http://dbd.game/killswitch
Developer Update | August 2025
Comments
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General my friend, thank you for asking. I am just going to copy pasta what I said in another thread.
As a long, long time Mikey main my first impression is these are awesome.
He gets undetectable base kit, something he always should have had. He is still a creepy stalker to charge up his new ability. He can tombstone death hook survivors. They're still keeping his identity which was my biggest concern that he would lose it.
They have now given him some solid anti loop in his kit. I mean as good as you can give an M1 killer. Faster pallet breaking and endures stuns quicker, while having base kit coup and keeping the fast vault speed.
Obviously I need to see all this in action but I am loving what I am reading.
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There are a lot of good changes here and I love the overall idea, but this is too much handholding for survivors and way too much complexity. Advanced survivors will abuse these mechanics while newer survivors simply won't be capable of understanding why any of this is happening, much less leverage it effectively.
I love all of the specific killer changes, and removing collision from unhooks is fantastic (especially for basement situations). Gradually increasing survivor speed over time while they are slugged is a reasonable change. Basekit unbreakable will NEVER be a balanced ability to give survivors and should not be implemented.
I like the idea of a temporary generator kick buff after fresh hooks, but I greatly dislike the survivor reveal and haste. Those just punish survivors for setting up for an early save (and make a lot of killer perks pointless). Instead I would prefer that killers temporarily see generator progress like how Wraith's irri addon works.
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Well we can assume the no collision only last 10-15s considering that is how basekit bt works right now. Ds and Off the record last 60s and 90s…. Wow, mind blown, I can count. Like i said, I play a lot survivor and i find survivor wayyy to easy right now and this will only make it easier. unless its an s tier killer getting tunneled out in pubs before all the gens are popped is a skill issue. i dont want easy games. thats boring as hell. Might as well play boring games like TCM at that point.
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That's already part of those builds, you have to have a way of picking yourself up. Otherwise you're just bleeding out while the killer's chasing your teammates.
All the ways survivors have of doing that are significantly faster + stronger than this new system, so they don't get to replace their perks with this system unless they want to risk losing because the killer can just leave them there for a minute and a half to go pressure other survivors.
If your position is that BHVR should've addressed unhookable builds at the same time as other slugging issues and deserve to be criticised for it, I can get behind that. However, what you initially said is that this new system will affect forced-slugging in general and that survivors can weaponise it, and neither of those things are true.
They're different statements, is my point. I'm only contesting the ones I think are wrong, not the general idea that unhookable builds should be fixed.
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I think the anti-tunneling and anti-slagging measures are too lenient. I believe that players should lose the ability to control killers, so that bots play instead of players, as in auto battlers. Seriously, though, instead of changing the game design, the developers are trying to fix it by prohibiting players from using mechanics that they themselves invented. It reminds me of the go-next system fix.
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Embrace the dashslop, and all doors will open to you
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Having the effects randomly be "less effective on certain killers" is massively confusing and leads to more knowledge issues.
I don't think it should work differently for these killers. it should be the same for everything, and if it becomes a problem you adjust those specific killers as needed.
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If they couple this reworking the "anti-tunnel" perks like DS and OTR, i think its fine, but the big hitch in the plan will be what the actual numbers are.
Like, are we gonna get 1% haste for 5 seconds? Or are we getting 5% haste for 30 seconds? Are we getting like, your regression is now 125% when kicking a gen, or "Now you knock off 15% off the gen when kicking it (like a basekit pop almost)"
The entire thing is very numbers dependent.
The other potential problem is how abusable it is. So the survivor gets unhooked now i have to go after someone else. What if thast survivor starts bugging me, they start body blocking me. Ok so i hit them. Ok then they keep doing it. Ok so i hit them again. Now i can't pick them up. But also i cant slug them.
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Plus, in my experience, the general player base seems to be more tolerant of camping or tunneling in endgame, especially if it's the Killer's only chance to secure a kill.
That's always been the tricky part about changes like this: How do you prevent a tactic's abuse without catching legitimate uses of it in the crossfire.
That's why the 90 second slug timer seems fine vs their last attempt at basekit Unbreakable. Worst case, the Survivor gets picked up same they would otherwise, best case, you've got a survivor out of play for a minute and a half.
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I think so too my friend. Getting rid of cheese tactics will actually make the killers play smarter, and not turn matches into an insta-3v1 ordeal.
Well, I am not @Dwight_Fairfield but in my humble opinion, I think the Myers changes looks really interesting. As long as they don't touch his Scratched Mirror, I am fine with the changes1 -
Guys it's a buff you get free haste and basekit BBQ chilli (haste is broken by the way), all you have to do is go chase someone else, stop camping that hook you can do better
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Totally agree on this, imagine high MMR players keep autores just to bodyblock. This patch gonna make most of the killers leave.
