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How to enjoy playing against SWF?
It's getting impossible once you hit purple ranks. I've tried everything, it's just hopeless. A game against SWF is a guaranteed loss. Not only that, it's stressful as hell. You sweat and stress out your guts, calculating and using every millisecond of time as efficiently as humanly possible, to the point you are about to faint from exhaustion, only to lose at the end and receive your teabags at the gates.
I'm not a new player, have 600 hours. I know how to loop, how to apply pressure, when to drop chases and all the other BS that has been suggested so often it's become memes. All of this works only against fair soloQ survivors. If you are matched against SWF - you have no chance. You can mindgame like a god, but every survivor's mistake will be covered by "nice dead 'ard". You can drop chases after 15 seconds, and still two gens will pop before a hook, or even a hit. You can't fight the unlimited power of the comms. Here are a few variants on what you can try:
Playing Nurse, Spirit or Blight takes thousands of hours to learn, requiring you to play the game as if it's your job.
Playing any M1 killer is not even discussed. I tried the best builds I can come up with on Wraith and Myers, I destroy solo survivors and get one 4k after another on them, and still they are completely helpless against SWF. The best I can get is 1k.
Playing Bubba and facecamping the first hook can be relaxing sometimes, but it gets old too quick. And you can't facecamp anyone to death if you play against SWF: they will always find a way to toxically unhook him in your face, ruining the whole point of camping.
So what can be done? Is there any advice killer mains can give on how to deal with SWFs and still not die from dehydration caused by excessive sweating by the end of a trial? Is AFKing to green ranks the only option to enjoy this game as a killer now?
Comments
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Alright, so I'll open up with saying that, yes SWF is a tougher challenge and those that stack up with fellow many-hour no-lives are asinine to face. They are stacking an unfathomable amount of advantages despite playing 'just for fun', which is often not the case with the common mentalities of players on both sides here. There is an irrational desire to win in this asymmetrical game that I can only attribute to compensate for being unable to do so in levelled playing fields.
Tangent aside, I understand your struggle. And luckily, you DO NOT need to main these three killers. Nor would you need THOUSANDS of hours to be able to use them and consistently win against even sweatier SWF's. Nurse isn't as hard as people try to sell, Blight is surprisingly easy to pick up if you give yourself perks to help you as training wheels and Spirit has never been difficult to use, although she is currently bugged right now. But you can also use any higher tier killer too and you can also get consistent results.
The key with these sorts of sweaty teams is to not hold back on the scum. Slug when you can. Tunnel when you can (but try to slug rather than hook these ones), abuse altruism to spread injuries and snowball. DO NOT try to go for many hooks. If you can destroy them all in one wave, DO IT. They will recover at the speed of light if you give them an inch. If need be, camp. But camp smart. Spread injuries if you're not a strong camping killer and immediately down the must vulnerable. If you feel they'll be pressuring YOU despite this, do everything to tunnel one out. Pyramid Head is a godsend for this.
Slowdown perks help but I'll be very honest here: They only work to make you 'win more' against solos. You're still going to get outmatched by people using SWF strengths and are generally better than you. Learn to forego generator defense for more pressure on the team itself. That's not to say don't run slowdown, but don't be this brain dead blight that runs to tinkerer each time it rings despite downing a survivor being the much better play. It's incredibly stupid. Focus on spreading the pain on the team and letting go of some generators. A first hook can be an opportunity to get more injuries and more downs, thus more slugs and hooks.
Most of all, don't consider winning a big fun factor in this game. Many people here do and it leads to awful mindsets. If you're gonna lose, oh well, you'll compensate by crushing the next solos. Eventually if you apply these aggressive angles I've suggested, you'll end up rolling SWF's.
Here are killers that are good at higher levels without being the top three: Twins, Pyramid Head, Huntress, Deathslinger, Trickster (Magnificent camper), Bubba (Same), Hag (Hard to use vs SWF however), Oni. They are not TOO HARD to get into either, and are generally great at downing or removing survivors from the game quickly.
