Dear Dead By Daylight: Killer Perk Changes: Nerfs (Excerpt)

I'm responding to King Frost, but both you and Plant Collector have brought forward some points I would like to address.

First, a general point: these changes were made with greater buffs to killers, game times, and bloodpoint gains in mind. Several of the complaints are, at least to an extent, a problem with the game's current mechanics, namely BBQ and the problem with bloodpoints. Additionally, these are meant to be a meta buster. With the rest of the changes in this series, a nerf to the strongest perks would allow for more variety for each game instead of just a beefed up version of what already is. That being said, I'll go into each of the other perks.

NOED: I mentioned that the time limit would be more for less experienced players who would get frustrated simply dying at the end of every game since they aren't used to searching and destroying totems. Sure, its proxy is dependent on the survivors, but for anyone who hasn't sunk more than 200 hours in this game and doesn't know where every totem placement in every map is, it is far from satisfying to just be downed out of nowhere.

BBQ: There are exactly 69 killer perks in the game. I believe the expectation from the developers is that most if not all of them would be used in an almost equal distribution. Now I understand that BBQ is ran by almost everyone, but that shouldn't change the fact that it is a band-aid for a lot of other issues. In this series, my goal is to fix all of those issues, thus this would be the removing of the band-aid from the healed wound. Its seeing of downed survivors helps in the process of slugging. As for Plant Collector's issues, letting players know would cause more locker hiding (since most people just take the BBQ reveal when they don't know) and, thus, more slowdown. There wouldn't be as many revealings, but that would be a decent trade off.

Rancor: First, every single Michael perk is about not tunneling the obsession. As for this perk, it's meant to be used when a killer is down on their luck and can't seem to get a kill. It's a comeback perk. It probably shouldn't be as strong when you've had a good round. If a survivor has just barely made it and the hatch gets closed, they don't deserve the amount of punishment they get from rancor normally.

Bamboozle: You may be right, but the developers have been trying their hardest to keep only one set of changing numbers per perk and I thought a lower number might be nice. Perhaps a constant 15 seconds just to keep it a nice clean number?

Monitor: I know this perk is really meta and I really don't understand why. I was just trying to find a way to nerf it that didn't make it useless so that it would fit all the meta perks in with the (hopefully) more balanced full list of perks.

Nurse's: I mentioned this in another post, but I've done a lot of math for this series. The average distance from the center of the map for any one map is 48.85 meters from the center. Nurse's has a radius of 40 meters from the killer and a good killer is not only very mobile, but is also focused on central gens, since if a central gen is completed, it becomes much more easy for survivors to get outer generators done. Added with sloppy butcher and some of the smaller maps and it's almost an inevitability that the killer will see someone healing.

Enduring: I may have made this list some time ago and haven't looked into all of the patches with a fine tooth comb. You're probably right on this one.

Franklin's: I'm not sure what you mean by the only good perk against items. There are plenty of perks against the particular use of items, but not items as a whole, which seems like an unnecessary category. Regardless, I think that a buff to the damage of the item should be in order, now that items can't really be lost unless the survivor dies. I still think that they should only drop the item when they are downed because of making sense thematically, as well as them not being able to get it back until they are freed causing more slowdown, but what if when it is dropped, the item loses 10/15/20% of its charges instead of the normal 0/5/10%?

Iron Grasp: I may have been mistaken on this one too. I thought it was really strong since it could drag you to the basement pretty easily with agitation, but very few people actually use it that way. Additionally, wiggling is a very minute part of the game, so this nerf was probably undeserved. Thank you for pointing it out.

Save The Best For Last: Maximum STBFL is 40% recovery on successful attacks. While you have to work on it, that is ridiculous. 40% doesn't give survivors enough time to run away after being attacked and might as well be an instant down unless they've got an easily accessible pallet. Though, perhaps it is not the increase, but the maximum that is the problem. What if the bonus was still 5% for each attack, but the maximum came only up to six tokens. 30% maximum to match with its sister perk unrelenting and is more likely to reach maximum STBFL. What do all of you think?

Infectious Fright: I think that Infectious Fright isn't meant for the purpose most of you are assuming it is. As I understand it, Infectious Fright is not meant to be a detection perk, but a caution for flashlight saves. Plague was added somewhat recently and was added in a time when team flashlight saves were at an all time high. Infectious Fright was meant to prevent that, not reveal everyone. It also encourages slugging by revealing a lot of area closeby. Factor in Distressing to increase terror radius and the previous math for Nurse's and that also gives a coverage of the entire map if the survivor was running a central jungle gym or pallet loop. Keeping it more centered will allow killers to know if anyone's closeby for a flashlight, body block, or head on save without being ridiculous in range.

Pop Goes the Weasel: Pop is the strongest generator perk in the game. It is also the only good generator perk in the game besides Discordance (I also have nerfed that in the main document, but I'm not going to add it to this here. If you want to check it out and comment, you can go to the main doc, check it out, and come back here to comment. I'd appreciate it). In my earlier article "Dear Dead By Daylight: Killer Perk Changes: Buffs", I suggested ways to make and modify existing perks to be much better generator perks. This was an attempt at trying to fit this perk in with the new perk buffs, but if the other perks are strong, then I shouldn't need to nerf this one. You guys are totally right.

Sloppy Butcher: I hadn't thought about it that way. Generators would get done very fast that way. I do think some slight modifications still need to be done for the perk, but perhaps something less drastic. To start, I think that mangled should work like every other form of slowing down or speeding up of actions with items, where the consumption rate changes with the speed. If survivors are mangled, you want them to heal and if they don't have any healing perks or teammates nearby, but they have a medkit, they won't use it if they're going to lose it before finishing. Secondly, make the haemorrhage effect fade after 90 seconds. I know that won't do that much, but it would be nice to unclutter the screen a little more. I think that might make it a bit more tasteful, though that's more of a change to the mangled effect than the actual perk.

I think that about covers it. Also as far as I know PlantCollector, Calm Spirit does not counter infectious fright. It does basically nothing except silence the birds.

Thanks for all the feedback! This was all really helpful.

Hey PigNRun, I should've let you know earlier, but if you were still curious about the Power Outage idea, here it is: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/141404/dear-dead-by-daylight-new-game-phase-power-outage-excerpt#latest