The Core Issue With The Killer Buffs

Not totally true, I had a match on comms (with an unorganized swf of much weaker players, but still.) where it bought the bubba using it a solid minute or two of slowdown.

I was also hoping they would throw solo queue players a bone here. Don't get me wrong, the base kit BT is great, but having to play blind on hook saves unless someone happens to have Kindred is just bad design. Especially when you consider SWF gets Kindred for free. Skilled players can play around it. It doesn't mean they should have to though. The whole concept of Kindred as a perk is bad. If two players have Kindred, the entire team is down a perk slot when one of those players is on the hook because of redundancy.

The other aspect of the changes are the buffs to already strong killer players who didn't need the buffs to begin with. There are 1800-1900 MMR Myers players out there and whatnot. And now they're getting 90 second gens and other buffs. I get that the buffs were aimed at the average killer, but high MMR is going to be a circus after these changes.

Yea, my heart definitely skipped a couple of beats when I read about the Knockout Buff. I was like, well #########, in combination with the Spine Chill nerf, I guess I’ll be playing less than I already do if killers equip it more often.

@StarLost The problem with bringing solos up to SWF is the game isn't balanced around SWF, it's balanced around extremely low skill level solo queue. So if we were to implement buffs to solo killer would need massive buffs. More than I think the devs would realistically ever do.

Also, semantics, you know what I meant when I said the average player is bad. The average skill level is a very low skill level, not that the average itself is low.

The buffs to Lucky Break, Distortion, Botany Knowledge, Pharmacy, Dark Sense, and Off the Record and people think that doesn't help solo queuing?

I have to disagree that it's balanced for low skill level solo unless you consider "balanced" that the killer gets his 4k on autopilot.

I ended up in low MMR. Survivors make lots of mistake, can't run the killer for twenty seconds, no gens get done. After the first hook, it's mostly "run around the map and get the next teammate off the hook until everybody's dead".

When I still took notes of my matches it was a 10-18 match loss streak against pretty poor killers, then an escape (mostly hatch), then another loss streak. I think the game is more balanced around the average players where most players are playing. You don't need a single slowdown perk to 4k in low MMR. I've played against a huntress with a single tier 1 perk on Lery's who missed every hatchet and whiffed a lot but still got a 4k at 3 gens left (I could have opened a gate since they spawned far apart, but I wanted to die in misery because such a bad killer who couldn't even hit me wiped out my group so efficiently).

This is why I'm so negative about the changes. The perk changes are mostly fine, some are questionable but overall ok. The baseline changes that apply to all killers at all MMR levels will make low MMR killers completely OP.

To add to that, I personally play with none of the meta perks that got nerfed and I'm still doing somewhat better than my teammates who run them. That's another big red flag for me, because it won't matter that I don't rely on this stuff - if my teammates get even worse when the stuff that made them halfway decent gets nerfed, it affects me nevertheless.

Except Off The Record the rest are negligible.

• Lucky break requires healing other people and it increases by time healed not charges put into, so it collides with any increased healing or cooperating heal, you get Bothany and instead of gaining 16 seconds youll get 10,6, and if you heal as 2 youll get only 8.
• Distortion the change seems ok but the perk has a problem where most Killer reading auras eat the stacks very fast, a lot of times without you being able to avoid it, Ive been using it lately because I was leveling the new Survivor and didnt have much else, stuff like Undying, Darkness Revealed and others can deplete your charges even before the Killer has a second hook, except BBQ the rest eat through it. We still dont have the full data but if the 30 seconds are also out of chase its just too much for a perk that gets depleted super fast or has no use at all.
• Botany is a buff but its only a 17% increase, it shaves 1,4 seconds of a heal from its current iteration (from 12 to 10,5), its not bad but I dont think its much better anyway, We'll Make It still outperforms it by orders of magnitude, after all most heals are done after an unhook, either under it or after escaping towards a safe spot, people injured being able to succesfuly juke the Killer is not the norm and its going to become even rarer after IW nerf, I dont think we are going to see more people escaping the Killer injured, actually I think we are going to see less.
• Pharmacy is still bad and still depends on YOU opening the chests and not other people, on a sidenote the reason they gave for the change also baffles the mind, who gets into a match with pharmacy and lets someone else take the medkit? I mean, you use it without items not when you carry something into the match, plus searching chests is usually detrimental for the team, better to put that time into fixing gens unless you happen to find one by chance.
• Dark Sense requires finishing a gen and the Killer entering 24 meters within you, by that time you probably can see him already or at least hear the TR and know where he is coming from, its a change Im not gonna judge yet, it may be better than current perk or worse but its not a very good perk anyway.

Dont get me wrong, those perks are buffed to an extent but they are not gonna make any difference for Solos and I dont believe any of them will become meta or see any high usage after the first month, maybe Bothany may see use after said month.

