Should Surge Be Buffed?

Imo get rid of the M1 restriction. On killers like Spirit, Nurse, Billy, Oni, etc, if you remove the cooldown & M1 requirement it'll be super overbearing, so the cooldown can stay. I don't usually notice it either.

1 With Billy, Huntress, Bubba, Pig Dashes, Demo, Pyramid, Blight, Oni, Victor the perk doesn't work, it's useless unless you don't want to use your ability.

2 It's less than 8 seconds, basically nothing.

3 Survivors will stay on the gens, they won't go down to 0, especially that slow, I promise

4 32 meters is nothing, too small.

5 40 seconds cooldown

But maybe has potential, who knows

Yes it should be buffed, same thing for about 70% of all perks in dbd.

My favorite perk. Here's the two changes I think it needs:

Firstly, allow it to activate on any downs. I think the cooldown is fine, personally. Additionally, I think if you have any other perks that have some effect for damaging gens that it should inherit those effects. Something like pop could be assigned to whatever generator has the most progress. It'd be an incredible combo to have Surge and Pop and I think it would rival Ruin+Undying. If it could synergize with other perks.

Surge is a great perk idea that just feels too restrictive. Also seems inconsistent that it damagaes gens that are already regressing since no other regression perks do that. Seems like that's why they gave it an unnecessary cooldown.

However there's no incentive to run it on most killers with the basic attack and cooldown restrictions. Sometimes I'd rather it not procc because I downed a Survivor who just started a gen, then it's not ready when I need it 30 seconds later.

Making Surge more consistent and less restrictive would be a great alternative to Ruin/Oppression for saving time not kicking generators. One of the main appeals of the perk.

Make it global with a 40-60 cool down, triggered by all hits.

Surge only blows up generators that are not being worked on, giving Killers awareness of what generators are being done almost like a counterpart to thrilling tremors.

No cooldown

I feel that the general consensus of Surge is that while it's a potentially useful perk, especially after the update that made it apply its 8% damage to already regressing gens, it still has too many conditions for activation that hinder it, and make it a poor choice when compared to other Gen defense perks. Currently its conditions are:

1. Must down a survivor.
2. down a survivor within 32 meters of a generator.
3. down a survivor with a basic attack.
4. it can only activate once every 40 seconds due to cooldown.

The problem with the First and Second conditions is that healthy survivors against a standard M1 killer will almost always get further than 32 meters from a generator after the first hit, especially on the medium-large maps where gens are spread out more, leaving the only killers who can down a healthy survivor quickly like Ghost Face and Shape as the ideal users.

The problem with the Third condition is that it just outright restricts the killers who can get any utility from it to killers who can down survivors quickly with a "basic attack". The only killers who can currently do this consistently are Ghost Face, Shape, and Plague since they all have a way to either expose the survivor, or put them in the broken state, which leaves them vulnerable to a 1-shot down. Compounding upon the problem with the first and second conditions, these 3 killers seem to be the only ones who can actually get any use out of Surge.

Finally the problem with the Fourth condition is that, while it can take a killer 40 seconds to down a survivor, good killers can start snowballing and down survivors 1 after the other within 20-30 seconds apart from each other. This means that for 2 downs back to back, Surge only activates 1 time, which feels wasteful considering the meager 8% damage it does to generators that would require 3 activations to even come close to equaling the damage Pop Goes the Weasel does in a single activation. Compounding this with with the first condition, that is potentially 3 activations of PGTW totaling to over 75% damage to generators vs. 24% damage spread out over a minimum 120 seconds.

The primary strengths of Surge are:

1. it can affect multiple generators at a time per activation.
2. it can damage generators that are already regressing.
3. it saves the killer time on kicking gens themselves.
4. it can pair with Surveillance to give the killer information on which gens are being worked on.

While these strengths are nice and amount to saving the killer precious time in regressing generators or finding survivors when paired with Surveillance, they also don't hold a candle to the sheer power you get from other generator regression perks like Pop Goes the Weasel, and Ruin, Both of which have far fewer conditions/restrictions for activation. This makes most of the community right to believe that Surge is far too underpowered to warrant having so many conditions for activation, because after all: Why would you equip a perk that only does 8% damage to a generator, Once every 40 seconds, only if you are close enough to said generator, on the condition that you down the survivor with a basic attack, Just for the reward of saving you time on kicking said generator, when you can otherwise down a survivor from any distance with any attack, and be rewarded with a 25% chunk of damage to the generator from PGTW?

Sadly we all know the reason why this perk has so many conditions for activation despite its meager damage: 3 gen situations. While designing Surge someone on the dev team must have said "but it can damage multiple gens at once, won't that make it OP in a 3 gen situation?"... I mean, Come on, you all know that's how that discussion HAD TO have gone down, and is definitely why they overcompensated for it with so many "conditions." Originally Surge was going to come out with 12% damage per activation, but apparently upon having this conversation, they overcompensated even further on this as well by knocking it down to 8%, but in all honesty, even with 12% damage per activation, it wouldn't even come close to slowing down survivors enough to stop them from defeating a 3 gen by split rushing when surge's primary condition for activation is: Down a survivor.

