Is DS feared anymore?
Before the DS nerf (6.1.0) I can confidently say that it was a lot scarier and more risky to tunnel because of the existence of DS and that 5s stun. I’m not going to act like it was perfectly designed because there were flaws, such as it working endgame. However, it definitely made me think twice before picking up someone or even chasing them in the first place. Now, it’s not even a thought. Off the record while very nice, will often be used in the same amount of time as basekit bt would have. And now when you do tunnel someone, you’re not scared of DS and even if they do have it, it’s so pathetic that you don’t care.
Proposed Changes:
Change 1- Increase stun duration
This is the most simple solution, whether they change it back to 5s or to 4s to compensate doesn’t matter as the extra seconds make a huge impact and will make DS a big threat again.
Change 2- Increase usage
As most of you know, when hitting (or failing) the skill check DS is gone for the rest of the game. This made sense when the stun was 5s but now that it is 3s having 2 DS stuns in 1 game could be a new way of making it a threat as while the stun is still short, it will add up.
Change 3- Increase activation duration
DS lasts for 60s after the unhook, which is a little short as when you are being tunnelled it could run out mid chase and then it does nothing. It could be increased to 70s or 80s whatever seems reasonable. In addition to this specific change I believe the difficult skill check should be removed as the effect will still be weak and the perk shouldn’t do nothing if you’re a newer player or you have bad FPS.
If anyone has read this far I would like to thank you for taking the time to read all of this. Whether you agree or disagree is fine, however it’s important to keep this discussion civil as we won’t get anywhere with bad faith arguing.
Comments
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I'd keep it 3 seconds stun but add 150% movement speed for 3 seconds.
8 -
That is a very interesting idea, however I feel like this would be a lot more brutal for the slow m1 killers such as trapper and pig, and not to frustrating for the stronger ones, such as blight and nurse. But then again current DS is like that anyway so it is a completely valid idea.
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I mean if they are tunnelling, they deserves it. For killers like Blight and Nurse, they are busted killers. They need some nerfs.
18 -
If a perk is "feared" it is because it is broken :
- old dead hard
- old eruption
- old DS
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At this point, they could revert the 'conspicuous action' condition and it would still be bad. They could always just make it activate after every unhook (minus the end game unhooks).
2 -
Devour Hope is also 'feared', and it's not broken. 'Feared' perks are perks that can punish misplays.
DS was an excellent tool for discouraging tunnelling until it got cut in half for no discernible reason.
20 -
Tunneling isn't a misplay. That's the problem. At worst it's an unfun strategy at the Survivors expense, at best it's happenstance.
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I would buff it to at least 4s stun and remove the conspicuous action penalty.
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It is misplay if you tunnel wrong target and ds user is usually wrong target. Tunneling does not always work so it's not always right play to do. Right play debends compeletely on situation. Sometimes it's to camp someone death sometime going after different target.
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How do you know the player has DS? Kinda bad design if there is no tell. And the counterplay being the assumption that everyone has it isn't good design either, as it's essentially making something base-kit without it being base-kit.
Nor do I like the thematic decision of "You can't chase this person". I agree that tunneling isn't always the right play, but it being because of a perk with flat out dismissal of any Killer input, I'm not a fan of.
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If it was still feared tunneling wouldn't be nearly as popular as it is. I wasn't against the nerf at the time but i really wish I had been lol. Making it deactivate in end-game was enough of a nerf tbh, the stun should still be 5s.
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Its not feared because it sucks
3 -
Feel like the "fear" is gone because of how many ppl dropped it from their builds. It went from having to treat EVERY survivor like they had DS, to realizing it's likely that nobody in the lobby has it. It's lack of a pick rate is what is causing ppl to not be wary of it.
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Not at all. The stun grants around 7 meters of distance. This is nothing.
DS has become a mild inconvenience.
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DS is only feared when its widely used. If everyone still used DS then tunneling would still be a risk, but nobody recognizes its value anymore and just uses OTR. Which to be fair OTR is way better, but DS isnt useless.
i'd totally be up for making it 4 seconds again. 5s would be too much though.
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unless you get downed near a pallet or strong window, then use it to reset the chase.
....vs anyone other than nurse and maybe blight, of course. Still, it has varying results based on how/when its used.
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Nah. DS is a joke. It was a joke before against the strongest Killers, now it is a Joke against any Killer.
It is a wasted Perk Slot. There is no "unless"-stuff.
