My complete feedback to the most recent Dev-Update (LONG post)

Aven_Fallen

Hello,

in this thread I want to give my feedback and Points to the June Dev-Update: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/kb/articles/337

This will be a long post. Just a few words in advance: I play DBD for 4 years, I did not witness the very first years of DBD, but I experienced a lot of Patches. Currently I have a bit over 7400 hours in the game, I play on a daily basis. I play both sides somewhat equally, there are times where I play a lot more Killer than Survivor and vice-versa.

I have prestiged every Character with all Perks, except for Sadako, Haddie and Dredge (but all of those are or will(tapplies to Dredge only) be P3-50 when the Update drops). I play most of the Killers, ranging from M1-Killers to Nurse, except for those I just dont like (e.g. Hag, Freddy).

And I was really looking forward to the Update after the Anniversary Stream. Mainly because it fixes two things for me - as a Survivor I highly dislike the stacking of Slowdown-Perks. It is boring and the easiest way to play Killer. Basegame changes would bring Killers to switch up their Perks (At least this is what I thought...), there are so many Perks which are decent and more fun to use. And as Killer, I dont run Slowdown-Perks (except Corrupt Intervention) myself, so Basegame-Improvements will help a lot.

Now to the Dev-Update itself:

Overhauled Progression System:

As I said, I have a lot of hours. And new players will get a lot of stuff which took me a lot of playtime to get. However, the Progression System is great, I love to see it. I always P3-50d and got all Perks on every Character after a Chapter dropped and it was a tedious grind. I am happy that this is gone and I am more than happy that newer players dont have to go through this.

Yes, Prestiging will still take BPs. But it will be far less than before. I also like that P4-6 grant the bloody Cosmetics and that P7-9 grant Charms. Those are not really a goal which players really need to get (unlike getting all Perks on a Character, which took far longer than prestiging), but I also did not expect to get a big reward for P3ing all my Characters before. Because in the end, many players did not bother about prestige, so it was clear that there wont be something very exclusive or super-cool. So the Icon is totally fine.

And basically everyone will reach the higher Prestige-Levels eventually, at least on their Mains.

So overall - great change!

Matchmaking Incentives:

This is a great idea to reduce Queue Times a bit. The biggest reason for long queue times is that during different times of the day more players play one role compared to the other role. E.g. in EU, the Queue Times for Killers are longer during the day, but instant during the evening. For Survivor it is the other way around. So giving an incentive will probably help a bit.

For me it is not really relevant, because I almost always exclusively play Killer when I play alone and play Survivor with a friend of mine. So it will not matter to me, but I will also profit from it because others might want to play Killer in the evening more or more Survivor during the day.

As I said - great change!

Gameplay Updates:

Those are the very interesting part and the one I was looking forward to the most.

Generator Speeds:

Personally, I think that this is a very boring change. Increasing the Gen-Times to 90 seconds is a huge Buff for Killers. However, it is a boring and most likely lazy one. I think it would have been more interesting to REDUCE the time spent pressing M1 on a Generator and add another Objective, like finding a Part which is needed to start the repair of a Gen. Lets say this takes an average of 30 seconds and then you can cut the repair-progress to 50-60 seconds. 50 seconds would be the "old" 80 seconds, but the Killer would have an easier time to find a Surivvor, since they are forced to move around and cannot go to the Gen which is 2 meters away from their spawn point.

However, IF you want to go for the easy route, it is absolutely mandatory to increase the time on the Hook as well. At the very least it should be around the same amount. As a counter-method to camping (which is another point of the Dev-Update) you could also increase the amount by a lot more, 90 seconds per Stage. This would make camping a lot weaker. Currently with 90 seconds and no increase in Hook Timers, camping just got buffed.

Kicking a Gen and removing 2,5% of progress immediatly is also nice. Those are a bit over 2 seconds of progress, which makes tapping a bit less prominent. This is a nice change.

