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Why did Ruin get nerfed for being "overused"?
Comments
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It's quite obvious Ruin was changed because they didn't want to stack the gen slowdown perks too much. Combining Pop and Ruin, and then throwing in Thanataphobia and Dying Light and you've got gens that take a long time to do. New Ruin is a very strong perk, if a bit risky due to being a hex. But then again -- old ruin was ALSO a hex perk, which meant it was also risky. New Ruin can't be stacked with something like pop goes the weasel. It's pretty clear that's a big part of the reasoning behind the change to the perk.
Old Ruin only stopped progression for good skill checks, and reduced it for great skill checks. (Great Skill Checks have since themselves been nerfed. They don't provide the same level of progression as they used to). Under New Ruin, a survivor being off a generator for longer periods of time means more regression regardless of if they're able to hit great skill checks, or the random nature of skill checks showing up at all.
At tier 3, keeping a survivor off a generator for one minute does double the regression and without having to kick the generator. So let's say you keep a survivor off a gen for one minute of regression.
Under Old Ruin, one minute after kicking the generator, it'd take 15 seconds to recomplete the progress. Assuming they only hit good skill checks, and two skill checks pop up during that same time, it'd go from 15 seconds to 23 seconds.
Under New Ruin, one minute after getting the survivor off the gen, it'd take 30 seconds to recomplete the progress. Even if they hit great skill checks for 4 skill checks during the time it'd take roughly 26.8 seconds to complete a generator.
The difference appears small, but this is a survivor hitting good skill checks vs a survivor hitting more great skill checks. Let's put them in the SAME situations.
Survivors Hit 2 good skill checks:
Old Ruin: 23 seconds
New Ruin: 30 seconds
Survivors hit 4 good skill checks:
Old Ruin: 31 seconds
New Ruin: 30 seconds
Survivors hit 2 great skill checks:
Old Ruin: 15 seconds
New Ruin: 29.4 seconds
Survivors hit 4 great skill checks:
Old Ruin: 15 seconds
New Ruin: 26.8 seconds
These are rough estimates, granted. My numbers could well be off. I'm not the best at math. But Old Ruin only really benefits pretty minor if the survivor gets FOUR skill checks. It saves about a second.
Now, there are other benefits to Old Ruin of course. But devs have mostly addressed them as well. Survivors have a greater efficiency penalty (without using a perk, I might add. It might not be as strong as Ruin was at it, but it also doesn't take up a perk slot and perhaps more importantly, it cannot be cleansed. Meaning it won't be gone 15 seconds into a match) They've also made maps smaller, reduced the number of pallets, made certain loops weaker. And they aren't done yet.
I'm sure the Devs introduce a few new elements into the game at a time so players have time to adjust to them. Rather than throwing everything out at once, and having a massive update where the game is so changed that it takes players too long to adjust. It's not that Ruin was overused, it's that it was a bit swingy mixed with the fact that it rewarded killers for minimal effort. Someone brought up Corrupt Intervention -- but it's a perk that disables itself after a set period of time. Retribution and Haunted Grounds? They're hex protection perks designed to give hex perks a chance of staying up, and making it risky for survivors to cleanse. And they don't reward the killer passively. The killer gets to see the aura of survivors... but they then must chase those survivors and find them. Same with Haunted Ground -- finding a survivor in the meantime. Plus again, they are time limited. As for Lullaby -- it's not passive. The killer must earn tokens on Lullaby. As for Autodidact... well it's not swingy because let's face it, it's pretty useless. No killer is going around in fear of autodidact healing because pretty much nobody runs it because of how useless it can be. But it's not the only useless perk in the game, and Devs have said they're taking a look at them. But I doubt they want to just change a bunch of perks all at once, without giving players time to adjust. We're getting major changes to Franklin's, Tinkerer, Knockout, and Lightborn this time around.
ETA: Since someone mentioned resilience.. there's a downside to that. If the killer finds you, he catches you injured. Yes, you can 99 the heal if you like, but there's still some risk involved.
I know sometimes it feels unfair, that the devs are so one-sided (They really favor [Side you don't main]). But I think they have the best intentions in mind. When they do one thing, that doesn't mean they're done. They seem to have big plans in the game. And I know I for one am looking forward to them. Especially the early game cooldown, which is probably the biggest issue killers face. Because until you find that first survivor, survivors feel absolutely no pressure. And that can take a long time if you spawn in a bad location or make a wrong guess.