8 -
sure. Some people will continue getting use out of it anyway.
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The only change i would make would be the skill check, i would remove it
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Ds is garbage
3 -
DS needs to be something different than just a 3-5s stun so it actually does something against nurse/blight, but doesn't destroy m1 killers.
1 -
you're welcome to your opinion.
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No, it's barely an inconvenience.
2 -
The physical stun is 3 seconds but the killer is "power stunned" for an additional 3 seconds. Has virtually zero effect on a killer like Trapper but gives some counterplay to Blight, Wesker, or Nurse.
I put 5 seconds of thought into this, no idea if it's any good lol
7 -
Judging from how no one uses the perk anymore, how most of the community thinks it sucks and how killers dont even respect it anymore kind of a fact that the perk flat out sucks.
2 -
nobody uses it because OTR does the job better, most of the community thinks a lot of things, and killers dont respect it because its no longer meta. Its been downgraded from meta to situational, while OTR fills the same niche better. Doesnt make it garbage, just obsolete.
2 -
OTR only does the Job better because DS is so bad now.
OTR is not good as well, since it resolves around Endurance and can be removed instantly (together with the Basekit-Endurance and any potential BT involved). DS would be the more effective Anti-Tunnel Perk (still not really good at doing this) with 5 seconds.
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I think that's a good change actually. People say nurse and blight like demo, ph and a lot of other killers can't right click right after the stun for the down.
2 -
and yet it still does its job if you get downed near a resource, you just have less time to reach said resource. There are pros and cons to each perk but people prefer OTR for being less situational/having a lower skill ceiling. Again, youre welcome to undervalue it all you want.
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Many killers who hit when you’ve got OTR or BT (tunnelers) aren’t downing you when you’re near resources, whatever those are. I guess “resources” are pallets that you can use because you’re also running Power Struggle to make this fantasy you’ve cooked up work. Idk. I personally think DS was less situational than OTR is now. But neither of them protects well against tunneling.
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Pallets or strong windows, and the scenario was about DS, guess it wasnt implied enough. You try to get downed near a pallet or window, DS, then use the resource to gain more distance and reset the chase. OTR you just use the speed boost from the hit to try to reach a pallet or window, slightly weaker scenario but you get two chances and its easier to use.
0 -
Would love to see it like new DH. Have 2 uses when you're on 2nd hook but keep the difficult skill checks ofc.
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Unfortunately, like any perk made to deactivate at a certain point in-game (lol, how atrocious), it will be dogshit cause it has no bite. I hope to be wrong, but I never see DS being meta again. In its current state, I don't believe making it activate 2x a match would make it inherently better. I'd start with reverting just about all of these half-baked nerfs it got, and the damage from devs trying to make the perk into something it wasn't designed as in the first place.
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I'm all for a buff but it shouldn't even be close to its old strenght. Old DS was broken, and the nerf was long long overdue. I can't count how many games I had where I didn't tunneled and the person I hooked previously still had it and I got stunned for 5s... Really balanced.
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It is if someone has an actually meaningful DS.
It really needs to go back to five seconds.
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And we are back to band-aid Perk design, great.
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I know band-aid perks aren't a good solution.
But they're -a- solution, as opposed to what we have now.
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DS had an obnoxiously high pick rate and killers reasonably had to fear it because it was so strong that it was often used aggressively by forcing grabs or pairing it with Unbreakable to waste a crazy amount of the killer's time if they chose to avoid it by slugging. This aggressive use eclipsed its anti-tunnel usage so I don't think reverting it to the 5-second stun is a good idea at all.
I think a good buff to make the perk more consistent would be to disable power use for a brief period of 5 or so seconds following the stun, make the survivor immune to hindered for 3 seconds, and give a 3-second period where hits are ignored (like MoM) to protect against Zombies. You already have immunity to bear traps and that feels good so why shouldn't you have immunity to other powers? It's a really weird inconsistency that's kinda ######### stupid.
1 -
The disabled power use is a thing I am seeing a bit in these posts and I haven’t thought of it however it would definitely make the perk a lot better than it is now.
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Unfortunately a lot of perks are band aids. For example, reassurance, unbreakable, OTR, etc. All of these perks are band aid fixes to camping, tunnelling and slugging.
