Dead by Daylight Nurse Guide

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The Nurse

The Nurse is the most unique killer of the game, her gameplay is completely different from the other killers. She ignores everything on the map, can’t be looped and requires constant prediction and concentration, she doesn’t follow any rule and being good with other killers means nothing if you want to play her.

Her stats and basic info:

Name: Sally Smithson
Power: Spencer’s Last Breath
Default movement speed: 96%
Blink movement speed: 333% (no addons)
Terror radious: 32 meters
Blink accuracy debuff: 2 meters max range (no addons)
Non-blink lunge: 6 meters
Blink fast attack: 3,33 meters
Blink lunge: 5,33 meters
First blink range: 20 meters (no addons)
Follow blinks range: 12 meters (no addons)
One blink fatigue: 2 seconds
Two blink fatigue: 3 seconds (more blinks add an extra second each only if used)
Blink missed swing + fatigue: 5 seconds

Strengths and Weaknesses

This is a basic preview of what you can expect from the Nurse, what she’s good and bad at.

Strengths:

Her power allows to ”teleport” through everything in game, which means she can’t be looped.
Best mobility in game. Ignores every solid object, you can travel like if there is nothing in the map.
Best killer in a chase. You can always catch the survivor, only limit is your skill, and the survivor’s.
Very strong on maps with several floors like ”The Game”, she can move between them instantly.
Very good defending totems, gens and hooks due to mobility.
Strong basement game due to her ability to teleport inside from far away and grab rescuers.
Very good ambush potential by blinking on top of gens from 32 meters away.
By far the best killer in game if you can play her properly.
Fastest movement speed while blinking, 333% whitout addons.
Best killer to punish cocky and over altruistic survivors.
Only killer that doesn’t have to fear flashlights at all, just grasp saves.

Weaknesses:

Slowest killer in game, walking at 96% speed, yes, survivors are faster than you.
Post blink fatigue can make you lose survivors easily.
Highest skill ceiling and floor of all killers, can be very frustrating to play if you are not good.
Hardest killer to play correctly, you need to be very good at predicting and reading survivors.
Her power is the most complex one, it may take a while to develop its potential.
Requires good map knowledge and good experience as survivor to be great at predicting.
She can be very stressful to play even if you are good with her.
Mistakes while blinking will punish you way more than other killers due to fatigue.

Spencer’s Last Breath (How to move)

The Nurse moves at 96% compared to survivors, she is actually slower and would never catch up to survivors unless they are dumb. She is the only killer that requires the constant use of her power to move around and chase survivors.

Spencer’s Last Breath allows the Nurse to charge a ”blink” that allows her to travel through the spirit’s world for a few moments. She ignores every solid object in the game, including survivors when she is warping with the blink, giving her the best mobility and ability to down survivors.

How to use the power to move:

You can press M2 (default killer’s power key) to start charging the blink, while doing it, the Nurse moves even slower. The blink, witout addons takes 3 seconds to fully charge on your hard, this means that it will cover the longest distance possible (20 meters by default for the first blink and 12 for the rest of them) The nurse closes her hand once the blink is ready, holding the blink longer has no effect but you can hold it forever, you can’t cancel it tho. You have 2 blinks by default.

While holding the blink, you can’t attack or perform any kind of interaction with anything, survivors can still blind and stun you in this state. Once the blink is fully charged it will cover it’s maximun range but if there is a survivor very close to you, then you can aim at the floor so you won’t blink anywhere.

There is an important fact about the blinks: The first blink can be hold forever if you don’t release M2, but, once you perform your first blink, you can’t hold the second one forever, you’ll be in the ”blink window time”, which means that, by default, after every blink, you have 2 seconds to either, attack a survivor, charge another blink or just do nothing and enter in the fatigue. Don’t be greedy and lunge when you are not very close to the survivor, you’ll enter in the 5 seconds fatigue and you’ll likely lose the survivor.

If you are just moving around the map you should fully charge the blinks to cover more ground. If you are chasing a survivor, you won’t always want to blink 20 meters, for example, if the survivor is at 10 meters of you, you have to release the blink before it’s fully charged, there is something called blink muscle memory (know when to release the blink to cover X distance) you need to practice the Nurse a lot to learn the blink properly.

Unfortunately It’s very hard to tell with words how to use it, because it depends on your muscle memory, with practice you’ll realize how much time you need to charge the blink to warp a certain distance, there is not a formula, just practice, after a few games it will be automatic.

