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I can’t believe Dead Hard got such a tiny nerf
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If it's silly then blame the people that drove the perk into the ground for making killer players act like that.
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The actual problem is that new dead hard encourages people to tunnel a survivor off the hook, more than the PTB version, because the PTB version didn’t heavily encourage a killer to immediately hit a survivor after being unhooked to counterplay dead hard. And in the PTB version, since the unhooker didn’t get DH until after the safe unhook event, the killer could just hook trade with the unhooker, and not deal with dead hard that chase.
So basically BHVR made a huge un-nerf to dead hard, even though it was the most complained about survivor perk for months.
Dead Hard should be limited to once per match, like DS, so it can feel like it’s a nerf comparable to what BHVR did to the killer perks this patch.
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How in gods name does it incentivize more than the PTB version?
The person you're tunneling is the person with the protection and any team worth their salt will go out of their way to force you to hit them instead so that their dead hard gets use even if you DO hit them off hook.
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And 1 pallet dead hard by 1 survivor can cost a killer the entire game. So the 2 uses can potentially be 8. So that's not a good point.
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Complained about for months? Try years at this point. But it's a survivor meta perk so it stays untouched or gets tiny nerfs.
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How bad are you that someone only needs to dead hard you at a pallet once for you to lose the game?
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Dead Hard, the perk that can be quite easily outplayed and can be quite easily missed, didn't need a further nerf.
This is coming from a survivor main who also plays as the killer. Maybe they should be making perks more enticing to use instead of gutting each and every single one and forcing new metas to take their place.
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I'm sorry, I'm willing to defend it and say it's not overly broken, but easily outplayed it is not.
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If a non killer main can quite easily outplay a dead hard, just by simply waiting and baiting it and still end up getting a 4K, I would say it's the killer's skill that the issue.
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And 1 failed DH has exactly 0 impact for the Killer. But I always forget that you are all at giga-MMR and only get comp teams.
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The original PTB dead hard was a massive nerf, and could have actually lowered the pick rate enough that I wouldn't have to worry about it every game. If BHVR felt the original PTB version encouraged tunneling, then they should have changed the effect so that it's still a massive nerf. Instead, they un-nerfed it by a huge amount.
The reasoning for the un-nerf didn't make sense either. Killers could always just hit a survivor immediately after being unhooked, to prevent them from using dead hard, so the original PTB version didn't really encourage tunneling more than the current dead hard.
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It still exists, but will no longer carry players through matches. What's the problem?
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"I can't coast through a chase because DH requires something new to work"
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No, its usability went from upwards of once every 40 seconds (less with Vigil) provided they mend, to its uses requiring you to be hooked and then (self) unhooked, giving it 0-2 uses.
That means that the dev’s consider it ‘balanced’ to have a perk that’s not guaranteed to work in the first place, due to mind games, timing and lag, then it can be denied by some killer perks and add-ons or them just tunnelling you off hook and at most you get it as a consolation prize for being hooked provided you get off said hook.
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No, its usability went from "survivors can easily get 0 activations", to "survivors get 2 free activations". When the other person said "I can't coast through a chase because DH requires something new to work", they were referring to the fact the original PTB version required survivors to actually do something new (unhook survivors) to work.
We should not be comparing current DH to the new DH. We should be comparing the original PTB DH (from a week ago) to new DH, so everyone can realize it got a huge un-nerf.
Do you know what it's like to super hate a perk for a really long time, and seeing the original PTB notes... and seeing a massively nerfed DH. And thinking "It's finally happened! We can finally get rid of this obnoxious perk!".... And then a week later all of that is ripped away, when the perk gets un-nerfed so much that it's almost like this is the bare minimum nerf BHVR could think of that might somewhat reduce its pick rate. It's almost like instead of wanting to really nerf Dead Hard, BHVR wants to just push it as lightly as possible, to see if killers make it "a hot topic" again.
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I play at intentionally tanked MMR and I can tell you successful Dead Hards are not the sole property of high MMR Survivors. This myth that landing a Dead Hard successfully is some kind of 400 IQ move really needs to die.
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Never said this. But yeah, "intentionally tanked", sure.
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Some of my fellow killer mains won’t be happy until the perk is completely unusable or better yet ceases to exist, it doesn’t matter whether it’s the most controversial perk nor that you personally super hate it, because a good subsection of this community don’t care about balance and/or don’t know what they’re talking about (which sometimes includes me).
