Gen Slowdown - An Abysmal State of Meta Perks
Hens just released a video of his "best builds" for every killer. After sorting through the data, this is what I found:
- Corrupt is present in 72.22% of builds
- Pain Res is present in 61.11% of builds
- Grim Embrace is present in 55.56% of builds
- Ruin is present in 38.89% of builds
- Undying is present in 27.78% of builds
- Pentimento is present in 19.44% of builds
- Sloppy Butcher is present in 13.89% of builds
- BBQ, Rapid, and Blood Favor are all present in 11.11% of builds
- The other 14 perks found were individually used less than 9% of the time
A total of 24 perks of the 124 total killer perks available were used. This is 19.35% of the total available killer perks that are being utilized for a competitive chance at winning.
Of the killers to buy for a new player:
- Artist has a 100% return on investment, with all 3 of her perks being extremely meta
- Blight has a 66.66% return on investment, with only 2 of his perks being meta
- Both Hag and Plague have a 33.33% return on investment, with only 1 of each of their perks being meta (totem builds specifically)
The question of the decade is: why?
Why is the current state of the game allowed to exist like this? People act as if they don't know why the general feeling of the game is at an all time low for survivors, well here is the data. Survivors can barely finish a single generator before the killer snowball starts, meaning all gen progression is halted. Most of the time, killers win with at least 3 gens remaining.
I understand the need for gen regression, but this is way too much. The arbitrary 60% kill rate target across the board needs to be adjusted, or the base game mechanics of this game need to be overhauled. Introduce a secondary objective as an alternative win condition for both sides (not hatch). Make chases more interactive, giving agency to both survivor and killer. Give each map interactable elements unique to that specific realm that either act as a win condition or will help whichever side spent time interacting with said elements. ANYTHING so we can get away from this stale and boring gen slowdown meta. If all those options are off the table, corrupt and pain res both need significant nerfs.
What are the community's thoughts on this?
Comments
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"Why is the current state of the game allowed to exist like this?"
Run a high MMR Killer game without any slow down perks and lemme know how it goes.23 -
Read the whole post
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We have two options:
Make gens take ages to be done and overnerf every gen slowdown
Or
Nothing, there is no other viable option to "fix" it, unless you make every killer borderline uncounterable that will always down any survivor in seconds (like nurse), which doesn't sound very good
We will always have a meta, it's impossible to make every perk from every category be equally good/bad
Gen regression is meta because it's fundamentally the best thing you can have as killer
Anti tunnel is meta because it's fundamentally the best thing you can have as survivor
And I like the idea of adding interactive things on maps, but it would probably create another problem, a map can be extremely insufferable as one killer and a free win as another (cof cof gideon)
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This is a problem of game design, not balance. The current killer perk meta is by no means unfair to the survivors, but guarantees a boring experience.
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I agree that there will always be a meta, but I do think that introducing a second objective to win for both sides would allow for more strategy during the match, rather than the bulk of a strategy being decided in the pregame lobby (perks), and I would prefer whatever that meta would be over seeing the same gen slowdown perks every match.
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Every update, BHVR continues to add more and more gen rushing perks. Every survivor pack that comes out comes with SOME sort of gen speed boost. Just recently, they also added 10 more seconds to hook states, so that's an extra 10 seconds survivors can be slamming gens out without having to go for a rescue. Essentially, gen speeds are so insanely fast that gen regression is mandatory at higher MMR to stand any kind of chance at winning (ESPECIALLY for m1 killers without map traversal abilities). The reason those specific perks are used over other gen regression perks is because BHVR has nerfed the majority of them into oblivion (such as call of brine).
A lot of killers are even under the intended 60% kill rate (bear in mind, a 50% kill rate is only a 2K. A 3K is a 75% kill rate in a match. A 62.5% kill rate would be on average getting a 2.5K per match on average), so 60% means they win just under half their matches on average). Considering a lot of killers are well under 60%, they are struggling to win on average which is pushing gen regression even harder as mandatory.
