Pros and Cons of Tunneling
What are all the pros and cons of tunneling from all different perspectives? How is it bad or good for Killers? For Survivors? For the game as a whole?
I don’t mean this discussion to be about what “should” be the pros and cons but instead of what “are” the pros and cons.
Comments
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Cons of tunneling is leading killers to high MMR where they should not be and give killers an illusion that they're belong in high MMR.
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Pros: your chances of winning are tremendously increased.
Cons: you might be called a bad word in the end-game chat.
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The only pro I've experienced as survivor is when the killer picks the wrong person and they get ran for long enough to the point where they lose the game because of it.
I was playing a match against doctor, and he decided to tunnel the Quentin. The Quentin was downed and hooked twice in the time it got us to get three gens done. When he got downed the third time, I tried body blocking and taking hits so the Quentin could wiggle off, which he did TWICE, and he had boil over so you know that helped. And him wiggling off gave the rest of us time to finish the last two gens. By the time the Quentin was hooked for his third time, we had opened the gates. By deciding to tunnel Quentin, the doctor over committed to one person, letting the rest of us escape.
Post edited by HaunterofShadows on2 -
Pros:
- Possibility to remove a survivor early and drastically increase chance of 4k
- Not much thinking required
- Easy to implement at a base level
- Can be done by any killer with any build
Cons:
- Can backfire if you tunnel the wrong survivor (aka someone who's much better than you)
- There are a handful of perks specifically designed to punish this type of play style.
- Boring all round (this is admittedly subjective)
- Does not improve the killers skill much
- Repeated use ends up putting the killer against survivors good enough where the killer is effectively a joke no matter what they do (aka: puts them in a spot where their lack of skill shows)
- Inflates egos (possibly subjective, but has proven as fact to us so far)
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Tunneling is kind of telegraphed so it makes it easy to interfere. The earlier that survivors are aware of it, the more likely it is that the tunneled survivor will have the whole map to play with.
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Pros:
- You can kill someone faster
- People will often waste time trying to body block for the tunneled survivor
- People will often give free hits trying to body block for the tunneled survivor
- People will waste resources (med-kits) trying to body block for the tunneled survivor
- Generally increased chance of winning
Cons:
- Risk of tunnel visioning on someone who is on death hook but in a good spot chase-wise (pallets, windows, anti-tunnel perks in play, etc.)
- Can lead the killer to ignoring people in more vulnerable situations
- Can lead the killer on multiple gen chases because they refuse to detach
Otherwise there are no cons, only rewards.
—Tunneling is a great strategy if you want to win - arguably the best. The only reason not to pursue it is your personal feelings of guilt, or the fear others will judge you, but those are self-esteem issues and not game related.Although a poster above is correct that a potential con may be rising through the ranks faster than you like, and getting into even sweatier games. If you're competitive it's not an issue, but if you want to have fun on occasion it could be.
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Actually another con: Your not taking care to defend generators, making it easy to speed through gens
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Pros: You will probably win.
Cons: Nobody is having fun, probably not even you.
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Pro: it's a winning tactic.
Con: none
I don't tunnel unless gens are done in parallel but let's be serious: there is nothing weighting against doing it.
The only reason I usually don't do it is to challenge myself I like hooking survivors after each other.
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Pros: best tactic in the game.
Cons: survivors who don't care about your feelings or experience will get upset.
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- pro: you will win the game
- cons: when your MMR increases, you will start to lose, you will come to this forum saying that the game is survivor side and you will ask for buffs for killers
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Pros (survivor): You learn how to loop faster.
Cons (survivor): Boring, annoying, can make new survivors quit, creates toxicity.
Pros (killer): You can win much easier, don't have to sweat too much etc.
Cons (killer): Your MMR becomes higher than it should be, inevitably resulting in you getting stomped hard. Also, every survivor you face is going to be really salty in the chat. Also also, it can create an endless cycle of you being "forced to tunnel" because of the survivors being much better than you are.
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The pros are that you can get to a 3v1 faster, because in a 4v1 the killer is disadvantaged. This makes it to where each additional injure, down, and hook, actually generates pressure on the survivors.
The cons are that you're more likely to be hit by OTR and DS, which are game ending to be hit by. And of course it's another thing for survivors to throw in your face in chat.
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it shows a lack of skill from the player, tunneling and camping is what I did when I first started playing before I learned how to be a killer from watching Twitch streamers.
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Pro: ez win. An early 3v1 is unwinnable for the Sruvivors.