The only reason people weren’t getting activations with the previous PTB iteration was because they were unlucky or lazy, which applies to a bunch of perks on both sides that have a cap on potential uses. I, the person who chose We’re Gonna Live Forever for their profile icon, would probably have little trouble getting Dead Hard activations and could potentially have it for multiple chases before you finally hook me, something the latest iteration makes impossible to do.
As for its pick rate, it already dropped by 50% after the Dead Hard for distance removal, dropping from around 3/4 survivors to around 1/3 and even the current iteration will drop uses now it has a 0-2 cap on attempts for the entire trial.
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Bear in mind that balance is a means to an end, not an end unto itself. Fun is the goal of game balance. And it is quite possible for a mechanic to be extremely balanced and still not fun to play against. Example, pre-rework Legion. Were they balanced? Yeah, Survivors could escape them no problem. Were they fun? Hell, no.
That being said, I think people are seriously overestimating the new DH, yeah. So many of the things that actually made it so impactful are gone. There's no DH in the first chase, which could previously be devastating to a Killer's momentum. In fact, none of the Survivors will be able to DH on their first chase. And swinging into a DH previously put you in a no-win situation. If you don't drop chase, there's a good chance you're in for a long chase that you really can't afford to take. But if you drop chase, they'll be able to DH again later (But now DH only works once per hook state).
I don't really see it staying relevant for serious players. Comp players often opted for Sprint Burst as-is, and the comp meta is one where people mostly just say "Screw it" and don't bother trying to mindgame DH. The opportunity cost is too high when other Exhaustion perks are way more consistent, and way more readily available.
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You said yourself that the original PTB version was still usable, and that is the version I want to go live.
DH in any chase could be devastating to a killer's momentum. New DH just means that everyone should continue to hit a survivor immediately after being unhooked, to prevent the DH, so killers can see zero DHs.
The idea of a chase meta failed. Killers should still camp hooked survivors, because there is a giant urgent encouragement to be there when the survivor is unhooked, because it's the only time most killers can place a survivor in deep wounds so they can't DH. And before anyone asks, yes I hate DH so much that I will hang out next to a hook, and hit a survivor immediately after being unhooked. I don't care if survivors think it's unfun. If BHVR wants to keep DH in a meta, and if survivors want to continue bringing this awful perk, then this game can be Camping Simulator 2023. This is how I currently play, and it's how the game wants me to continue to play.
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Who cares with 30 sec gens and voicechat.exe
I hope you prepare killer bots bec we are all leaving game
Hexes dead
Scourge hooks dead
Regress perks dead
Untill your surv earn it and uses 2 times my next match will be over allready with that op survs
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I want to be clear that my issue isn’t the difference between live and new DH. My issue is how much of a huge un-nerf DH has between the original PTB version and the new version.
The original PTB version was a massive nerf I would have been done with. Survivors would have needed to earn activations, and DH still wouldn’t have been in the first chase.
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You want the previous PTB iteration despite the fact it lets survivors earn Dead Hards for up to 6 chases, potentially starting from your very first chase, seemingly because of some misguided notion that survivors aren’t willing to earn uses for their perks and thus it’ll be picked less, something you’ve never shown any evidence for.
Meanwhile, camping makes it harder to earn Iridescent Shards and Rift Fragments, so if you feel you HAVE to camp that’s on you, but it’s not for me… just as you didn’t feel bothered to unhook others to earn Dead Hards under the previous iteration, which now means you’d be making it harder for others to gain their ‘free’ Dead Hards if you’re not getting them off the hook.
Heck, you admit it yourself that killers can just deny the newest PTB Dead Hard through tunneling and camping, so how is it un-nerfed again?
Again, you keep saying its charges are free, they’re not, they’re a consolation prize for getting hooked and you still have to earn them by Kobe, using a separate self-unhook perk or convincing someone to unhook you.
You don’t start the trial with it as the current live version and just like the previous PTB iteration you primarily earn it through altruism, just not mechanically so.
Being unhooked is never guaranteed, you can go a whole trial with zero ‘free’ charges if you’re abandoned on hook or hooked as the final survivor, both issues unique to this version.
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It actually has to be EARNED, instead of just given out for free all the time, like it used to. So, that IS a nerf.
However, the 'earning' is no longer ' performing a rescue. Now it can be 'just get hooked,' which is a pretty poor sort of earned activity.
Also, every rescue charges up 2 possible Dead Hards, which means that the total number of Dead Hards per match is still wildly out of control.
Which does mean, of course, that the perk wasn't actually nerfed all that much.
Certainly not as much as it needs to be to stop 75% of the player base from using it.
And CERTAINLY not nearly as much as killer perks have been, are, and will be nerfed.
