Is this dead hard nerf really that bad? Will it actually give more value now?
So I've been thinking. It seems the big complaint about the Dead Hard nerf in the Dev Update is the fact that Dead Hard now has limited uses per match. A popular number i've been seeing is a maximum of 6 uses per match (obviously could be lower).
Here's the thing. Realisticly how many uses do you need? If you're able to dead hard twice per chase then you are against a killer below your skill level because any killer dropping chase after being hit by Dead Hard isn't going to win regardless.
Based on my matches as Killer I see a maximum of 3 uses per survivor per match. One for each hook state.
So I want to ask the community some questions questions and I'm praying (foolish i know) that others answer the question and don't just start ranting that their precious dead hard is being nerfed.
So...
Question 1 - In an average match when you use Dead Hard how many times do you activate the perk?
Question 2 - The times you activate it how many times is the perk successful. Alternativly this could be asked how many times are killers simply waiting out the dead hard to down you.
I am very interested to find out the stats for dead hard of how many times its used vs how often its successful because based on my games as killer I would say its got about a 25% success rate.
Now the second part of this post asks the question Will Dead Hard actually get more value after the "nerf".
Clearly everyone is just thinking Jay your insane if you think it will get more value but I say...Are you sure.
Yes of course it will see less use by players, I mean why wouldn't it. For the most part Dead Hard is used as a crutch to help players who struggle in chase extend it a bit. However...
Think about after this goes live. Will Killers become more complacient because they are expecting survivors to not run dead hard? Will dead hard be more successful when it is activated?
Personally I believe that if this change goes live as it currently stands that with the exception of a few lower skilled players trying out the perk I think only more skilled players will be running it because they will have the skill to get those stacks and be able to use it. This is very dangerous for the killer because Dead Hard in the hands of a skilled survivor is extreamly hard to go against and I say this from experience.
So i leave it to anyone who is reading this post to post your thoughts on this.
And again please try to refrain from the normal "Dead hard nerf is stupid you don't know anything" type posts that im seeing everywhere. Let's have a civilised conversation :)
Comments
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I was thinking exactly this.
Part of the reason Eruption was nerfed, is due to the prevalence of the perk forcing survivors into a stalemate when repairing gens. Even if they hadn't seen Eruption of off yet, you were basically punished for doing your main objective.
Dead Hard is similar for killers, you expect it all the time, so every chase involves this game of chicken, waiting for the DH before you can attack.
With less Dead Hard's out there, or at least fewer uses per game, unless you're specifically going after someone who just unhooked, you can probably be safe to just got for the hit. So yeah, fewer games of chicken, means the few Dead Hard's you use may be more successful.
Additionally, with a further prerequisite to use, there's the potential to double up on exhaustion perks now. Similarly to how survivors can use Adrenaline with other exhaustion perks, you could take say Lithe, which you can use until you score an unhook, then you'll have a Dead Hard that the killer won't expect.
I'm actually more inclined to run Dead Hard now, particularly as I already run unhook builds with Renewal/Deliverance and We'll Make It. I'm already used to playing around the goal of scoring an unhook to unlock my perks. Dead Hard will lose out on it's use during a first chase, but any point after the first hook, it won't be too badly impacted.
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Yeah, the one guy running it. You run a perk that requires you to unhook, you unhook. You then get more use out of DH because the killer isn't playing chicken with every single injured survivor.
You know what else happens every game? multiple hooks, that means multiple unhooks. There are 8 potential unhooks per game, so if we're talking about the full party like you are, that's 8 Dead Hard's per game. Why would you need more than that?
If DH is being used more than 8 times per game right now, that's a clear indication it's far too powerful, giving survivors three health states (or more!) for every single hook.
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dead hard isn’t even that strong right now. Generally it’s just used to punish killers that are playing like pieces of #########. Kind of like DS. Killers are gonna be pretty frustrated when they realize lithe/lucky break, flashbang/lithe is stronger anyway. Hell I think if you get good at the game theres an argument that spring burst and balanced landing is 100X more cancerous as well.
