Self Care - Why Removing or Nerfing it would be good for the game
In my opinion, some of Dead by Daylight's balance issues could be solved, and the game made more fun for all players by removing or reworking Self Care.
It is no secret that a vast number of players use Self Care especially the higher up the ranks you go. It is so powerful that many players think it's madness not to take it, unless they are in a SWF group. Almost every guide I've read and player I have spoken to have said "Level up Claudette first to get Self Care teachable". Overall, I don't think it is healthy for the game. By the way, I play both Survivor and Killer, so I don't have a bias, and I have a background in game design so I'm trying to use that experience here, rather than just saying "Self Care is OP, pls nerf".
Benefits of Removing Self Care from the game (or nerfing it somewhat):
- Helping to extend game time for Killers in a number of ways (see below)
- Encouraging more use of medkits, meaning less toolboxes (i.e. less gen rushing/4 man toolbox teams)
- Promoting more teamwork and also team-based perks like Empathy, as Survivors would need each other to heal
- Diversifying Killer perks, as ones based on injuries and healing detection will be more viable
- Looting perks like Pharmacy will be more useful because medkits will be more valuable
- Not every player at low ranks will be playing Claudette just to get Self Care before anything else
Negatives to Removing/Nerfing Self Care
- Uncooperative teammates may not heal you
- Makes hook saves more difficult/time consuming as you are more likely to be injured or spend longer getting healed
- May be harsh to last remaining 1 or 2 survivors
I feel that removing/reworking Self Care would add some much needed tension back into the game for survivors who use it as a crutch. I personally enjoy my games without Self Care way more, and find it is far too easy to make comeback after comeback because of Self Care. When multiple teammates have self care, it is very hard for a Killer to hunt down and finish kills, and Survivors can come in waves for hook rescues/Killer bullying because they can just run off and hide and self heal. I have escaped in so many games and made so many mistakes because of Self Care. I think it, like Decisive Strike, doesn't punish you for mistakes. It's a get out of jail free card.
In a world with a less effective or zero Self Care, Survivors will have to play more carefully, think before making risky actions, and try to work more with their team for heals. It will help with the game ending too quickly and Killers relying on Ruin to slow the game down "jus' a little bit". Because Survivors will need to heal each other more, meaning they A: need to find each other, and B: both are not doing gens during healing. Or, they're using medkits, making medkits more useful, encouraging people to loot chests and spend time finding them. Which means there may be less toolkits as some people will prefer medkits instead, again making the game slower.
At the very least I think Self Care should not save its progress if you cancel it, have a much longer duration, or more skill checks/harder skill checks (maybe like Decisive Strike?). Self Care is abused a lot at stuff like pallets during chases which not only looks ridiculous but seems way over the top.
I could go on further about arguments for and against, I know a lot of Survivor mains will rebel at the idea. But I think it would add a lot to the game for both killers and survivors, slowing the game down and encouraging Survivors to use other perks. It would add more tension to the game, where survivors feel more fear and rewarding good play, and give killers a better chance of confirming kills.
Happy to hear your arguments for and against, with your reasoning. I believe the devs have said they are not planning to change Self Care but I think it's worth looking at.
Comments
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I agree, SC is way to strong. If it had at least SOME meaning full downside, it would be fine. The extended healing time is, for the team as a whole, a net wash as far as actual time wasted is concerned. Instead of two people spending X time to heal, it's one person spending 2X time to heal. It is LITERALLY not costing the team any time plus now you don't have to find someone to heal you so the time wasted running around is mitigated.
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Honestly, I don't think it matters. I have zero issues finding another survivor to heal me. Even back when I did run self care, someone would usually show up mid heal to finish it off faster. Two survivors can heal each other in the same time as they could heal themselves with self care.
So if anything, it's base heal speed we're talking about. I could go either way on increasing that.9 -
After the emblem system update i look for teammates to heal me. I do still run selfcare but rarely use it. If selfcare goes away or receives a major nerf bond or empathy maybe become meta. If people can see teammates more this may lead to more gen rushing and even shorter games.