General Killer Improvements:

This part is good and bad. First of all, I really like the reduction of Weapon Cooldown and the reduction of the Speedboost, because it counters Shift W a bit. So overall good change. However, I hope that in the long term, BHVR looks into Killers who basically force the Shift W-playstyle. Players like Artist for example, there is not really anything that can be done except for Shift + W. And because of those Anti-Loop Killers it just became promiment and it works even better against Killers without Antiloop.

Furthermore aside from Anti-Loop Killers the strongest Killers should be looked at. Even less of distance against a Nurse or Alchemists Ring-Blight is not really good.

But overall, good change!

Same can be said about the faster Pallet-Break and Gen-Kick Speed. Both a bit faster is good as well, especially the Pallet-Breaks.

What I dislike however is the Bloodlust-Buff. In my opinion, if you reach Bloodlust 2, you already failed massively. Bloodlust is only really a thing at unsafe Tiles. At safe Tiles the Killer has to break the Pallet anyway, which removes Bloodlust. No Killer will Bloodlust a Jungle Gym or tries to Bloodlust Shack. However, on smaller Loops with weaker Pallets, it is actually quite skillful to try and outplay the other side. However, Bloodlust makes this not really possible.

I am totally fine with keeping Bloodlust 1. But Bloodlust 2 and 3 should be removed and while it probably does not happen often that you even reach Bloodlust 2, it should not be faster.

Camping & Tunneling

One of the topics I was most excited about. However, I got also disappointed the most. I run BT and DS, BT so that other Survivors can have a chance to escape and DS so that I increase my chances to escape. I dont go for risky Hook Rescues unless absolutely needed. And I dont run into the Killer to get my DS activated.

However, tunneling and camping was buffed and not nerfed. Part of it is in the Perk-Updates, which I will cover later. But camping already got buffed due to 90 seconds on a Generator (as written above).

The 5 seconds of "Basekit BT" dont really do anything. The amount of time is too short. And the change is pretty pointless, since you STILL need to run BT to give the Survivor a decent amount of Endurance.

"Second chance perks should be nice to have, not essential to ensuring enjoyable gameplay. " <--Sadly this is not really fulfilled with your take on camping and tunneling. You still need second chance-Perks. And you still need BT in particular.

Meta Perk Changes:

This is THE topic I was excited about the most. I really wanted to see what you will buff and nerf. However, again, I am disappointed. There are quite a bunch of changes which read like "changing just to change the meta". Only because a Perk was Meta it does not mean that it has to be nerfed or even gutted. And changing just for the sake of changing is also not really correct. Sometimes the problem also just got shifted, so instead of running Slowdown Perk A, you just run Slowdown Perk B instead.

But, I will now go over every Perk:

BBQ and Chili--> I am twisted on this one. On one side it feels like a change which was done to just remove BBQ from the Meta. On the other hand, the Bonus-BPs are not really needed that much anymore with the Grind-Rework. BBQ will still find use on high mobility Killers. But it wont be run on every Killer anymore if they cannot really use teh Aura Read (e.g. Killers like Trapper or Deathslinger will no longer use BBQ just for the sake of BPs).

As I said, twisted on that one. I think it would not have been a problem to keep the BP-Bonus, but maybe some players would still think they are forced to run BBQ.

Hex: Ruin:

This feels like one of the Perks which got gutted just to not have it in the Meta anymore. After Undying was nerfed, I think Ruin was fine. It was a strong Perk. And annoying, even more annoying than old Ruin, but it was still a Hex and should be powerful.

I completely agree with the Nerf of disabling it once one Survivor is dead. At this point, the Killer will have an easier time. It would also remove the awkward situation where you just cannot find Ruin because it is TOO hidden. A 3v1 with lets say 4 Gens is already hard enough, so getting rid of Ruin at this point is good.

However, I really dislike the decrease in Regression. It makes Ruin pointless to use, at best, you can have "old" Tier 1-Ruin. Which is not enough.

So personally, I think disabling Ruin once a Survivor is dead would have been an appropiate Nerf. But since the Regression also got nerfed, it looks like you wanted to gut Ruin to make sure nobody uses it anymore. And yet, Killers will just go to one of the (buffed) Slowdown-Perks.

Pop Goes the Weasel:

I think the Nerf is alright. Not really the most urgent Perk to Nerf, but alright. No real comments here.

