What would be your preferred way of buffing Dead Man's Switch?
Dead Man's Switch is, in my opinion, an incredibly fun perk with a great gimmick, but unfortunately held down by it's restrictions (only hook the obsession) and short time limit (45 seconds). I think we can all agree it could use a buff. What would you do to buff is properly?
And, developers, if you read this, please inform us if buffing Dead Man's Switch is on your priority list - we'd love to know!
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Turn it into a scourge hook and remove the obsession requirement.
Also change it from "Active for 45 seconds after the person is hooked, unblocks at the end of that time" to "Blocked for 30-45 seconds once triggered." Not sure where the value should lie to be balanced, but in the current state if you triggered the perk 44 seconds after the obsession was hooked, the gen only blocks for 1 second and that's just stupid. It should be a set block duration.
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That can be powerful when paired with Artist's hook perk. Kind of always force a 45sec all Gen block for every hook happens.
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I still find it to be a pretty damn decent suggestion, although the devs have never changed the category of a perk, so I'm worried it won't happen
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Not really. Most people gen tap or get off gens in case the hook is a Scourge hook, so they wouldn't trigger Dead Man's Switch unless they got back on after the hook and then let go again.
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I think letting go of a gen while Dead Man's Switch is active should always pause it for a set time, not just for however much time Dead Man's Switch has left.
More bold idea: Let blocked Generators be kickable and be allowed to regress. As far as Ruin and Repressed Alliance:
-Make Ruin function at half strength on blocked gens (50%/75%/100% regression instead of 100%/150%/200% regression)
-Make gens blocked by Repressed Alliance immune to progress regression of any kind. Also give Survivors the ability to manually unblock a gen blocked by Repressed Alliance so they can continue working on it without having to wait out the timer.
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Dead Man's Switch's effect is a fun gimmick that's not even all that bad, but yeah, as you rightly point it is basically made useless by its Obsession condition.
There are some killers that can in theory make good use of the perk. Take Freddy with Class Photo, who can potentially get multiple if not all survivors off their gens immediately after activating DMS, getting immense value out of it. Artist can also force multiple survivors off gens with crows at any distance. Doctor can be mentioned due to his static blast which at latest with range-increasing add-ons and perks could be used to trigger DMS on multiple gens as well. Killers with good map mobility (Blight, Billy, Nurse; Spirit, Legion, Wraith and Victor to a lesser extent) can try and run around the map triggering DMS on multiple gens manually forcing survivors off them.
But since the perk only activates if you hook the Obsession, it will at most activate three times per trial, and regularly it might not even do that since you won't always be hooking the Obsession three times. Sure there are perks that can cause other survivors to become the Obsession, but the ones on the survivor side are obviously not something we can take into account, and the two that exist on the killer side are terrible. Well, Nemesis isn't entirely terrible, but that's only strictly in combination with Play With Your Food. But not only would that already be three perks needed one of which does not do much of anything for you itself, but even then it's just too gimmicky, since you not only have to get Nemesis to activate, but then you also have to obviously try and get survivors off gens - survivors at that which at latest after the first DMS activation have ways to play around your attempts to force them off.
So, the Obsession condition should be removed. What would a good alternative be? I think the perk could even exist without a condition whatsoever: every time you hook a survivor, it activates. I would like to see how that version of the perk would affect games, I can see that it would be balanced since you still have to force survivors off gens to get value, and they can also try and stick to gens as much as possible to play around the perk (e. g. if you are Class Photo Freddy, they can simply commit to the gens despite not knowing which gen you are teleporting to - you can obviously only actually teleport to 1 gen, and if the survivor on that gen is healthy they are at least only giving up a health state for it). Furthermore, DMS has notable anti-synergistic relationships with some of the strongest other game delay perks, such as Weasel and Ruin, since you obviously cannot kick blocked gens and they also do not passively regress while blocked. However, if it should turn out that the perk is too oppressive in that form, they could make it so that it only activates if you hook a non-Obsession survivor, or reduce its timer to 30 seconds I guess.
I also like the suggestion by anarchy753 to make it a Scourge Hook perk, and I do agree with them that in that case the perk should probably only trigger once any survivor does let go off a gen, then blocking said gen for 30 seconds. Since scourged hooks are limited, it might already be balanced in that form. However, there could still be further means of balancing it, such as by making it so the perk is only active for 45-60 seconds after the hooking event, so only if survivors let go off gens within that timespan their gens would then become blocked for 30 seconds.
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Michi was showcasing an interesting build the other day with Dead Man’s Switch
- Dead Man’s Switch - after hooking obsession Blocks generators for 45 seconds if a survivor leaves a gen
- Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance - Makes the generator with the most progress explode and forces off the survivors on it momentarily. Because Dead Man’s Switch above goes into effect before the explosion this means that gen immediately becomes blocked for 45 seconds
- Furtive Chase (and/or Nemesis) - Allows the Obsession to switch places among survivors after rescues and/or stuns.
So basically the strategy is find the Obsession, down them, then repeat whenever the Obsession is rescued or a new Obsession is created. Michi is a Hag main and also uses Make Your Choice, so with Furtive Chase that means he hooks the Obsession, leaves, they get rescued and set off a trap, he teleports back and hits the Exposed rescuer who is now the Obsession, and repeat.
Of course that’s a specific particular build, interesting one though. Dead Man’s Switch on its own is obviously weaker.
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