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For those of you who hate dead hard because of the extra health state

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Comments

  • ShroudedGhostFace
    ShroudedGhostFace Member, Alpha Surveyor Posts: 135

    Say goodbye to your crutch perk

  • AssortedSorting
    AssortedSorting Member Posts: 1,348

    Instadowns have a variety of counterplay, as they require the Killer to be on the Survivors butt, which already has a lot of counterplay: Pallets, Vaults, Stealth, Lockers, early distance, etc.

    Dead Hard is all about the extra endurance ensuring the Survivor is able to make it to a droppable pallet for just one more loop by protecting them from a Lunge, and if hit by the Lunge they can move to another Loop. The Killer can try to "bait it out" so the Survivor uses DH, but they still can drop the Pallet safely, and if the Survivor calls the Killers bluff, they can try to do so again. There isn't much counterplay to this, as Pallets by design are not supposed to have much counterplay, and most anti-loop is telegraphed even moreso than a Basic Attack.

    I like the agency of the Perk, but as a result of that agency, the skill floor and the skill cap of its use is significant, with the upper end of the skill cap needing tweaking.

    You could try to figure out more restrictive use cases (EG: you stop moving while the Endurance effect is occurring and gain no on-hit boost even if successful), or restrict the overall usage of the Perk (EG: Dead Hard is unlocked after safely unhooking a Survivor).

    However even then there is the thematic problem of Dead Hard: The counterplay is to "bait it out", for a Killer to stop interacting with their environment. Like the prior versions of Eruption and Pain Res. And for a Perk that is all about predicting the actions of another to perform your own action for a benefit, I can't think of a way for the counterplay to be anything different at the moment.

  • Jinxed
    Jinxed Member Posts: 248

    It already has 3 conditions. You have to time it right, you can't be exhausted and you can't be in deep wound. Doesn't sound very free to me.

  • BougieBlackChick
    BougieBlackChick Member Posts: 316

    I don’t run dead hard myself because after trying to for weeks and barely ever landing it accurately, I decided that I don’t have the skill level required to run it on top of the variables listed. But my friend that I play with do run it and while they’re better than me at it, they only land it around 2-3 times out of 10 for all the reasons I already listed. I don’t have to run it myself to see the issues surrounding getting it to work perfectly each and every time.

    Yes I play killer. I main Myers.

  • BougieBlackChick
    BougieBlackChick Member Posts: 316

    Except I don’t even run the perk. Thanks for trying to be an unhelpful troll in my post tho.

  • Chaos999
    Chaos999 Member Posts: 869

    I think the main problem people has with dead hard is not the extra health state, but rather the timing of its application.

    Exhaustion perks such as sprint burst tend to trigger early in the chase, letting the killer choose not to commit with only moderate time lost.

    Other endurance perks also tend to trigger early.

    Dead hard, as it is triggers at the very end of a full chase loop, which against competent, defensive survivors can be something like this:

    Start chase, loop twice, pallet, run to new loop. Loose mind game and hit, 30 to 45 seconds lost.

    Run to new loop, pallet, etc, another 30-45 seconds, hit, dead hard.

    At this point, anything from 1 to 3 generators start popping and killer has already committed, leaving now would be a mistake, so he has to go for another chase loop and if the player now chooses to run to a very strong tile or plays very defensively, it can extend for another 60 seconds.

    Regardless of the killer choice at this point, he has already lost the match unless something major happens, and he has very little agency about it.

    This is why I think the changes are exactly what's needed.

    Now survivors cannot pre win the match during early game and DH should start appearing when at least some map resources have already been used up.

    Dead hard will still be a powerful, change the course of the match, skill, but just one per match, per player, which is balanced considering how much it can affect the outcome with just one good chase.

    Dead hard will now be used by survivors who are actually confident in being able to get value out of a chase in the right moment, maybe to push back against a pressured game, or get that last Gen done.

    I think it's mostly modestly skilled players who liked the low risk, low skill, high reward, who are complaining.

