A definitive Dead Hard rant.

Credit to Killa Whale for the first iteration, much of this is paraphrasing him.

Since we're on the verge of a DH nerf and all the DH users have come crawling out of the woodwork in a last-ditch attempt to keep it from getting nerfed, let's address all the major arguments I've seen in favor of Dead Hard, one by one.

"I suck, so it must be OK!"- Common arguments like "I always end up Exhausted on the ground when I use it!" or "I always just get caught in a deadzone with it!" are often found here. Here's the problem: This argument isn't about you. If you can't press a button at a loop, you are not relevant to the conversation. Just like how arguments about Nurse aren't about the baby Nurse who needs 20 blinks to land a hit.

"Just wait it out"- For now, let's ignore the fact that you can't wait it out when it's used properly at pallets or windows. Let's take this argument at face value: Just wait it out. On every chase, with every Killer, just wait 2-3 seconds before you swing. Cool, pretty easy, right? Here's the problem: That isn't fun. Waiting isn't fun. Staring at a Survivor's backside isn't fun.

People who play as a horror-movie slasher want to slash Survivors. What a concept, am I right? So in what world does there need to be a mechanic that punishes you for doing that? Before we even get into the parts of it that actually make it strong, is waiting behind a Survivor good gameplay? No. And if you said "Yes", just go play Clash of Clans. I'm sure it'll be thrilling for you.

I know how to wait. It's just BORING AS HELL. But for some reason, people always jump to unsolicited advice and try to explain why it's my fault for not having fun.

"How is it different from waiting out Borrowed Time and Decisive Strike?"- I don't run into BT or DS every chase, and if you do, you camp and tunnel the crap out of Survivors. I can avoid either one of those easily. I really don't care about either mechanic.

"Unfun doesn't mean it's a bad mechanic"- Common arguments like "It's also not fun when you get pallet stunned or when you get flashlight saved" are found here. The reason these are different is because they take skill to do. They got a pallet stun because they played the pallet right. They got a flashlight save because they hid near their downed friend without getting caught.

If you think Dead Hard is some incredibly difficult mechanic, if you think playing around DH is some galaxy-brained mindgame, I have bad news for you: Parries aren't that skillful. The Killer swung, and the Survivor pressed a button, and now the Killer loses. Moreover, the Killer often had to make a skilled play to be in a position to get a hit in the first place, and then it gets canceled because the Survivor pressed E.

The WoW equivalent to Dead Hard is the Monk's Touch Of Karma, which shields you and redirects damage to your opponent while the shield is up; the correct play is usually to wait it out. Is it considered some incredible display of skill or thrilling, tense gameplay when the Monk presses Touch of Karma, and when their opponent stops hitting them and waits in response? No. At best, it's just another play. And this is in a game that was designed from the ground up, from day one, with mechanics like this in mind, unlike Dead By Daylight.

Moreover, there's another problem with Dead Hard: It punishes you for lunging and punishes the use of many Killer powers. Lunges, and powers like Demogorgon's Shred, are too telegraphed for you to counter DH by just waiting it out. Survivors can just press E on reaction and get the third health state practically guaranteed. If the existence of a perk completely shuts down basic Killer gameplay mechanics, it might be time to take a closer look at it.

"Barely anyone uses DH correctly anyway!"- Let's go over "correct" DH usage just for clarity: Using it at a pallet when the Killer is about to swing, or using it at a window when the Killer lunges. When done right, this puts the Killer in a lose-lose situation where they either swing and give the Survivor a free speed boost to the next loop without forcing a pallet drop, or don't swing and get pallet stunned or give the Survivor a window vault.

If your opinion is truly that barely anyone does this, then I'm sorry, but you are playing bad Survivors. Like, I'm not that good, I'd be very surprised if I was at the MMR cap, and it happens in almost every match with a DH user, so I have no clue where people are getting the idea that no one does this.

"Okay, so they get it off once or twice a game, big deal!"- Against pepegas, sure. I don't care if someone extends the chase by 50% if their team isn't that gen-inclined. But against decent Survivors who know that doing gens is how you win? Yeah, it's actually a pretty big deal.

If 2 Survivors are doing gens, It takes about 7 minutes for them to do them all (90s for the first 2 + 90s for the next 2 + 90s for the last + 2.5 minutes of travel time/unhooking/healing), and that's with some generous rounding, considering you're playing against four Survivors. If you don't tunnel or camp or 3-gen or run regression perks, that means you need to get at least 9 hooks in that time. Which means every chase needs to take 46 seconds or less, including time spent looking for Survivors and traveling to the hook. Even with an optimistic 20 seconds spent on travel time, if you've played against remotely decent loopers, you know getting a down in 25 seconds every time is completely unrealistic, especially at the start of the match when the Survivors have all the pallets at their disposal. It's hard enough to get two hits against good Survivors in a reasonable timeframe, but increase it to 3 and there just isn't enough time to chase everyone.

And at that point you might say, "You just need to drop chase and go after someone else!" And that's not always wrong, but it usually takes at least 20 seconds to realize this, and then you have to find someone else and hope they aren't good too. And if they are, then what? Drop chase again? At some point, you have to commit to someone. So you do your mindgames, get them twice, and then they press E at just the right moment and reset the chase. And all the while, their teammates are on those gens holding M1 like their life depends on it while you get outplayed by the E key.

Getting 2 hits against good Survivors is hard enough, but increase it to 3 and there just isn't enough time to get 12 hooks. And then Survivors get mad at you when you play with this in mind, with gen regression, tunneling, proxy camping, or 3 genning. You can come up with a ton of reasons why Killers play sweaty, but losing and being told you suck by people who can press E to avoid a down has to be up there.