And that, folks, is what the loudspeaker effect looks like. When one side of a two-sided game has 4x the volume of the other, they get treated with light touches and anything significant gets walked way back.
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How does every rescue charge up two Dead Hards? You only get it for being unhooked, not doing the unhooking.
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If it changes to this specification after the PTB, I will continue to use Dead Hard as the dash perk that I use most every month until I raise my Survivor to Rank 1.Occasionally, I may use another perk for a change of pace, but Dead Hard is the only one I can trust in the current chase.
It's very disappointing that the nerf that the pick rate hasn't changed much when playing Killer is nothing more than an environment that doesn't look good.
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The charges are free because the survivor doesn't actively have to do anything to get them. It doesn't matter if you call it a "consolation prize" because it's still for free.
And the original PTB version also didn't have people start the trial with a DH.
And even though "being unhooked is never guaranteed", being able to unhook someone is also "never guaranteed". If unhooks aren't happening, both versions wouldn't have gotten charges.
And again, it doesn't matter if you personally think the original PTB version is more powerful. It's super clear the majority of people don't agree with you, because they aren't flooding these forums with complaints. The original PTB version isn't like a hidden "best kept secret" that only you see, and everyone else just doesn't see its hidden better-ness.
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Are we really gonna appeal to popularity, maybe I just have a different perspective because I’m not obsessed over the perk’s continued existence?
The previous iteration was basically the live version meets Deliverance, but with up to 6 times the potential for charges. Deliverance being a perk that still sees regular play despite being a once per trial gimmick that also isn’t guaranteed to work. I’d barely call it a nerf when people could earn a couple charges without losing a hook state of their own.
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Yes, we are going to appeal to popularity! That's the entire point! If the popularity says that new DH is better than original PTB DH, then more people will use it! That's the whole entire point of this rant! That the original PTB DH would have lowered the DH pick much more than new DH!
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Dude, you are just obsessed with Dead Hard. I typed out an entire essay titled "A definitive Dead Hard rant" countering every common argument in favor of Dead Hard, one by one, in response to people saying it shouldn't be nerfed, and even I don't hate the perk this much.
It's unlikely that the perk will even see more than niche usage in its new iteration. Even if all four Survivors are running it, they can only activate it 8 times and that's it. Sprint Burst, on the other hand, can be activated 12 times minimum, and potentially an infinite number of times, with the only limitation being the Exhaustion timer.
Meanwhile, a single player could use the PTB DH up to six times, and unless you saw the unhook happen, you'd have no way to even know who has it.
Also, the first chase is by far the most important in the match. The Killer has no pressure, and can only chase one Survivor at a time while the others are all free to do gens. If you look at comp teams, a key element of their strategy is delaying the first down for as long as possible. And even after the first down, a good player would much rather have a Dead Hard on their first chase when everyone's still alive, instead of their last chase when one or more of their teammates may already be dead.
So yeah, not having an Exhaustion perk in the first chase (Or in any of the Survivors' first chases, for that matter) is actually a pretty huge deal.
If you feel you HAVE to camp after these changes, that's on you. If I can still win games without facecamping on the first down, on LIVE, I think you can get by without facecamping just to avoid a neutered Dead Hard. And it's not even a winning play; it's just a cheese strat that doesn't win against good Survivors, so you're going to be just as frustrated as before once you meet Survivors who know how to beat campers. Take some responsibility for your own actions.
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Does everyone understand that the effect of DH is exactly the same, between the current DH and the new DH, and that the only thing that changed is the activation trigger? As far as I'm concerned, after a survivor has been placed on a hook, the new DH is exactly the same as the current DH, where a survivor will try to use it 1 time before the 2nd hook, and 1 time before the 3rd hook.
And it doesn't matter how important the first chase is, because both PTB DH versions didn't work on the 1st chase.
And it's not every survivor that needs to be camped. It's only the survivors where I didn't see their exhaustion perk before they got hooked. Because they might have DH, and I hate DH so much that I think it's 100% justified to hit them immediately after being unhooked.
And the original PTB version actually fixed the whole "tunneling after unhook" problem, because the person being unhooked isn't the person to get DH, so there's no urgent need to hit them immediately after being unhooked.
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Yeah, the perk still has annoying elements to it, but at the end of the day, there's a LOT of things in the game that you could call annoying If we go by the logic of "Power level irrelevant, counterplay irrelevant, only annoyance is important", suddenly 90% of the perks in the game warrant a nerf. Power Struggle, Saboteur, Flashbang, Spirit Fury-Enduring, Pain Res, No Way Out, Adrenaline, Decisive Strike, Lightborn, Corrupt Intervention.
