I believe we have the most healthy meta ever for both sides

It has one drawback, it can sometimes confuse when a blindness status effect puts it off, and if you only play with it, it could be detrimental (edit: kinda like a drug where you would be in lack of it...).

Nope, DS is fine as is, there is no counterplay to ds for the killer in a situation where you are getting tunnelled, you just need to do gens while he is getting tunnelled, and then the killer gets a 2k at most, while you didn't sweat.

From my experience, tunneling can backfire if that team is a swf or if they are good enough, cauz if you full tunnel on a swf you can make the killer lose 5 gens, by making the tunnelled survivor go to the area where gens are finished, so if i think that generally, if they are prepared, survivors will win, so buffing DS will not solve the problem ...

Edit:( Im just saying that dbd can already make ppl miserable, and tunneling is not always by choice, and having perks to fix bad desing is bad, so don't buff DS, add more basekit time of speed after getting unhooked)

(I am making the assomption that the survivors do not make an error big enough to compromise that plan and that they loop well enough)

Blindness does cause that drawback, nicely said.

Also

Ds is actually the counterplay to tunneling. DS shouldn't have counterplay other than 'Don't tunnel.' The killer has no right at ALL to be countering DS other than... not tunneling.

You agree with this, right?

Sure, there will always be a meta. But every game that has a meta, usually changes the meta over the years. To keep things fresh and interesting.

Sadly, the current meta isn´t fresh or interesting. Its stale.

Definitely. Aside from the Buckle Up/For the People combo I don’t think there is anything really problematic with the meta right now.

Hopefully we get to play with this meta for a bit and they don’t just immediately add in another MfT level perk anytime soon.

Killer side

• Slow down
• Aura
• Chase
• Hex

Killers dont need much info, only survivors' aura needed. Mean they only pick 1 single strongest info perk, still have 3 slots for others.

Chase perks if being strong will be insanely oppressive. Survivors can not recover before killers turning back to them. Devour hope is one example that giving Exposed, survivors fall hard after killers have 3 stacks. And that is 1 perk, being a Hex. Image 4 chasing perks, then how long a chase will last?

Not talk about Hex

Slowdown, in fact, are quite safe to balance of them all, add extra few seconds or take away will not hurt. Plus it doesnt force killers to play a certain style, just chase-down-hook however killers like and the perks work along with it. Simple to use and balance.

On survivor side

• Aura
• Chase/2nd chance
• Gen buff
• Healing buff

Healing buff is pointless if killer tunnel, other wise, they're nice. There were healing meta (CoH), was it fine? Not.

Aura, there are so many useful aura perks yes, but survivors need alot of difference aura perks for all the info they need (able to see teammates, pallets, Gens, Killers, Totem, Chest...) Should those perks get buff to make it meta? And how much buff to make aura perks replace the current meta? Then everything become useless with Ultimate Weapon in play.

Should they make Gen perks meta? Certainly not.

A survivor may not do Gen/Heal an entire match, but they will always getting chased. Chase perks will always be meta, unless it get totally destroyed like DS

Ideally all perks would be equally strong. Or at least on a similar power level. Giving players the choice of either taking a bit of everything or stack perks to be especially good in 1 thing. I would even go as far and add another section of perks. Counter perks. Which don´t do much on their own, but excel at countering other perks. (insidious and distortion would fall under this list)

Aura reading on killer was nice. We barely see those anymore. With the exception of some Huntress players.

Chase also sees little action. Or can you remember the last time you played against Enduring + Spirit Fury combo?

Hex perks are well...

Slowdown perks seem to be the last resort of killers that struggle with gen speed. Thats why they stack them.

Aura reading on survivor is still very nice. Bond is one of my favorite perks as solo. WoO also sits on place 1 of the most used perks.

Chase perks like MfT, SB, Lithe and recently Background player are present in every match. MfT so overwhelmingly, that the devs needed to act.

Second chance perks are still powerful, but dropped hard in the pick rate, because they are not abusable anymore. Because lets face it, DS wasn´t exactly healthy for the longest part of its existance. It was one of those perks that carried. BT became basekit, OtR still strong (don´t understand why its pick rate is low).

Healing was ok, but got nerfed because everyone was just self healing with CoH or SC. I remember how i chased teammates with We´ll make it and they simply refused to get healed, so they could heal themselves. In other words, it got nerved because there was no teamplay.

I think buffing all totem involved perks would be a start in the right direction. Since we have a load of perks that revolve around finding/dealing with totems. That see no action at all.