Corrupt Intervention:

I think Corrupt Intervention is the one Slowdown-Perk which was totally fine for the game. It provides solid Slowdown on the cost of having only 3 Perks for the majority of the Match. So for my part, there was no changes needed.

But if you go with disabling Corrupt Intervention once the Killer gets a down, it should maybe have been increased to 3 minutes. This way Kilers who need to setup or who have a hard(er) time to down someone have more value from the Perk. A Trapper being able to set up 3 minutes instead of 2 would be really good.

Tinkerer:

Tinkerer only activating once per Gen is perfect.

Hex: No One Escapes Death:

Oh boy. I was excited to see NOED on the list of Perks getting changes. And yet the core problems of this Perk were not touched. The Perk STILL gives the Killer an undeserved Insta-Down and Movement Speed Increase. If you suck all game as Killer, you will get the same as a Killer who did a lot. And since MMR is based on Kills and Escapes, the "reward" in gaining or losing MMR might be the same. I had a Blight-game with 10 Hooks and a 2K. If I play Bubba and facecamp the first guy and get a second Kill with NOED, I got 2 Hooks and 2K. For MMR those are the same. And this is only because NOED is stupid strong in Endgame AND the counter is dumb.

But you are even celebrating the counter - Survivors have to cleanse useless Dull Totems to prevent it from activating. But if you do that, you might not even reach Endgame, so it is irrelevant if the Killer has NOED or not. It is even more difficult now with 90 seconds per Generator.

And the Nerf does not really help that much. You will still get hit by a Killer who got an undeserved Buff. And if the Totem is next to a Hooked Survivor, there is 0 chance in rescuing them.

NOED should lose the Hex-Status and be Token-based. The better the Killer did before Endgame the bigger the Buff they get after all Gens are done. This would be fair and it would not feel as bad to go down against a Killer who got a big buff because they played well before.

Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance:

I think this is a good change. There will still be decent Slowdown (a bit stronger even, because Gens have an extra 10 seconds), but it does not give information and more important, the Combo with Dead Mans Switch is gone. So overall, good change.

Dead Hard:

So basically Dead Hard for Distance is gone. And it is only used to tank a Hit now. I think it will still be used, but is a lot weaker. I see complaints about it, but probably only because it did not get nerfed into the ground. Overall, I think it is a positive change, because the most annoying part is gone.

However, for that one, I need to play against new DH a few times.

Deceisive Strike:

I was worried to see it on the list of Perks which will get changes. But I had the slight hope that the Anti-Tunnel Aspect will be buffed, but this did not happen. In fact, DS got nerfed into a state that it is not worth taking. And yet, it only shifted the second chance-Perk to another Perk (Off the Record).

First of all, disabling it in the Endgame is not really a good thing in my opinion. I think, if you need to rely on tunneling during Endgame to get that one Kill, you probably did a lot wrong before the Endgame already. So you are not really entitled to get that Kill. This also does apply to me, because once all Gens are done, I will tunnel and camp as well (nothing else to do).

However, I would be fine with this Change, IF and only IF the Anti-Tunnel Aspect of the Perk would have been buffed. Activating it twice, an even longer stun...Whatever. Making it stronger during the game and disabling it Endgame would be ok. But it instead got nerfed. 3 seconds is not enough to get any meaningful distance. 1,3 seconds of those are already used for the animation, so the distance gained is really small. And we already know this from a previous version which was 3 seconds AND a bugged version which had a shorter stun than the 5 seconds on some Killers.

And this for a Perk which has an activation requirement, a time limit and A LOT of actions which deactivate it. The DS-Nerf feels like one of those Nerfs which were only done to remove a Perk from the Meta. There were not many complaints about DS and the few complaints that came up were about Endgame. And if this is the case, it should have been buffed outside of the Endgame.

So at the very, very least the Stun-Time should be reverted to 5 seconds. Further Buffs for the Anti-Tunnel-Aspect would be great. Or just not touch the Perk at all, it was fine.

Borrowed Time:

This is really pointless. You added a "Basekit-BT", but it is so weak that you still need regular BT. What is even the point?

