Is it true Slugging is Meta?

There's definitely been an uptick recently, but I wouldn't say it's meta by any stretch.

And it shouldn't be, for two reasons:

1. It's a dick move.
2. It's simply not that effective, especially if it were to become widespread and the surv meta shifts to UB/Soul Guard/Boon: Exponential. I've been running soul guard more recently as it seems Hexes are all the rage atm.

I don't believe that slugging is the new meta. It always had conditions for the killer side like either slugging because of DS, to apply pressure either on a generator or because a survivor is near. Nonetheless survivors have a huge amount of tools to go against slugging. Either with Plot Twist, Unbreakable, Boon: Exponential and Tenacity - other Healing or Endurance perks can help too! f.e. We are gonna live forever, Boon: Circle of Healing, Botany Knowledge, Buckle Up, For the People.

So even if it would be meta, it would never be a strong meta honestly.

Say the Killer has Hex: Ruin:

If I get off this Generator and go rescue a Hooked Survivor, I now have to repair any lost progress once I get back. But if the Survivor has enough time left on Hook where I can complete the generator, and then go unhook them, I now no longer have to deal with that additional time caused by the regression from Ruin, as once a Generator has been completed, it can no longer regress.

The additional time a survivor can spend hooked allows me to be more discerning with how time-efficient I can be.

I don't know man, Pain Resonance + Pop goes a long way in terms of applying a lot of gen regression. You can even toss Surge on and it's a pretty easy game for the most part (depending on the killer you use).

People slug for the 4k because of the introduction of the finishing mori. However, the mechanic definitely has pushed killers to slug especially if a survivor is injured. The other day I had a Huntress toss hatchets at my body and would not leave my body simply because she wanted to mori me when my random died.

You do realise that this dramatically narrows the window, right? This only comes into play if your gen is around 90% done, otherwise there's no benefit and you're better off getting the other survivor off the hook so they can get back into action too.

Same goes here. It's only relevant if those extra ten seconds are exactly what you need to finish the gen. Which, to Akumakaji's second point, also means that these ten seconds are a pretty exact counterweight to the ten extra seconds on the gen.

But, another quite important question in the overall discussion: If these extra ten seconds are such a big deal, why would killers then opt to slug instead, considering slugging takes 2 full minutes longer, rather than 20 seconds?

Funny. In my experience it's the survivors who stay on gens for too long to make it pop who cry their salty tears in the end game chat.

Me? I laugh. Maybe someday they'll learn that making themselves vulnerable may not be the best choice given the killer may decide to take full advantage of the situation.

since you deleted original comment, time for explanation on why in many cases greeding survivor on hook is way better than going for a hook asap:

when killer hooks a survivor and someone is quick to come for a save, killer is well aware that at least 2 survivors are away from their objectives from the very moment unhook notification pops. This makes killer able to either:

1. try to push at least one of other two survivors remaining on gens while having established pressure on unhooked and unhooker if they reliably know where at least one of those two is;
2. get back to hook and force unhooked or unhooker (or both) to stay away from objectives and achieve another hook (or hard tunnel unhooked if they have been hooked first really early and unhooked very early too)

What greeding survivor on hook achieves:

1. killer is expecting someone to come for an unhook and thus they think there are two survivors remaining on gens (after what killer makes decision whether to force remaining two survivors off gens, come back to the hook or proxy camp if more than one go for the save), while in reality it's three of them almost nullifying killer's hook pressure + one can come for a moment, use Reassurance and provide more safety;
2. it makes hard tunneling much less profitable since it will be already ~50+ seconds of hooked survivor being on hook, which is kinda wasted time.

You do realise that this dramatically narrows the window, right? This only comes into play if your gen is around 90% done, otherwise there's no benefit and you're better off getting the other survivor off the hook so they can get back into action too.

my explanation above is "short" version of why this statement is wrong.

But, another quite important question in the overall discussion: If these extra ten seconds are such a big deal, why would killers then opt to slug instead, considering slugging takes 2 full minutes longer, rather than 20 seconds?

as soon as killer picks up survivor, other survivors know killer is taking that one survivor to hook, which gives them a time window to either:

1. rotate on objectives based on where survivor has been picked up by the killer;
2. stay on gens and prepare themselves for the eventual arrival of killer to the tile they are working gen on, after which one takes chase and, if they can reliably hold a chase and notice killer is about to overextend, 3rd survivor can come to unhook and leave zone around the hook asap, leaving one survivor on gen.

If killer decides to slug, the gap where other survivors can make decisions is gone and also, killer circumvents various on/off hook related survivor perks, +10s hook stage and any kind of planned save.

