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Dead Hard is fine.
If you are a weak or intermediate Killer player and complain about Dead Hard, it's a skill issue and you need to learn to just wait it out, so Dead Hard is fine.
If you are a good Killer player and complain about Dead Hard, you just got outplayed and you're probably not as good as you think you are anyway, so Dead Hard is still fine.
If you are a top-tier Killer player who easily and consistently beats top-MMR survivors, regularly going on win streaks of 50 or more and you complain about Dead Hard, then that proves Dead Hard isn't too strong because you can overcome it anyway. So Dead Hard is still fine.
If you are a tournament-winning Killer who still swings into DH, then the fact that you won the tournament (Where Survivors can only bring one DH, by the way) proves that DH isn't too strong because Killers can still win against it. So Dead Hard is still fine.
What's that? The fact that tournament-level Killers swing into it clearly means you can't just wait it out? Sorry, didn't catch that.
What do you mean, I'm moving the goalposts? It's just a coincidence that every possible line of logic and every possible piece of evidence always leads to what I originally wanted to believe in the first place.
/s
Comments
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Tournament level survivors still get hit by Eruption, you can't play around it, it's unfun and no counterplay!!! Plz nerf thx BHVR
Tournament killers get slapped by DH multiple times, wow he still won the game, it's fine!!!
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Can we ban DH threads for this week? What is this, the 9th or 10th one in a matter of days?
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Only if we get the option to ban DH for this week. You can choose not to read these forums if DH threads bother you so much. But if I wanna queue into DbD without running into this godforsaken perk for the 20th time in a matter of days, I'm SOL.
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I feel that.
I had a game as Doctor today and I hit 3 DHs. After the first DH my match was a bit rough. After the second I was struggling to come back and the third DH happened when I got grab validated into a hit into DH. That was the moment when I stopped feeling robbed an started to feel like the game was trying to tell me something.
I waited for their DHs and it still didn't help. At least I got to enjoy sniffing their butts for 5 seconds before I gave them their 3rd health states. Truly a fun and indulging experience. Also all 4 of them had DH, so I really had to wait in every single chase.
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It’s a meme because a BHVR dev asked for more DH posts. Just wait for tomorrow, the next #########-show will start and you’ll have a lil break from DH posts~
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I am honestly for a Forum Rule which would allow Threads about the same topic to be closed. Every Snowflake thinks that their DH-Thread is unique and worth posting, while in reality, it is not the case.
But for some reason people think that it gives any value if they post the same ######### which others have already posted again and again.
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Hey, I went out of my way to make a different argument from any of the others.
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Maybe Eruption was too strong and DH isn't? Just spitballing. They don't have to be the same thing.
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BHVR literally encouraged everyone to talk about dead hard more.
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All evidence points to Eruption being the weaker of the two, honestly; it didn't see nearly the same amount of play that DH does, even at the highest peak of its popularity.
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So what you're getting at is you want Behaviour to limit perks like it's done in Tournaments. Okay.
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I mean as someone who mains Billy I completely agree. If I manage to land a successful curve against a survivor and he presses E it clearly shows me that he is better than me and I got outplayed. So DH is fine. I should have just stopped right before the chainsaw would have hit him just in case he has this perk.
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I would actually be down for that. Survivor cannot bring the same perks and killers cannot bring 4 slowdowns. That sounds like a good deal for me tbh.
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I shouldn’t have to hesitate every time before I swing.
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everyone makes mistakes, for instance, when that tournament Oni swung into DH, or when you posted a video of someone swinging into DH a bunch of times and still winning in that other thread as evidence that DH is somehow overpowered. when someone makes a mistake it doesn't mean that it's impossible for them to not make mistakes, just that they did in that one instance
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If countering DH was really as simple as people made it out to be, tournament-level Killers getting hit by it would be a rare celestial event that you'd be shocked to see, not a routine occurrence that happens twice a match on average, even when there's just one Dead Hard on the entire team.
"Just wait it out" is not remotely difficult. Waiting requires no precise inputs, no aiming, no fake-outs.
So why do tournament-level Killers swing into Dead Hard? Because countering DH is nowhere near as simple as that.
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The "wait it out" argument has been disproven so many times, it's absolutely incredible to see so many people still using it and thinking they sound smart.
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It's not about being unique. It's about making another thread about DH so the devs will eventually do something about it. It worked for Eruption and Peanits suggested to make even more discussions about DH.