Blink Tips and Tricks while traversing the map:

Now you know how to move around the map, congratulations. You already want to chase survivors? Wait, there is still stuff you need to know.

Blink between floors

Did I mention that the Nurse can move between floors with the blink? Well she can. It’s very easy to do and even easier to suck while doing it.

The only thing you have to do is, charge the blink and then aim upwards or downwards, depending if you want to go up or down, ez done… Well is not that simple, you have to take into account the map layout on the other floor to avoid the overblink or just missing. The easiest place to try this is the basement, you have to know where the basement and how it’s layout is. The basement always look the same but on certain maps, like Lery’s hospital, it may be hard to blink inside if you don’t know where it is.

This strategy has been proven to be very effective while chasing, survivors can’t see the nurse, since she is on another floor, and most of the time they don’t expect you to do it because it’s easy to miss and most Nurse’s don’t even try.

You need two things to be great at sniping people between floors: 1º good blink muscle memory (I already talked about this) 2º very good map knowledge. If you have no idea of what’s on the other floor you won’t have an easy time to know where the survivor is going and how to predict him. Grab a friend, go to a KYF match and train the maps, easy as that.

You need to train and be great at this if you play on ”The Game”, Asylum, Haddonfield and the Preschool. ”The Game” is… well the entire map is two floors so you need to, Haddonfield and the Preschool have several houses where survivors will try to juke you, they are small but if you manage to blink to the stairs when the survivor goes in, he will go down, almost all survivors go to the second floor against Nurse since is hard to play there.

Survivor spotting while blinking

This is something I’ve never seen anybody doing as Nurse, not even the most famous Nurse streamers. When you are bliking you move very fast, in this state you can still turn your camera to look around and since you move faster than any survivor, you can easily spot them hiding around trees or gens if you do a 180º or 360º while blinking. If you are trying to find someone and you know he is somewhat close, instead of wasting time walking around every single tree, just go away and then blink through all the trees and objects while looking behind you (180º) even if they use Urban Evasion they won’t have enough time to circle a tree to remain unseen by you.

Spencer’s Last Breath (How to chase and attack)

Now you know everything about the power, you are ready to learn how to use it against survivors.

How to use the power to chase:

I already explained how to charge and use the blink, go back to ”how to move” if you have doubts.

When you charge your blink you want to close distance with the survivor, either to hit him with that blink or to be close enough to get a hit with your second or more blinks. I’ll assume that you already trained and have a good muscle memory, so you know how much you have to charge the blink to get to that survivor, ok?

You see the survivor, you start charging the blink, you have 3 seconds (or less) to take a look at what the survivor is doing and the map layout. Is he looking at you? Chances are that he will try to juke you either by running into you, doing a 90º turn, taking a window/pallet if close… Is he running straight without looking back? He’ll probably keep doing that. Depending on where you are, the distance and the survivor you need to make a choice. Every survivor is different so there is not a win-win tip against everything but I’ll try to explain most situations.

Prediction:

Survivor is in the open, no windows/pallets close, nothing to lose LoS (Line of sight)

This is the easiest situation you can be on, the survivor has nothing to fight you, he can only juke you with his skill.

If you are quite far from the survivor you need to use the first blink at full charge to get close and the second to hit him, if you are close I’d suggest you to use two short blink instead of a large one, that way you reduce the chances of being juked.
Remember to aim to the survivor, and not where he is running unless you only have 1 blink left. If you aim center mass jukes will be less efficient, he won’t get very far from you, if you try to predict way too much he may turn in the last second and at that point he may be too far for your next blink to hit.

First tip: Don’t overestimate the situation even if it’s at your advantage, even rank 20 survivors will try to do something random to avoid being hit.

Second tip: Use short blinks if the survivor is at short/medium range to avoid being juked instead of a single long one, if you have a good muscle memory and reflexes, there is no way a survivor can juke short blinks at that range in the open unless he outplays you completetly. If he does, you need more training.

Survivor is in the open with pallets/windows close.

In this situation the mind games take place, you have to guess if the survivor will vault or if he will remain on the other side to mind game you. It’s all about the survivor, if he tried to juke you by not vaulting while you were charing the blink and succeed, chances are that he will do the same again, survivor don’t change tactics as long as they work, if you get juked one time, he’ll try the same.

The safe bet is, use the first blink to get as close as you can to the survivor when he is close to vault, then wait for a moment on the blink window and use the second blink to either hit the survivor or go through the vault if he is vaulting, you have little time to react, you’d better be fast.

