So when is the killer meta changing??
So remember back when there was this big hoopla about how 40 perks were being changed and this was supposed to shake up the meta and make different playstyles come to light.....
Yeah that happened on the survivor side, but the killer meta changed very little (if at all).
95% of my games yesterday against various killers were "Eruption, Call of Brine, Pain Res, + insert aura reading perk here". Now while you can argue that "technically" it's a meta change because Eruption wasn't used before the buff, it has the same affect as the old meta perks so the playstyle is the same, except more boring now because killers break chase every 15 seconds to kick a gen.
Meanwhile when I look at survivor perks in most games, there's a huge variety of perks being used and different playstyles at play. Some people go for extreme healing builds. Some go for gen rush (I find those boring), some go for stealth, while a few stick with the old meta (Dead hard, CoH, etc)
So I would love to see an ACTUAL change to killer meta perks to the point where I don't have to run into the same boring perks 30 games in a row
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I think same as OP
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How else you expect Killers to play when Survivors bring their best too.
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No matter what they do you will always see slowdown perks being used bc if killers don't bring some kinda slow down the gens fly by and they end up with no kills or little to no hooks. As long as survivors continue to bring their best items and perks to win killers will do the same, especially lower-tier killers. Not every killer is a nurse or blight that can down ppl fast enough to keep up with gen speeds.
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Maybe it's just a mindset thing, but me and my friends DON'T bring the best. And I know that isn't representative of the community as a whole, but in general, I see a wide variety of non sweaty perks in use when I play both as survivor AND killer. When I say non-sweaty, I mean I run We'll Make, Any Means Necessary, Diversion, and Saboteur as my MAIN build. My back up build is Sabo, We'll Make It, For the People, WGLF.
But when I play killer and I main Huntress, I play BBQ, Iron Maiden, Darkness Revealed, and Lethal. And I do fine. Some games end in 2ks, the majority of them end with 3. You don't HAVE to play the most meta perks at all times is my point and while yes, those perks all work well for Huntress specifically, there's no gen regression in my build. My gameplay is reliant solely upon my skill in chase and my ability to find people quickly and get those hits. If I lose, I know it's because of my lack of skill and if I win, I know it's because I played well. Not because some perks carried me and stopped people from getting their objectives done FOR me
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You are carried by BBQ, Lethal and Darkness Revealed. You would not know where people are without them.
Those three perks are literally the best aura perks Killers have.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but skill is a small part of dbd.
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For Huntress, I use something like that but with deadlock as my slowdown and I do pretty well also. Do you play any other killer with no slowdown? Like Onryo, Mayers, or Doc? Those killers if you don't have any slowdown its painful as hell. You cannot down ppl fast enough and the gens are done so fast bc ppl group up or use toolboxes/hyperforce builds. I think Huntress is one of the few killers in this game that can get by with little to no slowdown since she can down ppl fairly fast, especially with info perks. M1 killers have to run some kinda slowdown since all they have in chase is their base attack and mindgames. That is just my opinion tho. If you do play those types of killers with no slowdown and get a 2 to 3k then my hat's to you, you a better killer than I.
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Killers would keep running regression perks even though gens repair would take 3 hours just to make the game miserable for others and get the "4k perfect skill game" as the devs want, so...
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You might not realize it, but those perks are quite meta/great on Huntress specifically. While most killers utilize similar meta builds there are some that don't due to their power. Huntress can utilize the aura reading better than any other killers as she can snipe. It is similar to how starstruck is meta on nurse and not on others.
The claim that a meta shift didn't happen for killer is also false, it went from passive slowdown to kicking gens. While you might not run meta on survivor, most still do. Most still focus on a build with exhaustion, healing, anti tunnel, gen repair type perks/items and for solos like myself with an information perk. It just is more varied now as they are closer to each other's power level. Keep in mind that in a team there is also more wiggle room of what type of specialist you want to be, while the killer is a single role and reliant on just themselves. It would be nice if more varied builds would be good on more killers and not just specifically for X killer; usually stronger ones in the roster.
In the end people will use good builds, because they want to win. If you want more variety, multiple combos need to be viable without to much of a power drop.
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Okay, so.
Here's the thing. 'Meta' just means 'the right way to play the game at this point in time'.
There will always be a handful of perks that are considered 'better'. The higher your MMR, the more likely you are to see people running 'optimal' builds and the more rigid the meta is.
All you can do is shake it up from time to time.