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Don't mind all the changes MAKE KILLER HARDER i like a challenge…IDK about Myers he is a classic a legend …
Post edited by thin_blooded on-5 -
The first thing that came to my mind was a 3-stack deliberately leaning their rando to die on hook to trigger this affect separate from anything the Killer does.
Having it as a permanent effect is too much for sure. A temporary one may be better, short if removing it entirely.
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Nobody asked for Myers to be a dash killer #########, you are ruining his lore like this. Just put him back make the Evil Within infinite times to use and let him break pallets and doors with his ability that's all you had to do.
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You can’t kick the gen or block IF the person you hooked is sacrificed. It didn’t say you can’t hook them.
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Just saying to everyone that new michael myers dash like lunge ability wont be really as viable as its show in the GIF by Ryan.
As you can clearly see in the GIF the survivor did not care putting down the pallet, and even if he didnt the survivor ran in the open zone rather than looping the loop tight corners like all survivors do once you go above 60% kill rate on any killer.
If they actually showcased how the ability works againts a proper survivor that knows how to play the game as its miss leading you will see his ability is similar to the Pigs dash that cant be stopped in any way unless you get stunned or dont go for the hit near the pallet.
Players will quickly adapt to this ability at higher mmr making it not viable to play same like The Pig in high mmr.
Except now the new myers is looking fairly similar to the pig than being his own stealth character.
Not saying i wont be using the ability, i will but its shown to be mainly limited time use unlike pigs one that can just spam it after CD.
I will use his ability for shack plays since thats where he current and i assume new major rework of his will be weak at that too still.
The new ability just promotes you into saving the ability rather than using it fast alike blight.
If they can make it into blight type of speed then michael is going to be chefs kiss since now what im seeing the ability is not worth using all the time its scarce.
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Uhhh….you’re not being honest or you misread.
Killers get basekit BBQ Chili, Basekit Haste, Basekit mini pop.
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I'm incredibly concerned about a couple of the anti-slugging and anti-tunneling features. Namely, the fact that sacrificing a Survivor who was just hooked will prevent generators from being regressed.
It is perfectly normal and natural to accidentally find the same Survivor twice in natural gameplay on occasion! Often times a rescuer will just ditch an unhooked Survivor, leaving the vulnerable off-hook Survivor behind.
Now, if I catch a survivor two times in a row for ANY reason, I'm going to have to slug them to prevent my generators from being permanently blocked. And now that slugged survivor can get up for free! So it's a worthless chase.
Am I just supposed to ignore the Survivor, pretend I don't see them and let them do the generator? Because if I hook them now I'm getting punished for their clumsiness.
Chasing them is useless because if I catch them, hooking them will give the rest of the team buffs and prevent me from regressing generators. But if I leave them on the ground to avoid being punished, it's a worthless chase because now the Survivor can just pick themselves up!
Please focus this update on rewarding Killers for fresh hooks rather than punishing Killers for Survivors playing poorly or getting caught.
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts, my dear friend, I appreciate it :)
Honestly, I liked most of it. From a "fun to play against" perspective, I should add, as I rarely play Myers myself, but he is one of my favorites to go against and I think most of these changes are good.
Except the new attack. In my opinion it leans too much into dash territory without being an actual dash, and since I hate dash attacks in DBD… yeah, not the best addition, imho. But everything else is perfect.
Indeed a pretty good job on the anti-slugging and especially the anti-tunneling, dearest friend.
DBD will feel much better to play with these changes, or at least I think it will.
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I dont know in which world chests can be compared with mechanics that completely change gameplay, but I will answer you with my very old comment.
But overall I'm glad with anti-tunneling, it buffs my playstyle "I see - I chase". We just need to nerf already most efficient players next – SWF – without punishing for play with friend itself. Something smart is needed.
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Thats another good point? Do we now how this 6 hooks work if someone is left on hook to die?
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Killers should get their Adept achievement if the final Survivor escapes to hatch. This would reduce slugging for the 4k and make it much more reasonable to get these Adept achievements, especially considering how difficult it's going to be to down all Survivors at once after this update.
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Wil the myers achievemnt be reworked (the mori all survivors one)
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The survivor who was hooked last time can take on the role of chasing or rescuing, and can take an aggressive stance by shouting at the killer, "Hey, try hooking me! I'll give you two choices: you take the penalty or I'll get up on my own!"
