Stop saying survivors hold w

Do you think having to chase a survivor for 50 seconds to hit them once because they started to run away early on is good for the killer?

@Trickstaaaaa is saying that running away early is "weak". I didn't say running away late was strong.

I definitely would argue that flashlights aren't very good. Don't get me wrong, if you manage to plunder one from a chest then they're great as the Killer mightn't expect it. If I see there's a flashlight or two in the lobby though, then I can just wait a few seconds and check around me after a down. Nine times out of ten, the Survivor with the flashlight is chilling around a corner so I can hit them and immediately gain tons of pressure. They're incredible against more nooby Killers though, I will give you that.

the idea of a survivor "holding W" is that a survivor just runs away from you in a straight line across the map until you caught up to them, then dropping a pallet and repeating this until they got themselves cornered somewhere, not being able to get away without getting hit anymore.

it is a very safe playstyle and is usually seen as a very boring one, as it doesnt allow the any side to actually express their skill in a chase, due to the Survivor never letting a mindgame happen until its literally unavoidable for them anymore.

its by no means toxic or an incredibly common strategy, but it is a very boring one whenever you do encounter it.

If killer is so easy, why are only 2 killers played in tournament?

If killer is so easy, why does nobody play killer?

Killer queues are instant while survivor queues are 15 minutes long.

No it isn't like this game not as grossly unbalanced.

I never hold W. There is no W on my Xbox controller - only W's in endgame 😎

jk i lose a lot

Killers are just selfish kids, that have 70% killrate and all they do to win is just press M1 and they still complain about everything. They are being spoon-fed by the DEVs like little spoiled kids.

hag is garbage against coordinated teams, she's definitely not being used in serious tournaments

absurdly overrated killer

Spine chill combined with holding W vs any low mobility Killer is one of the most unfun things to go against.

They are kinda the worst item in the game if the killer has any game sense

The idea that "just hold W" would be a viable strategy, let alone problematic or "meta", is absurd. First of all, I have played thousands of hours of this game and watched thousands more, and apart from newbies I almost never see people literally just run in a straight line. Making it out as if that would be an ubiquitous strat really is one of those far-from-reality things that is the basis for the "forum player" jokes. Mind showing me the countless videos there absolutely should be of killers chasing survivors in straight lines all game all day? Everyone plays structures, uses pallets and windows, pretty much all the time. The only times I see people actually just hold W is if they're in deadzones, and they start playing active tiles once they get to them.

Utilizing distance and trying to make more distance on a killer is completely natural a play survivors go for, that is the entire premise of running away. But it does not revolve around "just holding W" whatsoever, to actually be able to make notable distance and make use of that distance, survivors have to play tiles, break line of sight, use unexpected pathing, constantly keep track of the killer, be aware of what they can do and try to predict what they will do. It is almost never a simple straight-away play because the majority of maps just do not allow for that. The only "reliable" situation where running in a straight line would actually be feasible is if you are in the center of one of the handful of big maps in the game and one of the handful of pure M1 killers in the game approaches you and you notice well in advance that they do so. And even then you cannot just keep holding W, the edges of maps are always deadzones, you will have to play a structure sooner rather than later, or risk getting cut off by the killer if you try to "hold W" in a different direction. Whenever you are not in the middle of a big map on the other hand, you cannot run away from the killer in a straight line, that's just physically impossible; and whenever you face a killer that has an ability that allows them to injure or down you or to catch up to you faster (or stealthily), running away in a straight line is also not regularly feasible. And if you want to take a hit (which again is usually limited to M1 killers, and also requires you to be healthy to begin with) and then run off into the direction the killer approached from, you only get around 20 seconds of straight-lining before you inevitably go down. That's not at all a viable way to play.

