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Unpopular opinion - survivors rely too much on exhaustion perks to win
I know this ones going to rub a lot of people the wrong way. But before you start furiously typing away in the comments, consider how much you rely on exhaustion perks to cover for your mistakes.
I even find myself getting dependent on these. But the matches I do play without them feel more rewarding because I rely on actual skill rather than 'press e to erase all mistakes'
I have to actually strategize the loops I'll link together when in a dangerous position rather than knowing I have a safety net with dead hard.
Killers feel more dangerous and chases more intense when I can no longer erase mistakes that would of had me downed for poor decisions.
I honestly wouldn't mind if the devs disabled exhaustion perks for a weekend to test survival rates without them. This is coming from someone who plays more survivor than killer right now.
Just please, for the love of god keep the comments civil.
Comments
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that's why i don't use them. You don't know how good you are when you can't fix your mistakes.
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I hate dead hard with every fiber of my being and I highly respect survivors that can run me a merry chase without it. It would be interesting to see a weekend without exhaustion perks.
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If I played without them I'd probably sit somewhere in mid purple ranks.
I am not deserving of rank 1 status on either side.
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I look it like a easy and hard mode. Also i don't see the horror aspect of the chase when you know you won't get punished for your mistake.
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Unpopular opinion; new buffed mindbreaker is actually pretty good, especially combined with stealth killers or stealth perks
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Use Huntress' 120 second exhaustion add-on with it.
The only time survivors have Dead Hard is after being unhooked.
90 seconds, remembered wrong. Very strong with Mindbreaker though.
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This feels like it's directed more at Dead Hard than any other exhaustion perk tbh. The reliability of Dead Hard is often up for debate but yeah, it can let people get to a clutch safe zone and prolong a chase. Isn't that what all exhaustion perks tend to do in one way or another?
Exhaustion perks give survivors speed in some way or another (Or stun with Head On). I don't run exhaustion perks sometimes mostly because I don't have all of them yet and the only ones I'm really comfortable using are Balanced Landing and Lithe anyhow but I notice that without exhaustion perks I get caught just faster. I'm not a god at looping but exhaustion helps me delay the inevitable so to speak. Calling all exhaustion perks crutches is kind of harsh though because is there really anything wrong with perks that make your life a bit easier?
Am I wrong for using Windows of Opportunity so I know where to go?
Like, first people complain and want DS, Unbreakable and Borrowed Time nerfed/removed from the game and now people want exhaustion perks to receive the same treatment? I don't get it. What are survivors left with if you take away meta perks and exhaustion perks?
And this coming from someone who has no meta perks and runs exhaustion perks every other match when I'm not doing some kind of dedicated build like idk, killers have meta perks shouldn't it be okay for survivors to have perks they can trust? I'm all for certain problem perks such as DS being looked at and changed so they can't be abused but you people are literally asking for things to be straight up removed and or nerfed into oblivion and I really don't think it's that deep tbh
I still don't understand the whole deal with deadhard and why people are hating it so much lately. My friends almost always end up exhausted on the ground with it or it just delays the inevitable down. There are only so many palettes in each map and when you go through almost all of them it's impossible to loop killers and not go down lol
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I think they're kinda overrated. I rarely use them and I don't feel that much stronger with them, but that's coming from someone who hates metas and always runs meme builds. I do like Head On, but I don't really consider it an "exhaustion perk" even though it technically is one
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Is this unpopular? I feel like any Survivor worth their salt knows that not running an exhaustion perk is basically handicapping yourself.
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No one is doing any of what you are talking about, just saying that exhaustion perks are overused.
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I feel like most survivors can agree on this. I myself have become too dependent on dead hard at times. It's kinda why I'd actually like to see it get nerfed a little.
Most survivors have 1 exhaustion perk at high ranks. You always as killer try to work out which one each survivor has.
They are chase extenders. Same way every killer normally has at least 1 slowdown perk
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I don't like it equip any of the exhaustion perks when playing survivor. You improve a lot quicker when every choice needs to be right. You can also see the difference in skill when survivors that use them are caught on the cool down or is denied.
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I think I can understand the annoyance of dead hard for killers, and can agree to a certain extent why people want it nerfed. If it was I would probably be fine, provided that the nerf was fair and doesn't completely make it terrible.