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While it’s possible it may be successful more often when it’s used because killers may not wait for it as much or expect it, it will have less opportunities to be used and it is still an objective nerf in all aspects this time in terms of what it actually allows a survivor to do. The first nerf in 6.1.0 made it weaker overall but in certain scenarios it was actually better than the old one. This version of DH won’t allow you to do anything the previous one didn’t, and killers will not have to play around it in their first chase at all because no one can have it activated yet.
I definitely do not think it’s a dead perk, but it will get significantly less use now.
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You are still exhausted. So no you can't spam it. All this means is the failing to use dead hard won't punish you by having you have to unhook someone to try again later.
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You still get Exhausted if you fail. You can try it again in your next chase, but you won’t be able to just spam it multiple times in one chase.
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Agreed DH isn't actually that strong of a perk its just overused because of the illusion of strength (Giving you a third health state).
As a killer I would rather go against DH rather than Lithe or Sprint Burst because of how most more powerful they are.
Yeah this is what i though would happen. This does however beg the question. Although they removed the distance from dead hard in 6.1.0 you do still gain that tiny distance and it has been enough to juke my hits as killer on multiple occasions. Do we think that players will find a way to use DH in this way with the intended way being a last resort?
I see the original person you quoted removed their comment which is kinda funny but you are correct. If you want to use this perk now you have to actually help and save your team mates not just loop all game long. I think for sure this change will mean that more players are rescued than being left on hook when dead hard is in play.
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I'm still gonna be pressing E. Just gotta have two exhaustion perks now. You might only get 1 to 2 unhooks a game so probably running it with lithe.
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The update to DH might be one reason more to tunnel. If you dont see a lithe or sprint bust on the first survivor he might have DH. Just tunnel him out and DH is irrelevant.
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Regardless of how many activations you'll get out of it, current DH is absolutely stupid oppressive.
Case in point: yesterday, I'm playing against a Blight. I've already hit him with DH so he knows to wait it out. I'm completely zoned out in the left side of Suffocation Pit main. He wins a mindgame and I'm zoned away from the filler pallet. The nearest pallet is near top of mid. I spin at him once, he waits DH. I make distance from bodyblocking him with the spin. He closes the gap again, I spin at him again. Same thing happens again. Third spin, he still respects. Now, I've made it to the filler at top of mid, I DH through it, he hits the DH and I greed the pallet. Thanks to this one perk, I've managed to get out of a situation where I was 100% dead, and saved two pallets in the process, as well as gave my team an extra 10s to work on gens. There shouldn't be a single perk in the game that is as oppressive as current DH.
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My problem with Dead Hard was the fact it was everywhere, all the time. This nerf guarantees that the first chases in the match will have no Dead Hard, which will make the early game a little more comfortable for killers. Now survivors will have to use those pallets, meaning those pallets won't be there later in the game when they may be needed. This helps reduce survivors' resources, which reduces pressure on the killer.
Dead Hard will still be around. Just not always, forever, constantly, on everyone. And that's all that really matters.
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Keep in mind successfully shielding damage with it will not deactivate it permanently. Get another safe unhook, and you can use it again. Definitely weaker, but not quite dead, especially when compared to PR, COB, and OC.
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I have thought about this myself. The average user will not use DH anymore, so its usage SHOULD go down to a healthy percentage, where you don't have to play like everyone has it, and this will lead to a couple of surprise DHs that come out of the left field, but because its so rare, it won't feel as aggrevating. Like in the glorious 6.1 days: neary no one was running DH, besides a couple of stubborn survivors, and they mostly messed up and I could happily swing at cornered survivors without having to second guess or hestitate, and when I got paried by a DH, I went like "woah, awesome! Cudos, dude!", but we all know how the story went from then on.
Since 6.1 I have been through the 5 stages of griefing with DH. I was in the Depression stage for the longest time, but @Pulsar 's high and mighty talk about how he got nearly never paried by it let to me entering a dead-eye high focus state. And with this increased awareness came a certain detachment from the Fog and suddenly I could see it. I had finally accepted DH as a reality and for what it was, a crutch, and learned how to play around it and kick the crutch out of nearly everyone. Sure, DH plays at paletts felt bitter, but everything else became fair game.
