Does Decisive Strike REALLY need a very hard skill check?
I just introduced the game to a friend the other day, and we’ve played about 10 matches, all of which my friend was tunneled out of the game every single time. And I don’t mean the kind of strategic tunneling. I mean the kind of tunneling where we have 5 gens left, the killer face camps the hook and completely ignores everyone else. I brought Borrowed Time, I tried body blocking, and by the 9th match, I even tried the annoying “clickly clicky look at me” flashlight strat, and nothing worked. (Mind you, we went against 2 Leatherfaces, a Hillbilly, 3 Sadakos, a Myers, 2 Wraiths and an Artist, all of which are a bit difficult to effectively body block with 1 teammate)
After the 4th match, I got him Laurie for DS, but he can’t hit the skill check to save his life. Hell, I have 2,000 hours in the game and I still miss the skill check a decent amount. Why do we have such a small skill check when DS is literally the only (self) anti tunnel perk? Shouldn’t it be a little easier to pull off, especially for newer players getting tunneled? Why not make the skill check success zone bigger like with madness skill checks or struggle skill checks? And the condition of deactivating if you miss it? That seems a bit unnecessary. The perk just feels purposefully designed to negatively affect newer players who get tunneled a lot. They find the one perk to help, only to have it waste a perk slot because they can’t pull it off.
Anyways, what’s all of your opinions on the DS skill check? And again, my suggestion is NOT to remove the skill check, just make it bigger to accommodate newer players / people who struggle hitting skill checks, and also to remove the condition that the perk deactivates if you miss it.
Comments
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“clickly clicky look at me” flashlight strat
Only low skill killers take that bait.
The chads just gonna stay there and LOL at you
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I know, I know, I don’t even like bringing items, let alone flashlights which are almost entirely useless (imo). I was just desperate. I had to run BT, Breakout, Dead Hard, DS and a purple flashlight with the purple lens addon and the battery. Still didn’t work xD
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A 60-second timer after being unhooked, difficult skill check, being picked up, and one-time use per match weren’t enough activation requirements - according to BHVR and killer mains. Enjoy reading an essay for your pitiful ‘anti-tunnel’ perk that is still complained about to this day. While the root issue persists.
So yes, at the very least they can remove the difficult skill check already.
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Can't wait to see the git goot messages and what ever else toxic to come. I personally don't think you need to change the skill check. It takes practice and if you haven't used it in a while you might get out of practice. At higher MMRs they assume you have it and just leave you slugged for the duration. This perk only really delays the tunnel not stop it. If they really wanted to do something about camping and tunneling they would have. My best suggestion is get him to not do anything until someone is in chase till he gets more comfortable with it. Dying at the start sucks but Kate is another good survivor for WoO for learning tiles for loops. I hope you two can get past this frustrating and toxic trash.
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Yes, it does need a very hard skillcheck.
The idea is that you're literally preventing the Killer from progressing his sole objective of killing you, after a chase, after 4 or 5 pallets, and after Dead Hard and another 50 second chance perks, plus bodyblocking, flashlight saves, pallet saves... It needs to be hard to pull off and easy to mess up.
Regardless of how some Survivors think the game should play out; the Killer is supposed to get a kill now and then.
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Tunnelling is a valid strategy / way of playing. Most perks require you to actually do something to get use out of them, so I don’t think you should be able to avoid being tunnelled by simply equipping DS. Skill checks are a mechanic in the game after all.
Everything in DBD is punishing to new players. Your friend just needs to practice hitting the skill check.
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Most perks requiring you to do something is patently false. Botany Knowledge, NOED, Deadlock, the list goes on. Aside from DS’s laundry list of activation needs and deactivation conditions.
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I’m indifferent honestly. I don’t have an issue with the skill check, but I would not mind if it was removed.
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Most perks have requirements for either one side or the other. I could give plenty of examples.
DS has a simple skill check requirement, for the massive upside of being able to break free from the killers grasp. It’s more than reasonable.
edit: to clarify, I’m referring to active perks, not passive perks.
Also, my exact quote: most perks require you to actually do something to get use out of them - an accurate statement.
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It is a bit more generous than when it first came out - but after all the nerfs to DS, the skill check is an antiquated mechanic. It's still considered a 'hard' check like ones for Overload, maybe make it more generous like for Autodidact.
