To understand why DS needs to disable on ANY event that the killer needs to be able to block, you need to understand how devastating DS is to killer.

DS is a 5 second stun. That is the longest enforced inaction on the killer in the game. During that 5 second stun, the survivor can run from the killer. The movespeed differential between the survivor and killer is very low compared to both of their movespeeds, only about 8% of their total movespeeds.

This matters a LOT in loops, but not at all over long linear stretches. This means it takes a very long time for the killer to catch up. 24 seconds in fact. During 24 seconds, the survivors can collectively finish a gen. This is the minimum time to CATCH UP. Not get a hit, the survivor can loop after the killer reaches them. Just the minimum time to hit.

So, to understand the impact of DS, you need to imagine it as a 'If I land this skill check a GEN IS COMPLETED perk.

So, the killer basically auto-loses if they eat a DS and don't already have an absurd tempo lead. But DS also hurts their tempo a lot because, you know, they can't tunnel. So far so good.

The problem is the killer's.... ENTIRE GAMEPLAY is blocking the survivors from doing things, and the combo between DS and undying is super bad. It is completely healthy gameplay to block a rescue, or punish a heal, or attack someone on a gen, because that is what the killer does. But if you were just unhooked the killer only has the option of slugging you, which means you will just pick yourself back up and keep going unless they throw the game to watch you, or eating the DS, which, again, basically does a gen by itself if your team is repairing while you run.

If the killer is punished by losing a gen from stopping the survivor from doing something they effectively can't stop the survivor. That means the mechanic becomes uninteractive and DS becomes a conditional immunity that locks the killer out of the game entirely. But if DS is deactivated, then the killer knows the survivor is blocking THEMSELVES until they think they are safe, and killer can function normally again.

In essence, it does not matter how much you want to heal, or rescue, or whatever. If its something the killer needs to be able to block, you should lose your DS.

But obviously there is a potential negative outcome, a player might not heal you to keep their DS or whatever! So there is a negative outcome for the killer with old DS, and a negative outcome for survivor with new. Who do we prioritize?

Well, you want to ensure the outcome that creates negativity isn't the one the game encourages. And if that is the case, we absolutely bias towards the killer's needs here, for MANY reasons.

For one, winning a chase, downing, and hooking someone is meant to be a big tempo swing for the killer. Yes, you don't LIKE being tunneled, but mechanically it is important that you getting hooked weakens the survivor team, rather than strengthens it. The tempo loss of being hooked isn't just the pitiful amount of time it takes to unhook you, its also you delaying going back on an objective to recover, to ensure your out of the killer's sight, ect. DS being strong hurts that tempo aspect of the hook, if you can go right back to repairing the killer's gameplay falls apart.

More importantly, however, is the fact the negative behavior of the selfish survivor is sub-optimal and localized to a small part of the match, while the negative behavior of a survivor 'offensively' using DS completely destroys the killer role and is highly optimal play. In essence, selfish survivors will self correct, losing more often than they win (unless you legit suck so bad healing you or rescuing you is a bad idea, in which case you got bigger problems than selfish DS holders bud) both overall and in terms of comparison to their teammates, meaning they de-rank. De-ranking means they get pooled with other survivors who are bad and losing lots, and if your legit good you won't see them forever. Offensive survivors will NOT self correct, they will permeate every rank besides the 20's area, and their behavior has more 'impact' because it will be more frequent as well as increased in intensity.

So from both a mechanical balance perspective, and a game feel perspective? ######### old DS. It was awful, and the fact sometimes a survivor in your game might be a bit selfish is a cost EASY to pay in comparison to the killer role overall having its entire gameplay essentially ruined by one perk allowing you to repair a gen at 85% in their face, or unhook knowing you can't grab them so you can't stop the unhook.

Of course another option might be making it so the killer M1ing you while you heal, repair, or unhook insta-downs, which would make the inability to grab you more fair, but that has knock on effects through the design of the game. That said, with how dedicated servers are it may just make sense.

As for 'Well after I DS they can just tunnel me...'

Yeah? Ok. See, getting DSed is infinitely worse than being allowed to tunnel once? Again, its A FINISHED GEN. A smart killer WILL just slug you rather than eat the DS because it takes up more of your time, frees up their time, and if you don't use undying actually requires another survivor to come help you much like a hook. If you land the DS you just ate up so much of the killer's time they... lose?

No mechanic can force the killer to not tunnel that doesn't break DBD utterly. Both because they are passive systems vulnerable to dynamic attacks attempting to exploit them, and because like... Low key killer is supposed to tunnel you? Like its an intended feature that the killer wants to snowball either by downing lots of people at once and forcing everyone off gens to constantly rescue and heal, or to eliminate someone to reach a critical mass of momentum the survivors can't repair past. Both of these things are their win condition, and like win conditions in 99% of games they require you to experience some negativity as the person subject to them.

You will never ever escape that, and you need to make your peace with the fact the killer will sometimes camp you, tunnel you, slug you, whatever. That is just going to have to happen. That isn't me arguing to the status quo, that is me saying 'Unless they make the gen repair time 12 minutes long the killer literally needs to somehow get more value out of a won chase than one hook state as an inevitable mathematical fact.' That is literally how long it would take to win 12 chases 'clean' without ever tunneling, letting people heal, ect, before 5 gens are done, it would be ridiculous.

So survivors REALLY need to get out of the 'stop tunneling and camping at any cost' mentality. Its never going to happen. Tools to make camping and tunneling REALLY weak already exist. Right now it happens because the killer struggles to snowball through more 'honest' play, which is why stuff like BBQ basekit or a speedboost from the hook or some innate pop effect make a lot of sense to explore ways to make killers less thirsty at the hook.

Negative reinforcement is already as strong as it can be without breaking the game. Its time to explore positive reinforcement, while also accepting camping and tunneling are 'forever.' We can try to make them less bad (removing spacebar mashing on phase 2 would probably help a LOT in making getting camped feel less bad), and less necessary, but they always need to be options because the game becomes incoherent if they aren't.