This is a train without breaks. It's only going downhill from now. Until at some point DH will get another nerf / full rework.
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Knight is fine too, his stats prove it.
No. It's "waiting it out" is boring, slows down gameplay and it feels awful to swing into a "just wait it out" DH.
Let me pierce it with instant M1s and I won't complain. Why people want killers to have to walk directly 2 seconds into survs and then watch them wiggle a bit before they down them in the open is beyond me.
It's a fun perk and a nice display of skill, but the "wait it out" part when you're right behind a surv is utterly boring and on the same level of "fun gameplay" as spamming unhook to avoid a hook grab.
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Dead hard is only hated by bad killers. When I play killer, I always find it fun to see them dead hard in my face and stuff. It’s really not that big of a deal
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Haha.
Nerf nurse and eruption threads were fine, so the DH "spam" surely is acceptable too, else it'd be quitr the hypocrisy.
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I guess most of the top killer streamers are bad.
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Neat idea, but I think it would simply become too niche to be worth running.
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Yeah they’re often not concentrated because they’re streaming and swing into dead hard way more often than they should sadly
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It is getting tiresome. Maybe they could just make a separate subforum for it.
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Like reddit?
Creating one for dh right now, one for camping/tunneling/slugging in the long term and then one for the flavor of the month hated perks?
That would be amusing to look through 😂
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obviously countering dead hard isn't as simple as a single 4-word catchphrase.
its almost like you wrote an entire thread worth of ways in which dead hard is not overpoweringly oppressive, and that "just wait it out" is only one that applies to only some of the many situations you could go to. if you want a game where you can always counter a certain strategy in the same exact way, play rock-paper-scissors.
listing valid counterarguments and then saying "/s" at the end as if they weren't valid isn't an argument, it's whining that you're not capable of doing the very valid counterplay and making it other people's fault
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See, this is what I'm talking about. When I take the things you say at face value, I can't form a coherent belief system out of them. Do you believe that the counterplay to DH is simple and anyone who swings into it is just a noob, or do you believe DH is an intricate mindgame that makes the game better and more healthy at the highest skill level (Despite the legions of Killer players who absolutely hate it)? The two arguments are pretty incompatible with one another, yet people seem to switch between them like it's nothing depending on which is more rhetorically convenient at the moment.
And that ties into a much bigger problem: Your claim is unfalsifiable. No matter who you are or how good you are or whether you won or lost against DH, there's always some new rationalization for why DH must still be fine. Statistics don't matter. The opinions of bad Killer players, good Killer players, and top-tier Killer players don't matter. The consensus of the Killer community at large doesn't matter. Whether you win or lose against it doesn't matter. There's literally no pleasing you no matter what I say or what evidence I put forward or whom I cite, and I'm supposed to take you seriously?
Put yourself in my shoes for a moment and say for the sake of argument that Dead Hard really is a problem. How would you go about proving that? Because you've dismissed every possible source of facts and evidence I could use to back up my opinions with.
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Like looking deep into a bucket of sewage I'd imagine 🤣
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Statistics would matter. However, you don't have any. As there have been multiple people who play Killer who have stated they're not concerned with DH you don't have consensus or even an idea if the Killers who dislike it are the majority or just the loudest.
You have emotional arguments, a disregard of anybody else saying they don't have personal issues with it and a total conviction you're right and everyone else is wrong. That's not evidence; that's an opinion and opinions come with the possibility that the person stating the opinion is wrong.
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Dead Hard continues to be the most-used Survivor perk by a big margin, and its usage only climbs higher as you go to higher MMRs.
Cue the dismissal.
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Proof?
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I know full well that you've already seen such statistics. Glad to see you argue in bad faith, though.
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As it turns out I have never said that "the counterplay to DH is simple and anyone who swings into it is just a noob" or anything remotely close to it, because I don't believe that. I said that everyone makes mistakes, including high-level killers. The reason you can't form a coherent belief system from what you think I've said, is because you've either seen things other people have said and falsely attributed them to me, or just imagined me saying things I didn't.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean when you say "my claim" is unfalsifiable - specifically which claim are you talking about? You said you couldn't discern a coherent set of beliefs from (what you imagined were) my arguments, how would you then know what claim I was making, much less know if that claim could be proven wrong?