I would say using exhaustion perks have helped me get better in chases and escaping. At first I would agree I relied on them but overtime I have gotten more skillful with them and now able to use it too its fullest potential.
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Although I personally don't use exhaustion perks (excluding Adrenaline bc I love that perk), I wouldn't say people use them as crutches. Yeah, it's incredibly frustrating when you have a whole team of DH or SB, but exhaustion perks are essentially the survivor equivalent of Hex perks; important, powerful and risky perks that have significant drawbacks. Is using slowdown or hex perks crutching? No.
DS though, yeah, I think that's a crutch. For every time it's used on a tunneling killer, there's three killers who get DSed unfairly. Just my opinion though.
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Won’t happen because survivor weak killer op.
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How is using an exhaustion perk risky? Dead hard I can sort of see with how much I go down while Being exhausted. But sprint burst, balanced landing, lithe, head on? The most risky out of the listed ones is head on, but even then the hitbox is very forgiving for the survivors when bursting out of a locker.
Exhaustion perks aren't inherently risky, especially when the majority of them involve sprinting away to a safe distance.
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The idea is to give them a better chance in a chase; they all have counterplay if you can figure out the tricks. Good pathing will make sprintburst useless, lithe is just the hex: huntress' lullaby of exhaustion perks, balanced landing is plain hard to activate, you can wait out a dead hard (or just have them exhausted on the ground), and head-on is just awful. Plus, you can only use one.
I really don't mean to be sharp, but I take some issue to this statement:
"But the matches I do play without them feel more rewarding because I rely on actual skill rather than 'press e to erase all mistakes'
I have to actually strategize the loops I'll link together when in a dangerous position rather than knowing I have a safety net with dead hard."
The idea is that you adapt to the presence of dead-hard with skill; you can often times bait it out, especially if you zone them into a bad spot. The issue comes with perks or perk combinations that are either uncounterable or nigh-uncounterable (EG, hex: ruin/hex: undying, DS/Unbreakable), which require you to waste large amounts of time to counter them. Dead-hard can easily be countered by mindgame skills.
I do understand the frustration when you have to make a hail-mary lunge, they dead-hard away, and pallet- stun you; it's happened to me millions of times. But this is the same feeling survivors get with ruin or NOED or BBQ or even knockout; they have to go out of their way to deal with these. Even killer abilities, like spirit, depend heavily on survivor skill. This is just how perks work; they change how the game works, and if they're well-designed, they are counterable, but still keep their utility.
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Maybe risky wasn't the right word; difficult to use is probably better. Balanced, Lithe and Head On all require specific setups/scenarios to work, and for the survivor to not still have exhaustion. Exhaustion bursts can be wasted or not used to their full effect, they all require a dedicated perk slot for an effect that may not even help, they can't be stacked on top of each other. Sprint Burst in particular is notoriously finicky to activate effectively, which is why you see people who are less skilled walk around everywhere to save their Sprint Burst or wait until the last second to sprint away. Both of these put the survivor at risk if they aren't attentive enough, or react too slowly or poorly. It's an extremely strong perk but not always a guaranteed escape to a safe distance.
Admittedly, you could criticise them as not too difficult to use for experienced players, but that's the same for most perks in this game. They have many activation conditions and disqualifiers. The only problematic one is Dead Hard in my opinion, for the additional distance that can't be countered. Plus, Lithe and Balanced aren't even very good in the first place. Head On is a meme.
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Ah yes, let me bait out this dead hard- well nevermind... he made it to the pallet... now the chase is reset because he can erase his mistake of bad positioning, and I'm forced to break the pallet.
Baiting only works when you have a survivor extremely outpositioned. Which good survivors will hardly ever allow to happen because they know how to optimally loop. Even for other exhaustion perks you can't really bait out a lithe when they gain so much distance that you might as well look for another survivor to chase.
I can attest that I'm a boosted survivor player, mostly because I can erase my bad positioning with exhaustion perks. Dead hard being the primary offender there.
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Remember; zoning takes skill and game-knowledge. I eventually managed to pressure survivors into inefficient dead-hards, and I'm just mediocre. They might get away and force me into a lunge cooldown, but at least I know they can't do it again, at a more optimal location.
