Is my Knight play an outlier?

No opinions? I said I don't think camping, tunneling or running more than one regression perk is 100% necessary for the Knight to have success in regular play and that other playstyles are possible and nobody has an opinion either agreeing, disagreeing or otherwise?

@StarLost I'm pinging you simply because you had a thread about how to use the Knight effectively so you may find this interesting because I think we both started Dbd at close to the same time. I'm not on my A-game, more like my C-game because I just took a break over the holidays and I was tired, but you might find the video a more interesting approach to playing Knight.

Your first paragraph I agree with. Strategically, and if you pick the weakest link as opposed to picking the strongest, it is 100% the most optimal way to maximize your chances. I understand that and don't care about being tunneled when I get tunneled.

My curiosity was why is it so incredibly common with Knight as opposed to other Killers. For example, Bubba's kit is good at camping but only a minority of the Bubbas I versus camp. Virtually every Knight 3 gens and/or tunnels and camps which is why I was asking if people have seen a variety of playstyles or if nearly every Knight does that and, if so, why? Your second paragraph holds part of the answer, in my opinion, but I see very little divergence in playstyles with Knight.

In your opinion, do you think the new buffs will change that?

That would make sense. I don't consider Knight weak but more of a macro strategy Killer. As you play Twins (I'm assuming) you know that if you can set up a slug or a survivor on hook, a survivor dealing with or healing from Victor, and someone dealing with Charlotte then keep on juggling that the pressure causes most survivors to fall apart.

I find that similar to the Knight and see how it surprises survivors. As an example, with the Ash who I thought was a decent survivor, at the beginning he did not expect me to plop a guard in mid-chase directly behind him from locating him via footsteps and sandwiching him between me and the guard in a lose lose scenario.

The multiple times I used the guards to tie up survivors was intentional as I was wearing down the survivors to disrupt their effectiveness and wear out their resources for a quick clean up at the end. I also used the guards to herd survivors to where I wanted but that also requires map knowledge and knowledge of loops. Also, in my opinion, pinpointing survivors by sound is an important skill for Knight gameplay.

If a survivor is in chase and/or injured from a guard, one is in chase with me, one on hook and one healing or rescuing nobody is on gens. Regardless of whether I win the chases at the beginning or not, I'll win the game if I can keep that pressure up.

If you focus on micro strategy then, yeah, I think Knight will feel weak since to use his power in chase outside of acting like Artist's weaker sibling effectively requires map knowledge and the ability to locate survivors by sound while the survivors are effectively invisible. I also think the Knight's potential is hindered severely if people focus on just chases instead of macro level disruption and harassment.

Anyway, thanks for giving your opinion. That does make sense that other Killers, such as Bubba, are used differently since they're perceived as strong while the Knight is perceived as too weak. I hope the buffs do something to alter that perception and make a non-boring playstyle more accessible and increase the current dismal level of popularity he seems to have.

Did you watch the video?

Thanks for looking at that. I use FOR as I use the guards for harassment a lot and to use up their resources (medkits, etc). FoR is likely to activate at an inopportune time for the survivors and then I can see where they are and plan my next move accordingly. Getting survivors off gens is my priority as, if I can disrupt survivors from doing gens long enough, I will win. They'll get frustrated, panic, and make mistakes. Why chase a good looper at a strong tile if I catch them out of position? FoR helps me to accomplish that by letting me know the survivors positions and also if a good looper is in a vulnerable spot.

Nowhere to Hide is a better perk overall in my opinion but since I don't need the 2 extra seconds for LP on Nowhere To Hide I use FoR so I can some additional updates to change my strategy as needed. I generally main Artist and I do use LP there for the strong open with Face the Darkness for the extra time but I don't find Nowhere to Hide needs the extra time since the patrol radius with Map of the Realm is usually large enough to catch them.

