I’ll never understand nerfing perks because of their pickrate
COB, Pain res, Eruption, DH, COH… list goes on
If you really wanna change the meta buff perks with low usage rates. Theres a reason people choose the perks listed above over others. (spoiler: it’s because they’re the best of the best) Like why would anyone choose to use lithe over dead hard when Dh is so much better theres a reason these perks have high pick rates please buff some other perks to switch up the meta please!
Thanks bhvr.
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Or in short: MMR forces meta and ppl feel even more they have to use the strongest perks to compete.
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Well I agree with you but some perks need nerf and they are also the main reason why big number of playerbase runs them.
DH, CoH and 3-gen camping perks needed all some nerfs (even tho they probably overkilled the numbers a bit with CoB and Overcharge).
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The problem with your idea is we would need to buff those low pick rate perks to power levels that EXCEED Dead Hard and Circle of Healing and that's just insane.
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They got it wrong with pain res I only really ever got value from it when paired with iron grasp or agitation.
This has come about from them making two 3 gen killers in a row unfortunately.
I hope it works out.
If I get gen rushed by every swf going I will take another break from the game I think.
I don't always play high mobility killers.
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Buffing low usage rate perks is fine so they get more interesting, but not to the point they get better than the already meta perks, because i don't believe powercreeping is a good thing in the current state of the game. Hence the nerfs are at least necessary.
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Nerfing solely because of pick doesn't make sense, sure. You need to look at the whole picture, and see why certain perks are overpowered or otherwise problematic, but usually pick rate correlates with that. After all, the most busted things get used the most.
Circle of Healing is an example where pick rate does more or less reflect the issues with the perk, while the Billy changes appear to be made purely to flatten the add-on use chart, despite not being very problematic.
Dead Hard is a case that's sort of middle ground. Yes it's used more frequently because it's effective, but it's also used frequently because it's interactive and fun, and offers greater freedom for the survivor compared to more contextual exhaustion perks like Lithe. However, it's also problematic because it's far too impactful against certain killers and certain level of killer player, much like Eruption was.
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This single healing change indirectly buffed Sloppy Butcher, Thanatophobia, Forced Penance, Dying Light, Coulrophobia, Pentimento, Ruin, Leverage, Face the Darkness, Forced Penance, Blood Echo, and Gift of Pain. As well as add-ons that inflict mangled like Wraith and Huntress, and the hit-and-run playstyle as a whole. No need to buff anything directly when 13 relatively weak perks were just made stronger.
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Solely buffing weaker stuff is a problem too. Imagine if the devs have never nerfed anything, we would have to buff things to the power level of old Moris where the killer could kill you instantly on your first down as their was no hook requirement.
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This isn't absolute though, as evidenced by the Billy Engravings nerf. They're the most frequently used addons in a killer that, himself, doesn't see a lot of play and most who do play him generally agree the Engravings are the most fun addons to use and/or a genuine necessity.
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I literally said that.
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If you only buff weaker perks, you end up with power creep. Each perk needs to be better than the last in order to dethrone the meta, and so over time perks would become stronger and stronger. Eventually you'd reach a point where perks are ridiculously strong and have far too much impact on a match, making skillful play less important than the perks you brought.
Even beyond that, this simply is not feasible. There's 228 perks in the game. Even if we assume that 50 are in a really good spot (already meta in this case) and don't need any changes whatsoever, that's over 170 perk updates that need to be done just to balance things.
Instead, we do a bit of both. Most perks are already in a decent spot and see a good amount of use, but there's a few outliers that either don't get used enough or are used way too much. Bringing the top few down and some of the bottom few up is a lot more manageable. You pretty much answered yourself with your example. With Dead Hard being weaker, suddenly there's a lot more reason to bust out Lithe, Sprint Burst, or another exhaustion perk instead.
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why change something in the fist place? are you not happe with the kill rates?
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I choose lithe over dead hard
just like I choose inner strength over circle of healing
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An EVE Online dev once said something that stuck with me--if they left balancing to the community, every ship would end up with a million HP and 99% resistance to everything.