Iron Will:

This is another Perk which just got gutted to get it out of the Meta. And IMO Iron Will was the most fair Perk which was run frequently by Survivors. It is an all or nothing-Perk - if you can reduce grunts of pain by 100%, it is worth running. If you cannot do that, it is not worth running. With the change, Iron Will will not be used anymore. The Perk is just dead, gone.

The Nerf to disable it when Exhausted would have been enough and a fair Nerf. Because it would actually mean a trade-off. You want to use the strong Exhaustion Perks? Ok, then you wont have Iron Will all the time. You want to be stealthy? Then dont use Exhaustion-Perks.

I think this would have been enough as a Nerf. But the 75% Grunts of Pain Reduction on Tier 3 just killed the Perk. If you want to reduce the amount of reduction, do it gradually:

Once injured, 120 seconds of 100% reduction.

Afterwards, 60 seconds of 75% reduction.

Afterwards, 30 seconds of 50% reduction.

After that-->disabled.

Timer Reset when healed. This would encourage to heal but still give the benefit of 100% reduction.

Self-Care:

And the next Perk which just got destroyed to be out of the Meta. Self-Care was already in a rough spot. Not really a bad Perk, but also not really good. Solid, overall, when used correctly. But I dont really see Self-Care in my games, yet you claim: "we were surprised to find that its usage peaks in the highest skill matches.". And I have never heard players who claim to be at high MMR talking about Self-Care.

And yet, Circle of Healing, which is stronger, did not get nerfed (again). I am not saying that you should nerf Circle of Healing again, but it is strange to nerf the more balanced Self-Care.

But again - looks like you just wanted to remove a Perk from the Loadouts for the sake of removing it.

Spine Chill:

Another Perk which got only nerfed to be out of the Meta. Spine Chill is basically pointless now. I do not really consider it a strong Perk at all. I never used it, except when I was playing with the Vault-Build. But it has a big fanbase and it just got destroyed for them. Because seeing a Killer approaching without line of sight does not require Spine Chill.

Furthermore, it hinders people who are deaf or have problems with hearing:

https://twitter.com/Deafgirl_gaming/status/1539769851912273921

This should not be the case.

If you really want to nerf Spine Chill, you should just remove the Vaulting Speed. And this is the only Nerf needed, if any. Personally, I think the Perk was completely fine. Yes, as a Stealth Killer you had to look away. But this is easily done and will reward you with a hit, because players will rely on their Spine Cill.

Non Meta Perk Changes:

Another interesting section. I will try to cover those more quickly:

Overcharge:

Potentially a new Meta-Slowdown-Perk. As I said above, the Meta just shifted. It will still be Slowdown-Perks for Killer, just different ones. One of those being Overcharged.

A big problem I have with this Perk is that it is more effective against Solos compared to SWF. When I am in an SWF, I can tell my friend "Killer kicked the Gen in Shack with Overcharged"; and they will run towards it and stop the regression ASAP. As Solo, I have to hope that the other Survivors either know about this Gen being done or stumble across it. Otherwise it is down to 0 pretty quickly once reaching 200+-Regression.

Eruption:

It is fine IMO.

Knock Out:

For me, a Perk which is just annoying. And only encourages a bad playstyle (slugging the whole team). And again a Perk which affects Solos but not SWF. If you are Solo, you might not be found at all, as SWF, you just call out your position.

Does not need a Buff, needs a complete Rework to not hurt Solos way more than SWFs.

Coulrophobia:

This is a nice Buff. I will hate it, because I will struggle with those Skill Checks, but the idea is nice and I want to see how it is ingame.

Dark Devotion:

Good Buff. Not sure if it will be more common now, but removing the Basic Attack Requirement was the right decision.

Jolt:

Also, nice Buff. I would have been more happy to just lower the Cooldown (and not remove it entirely), but remove the Basic Attack-Requirement.

Lethal Pursuer:

One of my favorite Perks. Even better know, in combination with other Aura Readings the Perk does something after the start of the match. Great change!

Scourge Hook: Gift of Pain:

Good change once again.