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I find that finding other people to heal me can be hard or very time consuming on certain maps which is one of the reasons I think Self Care is so valuable. Especially if there is only one other survivor left or on big maps with lots of cover like Swamp.
I'd be fine with a longer healing duration for Self-Care or just in general to see how that would affect the game flow. When two people are healing you it's almost instant which can make SWF groups very strong if Killers aren't very good at chasing.
Interesting point about Bond/Empathy meta that fcc2014 raised. I played as Killer vs an SWF group running mostly Empathy/Bond and honestly it was one of the better games I'd had, because it slowed the game down as they kept meeting up to heal each other, and if I caught them doing it I could often get a down and a hit on the medic survivor.
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@Jigsawn said:
Benefits of Removing Self Care from the game (or nerfing it somewhat):
- Helping to extend game time for Killers in a number of ways (see below)
- Encouraging more use of medkits, meaning less toolboxes (i.e. less gen rushing/4 man toolbox teams)
- Promoting more teamwork and also team-based perks like Empathy, as Survivors would need each other to heal
- Diversifying Killer perks, as ones based on injuries and healing detection will be more viable
- Looting perks like Pharmacy will be more useful because medkits will be more valuable
- Not every player at low ranks will be playing Claudette just to get Self Care before anything else
Negatives to Removing/Nerfing Self Care
- Uncooperative teammates may not heal you
- Makes hook saves more difficult/time consuming as you are more likely to be injured or spend longer getting healed
- May be harsh to last remaining 1 or 2 survivors
I would remove the * Helping to extend the game time for Killers in a number of ways - from the benefit and add it to the cons. I don't have the exact metrics, but Self Care takes roughly 1 minute (I would love to have exact numbers but I could not find them) at Level 3. That is no medkits just pure self-care. That is one minute that at least 1 player is healing themselves in a corner not doing a generator, not running from you, just standing still. As a killer I could find the "healer" I can listen for whimpers I can see the blood trail.
So with the survivor healing the survivors are at 75% efficiency. 2-3 injured drops that down further.
Now a team heals decreases that healing time to 10-15 seconds. So the injured runs to the 2-3 people working on a generator and now they have more to work on that generator with since the person is healed. The time balance is not worth the removal of Self-Care.
While removal may increase the use of Medikits it does not change the overall way the game is played well enough. My suggestion would be to give every item a stack system. Brown 1, Yellow 2, Green 3, Purple 4 (this number could be discussed). The items are queued and those stacks are awarded after the trial they are collected in. Add-ons like instant heal or BNP use all the stacks of an Item. Once all stacks have used the items cannot and will not leave the trial even if someone else picks the item up. This should eliminate the stockpiling of Toolboxes, First Aid, etc. (Also All Add-ons are 1 stack)
This suggestion is much better for the health of the game, it reduces the players constantly bringing the same items. It overall helps the Quality of Life for the killer and reduces items players may not always use.
The other negative that you may not think about is that by removing/nerfing self-care it opens up another USEFUL perk slot for survivors. At least you know they will have SC and three perks. Without self-care it could be now Deliverance and DS so now as a killer they can get away twice. It makes it that much worse. At least now SC takes a useful perk slot.
I think there are plenty of other things in this game that need adjusted or perfected. Self-Care is not one of them.
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@Jigsawn said:
I find that finding other people to heal me can be hard or very time consuming on certain maps which is one of the reasons I think Self Care is so valuable. Especially if there is only one other survivor left or on big maps with lots of cover like Swamp.I'd be fine with a longer healing duration for Self-Care or just in general to see how that would affect the game flow. When two people are healing you it's almost instant which can make SWF groups very strong if Killers aren't very good at chasing.
Interesting point about Bond/Empathy meta that fcc2014 raised. I played as Killer vs an SWF group running mostly Empathy/Bond and honestly it was one of the better games I'd had, because it slowed the game down as they kept meeting up to heal each other, and if I caught them doing it I could often get a down and a hit on the medic survivor.
