How do we feel about Dead Hard now?

Current Dead Hard is totally fine. Even at its most useful, the pallet exchange you detail up there, the killer is getting something out of the scenario no matter what happens, even if that thing isn't a down. Everywhere else, it's easy enough to bait and play around that actually swinging into a DH at this point makes me go "damn, respect" instead of making me mad.

Speaking of, there are a lot of ways to bait. Flicking your camera upwards seems to work consistently for some reason, I'm not totally sure what that looks like from the survivor side but it must be similar to the start of a weapon swing because it definitely works a pretty reasonable amount of the time.

A lot of killers have ways to bait with their power, too. Pretty much any "charge-up" type power can be used to bait.

The pallet on dh actually has counter baiting it out. If they use it at pallet expecting you to hit just wait that the endurance is over and hit them while they're locked in the animation. They usually drop the pallet still but you get hit through it. So it's not uncounterable but the counter is not easy and you have to quess when they're going to use it.

Dead hard is in a much better spot, it still can be frustrating at times but not nearly as it was before the nerf.

Perfectly fine IMO as well. Before, it was a free safety net.

Now we all have to time our DHs and there's some element of skill involved. Its also hit and miss, you're not always going to get value out of it, there is no guarantee. A lot of good killers also wait/bait it out since they expect or assume its 1 of the perks you're running.

Its definitely annoying as killer, since every second counts but in terms of balance, its fine. There are ways around it but it is also rewarding for the survivor who successfully timed or 'guessed' when a killer would swing. In a good state now.

Better than before, but still unhealthy. This perk still has potential to put the killer in lose-lose situations

0.5 sec is too low.

its still ridiculous, no matter how many times they nerf it giving survivors another health state even if you need to time it is crazy

i still HATE that perk with a burning passion unmatched. Only 2 killers in the game can counter that cursed perk without troubles and both are average/bad killers: legion (you can't use dead hard if you have already deep wounded by his frenzy) and deathslinger (like legion, his m2 will cause deep wound, so dead hard won't work). Aside those 2 killers, dead hard could be easily consided buffed: you have less time available to activate the perk, but the outcome will be a sprint burst after being hitted (AGAIN) and effectively a 3rd health state... i'll personally tunnel to death everyone who will use that perk (wanna be a tryharder? I can do the same, but then don't complain if i'll play optimally and i'll completely ignore your personal fun)

I respect Dead Hard now. When a survivor uses it to soak a hit, I say to myself "Nice Dead Hard" because its not the super-annoying easy chase extender that it was before.

Its leagues and miles better then the old DH, were I got to a point were every game felt like torture and I died a little bit every time a survivor DHed to a palette or window, but after a somewhat long adaption period the new DH actually isn't that far off, again.

DH is miles ahead of every other exhaustion perk, is still (AGAIN) the most played survivor perk, you AGAIN are facing regularly 3-4 DH users in a single match and AGAIN the perk is sucking the fun out of the game. The short period directly after the 6.1 patch was SUCH a breath of fresh air. As the killer, if you cornered a survivor and caught up to them in a chase, you could just swing at them. What a novel, fun concept! The killer could just swing as survivors, so strings attached. Swoosh! And down. But alas, it didn't last long. At first it was just the obvious "180° turn into the killer" that you soon wisened up to, but over time a lot of survivors got the timing right and now we are basically back at step zero.

Well, its a bit better then old DH, ie you can't use for distance just like that anymore, and you can bait it out in certain situations, especially when you caught up to someone in the open, but most good survivors will use it skillfully in loops or to force the killer into lose/lose situations.

Two times, count it, two times, I was able to predict a survivor using DH before they vault and got them, but this is just opposed by probably hundreds of times were I got rekt by it.

In the past I was always defending the change they made to DH, claiming "wow, BHVR pulled off the impossible: they nerfed DH while simultaneously not nuking it form orbit, but making it fun and fair! Bravo!", but that was before savvy survivors learned how to use it correctly and now it just feels aweful again to be hit by it.

Got no issues with it now that you can't use it for distance anymore, i've seen a couple of suspiciously "perfect DH" but they're very rare.

More often than not, current DH users are incredibly overconfident if they ever land it once and then die because they try way too hard to land a second one during the match, wich leads to an easy down.

But on average most survivors always miss their DH or get baited into wasting it so it feels more like a waste of a perk than anything else.

Didn't BHVR nerf it because they wanted to "shake" the meta?

Still seeing 3-4 DHs on every game. They did success with DS but not with DH.

It needs further nerfs. 1 second of making you unable to use pallets after using it would be fine.

This is literally what I created a topic about once: https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/346703/it-was-the-best-month-in-the-game#latest

I feel you so much

nurse has a pick rate of around 1%. DH is around 50-60%.

try again.

Better than the last version for sure, but still not good.

It requires much more skill now but is still too unbalanced at higher level play.

Essentially there's enough time to hit it before a lunge so in order to land a hit you're required to do a fast hit (non lunge). Here's the problem. This essentially lengthens the time to hit since you have to get right up on their back before you can swing, meaning more time to reach the window/pallet essentially giving them the extra dash distance old DH gave. So you're skill here as the killer is irrelevant, you're just hoping they get nervous and mess up by clicking it too early instead of waiting for your swing animation.

Then there's also the factor not relating to power and simply fun. Is it fun now that every single time a survivor is injured you have to get up on their back and play around the fact that they may have a single perk? It also makes it so that you can essentially no longer ever use a lunge attack on an injured survivor as killer because of that perk simply existing. Because of how long the lunge animation is the only time you are ever getting a lunge hit on an injured survivor that is running DH is if the survivor simply messes up, nothing to do with your skill as killer. This isn't even getting into killers that non lunge m1 hits are even rarer on such as Twins or Huntress for an example who rarely tap m1's, meaning their hits will be hit with DH almost 100% of the time being completely reliant on if the survivor just messes up.

That is straight up terrible design.

In high MMR DH single handedly wins games with how long it extends chases. One perk shouldn't have as large of an effect on a game as this one does.

This is so true. The last couple of days I had just aweful game after aweful game, forcing me to do what I actually didn't want to do: playing CoB/Eruption/Overcharge. This way I still have to eat every greeded palette on the map, get run for ages and DH x-times, but at least I can stall the game long enough to actually have a fair shot. And while a super strong combo, it didn't feel to me like I was handed a win on a silver platter. Yes, against weaker survivors it will leave them absolutely no chance, but against the murder squads that I was up to in the last couple of days, it felt just barely adequate.

I mean its back in full swing, but I genuinely don't mind it. Didn't before either, less so now tho.

They don't make distance and it's short as heck, but when its forced at a pallet or whatnot sure, it sucks to lose a down but they also have to go waste time to mend if they happen to get away.