But even so, use rate isn't the whole story. If something is dominant, it might be overpowered....or it might be fine by itself but necessary to counter something that is busted (old Borrowed Time), or might be the only good option to make a weak character viable.
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We have very detailed dashboards that show not only pick rates, but also win rates for each perk and/or loadout. When something is not only used often but also makes people far more likely to win, it's a sign that it's doing far more than other perks. Ideally people should be winning their matches because they played well, not because they put on the strongest stuff. That said, data isn't everything. Each of the perks in this next update had no shortage of complaints.
The alternative of leaving them as is leads to a meta that becomes very stale after a while. When there's so many perks in the game, it can get a bit boring to play against the same dozen or so over and over. Over the past year or so, we've been making sure that any emerging metas don't stick around too long.
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Absolutely! Data is a sign of where to look, but it doesn't tell the full story. There are some perks which are used fairly often, but don't provide a significant advantage. When you look deeper, you find that a lot of people using those perks are simply using them for QOL (e.g. solo players keeping tabs on what their teammates are doing).
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And I added to it by adding detail to the current specific exception.
That and I missed the mention of Billy.
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Still this update was more focused around nerfs and we had next to no buffs. So of course that feels bad, feels like the devs took away fun and didn't add anything to replace.
Besides i think most people agreed that PR was in a good spot balance wise as it encouraged chases by the killers and rewards regression by progressing the game.
While DH was annoying for killers, it also rewarded gameplay that most survivors consider fun. Taking chases and prolonging chases with the killer. While all other exhaustion have more focus on getting away from a chase.
While i agree that you can't just buff everything because of power creep. If the strong parts of the game are things people find enjoyable, i don't see a reason to nerf them to create variety.
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Don't forget Hysteria and Leverage! I'm hoping Hysteria and Blood Echo become the new meta, due to all the survivors claiming they'll genrush and never heal all game. Well, here's some perks that punish exactly that.
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DH is one of the reasons why killers don’t value chases as much as they should. If a killer has a 3-gen, and sees a survivor that immediately tried to run across the map, then it seems like a giant waste to time to chase them, when the killer might need to go through 3 full health states. It doesn’t help that all healing speeds are way too fast, and injuries don’t feel like they matter.
If the DH nerf, and all the healing speed needs happen, then we should be in a much healthier meta, where chases feel like they are valuable, and injuries feel like they matter.
This shouldn’t be a negotiation phase, where people try to get nerfs reverted because they don’t want their side to be nerfed. We should be actually trying out this meta for a few months, so we can see where it settles. I’m so tired of this healing meta, where it feels like it’s a much better game decision to defend an area than it is to chase survivors.
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I am happy that you feel excited.
But i don't. I see the patch and only see nerfs to fun options, the removal of fun interactions and a bigger focus on objectives.
You are free to like it and maybe it will be an healthier game, i doubt because of the altruism healing speed. But even if it is, the first impression is terribly bad for me. Why should i be excited for an update that removes stuff and doesn't add anything.
I have seen this trend in other games, where they remove options and tools in updates or sequels. Again, maybe the game will be better, but there is no way to advertise it for me to be excited. I am just wondering if i will still find the game fun or if we enter a new meta that we all hate and with less fun tools and options to use, maybe have less incentive to keep going and just give up.
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Ideally people should be winning their matches because they played well, not because they put on the strongest stuff.
Hi Peanits! Does this only apply to perks? Because I have to say I'm a little disappointed hearing this statement when Blight's strongest addons (Alch Ring is the biggest one), Myers Tombstone addons and Spirit's addons (Mother Daughter Ring + Amulet) are still in the game. Are these players not essentially winning a majority of their games by bringing the best stuff in the form of addons? Perks can be strong and all but so can addons.
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I agree in theory. Though, if you don't think about why some perks or addons for that matter are overused it's easy to miss when other things are so bad that they aren't really an alternative, which leads to players equipping things they know they can get value from even when they're not all that strong to begin with.
Much like what I assume happened with Billy. The Engravings are used more than anything else because they are fun and you literally don't have any alternative (besides Lo-Pros, which are kind of a crutch). No, I do not consider my TR shrinking by 8 metres but only when overheated (Big Buckle) an alternative to 2 addons that actually give me something useful in nearly every chase. Something I'd actually need.