Gens fly so fast, because survivors have literally nothing else to do. They won´t heal, they won´t cleanse Hex perks. There are just Gens to do. Once survivors spend more time doing something else than gens, killers won´t feel forced to stack slowdown. Which opens up a new, open meta.

Each meta on is own is probably the healthiest it has ever been. But both metas at the same time leads to tunneling being the go-to strategy for many killers. That isn't great. It's not particularly fun to play against a hard tunneling killer and with the current meta it is more effective than ever.

WoO makes the game incredibly boring and you immediately see who has it too. They don't look behind, have perfect pathing and will not even try to loop because they have enough resources to maintain distance until the game is over. Worse yet, it's the sole reason why Blindness is a complete game changer at the moment. You see the immediate effect once WoO deactivates. This perk is downright unhealthy as it is because more often than not, the ones who use it absolutely cannot play without it. So not only does it not help with learning maps, it does the opposite. Why would you ever learn maps when you have a manual to tell you what to do?

Run pain res + pop or be forced to tunnel out every game unless you are absolutely destroying the survivors; because gens get done in 4 minutes, great meta

Then you still can just automatically lose the game if the survivor runs a god window or has super safe pallets lined up if you are on a weaker killer, making bamboozle STILL mandatory on some killers even like 5 years after release

No, it's not illegal. If it was, then I'd blame it on the players. Before you try and go on the offensive like this, at least see, if you have any ground to base it on. I blamed this issue specifically on the perk and I also blame it on maps, but that's a different discussion. They players simply use a perk. Unhealthy it may be.

But since maps are never going to be balanced (if it hasn't happened after 7 years, then it will never happen), WoO is the part of this issue that we can fix. If you can extend the chase by playing good, then I commend you for that. Really, I do. I love playing against survivors that actually know how to loop and mind game. But I don't appreciate playing "Let's run to yellow and press Space" all game. This is what WoO does. You see it as soon as you take it away from them, that the players that use it absolutely cannot play without it. It becomes a crutch.

There are enough people that play both sides and judging by the incentives, we have enough survivors and killers to play with short queue times. My killer queues are almost instant. Nerfing a perk will not change that. There was a time when survivors had to learn maps and somehow that worked out too. So I doubt that a nerf to WoO would change that. I also don't want this perk to be completely useless. We have enough useless perks already.

I have played this game for almost 3 years now and really solo queue is in the best spot it's ever been. It's still not great and I agree that BHVR should try to add some means to communicate but it's really not so bad. This whole "B-B-But solo queue bad." thing is just a strawman argument at this point. You will not win every match and you probably won't reach the level of a comp SWF but most SWFs aren't much better. Playing decent is worth a lot more than standard callouts.

When I play solo survivor I usually bring Bond. You may want to try that too. It solves most solo queue issues and also gives you a general idea of the killer's location and the resources that have been used around you. And yes, using one perk slot for Bond is absolutely worth it. Especially now that there aren't any obligatory perks anymore (looking at you, 6.1.0 BT). The HUD is a big deal as well as long as you actually use the information.

I also haven't said anything about gen rush here. Do I like it? No. Because it forces me to play just as fast paced, which always means I have to tunnel or slug. Something I refuse to do because I play survivor too and I don't like when it happens to me. I follow the categorical imperative on that one. But both tunneling / slugging and gen rushing demand their respective counter parts, which makes the game all the less enjoyable for both sides. At least that's how I see it. If you have fun ending the match in 4 minutes flat, resulting in you and your team mates all on the ground, then good for you. Have fun against the next comp Blight, I guess.

My point was that the combination of both of these specific survivor and killer metas isn't great. Because it results in both sides trying to end the game as fast possible, which also results in more "stomp or get stomped" matches. Both are not great. I'd rather have a 10 minutes game and lose with 2 hooks than a 3:30 minutes game and win by slugging all survivors. The healthier alternative in my opinion would be a middle ground between increasing the own pace and slowing the other side down. Not quite like pre 6.1.0 but not quite like what we have now either.

Still helpful to see what is currently available to you as the match progresses. Might not know if others have used up a pallet.

The game is only healthy if both sides can run no perks and have a 50/50 chance of winning at high mmr. That is not the case currently.

