KNOCK OUT perk and slugging playstyle

The issue is more likely the chase times. You've got an indoor map with tight rooms which are really the only ones ghostface is good on. If he can down you quickly knockout is going to hurt, but it would hurt a SWF as well. But if someone gets a good chase (or on some maps just a long sprint), the survivors will have plenty of time to find each other and heal up which the killer will have made no progress from hooks.

In my experience as a pure soloq survivor, knock out is annoying because it just slows down what was going to happen. Games we lost, we would have lost anyway if the killer hooked us, and games we won we would have won anyway. It's an annoying perk to be sure, but even if someone on the team doesn't have the right build it's not unbeatable if the matchup is otherwise even.

You give players the capability to ruin each other's games they will gladly take it and embrace it. Dbd has a freedom problem that slowly being fixed since release. The devs apparently don't have a person who "plays nasty" and there test games are groups of friends with unspoken rules you can see it clearly by looking at the game from release to now.

While almost any other game has limits" like the creators predicted people will be abusive so they block off your teams spawn from the opponent dbd doesn't even consider that a issue slugging tunneling camping. They are allowed because they are "strategies" but I know a not so insignificant group of people don't care about getting a 4k as much as ruining the time of 1-2 players as being able to flex power over some one is a very killer like mind set this game is very primed and ready for groups of people on both sides of the fence going in with the only goal of making some one of as many people as possible miserable.

So yeah survivors and killers shouldn't have the power to ruin people's games remove and replace theses mechanics

It’s still less consistent than hooking yeah, but with Knockout maybe not so much. It also has the benefit of avoiding all the hook related perks. Like if you count how many perks not hooking prevents from activating each match it’s actually a lot. I agree your premise, but the specific killer can alter that a lot as some have more synergy with slugging such as Onryo for just one example that may push slugging over hooking. I think mad grips a meme perk personally. Agitation is one of those perks that I think the community highly over values. Very, very rarely have I ever been like, yeah Agitation had a huge impact here. If we’re using it for consistent scourge hooks that also seems silly. Two perk slots to make one perk slot function how it should sounds like a bad deal.

A slug is the most beautiful thing that can happen in the life of any killer. When killers realize how useful this strategy is in everyday play. The time savings are simply colossal. Just think, how useless is it to hang survivors on a hook? When could this wasted time be spent on something really important. I'm talking about the chase. The most fun part of the game. The eternal chase is all that is needed for the happiness of all parties.

The concept of hooks is outdated in its essence and brings only disappointment to all parties. But ditching the grappling hooks in favor of the slug meta. You take all those perks out of the equation on both the survivor and killer side. Killers no longer have to worry about all those regression perks like Pain Resonance and Pop. Moreover, the developers themselves are going to nerf them so that the killers can try something more interesting.

In the end, grappling hooks only benefit survivors by giving them too many upgrades, but eliminating grappling hooks from their game. Killers will be able to render survivors' perks useless and only at the cost of a nerfed regression meta. You also won’t have to worry about all the toxic weapons the survivors have in the form of flashlights and sabotage. Everyone has long known that they are taken by people who want to make the killers unhappy. I've seen all these 5 second lobbies many times, survivors changing equipment and character.

The good news for survivors is that they will not be victims of camping and tunneling. What does it mean that a survivor will be able to spend the entire match in the game, and not be the first to be taken out in a short time. To me, it's a small price to pay for a full-fledged game with chases instead of camping and tunneling.

I declare with responsibility as a certified Doctor-Slug. By adopting the slug meta, you will feel much happier than living in a meta of 4 regressive benefits and the eternal race for hooks.

Actually, it's better to watch this video. It completely reflects the entire path of how killers reach such a life. Just insert what you don't like here. Be it camping, tunneling, Nurse and much more. You yourself created these monsters and now for some reason you don’t want to play with them.

Depends on how much I want to play slug. Until the promised increase in sabotage. I had enough of a mixed slug without a knockout. Now I'll probably switch to a pure slug build with knockout. Just like during the threat of the anticamp system during the PTB.

So that you understand.

Mixed slug

Clean slug

This game is mainly a with SWF side. All other sides are just setting up a SWF under the dictatorship. It sometimes amazes me how people ignore this bull in a china shop. All the misfortunes of solo survivors and killers occur because of a SWF. Solo survivors literally suffer for the sins of a SWF, and killers preemptively hit any lobby in fear of running into a SWF.

The only way out would be to create a separate regime.