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Depends. If you're very definition of fun in this game is entirely casual, you will almost never enjoy going against SWF. At times it can be a very frustrating experience and you'll feel entirely helpless. I really only have a single piece of advice, since i can't really give you any in-game advice as SWF's do not follow the natural "rules" of the game. Don't get mad. No matter what you do, don't ruin the game for yourself. Take it slow, you know you very likely won't kill them all (if any of them) so just enjoy the chases. Take it as an opportunity to see how your skill as as the killer you're playing compares to more experienced survivors, and use that knowledge to learn and grow. Playing against a SWF will never be "fun" but it is an opportunity to learn. Take it with a grain of salt though, sometimes they'll play so mercilessly you aren't really given an opportunity to learn.
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You don't.
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Don't forget the importance of mind games! These help me in a pinch when I REALLY need to get a down on someone. I think that it's a really imperative skill to start mixing into your kit as a killer when you're in purple - red ranks.
Additionally don't forget to drop chase when it's relevant. Knowing when to drop chase is so important. No point wasting a bunch of time trying to catch quite possibly their best looper (You can easily tell if a survivor is good in 10 - 15 seconds of a chase). Instead go pressure people off gens and find someone easier to down to generate pressure off of.
Personally I run perks that incentivize me to leave the hook and go patrol gens because I find camping and tunneling rather boring/not helping me get better at mind games and looping but to each their own. Generally I break out the trio of camp/tunnel/slug if I end up down bad or start to lose pressure or during the EGC because literally why not do it there. Exploit their altruism and slightest mistakes that's the best way to counter groups. Capitalizing on a small mistake can cost a survivor their life and make massive problems for the team as a whole. It takes a lot of time and experience to be able to adapt on the fly but this is another important thing.
Idk I'm just trying to give some tips and encouragement other than "camp tunnel and slug everyone" because while effective, those tactics are bad to depend on 100% of the time. Slugging is very high risk high reward so be wary of that when you do it
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Sorry to say, but you've probably inadvertently played with SWFs on your way to purple ranks. Most SWFs are only two, maybe three people.
As for the perfect survivor scenario, you also have to play at peak efficiency. Know exactly how to run tiles, predict correctly, mindgame where you are needed... Killers up against impossibly efficient survivors need to capitalize on whatever they can.
There are players with 5,000+ hours in the game that still struggle with this as killer. So don't feel bad if you lose.
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What he said
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How to enjoy playing Solo que?
Pray for competent teammates or a swift death.
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How do you know there swf? I guarantee the majority of swf u go against u won't even realize it.
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Usually with SWF teams it is going to be extremely difficult. So here is what I DO.
Carry Warden, NOED, Lightborn and Coulrophobia.
The tactic, SLUGGING: Find one survivor and DOWN them. Leave them down and just hover over them until their team mates are inclined to your presence that you are lingering over the said survivor. once the said survivor is revived or gets up. Down them again. Their team is now going to be distracted with YOU and they may try flash light saves and you can land other hits. If they are inclined to be altruistic (which they mostly are). You can land other hits and have 2 players DOWN. Which soon becomes 3 and then 4. Give it some time and usually one or 2 of them have "The bill perk" to get back up again and down them again.
Eventually you can start hooking survivors and face camping them to see if they are going to pull on the hook with Deliverance. Remember. you need both players next to one another hooked, so one doesn't hatch. . remember. there needs to be 2 of them that need to be 2nd phase on struggling before you do walk or away or they will get their friend UP.
Don't ever close a hatch, unless they are RIGHT there. Usually the last remaining survivor has Adrenaline. So let the last 1 or 2 survivors run their bleed-out timer and there you go. You have just 4k'd a team that otherwise would have cost you the match through infinite loops,
As a survivor The counter to this is to leave the one friend being slugged and not take the bait. While completing other generators. But most often they are ALL telling each other they want to be healed up and back in the game. So that is how that works. It is shady. But I don't really have any other good advice to counter this. I keep Warden and NOED so If there IS that one team mate that prevails and does all 5 generators. I can still hook the one person and trap them in the Trial and catch them before they escape.