They have to nerf that Buckle Up+For The People combo thought. It legit has no counterplay whatsoever and I've been getting robbed of hard earned downs tonight all over the place. Games where I'm barely keeping up and that perk combo comes in and literally just slaps me in the face with an L with absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Of course I have and it's one of the issues I have with this game. You win by minimising interaction time. That's not particularly fun, is it? Running from pallet to pallet and dropping everything immediately doesn't sound fun to me. For either side. It's boring. But that has been the most effective play style for years. Only, it didn't used to work as well as it does now. Because now games are overall shorter. So the killer has effectively less time to break through the resources, which makes this more effective across the board.

You don't need a fully coordinated SWF for this kind of play style and WoO gives many players the confidence they otherwise lack. But that is besides the point. WoO has become the single most crutch perk of the game. Really, just test it yourself. Use some blindness perks and see how it works out. Every single time, you'll see survivors run around like headless chicken. Because many survivors have forgotten how to actually play the game. They play this perk. Similarly to people that play only Nurse. Nurse is so different from every other killer, you might as well play a completely different game.

If you have 100 hours of experience and aren't that good at looping, then what in the world are you doing in the same lobby as someone who has 3k hours and plays accordingly? Do you not see how ridiculous this sounds? You shouldn't even play against someone like this to begin with. And if they aren't that good, then why would you need WoO to crutch on? If they are on your own level, then everything is fine without this perk. Unless of course, you want to win easily without having to put any effort into it. But then you decided for the wrong game. In a somewhat competitive multiplayer game such a thing shouldn't happen. You can play single player games to win easily.

You just confirmed everything I said before about this perk. That it is indeed a crutch. You can't play without it (yet) and that's fine. Learn the game and play with people of your own skill. That's what we have MMR for. It doesn't work perfectly but it should pair you mostly with players of similar skill. If not, then MMR is a whole different issue, that should be looked at. Someone with little experience cannot expect to be able to compete with a veteran player. Unless they have one crutch that carries them through. Which is neither fair nor (especially in this case) fun.

You cannot mind game the shack, several main buildings, jungle gyms against good players (which have become increasingly rare) and quite a few filler pallets. But you don't get to mind game anyway. Because pre drop and Shift + W will take this part out of the equation for the most part. A survivor can easily make enough distance to run from loop to loop and nothing is stopping them to repeat this until there are no more resources they can use. When that happens, that survivor is screwed. No ifs or buts. So that also has little to no interaction. I have seen many survivor mains say that the game isn't fun for them anymore and if that is how they play, then I am not surprised. I mean, how can something be fun, if it is repetitive and takes no thought?

What part of DBD is the most fun? It's probably not sitting on a gen, desperately trying not to fall asleep and occasionally pressing space. Running for the unhook, while certainly more interesting than gens is also not particularly fun. I wouldn't play a game in which I would only run around pulling people from meat hooks. Hanging on a hook and waiting for time to pass is probably the most boring part of playing survivor. Healing is about the same as doing gens. Running around the map might be fun for the first 5 minutes but after that it's not all that exciting anymore. What remains is the interactive part between killer and survivor. And when that is trivialised by a perk and the amount of resources there are, then that also becomes less interactive and more of a "going through the motions" kind of thing. Second chance perks like DH and op as bad as they were at least didn't remove the fun from this game.

To me it's like watching the same movie over and over again on a loop. No matter how good or bad the movie is, at some point you'll be bored with it. Just bored. Because it's the exact same thing every time. You learn all the dialogue and the unexpected turns of the story. In DBD terms: You can play with your eyes closed and no sound. Because you already know step by step what will happen over the course of the next 20-30 seconds. Or I guess you can't, because you need to look out for yellow. But the people you play against can.

Meta develops because players are able to observe what affects their effectiveness in the match the most and are able to choose what to bring in to the match. In order for there to be no meta, you would need:

1) to prevent perks from meaningfully changing your likelihood of winning, relative to each other

2) to prevent players from being able to observe which perks they win more often with, or

3) to prevent players from being able to consistently choose those perks

I hope you see the problem with each of those options

Could you point out how survivor has changed a ton? What perks are now meta, that haven´t been meta 5 years ago?

Same for the killer meta, please.

As much as I tend to agree, Exhaustion perks are a pretty stable part of the meta and most of them are quite old. Nerfing them is probably not the best option. At least not right now. It would go a long way however to give people an incentive to experiment with different perks. Like the random perks archives.

There are more than 200 perks in this game and most of us have barely used more than 30. Sometimes not because they are so bad but because it's easy and convenient to pick meta perks. "Everyone agrees that they are good, so they will surely carry me. Why step out of my comfort zone?" That's pretty much what's stopping us from using different perks. Well, that and of course the fact that we want to win and are prone go for whatever is the strongest build.