The truth about DS

I complain. Oops, I picked the guy up 59 seconds after he got unhooked instead of 60, after I just hooked someone else. My bad, right?

But you still get stunned instead of getting a hook after a chase and a down. You genuinely outplayed them, but they get a free second chance because of a technicality.

I think it gets mentioned in this kind of situations, because it still is a meta perk that usually gets picked together with the others, especially DH.

DS really isn't that bad, eating a random DS 58s after downing someone is actually one of the best situations for the killer, trading 5s of inactivity for nearly minute of a survivors time. The only complaint about DS that you regularly get is during the EGC, where it basically is a free get-away card. Most of the time you can't prevent either the unhooking, nor pick up the survivor with DS, its a lose/lose situation and that sucks, but its a real corner case. I mean, just because DS is sorta advised as the anti-tunnel perk, its not wrong per se that it got this extra strength in the end game.

A lot of perks have unforseen combos or effects besides their obvious usage, and if we would cry for patching each one of those out the game would be much more boring. BUT OP is right: if I eat an early DS because someone did a super cheeky, unsave unhooking in my face, I might go the whole mile and get that survivor out of the game, its sorta free pressure.

Imagine still complaining about DS

Main issue I see with DS is that if you save it for the end-game you basically get out for free. The other issue is that it adds an extra health state to survivors when triggered, requiring you to effectively get another hook any time it triggers. Also just simply how it can lead to you sitting there watching a guy on the ground for a minute when everyone else is dead/escaped which is just a massive time waste. Main thing is that it's mostly just... annoying, it's rarely used for it's intended purpose of escaping the killer or using it as an anti-tunneling perk but more it gets used as a way to BM the killer. Hopping into the locker, body blocking for a teammate, etc. which basically forces you to "tunnel" the person even if they've clearly no intention to flee. Lastly, it synergizes with Unbreakable, so you will always either recover or get picked up and DS, which is a fairly strong effect. Even after you use Unbreakable, Decisive Strike is still active for another 30 seconds.

I am a bit confused. Are you criticizing me for not asking to nerf DS, but actually saying from the killers perspective that its fine, or are you just musing and throwing your own thoughts into the room?

I literally said that DS strength in the EGC is the only somewhat valid corner case where it might be a bit too strong, and I still think its ok, because why not?

And DS has been literally in the shrine just a month ago, on January the 19th, so it was widely available to most of the community and new players all across the board. But I also said that getting hit by DS might incentivise the killer to go for a full tunnel kill, because there is now literally nothing protecting the player anymore.

Todays strong healing and gen-speed meta has a lot of killers with their back against the wall. If you play nice and fair you get often no chance to generate any kind of pressure, and one of the last ways to do so IS tunneling. Not only is a 3v1 often needed to get some breathing room, starting to tunneling one player out also often leads to overtly altruistic play of others and with some luck you will have two survivors trying to bodyblock and protect their mate on death hook, instead of doing gens.

Its a sad reality, but it can't be changed at the moment. And on the same note, if BHVR takes away camping and tunneling from the killers, many will have literally NOTHING left to play around strong survivors and multiple second chance perks. This situation must be handled with care and and BHVR shouldn't use the stick, in this case, but the carrot, not punishing killers for camping and tunneling, but giving them some baseline rewards for not doing so.

I think a system like Devour Hope, but with heal and gen repair speed debuffs could do the trick. The killer gets more stacks of this baseline ability each time he runs away from a hooked survivor, and on the other hand all survivors get a chance to actually play the game.

Sorry for being a bit negative here, but this just sounds as theory-crafting of a person who never played the game. Not accusing you of that, but your whole comment reaks of just that: theory-crafting. You absolutely fail to mention the other perks you got at your disposal, if borrowed time, which is a staple in many survivors builds, or kindred, which many SWFs disregard as a soloQ perk. But I bet you haven't used in a very long time, kindred provides nearly flawless info on the killer, when he leaves the hook, in which direction, or where exactly he is at a given loop around a hook. But of course, kindred isn't as fancy as a lot of other stuff.

I don't consider DS a no-brainer or auto include perk. Its another second chance, and one that helps a lot when the killer actually tries to tunnel you, but I would much more run kindred and/or BT.

But I am STILL confused why we are both duking it out. Did I say anywhere that DS needs to be nerfed? And if offing a survivor in a dead zone was that easy, you would see a lot more high MMR games that ended with a 2k then a 4E.

I'm fine with DS ever since it was changed to activate after being unhooked.

I do recognize it being a free escape during endgame. But even that I don't have an issue with it.

edit: btw, isn't DS dead?🤣 At least that was what people were shouting when it was last changed.

Your reasoning is completely backward. After eating a DS, you're not tunneling because DS forces you, but because it can't stop you anymore.

Even more so because in your story you're implicitly playing around DS by looking for other survivors and/or slugging the rescued survivor.

Only if you run NOED. It's very easy to save with a healthy survivor and borrowed time/dead hard.

I don’t really care about DS that much any more because of the nerf they added that you can’t do any objectives while it’s active. Before survivors could do gens in your face and you couldn’t do a thing and I would get so frustrating some times. But now if a survivor wants to do an objective then they lose their DS which is okay and if a survivor wants to keep their DS that means they are doing literally nothing for a whole minute, no gens no healing no unhooking, nothing. Which can be very beneficial to the killer, so when you think about it DS is a very balanced perk (sometimes, not all the time).

Yeah, zero complaints about DS from me anymore.

I still assume everyone is running it (and I might down and pick up after an unhook just to get it out of the way), but I feel no annoyance towards it at all.

Thats the thing: nearly everything that protects new and innocent players can be used to protect the bullies even more, so that they can bully some poor killer extra hard without fear of any repercussions. Its just the nature of things :<