Heck, this PTB update literally just gives all survivors free gen speed just for someone taking chase, and now you don't even need to bother to even hit skill checks - missing them becomes great successes.
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As long as 3/5 gens get blown through by the time the killer gets 1 hook, you can expect slowdown perks to be the answer that most killers turn to.
Imagine trying to run a killer build that seems fun when suddenly 60% of the entire survivor objective is done when you've only got 8.3% of your objective done.
Regression perks were recently cluster-nerfed without progression perks being touched…making the problem of fast gens even worse.
Bottom line is you can't realistically expect to see much killer build variety at all until there's a solution to quick gens that isn't perk-based.
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If you look at my post history you'll see that i have constantly said this is a horrible state for the game to be in.
The game is literally balanced around the idea that killers bring gen defense, and survivors bring anti-tunnel and anti-camp. But, if you look at the history of changes the past year, you'll see that survivors are constantly getting anti-tunnel and anti-camp basekit now. So they don't even need to bring those perks anymore. But killers are still stuck bringing gen slowdown in order to compete.
I ask why?
What needs to be done with all of these perks is to do what they do with killer addons when something is deemed to be "required". They have done it almost every patch now to at least one killer the past year. They need to nerf the perks, and buff the basekit.
Nerf all of the gen defense perks to be half, or even less as effective as they are now, or even just completely rework a bunch of them. Then…
- Buff basekit gen kick to 10%
- Buff basekit regression to 200%
- Basekit corrupt that lasts 30 seconds
- Basekit corrupt on totems that lasts 30 seconds
- Do SOMETHING to deal with the fact that killers often lose 3 gens in the first chase just by pure mathematics
- Survivors can literally just shift+w to a god pallet like shack, predrop it, then run to the opposite end/corner of the map, and by the time the killer catches up, and hits them twice, picks them up, and hooks them, it'll have been about 2 minutes, plenty of time for the other survivors to finish 3 gens. This is ridiculous.
- Create an incentive to not tunnel by REWARDING killers for spreading hooks
- Idea i have had for a while is to make it so after a survivor is unhooked for 30-45 seconds they repair gens 50% slower. Means that if a survivor immediately hops on a gen, they are gonna be slow, but if they properly go and run to safety, and heal, by the time they get to a gen, the timer is off.
- Or simply a basekit pain res type effect.
Once you do this, you can start having killers actually bring cool and unique builds that differ based on the killer they are playing or the playstyle of the player.
The main problem with the game is not "gen speed" it is the gen speed to chase time ratio. The game is balanced around the idea that a chase lasts 45 seconds for both hits. That has been stated by the devs in the past. But do the math now on those 45 second chases. And lets assume it takes 15 seconds between each chase to start. How much time actually passes if the killer spreads hooks and goes for a 12 hook game?
- 1st chase: 3 survivors x 45 seconds + 3 second pickup animation + 10 seconds to walk to hook + 1.5 second hook animation + 15 seconds till next chase
- 2-9 chase: 1 survivor x 45 seconds + 3 second pickup animation + 10 seconds to walk to hook + 1.5 second hook animation
That's just 8 hooks before anyone can get killed, assuming it takes survivors 45 seconds to unhook and heal (which is definitely not the case) but this is assuming everything is very in favor of the killer, but still timed for what chases are balanced on. This totals out to 760.5 seconds survivors can be on the gens. How long do they need to do gens? 450 seconds. So They have a full 210.5 seconds to run around and find other gens to do, do chests, totems, open the gates, etc.
So even in the state that the devs balance the game around 45 second chase, if chases actually lasted that long, survivors would do all the gens and escape before the killer can actually land a kill if the killer played "fair". This is not healthy, and i don't mean that for killers, i mean it for SURVIVORS. It is not healthy gameplay for the killer to be FORCED to play in a "mean/unfun" way for you, in order for them to not lose the game.
