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Is Shoulder the Burden really bad for Killers?
If a Survivor is swaping hook states, and the Killer is going for a 4K, the Killer will still need a total of 12 Hooks, correct? (Assuming nobody is left on hook to go to the next stage)
In other words, it doesn't change how much hooking a Killer must do, right?
Comments
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It doesn’t change the max amount of hooks, no.
In theory it could cause for a single survivor to not die until their 6th hook, though. But that requires quite a lot of coordination.
12 -
technically if all survivors not on hook have 1 hook state and the person on hook has 2. swap the hook state allows the killer to proxy camp and re-hook the other person into death hook.
the perk only allows you to spread hook state for first hook stage. for second stage, killers can proxy camp and tunnel survivor.
1 -
It matters a little bit in some scenarios, because it can delay the fourth survivor dying slightly longer, which can give the team the extra efficiency they might need to close out the last gen's repair.
Generally speaking, though, it shouldn't affect the killer all that aggressively unless they're tunnelling, which is fine by me.
17 -
It doesn't add new hook states into the trial, just trades them around.
If you are one of the people who go for a 12 hook game, this perk is either a minor inconvenience or a straight-up benefit in some cases.
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This is a very powerful perk for survivor teams because it gives them more time to kick the first one out of the game. It is also useful in the sense that it makes a strong perk even stronger, as it is even stronger if you have Off-Record, DH, etc.
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It doesn't though, at least not if the killer has more awareness than a brick.
The perk announces itself when used, so the killer can just switch targets and get someone out of the game early.
It also just switches the "strategy" from tunneling to hard camping, since the survivor who just took the hook state is literally a free kill and hook. I honestly don't think it's suddenly "too hard" for killers to figure this out, since camping and tunneling are literally the go-to (only) strategies some people understand in any capacity.
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The thing tunneling wants to archive ins't getting less than 12 hooks (that's what camping is for), it's killing as soon as possible. Shoulder the burden shoves the time it takes to tunnel this person out to the back so it's making it harder and is therefore bad for me as a killer.
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But say I'm running the perk and I've been hooked once already and I use it on another Survivor who is on 1st hook. You're actually better off now, right? Because before I used the perk you had nobody on 2nd hook. Now I'm technically ready to go to my final hook, right?
3 -
Yeah sure absolutely, but it's just this specific case and a horrible use of this perk. Normally someone that doesn't have stages should have used it to be efficient, otherwise you just change my victim, although I have to say that's also nice to have. You could save the poor dwight with 300 hours if use it on him and the killer switches on you with 5k hours as excampel, so you as a team have a better chance by dictating who the killer has to tunnel xD
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I was so confused when it was used when I was Freddy last night. I swear I think I hooked David 4 times.
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Funny perk isn't it? At least it gives you the information who used it and then you know who to tunnel xD
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I haven't really seen many people use it since the update launched so take this with a grain of salt but in every match where it DID get use it accomplished literally nothing at best and actively put the survivor team in a worse situation at worst. Shoulder the Burden is all fun and games until you get downed thanks to the exposed and then congrats, your team now has to protect you because you're on death hook.
In a super hyper coordinated team that can all loop pretty well, yeah I could see it being a problem. But that is a super hyper specific use scenario that I honestly don't think those groups would go for as they would likely rather load their perk builds with perks that don't require Seal Team 6 level coms in order to successful pull off to its maximum effectiveness.
TLDR Has the POTENTIAL to be really bad for you as a killer, but 9 times out of 10 won't be.7 -
It really doesn’t take that much skill or coordination for SWFs to do this. If a survivor is hooked, then one of the survivors (that hasn’t been hooked yet) just uses their voice comms to tell everyone else in the SWF they are going for the unhook.
That’s it. It’s really simple with voice comms.
And I have seen a lot of survivors use this perk, and I have seen a lot of survivors purposely stacking or daisy chaining this perk.
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As @jesterkind said, it basically doesn't affect you at all unless you're hard tunneling someone, and their teammates just happen to have the perk equipped.
