The best Killers in Dead by Daylight are the ones who end chases quickly, cover ground between generators, and keep producing pressure after the first hook. This DBD Killer tier list ranks the full roster for standard public matches on the current build, explains the two placements that actually moved this month, and answers the question most tier lists get wrong: how many Killers are even in the game right now.
This edition applies to Patch 10.2.0, released 6 October 2026, and was re-checked on 12 October 2026.
Quick answer: The Nurse, The Blight, The Hillbilly, The Spirit, The Ghoul and The Mastermind are S tier on Patch 10.2.0. The Mastermind is the only Killer in the game whose power changed in the mid-chapter, which is what moves him up. Everything else that moved, moved because of perks: 10.2.0 rewrote 58 perks (27 Killer, 31 Survivor) and almost all of them were older, lower-tier perks rather than meta staples. Behaviour's own roster now lists 42 Killers, not 44 — The Shape and The Cenobite are still playable but can no longer be bought.
What is the DBD Killer tier list for Patch 10.2.0?
| Tier | Killers |
|---|---|
| S | The Nurse, The Blight, The Hillbilly, The Spirit, The Ghoul, The Mastermind |
| A | The Huntress, The Xenomorph, The Executioner, The Lich, Dracula, The Animatronic, The Slasher, The First, The Krasue, The Artist |
| B | The Judgment, The Houndmaster, The Unknown, The Singularity, The Oni, The Plague, The Knight, The Nemesis, The Dredge, The Good Guy, The Wraith, The Nightmare, The Trickster, The Cenobite, The Doctor |
| C | The Legion, The Deathslinger, The Hag, The Twins, The Pig, The Clown, The Ghost Face, The Demogorgon, The Onryo, The Cannibal |
| D | The Trapper, The Shape, The Skull Merchant |
The table ranks broad match consistency, not whether a specialist can win with a favourite Killer. Map generation, add-ons, perks, input device and mechanical skill can each move a pick by roughly one tier in practice. Exact Killer names were checked against the official Dead by Daylight character roster. Tier placement is timesaver.gg editorial analysis, not an official Behaviour Interactive ranking.
Several Killers carry two names. Dracula is The Dark Lord in the Trial, and the roster also writes The Lich as Vecna, The Executioner as Pyramid Head, The Nightmare as Freddy Krueger, The Pig as Amanda Young, The Cannibal as Leatherface, The Good Guy as Chucky and The Onryo as Sadako. Both halves are correct.
How many Killers are in Dead by Daylight right now?
This is where most DBD tier lists are quietly out of date. Behaviour's own character roster currently returns 42 Killer entries. The Dead by Daylight Wiki still says 44. Neither number is wrong — they are counting different things.
Two Killers have had their licences retracted and no longer have a page on Behaviour's site:
| Killer | Status | What happened to the perks |
|---|---|---|
| The Shape (Michael Myers) | Cannot be unlocked since 19 January 2026 | Save the Best for Last became Keep Them Waiting, Play With Your Food became See How They Run, Dying Light became Cull The Weak |
| The Cenobite (Pinhead) | Left the store during 2025 | Deadlock became No Holds Barred |
Behaviour's departure notice for the Halloween Chapter is explicit about the cut-off: "On January 19th, 2026, 11 AM ET, The Halloween Chapter and all associated content will no longer be available to unlock in Dead by Daylight." It is equally explicit that nothing was taken away from existing owners: "For those who already own The Shape, Laurie Strode, and/or any of their Cosmetics, your content will remain accessible to you." The same notice removed the Haddonfield map from the map pool and retired the Strode Realty Key offering.
So the honest count is: 42 Killers you can buy today, 44 Killers that can appear in your match. We rank all 44 and mark the two legacy picks, because a tier list that silently drops them is useless to the large number of players who already own them. For The Cenobite the departure was reported at the time as 4 April 2025; Behaviour's announcement page is no longer live, so we attribute that date to contemporaneous reporting rather than to a first-party source.
The clearest proof that both licences are gone is in the current patch notes themselves. Patch 10.2.0 adjusts "Down to the Last [Sole Survivor]" and "Bound by Obsession [Object of Obsession]" — Laurie Strode's two perks, now balanced as General Perks available to everyone.
What did Patch 10.2.0 change for Killers?
Less than the 58-perk headline suggests, and in a very specific direction. The mid-chapter contains exactly one Killer power adjustment, and it belongs to The Mastermind:
- Virulent Bound now collides less with ground-level geometry.
- Virulent Bound keeps "some" momentum off ledges, except when grabbing a Survivor.
- Virulent Bound allows sidesteps between each Bound.
That is the entire Killer Adjustments section. The only other Killer-specific line in the update is a bug fix: "Fixed an issue where The Dark Lord could not perform basic attacks in both Vampire and Wolf form."
Everything else was perks, and Behaviour said plainly what the pass was for: "With this release, we are doing a pass on general perks - the perks new players gain access to when they begin their journey. We want to update them because a lot of them haven't been updated in a long time."