Just a follow up. I have run into a crew on PS4 in the red ranks all have the same name but different number. They run resilience, Dead Hard, No Mither and Empathy. They give me fits every time i play them. The ability to know teammates location at all times, no when to break hooks and get the boost from resilience. They are not toxic just highly skilled and coordinated.
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You should rephrase it in 'It's not healthy for the killers, remove it'
sadly for you, it won't get removed/nerfed, gl next time8 -
Buff Medkits! BUFF PHARMACY!
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Devs are scared of another review bomb. They will never remove SC and we will only get further trash killers
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WhateverIGuess said:
Soon running will become a crutch aswell, people are really starting to run out of things to complain about.
Now that you've said this, I'm anticipating the day someone complains about it LOL6 -
@WhateverIGuess said:
Soon running will become a crutch aswell, people are really starting to run out of things to complain about.Don´t forget to ask for your daily nurse nerf.
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Wait, the devs are no longer gonna change self care to having to self care in a single go, and stopping a self care will reset the timer? I loved that idea. It made Nurse's Calling a self care counter.ZombieGenesis said:Sadly the devs have buckled to survivor pressure and have dropped the idea to modify SC. Which is too bad because I think it needs to be reworked quite a bit. Right now it encourages reckless gameplay because there is little to no real consequences for it. Without it players would need to be much more careful about what they do and how they do it.
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The simple fact of the matter is that any Self Care nerf increases the gap between SWF on comms vs solo players.
They want it to go the other way.
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Well thank god, that you don't complain about the nurse.WhateverIGuess said:@Tsulan said:
@WhateverIGuess said:
Soon running will become a crutch aswell, people are really starting to run out of things to complain about.Don´t forget to ask for your daily nurse nerf.
Ever seen me complain about nurse? No. You didn't. I don't care about Nurse, as long as she doesn't have 3+ blinks. If you don't admit it's ridiculous, you're probably the most biased killer ever. (3+ blinks, with the fact that the Nurse knows what she's doing and isn't a baby).l
Case closed.2 -
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I stopped running self care for about 3 weeks now and started running bond just Incase they did nerf it or anything else. Bond is also helpful to find teammates and do gens for those co-op points. It’s also good if you want to lead the killer to your teammates
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@ZombieGenesis said:
Sadly the devs have buckled to survivor pressure and have dropped the idea to modify SC. Which is too bad because I think it needs to be reworked quite a bit. Right now it encourages reckless gameplay because there is little to no real consequences for it. Without it players would need to be much more careful about what they do and how they do it.Did the Devs say that they dropped the SC rework?
Where and when?0 -
Removing SC just to make games from 10-20 mins to 5 mins. Good idea.
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The self care nerf/rework is still planned , they just want to make sure it works for solo as well. I've always thought it was stupid to be able to sit there 2 feet or so from killer and heal run off and resume. The interrupt and it resets is fine and totally balanced and people will stop trying to taunt the killer or play so recklessly.
Perhaps they can make it so that if you're running Botany it keeps the ehal % done but has a decay timer starting the moment you stop. It'd work similar to gen regression and you'd perhaps have to hit the skill check during the next upkeep to save progress. If you fail it's like blowing the gen up, you lose some of the healing done.
It's like you reopened the wounds some so if you want to heal you'd better not be too close to the killer. It'd be a good way to shake the meta up some and help solo's a bit.
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Honestly, when I play as a survivor, I never use self care. I try and use the three main perks and then supplement the fourth with their personality. I mix and match a bit, but anyway, I only use self care on Claudette and find fun in playing characters without that ability. I would totally be okay with the nerf, or a tag making it attached to her, or faster on her, the current speed, and slower on everyone else.
People shouldn’t b reliant on that ability. It takes away a lot of exciting saves and wins.
