A cool idea about nerfing DS

Vert3x

Hi there,
I would like to share with your guys my idea on how Decisive Strike should be nerfed.

I'm assuming that, for the next mid chapter patch, the planned nerf for Decisive Strike is already scheduled and will be about the Broken status effect, which is pretty much the No Mither effect: you can't heal after escaping the killer's grasp.
I might be wrong about that actually, because I remember that as a final idea they were talking about applying the nerf where the killer gets stunned on place but the survivor remains on his shoulders and keeps on wiggling, and the other survivors can in case flashlight or pallet save.

Anyways, for the first designers idea the survivor could legit just run Iron Will, Dead Hard, Resilience and any perk that helps him when injured. Not saying that it would make it as powerful as it currently is, but still it would be inconsistent if the survivor starts playing stealthy.

For the second designers idea, that would just make it boring for the killer and, mostly, survivors would still abuse of it in swf teams, where they just bring in flashlights and keep each other updated on when they'll use ds in order for others to intervene and have a safe rescue.

So, my idea is quite simple but really cool in my opinion.
The perk should remain as is, but once you use your Decisive Strike you will be subtracted a hook phase.
This should award the killer of his Hooking bloodpoints (or maybe that should be a different score event in the Sacrifice category with the same amounts of bloodpoints, also for the Entity Summoning) and should also increase his Devout points, so everything should literally be like the survivor was regularly hooked.

So we come up to this point:
If the survivor uses it before being hooked at all:
- The next time the killer catches and hooks him, he'll be on the Struggle phase.
If the survivor uses it after his first hook:
- The next time the killer catches and hooks him, he'll be sacrificed.

So what if the survivor uses it after his second hook? Well, my idea is to allow the killer to Kill the survivor with his hands and to make that count as a sacrifice, but it would be fair too if the survivor was just not prompted to use his perk at all since he might have been too greedy with it (or he just had some bad luck and he was always picked too close to the hooks).

If this change was done, the survivor would still have his Killer Grasp Escape but that wouldn't be a free second chance.
This, though, would of course rob the killer of his chance to get a hook to bait as many survivors as possible away from their generators, but at the same time that would interestingly speed up the whole sacrifice process for the ds person; of course a BBQ & Chili token can also be earned, but that's not the main topic of course.

I'm a survivor main but I've long quit using Decisive Strike as I realized how stupid and unfair it is and, personally, rather than a "toxic" perk, I consider it a perk for bad survivors that can't give up on their lame second chance.

Let me know what you think about this idea, it most likely won't be even noticed by any dbd staff member as I understand that I'm not the only person posting around this forum and having ideas and opinions about things, but in case you really appreciated it, it would be nice if you supported it with Vote Up's and by sharing it to any friend that plays DbD!

Feel free to also share your ideas about this:
- Would DS remain overpowered?
- Would this make it underpowered?

CoolAKn

Decisive Strike is fine as it is. Your suggestion would quite frankly, make it completely useless. It the devs want to add a temporary Broken effect, that's fine, but I don't understand why people complain about it. It's a very useful perk, so people should be punished for using it? There are several killer perks that can counter DS.
Enduring - reduces the stun duration.
Iron Grasp - makes the skill check show up a bit later for non-obsessions.
Unnerving Presence - makes the success zone much smaller.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

Vert3x

@CoolAKn said:
Decisive Strike is fine as it is. Your suggestion would quite frankly, make it completely useless. It the devs want to add a temporary Broken effect, that's fine, but I don't understand why people complain about it. It's a very useful perk, so people should be punished for using it? There are several killer perks that can counter DS.
Enduring - reduces the stun duration.
Iron Grasp - makes the skill check show up a bit later for non-obsessions.
Unnerving Presence - makes the success zone much smaller.

If you play killer on rank 1 and you are versing a 4 man SWF squad that is already making it hard for you with a perfect usage of all the pallets and windows combined with a really quick genrush, trust me, Decisive Strike just makes no sense to be still like this and to have no downside.

I don't believe that the change that I thought about is making it useless, it just gets some balancement to it.
If a bad survivor uses Decisive Strike, the killer might just get rid of the problem quickly and catch up to them, but what if a good survivor uses it? There is still people that use it even though they know how to pallet loop a good killer, and if they start looping correctly immediately after they use DS the killer will be just robbed of the kill he deserved just because of 1 out of 4 perks of 1 out of 4 survivors.