That framing is the whole reason the top of this tier list barely moves. A general-perk pass raises the floor — it hands weaker, basic-attack Killers better default tools — without touching the slowdown and information perks that hold up S tier. The Killer buffs worth knowing:
| Perk | Patch 10.2.0 value | Previous value |
|---|---|---|
| Unrelenting | Missed basic-attack cooldown 30/35/40% shorter, plus a new 10% on successful hits | 20/25/30%, no bonus on hits |
| Distressing | Survivors in your Terror Radius repair 6/7/8% slower, Terror Radius a flat 30% larger | No repair penalty, 20/23/30% larger |
| Whispers | Whispers within 28/26/24 m, plus 5% Haste while outside that range | 48/40/32 m, no Haste |
| Dominance | First bless or cleanse of each Totem blocks it 25 s, Survivor screams, aura 3/4/5 s | Totems and Chests, 8/12/16 s, no scream |
| Agitation | 14/16/18% Haste while carrying | 6/12/18% |
| Hex: Nothing but Misery | Ignites after 4 basic-attack hits, adds 10% slower vaults | 8 hits, no vault effect |
Two older perks were quietly pulled back, and both hurt power-damage Killers specifically: Dissolution and Hex: Blood Favor again require damage from a basic attack rather than any damage. Behaviour's note on both is identical: "Some Killers benefited from this perk a lot more than others. To lower that gap, we're bringing back the basic-attack trigger condition."
Which DBD Killers are S tier in October 2026?
The Nurse keeps the highest ceiling because Blink movement ignores the geometry that protects Survivors, compressing chase time and map distance at once. The Blight converts map knowledge into fast hits and rotates between objectives before Survivors reset. The Hillbilly pairs instant-down threat with traversal, so even an unavailable chainsaw changes how Survivors route through open space. The Spirit forces prediction instead of reaction and wins the information battle while still contesting the map. The Ghoul keeps tempo after a hit through mobility and aggressive chase shape.
The Mastermind is the newcomer to S tier, and the reasoning is narrow on purpose. He already sat at the top of A tier. All three parts of the 10.2.0 Virulent Bound change target the same weakness — Bounds dying on terrain, Bounds losing momentum off ledges, Bounds that could not be adjusted mid-sequence. Those were the inconsistencies keeping him out of the top group, and they are the only power changes anyone received this patch. If you have been waiting for a reason to commit to Wesker, this is it; our Mastermind guide covers the add-ons that pair with the new movement.
A note on the Nurse, because players argue about this constantly and both camps have a point. One recurring community position is that she is not actually a high-skill-ceiling Killer, just a hard one to pick up — "she is just a bit hard to learn", as one r/DeadByDaylightKillers player put it in a 12 October thread on skill ceilings. That is a fair description of her learning curve, not of her ceiling: the Blink distances are fixed, so the skill lives entirely in reading Survivor movement. Either way, she is the worst first Killer on this list and the best one to still be improving at in a year.
Where does The Judgment rank now?
The Judgment stays in B tier, and this month it stays there for the opposite reason to September.
Behaviour tuned Divine Light four times in three weeks. The curve window while Zealous launched at 0.3 s in 10.1.0, went to 0.6 s in 10.1.1, then to 0.8 s plus a new 0.3 s non-Zealous window in 10.1.2 — and then Patch 10.1.2a reverted both, taking it back to 0.6 s while Zealous with no non-Zealous window at all. Behaviour's explanation was blunt: "The Judgment's performance skyrocketed following HF2. We are reverting the changes to Divine Light in order to better evaluate Its performance over a longer period of time."
Current live value is therefore 0.6 s Zealous, no non-Zealous window. Treat any number you read elsewhere with suspicion — this is a Killer Behaviour can now retune server-side without a client patch, and several large wikis still display the reverted 10.1.2 figures. Our Judgment guide tracks the live values.
Which Killers moved because of the perk pass?
The Doctor moves C to B. Distressing was already a Doctor-flavoured perk, and 10.2.0 turned it from a Bloodpoint-era novelty into real gen pressure: Survivors inside his Terror Radius now repair 6/7/8% slower, and the radius bonus became a flat 30% larger instead of a tiered 20/23/30%. A Killer whose whole identity is a huge Terror Radius just got paid for it.
The Legion is the biggest floor-riser and still does not change tier. Unrelenting going to 30/35/40% on missed basic attacks, plus a brand-new 10% reduction on successful ones, is a direct buff to every Killer who chases with M1 — and Behaviour's note explains why it was safe to restore: "Diminishing Returns allows us to return the long-since-removed successful basic-attack cooldown." The perk is live enough that Dredge players spent 12 October arguing on r/deadbydaylight about whether there is any excuse left to leave it out of a build. It makes The Legion smoother; it does not fix the Killer's actual ceiling problem, which is converting Frenzy damage into hooks. C tier, with a better default loadout. If you main them, our Legion guide goes deeper, and the full Unrelenting, Fire Up and Distressing breakdown has the tier-by-tier numbers.