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It’s adding the potential of a meta shift, that encourages chasing survivors instead of defending an area.
Of course there are parts of this plan that I don’t like. I currently use a lot of gen kick regression perks. I used to use eruption before it’s nerf, and that nerf felt really bad. I currently use the other gen kicking regression perks, and it feels really bad those are going away too. But I’m trying to look at the big plan, where changes are happening to both sides, to try to create a healthier meta.
Yes, we get a lot of survivors saying that if the full altruistic healing nerfs happen, that survivors will refuse to heal. But why aren’t we ever talking about the other role? Why aren’t we also saying that if the full altruistic healing nerfs don’t happen, that killers will refuse to chase survivors when they have a 3 gen? We know a bunch of killers are currently doing this, where they prioritize their 3 gen, and it’s a reasonable question to wonder if killers will still do this, if survivors don’t get the full healing speed nerfs.
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I think that the healing nerfs will do the opposite.
Makes 3 gens, camping and tunneling way easier to do. You can say that hit and run will be buffed and killers will have more reason to chase.
But i see the healing nerfs making those strategies i said before way more easy to do and win.
Survivors waste more time if they need to protect someone being tunneled, survivors waste 48s to heal themselves and rescue a survivor getting facecamped.
Survivors will waste more time healing or need to try and do the 3 gens injured.
So, i don't believe the heal changes for the altruism was fair. And that the negative consequences and ramifications where well thought out.
So, yes. Maybe hit/run and chasing survivors will be more viable. But look of what chaos can also occur.
And again. I was talking more in terms of fun and excitement for the patch, not even talking about balance or health of the game
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Geez Peanits tell me the good Wraith Build. i need to up my game.
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I appreciate your work. Its not easy, this community is not that easy. There are some REALLY NICE changes in it (Pig, Bloodweb, Map-Changes, Med-Kits). But i feel like the basekit nerf could be too much.
But BHVR should already know that the upcoming Meta will be Sloppy, Deadlock, No Way Out + NOED with harcore tunneling the first surv out asap, because he wont be able to activate his deadhard and killers wont have any regression worth using left.
With the upcoming healing-changes, you incentivise survivors to no longer heal and just slam gens with Resilience, Commodious Toolboxes and Prove Thyself.
For myself I can say my Freddy is finally dead. I have nothing left which synergyze with my power, because all Gen-Perks are dead or heavily nerfed, so their usage is not wise. It feels like someone looks at an Excel-Document and says: hey, this is used a lot, lets nerf it. Maybe I am just wrong, but at this point I even wish Old Deadhard and the Meta before 6.1.0 back 😔, when I got rewarded for being able to hook someone (Pop), giving survs other missions than gens (Ruin) and so on. Thats all gone. Whats left is Gen-Rush and Tunneling. Thats it... at least do I feel that way .
If the Billy-Nerf (just why, he is already C-Tier at best) goes through, I bet its just a matter of time my Paint Brush gets heavily nerfed too, even if its not strong, but necessary to at least being able using my power 😅.
Im 35years old and just want to enjoy my slasher before I retire from work 🤣
Please tell me you are working on a Freddy-Rework. PLEASE!
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But i will say with dh being nerfed, yes, we will see the percentage of usage rise within sprint burst, lithe and maybe even balanced landing. But is it inevitable that they too will be nerfed for being overused? There is a possibility.
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Both sides can create exaggerated claims. Killers can claim that if all the good gen kicking regression perks are nerfed, that it would be impossible to defend generators, and survivors will just gen rush every game. And we need to look at the consequences and ramifications of nerfing an entire genre of game slowdown, because nerfing so many of these perks is unfair.
But doomsaying doesn’t really help the game at all. And trying to get some of the survivor nerfs reverted, because of popular feedback, is dangerous thinking, because it implies that the popular opinions are always the best opinions.
We shouldn’t be looking at this as a negotiation phase. We should be trying all these changes for a good solid amount of time, to see how the meta evolves, and work from there.
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Disagree.
Some changes are bad enough that they do not need to be tested outside of a PTB.