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I think at this point cut the overall efficiency down to 20%, maybe 15% make it louder, make it so if you don't heal it to full within 5 seconds it decays at a rate of 5% per second and make it base for survivors. Oh and within a minute of getting hit, you heal slower. This will somewhat reward injuring multiple survivors and make mangled excellent as it takes forever to heal.
Not only will it be riskier to do (louder so it's easier to hear) it will take much more time to heal yourself so you have a choice. Do I look for a survivor to heal me and get it done fast but potentially get caught by the killer? Or do I go hide in a corner and heal myself but take a while and thus not on a gen. Could be a start but self care is stupid as it is and needs a nerf.1 -
Survivors shouldn´t be self sufficient. SC shouldn´t even exist in the first place.
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The real issue with SC is
a) it's limitless
b) it's self sufficient-Give it charges.(1 per tier, spend when the healing is finished using SC)
-make healing lose some progression if it is interrupted for any reason
-make it lose progression during sprinting
-make it slightly slower4 -
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@Vankruze said:
I've learned in this game as a survivor main you (while playing solo at least) simply can't rely on the other 3 survivors to do...well....ANYTHING to help you!! Low to Mid rank as I climbed the ranks I can't tell you how many times I was left for dead on my FIRST HOOK (yeah I am not even kidding) thank the devs at least for bringing that new self unhook perk I can promise you I'll be using it 100% because I am sick to death of being second phased and killed because survivors tend to be either completely oblivious or couldn't give a rats about a team mate needing help. Selfish and useless survivors are a very real thing for those who play solo (and I play solo 100% of the time mind you I am fairly new and lack DBD friends).I will assume at high rank it gets better and sometimes I do enjoy a team that will actually work together but I know in my heart when it comes down to a crucial moment I can't rely on anyone but myself. I think this might be part of why Decisive Strike and Dead Hard are so popular too because they are solo perks and yes second chance perks too but for a solo player I totally understand why and self-care for me I found super useful against freddy and often gets me out of a jam when there are no kits around or a jerk survivor wants to keep doing his/her gen instead of actually healing (yes this happens believe it or not).
So with all of that being said I completely disagree with nerf or removal of self-care because it hurts solo survivors in a big way!
Yesterday i had a match where i unhooked a survivor with We´ll make it and that guy started running and running, me following him, only to heal himself with SC.
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@Peanits said:
Honestly, I don't think it matters. I have zero issues finding another survivor to heal me. Even back when I did run self care, someone would usually show up mid heal to finish it off faster. Two survivors can heal each other in the same time as they could heal themselves with self care.So if anything, it's base heal speed we're talking about. I could go either way on increasing that.
Personally, I think people overplay the value of selfcare over a medkit. I've been burning items and offerings on meg so I can prestige her. EVERY game I enter, I have the ability to heal myself. And I only run self care about half the time. The only time I would say you're likely to care about how much more powerful self care over a medkit is when you as a killer are running franklin's demise.
As far as speed, I don't think it should ever drop below 1/3 speed. Half is still pretty long.
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@Chrona said:
@Peanits said:
Honestly, I don't think it matters. I have zero issues finding another survivor to heal me. Even back when I did run self care, someone would usually show up mid heal to finish it off faster. Two survivors can heal each other in the same time as they could heal themselves with self care.So if anything, it's base heal speed we're talking about. I could go either way on increasing that.
Personally, I think people overplay the value of selfcare over a medkit. I've been burning items and offerings on meg so I can prestige her. EVERY game I enter, I have the ability to heal myself. And I only run self care about half the time. The only time I would say you're likely to care about how much more powerful self care over a medkit is when you as a killer are running franklin's demise.
As far as speed, I don't think it should ever drop below 1/3 speed. Half is still pretty long.
Whenever I bring a medkit or anyone else does 1 and or more killer brings Franklins and or Sloppy Butcher.