Survivors were not left out, which is why no low-tier Killer jumped further. Better Than New went from 12/14/16% to 40/45/50%, Empathic Connection to 30/35/40%, We'll Make It now lasts 70/80/90 s, and No One Left Behind heals at 80/90/100%. Faster healing is the single most direct counter to hit-and-run pressure, so Killers who rely on spreading damage — The Wraith, The Ghost Face, The Legion — gained a better chase perk and a worse match environment at the same time.
Are C-tier and D-tier Killers bad?
No. C tier means conditional, not unusable. The Legion, The Deathslinger, The Hag, The Twins, The Pig, The Clown, The Ghost Face, The Demogorgon, The Onryo and The Cannibal all win public matches regularly. Their pressure simply depends more on map layout, setup time, Survivor mistakes or specialist knowledge.
D tier holds The Trapper, The Shape and The Skull Merchant. The Trapper needs setup and favourable trap value before his game plan exists. The Shape produces dramatic power spikes but concedes early tempo, and he now has the additional problem that no new player can buy him. The Skull Merchant's control pattern still does not convert into the chase and rotation value the higher tiers offer.
Personal mastery matters most at the bottom of a list, not the top. One point that came up repeatedly in player discussion this week is worth repeating: ranged Killers reward practice more visibly than anyone else, because accuracy is the whole power. The Deathslinger, The Trickster, The Huntress, The Animatronic and The Slasher all have a much higher personal ceiling than their placement implies.
Which Killer should a beginner learn first?
Start with a Killer whose power teaches transferable fundamentals rather than hiding mistakes. Behaviour publishes its own difficulty rating on every character page, and it is a better starting filter than any tier list — including this one.
- The Wraith, The Trapper and The Legion are the only three Killers Behaviour rates Easy. The Wraith is the best of them for learning patrol timing, ambushes and target selection.
- The Huntress is rated Medium and is the right pick if you want to learn ranged prediction and can accept missing a lot while you improve.
- The Hillbilly is also Medium and is the rare S-tier Killer whose basic traversal pays off long before you can curve.
- The Nurse, The Hag, The Oni, The Executioner, The Blight, The Twins and The Judgment are Behaviour's seven Very Hard Killers. They are where you go after you can already win matches, not before.
- The Ghoul is rated Medium and is frequently called an easy Killer, which sets players up to be disappointed. Players who main him describe the opposite: the power is simple to use and hard to use well, and the skill that unlocks him is zoning — steering Survivors toward map areas with no good pallet or window rather than chasing them into strong tiles.
Do not unlock from a one-line tier placement. Watch the power, consider your input device, and decide whether you enjoy the repeatable match loop. A C-tier Killer you practise for fifty matches beats an S-tier Killer you abandon after three.
More Dead by Daylight guides
Bookmark this page for balance patches. We re-rank after every Killer power change, perk overhaul or new chapter, and we date every edition to the exact patch it applies to.
- DBD Survivor Tier List: All Survivors Ranked
- Best DBD Killer Perks Tier List
- DBD Totems Explained: Hex, Dull and Boon After the 10.2.0 Rework
- DBD Patch 10.2.0: Every PTB to Live Change
- DBD Codes: All Active Dead by Daylight Codes
FAQ
Who is the best Killer in DBD right now? The Nurse is the strongest Killer on Patch 10.2.0 because Blink movement bypasses loop geometry and compresses chase time and map distance simultaneously. She also has the highest execution requirement on the roster, so The Hillbilly or The Wraith is usually the better practical choice if you are still learning.
How many Killers are in Dead by Daylight in 2026? Behaviour's character roster lists 42 Killers, and 44 can appear in a Trial. The difference is The Shape and The Cenobite, whose licences were retracted — they are no longer purchasable, but every player who bought them before the cut-off still owns and can play them.
Can I still buy Michael Myers in Dead by Daylight? No. The Halloween Chapter stopped being unlockable at 11 AM ET on 19 January 2026, which also removed the Haddonfield map from the map pool. His perks remain in the game for everyone under new names: Keep Them Waiting, See How They Run and Cull The Weak.
Did Patch 10.2.0 nerf The Ghoul? No. The Ghoul has received no power change in Patch 10.1.0, 10.1.1, 10.1.2, 10.1.2a or 10.2.0. The frustration you see in community threads is better explained by the Survivor side of the perk pass, which made healing substantially faster, and by the power itself being harder to master than its reputation suggests.
Which Killer got buffed in Patch 10.2.0? The Mastermind is the only Killer who received a power change. Virulent Bound now collides less with ground-level geometry, keeps some momentum off ledges and allows sidesteps between Bounds. Every other change in the mid-chapter was a perk change.
Is this DBD Killer tier list different on console? The broad order is similar, but precision-heavy Killers feel less consistent on a controller. The Judgment, The Nurse, The Huntress and The Blight all reward precise camera input, so expect to sit roughly one tier lower on those specific picks until your sensitivity is dialled in.
When will this tier list be updated? After every Killer power change, major perk overhaul or new chapter. This edition is dated 12 October 2026 and applies to live Patch 10.2.0.
Sources: Patch 10.2.0 Mid-Chapter notes, Patch 10.1.2a notes, Halloween Is Leaving Dead by Daylight and the official character roster. Tier placements are editorial judgments, not official balance rankings.
