Is this dead hard nerf really that bad? Will it actually give more value now?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sure, let me know how can i make them fail when they reach a pallet and they are in lunge distance.

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.

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.

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.

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.