Thanks for your input but I think there's a difference in how we're viewing it. While it might have been more efficient on a micro sense to just drop a guard and go my goal is not to win chases immediately but to wear the survivors down and disrupt their objective. Since I always use Dried Horsemeat and Map of the Realm except when experimenting I want the guards to chase the survivors. Every second in chase is a second that survivor is not doing something important regardless of whether it's me or a guard doing the chase. I could win a chase more easily but lose the game by not spreading enough pressure. Unless you have a specific example in mind I think I'm viewing the game more as time management as a strategy to win.

Thanks and you're correct; a single match is not enough data. I would go further and say that any set of matches from a single player is not enough to determine the long-term strength or weakness of a Killer. What I'm mainly asking is why does nobody else I've seen play like this along with the statement that we agree on that tunneling, camping and 3 or 4 regression perks are not necessary on Knight to do well. Unfortunately, Knight is also an outlier in that I haven't seen any other Knight player that hasn't tunneled, camped and/or 3 genned with multiple regressions from the start. I think that there are other playstyles viable for Knight in regular play but, unlike every other Killer, I don't see it when versusing Knight.

I'm not playing against top tier tournament death squads regularly but, with the soft cap being what it is, neither is anybody else in regular play. If anyone is interested in seeing what the data looks like over a set of games I could record the results on rank reset from Ash IV to Iri 1 and summarize it on a data sheet for people to look at similar to what I did with solo queue survivor. I'm not going to estimate my win rate, and I'm not trying to blow my own horn or anything, but I'm much better at Killer than I am at Survivor so it might be interesting to see. But it does take time so my only hesitation about doing it is I don't want to do it if it's not useful to anyone. If it is useful or interesting to anyone I'm happy to put it out there.

You're still thinking micro as opposed to a macro strategy. If I have one person in chase I have one person occupied. More survivors occupied are better.

I'm suspecting your arguments are coming from me saying Killers don't need to camp or tunnel in regular play. As @StarLost mentioned it's overkill in most situations. I don't need to camp or tunnel and I don't like to camp or tunnel so I don't. You also said most Killers don't need to camp or tunnel; they want to. That's my secondary point. Personally, I don't care if people tunnel and camp; that's BHVR's job to fix and not the players but it's the player's choice and saying they need to in this meta isn't entirely accurate.

Thanks for the input; that was my main question. Maybe I'm just unlucky but every Knight I've run across other than me has done it. It could just be bad luck or a quirk of my server, time I play at, MMR or any combination of those. I was just curious as, for example, with Bubba, I see more friendly Bubbas than I see facecamping Bubbas but what you're experiencing with the Knight is similar to with other Killers so maybe it's just a quirk specific to me I see so many doing it.

Or, alternatively, the Ash was surprised and made a mistake like everyone does. Nobody's perfect but since you didn't watch the rest of the video you can't really comment on anything other than a very specific sequence and you can't really draw a conclusion from such a small sequence.

That's irrelevant in my opinion, however, as I win most of my games as Knight without camping, tunneling or 3 genning from the start with multiple regression perks. The match was literally a completely random sample where I just thought 'hey, I'll record my next match for this question' and did so. As such, it is representative of the type of totally random matches you get since the softcap is where it is.

If you're trying to dismiss it because you like to tunnel and camp (which I don't know if you do or not but when I say it's not needed most dismissals come from people who do tunnel and camp) the secondary point I made wasn't that you shouldn't; it's that you don't need to. I don't care if you tunnel, camp, meme in a snowman, farm, or two hook and let everyone go. It's your game and time; play it how you want. My point specific to the Knight was that you don't have to tunnel and camp or 3 gen from the start to be successful in regular games and I have no problem showing that in sequential matches. As I only experienced tunnelers and campers as opposed to a variety of playstyles like with other Killers I asked if I played very differently from most Knights.

Cool, thanks for the input. I can't get anybody I know irl to play DbD because of survivors bullying and gloating at new Killers (not all survivors of course but enough it was unpleasant enough to deter anyone I know from continuing) so the forum here is the only place for me to get opinions from.

