Knock Out - An overlooked Issue

As you all know, slugging for the 4k isn't exactly fun to play against. You just lie there on the ground and wait for something to happen without the threat of dying or coming close to it in 60 seconds. But at least it's not something the killer will do every game and it's also not something they'll be able to use as a means to win games consistently.

Well, let me introduce you to Knock Out:

So why is this is an issue? Well, let's go over all the effects and what they accomplish:

1. Downing a survivor with a M1 makes their aura invisible for their team outside a certain distance. That already doesn't good, right? Well, dear reader, it isn't. Because it means that: The survivors don't get information about the killer's position. This might sound very minor but remember we are talking about a perk that promotes slugging. Their team mates will not know from where the killer is approaching, they will not know from where they came (meaning they don't know where resources were deleted) and they won't know where their slugged team mate is. That is a lot of information that this perk denies with just one effect.
2. The slugged survivor has no information where to crawl. They can't see their team mates auras and they are deafened, which makes it impossible to determine their position with the help of sound clues. Meaning, their best option is to stay where they are and start recovering in the hopes that their team mates will find them eventually. However, some survivors try to be super smart and crawl away from where they were downed, so the killer can't find them again. This is usually towards the edge of a map, which makes it even harder for the others to find them.
3. Knock Out reduces the crawling speed. Even if you were to know where the other survivors are, crawling towards them will take forever.
4. The recovery speed is reduced by 25%. Now, this doesn't like a lot, does it? The problem is that you don't have forever to get back up again. After 4 minutes, you bleed out and the longer it takes for you to recover, the longer it will take to get you back up, which brings you closer to bleeding out.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Who cares, hooking is much better because you only need to down them 3 times and then they're dead." But this is not quite true. You see, what happens normally is that a killer will run after a survivor and eventually get a down. Now they have their cooldown animation (2.7 seconds, let's take half of it because when slugging, they'll still move) will have to look for that survivor because they are likely to glitch around for a bit (about 1 second), then they pick up (3 seconds) and carry that survivor to a hook (5 seconds at least) before going through the hooking animation (1.5 seconds). This adds up to a total of 11.85 seconds (which is very optimistic because it usually takes longer to get to a hook) plus a bit of extra time that is lost while carrying that survivor to a hook (usually not where you'd normally go) at reduced speed. So it all comes to a total of about 15 seconds (still very optimistic). That's for every hook.

As reference: Pain Res grants the killer a maximum of 25% x 90s = 22.5 seconds and it requires the killer to carry that survivor to a specific hook and can only be activated 4 times. This means, that Pain Res buys the killer less time than it actually takes them just hooking survivors in a match with 5 hooks. And that's assuming, they can even make it to a scourge hook 4 times.

So the killer saves 16 seconds hooking survivors each time they get a down. But now they don't benefit from any of the hook related perks in the game, so it's probably still not worth it, right? Well, you'd be wrong, dear reader. Because those 16 seconds will be applied elsewhere. The killer will immediately go for the next survivor and now only 2 survivors remain on gens. At the same time however, nodoby will know where the slugged survivor actually is (even most SWFs only give an estimated position or direction), which forces 1 survivor off the gen to look for them. This is already likely going to take longer than going for an unhook because they can't pick the shortest route. Eventually they will find the slug and start healing, so now everything works as if they were hooked, right?

Actually no. Because they weren't hooked, no unhook could happen either. This means, that no hook related perks (DH, DS, OTR, We'll Make It etc.) were activated either so it means, that healing now might actually take longer than normal. This wastes even more time. All the while, the killer might already have gotten another hit / down and continue on their task to slug everyone.

So we have a higher efficiency on killers and a lower efficiency on survivors, that also allows the killer to maintain pressure constantly instead of giving the survivors breathing room between a down and a hook. But of course, this isn't all. Because a killer has 4 perks and slugging won't allow them to use some of everyone's favorite meta perks, they will have to use something else. Something to make Knock Out really shine by utilising all the extra time it grants you. Something that will also give you information so you can constantly keep up cycle of slugging, chasing, slugging, chasing and slugging until everyone is down. Something like Nurse's Calling, Surge and Sloppy Butcherer.

Nurse's Calling is also a great counter to Distortion because 1 of those survivors will still be shown. The combination of these perks allows you to get slowdown and increase your efficiency further because it saves you time kicking gens, information thanks to Surge and Nurse's Calling, which also helps interrupt healing and slug one of them again, while chasing the other away and slowing down any healing. This means, that you have a build that does pretty much everything to make Knock Out shine. You can also make those perks do some work even with only a health state and no down because they will have to heal, if they want to break the cycle of constantly getting slugged. Unbreakable cannot break it either because it's one and done. So only No Mither an Exponential remain. Exponential can be snuffed and No Mither would need to be used on more than 1 person because you can always just hook (or ignore) that 1 guy, while slugging the rest.

I have tested this build on a variety of different killers: Trapper, Wraith, Myers, Doctor, Freddy, Clown, Legion, Plague, Ghostface, Demogorgon, Deathslinger, Dredge, Skull Merchant, Singularity and Xenomorph and so far I haven't lost a single game. I came close to losing 1 game as Freddy on Temple of Purgation because a Zarina with Plot Twist attempted to counter Knock Out (respect to that Zarina). I played all of these games with the same build, no offerings to give me an advantage and no addons. Especially Wraith and Doctor surprised me in how well they could make use of these perks.

In these games I have encountered my fair share of SWFs and still they could not keep up with the constant hit and run into Knock Out. I do not believe that this build is unbeatable but I reckon it is way too strong for any casual group to survive against and I am 100% convinced that the perk that ties the build together, Knock Out, is a problem and needs a rework. There should never be a perk that increases the strength of slugging. I remember warning the devs about this when the change was first announced. But until this day, the issue remains unseen because most players like to stick with what they know.

If you don't believe me, I ask you to put aside your morals and test this build yourself.