The Dead Hard and Decisive changes made tunneling hard meta
First of all, I notice that tunneling is easiest most when I play Nurse and Legion this patch.
I hit a Survivor as soon as they're unhooked so they get deep wounded to take Dead Hard off the table and its pretty easy to chase the down. Decisive Strike is the basically the same amount of time as Blink/Frenzy fatigue even if in the rare case someone has it. With Nurse, I can down someone pick them up, eat Decisive, down them again and hook them in under 30 seconds.
Tunneling has always been effective, but I feel like there's really less to discourage it then ever. It turned from being high risk to slightly easier than chasing a healthy Survivor.
Honestly, if this is the direction the game is going. Survivors need a repair speed boost every time a teammate dies because early 3v1s are becoming more and more common. Something has to make tunneling out an early kill less optimal.
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There’s basically no reason not to tunnel now. I basically always hit the unhooked survivor since either I just tunnel them or they have to mend. It’s a win win
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Legion being easy to tunnel with? Now ive heard it all
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I always advocated for a catch up mechanic for the losing side, ie whenever the ratio between hooks and gen done is skewered to one side, like a speed boost to the killer or a repair boost or grund reduction to the survivors, but alas I always got shot down because people apparently don't like the feeling of "getting punished for playing good". I never understood this mindset, as a lot of games of DBD are nowadays decided in the first 2-3min. If the survivors make some big blunders the killer generates so much pressure that they can't possibly finish their gens, and the other way around, if the killer choses the wrong survivor to chase and gets looped for 80s and 3 gens pop in union, then the game is pretty much over, too.
So why is there so much resistance to a mechanic that just makes this totally one sided games more interesting instead of just a stomp fest for one side? Or do people love stomping so much?
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You were always screwed if a Nurse decided to tunnel what difference did the patch really make?
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Agreed but with the 3 seconds stun its much, much easier to keep track of a survivor now if a nurse wants to tunnel and that makes things a lot easier for her.
Its the difference between a chase taking 20-30 seconds or maybe even the survivor getting away if they also had IW and the chase taking 5 seconds.
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Frenzy Hits take away Dead Hard/Off the Record. Also, the Killer instinct tracking is great for finding the Survivors that you really want to chase. No reason to hook everyone when you can find the 1-2 Survivors you want dead there are no mechanics in the game Survivors can use to hide from Killer Instinct.
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Okay, here's the thing.
- Nurse has been a problem for a while now. She needs some tweaks, but honestly - a complete rework is the only way. She's a monster at higher MMRs, but struggles elsewhere.
- You're taking an important factor out of the equation here. You have a team, if you play survivor. If you're getting tunneled, they need to help distribute damage more easily. Bodyblocking, sabos, saves etc. The survivor role isn't just about individual performance, it's about team coordination. Yes, that's not always going to work in solo, but you can't balance the entire game around solo play.
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I don’t know. I would argue that it is a waste of time trying to take a hit for a teammate being tunneled because then who is working on gens? Distributing aggro sounds easier said than done. It has a lot of factors attached to it predominantly based around RNG. Who is the killer? What map is it and what type of tiles are there?
In this new meta resources will be limited considering the killer has more time to waste time to break a pallet.
I don’t think it’s good practice to take a hit without the guarantee that the attention will be switched. Especially if you cannot control the RNG and/or the teammate’s actions.
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Still, is not a free win for m1 killers, it is hard if the survivor does not rely on crutch perks to win. The patch did great nerfs and buffs, balanced the game for all and behavior this time did a very, very good job, altough killers still need QoL changes like their best purple addons becoming basekit and green too, but overall good patch.
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"Frenzy Hits take away Dead Hard/Off The Record"
All hits do that, since it puts you into the Deep Wound regardless. Want to track a certain survivor? Might I suggest Scourge Hook: Floods of Rage, it does what Legion does, but better.
Legion isnt come god tier tunneling machine, they are literally the exact same as any other killer, if not easier to face against since if they hit you in Feral Frenzy while tunneling, they still have to fatigue before hitting you, and any additional hits in Frenzy is just free distance.
If you want to look at a killer with huge tunneling potential, look at high mobility killers like Nurse or Blight, who have an easier follow-through hit, where in a lot of cases, the distance you make from getting hit (even with certain exhaustion perks) just isnt enough (even before the update).