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The intention here is for both roles to feel the benefits and incentives that come from spreading hook states.Problem is, the proposed "benefits" killers receive for spreading hooks does not equate to the EXISTING power that survivors have, let alone what survivors will have when this goes live. Spreading hooks has always been a losing play style for killers, now they have to be FORCED to play that way or get penalized with faster repair speeds AND not being able to BLOCK OR REGRESS GENERATORS. How could you possibly think that would be fair or fun for killers? All this will lead to is the killer focusing on two survivors the whole game, hooking them non-consecutively to not incur a penalty, slugging the other two if they try to body-block, until they're both out. That's what I'll be doing. Consider not implementing all of these changes at the same time at least. Just try a few that you feel are most important first and then add the ridiculous stuff later if you really have to. These changes are not going to have a positive impact in the long term.
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Okay, thinking about a lot of these changes, I'm a big fan of most of these, but there are a few things that I'm concerned about.
THE GOOD
Anti slug changes are good. Anti slug isn't too punishing for killers trying to get pressure. I'm a little iffy on basekit Tenacity, but we'll have to see how it shapes up.
Clown, Ghoul, Oni, and Unknown changes. No comments here, just good changes.
Killer anti tunnel incentives. Getting haste, a mini BBQ and PGTW is a great step toward pushing killers away from aggressive tunneling, with the effect being lessened on high tier killers giving me hope that they will start making changes towards M1 killers basekits to give them buffs they desperately need, while not buffing high tier killers at the same time.
THE MAYBE NOT SO GOOD
Survivor buffs when someone dies before 6 hooks. While I understand wanting to combat aggressively getting someone out, I feel that the changes made to the hook notifications and the new Elusive status are more than enough. Killers will spend a lot more time trying to get someone out of the game with much less information. Something I don't think BHVR wants to accept is that sometimes a team has a weak link. I've had plenty of times where I've tunneled someone on accident, simply because I managed to find them 3 times before their teammates. There are also times where I'd rather chase someone who I know is weaker in a chase. Why would I chase someone who can loop me for 3 gens when their teammate goes down in 25 seconds? Now if I find that survivor, I have to leave them to do gens or slug them, or the game swings very hard in the survivors favor now. Instead of being so heavy handed out of the gate, why not make it so that if a survivor dies before 6 hooks, give the remaining survivors a bonus to repair speed until the next generator is done. Instead of kneecapping killers for the rest of the game if they accidentally kill the weak link early, give survivors a small boost to get a foothold back in the match.
Healing perks with the new off hook effects. The new off hook effects seem great on paper and on their own, but combined with the current healing perks I'm worried about stuff like Resurgence + We'll Make It. BHVR clearly wants the moment after you get unhooked to be a bit of a breather. You stay quiet now and slink off somewhere hidden to heal with whoever unhooked you. In turn, this gives the killer a bit of a breather as 4 people aren't on generators simultaneously, while they get to regress some progress and hunt for someone else with these new changes. All good on paper, but when you throw perks like Resurgence and We'll Make It, this phase of the game is massively shortened in the survivors favor. These two perks are already ridiculous on the live version of the game, allowing for near instant resets after unhooks which puts a lot more pressure on the killer, as survivors are able to hop back on generators much faster and much more safely. I'm worried about these perks shortening this phase of the game that most killers need to get their footing even more than they already do on the live version of the game. This whole paragraph might be pointless though as these perks might be in the list of perks being changed, just voicing my concerns.
Conclusion
I'm cautiously optimistic for most of these changes. These could be steering the game into a better direction in the long term, but we'll have to see how they function in game before making any big calls.
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Until everyone stops playing killer when they realize that, just like with go next, innocents get caught in the cross-fire. These changes are too extreme and I expect we will see on PTB how much of an impact they will have on Kill rate vs escape rate.
How does the 6 hooks work when someone is left on hook to die?
Are we going to see more slugging to avoid hooking survivors back to back (i bet we will)
We except we are going to see vastly decreased ability from killers to apply pressure to gens.
We are going to see even more gen regression perks than we are already seeing.
You are going to see more aggressive plays from survivors (most likely from SWFs) TRYING to get hooked back to back to negatively affect the killer.
Anyone who thinks these changes are great and going to go over well are likely survivor mains that EXPECT to escape every game. They should NOT have introduced this many changes at once, and gradually rolled them out. When the game state is a mess next patch, they will have a harder time of knowing which of the 25 changes are causing it.
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Lots of folk seem under the impression that this is gonna be the end of it and survivors are just gonna be giga buffed forever. Despite survivor being strong AF, it sucks to play, it this succeeds at making survivor feel better, than this opens the door to gutting the ever living ######### out of all the oppressive ######### survivor has without them all immediately leaving. It's has the chance to be hugely beneficial to killer mains too, and I am a killer main.
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Yeah this feels bad ..
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If someone gets left on the hook, then it is obviously the survivor teams' own fault. But like some have stated, these changes needs to be extensively tested before they go live.