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Pray they make mistakes, because if they don’t you have no chance. A good experienced team on comms will stomp an average Killer + player controlling them 90% of the time.
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Some of these comments here tell you to be a toxic killer. One i hate to go against. Camping..i dont recommend it's horrible and just makes everyone hate you :( Tunneling sure i have to agree sometimes it needed. Gen speed is too fast so killers do need to tunnel to keep pressure . I hate doing it myself but i've slowly learned being nice gets you nowhere in this game. Camping i still refuse to do i dont even have fun with it.
I'd say just enjoy the chases, learn from them. I know its annoying when you get super good loopers and t baggers or flashlighters. I usually get maybe 1 kill with these kind of teams sometimes none.
Being toxic just grows more toxicity so i dont ever recommend doing that. Theres enough of that.
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Who enjoys playing DBD in the first place? Is that even possible?
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The game is just not balanced around swf, and the devs dont want to make the game fair.
Play survivor instead. Solo survivor is good or bad, depending on the team you get, but playing swf youself will give you reliable teammates.
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Play nurse and get 4k hours on it, then destroy every team
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You won't enjoy it. If the team is playing to win, they'll all be running variations of the same strong meta build.
Four Dead Hard. Four Decisive Strike. Four Unbreakable. Three Borrowed Time.
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Strategy aside, it is clear that you take the game bit too seriously/personally. There's no advice I can really give you to help with that.
In terms of what to do, mostly everything has been said, or you ought to know already. Though I would highlight the fact that even the toughest SWFs are extremely prone to overly altruistic plays, meaning if you can single out the weak link, and there's always a weak link, you can begin to capitalise on the fact that their team will often do almost anything to save them, giving you insane momentum in the process if you play your cards right.
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Not much if they're a sweaty SWF, exploiting the extreme lengths they tend to go to for altruism is probably your best bet. Find the worst looper and tunnel the ######### out of them until the rest of their team comes out of the wood works to try and save them
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If you will not care about winning, "revenge" (oh you tbagged me?!) or any similar to this you should still have good time. Prob not as good as VS randoms but you can still manage.
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I agree with everyone else, tunnel one of them and they will give you free hits and downs. If they run flashlights, use lightborn, you would be surprised at how boosted most of those survivors actually are. They NEED flash saves to even vaguely stand a chance.
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Love how the advice all boils down to camp...
So basically, there is zero way to have fun and you should just give them an equally miserable experience and move onto the next game.
How boring.
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I don't mind versing SWFs if they're bad. The most fun are toxic SWFs, not really doing gens.
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Stomping solos isn't fun as killer. It's clear when I'm facing a full solo team when I barely have to do anything to make them fall due to lack of coordination.
4 man SWFs are extremely rare, and even then most of them have at least a single weak link you can abuse, and 99% of SWFs are very altruistic.
And yet you're running 4 slowdown perks. Feels fair that you should go against teams like this.
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you don't
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MMR is designed to help solo queue get competent teammates which imo is a step in the right direction. What I don't get is why so many survivors dislike MMR
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If yo go against a flash/sabo squad you will have fun, they usually ######### around and will get a lot of chases. If you go against an immersive squad you might aswell go afk if you don't have a high pressure killer.
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I just try to catch them off guard. If you see flashlights in the lobby, try lightborn, agitation, and mad grit. Sucker them in for some bodyblocking hook action and go to town.
Just try for something off meta that they won't expect. Sometimes it will give you a snowball win.
It sucks so get weird with it.
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Camping is a cheese strat, yes, but it isn't really toxic in this scenario. You're facing a team with an inordinate amount of advantages that you do not see in regular public matches. As a result, you need to adapt and double down on strengths that are overkill in any other scenario than this one. I agree, camping for the sake of camping in regular public matches is just smooth brained and those that 'need' to camp often are just in the wrong ranks.