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You're taking a bit of time of gens, which will allow two people to be working on gens shortly rather than 1. I've been watching quite a lot of high level survivor play recently, trying to improve - and bodyblocking is absolutely essential.
And, yes, there is a lot of RNG in this game. Too many matches are lost at the selection screen. But that cuts both ways - if I play Scratched Mirror Myers and get sent to Eyrie against a halfway decent team, I'm dead.
Remember, the goal of this patch was to raise kill rates. People will be escaping less. That's intentional.
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I think this would have been a great idea and it probably would have helped with the horrible tunneling/face camping mechanics in the game. Why tunnel a person out of the game just to make the other 3 survivors stronger. It's be better to spread the hooks out at that point, so everyone has 2 hooks, then kill them.
This is a brilliant idea. (Also, it will never be implemented, which is sad, because this idea along could fix this game).
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Sure legion can find them but he still has to down them as a 115% speed killer, and if a survivor can't loop that maybe they deserved to get tunneled because they are clearly a weak link but besides finding them other killers could do it better
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Lots of good players use BT/OTR to set up very niche (ie doorway/window) blocks that force a killer to swing, wait, or go around.
Most players aren't as efficient/coordinated, but I certainly notice the ones that are T_T
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Excuse me. LEAVE MY DH ALONE.
DH is still an amazing perks and I still use it constantly, actually feels rewarding and skillful to pull it off which is a good thing...
Every time I succeed at my DH I just go "yeeeeee, speedy af boi"
But no DH nerf didnt make tunneling, it just stopped bad players abusing a OP perk.
DS not so much either, killers just know survivors are throwing a strop over it a d not running it so easy tunnel...
While tunneling is an issue for a few reasons, mainly fun you should reward people for not tunneling a d punish those who do... it's a double incentive that way and just makes game more consistently fun
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I partially agree.
The only way for me to understand the DS change is because of OTR, they didn't want survivors to use OTR and DS together as that would make for a very very strong anti-tunnel but also would give Survivors a free 3rd and 4th healstate they could abuse and put a Styptic or MoM on top. DS was already changed to cancel because of Conspicuous actions so it wasn't the ah you can't touch me weapon that it used to be and that was fine. Still very popular but not longer abusable by survivors so i don't get why extra nerfs.
In the end OTR now deactivates with Conspicuous actions aswell and can't be used if you have to Mend so the extra nerfs to DS just seem poorly thought out. Maybe they were done just to keep the "Meta Change" label.
A DH change was absolutly needed but was the change they did the right one? DH was opressive in every scenario. E for Distance was the worst feeling for a killer. Knowing you've outplayed, out spaced a Survivor but the Miracle of E denying a killer of all the work is something absolutly demoralizing and worse is that you have to expect dissapointment everytime you wanted swing at an injured survivor.
Hacks for Auto DH were running rampant aswell which just inflated the whole scenario to an even higher height.
As good as no more E for Distance feels it heavily limits the useability DH now has.
I'd simply remove the invulnerability aspect of DH, so that if you hit someone at any point they go down, this avoids the moments where you hit them but DH saved them from the hit and gave them distance.
By removing the Invulnerability, aka the 3rd health state, you could still get a down even if a survivor used DH. If they screwed the spacing, they'd get hit and go down but good use of DH would still reward you with a longer chase.
This way you don't double punish killer, if they hit you go down but if they don't hit then survivors gets the distance they deserved, would it still suck for killers? Yes but only if they couldn't hit but it would be more punisheable to survivors who use DH as the 3th health state. Which in my eyes was the majority of Survivors because the majority of survivors don't use DH with a plan, they just panick and DH, which led to killers not hitting or hitting but not counting cause it had invulnerability.
Instead BHVR went for full 3rd health state and screw Distance.
We never tested "Old" DH vs killer buffs. We never tested No Invulnerability DH vs No killer Buff and we didn't test No Invulnerability DH vs Killer Buffs.
Who knows, maybe DH not giving a 3rd health state would still make the perk valuable for good survivor players who plan to use DH in a specific scenario and it wouldn't hurt killers who get No Hits when survivors just Panicked E when they screwed up.
