Worst perk variety DBD has ever had?

DBD Community always was very meta heavy. I have never seen a community that blindly abides metas (and content creators) that much at all. The only thing that keeps it in check is that the cost of unlocking perks so high that many get discouraged.

Hell even games like R6 Siege aren't that meta heavy in my experience even in ranked.

Perk variety is nowhere near as bad as pre 6.1 meta and even the following gen kick meta for killers

i would consider gen-delay perks as essential, that is the problem. your not suppose to rely on perks. they're suppose to be optional choices where you can run gen defence but you don't need it to be competitive. that is something that they said in 6.1.0 that killer should not be required to run gen defence.

Guess what majority of killer are running? Gen defence.

Furtive chase is still not very good. Sure it went from F-tier perk to like usable c-tier perk but it is obsession perk that gives situational undetectable and situational speed. if they improved old design of the perk then it would be worthy of obsession status. Gearhead is suppose to be like discordance where you get dynamic information to gain information to bounce from one survivor to the next through hit & run. it went from perk that was F-tier to C-tier. it is usable but it is not that good.

Ultimate weapon and Nowhere to hide are solid recent perks. killers still have ways to go when it comes to gaining good stealth perks, instant down perks and strong chase perks. I guess for chase, there is coup the grace which is ok but then there is.... rapid brutality. I am still playing around with rapid but.... I just don't see much value out of it. the healthy survivor just seem to always make it to a loop which makes question what is the point of the perk? The speed boost alone seems to get them to any loop on the map. Until they provide more solid different options for killer, it is unlikely your going to be seeing any killer perk variety beyond gen defence. that is why i said that base-kit gen defence might be needed for killers to even attempt to change their builds along side buffs to different perks.

That just means your definition of viable is too strict, though. Personally, I'd argue viable perks are "perks which will consistently raise your chance of winning, if used right". I'll grant that "using right" can often imply them being pretty niche in specific builds or on specific killers, but they're still viable in that context. Furtive Chase and Gearhead are easily contenders for that description; FC might require a little investment (The perk Nemesis is a great pairing with it, for example), but Gearhead just works and works well.

Gen speed as it is right now is dictated more by your own play than by your perks, in a lot of cases. As long as your macro play is good (keeping track of where people are, occupying many survivors at once, chasing into deadzones, etc), gens don't really fly unless the survivors brought crazy stacked toolboxes and such, which in my experience is relatively uncommon.

you need hook obsession to trigger effect and it costs two perks slots to use perk effectively. Now Nemesis and Furtive would be fair perk cost if it was reduced your TR permanent but it is not. it is just temporary undetectable trigger. After that you have consider how often your hook obsession. In some games, it might be 0 but let say you commit two perk slots. On average, your tunneling little bit with killer, your likely not going be doing 12 hooks. let just say your doing 5-9 hook. if half your hook are obsession hooks, you get to trigger this 4 times without super going out of your way to change the way you play.

two perk that give undetectable with much less conditions are Tinkerer and Trail of Torment. Tinkerer used to be decent 7/10 perk before it got weakened. Now it is like 5/10 perk. something average. Tinkerer triggers on generators and you get it 5 times automatically. Trail of Torment is a perk where when you kick a gen, you become undetectable as long generator regresses. it has 60 second cooldown. these perk are a lot easier to trigger to gain undetectable and because each of these perk are slot efficient. you will be undetectable for more often.

I am not saying furtive is useless or anything but it is like 3/10 perk for what was a 0/10 perk for stealth. While these perk are fun to use, the generator are too fast for killer to consider running fun perks over just running classic gen defence perks.

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In term of raw finding survivors, Ultimate weapon, BBQ and Nowhere to hide are like 9-10/10 perks when it comes to activating and showing where survivors are. This is ok because these are general perks. Gearhead is more specialized type of detection perk. It is the type of perk where you trigger it and you expect to get information for when survivor are on generator so you can detach chases and apply "gen pressure". The issue with this functionality of the perk 3 three-fold

1) there is no notification when this perk triggers. This makes perk hard to use because you need have hawk eyes to use it. It is hard to concentrate of chasing survivor and looking at general direction of gens to trigger the perk. Red aura with Red gens is hard.