About the killer perks countering DS, excluding the possibility of Unnerving Presence since it's just a gamble that they miss the skill check and it shouldn't be a case to be consider at all, I'm not gonna lie, Enduring helps you a lot with it, but if you notice that you don't have any pallet or safe window near and you know that the killer has Enduring you still have one chance to save it for the next time, so you won't just waste a Hook phase; it often happens in this game that you should be really mindful about your opponent(s) perks, so it shouldn't be anything new. The obsession perks were always meant to give you good benefits with high risks or prices.
About Iron Grasp, that covers the case in which you're carrying a survivor for a long route and you're unsure whether they got Ds or not, but it really doesn't give you much help.

Chroma

I think DS is just fine as is tbh, it is annoying, but i believe if they change bigger more important elements of the game it won't be as broken. A direct nerf would just fix a small problem and give survivors more to whine about. DS is just a anti quality of life perk for the killer removing it wouldn't make it that much easier for killers we need something more substantial that makes it so the idea of DS in of itself isn't OP anymore.

Vert3x

@Mycroft said:

@Vert3x said:
Hi there,
I would like to share with your guys my idea on how Decisive Strike should be nerfed.

I'm assuming that, for the next mid chapter patch, the planned nerf for Decisive Strike is already scheduled and will be about the Broken status effect, which is pretty much the No Mither effect: you can't heal after escaping the killer's grasp.
I might be wrong about that actually, because I remember that as a final idea they were talking about applying the nerf where the killer gets stunned on place but the survivor remains on his shoulders and keeps on wiggling, and the other survivors can in case flashlight or pallet save.

Anyways, for the first designers idea the survivor could legit just run Iron Will, Dead Hard, Resilience and any perk that helps him when injured. Not saying that it would make it as powerful as it currently is, but still it would be inconsistent if the survivor starts playing stealthy.

For the second designers idea, that would just make it boring for the killer and, mostly, survivors would still abuse of it in swf teams, where they just bring in flashlights and keep each other updated on when they'll use ds in order for others to intervene and have a safe rescue.

So, my idea is quite simple but really cool in my opinion.
The perk should remain as is, but once you use your Decisive Strike you will be subtracted a hook phase.
This should award the killer of his Hooking bloodpoints (or maybe that should be a different score event in the Sacrifice category with the same amounts of bloodpoints, also for the Entity Summoning) and should also increase his Devout points, so everything should literally be like the survivor was regularly hooked.

So we come up to this point:
If the survivor uses it before being hooked at all:
- The next time the killer catches and hooks him, he'll be on the Struggle phase.
If the survivor uses it after his first hook:
- The next time the killer catches and hooks him, he'll be sacrificed.

So what if the survivor uses it after his second hook? Well, my idea is to allow the killer to Kill the survivor with his hands and to make that count as a sacrifice, but it would be fair too if the survivor was just not prompted to use his perk at all since he might have been too greedy with it (or he just had some bad luck and he was always picked too close to the hooks).

If this change was done, the survivor would still have his Killer Grasp Escape but that wouldn't be a free second chance.
This, though, would of course rob the killer of his chance to get a hook to bait as many survivors as possible away from their generators, but at the same time that would interestingly speed up the whole sacrifice process for the ds person; of course a BBQ & Chili token can also be earned, but that's not the main topic of course.

I'm a survivor main but I've long quit using Decisive Strike as I realized how stupid and unfair it is and, personally, rather than a "toxic" perk, I consider it a perk for bad survivors that can't give up on their lame second chance.

Let me know what you think about this idea, it most likely won't be even noticed by any dbd staff member as I understand that I'm not the only person posting around this forum and having ideas and opinions about things, but in case you really appreciated it, it would be nice if you supported it with Vote Up's and by sharing it to any friend that plays DbD!

Feel free to also share your ideas about this:
- Would DS remain overpowered?
- Would this make it underpowered?

More logical than the way it is now.

It should be removed altogether.

It's a personal perk of Laurie Strode on a first place, so at most it could be replaced and it makes no sense at this point (it's been nearly 2 years since this perk was released). The best thing is to just nerf it to make it balanced. What my idea would make of DS is just what it was supposed to be as an Obsession Perk: a kind of gamble, you risk to have no chance to use it, you risk to use it and to end up with disadvantage, but if you use it correctly and have some luck (which often happens, pallets don't really miss unless you go dying in a corner of the map) you can be given a big benefit.