Regarding Camping and Tunneling, it's just the way to play if you simply only care about wins. Pulling off 12 hook games is not easy or consistant. It's why TrU3Ta1ent of all people stopped striving for that.
You can't even pull off 12 hooks at low MMR because survivors give up easily, they'll DC or suicide early so imagine in higher MMR where people played in such a mechanical way that it would be impossible for most killers and most killer players to generate enough pressure to have time to get 12 hooks. Even if you get BP for the people that DC you're still missing BP for Hits and Chase length, you're still leaving pallets up to be used by someone else, you're hurting your Emblems and Progression.
The problem with killer buffs is that if you make killers feel nice to play as then you're also making them harder to play against, especially when they decide to get kills no matter how.
This is how Nurse is so problematic, she needs to be killswitched until she's revised. Buffing killers = buffs Nurse AND Nerfing survivors = Buffs killer = Buff Nurse. Nurse essentially got a double Buff.
I'm not a Nurse player, her constant gasping sounds annoy the hell out of me, but if i was one i'd be in DbD Heaven right now, i'd play every second i could cause right now she's possibly the strongest she has ever been or as close to the strongest she has been previously.
Regardless of what you do to killers, Camping and Tunneling will always exist and will always be the best option for Winning matches.
I strive to not tunnel or camp because i want to chase people, i want to create the scenario where i'm strong to chase anyone and everyone, i want to win and i want it to be my way, it's a me thing i get it and the game is not made for me and as such it's not always possible for me to win and to win in the way i wanna win but for me tunneling and camping is either a choice made by lack of valuable information, idk where the other survivors are and what they are doing cause i didn't bring info perks or i missed the info, or cause i desperatly need someone out of the game so i can have a chance at winning so i'll go for whoever i know is on death hook. Tunneling is NOT my default mode.
And the reason Tunneling and Camping becomes a Default mode for so manny players is because they don't want to deal with the struggle that is trying to play the game without tunneling or Camping. BHVR made an effort to make the game more enjoyable to play for killers and succeeded at it but the side effect of that is that there's more people playing killer who aren't that good at killer so they still need to Camp and Tunnel cause that's the easiest way to play. And most of those people were victims of Camping and Tunneling so they know the startegy works, so they will definetly employ it whenever possible. So in the end those who suffered from it will employ it cause they will realise they can't win without it.
Humans will always look for the easy method and the easiest thing for a killer is to tunnel and camp. Chasing is hard cause you need to understand Maps, tiles, chase Perks, etc. IT's the same thought process for Survivors who just pre-throw pallets and shift W to the next. They don't loop, they don't do interactive chases, they just want to get away and be as hard to hit as possible, so they put down the pallet, run to the next and so on. Killers either break the pallets which still wastes time or they go around which still wastes time.
Like i said, people will always do the easiest thing. Shift W and Camping/Tunneling.
Want another example? People hate skillchecks. It's why Old Ruin was so valuable and used, Most survivors would fail skillchecks thus their progess was getting reversed but in addition they were affecting the other survivors aswell, slowding them down because they screwed up. What did BHVR do? Remove the skillcheck part of Ruin and allowed any scrubb to do gens freely which was good for good survivors but was even better for bad survivors, now they don't have to worry about good skillchecks or missing skillchecks, the penalty is much much lower.
I will even concede to the counter argument of Console framerates being bad and affecting skillchecks which made Old Ruin very strong. I'll concede to Consoles getting shaffted, i am originally a PS4 player so i know that experience. BUT when there wasn't lag or framerate issues, mainly before Dedicated Servers, skillchecks weren't such an issue thus Old Ruin wasn't such a big deal to good players. PLUS Ruin is a Hex Totem, survivors spawn on them so much that it was almost miraculous that Ruin ever got so much value that it needed such a heavy rework.
It was reworked with the lowest skill level in mind, like so manny other changes...
To close off my argument, i think the Update did manny things right but as usual BHVR's lack of foresight and proper Testing made for some side effects that could easily be fixed before launch and should be fixed by the next update.
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Because winning the whole game only to lose because someone used a blue shell on you is not fun.
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I understand this, but I think its more like handing out red shells if you are on the last couple places.