Thanatophobia:

Not really a fan of this one. It is a very niche Perk which only really makes sense on Legion or Plague, aka those Killers were healing is either pointless or dangerous. Games against Legion are especially drawn out, with a buffed Thanatophobia they will take even longer.

Scourge Hook: Monstrous Shrine:

A bad sad that the Meme of Monstrous Shrine being the worst Perk is now dying, but I think the buff is good. Again, something I need to test, since I am not a fan of cutting down the Hook Stages, especially because Nurse, Hag and mobility Killers can camp from a distance. So, indifferent on that one (for now).

Calm Spirit:

A Calm Spirit-Buff is nice. However, I dont think that the action speed reduction is really neccessary. This makes the Perk worse than before IMO, since you know spend a longer time cleansing Hexes. Yes, silent. But longer.

Saboteur:

Eh, it is whatever. You want to use it on the Hook the Killer intends to use. And those are mostly Scourge Hooks, if the Killer has the possibility to get to one. Pointless Buff, but Saboteur has to be weak by default, since Hooking is such a basic mechanic.

Off the Record:

Ok, this is a big one. And once again a Perk which will just replace another Perk. I can see this Perk either replacing DS OR BT. BT because it helps the Survivor who uses it rather than relying that another Survivor has BT. Or DS because it takes its spot as the best (but still not good) Anti-Tunnel-Perk.

In general, buffing Off the Record is good. However, it will just swap places with one of the previous Meta-Perks and will be a staple for many Survivors. I would have rather kept DS as it was and buff Off the Record a bit less. Because now players will not see DS (or maybe BT) every game, but Off the Record every game.

Not really an improvement.

Lucky Break:

Not a fan of this Perk, in my opinion it is not really good. The Buff is nice, however, if I am not mistaken, you still lose seconds while getting healed. Which should change, the timer should stop.

However, I think the number of Lucky Breaks will go down with the Buff. Because it is pointless to bring Iron Will, why bring Lucky Break then? If you dont make Scratchmarks or dont leave Pools of Blood, you will still make injured Sounds, so you will be trackable pretty easy.

So yeah, a Perk-Buff which becomes irrelevant due to a Perk-Nerf of a different Perk.

Pharmacy:

IMO a bad change. Yes, you get more Medkits, but ONLY if you are injured. And it does not happen often that you get injured and not downed. And if someone else unhooks you, they will most likely heal you.

It would be better to just get a Medkitlike before. Maybe two per Trial instead of one, but the previous effect was better than the one from the Update.

Sole Survivor:

Pointless Buff. The Perk is still really bad, even if you slap old Left Behind on it.

Distortion:

This is a neat way to gain back Tokens. Good Buff!

Lightweight:

Also a neat Buff in my opinion, and IMO more worth using than Lucky Break.

Deja Vu:

Good Buff. However, I am never a big fan of Genspeed-Increase, but it is only 5% and Deja Vu was really weak before. But I see Killers complain about it, because it is an increase in Genspeeds.

No One Left Behind:

A decent Buff, but will not be used more. The Window of Usage is still too narrow.

Dark Sense:

IMO a nice Buff, which makes the Perk more specific and useful. I like it.

Tenacity:

Eh. You turned a Bug into a feature. It is alright I guess. But nothing special.

Hope:

Removing the Duration is a good way to buff Hope. It will still be overshadowed by Adrenaline, but I see it getting more use. Currently Hope mainly loses its time while on Hook or waiting next the Exit Gates.

Overzealous:

The Perk needed a Buff. However, it is still a Noob-Trap, not worth bringing, unless you can do a lot of Gens Solo.

We are gonna live forever:

It is OK... But nothing more. In my opinion, giving another Survivor Soul Guard will not really be that useful. In the end, it has a very niche use, because not only the Killer has to slug, but on top of it, they need to be nearby, otherwise the Endurance-Status does not matter.

I guess the Perk will be used a lot less now that it does not give any Bonus-BPs.

Conclusion:

I like everything not related to gameplay. When it comes to gameplay, I like the general Killer Buffs, EXCEPT for Bloodlust being buffed.

