I'm guessing the DS will receive another Nerf

It always was 3 seconds back in the day, it was only ever increased to 5 seconds because enduring worked on it, making the stun 1.5 seconds and 100% completely useless at the time. So they buffed it to 5 seconds to deal with that and said they would change it back to 3 seconds when enduring was changed to only work on pallets. And what happened? Enduring was changed to only work on pallets, and they just never reverted the buff to DS.

Making it 3 seconds again, is closing the loop on a promise they made years ago for the perk.

If the perk is bad, then why is it that it is used in every single comp game?

Man, where to start. I'll answer the question first, then tackle whether the question is relevant.

So, the answer is probably perk restrictions. Comp teams are gonna expect to see some tunnelling attempts, but they can't all run the strongest possible tools against that, so someone has to run DS. That's a guess, I'll admit, but it seems like the most likely answer.

Though, it should be acknowledged that DS is kinda-sorta okay if you're a really good looper and you go down in a strong area, something a comp team is going to have much more control over because comp matches are a completely different game to regular DBD matches.

Now, to tackle the relevance of the question. Does it matter either way? It really doesn't address the actual question I laid out, which I'll repeat: Do killers currently feel that DS is potent enough to rethink attempting to tunnel someone?

That's the question. How do comp games have any bearing on it?

How do you get to three?

There's two personal anti-tunnel perks, Off The Record and Decisive Strike. If you branch out into altruistic anti-tunnel perks the number goes higher than three since you're including Borrowed Time and Babysitter.

Either way: the reason all of these tools should be stronger is because they currently aren't an effective deterrent. Obviously you need to be careful with how you do this to prevent unintended abuse, but buffing DS to 5 seconds is a pretty safe pitch considering how hard it is to abuse that perk.

These perks also don't have great synergy, by the way, because a lot of anti-tunnel (including the basekit anti-tunnel) revolves around Endurance, and that doesn't stack. Rightly so for the most part, but it does mean OTR and BT are both rendered much weaker if you're hit within ten seconds.

Its one perk

Ah, I see. Dead Hard isn't an anti-tunnel perk, for the record, it's just an Exhaustion perk. A few of those can help when you're being tunnelled, but they aren't actually dedicated anti-tunnel tools.

I think the main issue with your argument here though is that it's resting on the assumption that tunnelling is a "playstyle" that is on the same level as hit and run or just... using information perks, as opposed to it being a problem for the game in its current state. There's really no getting around that, it's going to need to be brought out into the open: Tunnelling is not a legitimate tactic in the game right now, because it's far too strong, has almost zero risk, and doesn't even have particularly potent counters.

It would be a legitimate tactic if there was some element of risk involved. If you, as a killer player, had to think "is it worth trying to get the value of tunnelling this person out, when they could have [X]?", then it'd be in a much better spot compared to where it is now where no thought has to go into it at all. See someone get unhooked, down them, hook them again. Their input is minimal (albeit not zero the way it used to be), and the risk is pretty minimal too.

It's to the point where there are people who think you have to tunnel to win, because it's so much easier and safer than playing the game out normally. If tunnelling was risky, because the tools to counter it were more potent and you had to gamble on which ones are in play, then the other (currently more legitimate) strategies would start to look better by comparison because there isn't an easy shortcut to value overshadowing them.

TL;DR: Tunnelling isn't just any old strategy, it's a problem for the game. Fixing that problem will require, among other things, stronger tools to counter it properly.

With an extremely limited purpose, which it currently is not adequately fulfilling.

DS back to five seconds, and, IMO, instead of granting Endurance, OTR should create a complete info blackout until a conspic action: No screams, auras, killer instinct, grunts of pain, footsteps, blood trail or even scratch marks. Make that chase -awful-.

So, DS is ok, as long as you are good at the game, but if you aren't, its fine. So we should be making balance decisions around players who aren't good at the game as opposed to the ones who are?

Or we could shoot for the outcome where we do nothing and not just give survivors a massive buff

It's only a 'massive buff' if you're tunnelling. And if you are, they need the buff.

Oops, I missed this one, the forum's notifications are busted.

Right! To tackle this: DS is currently weak but kinda acceptable if you are very skilled and RNG breaks in your favour regarding map resources. If either of those two requirements aren't met, DS almost does nothing. This would be bad if DS were a normal perk you just wanted to get value out of reliably, but it's especially bad for a perk that is designed to counter a currently problematic tactic.

Even setting aside that anti-tunnel should just work without expecting you to be a pro, and that it should work without requiring you to be in a strong structure already, I'm gonna once again point to the core question: Is DS potent enough to make killers rethink the decision to tunnel someone before they do it?

What?

Explain what you mean by that?

How could they nerf it more? When you hit the skillcheck it instead stabs another survivor in the game and they lose a health state too?

No offence, but I'm suddenly doubting if you've even been reading these posts.

I'm not saying we should make balance decisions around people who aren't that good at the game. I'm assuming you're referring to when I say anti-tunnel should work without requiring you to be exceptionally skilled, but that's not even close to the same thing as saying we should balance the game in general around people who are actually unskilled.

This isn't a generic balance change being discussed, it's an anti-tunnel solution. It's operating in a different area with different expectations to other kinds of changes. Buffing Decisive Strike is meaningfully different to buffing, as a random example, Red Herring. They're completely different perks with different design intentions; DS is meant to counter a killer tactic and Red Herring is just meant to be a normal perk you actively get value out of yourself.

So, with that in mind, here's the question again: Is DS currently strong enough that it makes killers rethink tunnelling?

If the answer to that question is "no", then DS isn't functioning and needs to be buffed. It needs to be "yes", and it needs to be "yes" without requiring you to be tournament-grade in skill. Other perks - and killer basekits - don't have that core question because they aren't designed to counter a specific tactic, let alone a specific tactic in such a problematic spot.

Sick math but as ive played the game for any amount of time against ds, no you don't get 1s of chase and a 6m lunge at them