2) it relies on survivors doing normal skill-check. skill-check are random and the duration of the perk is only 30 seconds. it is unreliable.

3) lastly, Gearhead gives tends to give information at "late-time". when you trigger other perks like BBQ, Nowhere to hide and Ultimate weapon, Their effects are immediate. With Gearhead, it is waiting game.

This perk is really useful for what it is trying accomplished for killer but it needs more QOL changes to make it easier to use, to give information immediately when it triggers so killer can act on it and to be less dependent on survivor.

What I would like for the perk to be more consistent is noise notification when it triggers and when it does trigger, it randomly shows a single survivor's aura that is on generator IF there is anyone on a generator. The second change would means that you get information immediately and you rely a little less on rng skill-checks for the perk to trigger.

Never seen one? Have you ever seen MOBA communities? They start trashtalking to you if you don't follow the meta in those games. I've seen that happen even in begginer matches against bots.

I tried rapid brutality + Stbfl.

The outcome: it's the next loop, not the third in a row.

I think there's a lot of different issues with perks now compared to 3-4 years ago. For killers some just synergize way to well with their power or get buffed and survivors seem to lack a lot of meaningful perks as only a few are pretty useful and there are a ton of niche use perks.

I'm going to say perk diversity is worse now then it was in the past.

In the past meta perks were stronger but there was less overall perks. Meaning there wasn't a lot of overlap in what perks did so if you wanted to regress gens better, you ran pop bc it was the only option not because all other options were worse.

Now we have significantly more perks with many oerks having the same role as others and there's just clear winners. Diversity is just much weaker because there's far more perks going practically unused because they serve no purpose.

Unpredictable or likely unbearable.

why?

The meta right now isn’t great, especially MfT and that multiple slow down is still the best strategy, but it’s WAY better than the past.

Eruption meta was probably the worst killer meta ever. Current killer meta is a lot more varied and going against full slow down isn’t as oppressive, even if it is still unfun verse. Eruption/CoB/Overcharge was just miserable watching gens regress while the killer avoided chasing anyone.

As for survivor, the Small Peepee (DS/UB) build plus Dead Hard was probably the worst meta. Literally removed any counter play to DS and Dead Hard was one of the most broken perks to ever exist. And this meta lasted a LONG time. MfT is poorly designed but I’ll gladly take that over the DH/DS/UB meta.

The meta is always going to get stale but as long as it isn’t overpowered I don’t mind. Only perk right now I think needs adjusting is MfT and Buckle Up, otherwise I’m ok with the meta.

The problem with that is that if you want people to actually stop using meta tools, there are only two options: Buff everything to meta level (deeply problematic, see: release Circle of Healing), or nerf the top stuff.

Otherwise, you'll get an influx of good viable perks (Furtive Chase, Gearhead, Crowd Control, Claustrophobia...) and nobody will bother using them because their current builds work just as well as before and still work better than the newly-buffed alternatives.

I'm not personally saying I want them to do this, to be clear, I still want those bad perks buffed just so that they are available for me to use, but I do think it's a mistake to assume that'll do anything to the overall meta.

I don't want people to stop using meta perks because they are nerfed into the ground (see Thana, also kind of CoH). I want to see small adjustments to problematic perks to keep them strong but not causing major issues from their usage while increasing the number of perks at that level of strength (as a side note, I really think that there are almost no problematic perks at this time.) Rather than being effectively forced to not use a meta perk because it's been turned to garbage, I'd like the option of running that perk or choosing something else equally as strong, but that allows for a different style or focus of play. If you have more options on hand, you'll have more variety just based on the different ways people would prefer to play.

The more you lower the average power level of perks, the more you limit the design space available for creative new perks.