The reason I reacted in the specific way I did is because your original thread about Oni and this followup one show both a lack of respect for survivor players and a lack of attention to the counterplay on both sides with the game you chose to highlight. Your post is honestly a much milder example than other posts I've seen; from the way I've seen other killer players talk about it you'd think DH was like Mettle of Man without the protection hit requirements, activates whenever you would be knocked down.
With regards to respect to survivor players, consider your idea that top-level players hitting a DH as being astronomically unlikely (or whatever your specific phrasing was). Keep in mind the fact that when I say "Just wait it out" I mean it not as a sure-win strategy but as a general philosophical approach to chases, and think about the following: It's an inaccuracy for a killer to swing into Dead Hard, but it is similarly an inaccuracy to mistime a DH as a survivor. Going in for a hit on an injured survivor with DH is a zero sum game where whoever wins the read, wins the interaction. Why is it that you assume that a Killer hitting a DH would be so unlikely, but a survivor mistiming a DH would not be? Is a top level killer just inherently better at the game than a survivor?
As far as the game you chose to highlight, you need to consider that DH excels in countering hits that need to come within a certain time frame, such as Nurse's blink, Blight's rush, or also Oni's demon dash. Mechanically speaking, DH does counter that part of Oni's power; on some level, I do understand how that would be frustrating to face, but I honestly think that's the best use case scenario for the perk, avoiding a highly projected hit. You also need to keep in mind that in order to keep DH available to use it against Oni power, the survivor has to stay injured (since the dash is an insta-down), meaning by keeping your perk available you're feeding Oni his power faster. I would argue that the two demon dash DH hits were perfectly healthy for the game and fine, because they have the same mechanic as Plague of choosing between healing up and giving a power spike, or denying the power but staying broken. Given that 2 of the DH's the Oni hit were basically unmissable but came at other costs, I think it's reasonable to say the Oni only got outplayed on 2 DH, one of which was basically just him being unlucky and losing a couple coin flips by happening to chase the person who had the perk without knowing.
That said, I do think it is worth looking at ways of limiting DH to primarily counter those "easily anticipated hits" and being less oppressive right under pallets and so on, and to be less powerful when you don't know your opponent has it. I mainly object to way in which you hyperfocus on the way it negatively impacts killers while ignoring the skill expression of survivors, ignoring the ways survivors can mess it up, and ignore the ways in which killers can't always guarantee bypassing DH but can at least buy themself more of a chance.
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Nerfing Eruption but not DH feels dishonest. You can't play around DH if the survivor has the perfect setup.
Your head is full of survivor rhetoric and only see the game from one point of view.
When used by good players DH gives more time in chase than any other perk. In a "best case" scenario SB is only going to get you like 8 seconds because nobody is going to fall for you walking and swing into it. On the other hand DH can change a 30 second chse into a 60 second chase if there are enough pallets around. That's not fair to the killer.
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There is no dismissal nor is there any context. DH could be used simply because it's more fun and SB and Lithe might give more utility but they're not as much fun. As pre 6.1 DH was ubiquitous it could be familiarity? Is that why? I don't know but neither do you and that's my point. Your opinion may, but also may not, represent reality and there may be more nuances to which we're unaware. In the end, all you're doing is voicing an opinion; not facts.
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It's true, maybe these arguments are contradictory because they're coming from different people. Maybe person A is saying "Just wait it out 4Head" and person B is saying "DH creates an intricate mindgame that is good for the game".
But here's the thing; y'all have very fundamentally different beliefs, and you're so passionate about them that you'll jump on any thread which voices even a hint of disagreement, and yet you're always yelling at me and never yelling at each other. And often, on a long enough timeline, if I keep arguing with person A, they'll eventually make a person B argument, and vice versa.
It kinda seems like you're playing games, and I'm the opposing team, and anyone who's against me is your ally. And you're not really taking a position, but rather claiming to believe in whatever would need to be true in order to score points against me.
But I digress. The claim I'm talking about is "Dead Hard is fine". Or if you prefer, "Dead Hard doesn't need to be deleted". Because that's what this whole argument boils down to, in the end; we can tackle individual supporting arguments until the end of time, but with a claim as broad as "Dead Hard is fine", at what point do you throw in the towel and say "Dead Hard is not fine"? Because you can always move the goalposts and come up with more rationalizations for why Dead Hard must still be fine no matter how many individual arguments are debunked. For reference, see my OP.