In essence DH had turned into an inversed Nurse: against Nurse, every blink turned into a mindgame and you could hold W, double back, stand still or whatever, and bamboozle the Nurse or die trying. With DH from the killers perspective it was like the foil to this, I could bait it out by nodding or just waiting for my survivor the lose their nerves and when we met later in the same trial swing at the earliest opportunity, when they expected that I would swing a bit later. It actually really became much easier to play around once I had accepted DH, BUT I stil loathed it and that it was in every game and let every survivor benefit from it, if they played it or not. But I thought "live with it, it wont be changing anytime soon" ... and then BHVR dropped the big bomb on DH! Who would have guessed?
People have always claimed that SB would be the next meta after DH and that killer mains would course their own words, because "SB is actually stronger then DH!!!1", but frankly, I don't see it. In the short, wounderful period right after 6.1, when DH disappeared with a bang, we had a fun time of many experiments. People used all kind of builds, tried out old, rusted and crusted perks, just to see if they could fiddle around with them and, yes, peeps used ALL kind of exhaustion perks.
During this time SB did't rear its ugly head as the bringer of the apocalypse, because getting value out of sprintburst, besides quickly bursting away from a gen that you had 30s time to regain your exhaustion, its not that easy to use, Lithe is much more plug and play, and maintaining a 99% SB is the sort of high skill play that you see very, very rarely.
The thing is this: even if everyone would be running SB, Fixation and Vigilance, this would still be far, far, faaaaaaar less aggrevating and obnoxious then current DH, because its the nature of the perk to be front loaded, ie all its power is spend at the start of a chase, so the killer can evaluate if its worth pursuing that survivor or not, its not a nasty surprise 45-60s into a chase, literally taking away all your progress in the 7 frames before you would reap your benefits. And a survivor cornered can't suddenly pull a SB out of their behind and get a shot at sprinting away EVERY SINGLE TIME (at least unless they 99% it for the whole chase), nor do you have to waste time and play stupid mindgames in the open EVERY SINGLE TIME with EVERY SINGLE SURVIVOR or risk an embarressing blunder.
So call doom and gloom and the SB apocalypse all you want, it won't be happening. Oh there will of course be a few lonely lost souls who will cry for a nerf, thats just a givin with practically everything, but you won't be seeing 40+ threads all lamenting the same unfun playstyle that DH promoted, I guranteed it! And if it happens, please quote me and I will eat my words.
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Definitely a nerf and we will see way less of it but it’s absolutely not dead and the ones that are running it will get more reliable uses out of it as no one will expect it now.
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No one believes that the entire survivor playerbase was "playing easy" and using dead hard out of some goodness of their heart lol
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I'm glad I could help?
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I remember a year back, when I would have a timer running on my second screen to get an estimate if I had to fear a DS, or when I would wait 1min before picking up the last survivor, least they ran away towards the hatch after stunning me with DS. Heck, there was one situation where I tunneled a pesky survivor and they jumped into a locker and I camped that locker till the minute was over, DS was that prevalent back then (and funny enough, they didnt even have DS). Nowadays, if I do have to tunnel, I dont give DS a second though, and if I get hit by it, I am a bit surprised, chuckle and down them 10-15s later, because they got no distance, the poor things.
DH will mostlikely evolve in a similar direction.
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Sorry, I tried to be funny, but re-reading it it comes of more passive-aggressive then I intended ^_- So yes, you indeed helped me in overcoming my issues with DH. Somewhat.
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Ahh yes pos killers allways killing in a game about killing how dare they
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Between Dead Hard and baseline Borrowed Time, survivors can unhook a survivor and escape the map with 100% protection.
But, you know, let's ignore the thing that makes the perk use because it won't be a free, totally unearned 3rd health state, available every 40 seconds.
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Dead hard just doesn’t take as much brain power to get value. After learning the timing it’s pretty easy to get value out of it. I don’t know what game you’re playing but the entire player base is not using dead hard. Maybe you just get hit by it a lot but by waiting it out I would say I hit a survivor with dead hard like once a match? Almost every community tier list has lithe above dead hard. It’s just a stronger perk that does more once you practice how to use it effectively. If you straight up tunnel a survivor for 3 gens and don’t wait out dead hard rather than spreading out injuries you’re game is gonna sucks.
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I have no idea what tier lists you're reading, but the ones I've seen will maybe, narrowly put Sprint Burst above DH, but never Lithe above DH.