This isn't helped by the fact that a lot of killer perks range from 'rubbish' to 'meh'. There's a reason nobody runs Grim Embrace, Furtive Chase etc.
Most killers just want to win ASAP at higher MMRs. Very few are looking to make things deliberately miserable, they're just playing to what they believe is the optimal 'build'.
Also - not sure why you're making this an Us versus Them thing. A few months ago, they buffed Boil Over and you had so many survivor groups abusing it to become literally unhookable and stalling games out forever.
Hell, I have maybe 1 game a day where two survivors just hide the entire game to be annoying.
There are mean people on both sides.
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I know right that mean people are on both sides, simply the discussion was about killer meta changing and thus my reply
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Your reply implies that 'killers' are just mean people looking to make survivors miserable.
I'm saying that:
- This is a tiny minority of people.
- This minority occurs on both sides.
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Not sure by your first consideration, but I respect that
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Mean people in a videogame tends to be remembered, while the dozens of other good or fair games just get memory holed.
One bad experience tends to fill all the available space despite being quite small in the grand scheme of things. I call it 'the fart in an elevator' syndrome.
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As long as there's no meaningful and necessary secondary objective for survivors, the game will stay pretty much the same on both sides, regardless of how many changes they implement to the perks/gen-times.
Side note, I wish I faced survivors with more diverse perks instead of the chronic 2+ Prove Thyselfs, 4 DH's, OTR and CoH.
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Yes the "meta" did change but then again it didn't
It's still Gen regression VS. Second Chance and Gen progression
But the perks used have changed.... from passive slowdown to active slowdown (minus Pop)
Also the Gens now take 10 charges longer to finish... 10 seconds of progression and 40 seconds of regression
Then again good Survivors can hit multiple great skillchecks... but it's more of getting them
Killers still have time against them so they need to either find time or make time... 2-4 slowdown perks and Camping and Tunneling with Slugging mixed in there... cause again chasing 1 Survivor means that 3 Survivors are free to do Gens
And that equals to 3X however long the chase lasts... 10 seconds = 30 seconds... ETC
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"All you can do is shake it up from time to time."
What a horribly flawed way to look at maintaining game. Sadly I think BHVR agrees with you.
But they do have another, better option. The can try to balance the game. I know it's a shocking idea, but hear me out.
They could divide perks into categories and then try to balance the perks in those categories. In the slowdown category they could have easily done this in 6.1.0 but not overnerfing Ruin and Pop and not overbuffing Eruption, Overcharge and Call of Brine. For Exhaustion perks they could buff Balanced Landing, Smash Hit, etc to bring them in line with Dead Hard and Sprint Burst.
We'd see much more varied loadouts if BHVR took this approach. Unfortunately they appear to be controlling the meta so players have to buy licensed DLC to get meta perks. This is especially evident when it comes to slowdown perks.
I played this game yesterday:
It certainly didn't feel like the survivor meta has changed much.
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Perk categories and restrictions have been suggested before, but I think that would create an even more rigid meta. People would literally just pick whatever was currently considered the 'best' perk of each category, but with more restrictions on mixing and matching.
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I think the biggest problem is that losing as killer feels miserable and that is why every killer main runs meta and nothing else, be it ruin/undying or now kick genny builds.
If you are not a youtuber who makes funny videos of meme builds working once in 10 games you played where isn't really a point running different build. Just use the one what makes you win most games.
As survivor I don't mostly care, I was doing escape archives challange wait while 8 other survivors escape and it took me like 4 hours throughout 3 days to finish it because we just been getting slaughter by the same eruption/COB build again and again. Imagine if killer mains get 8 kills in 4 hours they play the game? They'd lose their cool on these forums. And I'm pissed too but as survivor I'm still having a bit of fun, running for the people and setting up dumb saves. Killer gameplay is pretty stressful most of the time, unless you see you got baby team, when you can kinda chill and still get an easy 4K.
Said all that - I still personally HATEEEE this killer meta. As a soloQ player, it feels awful playing againts it. Same 6 perks being used by 95% of killers. I hope bhvr change something, where is a reason why survivor gets 100% bloodpoint bonus the whole day.
Post edited by BoxGhost on0 -
Yeaaaaa you’re a little wrong there buddy. You must be in low ranked games. Every game I play, I see nothing but Dead Hard, Adrenaline, resilience, prove thyself, Unbreakable, and CoH. Every now and then I’ll see some unique builds. But it’s mostly always the same. I’m not complaining, I don’t care what perks I face. But you saying the killer meta hasn’t changed while survivor has is extremely hypocritical.
