The complaints about the DS nerf show why it's needed.
DS is overly relied on. It's not so much used as an anti-tunneling perk as it is an "I can bodyblock with DS/BT/Unbreakable and be invincible and there's nothing you can do about it" perk. Not to mention it's basically a guaranteed escape during endgame if the gates are either opened or 99%.
Things that reduce chase times are what the game needs. No one wants longer gen times and we've been repeatedly told there will not be a secondary objective. Even with NOED complained about so much, people still refuse to break totems because they just want to do gens and escape. So this is where we are.
The real problems are with Nurse and Blight. They are what needs to be looked at. If they need to lose their charges when DS'd then so be it, but this change is healthy for the game and the majority of the killer roster.
Comments
-
Nurse and Blight do absolutely throttle balance decisions, but what's even stupider about the giant DS nerf is that they introduced a perk that does its job, better, on both hooks, that doesn't deactivate on endgame.
You're gonna hate that one more than you EVER hated DS if that makes it to live.
18 -
Having it deactivate during EGC sure. Why not. As soon as the last gen is powered seemed too much, but okay I guess. Having it do all that and nerf the stun? They may as well have entirely deleted it.
14 -
If people can make it safely to loops when the killer has to break a pallet (which is literally 2 seconds), they can absolutely do it with 3.
2 -
A 3 second stun simply won't be enough to punish a tunnel and killers will be more than encouraged to keep tunnelling the survivor who DS'd them because they won't have made enough distance. It becomes even more of a laughing stock against killers like Nurse and Blight, and does little against average tunnelling killers.
DS is designed to be an anti-tunnel perk. In 9 out of 10 scenarios, it activates because the survivor is getting tunnelled. If you don't get tunnelled it's a wasted perk slot and if you do get DS'd by a survivor that you haven't tunnelled then you know at the very least they haven't been doing anything productive in that time.
The only thing that went against this design was the fact that you could use it in endgame. Get off the hook and you're pretty much guaranteed to make it out alive, even though the killer didn't tunnel you. This has been addressed which is great but the stun nerf is completely overkill and makes the perk redundant. It doesn't punish tunnelling hard enough to warrant running and it only activates when you get tunnelled, so you're now looking at a perk that only activates once in maybe a few matches to do next to nothing. You're almost certainly ending up back on the hook and getting tunnelled out of the game.
Not to mention that Off the Record does everything that DS did but ten times better and recreates the endgame problem of being invincible once you're unhooked. It's a baffling design choice to be sure.
8 -
I play both sides. As survivor, I don't rely on Decisive Strike, yet I'm with the people who think the nerf makes no sense.
Lowering the stun to 3 seconds? Defeats the purpose. It's an anti-tunneling perk, meant for you to get distance away from the killer so they'll give up on the chase and go do something else. Not to mention the survivor is also stunned for a second during the drop animation, so they don't get the full 3 seconds lead. To make things worse, it's affected by the poor netcode of the game, so if the killer lags, survivor gets even less time to run. I've had it happen where the killer lagged so hard during Decisive that he was able to swing right after the drop. Extreme case, but if the stun duration is 3 seconds and survivor is stuck in a 1 second animation, then even 200 ping would take 10% away from the intended duration.
Disabling Decisive Strike during end-game collapse? This is more fair. I've seen so many killers struggle to just get a single kill at this phase, so trying to secure the kill on that person who just got unhooked before they reach the exit gate is much more fair. However, there have been times where I've used Deliverance + DS + Borrowed as an "anti-face camping build". allows you to unhook someone who's being face camped during end-game collapse, then you take the hook on purpose, Deliverance off, Decisive strike, and leave through the gate. In this case, it's a counter towards bad killer behavior, so it's unfortunate this won't work anymore. But overall, i think it's a fair change to disable it during end-game collapse.
Solution for killers who hate DS:
Don't tunnel. I have no complaints with DS when i play killer, because i try to not go after the same survivor again immediately after they're unhooked. This is EXACTLY why decisive strike is needed, so that a survivor being tunneled gets a 2nd chance. And it's supposed to be a big punish to the killer, because if you single out a single survivors, then you're sucking the fun out of the match for that person. It's easy to forget that we play with other people, and both sides have behaviors that ruin the fun for others. And when the easy counter/solution to a perk is "don't be a dick and the perk won't affect you", then nothing needs to be done to the perk.
4 -
I'm shocked that everyone forgets that the 3 seconds doesn't start when you start running. Like how the basekit BT is really going to be closer to 4 seconds since you get the endurance when the unhook bar fills up, not when you can move again.
A Nurse or Blight will literally be right back on top of you in one second with a 3 second stun. For everyone else, I guess everyone just assumes they'll get DS'd in the middle of 10 loops with 0 used pallets.
5 seconds is completely fine. I've only gotten hit with it once in the past week, and it was because I literally couldn't find the unhooker.
Hate it when they hide.
6 -
Unless that Survivor wants to be downed again... I have seen happen a few times
Players think that (with DS) "I have this perk I might as well get use out of it"
1 -
I forgot to mention this since Nurse/Blight was brought up:
I actually love playing against them. Those are 2 of few killers where i feel like it's a test of skills for both sides simultaneously. So I understand why they're played so much at high MMRs, because it takes skill to play them well, and takes skill for survivors to dodge them well.
it's always exciting to hear a nurse screech in the distant fog, and wondering if I'm skilled enough to dodge her blinks <3
0 -
Tunneling through 8sec BT then 5sec stun DS happens all the time.
