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If we shouldn't nerf the META perks, why can't we buff other perks instead?
A common experience I've been having lately is trying to use new perks but always regretting the inherent weakness that comes with doing so.
I'll use a perk like Bond, so I can see where my teammates are. It's a great perk! But it means giving up Borrowed Time, which might get my teammates killed, or Decisive Strike which might get me killed, or Dead Hard which will considerably shorten my chases, or Unbreakable which can result in me getting slugged and my team losing the whole game.
These perks are very strong, and you see them used almost every single game. And it feels embarrassing trying to NOT use them and getting crushed as a result.
Which brings me to a question...
Why are we are so afraid of buffing low-tier perks?
Visionary has a 16 second cooldown... Why? Would this perk really be as good as BT, DS, DH, or UB if it didn't have a cooldown?
Wake Up... 15% faster gate unlocking speed. How about uh, 25%? Would it really be OP suddenly?
Better Together only activates your aura reading if you're doing a generator when someone gets downed, and even then for 10 seconds? Why?
Red Herring, yeah, okay, what? I should do a generator... then not do a generator and instead get into a locker on the off-chance the Killer stops what ever he is currently doing to go check the generator I stopped working on to go hide in a locker. Huh?
Off the Record- it's like Iron Will but worse in every way. Wonderful.
Deja Vu is only active for 60 seconds each time a generator gets done. I mean, honestly, if it were any longer, Killers wouldn't stand a chance, would they?
Why does No One Left Behind only activate after a gate has been opened? Why not just once all the gens are powered, like Adrenaline? Tell me that even if this perk got buffed to activate once gens are powered that you still wouldn't prefer Adrenaline?
Those are just some examples, but the point is that there is a HUGE difference in the power level of perks and it needs to be evened out somehow.
If we aren't gonna do anything about the META perks, we should at least buff other low-tier perks a little so people don't feel as inclined to avoid them.
As of right now, the opportunity cost of using a non-META perk is just too high.
Comments
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They are buffing both survivor and killer perks that are less used. They're just taking their time to adjust things. About Red Herring, I think you need strategy to use it. It's not simply go into a locker, but it can be good to earn some time from the killer by patrolling an empty area for you to do your objective somewhere. You just have to have a build for it, just as other perks. I'm not sure it would need a buff.
About Bond, I always use if the survivor I'm playing has it. I may not pick myself up from the ground, nor be able to farm a teammate being camped, but I can have information that may avoid slugging with a killer using Infectious, as example. I will know where not to run in chases, or where to go in need of help or to achieve the objectives faster, or when to leave an area if the chases person is coming. I gladly use it in exchange for any of these perks, because it allows me to adapt my game super fast and coordinate myself to maximum efficiency.
I get your point about meta, but they're working on the other perks so that you can get different gameplays, especially fun ones.
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The way I look at it is that the perks determine the difficulty level of the game. Meta perks provide super easy mode while the less stronger perks will give more of a challenge.
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I do appreciate their recent work on buffing perks, such as the upcoming Fixated buff. I applaud the devs for working on it and hope we see more changes soon.
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The buff for Fixated was honestly the most embarassing one.
They really needed 1,5 years to realize that it should also work when injured?
Even though that was the same problem with urban evasion?
Their changes are waaaaaay too slow and in most cases just pretty underwhelming in my opinion.
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Frankly I think all meta perks should be nerfed.
DS, Unbreakable, DH, Ruin, Pop, BBQ, etc.
All of them need to be gutted to be as amazing as Camarederie, Monstrous Shrine, No One Left Behind, This is not Happening, etc.
Then we'd have a really fun game.
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I think there is a solid middle ground area between "You can't hook me for 60 seconds" and "While on the verge of DYING, I'm slightly better at hitting skill checks!"
I personally enjoy the level of strength within perks like Quick and Quiet. It's on a short cooldown, but is a really helpful perk for chases or just getting around the map quicker without making noise. I also think perks like Any Means Necessary are interesting, although definitely not good enough to compete with the current META.
Overall, I just think there shouldn't be such a gap in strength to perks. I hope the Devs tone down the META perks and show some love to the lesser used ones.
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BHVR's game design sense is pretty embarassing to be honest. But I give them credit for creating a really fun genre.
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To be fair, fixated is significantly stronger than urban evasion.
I think a neat build is going to be fixated, lucky break, and iron will. Especially with say blendette you could break LOS with the first hit you take and then fixated away leaving no blood, sound, or scratch marks to follow for some high risk high reward stealth gameplay.
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They definetely created something very unique and i'm thankful for the experience i've had so far,but man do you get frustrated when you see how BHVR doesn't make this game as good as it deserves to be and instead just choose to do the bare minimum.
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"Significantly" is a very strong word for a perk that just let you see your scratchmarks and makes walking 20% faster compared to perks like Decisive Strike,Unbreakable,Borrowed Time,Dead Hard etc.
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You don’t need second chance perks if you don’t get into chases in the first place. Stealth has always been optimal in DBD.
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Urban evasion allows you to basically ignore PH trails and hag traps, and also works a whole lot better than fixated when there are no walls around. It is pretty hard to say which one is actually better
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I don't think they want to put the time into it. Like, this patch is having what, 4 really mediocre perks buffed. Why? They're just number changes, and even if it were a full perk rework, it's not that hard to change it.