Losing because the other team just got lucky a drew 3 blue shells right at the beginning and all you get is empty powerup blocks isn't that fun either.
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Absolutely - while I'm enjoying some aspects of the update, I've noticed way more camping and, to a greater extent, tunelling.
I think this is primarily because there's far less risk associated with eating a DS now, and obviously no more DH to help extend chases. Some killers will happily risk taking a DS because a) less players are bringing it since it was nerfed, and b) the 3-second stun is nothing major seeing as killers have greater power in chases now and generally more map/gen pressure.
Whilst I appreciate the incentive of base-kit borrowed, it's hardly achieved what was intended. I've noticed a lot of tunneling killers will now just breathe down the neck of the unhooked survivor for 5 seconds and then down them. I had this before against a really sweaty DSlinger: they camped a player to second stage, then followed right behind them and waited out the endurance just so they could use their ebony mori. 😠
The problem is, early game tunelling has always been an optimal play as logically speaking it's easier as a 3v1 than a 4v1. Equally, with gen slow-down/prevention becoming the new killer meta; getting a survivor out of the game early combined with the new gen meta (Jolt, Overcharge, etc.) is basically a guaranteed win for killer.
Finally, killers are incentivized to tunnel in the EG because survivor's have no meta anti-tunnel perks active (DS and OTR), and they don't have to worry about BT as no one seems to bring it since the update. This is so ironic as they were nerfed so that the survivor's don't get a "free escape", but now all the killer has to do is camp/tunnel during the EG and they essentially get a "free kill". Makes no sense to me, personally.
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That's a long read, but read assured that at least one forum user read ot all, as I am myself prone to writing essays, rather then short forum entries.
You are right on many accounts and I don't feel right like answering it all, but one thing in particular often crossed my mind:
Why doesn't BHVR introduce more perk classes that either share a common cooldown or a common resource? It works for exhaustion perks, so why not introduce gen regression perks or second chance perks and tweak them in a way that you can't get a big double wombo combo anymore. This is just a hot take on my side, but I am sure that we could work something out.
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The devs have added incentives to camp/tunnel by removing the BP from BBQ, as an example. Before the killer had an incentive to go after every survivor ASAP to ensure they got those sweet BP so tunnelling from the start wasn't a good idea. Now - why not? No loss to the killer.
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This is one of the biggest problems for survivors. If someone gets hooked twice before 2 gens are done the game is probably over. This happens all the time. Then you just sit on gens and wait to die. There's no catchup mechanic for survivors.
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Hard meta, yet I rarely see it in my games and the streams I watch. Odd, huh?
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News flash people with bbq still camp tunnel. Camping and tunneling is just a great tactic to win and the devs are too lazy to figure out a fix.
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It is, but if you are going against a smart killer you will only be handicapping the team, because even if you were to give up your two hits and get downed. The killer will just use that as time wasted by not being on a gen and leave you on the ground.
On RNG, I know it cuts both ways. I am not trying to examine each RNG case, I am focusing on this one instance specifically where someone gets tunneled out of the game and there is not much the team can do. It is why people often use the phrase "Do the gens to give that teammate a chance to maybe getting out" Because at best the teammate will mostly just buy time, but if people are too busy trying to take hits, they are not only throwing for the teammate who might have had a chance, but now for somebody else and that killer gets another kill.
I don't think the goal of the patch was to "raise kill rates", maybe the goal of some of the changes was for that, but not all of it. Also, just because people escape less and the patch is mostly catering to killers doesn't mean that it is the change that was needed. I've always advocated for individual killer buffs/changes and changing map designs... because those have been two contributors of why many killer players complain. This just seemed lazy overall, regardless of it's goal.
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You lost me at nurse. Everything is pretty easy when playing as her.
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Killers tunneled through 8sec BT, then DH (yep, this perk is stupid but still), then DS.
Now Survivors have 15sec BT as their best tool to prevent tunneling. There is no reason that make Killers stop tunneling.
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Something needs to make spreading out hooks more optimal than tunneling.
Otherwise people will always tunnel, we need to buff spread pressure.
