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Most good perks are glorified guessing games
Let's not kid ourselves, DS and NOED go to the top of this list. But while breaking down what is wrong with most strong/meta perks, they all had this guessing game in common. Let me list a few and y'all can probably come up with a many more.
Decisive Strike: If there's no obsession, there can't be a DS. But if there is an obsession, all 4 could have DS or just 1. How do you know who has it? Risking a 5-second stun, up to 4 times. It's likely that the obsession has DS, so you likely wouldn't 'tunnel' them, but that's assuming they have it. They have have Mettle, Sole Survivor, that one key add-on, etc. If there is an obsession period, the smart player will respect it on every survivor, which buys the survivors tons of free time and momentum.
No One Escapes Death: You did well on the gens, only for the killer to have NOED and get 2 or 3 instadowns, maybe even securing a 4k. It was preventable, because you could have done all 5 totems, but that's easier said than done, especially in solo. "If they're a bad killer, they for sure have NOED". That is untrue a lot of the time. With strong killers, stopping to do all the totems could prevent you from doing all the gens, only for you to find that they never had NOED. "This killer is good, so they couldn't have NOED." "They had Ruin/Undying so they won't have it." More fatal assumptions. You find out if they have it only by someone getting insta-downed.
Borrowed Time: Someone goes for an unsafe unhook, so they must have Borrowed, right? Not so in a lot of cases. They bluff, because they know how much time you waste hitting that BT'd survivor, which prompts you to respect it and not slug them off hook. But if they don't have BT and you slug them, you get actual pressure. Which option is better? You don't know until you find out if they do/don't have BT. And you can test which survivors have BT and which don't, but that would take a LONG time because you'd have to watch all 4 survivors unhook and see if the one they rescued gets put into dying state or deep wound.
Blood Warden: Quite possibly the most played around killer perk in the game. Everyone 99s the gates, because of a potential Blood Warden. "It's only good when paired with NOED!" Not necessarily. The exits get blocked long enough for the killer to down everyone and hook them, or if they played it right, long enough for the EGC to kill everyone. How do you know for sure if they have it? By exactly one of those situations happening.
Playing around a perk that isn't there, because of how strong its effect is when you don't respect it, is somewhat unhealthy for the game in my opinion. It's observable that that's why most of these perks are used consistently. Their strength lies in their win-win nature. You waste time and momentum just to avoid them, or else the other player reaps the benefits from having used them.
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No one'll ever know what perks are used by whom until the match is over. Very few perks (if any) give a notification preemptively.
This also isn't exclusive to DbD but happens in pretty much every game with a similar loadout system. Players have to make assumptions of what's in use and play around it and that's perfectly fine, it is one of the few skillful things to do in this game.
There'd be no real skillful interactions left and no point in playing if all players hands were held at all times and everybofdy was told what perks were used by whom and what everyone should do at any given time.
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