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Adrenalin and DS are mediocre one use situational crutches.
I never use them.
Dont know what all the fuss is about.
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This is why Ruin was also nerfed.
They just did not want to bother with the totem spawns, instead they nerfed a widely used perk so they'll get killers to stop complaining about it.
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"mediocre"
Funny. Considering DS is probably one of the most powerful perks in the game.
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Ruin being the way it was forced me to learn how to more consistently hit Great Skill Checks. Better players weren't hindered by Ruin nearly as much as newer players
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Old Ruin gave too much free pressure with no effort. It was already overkill on high pressure killers like Spirit, Nurse etc.
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But what it does do is teach survivors how to hit great skill checks and clear bones, you know, that secondary objective designed to slow down gen progression? I can hit great skill checks with so much ease thanks to practice with having to go against ruin. You should want your new players learning how to play the game effectively. Now the new ruin only teaches survivors to do gens together to get them progressed faster.
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Because it allowed bad killers to be carried by a perk that takes 0 skills to use. Changing that naturally wouldn't be a bad thing, but God forbid if survivors had to put in any work or skill for their perks that can swing the game just as hard if not more because all four of them can run it, without people threatning the devs with pitchforks and torches.
I personally don't mind the change too much as I didn't like running it anyway due to how stupidly random the perks can get broken barely 15 seconds into a match. So I stopped running it on most of my killers even
But it was honestly annoying the way they changed it that ticked me off. It made the perk more problematic against killers like Nurse, Billy, Freddy and Spirit who can pressure the survivors. While making it complete garbage for any of the set up killers or killers who can't snowball or pressure as well.
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^ this.
Instead of just giving a Benefit without any effort, Ruin actually rewards good Killers now. For me, Ruin is more annoying to go against, I was able to hit Great Skillchecks 9/10 times. But now everytime I need to go for an Unhook or if the Killer chases me, my Gen will go down, which is more pressure for me as the Survivor.
I really dont know how players can still complain about the Ruin-Change. As if old Ruin was really that good to begin with, people non-stop complained about the Totem being found early, but once they announced the Change, this did not matter at all. PGTW was the better Slowdown anyway and stacking those was not really cool (in general, stacking Slowdown-Perks shows that the Killer isnt that good IMO).
And I can totally understand the frustration of players who were not able to hit Great Skillchecks. You struggle to get a Gen done and then the Killer comes around and kicks 25% of your progress away.
And in the end, it gives more variety this way - Instead of just slapping on BBQ + Ruin + PGTW + any other Perk, Killers have to think about either using Ruin OR PGTW (or having the risk to play with 3 Perks all the time).
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The Ruin change was one of the better balancing decisions they’ve made, despite its unpopularity. Feeling like you had to run old Ruin every match was extremely annoying, especially since half the time it got cleansed in the first 30 seconds of the match anyway. It was too high risk and too high reward - i.e. bad design. Despite people absolutely freaking out about the change it was a very positive change for the long term health of the game.
I remember when old Ruin was live, I used to play with a friend and when we’d start working on a gen and see no Ruin one of us would inevitably say, “Nice, easy match.” And it basically always was. Can’t say that now though.
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Cage of Atonement = DS owned.
Also /dont_tunnel.exe
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Oh, come on, you cannot blame everything on SWF, lol.
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New ruin is still fairly decent.
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Yeah, I also look for the Totem after doing the first Gen, at least for some time. Before, I did not really care, if I stumble across Ruin, I will cleanse it, but I will not search for it (because this was the biggest Timewaster).
But now, I simply cannot stand to think that my Gen will regress to 0 while I am being chased or need to do other stuff like Unhooks, lol.
I also feel that more Killers get to like new Ruin, because I have it in quite a bunch of my games, roughly every second or third game a Killer is using Ruin.
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Killers complained about it! Seriously, every single killer player at the time complained about old Ruin because it felt necessary but was so easy to destroy, and because every killer ran it survivors would start looking for it the moment they spawned into the match.
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Survivors cleanse any totem even if they aren't being affected by anything.
"if it glows, it goes." It's why Haunted Grounds works so well by itself.
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"GeN pReSSuRe"
It's such a bad argument, and a meme at this point. You can have multiple downs, a few hooks, and excellent play, but still have 4 gens pop in like 4 minutes. Reminds me of this.