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Correct me if im wrong but isnt this game perk reliant? Why wouldnt people use the best perks that would give them the advantage. I feel whether your a killer or survivor if you go in a match without perks you would probably lose. Also it seems like a marketing strategy that in the last couple of dlcs some of the best perks have been with the licensed characters.
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Fortunately, none of the proposed changes are bad enough.
Survivors have had so many patches recently that favored survivors. And killers kept getting told “every patch doesn’t need to favor killers”. Now we finally have a patch that can be good for killers, and we should just let it happen, because every patch doesn’t need to favor survivors.
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Like I understand all that but you really do not bring the top down a few with some of nerfs you are giving. Look at pain res, most ppl say right now it's a fair perk but yall have decided to heavily nerf it. You not even nerfing to be in the mid...the nerf yall decided on will completely kill the perk outright. 60% regression for the whole match isn't enough to justify a perk spot. That's not weaking a perk, it completely kills it as you have done to a lot of killer and survivor perks. Thana, Ruin, Calm Sprint, and ect have been completely killed and put at the very bottom. You didn't nerf them to be near the middle of the other perks.
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The game is not, no. Some people might be, on the other hand, and their use of meta perks can further drive others to use meta perks to counter them. There's absolutely nothing wrong with using the best perks to improve your chances of winning, but you should always expect them to be adjusted if that's the case. It's on us to make sure that there aren't undisputed best perks and instead a lot of different options to pick from depending on your playstyle.
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Eh, arguably Altruistic healing doesn't need to be nerfed as much as Self healing, and the 50% increase to healing times will stack multiplicatively with perks like Sloppy and Coulrophobia, so there's definitely huge concerns that certain killer builds will make healing virtually impossible.
You could say it's a no brainer that the sort of healing changes proposed should come with nerfs to Sloppy and Coulrophobia as a necessity, and neglecting them is a huge mistake.
The rest of the changes (besides Billy) are fine though.
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*High-level DbD is almost entirely bs that relies and toxic gameplay to win
ftfy
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...what?
6.1.0 massively favored Killers.
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6.1.0 had so many changes for either side it's impossible to quantify it like that.
For example, killers gained 0.2 seconds on pallet breaks, and lost nearly all of their meta gen regression, however it turned out the gen regression they got in return made up for it.
Meanwhile survivors lost endgame DS and Dead Hard, only to gain a new Dead Hard a couple weeks later when they all realised it wasn't a nerf at all. In addition to basekit BT, super-buffed OTR, and a host of minor buffs to perks like Spine Chill, Lucky Break, etc.
To say that it "massively" favoured either side is insane hyperbole.
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Kill rates jumped up pretty high.
Killers gained their best meta since original Ruin Undying
I don't know how you CANT see it as a huge Killer buff. I think that's just copium.
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Kill rates jumped high in the one single set of data we got a few weeks after the update, so it's not accounting for the Dead Hard resurgence, and to rates that are still much, much lower than kill rates used to be a couple of years ago. It also shows Sadako at the top and Nurse at the bottom. As always, relying on these kill rates is mostly meaningless.
Your survivor bias is showing. Play a killer game or twenty.
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You forgot the whole "buffed perks ended up being nerfed afterwards" and "BHVR now sells more gen speed perks"
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That primarily, and because when so many people are running the same perks, it forces similar tactics, and games start to feel like a skipping record. Having games constantly playing out the same way is really boring, and takes a lot of the fun out of the game.
Mixing up the meta is very much a good thing, and while it causes short term discomfort for some (as people are forced to change a bit), it ultimately keeps the game feeling somewhat fresh.
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The Hillbilly change is down to two things, imo:
- Overheat was a mistake, but BHVR doesn't want to remove it fully, because that would be admitting it was a mistake
- The proposed engraving nerfs are to "balance" out the Overheat tweak, because BHVR can't seem to process that not every single thing has to be a give and take.
Almost no one plays Billy, and the ones who do primarily do so to play fun, fly across the map curving Billy. Take that, and he's all but dead.
