Is the default attack cooldown too long?

danielmaster87
danielmaster87 Member Posts: 10,719
in Feedback and Suggestions

This is something I've been wondering all day. I guess the best way to address this is with a comparison between DBD and Friday the 13th. In Friday the 13th, you can practically stun lock the counselors after each hit. That's not what I want in this game, but it puts into perspective how much time killers spend catching up to survivors.

Chases in this game last a long time, especially for M1 killers against healthy survivors. You have to hit the survivor once, after they make a mistake, and then do it again. When you do manage to hit the survivor, they get a sprint burst which carries them across half the map, give or take a few meters. They can almost always reliably use the sprint burst to get to a strong loop. If they use it to run to a TL or another mindgameable loop, that's their bad and they're probably going down. But if they make it to a jungle gym, a cow tree, anything like that, they're gonna last a long time especially if they're playing it safe and not greedy.

The only perk in the game that helps with catching up to survivors is STBFL, which even then only works on non-obsessions lest you lose your stacks. It's one of my favorite killer perks because it helps me feel "fast" with any killer. You're rewarded for hitting survivors by getting a faster attack cooldown. It's only reliable on some killers though, because if you don't have a secondary damaging ability, you're gonna have to hit the obsession eventually and lose the attack cooldown you've been building up to the whole match. That's how I think the perk is flawed.

But here's the kicker about the fast attack cooldown STBFL gives you: Even with STBFL x8, it feels too slow. That is because the sprint burst is not at all affected by your quick attack cooldown. You catch up to the survivor slightly quicker, but they're going the exact same speed as before. It makes a seemingly strong perk almost useless. The only time you'll be able to capitalize on it is when there's lots of survivors in a single place, sandbagging each other and stuff.

In endgame scenarios, if you're chasing survivors anywhere near an open exit and you have to hit them more than once, you physically cannot get them. That is without taking body blocking or anything into account. That is why killers must force the rescuer into getting grabbed when they're having to face camp a survivor. If the survivor gets off and the rescuer is not injured or has gotten a sprint burst, it was all for naught, and you will kill neither of them that match.

A popular looping strategy involves the survivor mostly holding forward until the killer is close to them. Midwich is notorious for the widespread use of this strategy. This wastes entirely too much time on the killer's part. Combine this with the already absurdly long time it takes to catch up, and you're talking about a 1-2 minute chase easily. There is no coming back from something like that against an efficient survivor team. And it's not complicated to do: you hold forward as a survivor, loop when the killer gets close, sprint burst after getting injured, hold forward again, loop, and by that point it doesn't matter if the killer got you or not because he's lost the game.

I might consider decreasing the default attack cooldown. Huntress throws point-blank hatchets because it is like STBFL x8 if not better. Good Hags never chase. Spirits always hit, phase, then do a second hit. Nurses only ever attack out of blinks. Plagues infect someone to broken, then hit them. All of these things happen because they play around the annoyingly slow, momentum-halting attack cooldown.

Comments