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I'm not going to bother quoting anyone specifically, but just go over the common complaints:
"It's unlimited" Yeah...that's, you know, the point of having a perk that unlocks an ability normally granted by a limited use item. If it was limited, why would I run it over that item, especially when the item has more uses and functions? It's already half speed. If it was limited in use on top of that, it would be literally pointless. Look at saboteur, even when the sabotage action was insanely powerful, it was always unlimited. Even now, with sabotage being pretty weak, it is still unlimited. Reason? Because that's the entire point of having a perk that unlocks an action rather than the item. You're using a perk slot for an unlocked ability: it should be valuable. Otherwise, it's literally pointless.
I'm out of patience to type out the rest, but I'll just point out something other people have mentioned. Do you like playing with SWF full squads? Because damaging self care will only increase the number of SWF, because it will be effectively nerfing playing solo. As someone who plays both sides...leave self care alone, honestly
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I agree selfcare needs to be nerfed but it most certainly should not be removed. As i have posted in other threads regarding this matter i think selfcare would be good if it applied a no mither effect. You still limp, you drop no blood, you dont grunt in pain and you still go down in one hit. With that in mind you could buff the healing speed back to 12 seconds. Selfcare would still remain a useful perk until a team mate heals you but the nice thing about it for the killers is that it keeps the pressure. You are still injured with no easy way to heal. That makes the killer a much greater threat.
I also liked the devs idea aswell. Granted it was alot more simplistic but forcing a survivor to commit too the heal or lose all progress was not a bad idea.
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@ZombieGenesis said:
@Wolf74 said:
@ZombieGenesis said:
Sadly the devs have buckled to survivor pressure and have dropped the idea to modify SC. Which is too bad because I think it needs to be reworked quite a bit. Right now it encourages reckless gameplay because there is little to no real consequences for it. Without it players would need to be much more careful about what they do and how they do it.Did the Devs say that they dropped the SC rework?
Where and when?During maybe the last actual dev stream. They said they were "putting it on hold" to see how things settle with all the current changes. Since "soon" equals 2 years I don't even want to think what "on hold" means.
That would be the second time they announced a Self Care nerf and it never came.
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@powerbats said:
@Wolf74 said:
That would be the second time they announced a Self Care nerf and it never came.
It's almost as if we've heard all these types of complaints beforehand, oh wait we have about the exhaustion nerfs never coming.
Exhaustion is a rather "new" effect that got nerfed, but Self Care is in the game AND unbalanced forever and never get touched.
Devs even admitted to be afraid of "torches and pitchfolks" in case they dare to seriously balance SC.0 -
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@Wolf74 said:
Devs even admitted to be afraid of "torches and pitchfolks" in case they dare to seriously balance SC.
Oh and where did the decs say this, care to post video evidence. They already said they wanted it to b fixed and pulled it along with eh change to ds to get it right. The changes to exhaustion also got pulled until they got it to where they wanted.
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Note that in the latest dev Q&A they talked about healing and self care a bit. I quite like their ideas and think this should be the next step in balancing out Self Care, then more steps can be taken as necessary. You can see the vid on YouTube.
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They just need to add a team chat for both Solo Q and SWF to close the gap! Even DG has voice chat and with it, became a more balanced game. I just think that SC needs a steep regression penalty so if you SC in a unsafe spot... The killer will find you and you have to start all over again since your progress will regress to 0%.Might_Oakk said:The simple fact of the matter is that any Self Care nerf increases the gap between SWF on comms vs solo players.
They want it to go the other way.
I'm thinking that you should lose 4% or 5% every second when your not SC'ing. My opinion tho! 0 -
They should just give it a limitation, just like 1-2 full health states.
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I prefer using Self Care to heal myself. If I miss a skill check and get found I have only myself to blame. I'd rather point any survivors who come to me towards a generator because I'm not too keen on being punished for another player's mistakes. Though oddly enough no matter what patch I've always played the same and never really noticed a difference. My build has changed due to Calm Spirit now being something I always use but Self Care has always been that one thing I'm so glad to have, because I choose to hide and break line of sight as quickly as possible rather than run around the Killer for 3 gens. But I can do that, and have. Self healing is often done by me after I've been unhooked and the rescuer is sprinting away and being a distraction, or when I've successfully escaped and am able to heal, with the heal being my reward. The game has always felt fine for me. So I don't really see many balance issues but I am always happy to try and understand the reasoning. And if I was to suggest balancing to this perk...