These exhaustion perks are meant to be very powerful, anyhow. They're really the only perks that can meaningfully allow from escaping chase, other than iron will and maybe lucky break. I would be supportive of a nerfed exhaustion perk weekend, just to see really how impactful they are, but I guarantee you that it won't be fun (and I'm a killer main).
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It’s 120 when you use both on people so many survivors give up healing after I tagged them or gave up chases because they can’t do or lithe away
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That's what happens when you become reliant on exhaustion perks to do good.
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IKR and 2mins no using it changes everything it shows who’s actually got skill and who’s gonna quite for it
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Objective: do gens. What do you need, a bot and time. How do you create time, get in chase. How can you prolong a chase, whether you’re good, bad or an in between? An exhaustion perk.
who cares
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Most exhaustion perks are literally handicaps or used to be toxic.
Balanced Landing, Lithe, Dead Hard, Adrenaline just feel like handicaps. (Even if Lithe and Balanced are more situational)
Head On isn't even used really to escape lockers last second, it's used on killers who weren't even going for the locker, they just wanted to stun the killer
Sprint Burst... it's basic but it's neither a second chance perk or toxic. Sprint Burst is literally the only exhaustion perk of survivors that's fine.
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A lot of people, just because you don't care doesn't mean others don't as well.
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a lot of people are so triggered by exhaustion perks? Try getting in a chase with no bloodlust, actual infinite loops, and sprint burst that recharges midchase while running. Dead hard has been around for nearly 4 years. It wasn’t until the first nerf to all exhaustion perks, then nerfing balance landing, and voila, now we need to complain about dead hard.
Forums are boring these days. Just the same ol’ regurgitated topics (for the most part). Next up: NOED is BS, BT should be deleted, Keys are trash, Moris are trash, ruin undying tinkerer, maybe a BBQ thread for good measure, don’t forget “small pp,” etc etc
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I can honestly say in my three and a half years playing this game I have never used an exhaustion perk, except when doing adepts, or if a specific tome challenge required it.
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A to outplay that cheese perk I agree. Only bad survivors tend to cheese off of it. Although you haven't seen a good survivor shift tech you with vault build. You can pretty much reaction vault every window.
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I usually just end up exhausted on the floor.
But lemme tell you, when I make a game-changing dodge.. pure dopamine.
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When killers can't instadown, teleport across the map in seconds right to survivor objectives, and have no counter with just 1 perk Ill feel bad for running exhaustion perks.
Until then killers can follow my Sprint Burst into looping position.
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I like how some of these comments are "fixing your mistakes" or "press e to fix mistakes" just say you hate dead hard (a perk that barely functions half the time) and go lmao
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Using exhaustion perks to get into a looping position is exactly how you counter those types of killers.
The way those killers get you is by catching you out of position. So, you can either be observant to see the killer coming towards your gen, and sneak off to a more favorable position. Or you can be prepared to use an exhaustion perk to get yourself into position.
Even freddy has a tell when teleporting to your gen. You can either respect the tell by sneaking off, or stay and risk being hit if it isn't a bluff.
If you get caught out of position by any of those killers even after using an exhaustion perk, that is entirely your fault.
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All the exhaustion perks are another health state, plain and simple. Especially when it comes to Dead Hard and Adrenaline. The ones that take the least skill to use are the best exhaustion perks in the game. Hmm, who would have thought?!
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I genuinely don't understand all the hate against balanced landing and lithe lol
How are these handicaps? I understand balanced landing is powerful on certain maps but otherwise it makes a survivor very predictable in chase if they're going up.
Lithe I feel is a bit more straightforward and easy to use but gives away your position with the loud notification unless you run quick and quiet with it but it's got a lot of potential.
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I have no beef with certain exhaustion perks. Lithe, balanced landing, sprint burst ( kind of ), and adrenaline. are some of the more fair perks.
Lithe requires you to already be in a good position to make use of it. Rewarding you for sticking to areas where you're not outpositioned.
Balanced landing requires you to set up the drop in the first place. Even with the perk you still suffer from a half second stun when landing. Putting you in a position that could land you on the hook. But also rewarding you for forcing a killer to endure the horror that is Haddonfield.
Sprint burst I find annoying because survivors typically use it as a dead hard when healthy. I main blight so i like to think they panic when they remember I have a sprint burst too. But as a survivor it can be used to get you out of a situation where you would normally be outpositioned because of your questionable positioning. letting you sprint to a loop to start the chase in a much more favorable position.
