Tunneling with Pyramid head is completely out of wack, and sadly the absolute best strategy.
I'm a Pyramid head main with 3,6k hours, and I've been playing since jenuary 2017. I've always played both sides equally, and I main also Pinhead/Cenobite and Sadako, but also play a lot of other killer even if not so often.
Since Deadlock was first announced, I knew it was gonna be a massive problem. It had to be nerfed/changed, it's just too strong if combined with other perks.
Currently, with 90 second gens, imo the absolute best build you can bring is: Corrupt, Deadlock, Ruin, No Way Out. The idea of the build is to have as much passive pressure as possible, to do the thing Pyramid head is the best at sadly: tunneling.
- Corrupt intervention is still the best early game slowdown perk, and makes some maps like Azarov a bottleneck. Competitive players always use it, for obvious reasons.
- Deadlock is probably the strongest killer perk in the game right now, maybe even stronger than Eruption on all killers, but surely it is better on Pyramid head. It combines very well with the next perk:
- Hex: Ruin. After the nerf, it's still strong and much more consistent than Scourge hook: Pain Resonance, which is very RNG based, especially on very big maps. It's very evil because: 1 if they leave a gen that got deadlocked it regresses 2 it can be tormented with your power, and if they try to cleanse it, even crouching, they get tormented 3 of they waste time bodyblocking the gens regress in the meantime 4 if they try to cleanse it/bless it easily game they waste massive time 5 if they try to find it, in the worst case scenario it buys you 20/30 seconds. + If one person disconnects because you're camping/tunneling them for example, the perk doesn't deactivate.
- No Way Out: even 2 stacks give you 36 seconds of blocked gates, which are enough to camp the second person, when one gen is left and get a third kill, or if things go wrong and they have Adrenaline, to get 2k and tie.
You might argue that perhaps Noed, Terminus, Dead Man's Switch, Pain Resonance, Pop, Call of Brine, Eruption or Lethal Pursuer are better than Ruin, but of all the perks I haven't had any that has provided such an insane passive regression, even if not a good perk on other killers.
With these perks, the strategy is this:
- Try to torment someone in chase at any cost. If not, once they get hooked, place a torment wall 4 meters around the hook, so when they get unhooked they either die or get tormented.
- Try to hook someone close to a gen so Ruin regresses it as much as possible
- Be always close for the moment when someone gets unhooked: hit both the unhooker and the unhooked to immediately counter Off the record and Dead hard, and avoid Locker Decisive Strike:
- If they go in a locker, just wait out the 20 seconds mending timer. Watch our for Head On.
- Once downed, Cage immediately, and go to the furthest point on the map that contains a cage spawn. They will always be caged there, unless someone had died in a cage there previously.
- Kill. There's no Off The Record/Decisive Strike this time, even if you have to watch out because they still might have Decisive Strike from the previous unhook.
- Once the first person is dead, you might wanna change strategy and go for a 3 gen strat with Call of Brine and/or Eruption, but I think just repeating the process and tunneling another person out is the better strategy.
Other tips:
- Always hook if possible in the basement, because Reassurance cannot be used, and because you can hit the person in the back hook immediately after an M2 super fast. Try to hook not on 2 floors, and in areas where Reassurance is difficult to use.
- Always hook first and cage only if you might suspect Deliverance. In some situations it's better to cage first, but very few ones, and hooking first always guarantees a stack of No Way Out.
- Some survivors will heavily bodyblock you to delay the kill as much as possible, some even going down: if that's the case, sometimes waste 2/3 seconds to cage them, it will be very useful to create even more pressure, and especially because if you catch them later they're already second stage.
I've done a 110+ games winstreak doing this, and it's just completely gross: I've beated or tied 3/4 competitive teams doing this, while using just the common add-ons.
With no add-ons, Pyramid head is better than Spirit no add-ons, perhaps even stronger than Artist.
Solo Q teams have NO CHANCE.
I've gone against the most meta perks, medkits with Syringes and Styptics, BNPs, but nothing, it's basically impossible to lose with this strategy! Especially if you use Terminus to avoid Adrenaline.
