The "Learn To Play Killer" Reasoning

Raimue

Could someone please explain the mindset behind the response? Learn to play the killer instead of slugging and tunneling. I was under the assumption those two were strategies. Very often I'm forced to slug; survivor crawls under pallet and I am actively aware 2, sometimes all 3 other survivors are right around the corner far enough away the downed survivor is picked up if I chase, and close enough to pallet stun me. Someone harasses me with flashlight, body blocking and baiting me to tunnel and slug. The list goes on.

By "learn the killer" do you mean their base kit? Their unique ability? Can anyone please explain instead of troll with "lul git gud" like we're a Dark Souls 2 pvp community?

jesterkind

Mostly it's unhelpful and not very constructive, but there is a kernel of truth underneath it.

Though, it only really applies to tunnelling. Slugging is a legitimate strategy, one that only needs a little weakening of its most egregious elements, so tunnelling is the one that really warrants this response.

There are a lot of things it could mean, DBD is a game with a surprising amount of depth, but I think one of the most obvious and consistent parts of good killer play that isn't being learned (or at least not enacted) while tunnelling would be macro pressure.
For example, let's say you have a hook. A tunneller will either proxy camp that hook, or if they're playing a more mobile killer, return to the hook when they hear the notification; this is explicitly much, much less pressure than the killer could be getting, justified because tunnelling is unbalanced and can lead to a massively favourable 3v1 early.

What you might do if you "learned to play", using that unhelpful phrasing for clarity, is make sure that you're constantly using that opening to force survivors to react. Someone's on the hook, so someone has to go save, and you're chasing someone else so they have to run away, rinse and repeat.
Maybe you would proxy camp, but with the aim of chasing whoever comes to try the save, forcing someone else to peel away. Maybe you'd slug for pressure, using the slight time saved to get into your next chase quicker and keep the team on the back foot. Doing this, especially with a good working knowledge of where survivors are or are likely to be, is much more skilful and impressive than tunnelling someone.

I'm not going to say that's what people mean when they say this because it is kind of just the "lol git gud" attitude, but I think it's the most useful thing to take away from people saying that. It's the most useful thing to try and hone in your games.

Rickprado

That's a funny one. Probably they are saying this as a rage bait to justify the changes or just to express their frustration with the current state of the game.

I will try to explain to those who still think that "bad killers tunnel" - I understand its not the OP POV.

One of the most important skills in killer is to know who to chase, when to chase and where to chase. Of course this implies into going to take someone out of the game as early as you need. But going for hard tunnel its far from being good, especially when you consider perks like OTR and DS, so most of the time a good killer will swap between two or three survivors. This type of "tunneling" is what most of the more experienced killers do and recommend if you want to win against a good team, as keeping the 1v4 for too long can lead you into a situation where you can't comeback as you won't to be able to defend gens in the lategame. And this is not tunneling, although some people consider as it is.

There is also a part of top tier killer players that hard tunnel - 3 hook a person as fast as possible to take out of the game - but most of the time they are playing top tiers like Blight or Nurse or the skill imbalance - due to bad matchmaking - is so big that they afford to eat every anti-tunnel perk before the gens get done.

I feel there is a common misconception among some survivor players that you could, theoretically, get everyone to death hook before sacrificing anyone and still win IN EVERY MATCH. And this is completely not true because if the survivor team focus on doing gens and the chases extend for a bit long probably you will lose all of your gens before the 9th hook. So, there will be matches were you need to focus on two or one people if you are a skilled killer.

One good example is when someone goes with the "genrush" build: Hyperfocus, Deja Vu, Stake Out and Built to Last with a Commodious toolbox. If let alone this survivor will just smash just as fast as lighting so the correct counterplay would be to focus on where the survivor is the weakest - at chase. Giving an easy time for this survivor to heal, recover and play safe will ruin your match. See: the build this survivor brought gambles on the fact that they will have spare time to do gens and won't need healing, chase or anti-tunnel perks. The counter to this build pressure this survivor as they will be on their weakest when their are the target and not their teammates - who probably have some other kind of perks.

Although i'm very vocal against the system of how its been on the PTB - i want it to be implemented fine tuned, not as it is now - i don't go for tunnel that often and usually hook as much as i possible can before sacrificing. I just don't agree with people saying that "tunneling is unskilled" because this is not true if its not hard tunneling.

Most of what i've said about tunneling could also be said about slugging: its a good tool in the hands of those who knows how to build pressure when its needed.