher will cause Hemorrhage and Mangled status effects to any survivor hit by your basic attack. This synergizes with the previous perk since the inflicted survivor will have to heal and you can track them easily.
Jolt is another great perk. This will cause the generator in a certain radius of a downed survivor to explode and rest them. This will put pressure on the survivor team as their objective will reset very regularly.
What are The Nurse’s Perks?
The Nurse has 3 unique perks with three tier levels:
Stridor
- Increases the volume of Survivors’ Grunts of Pain by 25/50/50 %.
- Increases the volume of Survivors’ regular breathing by 0/0/25 %.
Thanatophobia
- Each injured, dying, or hooked Survivor afflicts Survivors with a stackable 1/1.5/2 % Action Speed penalty to Repairing, Sabotaging, and Cleansing, up to a maximum of 4/6/8 %.
- Increases the Action Speed penalty by a further 12 %, if there are 4 Survivors, who are either injured, dying, or hooked simultaneously.
A Nurse’s Calling
- The Auras of Survivors, who are healing or being healed, are revealed to you when they are within a range of 20/24/28 meters.
What Weapon does The Nurse have?
The Nurse carries around the Bonesaw as her primary weapon. This weapon doesn’t have any special abilities associated with it. It is a standard swing and damage weapon.
What Powers does The Nurse have?
This killer’s main ability is called Spencer’s Last Breath. When you hold down the power button it charges her Blink ability. This propels her at breakneck speed and lets her phase through any obstacle that comes in her path. It is close to being teleported instantaneously.
The distance of the blink is determined by the charge time of the ability. The longer you hold the power/charge button the farther and faster she will blink. The Blink can be pushed to a maximum distance of 20 meters.
This ability can be chained once more for greater distance and chase potential. The subsequent blink has to be triggered within a window of 1.5 seconds after coming out of the previous one.
If this ability is chained, she will enter a state of Fatigue where her overall mobility and tracking will suffer for 2 to 3 seconds. The state of fatigue will be shorter if you do not chain the blink and it will be the longest if you chain it and lunge right when you teleport.
Is The Nurse fun to play?
The Nurse can be the most fun killer in Dead by Daylight, considering you have invested the right amount of time playing her. You will find her on top of most killer tier lists for a reason.
On paper, she is incredibly simple, but don’t let it fool you. This killer demands practice time, and the end result is incomparable to any other killer in the DBD’s roster.
She can easily pressurize the entire survivor team in a blink, pun intended. Her ability is the best at chases and can be used to traverse the whole map. A lot of the perks synergize with her amazingly.
What are some tips and tricks to get better with The Nurse?
Here are some tips that you can employ when playing as this killer:
- The Plaid Flannel add-on will show you the exact landing location of the blink. This is a great add-on for learning her blinking mechanic when you are starting out with her. Once you truly comprehend her charge-to-distance blinking ratio that’s when you can substitute better add-ons.
- If you are using blink to traverse the map then use only one blink. The second blink should only be utilized if you are certain it will connect to a survivor. Haphazard use of the blink will put you in unnecessarily prolonged fatigue, slowing down the overall hunt in the process.
- Predicting the survivor’s movement while blinking is a must. If you know the survivor is about to use a corner then blink to the corner instead of behind him.
- Blinking to the other side of a window as you are chasing a vaulting survivor will ensure you catch them as they land.
- Forget dismantling pallets. You can teleport to your heart’s content, rendering all these pallet drops useless.
- You can fake blink when chasing a survivor by looking down while charging. Many times, this will cause hysteria and the survivor will turn around to dodge your forward blink. If done right, they will turn towards you and present themselves as an easy target to down.
- Add-ons that decrease your blinking recharge time are your best friend. Fatigue-decreasing add-ons are just as important.
The Nurse in Dead by Daylight is not an easy beast to tame, but once you do there is literally no stopping you. This killer is so unique that none of the other killer’s skills or experience translate into her. Take your time practicing with her, lose a bunch of matches, and eventually come out on top of the food chain.