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DS had an obnoxiously high pick rate and killers reasonably had to fear it because it was so strong that it was often used aggressively by forcing grabs or pairing it with Unbreakable to waste a crazy amount of the killer's time if they chose to avoid it by slugging. This aggressive use eclipsed its anti-tunnel usage so I don't think reverting it to the 5-second stun is a good idea at all.
Taking two perk slots and a hook state to be able to take one hit for someone, once, and then spend the next 24 seconds incapacitated, on top of the time you spent after getting off the hook doing nothing of value for the team is not 'eclipsing its anti-tunnel usage'.
This was always a throw-strat that only got complained about by incredibly myopic killers.
3 -
There was no design change. It got nerfed far more than it should have but the point of it's existence hasn't changed.
It being active in end game is equivalent to a camping killer getting a free 1k, no it shouldn't be like that.
Just make it lock powers for 3 seconds after the stun is done, there it's not the base-game changing perk it was.
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Honestly, I think DS should be reverted to a 5 second stun. 3 seconds makes little difference for killers without a good chase power but it's basically useless against killers that do have one. I've also thought about DS having a second effect. The main problem is that it affects killers disproportionally. That could be fixed though, if certain killers like Wesker, Blight, Spirit and Nurse lost lost their power's charges after getting hit by DS.
2 -
I'd like it if it set the Killer's ammo/charges to 0 (in most cases, for example not for Pig traps), and also make them unable to recharge/reload or use their power(s) for 5s/gen remaining. That way if you are intentionally tunneling at 1 gen, you can start getting charges back in 5s, but if you tunnel at 5 gens, you need to wait 25s. This wouldn't meaningfully hurt say Legion, but would certainly destroy Nurse, as well as hurt any other Killer with a chase power to cheese a quick down after DS (like Blight, Wesker, Demo, Slinger, Huntress, etc.).
I do think 3s simply isn't enough in the majority of cases, but I'd rather it hurt stronger Killers more than M1 Killers.
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I disagree, there was a design change, and I'm not even talking about the obvious like the whole conspicuous action category that was made specifically for it in later iterations. It went from a unique offense perk that activated after being grabbed (regardless of obsession or being dependent on being hooked) to getting mangled and cut up to fit the defensive "anti-tunneling" mold. It has never recovered and it's been ######### ever since they began overnerfing it in 2.x.x.
How is survs completing 5 gens the equivalent of a camping killer getting a free 1k? That's nothing alike. If anything, the deactivated nerf is a reward for being in a losing position, and makes it that much more possible for camping killers to get a free 1k even though they failed to protect generators. You can very much be put into that same lose-lose situation on surv even after doing everything right all game, not having to use DS during the trial, and playing with essentially 3-perks assuming you made it to endgame without using it. It did nothing to solve an actual problem, only swung the pendulum to the other team advantage.
3 seconds is way too short. You'd barely get through the drop animation which takes over half of that time just to complete. It's nothing for any killer with the slightest range or movement skills. 5 Seconds minimum. I do like the idea of DS doing a hard reset on killer power. I'm sure there is one killer I could be missing, but having it put their powers on a CD timer (akin to if they had just used their power) would be doable and might provide a possible alternative. Deactivation at endgame has to go tho in any meaningful buff to it, and that's a hill I'll die on. It might have been acceptable as a short-term solution to place hold until a better method came along, but it is not a long-term solution.
The Halloween content (Chapter 2, a paid DLC that costs actual money) in its entirety has gotten so weak over time from nerfs and just antiquated design that there is nothing to be feared from it's additions to DBD except STBFL, that thing does scare me.
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I disagree with the fact it should work endgame. The purpose of the perk is to counter tunnelling, however in the endgame, everything is acceptable and you can’t really blame a killer for tunnelling if they’re securing a kill as it’s not like you’ve missed out on a match.
1 -
The only real problem I had with old DS was that it was guaranteed invulnerability at the end of the game. Nothing like a body-blocking, tbagging survivor who knew perfectly well they were invincible. It could have been fixed by having it deactivate in the exit gate areas.
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As a killer main, current DS feels too easy to thwart and not an issue. 3 seconds is not long enough of a stun.
Bring it back to 5 seconds and the perk will be at a good place.
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You didn't read my comment. Talking about old DS is quite laughable though.
I said 3 second stun and then the killer gets their power locked for 3 seconds after. Copying someone previous in the post.
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I do not believe perks should be "feared".
Respected? Perhaps. You need to respect PGTW, PR or things like flashlights.
But perks shouldn't be feared, imo.
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