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Knock Out discussion
Continuing a series of threads on the least picked perks according to Nightlight, next up is Leatherface's perk Knock Out (0.48% usage)
Knock Out -
Survivors put into the dying state by your basic attacks are not revealed to other Survivors when they are standing outside of a 32/24/16-meter range.
Survivors put into the dying state by your basic attacks crawl 50% slower for 15 seconds, and their recovery speed is reduced by 25%.
During this time, Survivors are affected by the Blindness status effect.
Blindness prevents Survivors from seeing auras.
The benefit of the perk is obviously that if you happen to slug a survivor this perk might slow down the process of them being revived. (Maybe, a little bit. 🤷♂️)
Looking at downsides, it's worth noting some players hate getting slugged for whatever reason and this probably translates in them not using Knock Out when they happen to play killer. Honestly, though, I suspect that's not the primary reason this perk sees such low use.
I think the biggest downsides that hamper this perk's effectiveness are:
- Unlike Third Seal, other survivors can still see a Knocked Out dying survivor's aura if they're within 16 meters. For context Deathslinger's rifle is 18 meter range, so that should give you an idea of how far away you can be from someone who is Knocked Out and start to see their aura. It's not HUGE but it's still a pretty decently sized range so it's not clear just how much this perk actually slows down other solo survivors looking for a Knocked Out ally.
- And the perk is even less useful against swf players since they can simply relay their location to speed up save attempts. There's maybe a marginal benefit still when all the swf is far away and there are no good landmarks nearby or something like that but mostly it won't do much.
- The perk does technically add up to about 7-8 seconds to recovery time because of the 25% speed penalty, but that's probably not too important a benefit and certainly not enough on its own to make it worth a perk slot.
- Also Knock Out for some reason only works on Basic Attacks which limits the killers who might benefit from it consistently.
- And finally making the dying survivor Blind isn't all that useful really since, honestly, they're not going to be able to do too much with aura information while they're stuck on the ground. Best case for them without Knock Out if they see an aura is to maybe relay that info to a standing survivor on comms, but either way the usefulness of auras while you can't really do anything is more limited.
So as it stands Knock Out is a pretty bad perk. Even in the context of when you plan to do a lot of slugging in matches, you're still probably better off using a more generally useful perk than Knock Out because the benefit you get is fairly marginal most of the time. And if you never slug the perk obviously does nothing at all.
All that said, while I do think Knock Out needs a buff, there's the complicating factor that we do have the Last Survivor and new base game slugging game mechanics coming on the horizon, and when that happens it's possible Knock Out will be changed in the process. But even then, one way to buff the perk that would maybe work in both the current system and the future possible system where survivors can revive themselves after a while is to increase that 25% recovery speed penalty. If that number is boosted to, say, 50% then now a dying survivor is looking at a baseline 15 extra seconds in the current game and possibly an extra 23 seconds in the future rework before they can be revived. That would hopefully open up more opportunities for on and off slugging for pressure where you can leave someone on the ground a bit longer and then come back and hook them after you do something else like a second chase where you get another hit or down or pallet drop, etc.
It's also ironic the perk only works on basic attacks now. It used to work on all attacks but that was changed in patch 4.1.0 for ... some reason, I never really understand the logic there. (It had maybe something to do with wanting to simplify the number of instances the perk could trigger I think? I'm not sure.) At any rate, if they ever reconsider and let it work with special attacks again that would at least help it a bit too.
Comments
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I think the only reason for them changing Knock Out from triggering on all attacks to basic attacks was that Cannibal already has an add-on that does almost the same thing. I agree on recovery penalty buff, however I would also re-add the deafness effect (without the white noise, since some people get sick/ get uncomfortable after hearing such sounds (I hope you know what I mean)). Also the smaller FOV part was cool, perhaps they should add it again (and make it fade in instead of instantanously reducing the FOV, reduces the odds of making people feel uncomfortable). Making it available might be a bit too much (unless you remove the "dying survivor can only be seen within x meters part), especially on range killers. But even if they would buff it, almost noone will run it unless the mori update becomes reality one day.
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I am going to propose same treatment to this perk as to last survivor standing perks (like sole survivor) - the worse the petk is and the less the perk is actually used, the better game we will have.
Basic idea behind this perk is to make slugging safe. This can work against solo, but not against SWF. Also it makes the game boring.