Solomode. Every 1-2 players receive a built-in Decisive Strike and Off the Record for each hook stage for 120 seconds until a noticeable action is made. They become more powerful if you take the perks of the same name. Plus, in case of a slug, when there are 2 survivors left, each acquires Decisive Strike, Off the Record and Unbreakable without noticeable actions.

Leave all other tactics in the form of camping, tunneling and slugging to a mode of 3-4 people with a bot, where there will not be all the built-in protections, since a SWF will easily win against such killers.

Where are these good killers? When tested, they turn out to be not so good, but simply kill survivors who refuse to hold M1 in any incomprehensible situation or sabotage the game by removing themselves from the hook. And all you need to win the game as a survivor is to hold M1 in any unclear situation. One survivor per generator. Each one must have a separate generator for repairs, and not everyone in 3 suffers from 1 generator.

I always keep these two pictures as visual evidence of why survivors lose. Because nothing has changed in solo play over many years of playing. I really respect the Bond perk because it allows me to avoid many problems in the game, as well as understand what to expect from the team.

I don't see anything wrong with slugging for tempo, knock out just makes it a bit more efficient. The perk is probably undervalued at the moment as it's a better slowdown perk than people realize. Even against a SWF yeah they can call out where they are but the recovery will still be noticeably slower.

why did you blur your perks?

someone probably already said this but hop in a locker if you’re going to go down. It counters knockout so your aura will never be hidden.

So full sabo squads shouldn't exist either then?

Survs abusing boil over in rpd should have been banned as well?

Both "sides" can play "toxic".

It''s a game with no ladder of ranking so just enjoy your own game, want to be a slugging face camper go for it. Want to tbag and flashlight/sabo spam go for it.

When you stop caring about results in dbd, you'll enjoy it more.

I think the issue in this case more than anything else was facing a Ghostface on an indoor map, all the more so as a solo group. Ghostface is actually incredibly strong on indoor maps, even highly-coordinated tournament teams with precise call-outs that practice indoor vs. Ghostface regularly have trouble against it and get 4k'd. Him slugging with Knock Out just added to the issue, it does not itself constitute the issue. Him supposedly choosing to bleed you out after having downed all of you, well, there is something to be said about the possibility of people unhooking themselves, or having things such as Flip-Flop and/or Power Struggle. But I agree that it is pretty obnoxious and something the devs should long have addressed, such as at the very least with the option to let the Entity end your suffering and surrender.

As for Knock Out (and Third Seal) specifically and the slugging playstyle at large. Well, first of all, while it isn't actually nearly as "useless" against SWF teams as it is sometimes made out to, it does have to be noted that it is certainly much less potent in those scenarios, and that keeps the build and playstyle in check because killers will rarely employ it given the ever-looming threat that the people they are facing are on external means of communication. Even in general, slugging-oriented playstyles (with and without Knock Out/Third Seal) are incredibly rare to encounter. It really does not pose a big problem. I play quite a bit of DbD, and I almost never encounter this on survivor. Neither do the people I know and watch. The one time in a blue moon this happens, you could even just refuse to play, go next (disconnecting if need be) and be on your merry way to dozens if not hundreds of matches without encountering it.

But I will even go further and say slugging strategies are a welcome change of pace and gameflow and make for very engaging and exciting matches, for both roles. There is very little downtime of just going through the motions of picking up and hooking people/being carried and twiddling thumbs on hook, no boring camping of hooks, no tunnelling someone out that can make the match a foregone conclusion early on, constant chases and pressure, unique gameplay interactions and decisions revolving around finding and playing around slugs, when to leave them and when to aggressively try to help them and how and so on, and the game is never over until it is because the survivors can recover fully even from a full slug, and this constant tension and possibility for the match to turn around is very exciting, as opposed to the many stale, foregone conclusions that can be present in normal matches where people are on death hook or dead with barely 2 gens done, someone is getting camped in basement or otherwise impossible to be saved, et cetera. Plus I have never understood why people dislike being on the floor to begin with, as opposed to being on a hook - you have more agency and things to do while slugged than you do hooked.

I for one would wish to encounter this playstyle more often. For anyone here looking for a fun way to employ slugging, here's a basic go-to build I like to use (on M1 killers, of course): Knock Out, Infectious Fright, Barbecue and then 1 slowdown perk, such as Corrupt, Ruin, Surge, Sloppy or the like. What you do is fairly simple: You down someone, and if you get an Infectious proc, you slug to chase them; if you don't get a proc, you hook them and let Barbecue lead you to your next targets instead. Obviously over the course of the match situations will arise where your decision-making will be a bit less simplistic than this and can stray from it, but this basic play paradigm will get you far and it will be fun and viable. Ultimate Weapon can also be used in Infectious' place. You can also of course go for a slugging playstyle without Knock Out. I don't think it's viable on M1 killers to do so ("viable" in the sense of allowing you to consistently win, if winning means to kill as many survivors as possible), but "winning" isn't everything - the low-downtime, constant-chase playstyle is very fun, and if you don't care so much that some survivors escape sometimes, it's an enjoyable way of playing and a good way to maximize your chase time and practice chasing. And on stronger, snowball-ier killers, it's a viable strategy even without Knock Out or Third Seal, just using chase and slowdown perks.