The new DH isn't just inactive on the first chase. It also doesn't work on the second, or the third, or the fourth if you aren't tunneling. Can't say the same for PTB Dead Hard.
The prevalence of Dead Hard is likely to plummet after this change. So congratulations, you're probably not gonna have to tunnel people off the hook anymore. You have what you wanted. Why can't you just take your W and move on? And I'd hate to see your face when you find out Off the Record exists.
No, the PTB version had an even bigger tunneling problem, because the unhooker would have three health states because they just earned DH, but the unhooked would only have two at the most.
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The prevalence of Dead Hard would have plummeted more with the original PTB version. There is no winning here. I had to remove all my regression perks because they'll not worth using anymore, but I still might need to deal with DH every single game, where its effect is exactly the same as it used to be, but at -1 uses per game.
The new DH needs an additional nerf, so it' can be nerfed at the same intensity as the original PTB version. Otherwise we're just using "oh, people might tunnel" as an excuse to make a huge un-nerf to DH. Maybe prevent survivors from using DH within 5 yards or a vault or pallet. Maybe make it so if the killer doesn't hit the DH, the survivor is stuck in place for 1 second. Just do something so it's nerfed as badly as the original PTB version.
Like what, is the usage going to go down from maybe 30% to 20%, and I'm supposed to be happy with that? Eruption had a massive pick rate drop, and CoB and Overcharge and also likely to have a massive pick rate drop... but DH might just have a moderate pick rate drop, and I'm supposed to be fine with that, because "it's better than nothing"???
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Again, you are vastly overestimating the strength of the new Dead Hard. For any other Exhaustion perk, if you could only use it twice a game, and not even on the first chase, that'd kill the perk outright. It was at roughly the same strength as Sprint Burst from the perspective of most comp players, so what makes you think Dead Hard will be so different, especially when Off the Record exists?
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Actual question.... what happens if the new DH is still meta? Will it just be "too bad so sad" for killers, and killers would need to wait another year for the 3rd meta shakeup? Does anyone think BHVR will monitor the DH pick rate, and step in if the pick rate is too high?
Current DH lasted a very long time as the #1 exhaustion perk, even though it was supposed to have been nerfed in the 1st meta shakeup. And BHVR didn't step in at all, and just waited for the 2nd meta shakeup.
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Yeah, and what if the world were made of pudding? The question is moot in the first place, because this is a nerf comparable to the Ruin nerf- the one that gutted it, cut its effectiveness in half. And very few perks have survived a nerf like that, none of which were Exhaustion perks that take up the single most important perk slot in a Survivor's build.
Dead Hard is now not only a dead perk on the first chase, but can only be used twice per game- meaning you can drop chase after they Dead Hard you, and the perk is dead next chase (When previously, they just needed to recover from Exhaustion to use it next chase). And there are literally other perks that can do what it does without Exhausting you, Off the Record.
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My dude, Call of Brine is staying on a lot of my builds, regardless of the fact it lost a ton of regression power and will be dropping from the meta, it’s still a good information perk IMO, better than Surveillance 90% of the time and just amazing on Nemesis because it makes zombies camp gens. Yet that hasn’t stopped tons of people on this forum claiming that it literally does nothing now, but they’re objectively wrong and so are you about Dead Hard.
Some people will continue to use Dead Hard, just as tons of people continue to use Self-Care and were allegedly responsible for the mass downvoting of DBD and its DLC on Steam following the release of this PTB because they didn’t wanna Self-Care for up to 80 seconds.
Some people just want to play with their favourite perks and if that turns out to be 10% of the playerbase with Dead Hard, you’re just gonna have to cope with it not being as dead as you demand it to be.
Regardless Dead Hard was nerfed and lost popularity after the removal of DH for distance, it dropped from around 3/4 to 1/3 usage, with part of that being a skill issue that deterred less skilled players from using it as an undo button and yes, obviously highly skilled players got just as much use out of the revision, that’s what highly skilled players do.
Meanwhile, you continue to insist PTB players were just equipping the previous version and then wasting it by going out of their way not to charge it and I don’t think you get how dumb that sounds?
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No. I'm saying people equipped the perk in the PTB, realized it's possible to get 0 activations from it, and dropped the perk. And the people that did equip the perk very often weren't getting value form it, because I was checking everyone's build in the post game screens, to see how many people were using DH.