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But you also have to realize the killer can completely deny this perk by not tunneling or by slugging. It's not a "f--- you killer" perk like you're making it out to be. This isn't old or slightly older DS. This is a "he's tunneling me out of the game" perk.
And let's be real here, if you're wasting 4-5 pallets, using dead hard, and other second chance perks as you're saying, your DS timer should have been over. Or as an efficient killer should do, you should break chase with the tunneled survivor and rotate after 15 seconds or so.
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fellow Anti-Tunneling Flashbang gamers where ya at?
But no really, I don't see a need for the skill check. Like I guess it could be argued that the Skill check is nice to have as a "you get a reward for succeeding at something", but it's really just a participation reward for drawing a square house on a piece of paper for an international art competition.
Instead of focusing so hard on trying to get him "anti-tunnel" button click perks. Teach them looping and map layout instead. At least that's what I did with any friend I had join the game, and they have had a much better time playing.
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Get rid of the skill checks. It only punishes new players (who are not going to have DH and DS at the same time since they're, well, new) and experienced players who do have anti-chase perks and know tiles aren't going to miss the check. The game being more new player friendly isn't going to hurt it.
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I support it dsync has made me miss ds sometimes
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it should be the same size as an autodidact skillcheck. it just seems silly to me.
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Everything in this game punishes new players, even skill checks on gens for example. Why should killers be punished for tunnelling new players, which is a valid action, when the new players can just learn to hit the skill checks, just as they must learn to loop, etc.
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Tunnelling is a valid action / strategy. Being able to deny this is very powerful, and as it stands, a simple skill check is a low requirement.
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Because tunnelling isn't fun and likely to get new players to leave while brand new killers versus brand new survivors is the only time DbD is killer sided.
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Tunneling is a tactic. If someone is the weak link; why should the Killer get punished for removing them in order to slow down gens in order to buy more time to kill?
All making DS easier to do does is buff a side that already has 5000 different ways to avoid being hooked.
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I get that, but all they need to do is hit a skill check. After a handful of matches the majority of people will be fine, and if they’re going to leave the game after a few matches because of bad luck with tunnelling then it’s probably not for them anyway.
I’ve honestly no issues with removing the skill check, but being objective, I just don’t see the “punishing new players” thing as a particularly good reason. Makes no difference to me either way though.
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Because Tunneling isn't just a "tactic" it is also an easy cheesy tactic. That is the part that players complain about and rightfully so.
Also, I love how eliminating a skill check is somehow "buffing a side" but allowing you to FREELY choose to go after a person as they are being unhooked somehow OK and balanced... Like honestly, I could care less whether the skillcheck stayed or not, but let's not pretend like the other side's "tactics" aren't BS either.
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I get your friend is new, but is it even a hard skillcheck? I can't actually recall the last time I missed ds, its honestly pretty easy to land, so maybe since imo its so easy, making it easier should not affect much, altho for the lack of effort on a players input maybe the stun time should be reduced, It would give too much value for very little effort.
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I would agree with you more if brand new survivors were actually against brand new killers. Since ranks were abolished, I don't think that can be guaranteed anymore.
What would help player retention even more, though, would be having brand new players only against other brand new players. Right now, it really sucks for both roles that people brand new to the role get thrown against people with a lot more experience in the game. New killers get humiliated and tbagged even worse than before when starting out by more experienced survivors and new survivors get tunneled out when they don't even have which button is sprint and which is crouch in muscle memory yet.
Until that gets sorted out I'm all for QoL improvements for new players that would have virtually nil impact on more experienced players. Imo, I think this would qualify.
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There is no reason for that other than new players are supposed to die quickly I quess and even get tunneled first 2 minutes in the match. Experienced players hit it almost always and ds abusers too. I tried to tunnel just see how good stragedy is as killer and I killed first person so fast probably less than minute and half. I felt bad for the claudette. She got under 1000 bp and I won that match easily but played normally after her death. What I did should not be possible thought she didn't had ds thought. I think ds skill check should be removed and it should be allowed to use 2 times if killer does not hook anyone else. Normally I very rarely tunnel unless I have rift challenge to kill obsession but even that is situational cause if there is 4-5 gens left no reason to tunnel. Now I even ran perk nemesis when I do have obsession killing or hooking challenges so I don't have to tunnel.