It is fine, overall. I wish it was a little bit better, but it isn't a problem for the game.
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The way I understand it, the truly game-breaking part is that SWFs can use it circularly.
For example, if the hook states are 2-0-0-0 someone can use it and it becomes 1-1-0-0. Then if the killer downs the person who used the burden, it becomes 1-2-0-0, but then someone else can use the perk again and it's 1-1-1-0. Effectively, this forces the killer to go through 1-1-1-1 stages and require 6 hooks before the first kill instead of 3, effectively game-breaking.
The game-breaking part is not that it reduces the total number of hooks to win (it doesn't) but it delays the fist kill, making the 4v1 longer, during which gens get progressed 30% faster than in 3v1.
Unfortunately while it's a very strong perk for SWFs, it won't improve anything for solos because it's tied to a perk and can be ruined so easily by your teammates stealing the unhook. If the killer tunnels, there are ALREADY game-breaking perks in the game, these are Decisive and OtR, which everyone regards as the two strongest perks in the game, and yet it didn't prevent tunneling at all because the majority of players don't use it in soloQ.
BHVR has to stop locking anti-tunnel mechanics behind perks because it's counterproductive for balance, it only make coordinated teams stronger while effectively doing nothing for the majority of the playerbase.
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Yeah, that's pretty much it. It's funny how people say the perk is like a 5th killer perk. It literally destroys tunneling, which people have been complaining about forever. If you're not smart enough or coordinated enough to use it, that's on you. The perk's design is fine. From the killer's POV it's a serious problem to contend with. Killers have an issue with not having enough time to do their objective, so they take shortcuts like tunneling. If they have to hook the same person 5 times, they will lose. It was hard enough to hook someone 3 times.
In no way is it a benefit to killer.
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That really makes it sound like the perk is doing exactly what it is intended to do.
If the killer is getting to 2-0-0-0 against a SWF this probably means the killer is tunneling / camping one survivor. Because if they leave the hook they should have a much more diversified hook spread, like 2-1-1-0. Now StB could still be useful there if the 0 hook has it, but you aren't going to get a circular unhook situation without either a very weird game or a tunneling killer.
5 -
it doesn't change amount of hooking for the killer, but it changes the hooking order and prioritization, meaning it will hardcore force killers that are too weak to spread hooks into a lose-lose situation, especially if you take in mind the fact that this way, single survivor can proc Deliverance/Wicked 2+ times, single survivor that is not that good in chase can literally buy enormous amount of time for their team by staying on first hook twice after getting StB-ed by a survivor that is a good player and can easily play around additional hook state. So:
- it's a brutally good perk for soloQ that let's you basically carry your team by helping people that are getting tunneled tremendously (if they decide not to go next on hook);
- is a final piece of a complete nullifying of killer's hook pressure puzzle;
- if good surv has it, killer is led into a lose-lose situation, since they will either waste a lot of time chasing that survivor or chasing someone else + unhooked one for +1 hook state
this perk won't have high pickrate in pubs because average survivor player lacks macro knowledge and will thus fail to understand it's value (same as with Deli, Wicked, Reassurance etc.)
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I'm all for anti-tunneling, but this perk is not the way to go.
It gives the anti-tunneling ability to SWFs, instead of soloQ survivors.
SoloQ survivors will have to rush the unhook in order to not get it stolen by their teammates, unhooking too early and effectively making camping and tunneling worse.
Meanwhile, BHVR will think tunneling is not a problem anymore, because they have introduced a perk to fight it, even though it does not address the problem.
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But that's just generally true of pretty much any activation perk in DbD. Deliverance, Wicked. We're Gonna Live Forever, etc. all rely on rushing an action before you might wish to because otherwise a teammate, who doesn't know you have it, might make a completely logical play on their part.
I think there are a couple of ways BHVR could relatively easily address this, but they've chosen not to.
4 -
It actually affects even non-tunneling killers.