Lucky Break on its own is one of the most powerful Perks in DBD. To be able to stack a buffed Botany Knowledge with a Medkit + add ons and heal yourself extremely fast and stop your timer from ticking away and have a means to add a few seconds back over the match is really good.

Distortion tells you what Perks the killer is using. So you can save stacks by hiding in a locker when you know the next aura read is coming, being able to get stacks back just by being near the killer in the terror radius is really good.

You are underestimating a 50% Botany Knowledge when combined with other effects.

Pharmacy can mean multiple medkits, especially if you bring a coin.

Dark Sense will show you undetectable killers and also just let you wall hack loop mindgames. 10 seconds is a significant amount of time when it starts at 24m. It will tell you if the killer actually knows where you are or if they are just passing by and will show you the direction you can go to avoid them if they haven't seen you, and you don't need to finish a generator for it to happen. Like Detective's Hunch it's just going to proc when one is finished.

The aura reading is strong, but I don't think the game's balanced should rely on suboptimal play, which is essentially what limited information hopes to achieve.

We could even throw out the killer aura reading or cap it where it's at. I just think a complete lack of information for saves doesn't add anything fun to the game in 2022, but it definitely adds a frustration element.

Frustration as a feature is something the devs really need to move away from.

Lucky Break is not one of the most powerful perks in DBD, Ive been using it thanks to prestiges and plenty of times it doesnt give you anything because you are not in a high wall zone or a main building and the Killer has direct line of sight, the replenishing is a good idea but its too harsh for it to make any difference.

You can only save stacks against BBQ because you can anticipate the action of hooking, you cant save stacks against anything else because there is no way to predict when the Killer is going to open a locker, when an undying dull totem is behind a wall, when you are healing behind a wall and the Killer activates Thanato, thats the problem with Distortion having few charges and a 30 second recharge time wont be of much use, the perks and addons that eat charges eat them very fast and out of your control.

Im not underestimating Botany with other effects, the increase is a flat 1,4 shave on a 12 second healing with current Botany, from 12, to 10,6, its a buff? yes, its a powerful buff? no and with the nerf to Self-Care the best interaction it could have (speeding up self-caring) is effectively rendered the same, for healing others We'll Make It is almost universally better.

Sure, you can have several medkits with pharmacy, then you have to search for chests, hope nobody searched them already, search them and then go back there for that extra medkit when you need it, not bad but all that time could be put into fixing gens, its not the opening of the chests that consumes time, its having to search for them, I tremble when I see a coin in the offering screen because I know one person is not going to be fixing gens until he opens an absurd amount of chests.

Dark Sense wont show you undetectable Killers because those Killers auras cant be read, same as you cant read them with OoO or Alert or Kindred, there is nowhere on the update where it says it bypasses Undetectable so there is no reason to believe it will.

As I said, those perks got buffed? yes they did, are they gonna make a significant impact on Solo Queue? nope, Solo has two problems, first is lack of info which translates into lack efficiency, 3 people going after the same unhook instead of 1 going, 2 fixing, two people saw the same hex and attempt to cleanse instead of 1 cleansing, other fixing or distracting etc and second problem which is also related to lack of efficiency is camping and tunneling are extremely strong against Solos because they cant know if they have to go for the save or keep pushing gens because there is a camp and its very hard for Solos to support each other during a tunnel, SWFs can rotate people eating protection hits and then healing on a Boon or use a gathering point, heal and eat another protection hit, also during camps finding gens is harder for Solos, SWFs can comunicate where they saw gens so when you finish one you go straight to it, Solos have to search for them and that time can be critical.

Now the big question, do any of those perks help with any or both of those big problems Solos have? no, they just help in areas where Solo may have a bit of trouble but you dont lose games in Solo Queue because a heal took 16 seconds instead of 10,6 (if that were the case We'll Make It would be mandatory), or because you didnt have that extra charge to block one aura reading from BBQ (you can always use lockers or hide behind gens), Solos get smashed because they waste too much time compared to SWF.

P.D. on a sidenote and this is pure especulative from my part and a bit offtopic, I believe there is someone at the developer team with significant power who loves to run Pharmacy and they keep buffing it in ways because said person wants it to work but they keep ignoring the problem with the perk itself which is, people searching chests are people not fixing gens, unhooking teammates or distracting the Killer, they are not doing anything, the people selfcaring at the corner get a lot of flak for being useless but is no different from the people searching chests when the match is not in the bag yet, something like this happened on SC2 development, a unit which was the baby of someone with power and the team just couldnt make it work so they keep changing/buffing it.

Does not matter if makes nurse and blight better at all, a non-issue.

To be fair Nurse avoids most of these buffs to killer, the only thing will be gen kicking buff to her, considering both Blight and Nurse have separate cooldowns from normal M1's, and Nurse doesn't need to break pallets at all same with blight really.