Tunneling, DS, and BT Fix

So I have a theory that might not only fix tunneling, but also the frustrations of DS and BT. It might have been suggested before. I have roughly 1,000 hours as killer and roughly 500 as survivor, but I am a killer main through and through (my XBL GT is Li Justice Li if you want to compare achievements and see my stats.

Warning, this is long as hell!

The biggest issue with tunneling is the powerlessness of the person being tunneled, and how frustrating it can be for the Survivor. The biggest issue with BT is it can be abusive if the unhooked survivor body blocks or baits the killer for a crucial time wasting hit, and again, the killer is powerless to BT. I often end up hitting a BT Survivor on accident or am forced to because they literally get in my way knowing they have endurance. This is especially aggrevating in the end game. BT is also completely useless against stealth Killers which I still don’t understand why they don’t make it proximity based instead of TR based but I digress.

The same is the case with DS. I have literally hooked someone, started a chase with someone else, down and hooked them within 30 seconds, and here comes the injured surv with DS baiting me. Slugging is boring for both sides. And with Unbreakable being relatively meta, slugging is risky in of itself. Also DS punishes endgame play, as a gate might be open, and you literally can’t hook a recently unhooked survivor because they DS and get away no fault to your own. In those instances, the killer becomes powerless.

So how do you fix it? I think they are on the right track with the upcoming DS changes but why not just change the mechanics for unhooks and make it standard? Here’s my suggestion:

“When a survivor is unhooked, they gain ‘ethereal’ for 60 seconds. This allows the survivor to be invulnerable from hits and powers and to be able to walk through the killer and other survivors. Ethereal deactivates as soon as a survivor is healed past 50% of their injured health state, the survivor performs ANY action (not including vaulting), or after 60 seconds . Ethereal automatically deactivates as soon as all 5 gens are powered, or the EGC has begun.”

So essentially, an unhooked survivor cannot be tunneled, and loses their invulnerability as soon as they perform any action like healing or repairing/ opening an exit gate, unhooking etc. This immediately forces the killer to go after someone else, and the unhooked survivor is encouraged to go do something else. To deter a free escape at the end game, this immediately deactivates if all gens are powered. The unhooked survivor can’t abuse this function (the same way BT and DS can now) or get in the killers way, and the killer wouldn’t want to waste time by waiting the 60 seconds.

Tunneling is only mostly an issue in early to mid game. I think we can all agree if the gates are powered it’s free game (including camping). Why is it for some reason more accepting late game? Because you’ve played a full match! Nothing is more demoralizing as surv than to wait ten minutes for a lobby to get tunneled out of oblivion after three minutes no fault to your own.

This is the same thing they are trying to accomplish with the DS changes, and I think if they created a mechanic like this, they can just change DS and BT into altogether different perks like they did with Left Behind.

As a Killer main I would love to see both those perks go, and it would make killers get better by focusing on gen pressure instead of tunneling like a knob, while also removing one of the most toxic things about this game.

As someone who plays survivor a lot, this would take away the “pressure” from having to run BT and/ or DS and let me be more creative with builds. The obvious benefits to new players is there as well.

Lore wise I’m sure they can easily add something like the entity wanted more “hope” for the survivors so when they fail etc etc etc that parts easy.

I would like to hear constructive criticism of the drawbacks versus the current state of the game.

-Mike