Vert3x

@Chroma said:
I think DS is just fine as is tbh, it is annoying, but i believe if they change bigger more important elements of the game it won't be as broken.

Of course, genrush is currently what discourages the killer from making chases that last longer than 20 seconds (if you want to play safely and to take no bad risks). Still I believe that currently Decisive Strike just gives you a free escape that you really don't deserve for the price of a succeeded skill check (should it even count as a price) and of a perk slot (ok, the obsession is one but people that aren't have even more chances to get the killer unexpectedly which sometimes is worse).

Chroma

@Vert3x said:

@Chroma said:
I think DS is just fine as is tbh, it is annoying, but i believe if they change bigger more important elements of the game it won't be as broken.

Of course, genrush is currently what discourages the killer from making chases that last longer than 20 seconds (if you want to play safely and to take no bad risks). Still I believe that currently Decisive Strike just gives you a free escape that you really don't deserve for the price of a succeeded skill check (should it even count as a price) and of a perk slot (ok, the obsession is one but people that aren't have even more chances to get the killer unexpectedly which sometimes is worse).

i'm not saying its a fair perk man i'm on board its not a well made perk. (for the current state of the game) I just think a bigger change of something else that makes decisive strike not as good without having to touch decisive strike directly and making it a useless perk would be better. changing decisive strike would just be putting a small bandage on a large wound.

CoolAKn

Okay, but not everyone is Rank 1 going against 4 man SWF. I only play solo. I'm not great at juking. I am not the best at trying to pallet loop, but Decisive is my only get-out-of-jail free card that in a lot of cases, I don't even survive to the end, but it increases my chances of survival, which is my goal. As far as your suggestion to have DS remove a hook stage, it would just make the killer tunnel me knowing he only needs to hook me twice. Killers already counter DS by dropping me over and over again. Supposedly it's supposed to fill the meter with each drop, but I have yet to see that. Once the new chapter comes out, everyone will have access to Rancor, which makes DS useless, since the killer will just avoid me until the Exit Gates are powered, where they can just Mori me and I am denied an otherwise useful perk. I already get tunneled running No Mither on David, almost guaranteeing I get hooked every time, making No Mither an absolutely worthless perk. That kind of nerf completely negates the usefulness of DS, because the idea is to NOT get on the hook, but using it is the same as if you were hooked anyway? No, not worth it.

Especially with Rancor making DS worthless, DS does not need a nerf.

Vert3x

@Chroma said:

@Vert3x said:

@Chroma said:
I think DS is just fine as is tbh, it is annoying, but i believe if they change bigger more important elements of the game it won't be as broken.

Of course, genrush is currently what discourages the killer from making chases that last longer than 20 seconds (if you want to play safely and to take no bad risks). Still I believe that currently Decisive Strike just gives you a free escape that you really don't deserve for the price of a succeeded skill check (should it even count as a price) and of a perk slot (ok, the obsession is one but people that aren't have even more chances to get the killer unexpectedly which sometimes is worse).

i'm not saying its a fair perk man i'm on board its not a well made perk. (for the current state of the game) I just think a bigger change of something else that makes decisive strike not as good without having to touch decisive strike directly and making it a useless perk would be better. changing decisive strike would just be putting a small bandage on a large wound.

I understand your point and I agree, but my idea is just following a little better the nerfing schedule that the game designers have been following since 2.0.

I don't understand why they refuse to slow the generators down, that would be a key to a better gameplay, but they just keep on going all the way around that solution, dodging it, taking away some fun for the survivors too (say the change to the pickup animation, that was done on purpose to nerf flashlight saving, and thinking of
the general reason why they said they did it, it seems like they just listened to newbie killers getting "bullied" by deranked survivors).

@CoolAKn said:
Okay, but not everyone is Rank 1 going against 4 man SWF. I only play solo. I'm not great at juking. I am not the best at trying to pallet loop, but Decisive is my only get-out-of-jail free card that in a lot of cases, I don't even survive to the end, but it increases my chances of survival, which is my goal. As far as your suggestion to have DS remove a hook stage, it would just make the killer tunnel me knowing he only needs to hook me twice. Killers already counter DS by dropping me over and over again. Supposedly it's supposed to fill the meter with each drop, but I have yet to see that. Once the new chapter comes out, everyone will have access to Rancor, which makes DS useless, since the killer will just avoid me until the Exit Gates are powered, where they can just Mori me and I am denied an otherwise useful perk. I already get tunneled running No Mither on David, almost guaranteeing I get hooked every time, making No Mither an absolutely worthless perk. That kind of nerf completely negates the usefulness of DS, because the idea is to NOT get on the hook, but using it is the same as if you were hooked anyway? No, not worth it.