As even Otz has said, tunneling has become even MORE prominent.
TUNNELING IS JUST OUT OF CONTROL WITH DEADLOCK AND PYRAMID, THERE HAS TO BE A FIX, AND FAST.
It doesn't have any sense that I just win 110/120 games with no effort, and even in the worst case scenario against a competitive team where I ######### up massively I still "tie", aka 2k /6 stages.
Comments
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Good post. It's true that Corrupt and Deadlock are both extremely strong. Both could use a tonedown on their durations. I think 20s for Deadlock and 80s for Corrupt would be more fair, but they'd still be very strong perks.
As for your tunneling strat, I like it. Double hits are almost stronger now that you can't Dead Hard during Deep Wounds. Waiting out the mend timer so you can cage them if they have DS if very clever. But how do you get people tormented during chase? They tend to just leave the loop.
Makes me wanna play some PHead. He was very fun when I used to play him, but his power takes a long time to get good at I think.
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I have not faced a Pyramidhead in THREE MONTHS.
I am totally, 100% not afraid of this Pyramidhead "meta".
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Tunnelling and camping is META regardless of perks (of course slowdowns are recommended). The comparatively short duration of a hook phase and long gen completion time has buffed this through the skies.
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If Tormented Survivors lost Torment when placed on Hook, I could see that being a thing, such that if PH wants to tunnel with Torment, they'd have to use his Cage-away mechanics rather than being able to use it off Hook.
But if that were the case it'd be nice to see Torment being easier to apply, such as PotD leaving behind Trails of Torment (The hit doesn't apply Torment, but the Trails placed once the wave dissipates would if run over)
Which would in turn also introduce a tactical angle to using PotD were you to want to place a Trail in front of a Survivor (albeit incurring the cooldown penalty).
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I also tunnel on PH, I cant hit anything with his Power, I often leaves the match with only 1 hit or zero hits.
Camping is boring, which is sad cause I much rather play as Killing machine whose power is able to destroy survivors within reason.
But if the Power is that hard to hit with its just bad.
In general dbd has too many Killers that are just too hard to play or where Skill with them does not give you reward required to defeat survivors.
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If you think Gens have long times then you need to look up all the Gen speed perks Survivors have to make them go quickly....a face camping Killer is a free Gen or two if done right.
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I mean he's called the Executioner. Would be weird if he wasn't good at killing.
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Without deadlock- maybe. However (and good campers know it), it takes a lot of valuable team's time to realize that a survivor is being camped, which long story short - 3k or 4k. Also experienced camp/tunnel meta users camp scourge hook for added value and around 3-4 grouped gens for the best results.
Don't get me wrong - it is a strategy and it works miracles. However, I also believe BHVR has created a whole "generation" of killers unable to do much more.
Kill rates altogether must be notably higher because the best teammates dc before last hook to avoid scourge hook penalty (if killer has the perk) and therefore match is dismissed from statistics.
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Basically you have to use the fact they'll potentially leave loops as an advantage, and if they don't get tormented, force them to get tormented off hook.
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Pyramid head is a different story, because he can completely avoid Off the record, DS and Kinship + Reassurance on second stage. Maybe only Doctor reaches the same stalling because of Dead man's switch and being able to block unhooks.
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Pyramid head is very strong, you just need to learn to use him. It's hard to mater.
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Exactly, in Dbd him being a "merciless executioner", quoting the lore, means that he's even lore wise insane at tunneling XD
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Yea i have no idea what they thought when they made cages not count as hooks. i've been refound and chased right out of cage so fast that my exhaustion wasn't even back yet lmao
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Cages must be stronger than hooks, or at least being tormented. The problem is how Dbd core mechanics work
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I Know this is offtopic but:
Yes, that teammate may be avoiding being placed on a Scourge Hook. However, if the teammate dc's the killer can immediately go forth towards the next survivor, and if the killer spotted a gen or survivor while attempting to hook, they are now going to die expeditiously. This is also for a Hook that may or may not be Scourged, because you typically will never use all 4 Scourge hooks in a match.