1 charge/point regression every 1.5 seconds when cancelling the action.
And as others have mentioned. This is the singular most reliable tool for solo survivors. So I'd ask it doesn't be removed... Because solo survivors would suffer, Nurse's Calling would suffer.... I just don't think it'd be fun to have it removed.
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There are many ways of countering self-care:
Nurse's Calling,
Thanatophobia,
Sloppy Butcher,
Coulrophobia,
Dying LightPerks that indirectly counter self-care:
Monitor and Abuse (on specific killers),
Make Your Choice,
Stridor,
BBQ and Chili,
Devour Hope,
NOED4 -
@Peanits said:
Honestly, I don't think it matters. I have zero issues finding another survivor to heal me. Even back when I did run self care, someone would usually show up mid heal to finish it off faster. Two survivors can heal each other in the same time as they could heal themselves with self care.So if anything, it's base heal speed we're talking about. I could go either way on increasing that.
If it doesn't matter, you're proving the point of how it doesn't need to be touched then.
As it's not the core problem. It's the lilypad on the water that everyone likes to point out. Not the shark in the ocean, which is the length of gens to chases.
Self care doesn't need to be touched.
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JammyJewels said:
I prefer using Self Care to heal myself. If I miss a skill check and get found I have only myself to blame. I'd rather point any survivors who come to me towards a generator because I'm not too keen on being punished for another player's mistakes. Though oddly enough no matter what patch I've always played the same and never really noticed a difference. My build has changed due to Calm Spirit now being something I always use but Self Care has always been that one thing I'm so glad to have, because I choose to hide and break line of sight as quickly as possible rather than run around the Killer for 3 gens. But I can do that, and have. Self healing is often done by me after I've been unhooked and the rescuer is sprinting away and being a distraction, or when I've successfully escaped and am able to heal, with the heal being my reward. The game has always felt fine for me. So I don't really see many balance issues but I am always happy to try and understand the reasoning. And if I was to suggest balancing to this perk...
1 charge/point regression every 1.5 seconds when cancelling the action.
And as others have mentioned. This is the singular most reliable tool for solo survivors. So I'd ask it doesn't be removed... Because solo survivors would suffer, Nurse's Calling would suffer.... I just don't think it'd be fun to have it removed.
This is the only nerf I want to SC and all other healing actions but sadly they said they won't be adding a regression penalty to the normal healing action! 
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Oh look another day on the dbd forums with killer mains begging to nerf survivors even more.
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Survivors are fine, just git gud
You don't need all 4 kills to win
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My take on this:
dbydaylight.com/en/discussion/17033/self-care-healing-suggestion#latest
Self Care/Healing change suggestions
-A part of the unfinished healing progression will be lost whenever the process of healing is stopped (if 2 survivor heal 1 injured and one stops, no progress is lost) no matter if it is Self Care of healing from teammates
-Unfinished healing progression will decay while the survivor is sprinting
-Self Care will get charges (1 charge per tier of the perk), finishing healing with Self Care will consume a charge
-Self healing with a Medkit will not consume a charge1 -
@Peanits said:
Honestly, I don't think it matters. I have zero issues finding another survivor to heal me. Even back when I did run self care, someone would usually show up mid heal to finish it off faster. Two survivors can heal each other in the same time as they could heal themselves with self care.So if anything, it's base heal speed we're talking about. I could go either way on increasing that.
Its not just the speed thats the factor here, its Survivor grouping and efficentcy.
Self Care
-One Survivor not working on gens
-Can be done anywhere at any time
-Killer only finds 1 SurvivorTeam Heal
-Two or more Survivors not working on gens
-Need to spend time finding and travelling to another Survivor
-Killer can find 2 or more Survivors simultaneouslyIts a world of difference that SC makes.
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