Especially with Rancor making DS worthless, DS does not need a nerf.

Not insulting, not judging you, but you have to commit to improving your skills in chases against the killer.
If pallet looping is really not for you, you could give a chance to playing stealth, and maybe you could start winning chases with it as the killer could lose you with a perk such as Urban Evasion, Iron Will, Dance with me.

Otherwise you could try out playing some killer and take advantage of that experience to see how survivors manage to earn safety with those same pallets that seem to be unhelpful to you.
It's not really good if you get carried by a perk anyways, you should no matter what never get used to having the same perks over and over. Solo Survivor is playable even without perks on rank 1, and you're not required to play uniquely stealthy (unless it's a Nurse, I'll take that one..), you can keep the killer and do everything right anyways.

Getting back on topic, I understand that when playing solo there is also many people messing up in your team and everything, and that doesn't always help you practicing to improve yourself, so yeah, my nerf idea would be a little brutal I'm assuming.

CoolAKn

I am only using Decisive as a crutch until I get much better at the game. My highest character is Prestige 0-15. I have 0 teachable perks, and hardly play killer. Once I am better at chases and evading the killer, I have no reason to use Decisive, there are far better perks to use than that. I only have DS with Laurie, who I am using until I get her to Level 10 and get the Adept Laurie achievement. After that, she probably won't get played by me ever again.

CoolAKn

***Comment added to above comment, can't delete?

MegMain98

@Vert3x said:

@Chroma said:

@Vert3x said:

@Chroma said:
I think DS is just fine as is tbh, it is annoying, but i believe if they change bigger more important elements of the game it won't be as broken.

Of course, genrush is currently what discourages the killer from making chases that last longer than 20 seconds (if you want to play safely and to take no bad risks). Still I believe that currently Decisive Strike just gives you a free escape that you really don't deserve for the price of a succeeded skill check (should it even count as a price) and of a perk slot (ok, the obsession is one but people that aren't have even more chances to get the killer unexpectedly which sometimes is worse).

i'm not saying its a fair perk man i'm on board its not a well made perk. (for the current state of the game) I just think a bigger change of something else that makes decisive strike not as good without having to touch decisive strike directly and making it a useless perk would be better. changing decisive strike would just be putting a small bandage on a large wound.

I understand your point and I agree, but my idea is just following a little better the nerfing schedule that the game designers have been following since 2.0.

I don't understand why they refuse to slow the generators down, that would be a key to a better gameplay, but they just keep on going all the way around that solution, dodging it, taking away some fun for the survivors too (say the change to the pickup animation, that was done on purpose to nerf flashlight saving, and thinking of
the general reason why they said they did it, it seems like they just listened to newbie killers getting "bullied" by deranked survivors).

@CoolAKn said:
Okay, but not everyone is Rank 1 going against 4 man SWF. I only play solo. I'm not great at juking. I am not the best at trying to pallet loop, but Decisive is my only get-out-of-jail free card that in a lot of cases, I don't even survive to the end, but it increases my chances of survival, which is my goal. As far as your suggestion to have DS remove a hook stage, it would just make the killer tunnel me knowing he only needs to hook me twice. Killers already counter DS by dropping me over and over again. Supposedly it's supposed to fill the meter with each drop, but I have yet to see that. Once the new chapter comes out, everyone will have access to Rancor, which makes DS useless, since the killer will just avoid me until the Exit Gates are powered, where they can just Mori me and I am denied an otherwise useful perk. I already get tunneled running No Mither on David, almost guaranteeing I get hooked every time, making No Mither an absolutely worthless perk. That kind of nerf completely negates the usefulness of DS, because the idea is to NOT get on the hook, but using it is the same as if you were hooked anyway? No, not worth it.

Especially with Rancor making DS worthless, DS does not need a nerf.

Not insulting, not judging you, but you have to commit to improving your skills in chases against the killer.
If pallet looping is really not for you, you could give a chance to playing stealth, and maybe you could start winning chases with it as the killer could lose you with a perk such as Urban Evasion, Iron Will, Dance with me.

Otherwise you could try out playing some killer and take advantage of that experience to see how survivors manage to earn safety with those same pallets that seem to be unhelpful to you.
It's not really good if you get carried by a perk anyways, you should no matter what never get used to having the same perks over and over. Solo Survivor is playable even without perks on rank 1, and you're not required to play uniquely stealthy (unless it's a Nurse, I'll take that one..), you can keep the killer and do everything right anyways.