  • MrMori
    MrMori Member Posts: 1,691
    edited April 2023

    Myers is hard to get to high MMR with unless you sweat hard and run max regression. What you'll see once you start facing really good teams is that Dead Hard is used by around 60+% of the players, and for good reason. It works really, really well on loops with undropped pallets, and good players take advantage of that.

    As for exposed and such, it's all fine, it's not broken. There's plenty of requirements and drawbacks that make them fair. The only thing unfair and unfun about instadown killers is their ability to sit next to a hook and guarantee a hook state. That's pretty damn boring, and has little counterplay. The devs say they're looking into anti camping measures, and I'm curious to see what it is. I personally think it's about time to remove unhook grabs from healthy, since they are mostly used by players who hardcore hook camp and gamle for a grab instead of actually playing the game.

    But the Endurance status effect is also perfectly fine. I have no problem with basekit BT or the perk, even Off the Record is fine. But the fact that this is possible doesn't make Dead Hard a fine perk because of how effective it is against M1 killers when used right, and how easy it is to get it with no real downside. It doesn't work every single chase, but it works enough that most players in high MMR use it. Take a look at this.

    This is a community tracked usage rate graph of Dead Hard from nightlight.gg. Before 6.1.0 it had over 40% usage rate. Now it's around 25-30%, but it's still the second most used perk. Sprint Burst and Lithe quite far away. The devs released stats showing that the old Dead Hard had 75% usage rate at top MMR. And I'm willing to bet the usage rate at top MMR is around 60% now. It's just so stale now.

    I like the rework, and I'm happy with it. We should look at hook camping next. It punishes uncoordinated teams far, far too heavily, while SWFs with Reassurance aren't even phased by it.

  • fulltonon
    fulltonon Member Posts: 5,762

    How about adding a perk that immediately expose nearby survivors by just pressing E for killers then, maybe activate it every 3 hooks or so? that would be as balanced as dh lol

  • Vhillain
    Vhillain Member Posts: 127
    edited April 2023

    I'm surprised I haven't seen comments mentioning how DH actually counters insta-downs itself. When people running DH know they are facing constant exposed status effects they will stay injured to prevent themselves from being downed. This is okay on certain perks like OTR and BT, but an on-command direct counter to exposed effects is a bit silly. You are literally safer injured than you are healthy when running the perk against several killers. It's not just a third health state, a well timed DH literally negates these powers that are supposed to give the weaker killers something that keeps them somewhat relevant. An infinite T3 Myers entire power that he has to work for is directly countered by a single perk slot.

  • Anti051
    Anti051 Member Posts: 691

    If used properly, dead hard allows you to get outplayed at a tile, but then just win anyway after the fact. The killer may be able to expose a survivor or hit them with a chainsaw, but they still have to outplay a survivor at the tile to catch them.

    It's not right for some survivors to be jumping actual gameplay hurdles for their wins with looping skill and mind-games while others are just dead harding at pallets and posing as good loopers.

  • m4x1m_000
    m4x1m_000 Member Posts: 103

    Any hit requires a lot more skill than pressing E so I don’t see the problem.

  • Verconissp
    Verconissp Member Posts: 1,589

    It makes bad survivors good survivors with it,

    Good survivors with Dh unstoppable..

    It promotes unhealthy gameplay and would deny a down when otherwise you were dead to begin with..

  • SunsetSherbet
    SunsetSherbet Member Posts: 1,607

    One thing people always ignore with DH is the fact you get value even from not running it. The killer simply must assume you have it, or possibly lose a chase/the game by not doing so. Thus, they have to "wait it out" even if you don't have it. They just have to assume you have it because everyone runs it and it's so powerful. This is identical to how DS used to be. All killers had to play around it because you simply had to assume everyone was running it. Which meant you got a benefit from DS even by not running it at all. This was considered an issue. And people who don't play killer don't seem to get that a few second time lost can easily be the difference between a 0k and 4k.