Empirical Proof that MfT's 3% Haste is Overtuned

LobAutumny

So, I still see a pretty significant number of people say that MfT's speed boost isn't that good, usually because they process it as "it's only 3%." And that's fair. After all, 3% is a very small number, and it barely makes any visibly noticeable difference. So it makes perfect sense to have the gut reaction of "there's no way in hell that this speed boost actually means much of anything," especially since Dark Theory is, like, a D-tier perk because its speed boost is only 2%. However, consider the following:

Speed in Dead by Daylight is not just a matter of the raw speed of the character you are playing. The biggest thing about speed that matters is the speed difference between the survivor and the killer. More specifically, the number that matters is how much faster the killer is than the survivor. Interestingly, this means that all survivor speed changes are actually worth a little bit more than the exact same speed change on a killer. Allow me to explain.

A survivor normally moves at 4m/s, and most killers move at 4.6m/s, or 15% faster than the survivor. In other words, without factoring in things like bloodlust, a killer can only close 0.6 meters of distance between them and the survivor they're chasing every second.

An injured survivor running Made for This moves at 4.12m/s, and now you may be seeing why this is such a substantial boost even though it doesn't feel like it. The actual speed difference at play here is suddenly 0.48, which means that a 4.6m/s killer is now only 11.65% faster than the survivor. Now, let's do some more math to demonstrate just how devastating this can be.

So, I won't bore you with every step of the calculations, and these numbers are not exact because I don't know how to factor in acceleration/deceleration times, but truthfully, that part shouldn't matter much, if at all. But basically, a survivor without MfT will make 13.93 meters of distance away from the killer after getting hit (assuming a 4.6m/s killer with no STBFL/Rapid Brutality/etc.), and a surv with MfT will make 14.25m of distance.

Assuming both players are able to run in a straight line indefinitely, it will take 21.16 seconds for the killer to catch back up to the survivor without MfT, assuming chase never breaks and the killer can get bloodlust. To catch the survivor with MfT, however, it will take the same killer 25.37 seconds, which is a 20% increase.

If chase does break, however, and bloodlust never activates, then it takes 23.21 seconds to catch up to a surv without MfT and 29.69 seconds to catch a surv with it, for an increase of 28%.

And while sure, most maps that are not Midwich do not let you run in a straight line for that long and the killer can cut the surv off when the map eventually forces them to turn, shortening this time, we now need to talk about the problem of loops. As you may be aware, survivors' hitboxes are smaller than killers' hitboxes, which means that the path survivors take around a loop is actually shorter than the path killers take around the same loop. This also means that the speed boost from Made for This is even more pronounced at good loops, meaning that a good survivor running the perk can use it to extend chases by well over 20% after getting hit. I don't have any hard numbers on this because the difference changes depending on the size and shape of the loop in question, a lot of loops are very weird shapes, and I don't know if we even have the hitbox radii in the first place.

At any rate, it still gets worse, because even after all of that, after all of the extra time that Made for This can buy a survivor, they aren't exhausted. They can still pop Lithe, or Balanced Landing, or Dead Hard, or Smash Hit, and make that much more distance, just the same as a surv without Made for This can, which means it's kind of like being able to run two exhaustion perks and use both of them in a single chase.

"So what about Dark Theory," you may be asking (probably not, but I just wanna be thorough). "Why is Dark Theory so bad, if Made for This is so good with a 1% higher speed boost?" Well, there's two answers, one of which is much simpler than the other: The first is that 3% is 50% larger than 2%. The second is that Dark Theory's only active in a 24m radius centered on one of 5 randomly-selected locations, and it can also be disabled by the killer, and it also has a ton of setup time that could've just been used to hammer gens. Made for This has no area restriction, cannot be disabled by the killer without the use of specific perks/addons that inflict exhausted, and does not require any setup time.

TL;DR - 3% is more than 3%, actually, because the math behind chases is ######### up and weird, and this means MfT is equivalent in power to an exhaustion perk while also letting you use another exhaustion perk after getting lots of value out of it in a chase.

Foempticol

MFT sucks, especially if you're a bad looper

jesterkind

Not to sound too aggressive, but where exactly is the empirical proof in this post?

You've given us a bunch of numbers, sure, but you haven't actually moored them to an argument in any way. You've given us three elements to consider - Hold W straight line chases, turning around loops faster, and then the Exhaustion perk ""synergy""" - but haven't actually elaborated on any of them beyond hard numbers.

We can clearly see the Hold W example is hardly problematic, it's laughably less distance than pretty much any other Exhaustion perk would give and even adding up over time is barely worth the perk slot. So, this can't be our empirical proof that MFT is overtuned.

We can't really say either way regarding loops, as you yourself agree there are just far too many variables we don't have access to that would go into evaluating this either way. So, this can't be our empirical proof either.

Then we have the other Exhaustion perks here, and while we're on firmer ground that we're at least in the ballpark of an argument, I'd personally say this is deeply misleading. The two strongest Exhaustion perks cannot be used with MFT, there is a hard mechanical restriction on them requiring you to not run prior to using it and to be healthy when it activates respectively, and even the ones that can technically be used with it don't synergise all that well- specifically Lithe, which severely cuts down on MFT's actual use case of hitting windows faster within a loop. That leaves us with Balanced, which is map dependant and inconsistent even on its preferred maps, Dead Hard, which is the only actual good synergy with other Exhaustion perks there is, and Smash Hit, which... I don't think I have to go into deeper detail there, right? It's Smash Hit. This doesn't shake out all that well for MFT here, save for being a perk that resurrects Dead Hard to be actually somewhat useful again. Something, but a pretty weak argument for MFT itself being too strong specifically for its Haste, and definitely not empirical proof.

None of this is objective or empirical in any way. There's barely even an argument in here at all, just a bunch of numbers that aren't connected to any point being made.