Dead By Daylight – Killer Tier list (Updated: May 2021)

SS Tier – Godlike

At the moment, there is no killer in Dead by Daylight that is extremely overpowered.

S Tier – Very strong

Spirit

Sprits’ power ability Yamaoka’s Haunting is still powerful, and there’s been no talk from the developers about nerfing her! This makes Spirit an excellent choice.

She also has good addons that can shorten the cooldown or increase the length of her power ability. If you are grinding for high rank as the killer in Dead by Daylight, we highly recommend that you try out spirit!

Blight

Out of all 22 killers in Dead by Daylight. Blight is definitely the most difficult killer to master. If you’re up against a good Blight, you are going to be in for a tough ride!

Nurse

Excellent mobility and can easily catch up to looping survivors if played correctly. However, experienced survivors are going to bait your blinks, and it can be very frustrating getting looped by a survivor as the nurse. Don’t let this discourage you from trying out the nurse! I know rank one nurse mains that absolutely dominate most of their games.

A Tier – Strong

Hillbilly

Hillbilly would be S tier, but experienced survivors can loop continuously if you mess up your chainsaw sprints. Billy is still a very good choice because of his mobility and one-shot mechanic. From a survivor’s perspective, a very good hillbilly can be rather difficult to play against.

Huntress

Is between S and A tier! She’s getting a huge rework soon and is expected to either go S tier or drop down to B tier. It depends on what the finished rework looks like.

At the moment, she is strong but has a smaller hitbox than Deathslinger. If they lowered Deathslinger’s hitbox or buffed huntress, then she would be S tier. Our detailed Huntress guide can be found here.

Doctor

The Doctor is extremely strong at locating survivors due to his power abilities. A good Doctor player usually 4K their games and gives experienced survivors a very difficult time.

Doctor has two good perks that are teachable, Overcharge and Monitor & Abuse. We recommend that you at least level him up for the perks, as they are good with most killers.

B Tier – Strong if played correctly

Hag

As with the nurse, hag offers great mobility if survivors trigger your traps but can be difficult if you are starting in Dead by Daylight or aren’t experienced with the hag. Thankfully we have a very good hag guide that will help you out!

The Executioner

The executioner doesn’t offer any mobility, but his ability to zone out survivors with Rites of Judgement and stop survivors from looping you is very good.

He has a rather steep learning curve because you need to predict the survivors’ movement to land a hit outside melee range. It can take some time to get used to it, but the Executioner is defiantly s tier!

Oni

Oni’s power ability allows you to rush through the maps and apply great generator control as well as “one-shotting” all the survivors. A good Oni player is definitely someone you should watch out for!

The Nightmare

The Nightmare, also known as Freddy, offers a perfect kit if you are playing as the killer! His unique ability, Dream Projection, offers great mobility and allows you to teleport to any generator on the map.

When you are trying to climb the ranks in Dead by Daylight, The nightmare is an excellent choice! We have a detailed Freddy that is optimized for higher ranks that you can read here.

Demogorgon

Demogorgon has excellent map control due to his ability to create and traverse between portals. At the moment, Demogorgon is a solid B-tier killer.

Note: If you are considering playing Demogorgon, we recently published a very detailed guide with a rank 1 build.

C Tier – Pretty weak compared to other killers

The Twins

Twins offer great mobility when you play as Victor, and it’s entertaining to scare survivors, but the hitbox is way off. Sometimes an easy pounce doesn’t connect, and sometimes a missing pounce actually hits the survivors.

There has been talked about bug fixing Twins, but no official statement has been made yet, and therefore we put Twins as C tier. We have a good build for Twins where we go through their perks and how to play them! You can check out our build here.

Ghostface

Ghostface has a one-shot mechanic but requires you to waste time stalking survivors. You can speed up the stalking speed with addons, and then Ghostface would be A tier, but you are not going to have those addons for every match.

Ghostface also lacks mobility, and getting looped by survivors is going to happen unless you outplay them. Personally, my second main killer is Ghostface, after Deathslinger. He’s very fun to play as, and you can climb out of the lower ranks pretty fast with our Ghostface Build

Clown

Good with addons that make survivors exposed like we mentioned in our Clown Build or exhausted when they run into Clown’s special ability. With no perks, he’s pretty weak when you compare to other killers in Dead by Daylight.

Pig

Very fun killer to play as, but Pig’s toolkit is pretty weak. However, it can be boosted with addons, but you are not going to have addons every game you play.

Deathslinger

Hitboxes got nerfed in Dead by Daylight patch 4.5.2 which made  Deathslinger weaker. We now consider him to be a solid C tier. He’s not a bad choice but he’s now weaker compared to other killers. We have made a very detailed guide for Deathslinger that is optimized to get rank 1 (And staying there!) You can read our full guide here

Wraith

Requires you to have a proper build as we mentioned in our Wraith Build article. Recent buffs to Wraith have made him a somewhat decent killer. Without add-ons and good perks, he’s considered pretty weak compared to other killers in Dead by Daylight.

Leatherface

Has no mobility and experienced survivors will make you mess up your chainsaw sweep. We do recommend new players to level up Leatherface because of his Barbecue and Chili perk.

You are going to need it for every killer! With Leatherface, it’s fairly easy to farm bloodpoints, and we recommend you check out our Beginner Leatherface guide so you can start farming bloodpoints!

D Tier – Weak. Don’t recommend playing.

Trickster

At lower ranks, Trickster is pretty good but once you hit the red ranks (1-4) you’ll notice that Trickster is extremely weak. His power ability is basically useless and no one is ever using it. Trickster is also slow and is unable to apply “gen pressure.”

We’re pretty certain that Trickster’s power ability is going to get a full rework soon. Hopefully, it makes him much stronger as he’s a very fun killer to play!

Plague

Good survivors are not going to cleanse as often as beginners; therefore, Plague isn’t A tier. It shouldn’t discourage you from playing her, as she’s one of the funniest killers you can play. She also has some good perks like Corrupt Intervention that is highly effective on every killer in Dead by Daylight.

Michael Myers

Extremely strong with addons and good game sense. However, it can be difficult for beginners if you don’t manage Michael’s Evil Within ability correctly.

We have a very in-depth guide for Michael Myers where we go through everything you need to know about playing as him!

Trapper

Good survivors will avoid your traps unless your trap placement is very unexpected or if the survivors have bad gameplay. Sometimes you can clutch games like hooking a survivor in the basement and trapping outside the basement and simply farming the survivors. It only works if you are playing against bad survivors.

Legion

Blood Frenzy is a very weak ability and should be reworked. At higher ranks, legion players only use blood frenzy to locate a survivor and then snap out of it before they initiate a chase.

Update Log

11.05.2021 Tier list has been updated for May.

Conclusion

We hope you enjoyed reading our killer tier list for Dead by Daylight. We will update this tier list every month as well as when a new chapter for Dead by Daylight comes out. Make sure you bookmark this page, as we’ll inform you of the best killers in the game throughout every upcoming patch. If you have any questions regarding our tier list, feel free to contact us on Twitter.