The problem is the gen to chase time RATIO not the speed of gens. If gens only took 45 seconds, but a chase lasted 1 second, that could still be a world that was balanced if the ratios worked out (not saying they would, just making the point)
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People have generally been against secondary objectives. Every time a secondary objective has every been added to the game it causes people to groan. Be it Pig Traps, Totems, Pinhead Box, Glyphs, or anything else that deviates from just doing Gens.
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I mean gen slowdown is the only perk build that is viable in almost every game no matter the rank or skill of the survivors. Running any other build always is a risk that it could go wrong. Run oblivious build and get matched with an SWF on comms ⇒ useless, run totem build against totem cleaner perks ⇒ useless, run chase build against survivors with 10k hours that are gods at chasing and bodyblock for teammates ⇒ useless , can't finish ur first chase in 60 seconds and have no gen regression? ⇒game is more or less over.
Gen regression is a build that just always works and that many killers need cause their power isn't strong. Nerfing it even more will just push more and more players to only play S tier killers cause they get rolled by genspeed on weaker killers.That will then lead to this forum being full of even more "why do I only play against nurse or blight" posts. Also survivors have gotten a perk combo this ptb that enables them to do gens in 20-30 seconds with 2 people in most scenarios.
Don't know if just adding a secondary objective will fix this. In the end there will once again be meta perks for that as well.
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Secondary objectives that are win conditions for both sides. All those you mentioned are for killer only.
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You got 1 persons opinion on what the best builds were and noticed they use the same perks alot for each build... Did it not occur to you that was going to happen? My own builds ALSO use alot of the same perks from each other. That's going to be the case with most people.
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The problem is that stacking Gen Slowdown is the easiest thing to do and it also works on every Killer without any issues (minus a few Perks which dont work on Nurse, but while she cannot use Sloppy Butcher, the Devs thought it was a great idea to give her an Add On…even less investment, yay).
The thing is, you can always think about specific Perks which work better for some Killers than others. E.g. you could use Bamboozle on Bubba. Or BBQ on Killers with high Map Moblity. Or Perks like Dissolution on Wesker. Or Iron Maiden on Huntress and Trickster. All those Perks work better on those Killers than on other Killers. BUT - Slowdown works better. So you can in theory just C&P the same Build and use it on every Killer, since it is the most effective and easiest way to play Killer.
And as long as THIS does not change, we will see the same Builds over and over again.
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Anything to get away from the gen slow down meta? The reason why people use them is because gens fly way too fast. Your answer to this is "If all those options are off the table, corrupt and pain res both need significant nerfs" so making them so bad it's pointless having them is the solution? How about making gens take longer to complete so people don't feel they need to use slow down perks?
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It shouldn't really be surprising that whatever one person thinks is the ideal build is going to remain pretty constant between killers. You could group killers into a few broad categories and you'd expect even more perk similarity between them.
As for why gen slowdown? It's the most predictable. On the far end of the other side is Hex: Devour Hope which can either win you a game on its own or be absolutely useless. Even something like Batteries Included might get a lot of value if you get into a couple of chases around gens, but also might not get anything. If you're looking for consistency (which the comp scene emphasizes and kill streaks require), you want perks that give you predictable levels of value.
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If the perks were not effective, they would not be considered "best builds." Besides, you cannot tell me with a straight face that running corrupt + pain res on any killer doesn't yield results.
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this is not surprizing . They could nerf all slowdown to near useless levels and it would still be the most used perk . This game is based around slowdown existing. Play at high mmr with 0 slowdown and enjoy your 4 minutes long match. Unless they do something basegame to stop that then slowdown will always be the choice when winning is concerned.
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That's what the latter half of my post was talking about.