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Lol, the exact same can be said for the opposite side that is just a bunch of solos. You do realize how asinine it is to face the easiest killer to get results with holding the strongest slowdown combo + Sloppy as a solo queue team? Literally impossible to enjoy and beat this build in the standard DBD format.
The difference is you're actually facing these sweaty SWF's once every twenty games. You face killers like these every two games in solo survivor. But at least now you're ready for the dreaded team that'll probably still win if they're actually good lmao.
Although the reason I'm bringing this up is because OP would also need to realize that there are sweaty SWF's that are rare, and there's everyone else. It's absolutely silly to overprepare just to stomp everything in the most boring and overkill way just to be ready for the dreaded team that's probably collectively better than you anyway. Keep in mind this is just a silly, asymmetrical game that's never been fair. Adapt to what you're facing and don't be the average douch-y turd.
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SWF are not impossible to defeat, especially since a decent amount of them are playing casually. A defeatist attitude isn’t going to help you, and we both have similar hours in the game, but there’s still plenty more to learn in DBD with 100s of hours.
I don’t see how spirit takes 1000s of hours, she’s probably the second easiest killer to play, wraith being number one. Blight isn’t easy, but I doubt considering how recent he came out, many if any non-comp players have used him for 1000s of hours.
I’d recommend starstruck, it makes altruism easily punishable, and being too altruistic is often the downfall of SWF.
Also, just dodge lobbies if they look like SWF.
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“ calculating and using every millisecond of time as efficiently as humanly possible “
some killers do these ... Vs noobs survivors to :(
imagine that to ;)
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NOT THE SLUG THE SCUM
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Ok. Dose of real talk you may not like. 600 hrs is new in a 5 year old multiplayer game. If you are genuinely struggling at purple ranks, you have a massive number of things to improve upon.
The best thing to do is be honest with your yourself and your gameplay. Refresh the basics on running basic tiles the correct way. Stay analytical and think of solutions, not problems. SWF is not your issue. I 100% guarantee you it's gameplay. Obviously can't critique it without VODs.
Look at it as a challenge and keep the right mindset. You can always improve. Going against a team with 10k hrs between them? There's going to be a massive skill gap there. It happens. All you can do is keep improving.
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My experience with MMR was getting paired with newby killers that camped hook 1. I guess the game was trying to pair me with low skill killers and I realised that the high skilled Killers I was playing against were just better and could actually play the game.
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Against SWF, you get out perked more than outplayed. You just can't do anything when a downed survivor crawls in front of a head on readied locker or a pallet for example. The games against them almost feel scripted 😅
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Just proxy camp and prioritize the tunnel. You can rank 1 on SWF that easily.
If you don't like the idea of camping and tunneling, playing killer at high ranks isn't what you're trying to do.
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If you assume you are going against SWF, take non-meta perks that might counter their perceived plans. My favorite are lobbies of friends that bring multiple flashlights. It is hilarious watching myself get crowded by survivors trying to blind me multiple times while I just laugh in Lightborn. Map and key present? Franklin's. Also, Bamboozle in general is a good perk that many people don't take.
What I am trying to say is, change your strategy. Don't just go for a meta build, swap things out. Even some of the worst perks have value sometimes, and some of the best perks are bad against SWF. As good as Ruin/Undying is, a good SWF team is going to collapse that plan pretty damn quickly. Switch to Pop in these instances. You can even include Surge for some added flavor.
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I know about tunneling, it doesn't work either. Since SWF see 100% of the map every second, they will just hide those of them who have some hooks on the other side of the map, and you won't be able to find them again because they always know there the killer is.
About camping: is there any way to actually secure a kill with this? I mean is there any way to camp so that they won't be able to complete the unhook animation?
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Force them to make difficult choices and watch them scramble for each other.
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