For example, if the killer gets hook states 1-1-1-0, then 2-1-1-0, then they are clearly not tunneling. Yet someone uses the burden and now it's 1-1-1-1. The killer played nice and yet the perk still works against them.
This perk is not particularly anti-tunnel, it basically affects every killer who doesn't go for 1-1-1-1.
Meanwhile, BHVR will think they addressed tunneling, even though this perk does nothing for solos.
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That won't have much of an effect, because if you aren't tunneling then you wouldn't chase the first survivor anyway, considering they just got unhooked. If you go for the unhooker, even if you don't get them instantly with the exposed downside, they are now on death hook and the situation doesn't change for the other two survivors.
It has no effect if you don't tunnel.
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It can be a benefit, if you happen to camp the survivor who gets resqued by the StB user.
A niche and rare situation, yes, but one that can happen.
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it has effects if you don't tunnel in case where you don't go to just fresh hook everyone over and over + having single survivor be able to Deli 2+ times and basically be used as hook meat to generate 0 hook pressure for killer is extremely useful, especially when person using StB is very good in chases
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The first survivor wasn't necessarily just unhooked, he might even be the one coming back to rescue the person who used the burden.
Full example, say you never tunnel and every time, you chase the unhooker:
Without shoulder the burden:
- 0-0-0-0
- 1-0-0-0
- 1-1-0-0
- 2-1-0-0 (survivor 1 rescued survivor 2)
- 2-1-1-0 (survivor 3 rescued survivor 1)
- 3-1-1-0 (survivor 1 rescued survivor 3)
→ 1 kill
With shoulder the burden:
- 0-0-0-0
- 1-0-0-0
- 1-1-0-0
- 2-1-0-0 (survivor 1 rescued survivor 2)
- 1-1-2-0 (survivor 3 rescued survivor 1 and used shoulder the burden)
- 2-1-2-0 (survivor 3 rescued survivor 2)
→ 0 kill
The killer is not tunneling in this example, chasing the unhooker every time, and yet the perk denied them a kill.
You can check that in both cases, the survivors are hooked and unhooked in the exact same order, the only difference is survivor 3 used shoulder the burden at step 5.
I think getting your first kill at 6 hooks would be considered by everyone to be fair, but the perk can deny it.
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I mean, in this magical hypothetical scenario you also have to have 4 survivors all running the perk for this to even be guaranteed (along with some pretty tight coordination). Otherwise random chance dictates that there's a much, much greater chance the one person who brought STB is already hooked in that case.
And if you have 4 copies of one perk on the survivor team and only one of those 4 even gets value, that sounds like a gigantic win for the killer already.
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If you're going out of your way to try and tunnel someone out at 5 gens, then sure, Shoulder the Burden is going to be punishing to play against, If you're a normal person that plays the game normally and not like your family is being held at gunpoint, then the perk will do almost nothing of note
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It's really only good against tunnelling killers to delay the first sacrifice, and even then only situationally. For one thing, the unhooked survivor has to already have been in struggle stage and the unhooking survivor has to have had no stages for it to realistically be beneficial to use, so if the killer isn't hard-tunnelling one survivor from the get-go and stages get spread instead, STB often at best won't be useful and a wasted slot or at worst not there to help should the killer then tunnel whoever gets hooked a second time. Ideally you also want to not instantly die for it, as that's essentially throwing away two health states and landing you on hook in struggle stage and a tunnel target yourself. And tunnelling killers will usually also be camping, and be it proxi-camping, or periodically returning to hook, which makes it difficult to not die for the STB unhook (and if they aren't camping or returning to hook, the tunnel-out threat isn't usually that acute to begin with, given that the unhooked survivor could have hid or been healed).
You would also prefer for this to only be necessary at an advanced stage of the game, with only 2 or less gens to repair remaining, as otherwise the prospect of instantly landing on your own struggle stage hook and the unhooked survivor being in chase is not necessarily all that promising. Additionally, the only really reliably impactful and abusable way to leverage STB is in SWFs, where you not only know that the survivor whose stay in the trial you prolong is good enough for that to make a difference (and has perks to help them not land on hook again shortly thereafter), but where you can also know that yet others potentially have STB themselves and can help you should you become a tunnel target. Hell, in non-SWF scenarios you can't even guarantee being the one to unhook when STB could be beneficial in the first place.
