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Decisive Strike isn't quite an "Anti-tunnel perk"
A lot of people, including myself and many other respectable members of the DBD community have described the current Decisive Strike as an "Anti-tunnel perk."
However, I would like to provide some examples, ones that I personally encounter very frequently as both Killer and Survivor as to why it's not exactly that.
Killer Example 1: "I don't even remember hooking you."
You find a survivor. You hit them. You down them. You hook them. You immediately leave the hook and chase another survivor. You hit them, down them, hook them. Then you find another survivor and hit them, but you have Pop Goes The Weasel so you go to kick a gen. Then a healthy survivor runs at you and hops on the generator. You pull them off, thinking to yourself, "Well, that was a costly mistake." Turns out, they have DS. And guess what? It's that very first guy you hooked.
Despite chasing, downing, and hooking another survivor, and hitting another, and kicking a generator, and despite the first guy you hooked having time to self-care for 32 seconds, you still stunned by DS. I don't think that this matches any reasonable person's definition of "tunneling."
The way this usually happens is the first guy you hooked stays on hook for 40-50 seconds or so while you go about your business, then when unhooked they still have 60 seconds of DS. In those last 10 seconds or so of DS, the survivor plays extremely risky, baiting the killer into wasting time trying to punish them.
Survivor Example 2: "Guess I'm not getting tunneled, then?"
You're on the hook. You get unhooked in front of the killer. Thankfully, you have borrowed time. However, the killer decides to chase you anyway. The hit from BT allows you to make 20 seconds of distance. Wait, that's already a third of your DS gone? Whatever, so we throw some pallets and the killer is forced to break one and we get some more distance. It's been about 40 seconds now, which isn't super unusual for a chase. You finally make a mistake, and get downed. You have 10 seconds of DS left... The killer waits just a moment, then picks you up. No DS. Because you didn't get tunneled, right?
Despite getting immediately chased off the unhook, and getting downed by the killer without any other actions taken, the perk deactivates. This is quite literally the definition of "tunneling." This is why many survivors choose to purposefully jump into a locker instead of chasing the killer around, especially on their death-hook.
Conclusion and Suggestions
Decisive Strike is a very strong perk, but it's not quite "Anti-tunnel." It can be used that way, but it can also be used very offensively, often punishing the killer for merely hooking a survivor at some point in the match, or failing to give any value to a skilled survivor who is good at looping.
The new DS changes, the ones that will make DS deactivate when repairing generators and such, will help alleviate the issue a little bit on the killer side of things, but I still think survivors have it unfair too.
My suggested change to DS is to have the perk deactivate if another survivor gets hooked, but to have the timer slow down drastically if the DS user is getting chased. The implications of this change are that, if you aren't strictly tunneling one survivor, the perk will never go off, however if you are tunneling a single survivor, they will likely have DS for any amount of time as you continue chasing them.
This would be a nerf to the perk overall, but given how strong and perhaps overused this perk is, making it more situational might be the right decision.
In any event though, my primary point here is that DS is not an anti-tunnel perk for either side. As a survivor you often need to plan to use it offensively against a killer that otherwise would not tunnel you, and as killer you have to play around every survivor you've hooked possibly being ready to stab you.
Comments
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Conceptually it is meant to be anti-tunnel perk. The examples you gave are examples of it not being used as such. The new changes to it will solidify it as being an anti-tunnel perk which is what it should be. It should not be granting you immunity to do hook trades without any consequences or sit on a gen for 60 seconds and hop into a locker the moment the killer shows up.
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Have you read OPs second example? The new changes dont do anything to make it an Anti-Tunnel Perk, if the Killer does not catch the Survivor in 60 seconds, DS is gone, despite the Survivor getting tunneled.
Let alone that against some Killers, DS does nothing. If I stun a Nurse, Spirit or Blight, they are on me right after the stun again. So DS is mildly annoying in this case, but not a protection from tunneling at all.
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The first example I gave demonstrates how the perk can be successfully used without being tunneled, and the second example demonstrates how the perk fails when being strictly tunneled.
I understand that, conceptually, it's meant to be anti-tunnel, but just because you got picked up 60 seconds after getting off the hook doesn't necessarily mean you're getting tunneled. And just because 61 seconds passed before you got picked up doesn't necessarily mean you're NOT getting tunneled.
I do like the new changes! I think they're healthy overall. I am concerned however if someone gets unhooked, decides to get healed, then begins healing a teammate (likely their savior) before the killer shows up and goes tunneling now without consequence because the perk expired. This would not be difficult with Nurse's Calling on Ghostface, for example.
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If you are able to heal a survivor, do a totem, do a generator, or progress the game in any way, you are not being tunneled.
In the example you give, it sounds like maybe the survivors should run and go hide and heal instead of standing near the hook. The reason survivors get away with so much ######### these days is because of BT combined with DS. If i have DS and BT, i can just hook dive, and unhook you, you now have BT, if i go down i have DS. The point is that these types of plays are unhealthy, survivors should not be throwing themselves at the killer and have it be effective. They are the ones being chased, not the aggressors.
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You're right. It's a second chance perk, and always was. It still is; a killer grasp escape is a second chance, but won't dissuade a killer from tunneling you. A true anti-tunnel perk would not proc just once and then go on vacation. It never was a full-fledged anti-tunnel perk, it's just a watered-down second chance that just so happens to require you to be tunneled. Believe me, If I'm going to tunnel a guy, one measly 5 second stun is a fart in the hurricane.