Overall that’s the best strategy because the survivor will start either vaulting or juking by the time you get there, if he didn’t vault by the time that you landed the first blink, do a short one and hit him. This juke only works at long range where the survivor has more time to react to the Nurse, at close it just doesn’t work, that’s why the short blink strat applies again.

Survivor has stuff to lose LoS (Line of sight)

The real mindgame, you can’t see the survivor so you have to guess where he is and where he is going. This all comes from experience and what the survivor did during the match. Some survivors will try to hide when they break LoS hoping for you to miss the blink, others will run straight but try to remain unseen as long as they can.

The safe bet here is, use your first blink to the last known location of the survivor, chances are that he’ll try to do the double back juke (remain stationary where he broke LoS hoping for you to try to predict and miss). If he kept running then you have to use the second blink to predict him, good reflexes and map knowledge will bring you the victory in this situations.

Very good survivors will mix up the jukes, maybe they’ll keep running during your first blink and then try to do the double back on your second when you don’t expect it, they are rare tho and overall if you keep chaging strategy you’ll chatch them, just don’t do the same all the time. Watch every survivor, what they like to do and then counter it.

If you have problems you can try a more risky but rewarding gamestyle, which is blinking on top of the survivor when they break LoS with you, it proved to be the best in every situation. But how are you supposed to blink to someone you can’t see? Well based on the map layout, footsteps and the survivor’s speed is easy to guess, most survivors will keep running around jungle gyms and buildings all the time until hit. Instead of trying to predict the survivor’s path, you blink right on top of them, to where they ”should” be, that way they won’t have enough room to juke your second blink.

Survivor has pallets/windows and stuff to lose LoS (Line of sight)

This situations happens a lot on Lery’s since the entire map is a LoS breaker and there are windows everywhere. Blinking on top of the survivor doesn’t always work beacuse he may take windows, in this situation you are at disadvantage and you have to completely guess where the survivor is going. Depending on how is the survivor you’d have to either expect double back and them hiding around or try to cut them by full charging the blink.

The safe bet on this map/situation, same as when survivors have stuff to break LoS. You also have to watch the survivor to see what he does, if he just runs around, cut him with long blinks across the map, if he plays stealthy, do short blinks to its last location, you’d probably see him trying to hide.

Blink Tips and Tricks while chasing:

Blink flick

If you notice that the survivor is looking at you while you are charing the blink (good survivors will do) you can fake your blink direction by looking to somewhere else while charging the blink and then move your camera fast to where you want to blink as soon as you are ready.

For example, if a survivor is running slighlty to your left around something you can make the survivor think that you are going to blink to the left to cut him by charging your blink while looking to the left (a lot) and make him turn right (if he tries to juke you). It’s all about mindgames and make the survivor think that you are going to do A but you do B.

Blink cancel

This is very simple and most people with some experience on the Nurse should know about it. When you have your blink ready you can’t cancel it, but if you have a survivor right next to you, you can aim downwards and release the blink to not move at all and be able to hit the survivor with your second blink. If you are using blink speed add-ons it will be so fast that you can actually use it as a valid strategy to get free hits. Note: It doesn’t work on second floors, for reasons I explained on ”how to move”.

Perks

The Nurse benefits from a wide variety of perks but certain ones are either must haves or extremely good on her. I’ll take a look at the best of the best and some decent ones.

A Nurse’s Calling — S+ tier (must have)

Unlocks potential in one’s Aura reading ability. The Auras of Survivors who are healing or being healed are revealed to you when they are within 20/24/28 metres of range.

One of the must have perks the Nurse needs, this perks allows you to see survivors healing at 28 meters or less, due to her ability to blink through everthing, this makes you able to instatly down unaware survivors. One could say that the counter is ”don’t heal on her terror radious”, it works but when you are blinking you move so fast that survivors don’t have time to react and you can still see them healing for a brief period of time, chances are that they will be on the same spot for your next blink.

Barbecue & Chili — S+ tier (must have)

A deep bond with The Entity unlocks potential in one’s Aura reading ability. After hooking a Survivor, all other Survivors’ Auras are revealed to you for 4 seconds when they are further than 52/46/40 metres from the Hook.
Each time a Survivor is hooked for the first time, gain a 15/20/25 % stackable Bonus to all Bloodpoint gains.

Another must have for the Nurse and one of the best killer perks. It allows you to see survivors who are far away after hooking someone, you can use this info to plan your next movement. If all three remaining survivors are far then there is no reason to defende the hook, blink away. If you see nobody, they are probably close or behind gens, but someone will be most likely close to the hook. It also gives an extra 25% bloodpoints for every survivor hooked at least one time, you can get an easy double bloodpoints every match which is nice to have.