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People still complaining about dh as if the only reason it shouldn't be gutted is to simply stop the waiting out gameplay that is beyond boring. I get one instance of eating a dh on a low tier killer is awful for pressure but I simply don't want to play around it after the 10000th+ time. The devs either don't understand that or they do and want to appease the majority of survivors who find the perk fun(understandable).
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Oh wow, so you’re able to review a significant sample of matches and have backend access that lets you track players pick rate of the previous PTB iteration of Dead Hard?
That’s amazing, I bet your uncle works for Behaviour and gave you the inside scoop, right? :D
And again, Deliverance still see’s regular play, it’s not hard to safely unhook someone in the age of basekit Borrowed Time.
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The perk's still beyond broken since it's leagues easier to activate than Mettle of Man while serving the exact same purpose: giving survivors a third health state. Now if four survivors bring this perk they'll be getting up to 8 health states in total from this, now consider how much time it takes to chase and even hit a survivor.
Let's be generous and say it takes 30 seconds to score a hit (and that's still being far too generous considering how atrocious the map design is) then we're talking about 4 minutes of additional repairtime for survivors. It's possible to repair all of them in just 5 minutes.
This perk is still far too strong. The least they should do is disable it entirely once the final gen pops.
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Doesn't that take kind of imply that every single attempted Dead Hard actually blocks a hit, and isn't used too early/late because of latency or the killer baiting it out?
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Also, I wanted to mention that if BHVR thinks original PTB DH was a problem because people might tunnel someone for only having 2 health states..... that it's kind of admitting that a perk granting a 3rd health state is unhealthy for the game.
Imagine if I were the type of person to tunnel someone for only having 2 health states. That would mean I should just tunnel the 1st survivor I see, that uses an exhaustion perk that isn't DH, since it's extremely likely they would only have 2 health states the entire game. For example, if I see someone use sprint burst, I should tunnel them out of the game, because they likely aren't using DH, so they're likely to only have 2 health states. If I tried to hook survivors equally, I might eventually run into a DH user with a 3rd health state. Why should I put myself at that risk, when I've already found someone that's 99% likely to not have DH?
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And what are you going to do if it turns out that Survivor has Sprint Burst, but also has Off the Record?
Hard tunneling isn't unbeatable. Once you start running into Survivors with the perks, items and experience to counter it, you're just shooting yourself in the foot.
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I very rarely see someone have Off the record and an exhaustion perk at the same time, but if that happens, then I'll either tunnel them off the 2nd hook, or just do something else until Off the record times out (or I'll try to do something else, and the unhooked survivor will purposely try to start a chase, because they "don't want to waste" their perk). This is a rare enough occurrence that I'm not concerned with it.
And I never said hard tunneling was unbeatable. What I did say is that if survivors want to bring the most unfun survivor perk in the game, that is still not properly nerfed because it gives survivors 2 free activations, that it's fair game to match it with unfun camping and tunneling.
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If you rarely run into Off the Record, it's because live Dead Hard can do what it does but better, so long as you know how to press E. But OtR works great with Sprint Burst, because it gives you a third health state while still giving you room for another Exhaustion perk.
So yeah, if you decide to tunnel someone after seeing they have Sprint Burst, you're just setting yourself up to get dunked on by anti-tunnel perks. So what's the point of adopting these unfun strategies when it's not even going to help you against decent Survivors?
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Many survivors that use OTR want to use the endurance part of their perk, so if they aren't getting tunneled, then they'll start a chase with the killer, so they "don't waste their perk". So it doesn't matter if I tunnel, or if I don't tunnel, an OTR user, since many of them are going to start a chase with me anyway.
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So are you or are you not going to tunnel someone with Sprint Burst? Because it sounds like you're counting on them to make a mistake if they have OtR. Letting them go, and hoping that they'll come back to give you a free hit instead of hiding somewhere, healing up and then just doing gens where you'll never find them?
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This whole thing was in response to BHVR telling us they had to change the PTB DH's effect, because killer's are more likely to tunnel survivors with 2 health states instead of 3 health states. And I said, if that's true, then killers would just tunnel any survivor that showed a different exhaustion perk, since it's extremely likely they will only have 2 health states.
And that still stands. It doesn't matter if there are rare occurrences where a sprint burst user might have a third health state, because the majority of them won't, so if a killer is trying to estimate the best person to tunnel, it's any survivor that shows a non DH exhaustion perk.
And if BHVR wants to change DH so it has tunnel protection, then it should be changed to be an anti tunnel perk. Make DH deactivate on a conspicuous action. This rewards killers for not tunneling, and BHVR should be rewarding killers for not tunneling.
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