Just holding W is not a real problem, because it is restricted to a limited amount of situations on a limited amount of maps and against a limited amount of killers, and even in those limited instances most players will still play tiles. In tournament play you will also see survivors use pallets and windows as much as possible, they don't merely run away to make as much distance as possible, which they would if that would really be the simple and obvious winning play. It is limited to situations where they want to take the killer away from certain gens at all costs, where they are in a deadzone and know they will go down anyway and just want to get a few more seconds out of it, or where they are in a spot that they know is too risky to play against the killer and going down in the corner of the map is a calculated move since their team is pumping out gens. In your average pub games, people are not playing very efficiently at all, to more or less give up your life by running into the corner of the map in the hopes that your "team" is actually doing gens is a foolish play most of the time. You are much better off actually trying to prolong the chase as much as possible by playing structures, that way you don't have a set timer until you go down and might actually be able to allow your fellow survivors to have the 2 minutes they need to finish 1 generator.

The only actually consistently worthwhile way to use distance is if you can break line of sight while playing structures in a chase and go for unexpected moves that allow you to leave the tiles without the killer noticing immediately, since then you get to take the chase to another tile, conserving resources and prolonging the chase "for free". Although it has to be noted that leaving tiles like this comes with obvious risks, even against M1 killers, and also requires positional and map awareness, knowledge of timings and fairly quick decision-making.

However, there are some things in the game that do actually make the catch-up time on a distance more of a problem:

There are a few select maps the layout of which can actually reliably allow survivors to just keep running until the killer has caught up. The main culprit in this regard is Midwich, where you can keep running through the circular main hallways, and due to the lack of any real cut-off opportunities, a killer will either have to follow until they catch up, or give up and try to get the jump on you or other survivors at another point. Haddonfield is another bad case of this design flaw, because the houses and fences that are all over that map can be run around until a killer has caught up, though there is a certain albeit small amount of counterplay to this. And then there are a few specific structures in the game that function similarly, such as MacMillan's watertower tile that is infamous in this regard because a survivor can spot the killer over the structure, or the piles of cars on Gas Heaven since they make for very long straight-aways where line of sight can be maintained.

Another issue in this regard can be the starting distance of a chase. If a survivor runs away early as a killer approaches, the time needed for the killer to catch up before the "chase" actually begins is regularly too much for it to be worth following that survivor. However, this is far from a cut-and-dry issue. First of all there is again the caveat that the position on the map often simply does not allow a survivor to make distance straight away from the killer, so they will need to try and make distance unnoticed in an off-direction, which is also not always possible and carries the risk of getting cut off. Then a survivor first has to even be sure that the killer is actually approaching their position and trying to pressure them. So the multitude of stealth aspects of killer gameplay make this less of an issue, for one thing. For another, if the survivor goes for early distance without even knowing for sure that the killer is approaching their position intending to pressure them (rather than chasing or having spotted someone else around there or whatnot), they will waste a lot of time running away from objectives every time they think the killer is going for them. And then there are a ton of situations where the killer does not even want nor need to follow after you. In for instance the common scenario where the killer has just hooked a survivor and is then approaching others on gens, if you run early the killer can just proxi-camp their hook and they will adore you for running away every time they as much as look at you. They stop you from progressing objectives while simultaneously progressing their own. And this is just one of the many completely common scenarios in which survivors have to aggressively pressure objectives and cannot afford to "just run far away early".

And the third issue is the endgame. In the endgame, the game actually becomes a distance race to the exit gates, and in this scenario the catch-up time often proves prohibitively long for M1 killers. If a survivor is healthy, they will make it to the gates from almost anywhere if the killer has nothing but their basic attack.

Things should done about these issues:

Haddonfield needs a bigger rework, always has. For Midwich the solution is to add dead-ends into the hallways, maybe 2 per level. These could be breakable walls, even. The dead-ends on the upper level should be by the drop-downs to the lower level, whereas on the lower level, the dead-ends should be close to the ramps that lead up (not the stairs). And the bathroom ramp should not be blocked by breakable walls - the map needs easier access to both levels anyway, for killers and survivors, plus that bathroom is a pretty stupid dead-end non-gameplay area without that alternate route. And the different specific tiles that are problematic in this regard should be changed. Watertower could be turned into an accessible structure such that it cannot simply be run around in circles anymore but offers new gameplay, the stacks of cars on Gas Heaven should have at least 1 gap in them where killers and survivors can go through.