Ideally I want this perk (together with insidious) gone or totally changed
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I'd like them to change it to not be for slugging.
Instead have it be when you injure a survivor with a basic attack they are blinded and other survivors cannot see their auras until the survivor is healed/downed, survivor can also suffer from hindred for 15 seconds. This will block the survivor in chase from using their aura perks and block other survivors that are running a perk like empathy or bond from seeing where that survivor is being chased. If survivors want to use their aura perks they will need to spend time healing themselves/eachother.
I would also have them change the color of downed/hooked survivors to a different color that does not apply to the blindness status effect - similar to how killer items like pig boxes are not included. Perks that blind the aura of downed/hooked survivors only hurts solo q and is unnecessary.
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From all the TTV's I've watched, there's also a benefit of not being able to immediately pinpoint the aura of the downed Survivor, so it's not so quick to say "Oh, the Killer is over there".
Not really useful against SWF's though until they introduce a method to chain Undetectable through a down.
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It's a bad perk.. if you're going for hook kills
Otherwise if you're going for unconventional kills like wesker throw kills, bear trap kill, zombie kills, etc then it's a staple in the build and great as a backup if your third seal was cleansed
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Yeah I really miss that part about it. It went from being really cool when it's used against me to just being bland. I wish they had kept the deafness effect at least as an option for those that want it since it doesn't do much overall except add immersion
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I'm a little confused, Knock Out doesn't trigger on any of those special abilities you mentioned, it only works with basic attacks. Why would it be a staple for Trapper or Wesker?
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I never said it did? I mean if you're going for those types of kills
Here's what I mean if you're still confused: https://www.reddit.com/r/deadbydaylight/comments/y0lp7z/a_collection_of_unconventional_kills/
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I'm still not following. Say you throw someone with a Wesker Bound for instance and leave them slugged afterward. Knock Out didn't trigger because it doesn't work with Bound, only with basic attacks. So why would you use Knock Out if you're intentionally planning to go out of your way to do that, it wouldn't do anything?
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You M1 them so they gain bleedout progress more easier since their teammates will have a harder time finding them, thereby allowing more time for the bleedout timer to progress so you can kill them later with a special attack
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Sorry I'm really not following what you're trying to do. So you're saying you do a basic attack to Knock Out someone, they bleed for a while, and maybe when they're really close to bleeding out entirely much later you try and knock them down with a special attack instead?
... I don't get it. Why go through all that effort? Even if you're trying to bleed them out, why not just do another basic attack at the end? Why would it have to be a special attack at that point? Is it just a meme thing?
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Yeah mostly a meme thing, basically instead of simply dying from bleedout it looks like they were instantly killed from you attacking them, even if it is counted as a bleedout
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I think i recall peanut making a remark for on basic/special attack for knockout. i think I remember him saying something lines of changing it to not work on huntress hatchets. this is very distant memory.
Knock out encourages leaving survivors on the floor and tries to incentive the killer to bleed out the survivor by denying the survivor the ability to see teammates on the floor. there is just few problems that make it ineffective at the job
1) SWF can still see survivors that are on the floor by doing call out, so premise of the perk does not work. It only works for soloq but it does not work too well because 16 meters is still decent detection range to still find the survivor. It is bad at keeping survivors on the floor.
2) The recovery time and slower crawling speed for 30 seconds are irrelevant bonuses.
3) Hooking survivors is faster death then slugging them. There is no chance the survivor ever dies to 4 minute bleed out with or without this perk in normal dbd gameplay. Slugging is relevant without the perk, so why waste a perk slot for unrewarding action?
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slugging is weird in current dbd because survivor do not expect to get slugged, so they do not bring perks to counter slugging because slugging is uncommon. The reason why its uncommon is because its unrewarding for "most" killers to slug survivors when 4 survivors are alive. they don't get rewards for downing the survivor because survivor is almost never at risk to dying to bleed out timer. Its also difficult for weak killers to slug because their time to down is not very good. as a result of no risk of dying to the bleed out timer, SWF can abuse slugging as anti-tunnel mechanic through body blocking where as soloq rarely body-blocks and often plays a more 1vs1 killer lone-wolf gen rush style. Survivors are more at risk to dying to 3 hook condition more so then slugging. this is why survivors used to bring anti-tunnel perks and anti-camp perks to slowdown the killer's chances in winning through 3 hook win-condition.