As such, while it's a game-changing perk against hard-tunnelling killers in a coordinated SWF group that ideally also uses multiple instances of it (which we should not underestimate - tunnelling is often almost necessary for around half of the killer cast to be able to consistently compete with good, coordinated SWF groups), it does next to nothing for solo survivors, who already struggle disproportionally against tunnelling. I guarantee we will barely ever even see solo survivors run this as it comes at a huge detriment and risk to themselves, often for fellow survivors that they have no idea are even worth the cost (and regularly aren't).
There are some edge cases where it can be neat to have, such as giving someone back the chance to get Deliverance value or giving up a stage if your stages for some reason don't matter as much anyway (e. g. Rancor, STBFL, being Condemned or having a ticking RBT on). But these don't really make the perk all that much more attractive to bring either, certainly not in a solo-queue context.
I think this perk is another case of BHVR missing the mark, wanting to do something against tunnelling (in a band-aid perk form), but delivering something that's only really reliably helpful where tunnelling is not even all that problematic all that often (coordinated SWF) while doing little to nothing where tunnelling is often devastating (uncoordinated solo/duo groups). My preferred change would be to perhaps reduce the Exposed timer again, and, more importantly, make it so that the killer doesn't get info on the perk having been used. The fact that a tunnelling killer would not know that the unhooker is Exposed and that the unhooked survivor has a stage less than they assume if anything is the perfect way for the perk to punish tunnelers, and it will also encourage anyone to go for the unhooker instead since they might be Exposed, as well as act as a general tunnelling deterrent because your tunnel target might not be as close to death as you assume. In turn, as always, I want them to implement SWF loadout restrictions such that any perk (and item/add-on/offering) can only be equipped once between the members of a premade group. This would alleviate most if not all perk-based balance concerns and generally solve most if not all loadout-related imbalance potentials, drastically limiting the ridiculously stacked and synergistic builds coordinated groups can come with.
Anyway, my posting about this perk again is partly motivated by wanting to share a little anecdote: A bunch of content creators with more than ten-thousand hours each (OhTofu, ZubatLEL, AlbyAround) and one of the top most decorated and experienced tournament players in the game (Xeno) are going on pub winstreaks lately, and they lost one just yesterday (8 rounds in I believe, to a Pig of all killers, on Gas Heaven even). Now there were some contributing factors such as latency benefitting the killer and them being on a Thrill build too, but what really was the deciding factor that match ultimately was Xeno opting to use Shoulder The Burden on a survivor on their first hook, instantly ending up in struggle stage for it himself, and then getting tunnelled out. STB literally made a full voice-comm SWF of some of the most experienced players in the game trying hard to win lose, against a Pig on a good map. Or majorly contributed to the loss, anyway. Food for thought I guess?
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This is not a "magical hypothetical scenario" at all? It will literally work in every scenario that doesn't go 1-1-1-1, I just gave one example across hundreds of possible ones. In particular, it can also happen in 2-1-0-0, and now you have 2x more chance that one of the unhookers has the perk. It won't happen every game sure, but empirically I'd say the perk already gets used ~1/10 of the time against me right now and I don't tunnel, and it has a game-changing effect when it happens. (To be fair though, it was counter-productive for the survivor team half of the time, so right now it's not frustrating to play against, but it could be in the future)
What do you mean by:
there's a much much greater chance the one person who brought STB is already hooked in this case
Given a 2-1-1-0 scenario, the chance that the person who brought STB has not been already hooked, is simply 25%. 1 out of 4. That's quite common.
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this ain't a magical hypothetical scenario at all lol.
are we really going over another scenario of complete lack of awareness for true perk potential?