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It's so hard to balance a game that is meant to be unbalanced, so when these patches come out I see people saying it's either survivor sided or killer sided, but I really believe this last patch was more helpful for killer and less fortunate for survivors. Iron will and dead hard have no real use anymore, at least not in my opinion, and the bloodlust changes are awful as well. Tunneling is so frequent that I have to pack those really lame selfish builds! I just hope the game finds some equal ground for both sides that isn't going to completely take the fun out of either side, because right now playing as survivor is a chore.
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Regarding Camping and Tunneling, it's just the way to play if you simply only care about wins. Pulling off 12 hook games is not easy or consistant. It's why TrU3Ta1ent of all people stopped striving for that.
The reason why tru3ta1ent stop going for hooks is because every time he went for hooks, he lost. this classic psychology. B.F skinner, negative reinforcement, positive reinforcement.
if every time the killer tries to go arbitrary race for going 3 hook win condition but does not tunnel and camp a survivor to do so and loses. The killer is getting negative reinforcement to stop going for hooks because every time he tries, he loses.
When tru3ta1ent camp and tunnels, he wins games. This gives him positive reinforcement to keep tunneling and to keep camping because every time he does it, he wins. this is why everyone that players killer camps and tunnels because not playing this way makes you lose as killer.
what tru3 realized when playing survivor is that getting camped into 1 hook and getting tunnel out of the game is unfun for the survivor because it removes component of skill from the survivor because they only get 1 chase.
this is why survivor use dead hard, decisive strike and borrow time. it is to increase their fun factor because getting unhooked and immediantly getting downed without a chase from being out of position from unhook removes chase component from the game. OTR does what all 3 of these perk do. it grants 80 seconds of dead hard, BT and it resets position of the survivor from the hook(which is what decisive strike did at 5 seconds of stun).
since tru3 realized that this is unfun for survivor, he was trying figure out how to make killers not play this way because he realizes a problem with the killer which is that default win conditions for killer are too ineffective compare to survivor objective(which is doing all 5 generators and escaping through gate).
so he had numerous idea's to reward killer:
His first idea was to give survivors negative debuffs when a survivor is freshly hooked.
This is perk... the perk is called dying light. The problem? It only gives 3% action speed debuff per hook. that is not enough. you will still lose for try to go for 12 hooks with this perk. the perk also has really stupid negatives of giving botany knowledge for free on obsession and the obesssion is completely immune to action debuffs.
a problem with this idea is that its win-more perk because if you were buff dying light, you'd have this problem where the perk does too little too late because by the time you get a relevant amount of stacks, you'd already be at 1 generator where the perk has least power. If you buff to the point that you gain enough slowdown to win, you'd virtually make it impossible for survivor to win after x amount of hooks.
for example if it was 10% per hook(with no stupid negatives like botany for free and immunity on obsession), after 6 hooks, you might as well just surrender as survivor because next 6 hooks are basically given especially if there multiple generators.
the more contemporary approach these perks are thanotophobia and Scourage hook; Gift of pain. First I'm just going to say gift of pain is trash perk still so we get this out the way. the negative repair penalty doesn't work when injured and triggering the perk with 4 scourge hook makes the perk random rng.
now regarding thano, when you hook survivor, you gain some slowdown from thano because the person on the hook is injured. The main problem is that you never really big thresholds with the perk because the survivors can control the perk and if you give killer the ability to keep survivors injured, than survivors have to be very comfortable playing injured entire game which gives all killers exposed.
his second idea was base-kit ruin that cannot be cleansed.
problem with this idea is.... 3 generators.... with such strong regression perk as base-kit. you can just camp 3 gens and the close proximity on 3 generators means that survivor doesn't really get chases around the map. so the killer can effective hold the game hostage and you might as just suicide as survivor.
assuming regression is high enough and generators are close enough. you won't be able to progress the game.
his last idea is scourge hook: pain resonance on every hook base-kit.
I mean this is good idea except for the fact that dev will probably never give that as a perk to the killer. the perk does not stop tunneling though but it does de-incentive camping. so they might need to make decisive strike+off the record base-kit for survivor if this perk base-kit for killer.
all of his idea were within the mind to make survivor experience more fun for the survivor while making it more realistically for killer to win without needing to tunnel/camp/slug.
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I think if they wanna make Nurse a bit less oppressive to make the first blink a teleport, and the second one a super fast lunge sort of attack, very fast like the teleport but still respecting the collision.
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