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Yeah some killers use perks better than others and in his opinion those perks slot in into the "best builds" for most killers
This is just the preference of one guy though and there are plenty of other varieties / preferences / fun factor that leads to other perks being used. So while on paper they are some of the most effective builds / perks being used they only slot into ~25% or less of usage rates in reality and you can't really compare the gameplay data to real data because again its one person with thousands of hours using what is in their opinion the best build on the characters and not an actual conglomerate on all killers across all skill levels
Id assume if there were survivor differences in the game the "best build" for every survivor would follow a similar pattern where the same perks see usage in every build
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What would be the point of making a "best builds" video for the community if the target demographic was less than 10% of the playerbase? Same thing when Otz made his best all-around killer build a few months back that consisted of: Corrupt, Pain Res, Agitation, and Dead Man's. Now you're telling me Otz and Hens are only making content for high MMR, thousands of hour players? Based on their videos, I would disagree entirely. These builds are intended to be used at all skill levels for maximum value.
As for "preference," this is the preference of anyone who wants to get a 3k every match, let alone a 4k. Less than 1% of players are logging in to play jumpscare myers. Less than 1% of players are logging in to play boop the snoot pig. If there were more players with different preferences on what they enjoyed in the game as killer, the community wouldn't be complaining about gen slowdown and Solo Q as much as they are currently.
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The weak chase killers absolutely need this. The strong ones dont. - but they can pick from the same list.
I dont have a fix
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We can debate perk strength all day long, my point stands. You didn't get an average perk usage, you got a list of 1 person's usual perks used. That doesnt mean all other perks that they didn't use sucks, just that he does what MOST people do and tends to have person favorites. Personally, I have corrupt and pain rez on exactly 0 of my builds. I do like to use surge and gearhead though. This doesn't mean pain rez and corrupt are garbage just because 1 person doesn't use them. It just shows personal preference.
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Tough spot because making chases more interactive might inadvertently make 1v1s for survivor too strong meaning you would have to make solo gens even more boring by making them take longer. Just a lot of mechanics would need to be changed in the game to favor a more chase oriented game which I don't know if the devs are willing to do.
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I don’t have a problem with (normal) gen slowdown, but it is completely untrue to say people use it because “gen’s too fast.” When slowdown was at peak strength 1-2 years ago people stacked those perks and gens took almost 200 seconds or longer per gen to complete. This was after a bunch of buffs to killer and nerfs to survivor.
A major part of why slowdown perks have been so heavily nerfed is because of what people did with them back then.
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Buff other Gen perks or buff killers or both.
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I literally pointed this out in the meta perk around 6-8 months ago where i said that killer meta is ALL slowdown and has NO variation at all in any form of capacity. There is no BEST BUILD that isn't slowdown. it is either 3 slowdown or 4 slowdowns and only difference is some variation is type of slowdown because someone killer have trash mobility not use certain slowdown well.
In the past, i remember having dialogue with @jesterkind about perks in dbd and how nightlight's stats in dbd for perk is first 10+ perks being slowdown and than a couple information perks showing up as "ok" fillers. So you would see like Pain res pop goes weasel, Sloppy butcher/eruption and than last perk is "Nowhere to hide". filler information. You see Corrupt+Deadlock+No way out and than like BBQ as filler perk. You see hex:plaything+Hex:Penti+Pain res+Grim embrace. It is just literally 4 stacked slowdown, nothing else.
The only filler perk you see are Bamboozle, Brutal strength, nowhere to hide, bbq, Stbfl before it got nerfed and that is it. you see nothing else. So it is like 2 somewhat lousy chase perks, few solid information perks and then you have your sloppy butcher/stbfl perk. the killer meta is extremely blank in term of perk choice. you can argue that you can run other perks but when talking about perks, we're talking about VOLUNTARY meta choice perks where the perk is OPTIMAL. best in slot. Not, I am running this perk to run something else but the perk sucks/is unoptimal.
there is suppose to be optimal choices that aren't just same perk stacked with different name but BVHR has yet to balance any of killer perks to create any variety in killer meta. All they have ever done is just look at top perk for killer and just nerf them. over and over. and over again. If something obscure becomes even remotely useful like current weave attunement, straight deletion.
nothing in their optimal perk section is anything different from what killer meta has been for last 5-6 years. You really shouldn't be surprised. survivor was like this before 6.1.0 but they actually received actual buffs to perks over last years to make their meta choices more diverse. killer hasn't received any changes relevant to their perks other than nerfs. they have received killer buffs to killer themselves which is great but perk-wise, nothing has changed. the killer meta is probably weakest that it has ever been. impact-wise.