We already saw it with lack of awareness for aggressive usage of anti-tunneling perks thinking they are only good against tunneling, we already saw it with lack of awareness for hook greeding thinking it's only good when killer is camping. Can we please once see someone actually realize value of perks instead having a 99% narrowed viewpoint for them?
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I have seen the perk used, I have tried to get value out of this perk, it has done absolutely nothing of notice beyond getting somebody killed sooner then they otherwise would have
This perk is not good unless the killer is actively letting survivors get value from it
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No, it's not. I've seen some content creators label it as the best survivor perk in the game, to which I have to say — why is no one running it then?
I'm yet to see a single effective use of this perk in my survivor or killer matches. Actually I'm yet to see it at all as killer. Every time I've tried to do anything with StB, it's just had a net neutral effect on the match. Doesn't seem as effective as people are making it out to be, at least not in casual solo queue matches.
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It won't happeneverygame sureBut if a perk doesn't get used every game, it should have more value in the instances in which it does.
In particular, it can also happen in 2-1-0-0, and now you have 2x more chance that one of the unhookers has the perkAnd if the survivor A or B have it, its a dead perk slot.
The important question is: what else might the survivors have been running? Did the survivor at two hooks run StB instead of something that would have helped them looping and maybe they never would have been caught? Maybe they would have had something like Resurgence that would have made it easier for them to be healed before the killer got to them for the second hook?
And even if want to imagine that the survivors at zero hooks are the only ones with shoulder the burden, what did they give up to use it? Did they play in a cautious manner instead of slamming gens because they wanted to be sure they would be safe to use it? Could they have brought gen perks to get gens done faster so that one survivor being on death hook doesn't really matter? Or maybe they could have brought something like babysitter so when the 2 hooked survivor gets unhooked, he can still get away from the killer and wastes even more of the killer time.
Shoulder the burden can have value of course. But perks should be able to get value and to evaluate them on a balance front we need to compare them to the other options survivors have and the pros and the cons. Right now it seems to fall into the category of situational with a high possibility of no value.
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I am not saying that the perk is too strong or too weak, I'm just saying it is not an anti-tunnel perk like most people thought at first glance. It will affect even killers who spread hooks.
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Yes.
It's messing with my hook counting and I accidentally killing a survivor earlier, makes me look like a tunneler.
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If you honestly think that stacking and daisy chaining STB really is a magical hypothetical scenario, then you should be ok if that part of STB gets nerfed. Because why bother defending that part of the perk from being nerfed, if you honestly don't think it is realistically going to happen?
Nerf suggestions:
- A specific survivor can only use STB, if they haven't had the perk used on them yet. (no daisy chaining)
- STB can only be used on a specific survivor, if they haven't used the perk on someone else yet. (no daisy chaining)
- STB can only be used on a specific survivor, if they haven't had the perk used on them yet. (no stacking)
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But I don't know how you could do that. If you gave it a condition like 'if more than one survivor has been hooked, StB deactivates', it would be absurdly weak. And if the goal was to completely and absolutely eliminate tunneling, like if that was BHVR's new design philosophy, then they'd go with a basekit mechanic.
Like Unbreakable is a anti-slugging perk, but it doesn't mean the only time you get value out of it is against a full out slugging killer.
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But there is not tactical advantage here because survivor 3 just sent themselves to death hook.
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There are a bunch of factors not included in your assessment here that play a big factor.
A huge one being: just because people bring the perk doesn't mean they're going to get value from it. They may get to second stage first (tunneling), they may not get the unhook, and most importantly, it may not be a smart idea to activate the perk of the killer is camping and you'll be insta downed for no gain.
You also have the problem that even just moving hook stages around isn't always going to be a net benefit for the survivor team. If your "weak" player, or someone with a meme build, makes themselves the target it will net lose time for the team over someone who can loop better or has a chase oriented build.
I think you misread what I wrote because you responded to the wrong thing. In the 2-1-1-0 scenario, there's a 75% chance the one STB player is already hooked meaning they're either already on death hook, or putting themselves on death hook to use the perk. Which is much much greater than the 25% to use it completely safely.