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I think the issue with this approach is that in this patch it was largely just nerfs. With players choosing "the next best thing" as the new meta, we end up with a weaker meta, but a meta nonetheless, that will still favour the same things. Regression, Gen speed, etc, just weaker.
And next time? Nerf the new meta again and so on? Until perks become gimmicky and inconsequential.
That in essence isn't that bad, until you factor in the elephant in the room. Not all killers are made equal. Sure some might do well with weak perks or no perks at all against similarly skilled survivors. But not all of them. You are fostering a "character meta" rather than a perk meta and does not sound fun at all.
And if this leads to character powercreep where every new chapter releases killers and survivor perks tailored to do well with the current meta, well....
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It was (far more than the upcoming one, really), but it was also kind of an outlier in that regard.
"Mains" might disagree, but this new update is actually pretty even handed, tbh. It really blows up the meta on both sides.
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Still blaming MMR for everything you don't like, heh? As if DH wasn't already omnipresent before the implementation of MMR, lol.
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It's not perk dependent in theory, but in practice it really is, because how the game plays is almost entirely a function of the people playing it.
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Nerfing everything is the only right decision.
I hope they keep on with this.
Everything got way to powerful and fast over time. You need to slow down. Otherwise you will get faster and stronger perks until there is nothing left.
Watch some high skill gameplay and you see how fast everything is.
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For one, Survivors didn't lose endgame DS, they lost DS entirely. The loss of DS makes too many killers turbo-tunnel like there is no tomorrow. I literally just got done with 10 games and only 1 of them had a killer not intentionally hard tunnel off hook before all gens were done. OTR is a joke when the degen killers hit people off hook regardless, negating the use of the perk. The minor buffs to Spine Chill? You mean removing part of the perk? I'd call that a nerf. Distortion, Lightweight, and Lucky Break are the only meaningful buffs I see going down the list. Meanwhile Eruption provided 37.7% combined regression and prevention only hitting 1 gen with 1 surv (10% and incap for 25s, preventing 27.7%). Combining that with Overcharge and Call of Brine has led to innumerable people preferring to hook suicide than play the game, being held hostage in a gen kick circle.
That doesn't even mention the extra total of 50s on gens that were now required (which also shadow buffed % gen regression), while also making basekit killer end chases ~10% faster.
I consistently win my Killer games if I use 2 of the gen kick perks (any combo). Once I realized it was easy mode I forcibly tried to run 1 or no slowdowns. Turns out, balanced builds are good. Running SH:PR with SH:Floods lets you get all the intel you need, while hiding it under going for the PR. Add in a STBFL/Bamboozle/Brutal for a little chase lethality and you got yourself a stew going. Then you can add whatever fits in best. Weak early game? Lethal Pursuer. Weak late game? No Way Out. You have to earn your wins, but you can get them. Unlike the current gen kick perks where a Simpsons weighted bird on the spacebar could even win the game. I think people don't realize how easy it is to stomp soloq when they run into a single skilled SWF, making them forget the past 3 hours of free wins.
I'm a BP main. That means before 6.1.0 I was essentially a Killer main, as BBQ and your own skill was the best way to get the most BP. Now I follow the incentive, and soloq Survivor is near unplayable at the moment. Honestly Survivor incentive is only worth your time at 100%, as even a theoretical 99% means you have a fast enough queue as Killer to get more BP for your time spent.
I'm firmly against nerfing things based on usage, without an underlying reason or understanding. The main Killer perk nerfs I understood (in 6.1.0) was Tinkerer proccing only once per gen now, and Corrupt Intervention preventing facecamp cheese. But the majority of the Survivor nerfs were without logic, or were load bearing beams, preventing the game from collapsing upon itself in the case of DS. Also I loved old Thana, but now it is near worthless because it was overnerfed in response to a needless buff. They could have just reverted the buff and it would have been fine, or drop it to 4.5% per surv to account for the longer gen times, but instead they hard deleted the perk. Old Thana gave me so many free downs where people would try to greed the gen before running off.
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I typically don't like when other forum members hit a dev or moderator with whataboutism, but this is a really good question. I'd recommend trying to have this answered for the next Q&A.
Add-Ons can often dictate the outcome of a trial
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