The "chase starting distance" is a more complicated issue, it does not have a simple solution and like I said, it's not even always a real "issue" for killers. The biggest maps could be reduced in size a bit, certainly, to help with this. Spine Chill could and in my opinion should be reworked. Prior to when its rework finally came, Object Of Obsession was the perk to abuse early distance with, now that that's gone it leaves Spine Chill. I think Spine Chill is too good at what it does because not only does it combat stealth mechanics of all kinds, but it also often allows a survivor to know that a killer is actually coming for them, rather than merely approaching their position for other reasons. The good thing about this is that I think they could solve both issues with one change: make it so Spine Chill does not activate if the survivor is Oblivious or the killer is Undetectable. A lot of people would just stop running Spine Chill due to this change, which would "collaterally" solve the issue against non-stealth killers too. They could then buff Spine Chill in some other way to make it more attractive for players that actually stick to gens when a killer is approaching, such as increasing the repair speed depending on the proximity of the killer, or granting a lingering action speed buff or Haste effect also depending on how long the survivor kept repairing as the killer approached, which would benefit them in the ensuing chase. Note: I know that Spine Chill has basic counterplay in that the killer can simply not look at the gen while approaching it, but I just find that counterplay to be too stupid and inconvenient, I don't want to always preemptively have to crab-walk my way to places just because I suspect a survivor is using the perk. That's just not good game design.

For the endgame, well, that really is a strictly M1 killer-specific issue. Like I said, the catch-up distance thing in general is already mostly only an issue for the M1 killers, but in the endgame this is doubly the case, so much so that NOED on M1 killers has to actually be considered a healthy perk. What can M1 killers do in the endgame? They are not seldomly pretty much forced to hardcamp any hook they can get since they cannot secure downs on other survivors. NOED in these cases actually makes the endgame more dynamic and interesting. But we obviously cannot give all killers base kit NOED, and only enabling it on some specific killers would be an odd design choice too, not least because then the big arguments would have to be had about which killers should get this base kit NOED and which shouldn't. An alternative could be a suggestion I've seen on various occasions before: make the basic attack cooldown a base killer "stat" that changes between them, with most still abiding by the default we are used to (and some perhaps even having increased cooldowns), but certain killers that have less potent abilities being granted a reduced cooldown. This would not only make them more threatening as "M1 killers" in general, but also increase their ability to hunt down healthy survivors in the endgame. Save The Best For Last would have to be reworked to account for this, of course. But there could be other solutions for this issue too. One thing that would already help is if gate progress would reset over time, so that gates cannot be left at 99%. With that change there could then also be killer power-ups that are exclusive to the endgame collapse phase, such as increased speeds, decreased hit cooldowns, or indeed Exposed survivors.

Holding W is not toxic.

HOWEVER, it is undeniable that against most killers without mobility holding W is an effective thing that requires zero effort from a survivor to pull off.

Playing survivor has it's things. You do need skill and to know what your doing. Your skill does definitely show and the better you are, the better you perform.

But it is undeniable that gens are too easy and too safe, and that holding W is way more effective than it should be. If a survivor just holds W when they get a sprint burst from a killer hit, it really takes like 20 seconds just for the killer to catch up. Then they can start playing tiles. And this is ridiculous when you then a survivor who is decent, so they can waste your time by just holding W and then they're very very hard to catch when actually playing tiles. Holding W is too much of an advantage for very little requirement.

It's a busted thing that, to be honest, I'm not sure is even fixable in the current game we have, but it is massively frustrating when playing m1 killers. It just feels like you're losing the game while your opponent is doing nothing. They're not even outplaying you because there's no plays being made. The tutorial Bots waste about as much time as survivors holding W. That says something about holding w....

So many chase oppressive killers have encouraged this. Along with people complaining on the forums has made it more known by more survivors ironically.

Nobody says holding W is toxic. It's just boring but efficient.