Getting back on topic, I understand that when playing solo there is also many people messing up in your team and everything, and that doesn't always help you practicing to improve yourself, so yeah, my nerf idea would be a little brutal I'm assuming.

Yet when survivors are good at running around killers...killer main will conplain that survivors are too OP at 1V1 chasing. I mean I can lose a killer in a chase by breaking line of sight and sometimes it comes down to looping and map design on how easy it is too lose a killer. Example: it is much easier to lose a killer in the corn field or on a dark map (Red Forest) than it is to lose a killer on The Game or Asylum. DBD will never be able to please everybody when everybody screams for nerfs to one particular side.

MegMain98

@CoolAKn said:
Decisive Strike is fine as it is. Your suggestion would quite frankly, make it completely useless. It the devs want to add a temporary Broken effect, that's fine, but I don't understand why people complain about it. It's a very useful perk, so people should be punished for using it? There are several killer perks that can counter DS.
Enduring - reduces the stun duration.
Iron Grasp - makes the skill check show up a bit later for non-obsessions.
Unnerving Presence - makes the success zone much smaller.

Agreed. Why use DS if when you use it, it’ll make you go to struggle phase? You’ll most likely still be caught and hooked. It would be beneficial to run another perk instead. There are many ways to make Decisive not as useful. Not ever perk has or needs a direct counter to it. When I first started, DS was in the shrine and I bought it and used it as a main perk. I still use it but half the time I don’t need it or miss the skill check anyways. People will complain about every perk that is useful in the game (DS, SC, SB). Just because it is useful doesn’t mean it needs a nerf.

Master

@CoolAKn said:
Decisive Strike is fine as it is. Your suggestion would quite frankly, make it completely useless. It the devs want to add a temporary Broken effect, that's fine, but I don't understand why people complain about it. It's a very useful perk, so people should be punished for using it? There are several killer perks that can counter DS.
Enduring - reduces the stun duration.
Iron Grasp - makes the skill check show up a bit later for non-obsessions.
Unnerving Presence - makes the success zone much smaller.

You clearly dont know what "countering" means.
Btw, 3 perks to "counter" a single perk. Seems like a solid design

CoolAKn

@Master said:

@CoolAKn said:
Decisive Strike is fine as it is. Your suggestion would quite frankly, make it completely useless. It the devs want to add a temporary Broken effect, that's fine, but I don't understand why people complain about it. It's a very useful perk, so people should be punished for using it? There are several killer perks that can counter DS.
Enduring - reduces the stun duration.
Iron Grasp - makes the skill check show up a bit later for non-obsessions.
Unnerving Presence - makes the success zone much smaller.

You clearly dont know what "countering" means.
Btw, 3 perks to "counter" a single perk. Seems like a solid design

You like to say "git gud." Killers have tons of perks and add ons at their disposal to counter survivors that may have DS. Rancor will completely ignore DS for the obsession, boom, easy. Many times, survivors get downed near a hook, and not enough time for DS, boom, easy. If you are chasing one survivor for minutes at a time, you are allowing generators to get done, that's not on the survivor. Killer can use an ebony mori to counter the rest if they decide to save it, boom, easy. Adapt to your situation. Don't cry to nerf your opponents. It's just as stupid when survivors cry to nerf killer abilities.

For me, DS is only on Laurie that I have at Level 7. I use Decisive Strike so I can get better at dodging the killer, to learn and adapt. I don't always get away, and that's fine. Once I get Adept Laurie at Level 10, I will probably never use Laurie ever again, only leveling her up to get her teachable perks for my other characters. Even then, I would only consider using DS if I decide to use No Mither, because it is apparently an invitation for the killer to tunnel you.

DS is a noob level perk that is relatively easy to use in most circumstances, and can help them learn how to dodge killers more effectively. Decisive Strike should be a crutch to inexperienced players who can't evade the killer easily. There are several more useful perks out there than DS, I wouldn't even list it in my Top 10 survivor perks. Just because some sweaty survivors use it to grieve killers, why should the rest of us suffer when we aren't the toxic ones? Perhaps you are playing DBD far too competitively. ITS A GAME. Don't take it too seriously. You win some, you lose some. Deal with it. You expect survivors to take a loss, practice what you preach as a killer.