And I've seen comp players swing into DH pretty regularly. The ones I've talked to say it's just not worth it to try and play the waiting game if it means they might make it to a pallet.
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To me the important thing is you can no longer Dead Hard on first chase. That is where the most damage comes from in terms of lost gen pressure. If you are REALLY behind as killer the survivors cannot use Dead Hard to make it worse because no one has been hooked yet to give it to them.
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Its another change that just promotes tunneling, why go for the unhooker when they could have a potential third health state when you can just go for the same guy that you know doesnt have dead hard.
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Dead Hard is so tough to actually pull off. It is not really possible to react to a Killer swing and activate DH. All survivors have to predict a killer swing, and blindly guess. This means that Killers can easily bait it.
The fact that Killers have been whining about DH shows how entitled Killers are. It's so easy to bait and make them fail.
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We had to get one comment about this didn't we :)
Leave your "killers are entitled" comments for the ######### posts about us vs them.
but to answer your question dead hard was very easy to pull off as there are a lot of tactics that would give the killer the illusion of a free hit when infact its a dead hard bait.
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I personally find that sprint burst and Lithe are much easier to deal with than a successful dead hard. This is mainly because I play clown and once I know a survivor has lithe im throwing a bottle at them as they get to a pallet/window so they are already slowed going out of it. Or if its clearly a sprint burst bait (walking away from me instead of instantly running) i'm throwing a yellow bottle at them to force them to trigger sprint burst and then i get the speed boost to catch up with very little distance lost.
I do believe that currently Dead Hard gets much more use than SB or Lithe but this is just because its a lot of survivors go to crutch perk (Granted this is mainly newer/lower skilled players). It will be nice to not see this perk being used as much but as i said in my original post I think the power value of DH will go up even though its not used as much
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I don't think this will promote tunneling anymore than the game already does. Sure your point is valid but as a killer if your at the hook when an unhook happens you have 2 choices. You go for the unhooked player who you know has BT and potentially have either longer BT or OTR. Or you go for the unhooker who MAY or MAY NOT have Dead Hard. The smart choice here is to go for the unhooker as its less likely that your going to get hit by an endurance perk.
I don't really want to get into the topic of tunneling to much on this thread but the only reason some killers will hardcore tunnel is because they suck at the game and its the only way they can get a kill.
FYI there is a difference between hardcore tunneling and logical tunneling. Logical tunneling is when its either the only thing you can do without throwing the game or you have been put in a situation where its the most benificial thing you can do. For example when an unhooker insists on standing in a doorway because they have BT/OTR. If that happens that player is basicly asking to be re-chased and has no right to complain when they go down again.
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Sure, let me know how can i make them fail when they reach a pallet and they are in lunge distance.
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ALL I want is to not have to wait it out. Anyone who says it's a guaranteed 3rd health state doesn't have patience, but my god playing around it every chase when it's not something base kit is so dumb and tedious.
Honestly I have never though of this comparison or seen it but rusty shackles is essentially the same thing. You know the hag has it after first chase and all you have to do it be aware and wait it out. What's so hard to understand about it? It disrupts the natural flow of the game. The little mind game where the killer is in full control of the situation regarding dh is just dumb at this point. It's really not that skillful to use or play around, just beyond tedious.
If it's somehow still run in my games by more than one survivor, I am going to start running alch ring again as that add-on obliterates current dh(well also it's busted but that's beside the point here).
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Ah yes. One specific situation. In every other situation it's easily counterable. I love watching survs try it on the way to a vault. People always moan about DH on pallets but that is the only time the perk is reliable. The rest of the time killer can bait it very easily.
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Problem is that its not "one specific situation". That could be valid if it was a rare situation or something. But it's pretty common on a lot of chases (i could say 80% of chases) to the survivor to reach a pallet while you are in lunge distance. If no DH was involved, on those cases you could get a hit as a killer and if you are lucky also a pallet down. With DH this is a lose-lose situation for the killer.
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Simple answer is either down them before they reach pallet or work around it. DH is only really an issue if you hold W and m1 after survivors with no other tactics.