I do agree as well that the Knight is better when he is played macro and that the Artist is much better than the Knight. The playstyle is different enough I can play him for variety but with the Artist, who I generally main, I've easily won against survivors I would describe as really good as opposed to just competent and that I think would have given me a very hard time on Knight. The Artist is definitely the stronger Killer. I would say Knight is maybe B+ but Artist is S tier.

No problem, it was literally a random match from a day I randomly picked. I win nearly all of my Knight games so this is a representation of what you see in regular play and not tournament style play which I specifically said I wasn't referencing. If you feel they didn't know what to do that just strengthens my point that the softcap is low enough there's no need to tunnel and camp in regular matches; it's a choice and not a necessity. I think they were competent overall, not great but competent, but if the softcap is low enough survivors who don't know what to do are matched against more experienced Killers that just helps illustrate that tunneling and camping is not necessary in regular play. Tournament could be a totally different matter but I'm talking about regular matches, not tournaments.

Thanks for explaining your definition of cherry picking as it sounded kind of like you were lumping me in with sporadic 99% kill rate, 80% solo escape rate claims that show up sporadically.

I don't think it is impertinent to describe the matches people encounter as regular games and I do think there is a wide and varying level of skill shown in there and not one extreme or other. The soft cap is low enough there are not any Killers who, outside of custom matches, etc, are facing top tournament level players on a regular basis. That is just not the reality of the game.

I don't think your explanation covers it though. Tunneling can, if you just pick the first survivor seen, cost you the game and there are a lot of people who play sub-optimally due to fun, they don't want to be really sweaty to the other side, etc. I didn't see that with my Knight experience which is why I asked. To be honest, with the softcap, playing optimally would be boring.

To be honest, and I'm not trying to blow my horn, I win definitely more than the kill rate BHVR is shooting for. I also, unless BMed, never tunnel or camp and both statements have been true for months on all Killers I wanted to play even semi-seriously (outside of using Frozen Ghostface to pop out of snowmen and things like that).

The high level MMR thing is, in my opinion, a myth. The soft cap is too low for anyone to run into tournament level teams where it might be necessary on a regular basis. I will of course add the caveat that I don't believe any single player, regardless of the number of games, can serve as definitive proof of anything as one person can't represent everybody but, for me at least, out of an average of 4 to 8 Killer games a day over months I have seen no need to consider tunneling and camping and was able to win a considerable majority of them with spreading out hooks. That's why I don't think it's necessary. Matchmaking does not have enough survivors of the skill level where one would have to to regularly encounter them.

That's fine; we can agree to disagree. I do run into very good SWFs and I still quite often win without camping or tunneling. Are there SWFs that would stomp me? Of course there are. However, I generally play later at night for three reasons; Killer incentives, a lower queue time and a higher chance to face SWFs which are more of a challenge than solos so I do run into quite a few SWFs.

Your experience can be different but we dont know a variety of factors: which of us is the more skilled player, whether our servers make a difference, whether the time of day makes a difference, the exact intricacies of the MMR system, etc. I find that a lot of people tend to point at whatever fault they can try to dig up to justify their own position such as when @BradQuackson posted his Nurse play and people said 'the survivors weren't very good' and ignored that his match was a random sample of his very long win streak and his point that he won virtually all of his matches was very legitimate.

The fact is that I don't camp or tunnel and I spread around hooks and I win most of my games. There are three possibilities I see; a) is that MMR point gain is completely borked and that's influencing my experience but, in which case, everyone should be experiencing that, b) that camping and tunneling is a choice but not a necessity in most matches, or c) your server just has a far higher proportion of very high survivors than mine.

Personally, I think it's b) and the majority of people who say it's necessary are just trying to justify their choice or have trapped themselves at a level where they need to because they haven't worked on their other game skills enough. I find that most people who get defensive over the statement that camping and tunneling is not necessary fall into one of those two categories.