I think that, better than making a new anti-tunnel perk, it should be part of the base kit. Dissuading from scummy play styles shouldn't be a necessity, but a given.
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As someone else on the forum once pointed out, you could still be "tunneling" someone by not tunneling them.
Sure, you see that person get saved from the hook, but you fear DS. So you hook other Survivors, kick gens, hit other Survivors, do everything you can in the time it takes for DS to wear off, but the moment it does and you hit them, it's because you were tunneling them all along.
I almost couldn't type that without smiling. Been working on my poker face, though. Gotta be top notch.
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*Survivor gets unhooked*
*killer immediately hooks a survivor he was carrying to a nearby hook*
*Killer now goes after the guy who just got unhooked moments before he hooked another survivor*
Guess that's not tunneling...
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On one hand, I agree that tunneling is unhealthy for the game in general, and something should be done to prevent it. On the other hand, I fear that taking away the Killer's ability to focus down a survivor to gain the pressure needed to stop the final generators from popping would be detrimental as well.
Perhaps they could instead of a punishment, add some benefit to hooking a different survivor each time. After hooking one survivor, hooking a new survivor grants you double bloodpoints and speeds up their entity hook progress by 10 seconds. Something like that maybe. Just a little incentive.
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Well yes, the way to play killer is to preferably get a survivor out of the game early. That being said, there is a difference between being economical and hard tunneling. If the latter is to be addressed in a perk, I would probably have it so that if you are chased for 50 seconds more than the survivor who has been chased the second most amount of time (EG, you are clearly being targeted), and you have been chased for at least 60 seconds (not relative), then the next time you are hooked, you will not go down a hook state and your hook progress is severely slowed down (EG, If you're on death hook and this perk is active, you won't die, you just pick up where you left off last time).
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Is it really tunneling if the Killer starts chasing you after they went out of their way to leave your hook, find another survivor, down them, and hook them?
I understand you are pointing out the situation in which, a split second after the unhook, another survivor got hooked and the Killer comes straight for you. From the survivor's perspective it might feel like tunneling, but from the Killer's perspective, they purposefully went out of their way to find a new survivor.
If Decisive deactivated on hooks, sure it would be more situational, but given perks like Deliverance, Second-Wind, Autodidact, exist (Which can either be very strong or completely useless) I don't think it would be a bad change necessarily. It would just mean DS only activates if you're getting hooked twice in a row, which to many people is what they define as tunneling.
I personally don't consider it tunneling if the Killer hooks me after having chased and downed other survivors.
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Example 1 will be rectified by the DS changes coming on Tuesday. Jumping on a gen will deactivate DS so you'll be safe to grab people off them.
Example 2 is merely the limitations of the perk. Would you suggest DS should be up indefinitely? Killer lost a lot of gen pressure chasing you for the full 60 duration of DS. You've done a good job in giving him the run around for that long.
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As I said, that doesn't mean it's not an Anti-Tunnel perk, that's simply a limitation of the perk.
The perk not being foolproof and uncounterable doesn't mean it's not still doing it's job.
In that example, you gave your team mates 60 seconds to do gens.
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I personally wouldn't mind DS pausing the timer if the Survivor is in chase. After the updates that prevent abuse come through, of course. With DS no longer allowing flagrant abuse, extending the timer on it in chase really isn't that bad of a thing. It would definitely punish tunneling, while giving the survivor a larger window of safety if things are going badly for them.
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Good points honestly. The new changes will mean that, even if you get hit by a 59 second DS, at least that survivor did nothing during that time. And you're right about DS needing an eventual limitation.
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They would have to significant reduce the duration of DS if it could pause via any mechanism.
The survivor would be untouchable, invincible, if all they need to do is run around in front of the killer.
Does that not seem broken to you? Run around IN FRONT of the killer to become INVINCIBLE?
Another suggestion I've seen is have the DS timer pause when in the dying state... but again, downing a survivor makes them untouchable then, and if they have Unbreakable too, they're guaranteed to get themselves up, and the killer can't do anything about it.
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So, the Survivor would not be healing. Would not be working gens. Would not be cleansing totems. Would not be unhooking. Could still be slugged. The only thing they'd be doing is wasting their own time to increase the timer on DS while accomplishing nothing. They would not be advancing the objective or helping their team in any way, and instead throw out their worth just to increase a timer.
What do you realistically think they are going to do that is so troublesome?
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You've never faced the bully squad have you?
All survivors circle you at minimum safe distance, doing gens and such right in your face, body blocking if you try to do anything. Making those survivors more invincible, knowing that even IF you do down them, you can't pick them up, is a terrible idea.
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Hand down you explain how bad DS is designed. I was tried to explain but failed.
The invisible doing Gen was stupid. But new DS is not really help anti tunnel. Its either you able to make 60sec chase then have DS deactivated, or 5sec stun does nothing to Nurse, Spirit.
On the other hands, if DS timer is lower but paused if Killer chasing you. Survivors would exploit that they just can run around Killer, body block Killer and force Killer to down them, because they have unlimited DS.
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I have faced a bully squad, yes.
I've also beaten them. Guess you haven't.
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