The state of shift w in Dead by Daylight

Sadly it's effective strategy and a survivor tool thus You'd be hardpressed to find a lot of people demanding to nerf or remove it. (Btw nerf tunneling, only survs allowed to use working strategy /s)

I'd say it has to sray cuz of player agency and choice.

The counter to small maps is not Shift + W. Quite the opposite. Because you easily find yourself in a corner with no way to avoid a hit then.

People hold Shift + W on every map. They did it on old Cowshed, they did it on old Eyrie of Crows, they did it on old Mother's Dwelling and look at how these maps are still played. Shift + W. The same goes for the Asylum, Groaning Storehouse and GoJ. All of these maps have strong loops. But why would you loop, when Shift + W buys you an 10 seconds after a pallet break and 15 seconds after a hit just for the killer to catch up again? You're in no danger as long as the killer isn't right behind you and you cannot mess up either.

That's why survivors play this way. It's just like tunneling. It's easy and highly effective. Both are terrible and both should be limited in some way. The question is: How do we do that for Shift + W? Stronger loops and bigger maps are not the answer. Just as killers without chase powers aren't. I mean, look at Myers. His chase power is terrible and people still hold Shift + W against him.

I agree with most of what you said except even on small maps you can still just turn a corner and continue holding shift w again. Also if you are somewhat decent at looping you can waste the killers time for minutes on end holding w is not going to get you a 3 minute chase. Even with throwing all the pallets now no one is going to have resources and you are still going to go down around any unsafe loop you throw a pallet at.

Yea its done for both they go hand in hand. Some killers its more effective because they are oppressive and them some killers its less effective. If im going against slinger or huntress im not holding w. If im going against xeno, artist, or singularity im holding w the best counter play to those killers are walls and getting to a window before they can hit you. Then comes the map reworks its even unsafer against certain killers due to the nature of the loops.

On small maps, the chances for the killer to cut you off are a lot higher. This is why it doesn't work as well on smaller maps. Well, mostly. Midwich is still fantastic for holding Shift + W because you can only follow the same path the survivor uses. As long as you don't play Nurse that is.

The problem isn't just that Shift + W is done without using any resources. It's more like they use a window or pallet to gain a bit of extra distance and now the killer has to spend 10 seconds minimum to catch up again before the survivor actually has to loop and repeat the process. This often happens as a means to get to the shack from anywhere on the map. Which is a problem because more often than not, weaker killers cannot spend the time to play around shack. And they are also the ones that are most affected by Shift + W. So they are screwed no matter what. The one perk that actually helps with this (STBFL) was nerfed considerably but it's still the tool against Shift + W simply because there is no alternative.

A killer that allows you to loop them for 3 minutes does something wrong. Either they don't notice that whatever set up you're using is way too strong or they play bad, so that is not really a counter argument to the strength of Shift + W.

May I ask, what you call unsafe loops here? Because there are only very few examples of loops where you'd get hit, if you drop the pallet and run away. Like the old Ormond tables (don't know how that area is any more interesting now than it was before but that's a discussion for another day). Even on weaker loops that can be mind gamed without much of an issue, you still get a bit of extra distance. That is easily enough for you to get to the next loop.

Well that's the worst part it depends on the rng but even on groaning store house there's unsafe loops. Also the main thing about looping is chaining a lot of the new McMillian maps only spawn in ive seen as little as 8 pallets for a whole match. Or one side having multiple pallets and the other side of the map having literally none.

I mean I guess its not that strong vs most killers if you kick the breakable door it doesn't take long to chase someone down. All it has is one pallet and one window next to the breakable wall, and yea outdoor maps usually have less pallets but they are now usually only on one side of the map literally leaving you no option but to hold w because there's only one t l on one side of the map and 3 gens. They also added a bunch of new tiles that are very weak about as weak as t and l's. The amount of there's a lot of different reasons hold w i for one like to loop but to each their own.

Yes you're correct, that is a very unfortunate side effect that I don't have a solution for. Just in general for "most" the game it would be better overall. Maybe those specific killers could get alternate improvements in other ways to compensate. Maybe most the LoS blockers are more "vision" and less actual like objects, so they could still theoretically make the hits, it would just be harder to see that far and maybe put more emphasis on aura perks for vision through them. Idk. Maybe you have some ideas?

bloodlust is 1 reason that shift-w is so prominent. the longer you stay at a tiles, the more you get bloodlusted. distance should be earned by pallet stunning the killer but it is not. safe tiles should not exist/extremely limited(with 1 entity blocker on said window). Windows should be possible to mindgame but provide the survivor significant distance if they guess right.

The ideal would be something like killer moves at 120% m/s so they're extremely dangerous outside of tiles but when survivor get to a tile and successfully stuns killer, killer loses -10% speed for 45 seconds that decays gradually. Windows need to be constructed in such a way that they work like T-L wall where if killer wins a 50/50, they get a hit on the window but if killer loses 50/50, the survivor can endlessly loop the killer with no entity blocker. So think of Gideon's T-L wall where T-L wall is big. The other issue is that gen-speed is too fast at base-kit(0 perks) when the killer is good at hooking. They can basically win every chase, makes little to no mistakes but still lose. Implementing a system where killer has no bloodlust, the killer gets punished for eating pallet stuns and you can get endlessly loops on windows with current gen speed would be killer instantly losing for 1 error. Survivor would be free win for single successful play. The killer needs margin of error. that would be ideal dbd.

This mainly comes down to the fact that maps now have too many tiles grouped together, meaning that as soon as you try doing anything to mind game that requires the survivor to make a read or get hit, instead they can just abandon the tile rather than risk making a bad read.

Now this wouldn't be an issue ideally, because abandoning a loop is its own read, and a killer could bait a mind game expecting them to leave the loop, and theoretically would get a free hit. But loops and tiles are so close together that alot of times you can't even punish the survivor if you predict they will abandon the loop.

Doesn't help that windows of opportunity removes a lot of risk of them abandoning a loop for a tile that has no pallet or window. I'm not advocating for it to be nerfed, but it is a big reason why shift-w is so much more common now.

Maps are smaller, loops are weaker, and most killers have an anti-loop ability (teleportation, dash, ranged attack, some sort of loop denial). There are a few maps where looping is better than just running in a straight line (Badham) but I think survivors are being conditioned to run in a straight line and that’s honestly the better strategy. Why gamble looping on Badham (GoJ has terrible loops outside of main) when you can hold forward on one of umpteen maps that has really bad loops? Holding forward doesn’t guarantee survival but it might be the difference between a 5 second chase and an 8 second chase. And within those three seconds a generator could be completed.

The maps are also a factor.

In the past most tiles in the game had potential for mindgames. There was no real reason to just drop the pallet immediately and keep running, this would be seem as a waste of resources.

But now, most things are unsafe. The game basically encourages survivors to hold W and pre-drop everything.