Even myself… my build 99% of the time is DH (literally does not leave my kit), windows, adrenaline, and resilience. The same applies to my entire SWF.
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I don't know how you could think that. It's not based in logic, that's for sure.
If all the slowdown perks were close to equal to each other people would pick whatever suits their playstyle and not be forced to pick the meta because no perk would stand out or at least not stand so far out. They wouldn't feel like they have to choose Eruption or Pain Res because they are by far the best regression perks currently in the game.
If Ruin didn't have its regression rate nerfed along side it getting deactivated once a survivor dies, it would still have a decent pick rate because there are players that like its automatic regression without having to kick gens or use scourge hooks. But now the only people using Ruin are people that are returning to the game after a hiatus that didn't know it got nerfed hard enough to be a dead perk.
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And survivors keep bringing all their meta perks and try to to make games as miserable as possible for killers because killers shouldn’t even get a hook minor less a kill.
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Here's the thing. Balance is fractal.
Even if the perks were at 1% of each other (a nearly impossible goal, without making them ridiculously simple and similar), whichever perk is 1% ahead would be picked substantially more.
That's just how a meta works.
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- No one knows their MMR
- I have no delusions about my killer MMR. I'm mid. I'm certainly not in low levels but I'm nowhere near high either like most people claim they are.
- Even in my survivor games where I actually am more confident that I'm closer to the higher end, I see a lot of perk diversity. Yeah there's some who stick to Dead Hard, but alot of people rotate other perks in
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The meta will be shaken up when survivors stop bringing meta perks too. Not sure which games you are playing, 90%+ games of mine survivors have toolboxes , strong medkits and atleast 2 COH , prove. I dont blame killers for bringing in heavy gen regress perks in such cases. COH is a busted absolutely perk and COH / strong medkits take away the slowdown of the game so what do you think Killers will bring to slowdown game?
90% + games played there was atleast a single COH and prove if not more.
I usually run info than gen regress when playing killer but after game after game of gens being rushed with such builds , I change to my regress build too.
Its a never-ending cycle - killers will bring perks to counter survivors and survivors will bring perks to counter killers.
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I disagree. Throwing around a three dollar word like fractal isn't going to convince me.
Maybe what you're saying is true for highly competitive eSports games but it's not true for DbD, for the most part. There are no leaderboards in DbD.
Most of DbD's players are casuals who likely don't even know what the meta is. They look at the perks, make comparisons and decide for themselves what they want to run. If perks were balanced they are less likely to stumble on the meta. Unless the player is getting destroyed, they are not going to go look up what the meta is. This is different than now where players will more easily identify Pain Res, Eruption and a few other perks as being better.
Here is a graph of recent perk usage from an aggregate data site. The first 4 perks on the left are Pain Res, Call of Brine, Jolt and Eruption.
If perks were more balanced, it would result in more builds being viable in games which would result in more perks being used and we would see more variation in perk usage. This would result in the graph flattening out.
Anyways, I doubt I can change your mind. Nice chatting with you.
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Is it a three dollar word? I think it's just a good word for what I'm trying to say. Infinitely complex - is that better?
Is that perks being balanced, or is that just the power of meta and player-see-player-do?
Which site, by the way, and what MMR?
That said:
- Could perks be more balanced? Sure. A lot of perks need buffs. A handful need small nerfs.
- Is pick rate below...say 50% a good indicator of balance? I'm not sure. I know Surge/Jolt isn't all that amazing on most killers, but it still gets picked a lot. Ditto self care on survivor.
- Even casual players probably do a 'best build for x' Google after they get stomped.
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The meta perks did change, it’s just the play style didn’t.
And this is for both sides - killers are still full regression and survivors is still second chances + gen rush. The meta shakeup just gave the old meta a new coat of paint.
It sucks, but these play styles will always be meta.
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Went from ruin undying pop to aura perks and gen kick perks. This is unequivocally a shift. Your entire post is based on a flat lie. I'm embarrassed on your behalf.
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The killer meta did change, it just changed for the worse and still falls within the same theme of a slowdown-oriented meta. Either way, this meta sucks. And while the survivor meta did shift more, I would still argue it hasn’t shifted enough on either side and there is still too much power in the strongest tools for both killers and survivors alike.
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You see more variety in survivor perks because there's actually a lot of decent survivor perks and survivors aren't under a time crunch like killers so they have the flexibility to run "fun" perks for flavor.
Killers don't have that privilege against good survivors. They are on a time crunch. They have to run time efficient perks because they are on the clock. Also, most killer perks are just bad.