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I am a prestige 25 pyramid head and I do basically the same thing in my games. I would argue that this is not a problem. Other killers can tunnel just as quickly because they are gifted with stupidly fast mobility, so why punish pyramid head when he has to walk like everyone else? Additionally, alert survivors can easily counter cage tunneling by pre running to the expected cage location and saving instantly.
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Well, it is not advisable if someone is tanking hits :):)
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I don't believe Ruin can even work with Deadlock, entity blocked gens are usually immune to regression. But I can see your point about PH being an effective tunneler capable of circumventing most survivor perks, that's nothing new however.
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It works well because 99 gens regress, same if you leave a gen to go to another one
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PH might be the best killer just for tunneling.
Loved Corrupt before, but now what do you do? Just injuring everyone?
If you get a quick down, even if it takes 1 min - BÄM, 1 perk gone.
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"I use these perks to ensure I can camp and tunnel but something has to be done to stop me using these perks to camp and tunnel."
That was a wild ride.
Personally, I'm not encountering many PH's and not much camping and tunneling, but then I don't particulary worry about levels, pips or high MMR etc. So maybe I'm just outside the realm of where this happens. I guess if someone who actively uses this build thinks it's too powerful, it is, though.
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Not really, by the time deadlock should proc in the first time, ruin should be cleansed already, also blocked gens cannot regress, so if I as survivor see my gen get blocked and I know the killer has ruin, I literally get a gen that cannot lose progress, meaning I can leave that gen and go clease ruin without any risk, that combo literally gives survivors a benefit when affected by deadlock.
If a team of survivors actually manages to let you get value from that combo and not use it against you, I would say even bloodhound can be an OP perk against those teams.
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That's true, and that's the strongest tactic, the problem is that you need coordination, and a medkit or another survivor to fully heal the survivor before Pyramid goes across the map. And even if you get healed, you can still be hit in a deadzone perhaps.
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1 perk gone, true, but also massive time saved in case of an extremely huge map with spread spawns like Eyrie or Garden of Joy. I'll try Lethal Pursuer instead of Corrupt, but the expected outcome is that Corrupt is always better by far
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The problem is like The Nurse: it's somewhat necessary because it's one of the few (5/6) killers that can consistently defeat coordinated "competitive" survivors with the most busted builds, but destroys uncoordinated solos/chill team of friends that just wanna have fun, maybe with no communication.
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In almost all the 150+ matches of my winstreak I'm doing right now, 90/95% of them Ruin doesn't get found, cleansed, or if it does get found it's too late because someone is already almost dead, and I didn't have a single one where ruin was found right at the beginning, perhaps they improved spawns or something, or maybe it's the combination with Corrupt that makes it so they don't search for it if it spawns near them.
If after they know Ruin is in place someone wastes even 30 seconds trying to find it, that's MASSIVE, because after the first survivor is dead it would be gone anyway, and it might be the difference between killing the first survivor at 3 gens left instead of 2 or 1.
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if you did that steak it means that you were aganist REALLY bad survivors probably... things aren't so simple as you stated sadly...
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If during 150+ games no team was competent enough to get rid of a perk that is so easy to counter, then holy hell, I knew the average player had no idea how the game works, but I thought they were at least semi competent.
If what you are saying its true, then that also explains sadako's high killrate and so on, then again I still 4k while playing addonless slowdownless slinger, which should be a free 4 man escape if the team is mediocre.
With that said if you have won so much games with such an easy to counter build, with a low mobility killer that cannot pressure hex totems, then imo you can make the case any killer is OP and out of control, since people can get beaten by the easiest to dunk on strategies.
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Well, it is not advisable if someone is tanking hits :):)
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Didn't go vs bad survivors, I was playing from 10pm to 1 am, found 3/4 comp teams, and really good survivors in chase. If there wasn't max coordination it was basically gg, many times I reached 2 kills at 2/1 gens left!
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If Ruin spawns far away, near a Corrupt gen, people may never even go close to it, and usually 2 things happen:
1 They think Ruin is weak, until it's too late
2 They waste massive time to find and cleanse it, and then it's all wasted because once someone is dead the perk is gone.
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