The majority of killers have a way to bypass DH or pallet looping. Antiloop, inflicting exhaustion, exposed from full health, deep wounds. Every killer has something in their basekit/addons to counter pallets and/or dead hard.
And sometimes it's simply recognising when it's a good idea to simply swing into the deadhard, i had a surv trying to loop me at shack. I was running bamboozle, I sealed off the vault and they made an obvious DH play at the pallet, i thought "this'll be funny" swung in, they got their 3rd state, greeded the pallet and whipped around the outside of the door and i followed them round, to find them running into the blocked vault window. Wham bam thankyou mam. Hooked them in shack basement.
If people get repeatedly punished by DH AND lose games because of it, then it is a skill issue. There is so much counterplay not just with plays midchase but straight up mechanical counters. But if people want to play killers with zero perks and not utilise their powers? Ok have fun getting 3 hits for every down I guess? 🤷♂️
That said I don't mind the DH nerf, tbh it makes little difference to me, I never trigger it as surv more than once or twice a match except against baby killers, and as killer I counterplay it as a matter of course.
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number 1 list when googled and it’s community voted so its not just one persons opinion. Lithe and sprint burst both above dh.
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Simple answer is either down them before they reach pallet or work around it. DH is only really an issue if you hold W and m1 after survivors with no other tactics.
That would be like saying "Man old Eruption was fine, simple answer is to repair the gen before the killer gets value from Eruption."
The majority of killers have a way to bypass DH or pallet looping. Antiloop, inflicting exhaustion, exposed from full health, deep wounds. Every killer has something in their basekit/addons to counter pallets and/or dead hard.
Maybe some killers have, some others dont (saying the "majority" is a bit of a stretch anyways). But "just dont use X killer" should never be a counterargument.
And sometimes it's simply recognising when it's a good idea to simply swing into the deadhard, i had a surv trying to loop me at shack. I was running bamboozle, I sealed off the vault and they made an obvious DH play at the pallet, i thought "this'll be funny" swung in, they got their 3rd state, greeded the pallet and whipped around the outside of the door and i followed them round, to find them running into the blocked vault window. Wham bam thankyou mam. Hooked them in shack basement.
That was a hard survivor missplay that had nothing to do with DH. Yes he greeded the pallet after DH but he could have done the same without it. It was his decision to stay instead of run into another loop. Writing a bad survivor decision doesn't seem to be the best idea..
If people get repeatedly punished by DH AND lose games because of it, then it is a skill issue. There is so much counterplay not just with plays midchase but straight up mechanical counters. But if people want to play killers with zero perks and not utilise their powers? Ok have fun getting 3 hits for every down I guess? 🤷♂️
Strawman right here. So "people having a hard time with DH" means that "people just want to play without perks and without their powers"?
No doubt that using DH sometimes doesn't give you anything if you "get baited" or something, i will give you that. Is not always a "i press a button and i get a free escape". But still, it has many problems:
1.- Lunge removal.
Lunges, a killer mechanic, gets completely removed from the game when someone is wounded and it has DH. They are completely reactable and you will need to walk into the swing range and start the "mindgame". Some perks cand o that on really certain situations (Bamboozle only on that window IF the killer vaults it and then you know it has it, Deadlock only for 30 seconds and you still can repair other gens, etc). I think people should be aware that removing a mechanic from the game is not healthy at all cough cough Eruption cough.
2.- Passive deterrence.
Remember old ruin? Old NoeD? Times where you need to assume the killer/survivor has a certain perk and you need to act like they had it, just in case.
By DH doing that it means you are, again, removing your lunge until you are certain the survivor doesnt have it, wasting time going into their butts, wasting more time trying to bait it, then swinging. And they even dont have it, but you need to play like they have. At the meanwhile, people are repairing gens while you are losing all this time.
3.- Pallet situation.
I already did talk on this situation about lunging in pallets. Do i lunge? Survivor reacts and DH. Do i just not lunge because of DH? Survivor uses pallet. Win-win situation for survivor, and these cases happen a lot through every game.
Even if we count those cases where killer is not in lunge range but on swing range, we get again to a point where the window where you can hit the survivor after DH and before he throws the pallet is extremely tiny. Doable, but difficult. But the problem is the first case, not this one.