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Do things like distortion hide the reveal effect from the "fresh hook" thing?
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this seems like a great direction to take. Looking forward to these changes
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Agreed. It should be the same universally
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Question: What about Killers who can kill with their powers before a Survivor is on Death Hook, like Sadako and Pig. It's entirely possible for them to kill a survivor without ever hooking them.
Will death by killer power trigger the pre-6 hook survivor buff? Well the anti tunnel penalty trigger if the last hooked Survivor dies to their Reverse Beat Trap?
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Does this mean the Strike is not considered a Basic Attack for the purpose of Perks, like Coup or Sloppy Butcher?
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It's funny that the developers understand that their changes don't make the game better, adding the ability to disable innovations in custom games and disable them in endgames, because they understand that in tournaments it will become clear that killers won't be able to do anything to good players and that without disabling anti-slag and anti-tunneling in endgames, the kill rate will be 20 percent.
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The reveal effect really needs to be unblockable, except by the anti-tunnel mechanic.
Survivors should not be able to dodge this special reveal with lockers or perks.
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One thing I'm wondering, unless I can't read and didn't notice it being mentioned.
Say a survivor dies on their second hook before that 6 hook count is met, be it some diabolical camping, the solo queue curse of teammates leaving them or just not hitting skill checks to go next, will the gen speed buff still go through?
Is it situational, or is it regardless of someone else being chased/having been hooked already, or if the killer is locking down the kill by keeping a hatchet charged up? I'm mostly worried for people giving up or survivors letting them die on purpose for the buff.2 -
bhvr gotta be kidding, they listen only to crying survivors that played 100hrs, but dont listening good ideas for ur game from survivors that played thournaments, have thousands hours in the game. Many good ideas for new mechanics, addons n perks on youtube. Of all options that could have been changed, that more critical than slugging, they prefered to "improve" anti-slugg system, LMAO. As a surv main I can tell that if whole team get slugged, that means that survivors just dont know how to play dbd, and need to improve their skill and not to start complaining about how killers are overpowered, this game from the start is literally unfair, 4 survivors n 1 killer. All 4 survivors down - means lost game, absolutely same thing as 4 survivors die on a hook. This new anti-slugg system is terrible as hell.
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With these anti slug, camp and tunnel Is a huge nerf for all killers and a huge buff for survivors now, especially for a pro SWF and bully squad. I think i'll be done with this game after 2v8 is over. If BHVR wants survivors to win more then why not change the name of the game instead of Dead by Daylight called it Survived by Daylight/ Sunrise!!
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Hi, so I've got a couple questions. Why will killers be punished for playing the game? I understand that tunneling sucks and how hard it is to REALLY balance, but this (unless I'm reading it wrong) means that if you hook someone twice in any situation in a row to kill them gives everyone a reward. Would that not incentivize bad play later in a match to get gens done even faster? Just sandbag a dead-on-hook teammate to get a buff. I play both sides of the game and either way you shoot it, survivors get rewarded if their teammate kinda sucks enough to eat a chase (and lose) after just being unhooked.
The regression part especially is odd because how could a killer prevent gens getting done other than wandering between gens? Killers with very little movement (at lower levels like me) would be SOL if a group just bounced from gen to gen. I hope that there is playtesting and more fiddling done to see what else would work because I just don't see this specifically being a great change.
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One thing I would maybe change is make recovering while crawling reduced by 50%. Otherwise Tenacity needs a new effect.
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For the whole match?
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I do anticipate that the base kit barbecue and chili will be disproportionately punishing to new/casual players who may not understand that fresh hooks reveal them.
I think it would be very fair to provide a status effect icon for Revealed Survivors on fresh hooks, very similar to the one given in 2V8, since this is a guaranteed part of the core gameplay loop: a reveal that everyone should know about, should be communicated to all players.
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So if Myers kills someone with Evil Incarnate before 6 hooks ? will he still be punished ? same for pyramidhead
what about an unhooked survivor getting caught in a trap ? can trapper not hook them again or he get punished ?
What about if a survivor try to go next ? we just can't get them out of the game or we get punished ?
What if someone is left to die on hook by their team, does the killer get punished ?
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"If a Survivor dies before 6 total hook states, all remaining Survivors gain a repair speed bonus for the rest of the Trial."
As a Sadako main, that's awesome! I love the idea that, if I manage to properly use her power and play well in order to get a Condemned kill early on, with no tunneling nor slugging, I get ######### penalized for it!!
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read new anti-slugg, anti-tunneling system, and I literally have a question, do bhvr themselves play their own game? AND not like the crying survivors on twitter levels, I talk about high mmr level survivors/killer mains
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I was just thinking of this… does this just murder sadako, pig, and pyramid head???
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