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Do we have to start again on ruin?
My opinion is that for old ruin:
yellow/brown ranks = Extremely effective, survivors can't do a gen with ruin
purple/red ranks = almost useless, veteran hit almost all skillchecks, or got rid of it very quickly, knowing most of the totems spots.
This was litteraly an anti new player perks for me. Not counting people experiencing lags on skillchecks, and the randomness of totem locations. But every excuse is right for crying again on devs hating killers. DS was nerfed a lot.
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Ruin was a crappy bandaid to fix a glaring fundamental issue with this game, an issue the devs have not addressed after they nerfed ruin. Ruin needed to go, but we were hoping that what would follow would be a legitimate fix to gen speeds. Instead we got an imperceptible change in toolbox speed, breakable walls that have not been fully implemented, a capitulation in the devs changing the way scoring works and just saying the first 2 gens are supposed to be done quickly, and an ineffective change in how skill checks work and multiple survivors on one gen works ( I think this was so ironic, considering they nerfed ruin because it was hard for players to hit skillchecks, yet they changed great skillchecks because players were hitting them too often). Now we're getting this billy nerf, and I imagine spirit doc and freddy are next. Now we can hope that the devs start actually working on balancing this game after these nerfs, but considering what happened after ruin, it's reasonable to be skeptical.
The changes the devs make to survivors have, at the most, a moderate impact on survivor play. The changes the devs make to killers have severe game altering and game breaking impact on killers. This is especially notable in listening to how the devs explain why they fix certain things. It also shows in their inconsistent reasoning like what I pointed out above about skillchecks. I don't know if it's an issue with the devs themselves, or the person that gives them orders, but whoever is calling the shots clearly doesn't actually play this game beyond just hopping on for 20 minutes every couple of days, and the voices of those in the team that actually do spend significant time on this game are not being heard, and the voices of the players are certainly not being heard.
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DS never got nerfed, really.
I'm fine with that, but as it should be said, it was reworked.
It's still just as strong as before, if not stronger sometimes.
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Am I the only one that, as a survivor hates new Ruin more?
Old ruin stalled progress but at least you made progress. Nothing more dull than going solo queue, holding M1 on a gen until it’s 80%, then going on a lengthy chase and either losing the killer or being hooked but either way you get back to your gen and realize its either at best down to 20% or its completely dead. Then you gotta hold M1 all over again.
But hey play swf and you render the perk worthless as you just ask someone else to finish it for you 🙄 closing the gap between solo and swf, one perk at a time.
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Just throwing this out there:
The great skill check bonus progression prevention when the numbers were crunched was the single strongest *reliable* slow down effect in the entire game.
With the then 1.6 seconds bonus progression on a generator 2 survivors getting a total of 10 great skill checks finished a generator in ~28.5 seconds which is the same time as if ALL 4 SURVIVORS WORKED ON A SINGLE GENERATOR.
Keep in mind 10 skill checks across 2 people isn't that uncommon in DBD.
Fun fact: you great skill check's bonus progression had to be CUT IN HALF after ruin was nerfed due to how powerful they were in reality.
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They said survivor find it annoying to play against ruin
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So by that logic DS, BT should be look at because those are the perk you see in almost every build in the red rank
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but.
decisive strike.
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I used to run Ruin and Huntress Lullaby together on Pig... It was fun
But now i don't run Ruin on most of the killers I play... That's only due to totem placements and not much else...
I would say the change to Ruin was "needed" but not "necessary" IMO...
Also side note... I thought Huntress Lullaby was considered a mid-late game perk.... and: Remember Me, STBFL, Spirit Fury (need I go on)
Now the game does need a skillcheck re-work... I've suggested some of my own... but hasn't been thought of as (much as I like it to be) something that is the best of both worlds (Survivors only affected when hit "so it's not passive" and they affect the Objective "which is where the Survivors need to be overall") and can be adjusted to match the climate of the game at the time
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Are you planning to rework DS to be less oppressive to the point when it's actual anti tunneling perk? such as de-activating DS when survivor goes to repair generator, or gets fully healed? (obviously not being tunneled)
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Soon TM...
But I'd like to see what happens to killer perks along side that
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I guess we will be waiting. But in my opinion DS at current state is the STRONGEST perk of the whole game. Not any killer perk comes even close.