TLDR: What you're seeing is a symptom of bad map design which makes gens go too fast and forces killers to run certain things. Most killer perks are also just quite bad and undertuned.
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Well...sure? But that's both a product of just how the game works (killers need to stop survivors doing gens) and how mediocre/bad non regression perks are. Like...can you name me three universally good killer perks that aren't aura reading or regression? Because I'd struggle to.
I'm seeing a very wide variety of survivor perks though. Lots of info on top of gen/ex perks.
The problem is that if you buff lethality perks, people don't like it - because it makes them die faster. Before Eruption took over the QQ train, it was STBFL, and before that Starstruck.
Unless you completely change the way the game plays, killers will always want a lot of regression.
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Actually, "meta" means MOST EFFECTIVE TACTIC AVAILABLE.
It's literally an acronym.
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Survivors are not under a time crunch? That's quite a hot take. A couple missteps and the survivors can easily be the ones on the bad end of time crunches in DBD.
I would say post perk shakeup I see more variety than ever. Still plenty of meta slaves but also a pretty good amount of unique builds.
I also don't think killers are pigeonholed into builds like you will claim here. An early slowdown or two is more than sufficient on killers with a strong chase power. Pretty much any build is 2k worthy, which is a viable build
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"Survivors are not under a time crunch? That's quite a hot take."
I'd say that's pretty unanimously agreed on by most high hour players. Wouldn't really call it a hot take.
"An early slowdown or two is more than sufficient on killers with a strong chase power."
More than sufficient on like 5% of the killer roster. With the other 95% of the roster and against actually equally very good survivors? No, it's not enough. If they're equally very good the survivors have to make a lot of mistakes for it to work.
"Pretty much any build is 2k worthy, which is a viable build"
I mean if you just wanna face camp and tunnel people out you can say zero perks is 2k worthy so that's kind of a mute point. If were talking actually playing normally and any build is 2k worthy? Not a chance.
I'm assuming very good vs very good as that's how we determine objectivity. Not your average bad players.
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Agitation, Noed, No way out.
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But they are not on a time crunch they and stop plan out their next move or while Survivor A is being chased Survivors B,C, and D are cranking out Gens so if A is a good looper then 2-3 can get done
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This is an average game for me. I always play Blight, but alch ring and gen regression in general are usually not in my build. The requirement is for the survivors is to have 3+ med-kits. I play like 4 games a week at this point and this is what I have to deal with. To be honest with you I wish there was a game mode where it was perkless and has no add-ons/items allowed except I couldn't play it unless an FoV slider was added.
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what makes you think that survivors are not in a time crutch? They definitely are. In fact, every single meta perk on survivor side has been time-crutch reduction perk for survivor or time-crutch increase perk for killer.
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I think main reason why killer still using same perks is because their perks really safe and very weak. The dev are so concerned of killer using any perk for even smallest advantage on x killer synergy that any good synergy is erased or prevented entirely.
This ultimately extends to killer powers as well. Most of killer powers are pretty bad vs good survivors so historically, the killer has less perk variety then survivor because their role is weaker. You get more perk flexibility as killer if your killer is stronger and you can win the match through skill. Unfortunately, Killer is not a newbie friendly role and a lot of killer skill relies mainly on survivor skill. As a result, Killer relies on more on raw advantage through perks to make up poor balance on killer powers.
They would need buff a ton of perks and also make killer powers way stronger for killer to have more freedom in perk selection. One interesting relationship is that when the killer is stronger, the survivor's perk selection becomes more narrow, so always one side suffers in term of perk variety in my opinion.
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As some people figured:
The meta on either side is gonna change as soon as the game mechanics change drastically. Not in the sense of making it a complete different game, but in the sense that it's not focused on 'getting a 4k/open the gates asap' anymore.
Right now these things are the ONLY bits that are rewarded, regardless who you play as on killer side. So, of course you'll see not just these builds but the same bad behaviour all too often. Because the game doesn't make a difference between a 3-hook kill that came to be through fair and square playing, or through camping and tunneling.
If the game would do that, and if different playstyles depending on the killer you play/face would be rewarded accordingly, then we'd see a change in the meta, because then people would focus on 'what build is good to play this killer to their full potential'.
But before that? The meta won't change
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You have to play off meta to see more survivors off meta.
More survivors off meta, not all of course.
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And survivors srill run dh with gen rush builds and try to pound gens out in under five minutes. Your point?