They devs also seem to have a tendency to vastly overestimate how good a perk will be. Coup De Grace was nerfed before it was live, for no reason, Trail of Torment has a 90 second cooldown for a really meh affect, and plenty more.
It really sucks that they don't try to make other perks better. The meta for survivor has been to same for a very very long time: DS, Unbreakable, BT, Dead Hard
You've got your fun builds that work 5% of the time like head on, Q&Q, fixated, and ds, but those fizzle out real fast and we go back to the same stuff
Killer meta has changed a tiny bit, from proxy camp and 3 gen to apply pressure across the map threw Ruin/Undying, but that's being nerfed so it'll go back to pray you get value out of Corrupt, and then protect your 3 gen with pop once corrupt is out
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Stealth has never been optimal in DBD. Way back with infinite loops, vacuum pallets, and OP toolboxes, you had no reason to hide, and in the current META of gen regression, you're doomed to be killed eventually if you aren't constantly distracting the Killer and pressuring generators.
The only time you benefit from stealth is.
- You are sure the Killer is not doing ANYTHING else but looking for you
- You successfully remain undetected (Otherwise, you give the Killer a free hit)
- Even in this ideal scenario, you're not doing generators which means the Killer might as well be chasing you
The moment the Killer stops looking for you, sure, you can now do generators and you haven't been hooked, yay! But now a teammate who WAS doing generators is going to get interrupted, chased, and killed. You can't hide forever, especially with Whispers, BBQ, Thrilling Tremors, crows, and quite honestly, a little guesswork.
Stealth is bad, to be blunt. Teammates hiding at the edge of the map instead of doing generators while I get chased for 2 minutes is the number one reason I lose Survivor games.
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Fixated works at many more locations and is actually a speed boost, allowing you to do a stealthy ring around the Rosie without the killer ever noticing you where you probably would have bumped into them with urban.
It also pairs well with the best exhaustion perk in the game, sprint burst, and lets you hold it instead of having to constantly blow it to move around at a reasonable pace.
I doubt it will ever be meta but if you are good at looping it’s not like you need a million second chances anyways.
Stealth has been #1 since the dawn of DBD, where 80% of the time the killer at red ranks was Nurse and your only option was to hide or get dropped in like 15 seconds.
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No reason to hide? Red ranks back in the day was probably 80% nurse 15% Billy. That’s it. There was no looping involved because every session was Nurse, Nurse, Omegablink Nurse, 4-5 blink Nurse, and then an Instasaw Billy.
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I will admit that Nurse is an exception to stealth. Because of her high-threat chase ability and terrible movement speed, it's natural to exploit her unique weaknesses. For pretty much every other killer (and some of these points even apply to Nurse) though,
The problem with hiding is that it just doesn't work unless the Killer doesn't know what they're doing.
Even with no perks, the Killer can:
- Look for scratch marks in the distance
- Look for crows
- Listen for generators
- Just look around
You might crouch around the map, not leaving any scratch marks, sure, even though this is a big waste of time in most cases. You might also run calm spirit or crouch past crows, but now we're using a precious perk slot. Even then, doing generators is unavoidable, and if a generator gets worked on, and the Killer doesn't see scratch marks running away from it, they're gonna take a look around. And there's quite honestly a good chance you'll get found and the Killer will get a free hit.
Alternatively, you can sit on a generator until the Killer shows up, then sprint to the nearest safe loop. Now you have generator progress, an extra health state, and your team can now completely focus on objectives too because the Killer won't be looking for them.
Not to mention perks:
- Whispers will make sure the Killer never wastes time looking for someone that isn't around
- BBQ is map-wide aura reading.
- Discordance
- Tinkerer
- Survellience
- Thrilling Tremors
That's not all the tracking perks in the game even, but the truth is that stealth attempts are usually a waste in one way or another. Even when successful, there's no real payoff, and when the Killer finds you using common sense, you lose the benefit of being chased while healthy.
Anecdotes aren't usually worth much, but I feel the need to repeat that as Survivor, whenever I lose, it's because I get hooked and see 2-3 auras of crouching Survivors. In what situation do 3 people in 3 different parts of the map need to all be hiding? It's easy to inefficient with stealth. As Killer too, whenever I catch Survivors trying to hide, I know I'm going to an easy game off the start because they won't be doing generators.
But maybe your experiences are different and maybe you've concluded that by avoiding the Killer entirely you're able to get more generators done and escape more often without sacrificing your teammates. If that's the case, maybe I'm wrong.
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The only perk you need to be stealthy in DBD is spine chill. Everything else is gravy.
Sitting at a random hiding spot is not bad at all if you are running sprint burst as well, since there is no penalty if you are found.
Hiding at a generator is always better than being chased, it wastes just as much of the killers time and doesn’t use any pallets to boot.
Just because most survivors are terrible at being stealthy, trying to hide while injured without iron will and such, doesn’t mean it’s not the best strategy.
Plenty of killers are so oppressive in chase there isn’t much you can do if they are good, and the maps are littered with dead zones.
If you watch competitive DBD, the tournament teams always start the game off playing as stealthy as possible until the first person starts being chased.
Stealth is also a good way to avoid dying in solo Q. A ton of killers have the potential to kill you on your first down. All the second chance perks in the world won’t save you if your team is bad but simple perks like spine chill can.
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