Cons: Survivors will be meanies towards you in Chat :(
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pretty much this. though i don't agree with the self-esteem part, you might not be preferring tunneling because you simply can be sympathizing with your opponents and it's not a bad thing or a self-esteem issue. or for example as a player that don't really mind losing, tunneling doesn't appeal to me because 3v1s are boring; remaining survivors either start playing very safe or stop trying altogether.
i'll also add that if you are hard hard tunneling without pressuring anybody or any gens, other survivors will grow confident and be extra efficient on gens so if the tunnel out isn't fast enough, gens will get done in no time.
Post edited by NerfDHalready on1 -
MMR takes care of that and they actually belong there because that is how they play at top MMR.
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If all high MMR killers did was just immediately tunnel off hook, they wouldn't last very long against efficient survivors.
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It is very seldom that I see a tournament of "so greats" that doesn't feature tunnel monsters. Every streamer in what they suppose to be top MMR (probably is) also has tunnelmanship as their principle perk.
You may be right about that last sentence though. They use discretion as to when and how they enact their tunnelmanship.
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i'd argue that your killer skill improves faster in 1vs1 by tunneling. Your going to be way better at the chase. You may eventually find out how to evaluate the risk of going for strong loops vs risk losing gens. main drawback of tunneling is that you have faster chance to lose generators if you commit to the wrong tunnels and you will have less hook states allowing you to be more susceptible to bodyblocking(Unbreakable, Adrenaline), flashlights, pallet saves and hook sabotage.
other than that, there is lack of chase-risk in tunneling. It is not like survivor is stronger at the chase when they're getting tunneled. You don't get stat boosts as survivor for getting tunneled.
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Only the chase part. Hunting them, mindgames (you kinda can but really many just try to burn pallets asap), managing to exert pressure across multiple survivors. These aspects are all neglected.
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what do you mean by hunting them? you mean following scratch marks? pretty sure that get improved quicker as well. you won't fall to any jukes. Mindgaming might also be better because typically tunnelers tend to ram themselves into unfavourable tiles which results in them having to learn mindgames to beat unfavourable tiles.
managing to exert pressure across multiple survivors
Sometimes eliminating a survivor early is best pressure. It depends for how long you take to eliminate the survivor. For example, I remember watching a game played by Xeno Blight where he tunneled on coal tower but lost 4 gens as blight but because he only had 3 perks, he wasn't able to comeback vs Japanese team with his 3 perks(Corrupt/Pain res/Pop/Grim embrace was his default build but corrupt was omitted due to 3 perk slot limit).
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Hunting as in locating the stealthy ones (this aspect has been lessened with all the aura reading) and keeping track of whos where.
Sometimes eliminating a survivor early is best pressure. It depends for how long you take to eliminate the survivor. For example, I remember watching a game played by Xeno Blight where he tunneled on coal tower but lost 4 gens as blight but because he only had 3 perks, he wasn't able to comeback vs Japanese team with his 3 perks(Corrupt/Pain res/Pop/Grim embrace was his default build but corrupt was omitted due to 3 perk slot limit).
No, it is the best pressure, but that does not negate the cons of the list. As you said, depending on how long it takes it could backfire or not. If it does then gens get done and 2-4 people escape and if it doesn't then how much skill in the other areas are they practicing? Once the killer is unable to tunnel any survivor out they're left with the inability to pressure multiple survivors enough to get resources down before the gens get done.
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i'd argue that your killer skill improves faster in 1vs1 by tunneling. Your going to be way better at the chase. You may eventually find out how to evaluate the risk of going for strong loops vs risk losing gens.
It depends chasing better players on purpose can teach you how to correctly run things as a survivor and being chased as a survivor can help you learn how to chase on killer all while refining your general ability on each role. Generally playing against good players then coping them on the other role i think is the best bet.
Going for the weak link and tunneling them out however, wins games but you won't improve as quickly.
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Pros
-It's necessary for it to be an elimination game. Survivor wouldn't be as intense if the prospect of elimination wasn't on the table.
Cons
-When pulled off successfully, its a boring game. If the killer gets a quick tunnel out the game just becomes a slog.
-When attempted and failed, its a boring game. The survivors crank gens while one is in chase and then take their 3e.
-MMR boosting, which a lot of others have mentioned. Not only will many 4 person SWFs be expecting it, but even skilled soloq survivors can counter it by just staying on gens and not rushing the unhook.
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CCons:
SSurvivors will zry to gaslight you into not doing their favorite strategy on gens.
SeSeriously both sides are okay to focus on a specific objective, not just survs.
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This and I would maybe add cons when you lose you get less bp and score when other survivors just fix gens and match ends quickly and it also makes games more stressful.
Subjectively losing this way feels even worse than when just losing and playing for hooks etc.
Pros: I would add it allow chance for comeback.
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