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Survivors already struggle to learn all 38 killer Powers, what do you think would happen if they had to deal with more than 7 perks to deal with?
Neccesary evil in my opinion
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4 Slowdowns will always be the meta for killer.
Killers get stronger as all the pallets get used up so any way to give yourself more time will always be the best play. Even when gen regression was at its peak killers were running 4 slowdowns. People also fail to mention all the new tiles they've been adding and replacing other tiles with are full of unsafe pallets. So gen regression is fine being nerfed to compensate. Cant have your cake and eat it too.
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I'd say they have been nerfed to a normal state. People still use them because they feel gens go too fast. Even with them I'm finding gens are flying, if I don't get a down in this first 45 seconds of the match I know I'm going to be up against it and makes me think "do I have time to get 12 hooks?" If the answer is no then I tunnel, slug or do what I need to do to win. I know some will use slowdown perks regardless and some will slug and tunnel regardless but these get used more if gens fly and the killers get the "your toxic" treatment.
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I'm not surprised. Day 1 of patch 6.1.0 I knew the killer buffs were too much, because I knew they were going to snowball out of control. Here we are, 2 years later; and the only people defending gen slowdown at this degree are staunch killer mains who have not touched survivor for a single game outside of either tome challenges (where they do the challenge and go next) or killers that do not have enough experience and have 90 second chases.
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like non-sense. killer winning at 3 gen remaining is survivor playing poorly. if you watch some higher level games, for example, take this tru3 game of nemesis. He wins with 1 gen remaining where 1 of gens is 70% but he dominates all the chases except Nancy's first chase which at shack… which… again is a survivor sided loop with little no to counter-play as time-sink. you can win loops but it wastes lot of time if survivor plays correctly in which she did.
Can you guess why he won this game? It is how little friend, the gen defence perk. that is why player use gen defence perks because those perk are what give impact to change outcome of a match from losing to winning. Until bvhr makes other perks NOT named gen defence perks go from losing to winning. there is no reason for player to choose anything else. It is like if you told survivor to use Better than new over running idk, Deja vu. The player is not going to pick perks that are not useful and most killer perk that are not gen defence are better than new levels of irrelevancy. stop being surprised when all popular perk choices for killer are exactly the same type.
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I don't think anyone is surprised by that. Despite Hens not using it once, I see pop almost every match for this very reason. My question is more along the lines of why does the game have to remain this way, and is there anything we'd rather have instead.
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with survivor's attitude towards killer perks, i don't think so. BVHR doesn't really buff bad perks into relevancy for killer so it matches. the few times they do, it is just accident and the perk is quickly deleted anyway. that is my thoughts on that.
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Gen defence perks are still too strong and basekit regression not strong enough. Toolboxes are in scandalous state and some of the strongest survivor gen rush perks like Hyperfocus and Resilience can do with getting toned down a bit.
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No killer meta will ever be as healthy for the game as BBQ in every match was.
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- limit the amount of gen slowdown perks killers can use to 2
- bring some strong basekit game mechanic to combat tunneling
- increase gen times. by 20 charges?
these would be my suggestions. assuming we aren't asking for further straight gen slowdown nerfs without anything else.
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I’m merely sharing that when killers didn’t need to use slowdown perks at all, what they did was stack the most powerful slowdown perks to make games grueling for survivors. The kill rates were so affected that BHVR almost immediately took a sledgehammer to several slowdown perks and buffed areas of survivor gameplay just to rebalance things. No one here talks about it much anymore (on the killer side anyway) but I’m sure BHVR devs remember and want to avoid that situation again.