Adrenaline is highly situational, even if it gets you up from dying you could be slapped down instantly. But I dread going against a team that all get healed at the end, destroying my hard work and any hope of getting more than 1 kill in the endgame.
But one perk I hate with a passion is head on. Primarily because survivors use it as a bully perk. God, the 4 man SWF's I've faced that all used that perk.
The rest I consider crutches to one degree or another.
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I don't think exhaustion perks or how survivors overall use them are to cover mistakes. Killers are by in large faster than survivors and the majority of exhaustion perks give a very small window where the survivor (can be) on par or faster or than the killer. Most of these skills have limited strategic use.
Sprint Burst - usually only good at the beginning of a potential chase to get you from a dead zone gen to a safer tile. Can be worth 99ing, but only with a great deal of attention and care. The user always has to weigh when to use SB or when not to.
Balanced landing - so very map reliant as to whether or not you'll get use out of it.
Lithe - probably the most versatile of the exhaustion perks, but also heavily reliant on the map. A map with a lot of gens in dead zones? Lithe probably won't help you. High latency on the killer end? Yeah, probably still won't help.
Dead hard - you have to be injured which is something you want to avoid and it's benefit is not nearly as much as the others.
The point is that exhaustion perks are not a get out of jail free card. All of them have their advantages and disadvantages.
Is it a survivor 'capitalizing' on a mistake when they Lithe through a window? Or is it good judgement of where they and the killer are at that let's the make valuable distance? Probably depends on the survivor and their map knowledge.
Going back to the point that killers are generally faster than survivors in a 1v1 , I don't think that survs rely on exhaustion perks as a 'crutch' but often times it's what makes them competitive. Sure Awesome Survs can run certain Killers for multiple gens, but if you matching knowledge for knowledge, skill for skill, exhaustion perks are deffo a thing that allows survs to stay competitive IMO.
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If they buffed Mindbreaker to be a 10s exhaustion then it would actually be pretty good. 5s is to short for anyone other than a stealth killer. But yes I agree people rely on exhaustion perks way to much, they do let you get away when you were caught out of position after all.
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And Killers rely too much on slow down perks to win. They hide behind their gen prevention, slow down, or regression perks to make up for their own bad plays. They could just play better and apply the proper pressure without needing a perk to do it for them.
And Survivors rely too much on healing to win. They should just accept injury and realize they don't need any additional health states than they should have. (3. Healthy, Injured, Then Dead) Healing and getting unhooked is just rewarding their mistakes in the end.
And Killers rely way too much on their powers. If trapless Trapper can down a Survivor, the others can as well. A Nurse relying on her blinks isn't really expanding her horizon of outplaying the survivor with mind games. Victor stays inside, using him is a crutch.
Yep.
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You could at least attempt to stay on topic
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Nah, you're basically saying a core set of perks is a crutch simply to push a agenda that players will evolve into a better skill level by handicapping themselves for supposed nonbias reasons. Survivors can win without exhaustion perks? Yep. Killers can also win without slowdown perks? Yep. Doesn't mean they don't play a crucial role in combating issues in a match that could be out of the player's control. Whether it's the massive dead zone revamped maps with a gen sitting in the middle of nothing or walking your low mobility booty to patrol gens on one side of the map to find out they are actually working on the other end's gens.
Really want to risk doing one of those middle of the corn or middle of the grass (like on Nurse's map) and have a Leatherface come rushing up ready to face camp you for the rest of the match? No thanks.
I could down people with only Big Sis, but I sure as heck am going to take the easier route and use little bro to.
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I hope you also have the same opinion about regression and game delay. Making mistakes? That's fine, run four game delay perks. :^)
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adrenaline, the perk that gives you the longest speed burst and a free health state is one of the more fair exhaustion perks? this i need to have explained ngl
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I haven't seen a survivor not running an exhaustion perk in a very long time, mostly dh and sb.
But the answer yup, most survivors rely just waaaaay too much on exhaustion perks.
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Gen regression perks have conditions except ruin and corrupt, as long as it's up it's working.
Pop - hook a survivor.
Surge - down a survivor with an M1.
Dying light - buff a survivor since the beginning of the match and hook non obsession survivors.
Forgot the name of the new perk on twins - kick a gen every what? 120 seconds? I'm unsure of the time.