I would say that say that tunneling, camping and slugging each facilitate each other in helping the killer win if the uses the strategies correctly at the right time. Its big circular relationship that is somewhat complicated to explain. Tunneling is strongest strategy in dbd because if you kill one survivor early into the game, you reduce survivor's repair and healing efficiency by 100%(25% out of 100%) which is very significant. The earlier this happens, the more significant it is. Camping is strong because if a hook is regressed for 60 seconds, you need 1 less chase to kill the survivor making them easier to tunnel out of the game. Now we go onto the most complicate part of dbd which is slugging. Slugging is more of double-edge sword. Slugging facilitates camping because one of risks of camping hooks is that survivors can ignore the hook and rush generators, however this is only true if survivor is ahead of the killer in the generator objective. if you hook one person and then intercept the unhooker and down them, its often better to leave the unhooker on the floor and to push the person on hook to second stage because it becomes easier to tunnel the 2nd hook person out of the game. Certain killers excel at this type of camp-slug type gameplay. Tunneling survivors out of the game and successful creating 3vs1 makes slugging a lot easier to achieve because if you are successful in downing two survivors at once in 3vs1. you can often find the 3rd survivor and chase them which leaves no survivors available to pick up remaining survivors. If last remaining survivor tries to pick up a 95% recovery survivor, the killer can re-slug the survivor by hitting the downing survivor unless one of survivors has the perk Soulguard. Soulguard is like borrow time for slugging although I would say Soulguard is a bit weak in term of duration in comparison to borrow time(8 second vs 20 second BT). In any case, if you are successful in knock out the 3 remaining survivors, you can 1 hook them. Some killers excel/rely on this finisher-type slugging play-style(Twins, Oni etc.). In a 4vs1, slugging for bleed out is too risky. If the survivor team is strong, it will almost always backfire because the killer will lose hook-states for not hooking the survivor. Its a lot safer to hook in 4vs1. The survivor team needs to play very poorly for slugging to be successful in 4vs1. This is why slugging is double-edge sword.
I would say circular relationship between these killer actions go something along this. Slugging -> Camping -> Tunneling -> Slugging. Slugging facilitates camping where camping facilitates tunnelling where tunneling facilitates slugging. The explanation for why this works this way can be seen in paragraph 2.
Knock out is a perk that encourages bleeding survivors out, but the way it does this is ineffective and winning through bleed out for killer is ineffective strategy. Its same reason why nobody uses Third seal. Gimmick perks that do not work vs strong teams and at best work vs weak soloq survivors that have poor teamwork and really bad at looping. personally I think blindness should be debuff that prevents the killer aura from being read and it should not block aura reading from teammates. The whole slugging dynamic could use some tweaking to make the slugging gameplay more streamlined so that twin's gameplay loop is more streamlined. Currently not many players enjoy playing twins because slugging is too advanced for most killer players because how sharp the risk vs reward slugging is. This is why I think slugging needs more gradual rewards so that it is a bit less sharp.
there is also that problem where survivors have sentiment that slugging is boring, unfun and toxic. perhaps it would be interesting to look at why these sentiments toward the killer slugging are there and what could be improved to make slugging less boring, more fun and less toxic towards the survivor. For me personally, the only part i dislike about slugging gameplay on killer side is chain-slugging. this is where you are slugged by the killer and a teammate picks you up and the killer immediately downs you and re-slug you. this is unfun for surivivor because the survivor has little counter-play if they are being camped when slugged. I could see survivors getting base-kit soulguard similar to base-kit borrow time to make this a bit less effective and soulguard being buffed to say 20 seconds. Slugging needs to be seen less as negative towards survivor and be more widely accepted killer gameplay like hooking & camping is.
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On a tangent, I use Third Seal not because it helps with slugging but because Windows of Opportunity is the second most used survivor perk just under Dead Hard at the moment and Third Seal hard counters it as well as every other aura perk. The fact that Blindness helps with slugging is a side bonus honestly, to me the main benefit is it typically totally cancels multiple survivor perks per game.