When it comes to Perks, I think some Perks got just nerfed for the sake of getting them out of the Meta. Especially when other Perks got buffed, which will just result in a Meta-Shift, while Survivors will still have to use Second Chance-Perks (but now Off the Record instead of DS) and Killers will use Slowdown-Perks (but now Overcharged instead of Ruin).

Biggest disappointment is that some Perks really just got nerfed for the sake of nerfing them. E.g. Self-Care, Iron Will, Ruin... Only because a Perk is Meta does not mean that it is bad for the game. Especially the Perk which got two Nerfs could have been fine with only one Nerf to keep them viable, but lower their strength.

(E.g. Iron Will only gets the part where Exhaustion disables it or Ruin only disables when a Survivor is dead, but does not have a nerfed Regression).

Overall, not really happy with the Update. And I think I will play a bit less DBD in the future, especially Survivor, because it seems like Camping has been buffed and not nerfed. Which is a No-No.

ad19970

So I can see why they aren't adding another objective. There are two big challenges I see with this. On the one hand, it's the huge amount of maps, and trying to figure out a way to fit in a second objective in all those maps would probably take tons of work. The second is finding another objective that does not favor swf compared to solos in any way. I have seen the idea where survivors have to look for geneator parts before they can start working on a gen, but with solo survivors, you'll just have people running for the same part, solo survivors will waste more time than swf survivors with that I fear.

I think having a second objective that does the same thing as increasing the gen times to 90 seconds would have been more preferably, but I also think 90 seconds shouldn't be too bad. And I can understand why they went with that approach seeing all the other changes they've been working on.

The other killer buffs are all great, I agree. I guess it's true that they should maybe take a look at some anti-loop killers. Nurse and Blight will obviously looking at, but the other two non S-tier killers that pop in my mind are Artist and Pyramid Head. Though that should only happen once we get to play with these changes. Even Artist does have the potential to be looped, albeit simply at loops that break line of sight. Killers that have very well balanced chase abilities are probably Demogorgon, Huntress and Dredge for example. They are strong, some more than others, but allow for enough counterplay as well. I know some don't like going against Nemesis, but his anti-loop I also think is very well designed.

The baseline buffs against camping and tunneling are very disappointing though, there is no way around it. I hope they increase the duration of the endurance and haste status effect to at least 10 seconds, but hopefully it's going to be 12 seconds. BT already does that in the current build, as it stands now, survivors will still be forced to run either BT or Off the Record.

Camping also needs to be nerfed real bad. I think hook phase duration being increased from 60 to 80 seconds would do the trick here. Perhaps even 90 seconds, though that might be a bit much I have to admit. Another important nerf to camping is the removal of hook grabs.

In general, I am quite happy with how many perk changes we are getting. BHVR obviously put a lot of work into this patch, and it's appreciated. Having the meta finally shaken up is a good thing. But I also am not that happy with some of the perk changes. The nerfs to DS, Self Care, Iron Will and Spine Chill are way overboard. I especially dislike the stun duration decrease on DS, that should NOT be a thing. The only nerf I would have given DS honestly is to have it deactivate when a survivor hops in a locker. I guess it decativating during end game would be fine if survivors had a proper baseline BT effect.

A few perk buffs could also be problematic. Off the Record will probably also need to deactivate after being healed fully, or it could be used to bodyblock too effectively. Thana buff is incredibly unnecessary, and Overcharge is buffed too much, especially since the skill check part of the perk hurts newer players more than experienced players. The max regression should probably be 300%, and the skillcheck should be swapped with something different. Or, instead of lowering the regression, the aura of a gen kicked with Overcharge could be shown, so it doesn't hurt solo survivors more than swf.

Sadly, Eruption has the same problem, Otz explained this in his video. Swf survivors can call out when they are about to go down, solo survivors can't. They should buff the regression to 12%, but keep the incapacitated status effect duration at 12/14/16 seconds.

If BHVR listens to community feedback, and makes some more changes, especially towards camping and tunneling, then this could be the best patch DBD has ever gotten. But at the moment, it's just halfway there.