The way I see it, its just another way to play the game. Maybe the player got bored of hooking or dealing with hooks so they elected to play a different way.

There is no RIGHT way to play killer, the goal of killer is to…kill. If they can manage to bleed you out then I say good on them for being ingenuitive.

What it seems like is that YOU just dont like being on the receiving end of it.

Its not a matter of "good play" or "bad play" You are thinking like a scrub, and i don't say that in like a mean way, i mean it in the technical sense. I would suggest reading the free e-book by game designer David Sirlin called "Playing to Win" https://www.sirlin.net/ptw

Here is an excerpt from that book that i think is showing exactly what i'm talking about:

The derogatory term “scrub” means several different things. One definition is someone (especially a game player) who is not good at something (especially a game). By this definition, we all start out as scrubs, and there is certainly no shame in that. I mean the term differently, though. A scrub is a player who is handicapped by self-imposed rules that the game knows nothing about. A scrub does not play to win.

Now, everyone begins as a poor player—it takes time to learn a game to get to a point where you know what you’re doing. There is the mistaken notion, though, that by merely continuing to play or “learn” the game, one can become a top player. In reality, the “scrub” has many more mental obstacles to overcome than anything actually going on during the game. The scrub has lost the game even before it starts. He’s lost the game even before deciding which game to play. His problem? He does not play to win.

The scrub would take great issue with this statement for he usually believes that he is playing to win, but he is bound up by an intricate construct of fictitious rules that prevents him from ever truly competing. These made-up rules vary from game to game, of course, but their character remains constant. Let’s take a fighting game off of which I’ve made my gaming career: Street Fighter.

In Street Fighter, the scrub labels a wide variety of tactics and situations “cheap.” This “cheapness” is truly the mantra of the scrub. Performing a throw on someone is often called cheap. A throw is a special kind of move that grabs an opponent and damages him, even when the opponent is defending against all other kinds of attacks. The entire purpose of the throw is to be able to damage an opponent who sits and blocks and doesn’t attack. As far as the game is concerned, throwing is an integral part of the design—it’s meant to be there—yet the scrub has constructed his own set of principles in his mind that state he should be totally impervious to all attacks while blocking. The scrub thinks of blocking as a kind of magic shield that will protect him indefinitely. Why? Exploring the reasoning is futile since the notion is ridiculous from the start.

You will not see a classic scrub throw his opponent five times in a row. But why not? What if doing so is strategically the sequence of moves that optimizes his chances of winning? Here we’ve encountered our first clash: the scrub is only willing to play to win within his own made-up mental set of rules. These rules can be staggeringly arbitrary. If you beat a scrub by throwing projectile attacks at him, keeping your distance and preventing him from getting near you—that’s cheap. If you throw him repeatedly, that’s cheap, too. We’ve covered that one. If you block for fifty seconds doing no moves, that’s cheap. Nearly anything you do that ends up making you win is a prime candidate for being called cheap. Street Fighter was just one example; I could have picked any competitive game at all.

Doing one move or sequence over and over and over is a tactic close to my heart that often elicits the call of the scrub. This goes right to the heart of the matter: why can the scrub not defeat something so obvious and telegraphed as a single move done over and over? Is he such a poor player that he can’t counter that move? And if the move is, for whatever reason, extremely difficult to counter, then wouldn’t I be a fool for not using that move? The first step in becoming a top player is the realization that playing to win means doing whatever most increases your chances of winning. That is true by definition of playing to win. The game knows no rules of “honor” or of “cheapness.” The game only knows winning and losing.

A common call of the scrub is to cry that the kind of play in which one tries to win at all costs is “boring” or “not fun.” Who knows what objective the scrub has, but we know his objective is not truly to win. Yours is. Your objective is good and right and true, and let no one tell you otherwise. You have the power to dispatch those who would tell you otherwise, anyway. Simply beat them.

The point is, this idea of "what is good play" will not go away until the devs start incentivizing that "good play" if you want tunneling and camping and slugging and all the "toxic" ways killers can play to go away, the devs need to encourage the good kinds of play and stop balancing the game around kills.