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They should either make it so you press e.g., E whilst being picked up to use DS or make the skill check really large so it's basically impossible to miss. The second option is my preferred choice just because it would be easier for new players to visually see how to use DS instead of a small E prompt that could be overlooked. (Edit: Although now that I've remembered the new wiggle system is a thing, maybe pressing a button is the best option just to remove some complexity).
There's no need for the requirement of actually hitting a "hard" DS skill check to be a thing.
The small skill check doesn't need to exist in the first place, it's outdated. So I don't think nerfing the duration of DS to compensate for its removal/increased size is necessary.
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Tell your friend to use this skill check simulator to get some practice : https://dbd.lucaservers.com/
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I say this. Keep the skill check. If they hit it the killer's stun timer increases by 1, 2, or 3 seconds depending on the perk tier. If they miss it, they still get the default 5 second stun.
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It’s not difficult with practice. Also DS isn’t meant to counter tunneling. It’s meant to be a disincentive, which it does just fine. There’s no reason to remove the skillcheck.
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It actually makes me drop chase on you. More than likely youll just follow me around trying to get me to chase you so that's a survivor off gens
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The ds skillcheck is already decently sized... if you want we could make it an overcharge sized skillcheck
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You obviously don't partake in the bourbon when playing, lol.
In all seriousness , even then I seldom miss it.
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For everyone saying there's no reason to remove the skill check, yes there is: it's called console.
For crying out loud, after all this time I still struggle to hit the skill check on PS4 to the point that running the perk is pointless, I miss the skill check 80% of the time.
On Switch, I can't hit the skill check at all. I can live with the fact that Overcharge will screw me every time, I can live with the fact that Yellow Glyphs will take many many tries, and I can live with the fact that I become a huge liability for my team against Merciless Storm. That's just Switch life. But I should be able to use my own damn survivor perk.
If DS really does need to take "skill" to use in this game, then BHVR needs to come up with something skill-based, not something that can be screwed over by input lag and frame drops. I've been playing this game for over 3 damn years, I paid for the Halloween chapter, I'd like to be able to ####ing use DS. There's no reason to screw console players more we already are. I've read enough on this forum to know console players specifically get tunneled because we're worse in chases due to controllers having less precision than M&KB.
It's also not very nice to prevent new players from using DS, either. They're going to go down easy, anyway. It's the super-skilled survivors who make killers' lives pain with DS, and they're the ones who aren't affected by this skill check.
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many killer mains are so selfish
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5s is already an insanely strong stun. Also DS does not need buffs.
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If you hit 4 or 5 pallets in that chase, you're not hitting DS. Not to mention that all of this can be avoided if the target you're going after is -not- the one that just got pulled off the hook.
why should the Killer get punished for removing them in order to slow down gens in order to buy more time to kill?
Because the killer is the one that decided to faceplant directly into the opponent's perk. The same way a killer gets punished for actively staring directly into a flashlight, or chasing under a pallet when the survivor drops it.
You have the option to counterplay it, and it's not hard, either. It's one of the most avoidable perks in the entire game.
Let's draw an analogy to the other side: If the survivors genrush the killer down and then NOED pops, should the survivors get punished for doing their objective?
Or would you say that the survivors
decided to faceplant directly into the opponent's perk
?
EDIT: To answer the topic at hand, the skill check is a remnant of DS's original form, which I believe could be used without requiring being hooked first. It needed more drawbacks back then, this was one of them. Now that DS has settled into its new role, it can definitely afford to be made unmissably easy. It should still stay as a skillcheck, just because it's a neatly tied up way to ensure that DS is used very shortly after being picked up, to save killers having to walk all the way up to the hook and then having the survivor jump off last second.
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Good for you I am assuming you are a brand new player who may still struggle with normal... oh wait you aren't lol get out of here. 0% interested in anything you have to say now on this. New players haven't had as much time to prefect it as older players have. I am against making it bigger but the fact remains that yes it is get good but your response does not help at all.
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Hmm fair enough, when you put it that way it seems more reasonable.
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But it will sadly. If you remove the skill checks which you say are not new players freindly the where is the possible failure. Not everything can be auto or button press to success. I mean with you reasoning let's remove skill checks with repairing gens, healing, pig boxes, etc.
The point of skill checks is to try to balance the the advantage survivors do have over the Killer. When I first played I was terrible at hitting skill checks because I was well NEW. But after time I got better and now those skill checks are easy to hit. We don't need to give a crutch to players because they are "new" they have to learn the game like we all did and gain skills over time.