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I don't think there is a good solution for gen slowdowns other than removing them from the game entirely and transforming them into an entirely new mechanic that's supplemental to other perks.
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I agree with everything except the "almost immediately" part.
Cobruption was meta for at least 8 months before they touched the first perk (Eruption). Even after that, it took nerfs to call of brine, overcharge, the first skull merchant rework, and adding the regression limit mechanic to finally kill off the 3-gen meta of holding games hostage.
Between the gen kick meta and the 3 gen meta, it took them about a year. That's hardly "immediately".
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Gen perks are buried in effectiveness. They are nowhere near as helpful
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I like Henz, but his site and the builds he posts are kinda bad. Every build is just 'pink addons + Pain Res/Corrupt' — like, no surprise those are the 'best builds.' It’s always the same: 'best build for X' and it’s just 4 meta perks with a pink and purple addon. Can we please go back to builds that actually have some thought behind them, where the perks work together and with the killer you're playing?
This is why I like Otzdarva's site more. He gives more variety in non-meta perks and brown/yellow addons, which are actually pretty good a lot of the time
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The biggest problem is the difference between soloQ, low MMR and SWF.
The mass nerfs to Gen regression, I feel, was made with High MMR and SWF (doubly so for high MMR SWF teams) in mind, to prevent the high MMR killers from dragging the game to a halt against "good" teams. Only problem is that in doing so it ends up ######### over low-mid MMR killers and SWF teams (because not every SWF you encounter is trying to be the next Team Eternal, more than likely in low-mid MMR you're dealing with a stack of friends who just want to play a couple of games together and not sweat their balls off.) These changes also screw with SoloQ, as they have to deal with the three other hockey pucks they get matched with, and pray that the killer also isn't sweating in expectations of encountering coordinated Solo's or being matched against the high MMR SWF.
So yeah, as killer, choose to run quad slow-down and you have a higher chance of winning against good teams, but more often than not you'll just end up stomping a bunch of noobs. Don't run the slowdown, then you loose 2-3 gens in the first chase because of how fast the progression is now.
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If you sweat up to high MMR with a meta build and then remove the meta build, of course you're going to have a bad time. If you just use whatever perks you want, you won't be boosted, and you won't have any problems with gens flying without bringing slowdown.
I rarely run slowdown while playing killer and rarely use exhaustion or second-chance perks while playing survivor, yet I do just fine on both sides, presumably because my MMR is not inflated by always running a meta build.
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This is the point that is extremely frustrating. A full gen slowdown build for most killers is training wheels. Unless you're running Myers or Freddy, one if not two slowdown perks are more than enough. Put a full slowdown build on a killer that knows how to play well without them? That's where you get high killer win streaks. That's where you get 1900 blight win streaks. That's where you get the abysmal state of solo Q, but who cares as long as the killer players are having fun and getting at least 3 kills at the expense of the survivor experience right? (Sarcasm)
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i mean i never have issues either not sure if you assumed i did. I go on 100+ winstreaks all the time but i do run the meta builds as that's how i play on every game . Optimally
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I feel like the pool of meta perks for survivor is about the same, I'm not really surprised/upset about it.
Creating off meta builds is fun, and in order to do that, things have to be off meta 😅
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Play at high mmr with 0 slowdown and enjoy your 4 minutes long match
I go on 100+ winstreaks all the time
What are we even doing here
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Suffering
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Removing the BP Bonus from BBQ and WGLF was the worst decision BHVR has ever made for the health of this game.
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Not sure if that was THE worst because there are other contenders, but one of the worst? Yes, definitely.
Those perks were perfect, they encouraged killers to spread the pressure and survivors to be altruistic, and the reward even helped with the massive grind DBD has.
No one wanted those perks to lose the BP stacks and I'm certain no one would complain if they were reverted.
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