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First of all survivors are not under the same stress and pressure for time as killers are. There are 4 survivors and only one killer. As killer chases one survivor the other 3 are doing gens in the background. If it's a bad map(which majority of maps in dbd are survivor sided) and the killer is a low tier killer (non blight or nurse) chases can last up to or more of a minute. That's a min of time where the other 3 survivors are doing gens uninterrupted. Before you say well injure and go after someone else. CoH and medkits have killed the hit and run strat in this game. A survivor can fully heal themselves before you can even get into a new chase. This is why you see a lot of killers running two or more slowdown perks bc time is very precious to a killer, more precious than a survivors time. Also a killer is going against 16 perks combined where survivors are only going against 4 perks. So yeah I wouldn't say the phase "killers are under a time crunch" is a hot take. You need to realize that all killers can't end chases as fast as a blight, nurse, or other high tier killers. Not all killers have chase powers.
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None of the killer meta perks from before the 6.1.0 patch are still meta.
All of the survivor meta perks from before the 6.1.0 patch are still meta.
At least according to the official stats. So i don´t know what you´re talking about.
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The killer meta changed massively. Instead of Ruin + Undying, Pop, Corrupt Intervention and Pain Res + DMS you see a lot more Eruption, Overcharge, Call of Brine etc. Slowdown is the new slowdown. Also BBQ got nuked back to stone age because we can't have a game health perk in the meta (probably the worst decision in this process).
Honestly though, its hardly surprising slowdown is still the go to for most killers. Gens now take 90 seconds in theory but with all the gen perks and other tools survivors have at their disposal to progress faster in a match this really doesn't do much.
Personally, I've never been to keen about slowdown perks but seeing how regularly I lose a match as killer in under 3 minutes, I'm questioning how long I can compete with more chase oriented builds.
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The biggest problem with the current meta for me can be summed up in one word: ERUPTION
I have no issue with gen slowdowns in general but stacking full slowdown builds with Eruption is just brutal against solos and very unfun to deal with.
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Miss old Undying Ruin yet?
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I can only speak for myself, but... what other perks are there to use? What is there that is reliable and consistently helpful?
Chase perks? Hardly. A lot of killers don't even need them since their power is chase-centric. Even still, their effect is mainly marginal and their absence isn't too apparent.
Info perks? Like what? BBQ? Aura reading perks, perks that have become increasingly unreliable with the popularity of Off the Record and Distortion (which gains tokens in chase cuz... why?)
Hex perks as a whole are pretty much dead. Disregarding that most are terrible, CoH is extremely popular, meaning survs are more likely to seek totems on top of the bad rng, so why bother?
Anti-Healing perks? We have... Sloppy Butcher! Uh... um... Gift of Pain? Coulrophobia...? Yeah, moving on.
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Not "the right way" : the "most efficient way" or "the easiest way".
The "right way" may mean something different for a lot of people.
For me the right way could mean "the most interesting way", "the most enjoyable way", "the silliest way", "the most difficult way" (although that one is almost always "no perk, no addon").
About the META.
As @bluerose said, only a few killers can compete without a solid build. I stress "compete", not "win". If I've killed teams using at most one perk and no addon, even as Nurse I can't win against a skilled team with a full build. I don't think anyone can.
I've noticed a shift these last few days. Almost every single team I've versed played gen-rush the gens-before-friends/don't-heal way. Some leave gens early (especially in maps with lots of hiding potential), some commit. This against any killer and any build. This seems to be the current META. It's easily countered by ensuring one hook state (if I leave the hook for a minute, nothing happens, then two or three gens pop, a killer would be a fool not to) then, tunnelling out and going for the next one. With an end-game build, a wipe isn't out of reach.
I find this kind of lame. When I play, I play for chases and mind-games (whatever role I'm playing). I don't find playing QTE on gens nor camping fun. BNPs aren't fun. Flashlights, flashbangs, bamboozling, making the killer eat wood are. I snigger every time a killer loses me mid-chases and grazes me while trying to find me.
For a change in the killer META, a change is needed in the survivor's first. I don't think it can go the other way. If the killer META changes first and make them stronger (to kill faster than gens are done without camping and tunnelling), it would lead to a survivor genocide as most only know that one move. If the killer META change is one that makes them weaker, the role will be put aside by most and we'll go back to long survivor queues.
Even if I don't like the current trend, the queues seem to be reasonable for both roles, so there is some kind of balance.
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I still miss OG Ruin tbh
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For me it was the most balanced and healthy combo we ever had.
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