Bottom line, If they removed the "Down with Basic attack" requirement, and the Cooldown, Surge still wouldn't be as useful or as powerful as any of the other gen defense perks we currently have... but at least it would be more useful to more killers on the roster than it currently is.

TL;DR:

Surge has too many conditions for activation that restrict its usefulness to only 3 killers on the current roster who can get consistent use from it (Ghost Face, Shape, and Plague). For the meager reward of 8% damage and saving time on kicking gens yourself, there are better alternative perks available that do greater damage and have fewer restrictions which makes Surge "Trash tier" by comparison. I believe the sole reason Surge is so restricted is because the devs feared it's potential power in a 3 gen situation, but considering that its primary condition for activation is that you have to down a survivor, this logic is flawed. Even if they removed 2 of the conditions for activation, basic attack and cooldown, Surge still wouldn't be Overpowered in a 3 gen situation, or any situation honestly, but at least it would be useful to more killers on the roster.

Like most people have said removing the basic attack requirement could make it good enough to be a meta option. It's so fresh that the meta has changed multiple times recently, it used to be nothing but ruin for years but then there was pop corrupt and now new ruin undying, I love the variety for once.

I don't really see how. Imagine if said nurse hooked every survivor after downing them, the most activations of surge she would get is 12. Now factor in how many generators she is activating it on which will likely be only 1 or 2 at most on average. 8% damage per activation * 12 activations = 96% total initial regression, assuming its only activating on 1 gen at a time. Even if she still manages to hit 2 gens every time she activates Surge, the total damage would amount to 192%, but since its hitting 2 at a time, that's still only a maximum of 96% lost on each gen, and completely assuming that she's hitting the same 2 gens the entire match, in reality however, if she manages to hit 2 gens every time it won't be the same 2 that take the heat all game long.

For example If she was damaging only 1 gen at a time, and the affected gens were spread out between 3 gens each losing 8% per activation, she's achieved the 96% damage but only regressed 32% on each of those 3 gens at the time she achieves the final down in the game.

Now we factor in the time for the downs, and this is important... The average match takes 10 minutes. Getting 12 downs in 10 minutes would mean that she has to down 1 survivor every 50 seconds in order to keep the damage consistent and achieve that 96% damage spread out on a possible 5-7 generators. If she's downing 1 survivor every 50 seconds, that's 50 seconds of progress on 1 or more generators minus the 8% damage or +6 seconds added to repair time per activation on 1 or 2 of the 5-7 gens on average.

Even without cooldown, Basic attack requirement, or even the distance requirement, the fact remains: the killer STILL has to down a survivor to activate it. 12 downs doesn't even equal 100% progress lost on 1 generator, and by that time the nurse has already won the game, otherwise she'd have to do triple the downing without hooking, and in less time in order to achieve in 10 minutes what Ruin accomplishes in only 2.6 minutes without needing for you to down a survivor. Hell, if she were to use Pop goes the Weasel for each of those 12 hooks, she would have done 300% damage to a generator or spread out among any generators of her choice. That's 3 completed gens worth in damage! Yet Surge can't even pull off 1/3rd of that damage with 12 downs.

I could go on with more math over this, but Basically, It all amounts to the fact that no matter how fast she downs the survivors in a row, there's no way the damage done By Surge can compete with the progress gained by survivors. Ultimately, Surge is incredibly underpowered compared to other gen defense perks that are currently available, and would remain underpowered even if they removed all but the "Down a Survivor" requirement to activate it, because it simply can't apply its damage frequently enough to counter the progress survivors make in the same amount of time the killer achieves a down.

I wouldn't call that "Disgusting" I'd call that "Funny" because the killer apparently overvalued Surge and wasted a perk slot.

Any killer with a passive m2, such as trapper

Just have the tiers work like discordance. Yellow, all gens within 32m regress. Green, all within 64m. Purple, all within 96m.

Cooldowns on punishment perks are nice incase survivor teammates are throwing the game, purposely going down, farming hooks, etc.

...or Bubba chainsaws someone camping a hook, downs both survivors, and Surge triggers *twice*.

There's reasons for brief cooldowns, trust me on this ... they cannot and will not remove the cooldown on it; game breaking scenarios.

Remove the basic attack requirement and it would probably become a staple on my Pyramid Head build. Other then the basic attack restriction I think the perk is in a decent spot. It's good, but not so good that it feels too oppressive.

Nope, you won't get a free down, and many gens have a window or a pallet near, or high visibility to counter tinkerer