4.- Counterplay to something being "not do anything at all" is not healthy
So, the counterplay to DH is usally, reach the survivor butt and then............do nothing. Literally. Wait until they DH, at the meanwhile, do absolutely nothing. Interactive as hell.
I suppose that when old Eruption did make survivors not being able to do anything for 25 seconds they were having the best time of their lives. Anyways, you could counter old Eruption by doing nothing until it pops, then you didnt got the incap effect. But it wasn't funny, i suppose. And i get it wasnt funny, the same way is not funny on DH case.
5.- Time lost while not doing anything and losing your lunge is a LOT more than people give credit for
People ignore this, but lunging has always been an integral part on how killers down survivors. By losing that, that means that you need to waste some seconds (like 4 seconds or so) by running from the initial lunge distance into the survivor's back. And thats not all, you now need to wait another 2-4 seconds trying to bait DH. That could be like 6-8 seconds that you already lost trying to catch a survivor that otherwise you could have downed already.
Now multiply that for every time the survivor can be on wounded state, 3 times at minium. 18 seconds. Now for every survivor that has DH (on my games are usually 3 DH at minimum). That can be 54 seconds easily (things can change, you can wait a little less or a little more, survivor can go down or successfully hit DH so they win the chase and you need to count another new DH, etc), but it should be a pretty good estimation. 54 seconds of free gen time.
I could keep going but this is a little wall of text so i think i will stop here. No matter if DH is strong or not (tip: it is), but the thing is that its not healthy for the game at all.
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I'll guess it will be another DS situation. Killers won't expect anymore because the usage rate will drop a ton, but when it hits, it hits hard.
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Comparing DH to eruption is always insane. Eruption was only counterable if you had voice comms. In solo q you had zero way to counter it unless you could actually see the chase while working on the gen. Otherwise you had to get off gen as soon as a surv was injured to avoid it which could prevent you working on it for a very long time. Pretty much as bad as letting the trigger happen. DH is way easier to counter. Eruption would ruin every solo q game it popped up in.
And all you are listing here are mechanics that DH works against. Every strong power/perk/ability is like that. It's the basic arms race in every multiplayer game using perk/power systems. Aura removes stealth as a mechanic, iron maiden prevents (or rather punishes) using lockers, plague pretty much removes the standard healing mechanic, lightborn makes torches useless, franklins pretty much removes all items from the game. Hell nurse and blight pretty much remove running as a mechanic to help survivors. Just because a perk is strong doesn't mean it's broken.
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Well, I gotta say, that's a pretty terrible tier list. Prove Thyself as the #1 perk? Adrenaline, Off the Record, Unbreakable and Deliverance in B tier? No self-respecting comp player would make a tierlist like that.
This tierlist puts Head On on the same level as Deliverance, and puts Mettle of Man above both, almost as high as Unbreakable. And if Mettle of Man is above Deliverance on your tierlist, you done goofed.
This a fine example of why polling isn't good data.
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The main effect is survivors are punished if multiple people bring it. Just like Deliverance it'd result in people fighting over unhooks. This will result in many people who still -want- to run the nerfed DH just not running it because they don't wanna be doing unhook races with other people.
It's similar to Inner Healing that way, which is gonna be a lot more popular with the healing nerfs, but if everyone else runs it you're screwed.
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Dead hard is limited by:
- Exhaustion (and so some perks and addons will limit/counter its use)
It's first nerf and upcoming nerfs also mean that:
- It is more difficult to time (shorter time window) and also doesn't work vs Deathslinger's power anymore.
- It can't be used when mending (so certain killers and addons counter it, it also can't be used in combination with OTR or BT etc)
- It is limited further - you'll have to get a safe unhook for every use of a successful DH.
So there's a lot of factors where you just won't be able to use DH - especially in solo q where you can't tell someone you want the unhook for DH. Also, if a killer decides to tunnel you and only you out first, you're not gonna get to use DH. Then there's also the fact you have to time it and it is still not 100% consistent.
Post edited by Pepsidot on1 -
Only Truths!
1. killer always want easy game.
2. DH is useful one time.
3. The second time killer wait before attack.
4. It doesn't always work because of the game latency.
5.Need skill to use
6.I don't see the point to nerf
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