Whispers — S tier

You have a rudimentary understanding of the Entity voice. Sporadically hear the Entity’s Whisper when standing within a 48/40/32 metres of a Survivor.

This perks allows you to track survivors around you, check areas of the map to know if someone is there and turn the last survivor standoff into a chore.

What you want to do with his perk is, use it early game to check gens, you’ll know if no one is close if the perks is not activated so you can move on to the next area without wasting time, late game you can deal with 1-2 survivors very easily, you can even triangulate survivors with whispers if you move around the perk activation point ”drawing a circle” around the survivor. It’s also the only counter to the hatch standoff, if the survivor is not close to the hatch, he won’t escape a good Nurse who knows how to use Whispers. Very strong perk.

Hex: Ruin — S tier

A Hex that affects the Survivors’ skills at repairing Generators. 2/3/4 Survivors are affected by Ruin, which causes Good Skill Checks to result in 5 % regression on the Generator and Great Skill Checks grant 0 % in progression.
The Hex effects persist as long as the related Hex Totem is standing.

The best game delay perk in game right now, the only counter to a great Nurse is gen rush and end the game ASAP, this perk makes that slightly harder. Survivors will either waste time trying to find the totem or they will repair gens slower, it doesn’t really matter if it gets destroyed in 60 seconds, it already buyed you a lot of time.

Good survivors can hit great skill checks consistently so they are less affected by Ruin, but it still annoying and they will probably blow up the gens a few times while trying to hit all the great ones, no one is perfect.

Knock Out — A+ tier

The trauma caused by your brutal attacks makes crying for help painfully difficult. Dying Survivors’ Auras are not revealed to other Survivors when they are standing outside of 32/24/16 metres of range.

Best slugging perk of the game. Removes the ability of survivors to see their teammates when they are bleeding on the floor as long as they are at 16 meters or more. Gives the Nurse the ability to put tons of pressure onto survivors by letting someone bleed on the floor and go for another survivor. One of the best ways to delay the game and remove 25% of the survivor team for a long time. It gets somewhat countered by SWF on comms since they can somewhat tell eachother where they are but it still delays the saves a lot. You can also try to slug the entire team early game but you’ll lose your BBQ stacks if you do, better keep someone on the floor at all times and hook the others, don’t forget to switch the slug with other survivor, no one wants to be on the floor for several minutes and end with 1000 points, you also want his BBQ stack.

Make Your Choice — A+ tier

When a Survivor rescues another from a Hook at least 48/40/32 metres away from you, Make Your Choice triggers and applies the Exposed Status on the rescuer for 60 seconds.
Make Your Choice has a cool-down of 60 seconds.

Great perk for an easy one shot on rescuers. It sounds great on paper but the survivor is notified when affected by MyC, which means that he’ll probably play extra careful and you’ll have a hard time finding him, this perk also promotes switching targets, the smartest choice is usually kill the unhooked survivor since he is in perma one shot status, bleeding, making noise and he’ll be either dead or on second phase on the hook. Situational at best but very good when it works.

Hex: Devour Hope — A+ tier

A Hex rooting its power on hope. The false hope of Survivors ignites your hunger. When a Survivor is rescued from a hook at least 24 metres away, Devour Hope receives a Token.
2 Tokens: Gain a 5% speed burst for 10 seconds after hooking a Survivor. Speed burst triggers 10 seconds after hooking a Survivor.
3 Tokens: Attacks put Survivors into the dying state automatically.
5 Tokens: Grants the ability to kill Survivors by your own hand.
The Hex effects persist as long as the related Hex Totem is standing.

A very high risk / high reward perk that works the best with the Nurse due to her ability to end chases quickly. If you manage to keep your totem alive, is easily the best perk in the game, unfortunately it’s way too risky to use and rarely brings more than one or two one shots.

Shadowborn — A tier

You have a keen vision in the darkness of the night. Your field of view is moderately/considerably/tremendously wider than normal.

A FoV perk that helps locating survivors and to not lose them as easily while on blink fatigue. In my opinion, it is not needed to play the Nurse at god level and is better if you don’t get used to it but if you really have problems tracking and losing survivors, give it a try.

Deerstalker — B tier

Unlocks potential in one’s Aura reading ability. Reveals dying Survivors’ Auras when standing within 12/24/36 metres.

Good perk for a slug build with the Nurse, but you can track people on the floor with Whispers and it’s kinda situational.