And Survivors don't even need to be in a position to use Dead Hard. If they get caught out in the open but a pallet is nearby, you can't swing at them before they reach it. If you swing early, they DH your hit. If you wait it out, they make it to the pallet. So waiting it out isn't a viable strategy, but neither is swinging early.

So let's say you're playing decent Survivors who will finish all 5 gens in 7 minutes, and you don't wanna tunnel or camp or 3-gen. So for 9 chases, you have 46 seconds to down and hook each of them before endgame. Minus an optimistic 20 seconds to travel between gens, look for Survivors and pickup/travel to hook. Let's say you get a first hit on the Survivor in 10 seconds, and 15 seconds later, you get hit by Dead Hard.

Even an optimistic 10 more seconds to get the third hit is putting you behind schedule, only made worse by people saying "Well, you need to leave chase when they DH like that". Fine, I'm leaving. I wasted 25 seconds to get one Survivor injured. That Dead Hard was an instant, free escape from being hooked exactly when they needed it. Let's look at other perks that do that: Adrenaline, activates once per game, if you survive to the endgame. Deliverance, activates once per game, still costs you a hook state, doesn't activate unless you got an unhook first. And now, Dead Hard: Available every chase with no preparation.

"But Sprint Burst!"- Common arguments like "You'll be sorry when everyone's using Sprint Burst!" or "But a 99'd Sprint Burst can be used in the same way as DH!" are found here. But honestly, I can respect the skill needed to 99 a Sprint Burst because it's way harder than just pressing a button, and it actually costs the Survivor something; no repairing, no healing, they have to play aggressive at just the right time for it to be truly worth it, so using it to buy as much time as DH can is rare even among Sprint Burst users.

The one thing Sprint Burst does have over DH is the ability to escape a dead zone at the start of chase. But I'd much rather lose to an Exhaustion perk before I commit to a chase rather than lose to an Exhaustion perk at the end of a chase, because with the latter you've already wasted the time to chase them.

"But Killers have Bloodlust/Bamboozle/[Insert Killer power here], isn't that an automatic, no-effort chase winning mechanic?"- In a 4v1 game, the one has to be much stronger than the 4 individually. The Killer has to have the advantage in the 1v1 for the game to be balanced. I think the devs have made it pretty clear that as a Survivor, you're supposed to lose a chase after a certain amount of time. If every Survivor could make every loop last 30+ seconds just by running it well, Killers would lose every match.

If you've managed to run the Killer for 15 seconds without taking a hit or forcing a pallet break, or even if you just managed to buy yourself an extra 5 seconds with some fiddly maneuver, that's a good thing. As in the earlier example, you're putting them behind schedule.

I am not some crazy "The game is balanced when I 4K every game" Killer main, I just wanna win a chase when I've won a chase.

"Everyone just uses Dead Hard for fun!"- When their "best" arguments are put down, apologists for Dead Hard resort to more flatly ridiculous arguments like this. Despite Dead Hard being commonly used in SWF sweat squads organized by comp players to do escape streaks, seeing regular tournament plays/bans and being the 2nd most-used Survivor perk, some people insist that the majority of Dead Hard users are playing it for fun.

And to that I say, if you're using it for fun, why so upset about the nerf? It can do all the same things it did before, just not as often or as easily. To which apologists would say, "It's only fun for me if I can use it every chase!". How convenient that the main quality that determines whether or not Survivors enjoy using Dead Hard also happens to be one of the main things that makes it strong. It's almost as though they cling to it for that reason. Pre-nerf Moris were fun to use too, in no small part because they were useful every match, that doesn't mean they didn't need a nerf.

There are a ton of "fun" perks out there, but they're all situational and/or they force you to jump through hoops to earn it, because if they didn't, they'd just be meta perks. Diversion, Head On, Flashbang, Blast Mine, Wiretap, Mettle of Man, Deception, Background Player. There are lots of perks that people use for fun, and they usually hover around 1-4% usage. Dead Hard, meanwhile, sits at 30%. Could it be that in addition to being "fun", it's also significantly stronger than other options?

And what about the Killer's fun? As outlined earlier, ignoring the perk's clear strengths, Dead Hard just isn't fun to play against. Survivors with the attitude that DH should be left alone seem to think that their fun is the only fun that matters, and if the Killer isn't having fun playing against DH, that's their fault. This is an incredibly self-centered attitude, and it ignores the basic tenet of multiplayer game design that you can't only be thinking about the player who gets to use a mechanic: You also have to be thinking about the player it gets used on. If the counterplay is unfun, it's a poorly-designed mechanic, regardless of how fun it is for the player who uses it. And yes, this applies to a lot of Killer mechanics too.

Conclusion: Dead Hard is a relic of 2017 DbD when it was mostly a game where you're meant to mess around and scare your friends, when balance was given little to no consideration. And now, years later, it's a stupid and meta-defining perk because people actually know how to play.

And it's a crutch perk. I've seen so many Survivors who simply rely on Dead Hard to save them from a stupid mistake. Survivor players have often reported getting much better at looping after dropping it, because you don't just have a third health state to save you every time you screw up.

Dead Hard has dominated the meta for years and years now. The Killer perk meta has been nerfed, what? Five times now? Yet Dead Hard remained the perk of choice for huge swaths of the playerbase through all of that, and still does to this day despite being as hated as ever. It's high time to end it.