And all of that is contingent on the other factors I mentioned above as well.
4 -
so...Reassurance, DS, OTR, Deliverance and Wicked are also bad by this logic?
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They should go with a basekit effect, yes. Extending hook timers by +10 sec for example was an excellent move against camping, it is straightforward (no need to learn yet another mechanic, important for new players), does little for SWFs, while making a big difference for solos.
Against tunneling, they could give something like OtR basekit: no noise, no scratch marks for the unhooked survivor, extend basekit BT to 90 sec. If it's too strong, then give something like Make Your Choice basekit for killers, which gives a reward for not tunneling. When it's just a "too weak" vs "too strong" question, then we have solved the problem, as that can always be fine-tuned.
In contrast when it's a question of "too weak for solos" vs. "too strong for SWFs" then that can NOT be fine-tuned as no matter which direction you move you will make the game unfair for one side. STB does not address tunneling, instead it pushes it even more in the "solo vs SWF" direction, which is completely backwards. On top of that, it happens to also work against non-tunneling killers. It is an unhealthy perk for the game no matter which side you play imo.
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I've re-read the conversation and now I realize we talk about something different.
When I say the scenario can be "common", I'm not saying it will be "common" for survivors to get value from the perk, that's not at all the topic of the message you initially quoted and in fact they will NOT get common value as you have pointed out (a given survivor gets value at most 25% of the time at most).
My message is from the perspective of a killer playing nice. What I'm saying is that it will be common for them to get hit by the perk, the exact percentage can be debated but let's say that it is 25%, I think you agree that it would be not just "common" but actually broken for a perk labelled as "anti-tunneling" to still trigger 25% of the time against someone who never tunnels. In reality my experience so far is that it triggers much less than 25% and more like 10% of the time, but that's still a lot. Imagine if you never tunneled and still got hit by DS about 10% of the time while chasing the unhooker, and then people tell you on the forum to stop tunneling, you'd have a reason to be annoyed, well that's what will happen with this perk. In the conversation you quoted, the 2-1-1-0 scenario was just to show a concrete example where that happens, I replied that to GeneralV and some others who said if you don't tunnel you will never get affected by it.
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Its another one of those things where its like…
Yea its extremely valuable and nice to have but good luck getting people to run it in any cohesive way outside ofcoordinated swf
And even if someone takes it, its hard to work around things when you lack all basic communication. It can turn into a complete troll feed perk very easily in soloQPlaying soloQ you already have trouble getting people to take things like reassurance, we'll make it, kindred, etc….
Altruism isnt the most attractive perks for most players
Which is big sad.1 -
Just had it used against me as killer, and yeah it really doesn't do much if the killer isn't hard tunneling:
And I don't mean it as a jab towards this Taurie here, I think she played well. But the perk doesn't have much value if the hook states aren't concentrated on a single survivor.
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They call it "the best survivor perk" because clicks and views are their income. Play a dozen games, cherry pick the couple of times it sees value, and voila - new clickbait YT video. I love watching content creators (watching one right now in fact as i wrap pressies) but I take alot of what they say with a grain of salt. Hens is my favourite content creator but his live stream using StB didn't sell me on it at all. Despite him also calling it the best survivor perk repeatedly. I respect his experience and insight, but hard disagree with him on that one.
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4 survivors alive means more people working on gens, more people healing each other, more people to waste time chasing. So obviously swapping a hook state is massively game changing since it's more time the game is in a state where 4 survivors are alive.
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We're pretty much just joining the echo chamber of it doesn't do much if you're not hard tunneling someone out.
For what it's worth, it still has some value outside of this scenario (long as the user and rescuee aren't potatoes) but since it only moves hook states and announces itself with user, it's not a major difference. Someone will be closer to death no matter what.
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If you aren't hard tunneling this perk turns more in to a killer sided perk like invocations. Letting you instant down the one that used it if you put little effort in to it.
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None of those perks listed actively get you killed sooner if you try and use them
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none does StB if you know not to unhook in front of the killer and know how to chase :D
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