There are more perks and combos that work with the Nurse but these are the ones that will give you the better results.

Add-ons

Now I’ll talk about the add-ons and combos that you can use with the Nurse and what add-ons you should avoid as her. There is a lot of misinformation about Nurse add-ons and way too many fools that say all of them are bad, which is not the case.

The add-ons are pretty much self explanatory, I’ll talk about the combos mostly since most of the add-ons have downsides and need to be used with combos anyway.

WARNING: Don’t use charge speed add-ons, never, ever. Charge speed add-ons modify the speed of the blink charge and destroys your muscle memory, you won’t be able to judge distances properly when charging the blink. Also be careful with the downsides of the add-ons, if you are going to use an add-on that increases something but decreases something else as a downside, don’t forget to use a common addon to compensate this downside, that’s the only situation where you may want to use charge speed.

The Omegablink

This combo is done with Ataxic Respiration + Catatonic’s Boy Treasure. It increases the maximum range of the blinks and allow you to traverse the map a lot faster and catch up to survivors with less blinks. Is the most broken combo and extremely strong on good hands.

No fun allowed

This combo is done with Ataxic Respiration + Fragile Wheeze. Less maximum range compared to the Omegablink but you have 3 blinks which increases your chances to hit survivors. It’s almost impossible to juke a good Nurse with 3 blinks but a god/great Nurse will benefit more from Omegablink.

Warp speed

This combo is done with Anxious Gasp + Bad Man Keepsake. It increases a lot the movement speed of the blink and makes you very hard to juke since survivors have barely any time to react.

OMG KYS

This balanced combo is done with Campbell’s Last Breath + Fragile Wheeze. It allows you to play with 5 blinks and make the survivors cry blood. In my honest opinion, this combo is far from great and it’s only useful to ♥♥♥♥ off survivors or turn a mediocre Nurse into a good one for one match. God Nurses don’t even need more than two blinks 9 out of 10 times, why would someone need 5 blinks? Idk

These are the strongest combos that you want to use with the Nurse, you can always play the uncommon and common version of this addons (make sure you compensate the downsides with other addons too)

There are other combos like the reduced fatigue time with the Pocket Watch + Metal Spoon but imo is not good enough to be here.

Best and worst maps

The Nurse overall benefits a lot from open maps with clear line of sight and without many buildings or complex areas. Pretty much every non-dlc map is very good for her aside from certain corn-heavy Coldwind maps like Rotten Fields.

It’s quite hard to make a ”tier” list on which maps are better since it depends on the player too, so I’ll just mention the worst maps for her, since every other map not in this list is either great, good or at least ok.

Léry’s Memorial Institute

By far the worst map for the Nurse, everything is a LoS breaker, even if the survivor is a rank 20 and runs randomly around the map he will be hard to catch due to the amount of rooms, walls and stuff around that makes long range spotting impossible and hiding extremely easy. If survivors decide to play immersed in this map, you won’t find any of them, even with Whispers is hard because they could be hiding on every room, on every corner.

Don’t feel bad if you perform bad on this map, you rely either on the survivor making big mistakes or complete prediction and guessing.

The Swamp

Mostly The Pale Rose, the biggest map on the entire game with confusing jungle gyms with two floors and a boat with two floors too. The main problem here is moving around which will take a while if you are not using range addons and spotting survivors, good luck if you are playing against 4 tryhard claudettes with dark mist because you won’t find them there and if you do, they may take advantage of the fatigue to hide in the tall grass around the map, if they have Iron Will and Urban Evasion it will be a long match. I wouldn’t rate the map as very hard as long as no OP offerings are in use and survivors don’t play super immersed.

Haddonfield

Used to be the worst nightmare for the Nurse when she was unable to blink on the houses, against survivors who abused this. Is not as bad anymore but is still one of the worst maps for her. Several houses, bushes that hide completely survivors, and a very easy time to break LoS make this map one of the last places a Nurse wants to be in. You need to train blinking into houses and second floors a lot if you want to do well here.

Springwood

The Preschool map reminds a bit of Haddonfield since it’s pretty much the same houses and a somewhat big building with two floors, the bottom one has a very weird layout that is quite Nurse unfriendly, most of it are corridors so blinking there from outside is quite difficult. Aside from the school and a few houses the rest of the map is quite good.

Red Forest

Pretty open map but with tree heavy areas to lose LoS easily and a small but complex building on the center with several windows and a second floor with narrow corridors. The most annoying feature of this map is the rain, hearing footsteps and injured survivors becomes harder.