Now on survivor exhaustion perks.
Dead hard : be injured.
Sprint burst : run.
Lithe: have a good position and vault a window/pallet.
Head on: this doesn't count since it's mostly a fun perk.
And most killers use slowdowns because of that, killer does play against 4, killer has to manage time, same as survivor but less since mistakes cost less.
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There's a reason why exhaustion perks are considered some of the best in the game.
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You win the thread 😂
I love the retort “you could stay on topic” 😂
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First off, "to win" is a bit exaggerated, but it is indeed the case sometimes (Like securing an exit gate escape with DH).
But I do agree, some rely on exhaustion perks too much, and their skill often lacks in looping, some survivors last way longer in a chase without an exh perk than survivors who have one.
People who play survivor as a beginner should try and avoid using exh perks like DH and SB into their firs builds. Those two cause some games to be thrown because of how they act.
SB - They walk all game, to save it or to recover from exhaustion = SO much time wasting when walking, can be kinda made up with fixated, but still, SB isn't only used in chase, mobility is one of the more consistent ways to use SB.
DH - Makes you too confident in certain loops / against killers. "Meh I can do another loop, I have DH" *Too bad reaction time and gets hit anyways, or DHs into a wall*
So what about Lithe and Balanced? (Head On is just a meme, SWF use it to bully or to coordinate saves, but imo doesn't have that much correlation with the other exh perks, looking at the fact it's usually not used in chase, exceptions do exist though, like deception)
Lithe - Requires game sense when you should activate it, and does encourage you to do gens around places with windows, though maps like The Game suck since there are like 4 windows in total in that god damn map, not including pallets though. It also comes in unexpected, usually killers expect like DH or SB, if they think you didn't have both, you can totally mind game them and use QaQ with it to get out of a jungle jim without them knowing, it's very fun :).
Balanced - Of course is also map dependant, but also require skill, since you still have a fall stun and those few milliseconds can cost you a health state. But very strong on maps like Haddonfield or The Game. But still, you are not immune to the stun! You can still get hit, like when killers still hit you when you're activating SB.
So, both of these perks don't really encourage "unhealthy" gameplay like the other two. It's just these are usually seen inferior on how map dependant they can be, but can be really strong when used correctly. Of course the other two can be very strong, but can, like I said, make you a liability to the team.
So what should people do (Imo)? Avoid DH and SB as a new survivor, train your looping first, I don't know if this is an unpopular opinion, but I do think looping requires skill and some people could need a bit of training on it sometimes. When done with that, practice the exh perks if you want, look up videos, don't just walk to recover from exh and try to use DH to make distance to pallets / windows, but you'll probably DH into nowhere to avoid a hit, so be aware of your surroundings.
Also this thread shifted from "Relying too much on it" to a "Exh perks are too strong/Exh perks are fine" discussion, like yikes. My take on it, they're fine. It's usually just a few seconds more before their inevitable down status.
But that's just me, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk, appreciate any other opinions!
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Adrenaline activates ONCE per match, you may never even get to the point where it activates because you and your team have to finish all of your objectives to get to use it (and it may not even be useful for you in the moment, because unlike all other exhaustion perks, you do not get to choose when you use it unless you're the person on the last generator).
Sure, it's a free heal/pick up and an entire team of injured-into-andrenaline players can be devastating to a killer's hope of winning (unless... hmm... he has NOED or an insta down), but considering the conditions need for it to proc, it's a fairly well balanced perk.
It's really only an exhaustion perk in the literal sense of the definition (i.e., it causes exhaustion upon activation) rather than the more traditional definition of an exhaustion perk (a perk used to prolong chases), if that makes sense.
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Agreed, the game is already difficult for most killers as they are tied for time and exhaustion perks make it so killers have to give up more time in order to end chases.
Like the SB/Lithe/BL making it so the killer needs another 10-20 seconds just to catch up to the survivor, or the DH that can reset chases entirely, making it so the survivor who should've been downed, gets a second chance to loop the killer again.. and as we know, some chases take forever and there's been times where a DH has given a survivor another 30-40 seconds of loop time against me (generally because they have a very good map to work with.)
You then have to account that every survivor could bring an exhaustion perk.. making the problem even more stupid. I think the perks by themselves are fine, but when you put them on a competent survivor with a very strong map, illustrates the problem with the game.
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