Given 5sec BT basekit then 3sec stun DS will not help.
OTR is surely op in end game, but before that, 5sec or 80 Endurance is the same after a hit.
3 -
Yeah and it's obvious when people attempt that.
if the survivor baits you into a chase again soon after they're unhooked, that's a big red flag, and it's best to leave them. They'll waste their time trying to grab your attention while you go do something else.
Edit: Also to be fair, this started happening more after the previous change to DS where it's now disabled if you perform any action that progresses the match. After that, some people felt like "if i touch a gen, I waste a perk, so i'm gonna go chase the killer down!". It's a side-effect of an attempt to nerf the perk.
Post edited by EntityNea on2 -
So.. you want slower gen repairing, shorter chases... want autohook as well?
1 -
Good job putting words in the OP's mouth.
Second paragraph, second sentence
No one wants longer gen times
0 -
you're right, I misread that... it's 2 am, my bad
0 -
Oh no problem if it was an honest mistake and thanks for the apology. Not a given in the anonymous online society nowadays.
Have a good night. (Even when you might already be up again 😜)
0 -
DS is overly relied on. It's not so much used as an anti-tunneling perk as it is an "I can bodyblock with DS/BT/Unbreakable and be invincible and there's nothing you can do about it" perk.
Bodyblocking only works with BT. If you try to bodyblock with DS, you're gonna get slugged out and lose more time than you gain.
The end-game nerf to DS is very fair. I'd even say it's undertuned to what it needs to be, which is triggering after 5th gen, rather than only EGC, because 99ing exit gates is a thing. But the stun nerf to DS is an absolutely baffling one, and that's because DS is the perk with the absolute highest killer participation requirement. I mean, think about it, in order to get hit with DS, the killer needs to:
1) Engage the survivor before they performed a conspicuous action
2) Ignore any other viable target
3) Knock down the recently unhooked survivor
4) Actually pick them up
Every single step of the way, you have ample opportunity to not do this. You can NOT run back to the hook the moment there's an unhook and focus on a different target. You can go for the unhooker rather than the unhooked. You can simply slug the unhooked survivor and leave them to rot while you continue pressuring or chasing.
As much as some people on these forums like to argue the opposite, Killers do also carry some responsibility for their own play. If you faceplant THIS HARD into a perk that is specifically designed to counter only this exact scenario, you deserve a five second stun. Hell, you deserve a ten second stun with how terribly you misplayed that scene. I once had a 2E from falling for a DS bait and I had no one to blame but myself, and since then, I've had DS trigger against me literally never, and that's not for lack of trying by some survivors.
Probably the only other perk that is quite as tragically dependent on the killer's compliance is Power Struggle, and that thing's on a zero percent pickrate for a very good reason.
Even with NOED complained about so much, people still refuse to break totems because they just want to do gens and escape.
Breaking totems is statistically a really bad counter to NOED.
0 -
Just the instant escape alone, without the stun, makes this perk one of the most powerful. It's a free 100% wiggle.
0 -
I dont go out of my way to tunnel but DS still has it's issues.
~I go after someone and someone else gets unhooked, the unhooked person comes to get a pallet save or flashlight save and gets downed from it. I picked them up and I get punished for their awful play? Im sorry, but how is that a fair designed perk? The survivor actively chose to go and try to save their teammates when they could have been healed, done a generator, but I get punished for THIER awful decisions. "Oh but they waste their DS, and it takes longer to do gens since they aren't doing them" is a common counterpoint I see to this, and my argument is "okay and?". I don't care if they aren't on gens, I don't care if they waste their DS, it still feels awful to get punished for someone else's awful decisions. Survivors hate SoloQ because they get punished for teammates not knowing what they are doing, it's not any different with this situation either.
~Or how about this, you have a bunch of people injured using the same cosmetics, I down one in the exit gates, and get DSed, how is that my fault. I cant tell who got unhooked if they all use the same cosmetics, but I get punished for going for the same person twice? That is horrible design. You put the killer into a guessing game as to which person to down, your chances of getting a hook and losing completely come down to a coin flip. Heck, they don't even need to be using the same cosmetics, sometimes people just get players mixed up, it happens, but tunneling was never your intent, you never actively went for the same person twice, but yet again, you are punished for it.
~Or end-game, person comes to bodyblock with DS because they know if they go down to the killer cant physically do anything about it. You are not actively going for them, but they are still throwing themselves right in front of you. The game acts like it's tunneling when it's not. "Just slug them", okay, well, they'll just get picked up and still leave or the person I was going for still gets out. What do I do then? I cant pick them up, since they will DS me, I cant go for the person ahead of them, since they are bodyblocking me, I'm forced into a situation where I cant do anything.
My issue is entirely based around the fact that I get punished by a perk for other's decisions instead of mine. While it can be used to counter tunneling, which I am fully fine with, the issue is that DS does MORE than that. DS extends beyond tunneling. It puts killers into situations where they lose over something not their fault. THAT'S THE ISSUE. If I tunnel, DS me, I deserve it. But if I don't actively do so, don't punish me for something I never went out of my way to do.
0