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Its a perk which should be reworked since it requires slugging for it to do anything what so ever. So if you buffed this perk so it becomes good enough to be run, you encourage a slugging meta which survivors dont want and neither do the devs. With this in mind the only way I can think to save this perk is to have it be reworked to not require only slugging. Maybe rework it so when getting hit with a basic attack it applies some kind of status effect, maybe it slows your gen repair speed for x amount of time? Just an idea.
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for hex perk, that is not really worth it. its risky hex perk that can go down at any time and the information denial exclusively hurts soloq without comms. I have used third seal as an experimentation perk on tier 3 myer's. the results are pretty funny, you can 4 man slug teams with blindness if they're soloq with myer's but as soon as you go against swf with third seal, survivor pick themselves up as if the status effect does nothing which creates this infinity loop of me downing survivors like +10 times but survivor picking themselves up perfectly at 30 second recovery period. that is why slugging does not really work in 4vs1. your better off hooking survivors in this instance. Blindness only works vs soloq and survivor need to be poor at looping for it to be successful. Strong 4 man comm SWF just make this perk very irrelevant which is why nobody bothers with knock out or third seal. They improve slugging in an irrelevant way compare to how killer use slugging to gain an advantage in the game(based off survivor misplay).
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Information denial doesn't "exclusively hurt solo queue" because swf players do frequently run aura perks, including Windows of Opportunity which is the second most common survivor perk in the game. Blindness does hurt solo survivors MORE, but removing aura perks from swfs hurts them too, it's not exclusive to solos.
And if you think "only bad loopers run Windows" you're mistaken. Like I said, it's almost as common as Dead Hard, lots of solid survivor players run it.
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I think if you rely on window of opportunity to loop, then your not really good at looping with survivor. Its like relying on technician and corrective action to do skill-checks on generators. that's kinda why i dislike window of opportunity for its training wheel aspect. it lower skill-floor for looping. a good looper runs Window of opportunity for different reason compare to a low-middle MMR player. If I run this perk, I use this perk to not go in deadzones from previous chases(teammate chases) and to keep track of my teammates that drop pallets(useful for vs low tr/stealth killers).
a build that I used to run for memes is Order doctor(Fake pallet doctor) and I would pick maps like RPD. You would be surprised for how many people that run windows of opportunity just run into fake pallets and turn their brain off when looping. i find that hilarious. I think that is why they nerfed fake pallet freddy because low-middle mmr survivors rely on window of opportunity and just run into freddy fake pallets like dummies.
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Right, good survivors and bad survivors make different use of Windows, but the point is both types frequently use it and Blindness negates it.
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I do not like that it negates this type of information. I think it should only negate perks that give wall-hack on the killer as such as Alert, kindred Wallhack, Wiretap and Fogwise. OoO and blood amber keys should also be negated.
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I think if Blindness didn't negate basically all auras it would be too weak. At the very least I don't think anybody including me thinks Blindness is overpowered! So I can't imagine nerfing it.
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Agreed. But we are getting quite off topic to actual knock out.
I have only one question - can we agree that it's a good thing, that this perk is bad? I mean in my opinion some perks should never become good, because they would make the game more unhealthy then is current state.
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I don't like bad perks, they either should be buffed or revamped.
As far as slugging goes, I've never really understood the complaints about it. If anything you can at least crawl around while slugged which is more than you can do on a hook typically. And eventually in the new slugging system you'll even be able to get yourself off the ground after a while with no perks.
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its not overpowered, but its not well thought out status effect in my opinion. a status effect that is totally pointless vs 4 man swf comm's but can sometimes auto-win games vs soloq due to disorganization.
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I mean.. third seal is useful for helping to get special attack kills so
Basekit soulguard would ruin so many things tbh, it would make sense sure but it basically discourages mori photo bombing because you won't be able to keep the obsession on the floor cuz they can be completely invulnerable and nothing you can do abt it
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Exactly, like when I get slugged I'm confused but also thankful as it's better than being hooked, especially if on death hook and shows that the killer isn't like most
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base-kit soulguard endurance is a lot less severe then their base-kit unbreakable. All these perks are too situational for survivor currently because slugging with 4 players alive offer low rewards for the killer and slugging is only abused by SWF usually by bodyblocking unbreakables, Flashlights or Alex toolbox sabotage which are all anti-tunnel mechanics that soloq survivors suck at using these tools. these type of anti-tunnel mechanics require team coercion which soloq lacks. SoloQ instead used decisive strike as an anti-tunnel tool.
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