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Flashlights can be easily baited and avoided/turned into a kill on the person with it instead. Pallet drops can be baited out to dodge the stun. The one and only way for the killer to avoid DS of their effort is to forfeit the down they earned for 60s or redo the entire chase after a 5s stun. Furthermore, tunneling is a strategy with specific situations where it is stupid to not tunnel.
NOED doesn’t punish doing the objective. It punishes not remembering (NOT not doing) the secondary objectives. Remember totem spawns and any totems you see along the way. Re-check and destroy NOED if it appears, or just leave. NOED is simple to play around and get rid of, and is not that problematic unless someone was already death hook.
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mhm! or my game would literally freeze as I get picked up and RESUME after the skill check flies by.
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Stop lowering the bar.
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I'm trying to learn how to play. I'm at Devotion 22, but the low fps and frame drops are still kicking my ass. I just don't understand, how many more hours do I need before I become skilled and can finally use DS?
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There is a limit to accommodations. It’s like removing the skillcheck system entirely because some people lag and cannot hit them well.
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If BHVR won't let me play the game on console to a reasonable degree, gatekeeping perks behind performance issues, then they need to refund everyone who bought the game on console and stop selling it there.
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Its a skillcheck you can learn to hit it. Honestly even if they hit the skillcheck it sounds like they would still be tunneled anyway after the killer identifies them as the weak link so having them change the skillcheck wouldn't help them in the long run if they still can't take chase
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Skill checks are very easy. Killer mains never fail one. Devs should not remove skill check but add them to hooking people
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Flashlights can be easily baited and avoided/turned into a kill on the person with it instead. Pallet drops can be baited out to dodge the stun. The one and only way for the killer to avoid DS of their effort is to forfeit the down they earned for 60s or redo the entire chase after a 5s stun. Furthermore, tunneling is a strategy with specific situations where it is stupid to not tunnel.
No, you can avoid DS by simply not chasing down a person who was unhooked within the last 60 seconds, unless you catch them disabling their own DS. You can also avoid DS by waiting out its remainder, which will not be 60 seconds unless the person literally got slapped down the moment they were pulled off the hook, in which case you have already been handed the entire game on a silver platter and that 5 second stun won't stop you.
Yes, Tunnelling is a strategy. So is running DS.
NOED doesn’t punish doing the objective. It punishes not remembering (NOT not doing) the secondary objectives. Remember totem spawns and any totems you see along the way. Re-check and destroy NOED if it appears, or just leave. NOED is simple to play around and get rid of, and is not that problematic unless someone was already death hook.
So NOED, which requires you to memorise all totem spawns and/or active totem locations while coordinating that with a team with which you cannot communicate, is 'simple to play around and get rid of', but it's hard for you to not go after a person who was just unhooked, or just refuse to hit spacebar once they're down?
There is a limit to accommodations.
Yes, there is. But this sure as hell ain't where it's at.
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And not tunneling, like I said, is a dumb decision in several scenarios. I think DS is fine as is. It does not need any more help. I agree DS in its current state is good and healthy design.
NOED doesn’t need team coordination, you can do it yourself. You are oversimplifying the argument. Yeah, you can just choose not to go after the person off hook. It’s also still a stupid decision in multiple scenarios to not chase that person. Totems spawn off a few rules for their possible locations. Check them while playing normally and going around the map, and check them later or just leave. NOED is not that strong despite its bad design (since it can activate without the killer doing anything).
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Killer Mains will be against every Survivor Buff. Even if it does not really affect them, because DS-Skill Checks (at least on PC) are rarely missed IMO. (But on the other hand, tunneling Killers are swinging when picking up a Survivor who might have DS...as if that will make them miss, lel).
Personally, I think the Skill Check can be removed. It is a relict from a time where DS did not have an activation requirement other than just being picked up. And with Ds being that strong back in the day, a Skill Check was justified. Nowadays the Killer can decide if they want to deal with DS or not, it has an activation requirement and gets deactivated by basically doing anything.
I would rather see a Buff in the Anti-Tunnel aspect, but we know that BHVR will not do that. So, yeah... Skill Check can go, it is outdated.
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I mean now that it's balanced, I'd be all for it to activate on every unhook
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