Okay, so DH is a zero-sum game. It's a pure 50/50 for who wins the mindgame. And indeed, tournament-level Killers seem to M1 into DH roughly 50% of the time when the surv isn't Exhausted.
Ignoring that second-guessing every swing you make and waiting behind the Survivor is incredibly unfun gameplay, here's the other problem: The mindgame isn't happening in a vacuum. The existence of DH changes how the Killer must approach every other aspect of the chase. Suddenly you can't lunge or use your power anymore, and that can be very costly. Schrodinger's Dead Hard allows Survivors to make it to pallets or windows when they'd otherwise be dead to rights, and that can extend chases considerably even before E has actually been pressed.
Anyone who's played Killer for any length of time knows that the difference between a lunge and a quick swing can easily be the difference between a hit and a pallet stun, so a chase where lunging is not viable can easily go on for an extra 15 seconds or more. And again, all this is happening BEFORE Dead Hard actually comes out in the chase. Which is one reason why, as in the matches shown, skilled Killers will often say "#### it" and not really bother playing around DH. Which kinda negates the whole point of the perk.
Look, I wouldn't be as harsh on Dead Hard if Survivors had no other good options in terms of perks, but they do have other options. There's no shortage of good Exhaustion perks out there, and the number can only grow as time goes on. And dodging an attack with a 99'd Sprint Burst or walking 40 seconds in chase is way more impressive to me than pressing a button. And it's easy to feel robbed by DH when the Killer often had to make a skilled play to get into a position to swing in the first place, and DH just cancels it out.
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So, no proof?
Nice ad hominem.
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you see, those are reasons I do think we need to look at why DH is so powerful and how it can be tweaked to be less of a looming threat, because I too think DH is too strong right now, as it is. I just disagree with the sentiment that DH needs to be deleted from the game - there's a good place for a perk that allows you to situationally avoid one instance of damage when played right. the one we have right now is slightly-to-moderately too good at it. your initial "arguments," if you could call them that, were weak. this post was much stronger and more reasonable.
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Wasn’t old Ruin nerfed because it was punishing for newer players who couldn't to get better, even though it was ineffective against more skilled players.
Wasn’t old DS nerfed because it was so powerful it had to be respected by waiting it out, even though the player may not even have the perk.
Wasn’t Nurse nerfed because even though it took a lot of skill to use her, she was extremely effective in the right hands, and useless without the skill to use.
Isnt DH also these things; useless without the skill to use it and insanely strong when you do, have to wait it out just in case they have the perk, supremely effective against those who can’t counter it and the argument is if you can’t counter it then just get better.
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Spot on 👍
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Recent
This one is like 5 months old and ranks it second most used.
This guy did his own counting of a small sample. Dead hard is first.
I mean, none of the sources make it a large margin, but you're not exactly holding a good faith argument by pretending Dead Hard isn't one of the most used perks.
Weather its good to use or not across all the matches that occur, is a separate argument.
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My initial argument was based on my experience posting videos on this forum, or otherwise voicing complaints about DH on this forum; if someone loses to DH, they got outplayed so it's not a problem. If someone wins against DH, that means Killers can win against it, so it's also not a problem. So... what the heck am I supposed to do? End every match with a 2k?
Which is one reason I have no patience for someone who claims my video showing the Oni's comp performance proves nothing, or that it proves Dead Hard is fine. No matter what hoops I jump through, it's never enough.
At any rate, I don't see DH getting fixed in such a way that it isn't annoying to Killers. It's annoying for many of the same reasons Eruption was; it punishes you- harshly- just for trying to progress your primary objective. It's not like Endurance is a completely unworkable concept, mind you; I don't recall seeing anyone complain about BT basekit anytime recently, and indeed I don't mind it either. But BT works because it's predictable and easily avoidable; you know exactly where and when you need to worry about it, and the Survivor can't just hold onto it forever.
And to share some points from game design lectures I've seen, I have two lessons to impart:
1) "Don't confuse 'interesting' with 'fun'". Adding more complexity to a game (Like DH does) is interesting. But "interesting" and "fun" can be two very different things. Games can provide two different types of stimulation: Intellectual stimulation ("Hmm, how should I play around his Dead Hard?") and emotional stimulation ("Haha, yes, taste my knife, pitiful survivors!"). Intellectual stimulation can be fun, but more often than not, emotional stimulation is what you should prioritize as a designer; visceral thrills and/or emotional satisfaction are what keep people coming back to your game.