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"Fun fact: you great skill check's bonus progression had to be CUT IN HALF after ruin was nerfed due to how powerful they were in reality."
Eh, disagree.
I think the Great Skill Check Progression-Bonus was cut in half because it was the easiest way to make Gens a little bit slower, without actually increasing the Gen Time. Like, you dont really need to think a lot about this or check if it is balanced or not.
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Meh still proved my point that the no great skill check progression part of old ruin did in fact slow down purples/reds by a semi noticeable amount(the other guy claimed it did next to nothing at high ranks).
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I agree with you and Ill add to the mix that nerfing the great skillcheck bonus was something pretty much noone gave a damn, there was no drama, no hundreds of posts filled with tears and rage, no "devs refund my money", no "lol survivors you had this coming, time to git gud" threads etc.
I believe the fact that pretty much noone was going to care about it weighted a lot.
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going along with how the devs go about adjusting Survivor perks... there will be "blood"
Also... I agree that DS is (one of) the strongest survivor perks
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^this
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The new ruin is only particularly good on killers that are already top tier.
You need a lot of map pressure to get use out of new ruin by forcing people off gens. People like Spirit, Oni, Billy & Nurse can easily do this, while killers like Bubba, Clown, Pig and Trapper have no such capability, especially on larger maps. In effect, it's a buff to those already good and an added burden to those that are incredibly stressful and difficult to play at a high level.
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That was not a bad response and it actually makes sense a killer shouldn't be able to just lay back and not try and still win
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DS is the best perk in the game.
But I'd definitely say some killer perks definitely do come near that level.
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While we are discussing Ruin, all the killers that complained about the Ruin nerf, are you still playing killer?
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I took a break for 2 months. People said it was a crutch perk. It is right, but it was the only perk that could give you a chance to win with low pressure killers, if you did not want to camp / tunnel every game. Not everybody has played killer for 2000 hours and is good, that's not the majoritiy of the playerbase.
I play mostly freddy, because with him even the new ruin is good and he has a high chance of winning.
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Not the best perk in the game when you get slugged, or get no use out of it.
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Unbreakable. Almost always paired together.
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That’s still a wasted 20s from lying on the ground recovering
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Every single thing of these can be applied to DS.
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To be fair, Ruin was never really a factor in matches anyways. How often was Ruin broken within the first 15 seconds of a match? People were playing matches without old Ruin before old Ruin became new Ruin.
I do understand the rationale though that was given. Veteran players always hit great skill checks with very few good ones hit. On the opposite side of the spectrum, you had newer red ranks that screwed over the veteran players and made it so Ruin needed to be tracked down and broken for progression to occur.
So Ruin was changed to counteract the inconsistency. Is it better or worse? Dunno.
That said, I still find it funny that Gearhead was changed after Deathslinger's PTB to reflect Old Ruin thus proving the issue in question that veteran players aren't affected by it at all and newer players are.
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Ruin change was a buff
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Not even remotely true. If you are playing against swf, which you almost entirely are at red ranks, if the gen is close their teammates finish off that gen while the person being chased pulls the killer away from it. What you're saying may be true with solo groups in green ranks but only there.
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Ruin was used 90% of the time at all ranks, if the killer had Ruin, it was going to be used. You should be happy Ruin got nerfed, because it opened up a perk slot and slowed down gen speeds when multiple survivors work a gen, made maps smaller and got rid of infinites. I would say giving up Ruin for all of that is way worth it.
What type of nerfs do you want to see on Killers if you get rid of DS and Adrenaline. It's always fun to talk about nerfing perks but you have to remember there's always a balance to be made.
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Amazing job at word saying
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Ruin, in its original incarnation, ruined a lot of games of survivor because you couldn't rely on the people you were teamed with to actually hit the great skill checks.
Also, it was used so much that every game became so boring, annoying, and predictable. It didn't need to be that way to have a slowdown effect. The new Ruin is pretty good. I see it wrecking a lot of games, especially in combination with other perks or certain killers (like Legion).
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But ds adrenaline sprint burst/dh borrowed time etc. aren't frustrating to play against or overused? Sure, i only see them in 90% of my games as killer but i guess u guys have the data, anyway new ruin is ######### so either buff it or make it not a hex pls? The devs on stream said they kept it hex to keep the theme of hag's teachables and if its too weak they were gonna buff it, well that never happened did it. If a perk is used in 80% of matches in red ranks that prob means its needed and not op?
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