And Dead Hard, on the Killer's end, can make the game more interesting, but the number one complaint I see about Dead Hard, myself included, is "I just wanna stab the Survivor without running through a damn checklist". This isn't fun.
I've seen a LOT of people, my past self included, who have totally missed this concept.
Source:
2) Good counterplay is more complicated than people think. There's some subjectivity to this, but people oftentimes can instinctively tell the difference between good counterplay and bad counterplay, though they have trouble putting it into words. Generally, good counterplay needs to fulfill the following criteria: Is counterplay possible? Is the need for counterplay clear? Is the counterplay interesting/fun? And by interesting/fun, I mean, is the counterplay varied and nuanced? Does it increase or decrease the number of choices available to your opponent?
So, positive example first: Wesker. Is counterplay possible? Yes, his dashes are not unavoidable unless you seriously messed up. Is the need for counterplay clear? Yes, there's a charge-up time with audio-visual cues. Is the counterplay interesting? Yes. There are many possible ways for you to try and juke his dashes, it can often be more engaging to play against him than against a standard M1 Killer.
And a positive survivor example: Pallets. Is counterplay possible? Yes, you can often get a hit at a pallet depending on how you both play it. Is the need for counterplay clear? Yes, the undropped pallet is there, clear as day. Is the counterplay interesting? Yes, you can respect the pallet, try to swing through it, try to throw your power through it, or try to mindgame it. And after it's dropped, you can break it, bloodlust it, throw your power over it, or try to mindgame it.
And for a negative example, Knight (Even though I'm kinda biting the hand that feeds me here, given that I main him). Is counterplay possible? Yes, hold W. Is the need for counterplay clear? Yes, there's lots of audio/visual cues. Is the counterplay interesting? No. For the most part, your options in chase are whittled down to holding W and hoping the next tile has something to help you lose the Killer.
And Dead Hard. Is counterplay possible? For the most part, yes. Is the need for counterplay clear? Sort of, if you haven't seen any other Exhaustion perks. Is the counterplay interesting? No. In many scenarios, Schrodinger's Dead Hard significantly reduces the number of options available to the Killer. Where they previously might have been able to go for a lunge or use their power to try and nab a hit, DH is there to punish them for it. There are so many clips where the Killer so desperately wants to swing, but they can't because of Dead Hard, and the Survivor knows it. And because Schrodinger's Dead Hard weakens the Killer's chase so much, it's common even for skilled Killers to just say "#### it" and swing immediately.
Source:
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Pre 6.1 DH was nerfed because it had both invulnerability for a short duration and gave a very short speed boost. M1 and M2 attacks were ignored instead of causing Endurance and the three foot speed boost made it impossible to stop a DH for distance to a window vault. Deep Wounds did not affect a usage of DH and you could DH literally over Trapper's traps. 75% of survivors used it and anyone using it could, in a very short amount of time, use it to significantly improve their survival rates.
Now, there are counters, you can hit a DH user vaulting when you couldn't even get into range before and the effect of the power actually takes effect now instead of allowing the DH user to just ignore everything.
It was not nerfed because it had to be waited out; it was nerfed because it provided way too strong of an effect.
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pure baits lol
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I said old Decisive Strike, not old Dead Hard; to show how both are so powerful they have to be waited out just to make sure even if the survivor doesn’t even have the perk equipped.
New Dead Hard grants something old Dead Hard doesn’t btw, which is a speed boost when you tank a hit instead of just dodging it.
Against Trickster for example, if you had used old DH you would still have gone down to one more blade, where the new DH you get a free health state and speed boost as well as resetting the laceration meter so you have to build the power up from scratch again.
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just wait the threads out
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How hard is it to wait .5 seconds? Complaining about new dead hard must be a joke, considering it actually is so inconsistent now with how it relies on the killer's connection. I'll press E and still be downed. This perk is actually mid now and if killers are losing to it, it really all boils down to experience, no ifs ands or buts about it.
ALSO I play killer. Just thought I'd throw that in there. If you realize a survivor has deadhard, WAIT to m1 AND if that doesn't work, they are probably a damn good survivor and you should probably find another survivor to chase instead of wasting 2 gens chasing them.
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The Dead Hards fuel my STBFL tokens
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