On the other hand, against decent survs, killer will manage to get a 2-slug and very rarely a 3-slug, but never a 4-slug.

yeah it's funny because if you check killers that are in the low end at 55% killrate they still win more than survivors by about 8% winrate it's funny to watch because there so bad at the game they want free wins 24/7 to the point it's almost getting to the reverse situation of bdb when the game was new and killer actually could not do anything where getting closer and closer to that state really quick and its running the game really fast

when i play killer time has almost never been a problem except when i first started out, i play huntress and ghostface and usualy get a 4k without sluggingwith huntress and with ghostface average of 3k, its just that before people slugged when players were close, now they slugg the entire map which is in my opinion a very boring way to play the game cause you dont get to have any good chases except for a few times.

since you deleted original comment

Okay, before anything else: The forums are definitely broken, because I did not delete that, and I doubt a mod did, either, since it didn't get scrubbed from quotes and I received no notification or warning or anything of the sort. Same thing happened with the thread about 'does anyone ever recommend this game?' where I made a joke about it being against the Geneva Convention, and that comment got wiped too.

when killer hooks a survivor and someone is quick to come for a save, killer is well aware that at least 2 survivors are away from their objectives from the very moment unhook notification pops. This makes killer able to either:

try to push at least one of other two survivors remaining on gens while having established pressure on unhooked and unhooker if they reliably know where at least one of those two is;

get back to hook and force unhooked or unhooker (or both) to stay away from objectives and achieve another hook (or hard tunnel unhooked if they have been hooked first really early and unhooked very early too)

What greeding survivor on hook achieves:

killer is expecting someone to come for an unhook and thus they think there are two survivors remaining on gens (after what killer makes decision whether to force remaining two survivors off gens, come back to the hook or proxy camp if more than one go for the save), while in reality it's three of them almost nullifying killer's hook pressure + one can come for a moment, use Reassurance and provide more safety;

it makes hard tunneling much less profitable since it will be already ~50+ seconds of hooked survivor being on hook, which is kinda wasted time.

The only thing you're saying here is that this hinders the killer when they want to camp or tunnel, which is exactly the point of those +10 seconds. This is a reversal of an unintended collateral buff to these two tactics in the form of the +10 seconds on gens, basically reverting that dynamic to pre-6.1.

If killer decides to slug, the gap where other survivors can make decisions is gone and also, killer circumvents various on/off hook related survivor perks, +10s hook stage and any kind of planned save.

But the planned save is in the killer's benefit, and pretty much the only hook-based survivor perk that can legitimately hinder the killer is Deliverance, and that is only going to work in coordinated SWF.

Also, again: You're dodging the +10s hook stage by trading it for +120s. How is that a good deal? The very issues you have with the +10s are exacerbated literally twelve-fold by slugging.

exactly that
and the devs listen to those killers complaining about losing 1 game out of 10

I see, I only do it because of how common Pain Resonance, Surge, and Pop are in my games.

If I can get off the generator, take a hit, and pop the gen I will do that. I don't get mad about it because it is a game at the end of the day and I just don't spread toxicity to other people over something as silly as that.

The longer that survivors are in a game, the more stronger killer gets as the game progresses. That's why I actively choose to pop a gen in the way that I do to alleviate pressure in the game, especially if it's a three gen that needs to be done.

I suppose you can say you're not generalizing, but when you say survivors are crying in end game chat because of their misplays... Not all survivors react that way. Even when I do a misplay, I acknowledge it, laugh, and move on — like I said it's a video game, not like we're playing Dead by Daylight competitively for money.

This explains the whole situation and problem perfectly and goes quite in-depth. And yeah, the game is balanced somewhat around the power of SWF, thus making everyone else, including the most numerous and vulnerable group in the game (soloQ survivors) surrfer as a consequence. I proposed a change that would defang SWFs neatly without "punishing players for playing with their friends. OMG!", while not affecting soloQ in any way, but it usually gets shot down.

Just let everyone see the others loadouts and prohibit multipicks of the same perks in any pre-made group. Simple as that. No more "4 DH/Unbreakbables" to work through and everyone has to find their little niche, but its not THAT punishing. In my regular duo and tripple SWFs we have very little overlap in perks, because we all got different playstyles and try to achieve different things, and the couple of overlap perks could easily be sorted out.

But any soloQ players getting rolled into that match wouldn't have their perk choices affected at all. A lot of nerfs in the past could have been averted by this system, too: going against 4 DH or MFT was pure torture, but only having one survivor with it is manageable. I think this is such an obvious and elegant solution that I am wondering why it gets so much resistance?

@NarkoTri1er pretty well explained how slugging affects pressure and how not going for the unhooking for extended periods can rob the killer themselves of any pressure. Its not that hard to understand, but you seem to purposefully dodging this.

Regarding tunneling, this was brought up as the only way the killer could salvage such a position and apply some pressure themselves, but this isn't viable because of all the anti-tunnel - while tunneling is not fun for the tunneled player, I know this well from my own experiences, most survivors fail to understand how much they pressure the killer by just splitting up. To the survivors its so often "hur dur he tunneled at 4 gens … what a looser!", while the killer saw during their chase two other gens that were 75+% and one other already on a good way to 50%. This already backs the killer heavily against the wall and depending on where the survivors spawned it makes defending 4 gens with just 1 hook to their name impossible.

And like I explained already, the +10s hook timer is NOT equal to the +10s gen time, or as you put it " these ten seconds are a pretty exact counterweight to the ten extra seconds on the gen."

The 10s hook time allow all other active survivors that much more idle time to do what they want, just like Windows of Opportunity was infinitely more useful to survivors (showing in its 30% pickrate) then old, pre-buff Zanshin Tactics (with a measly 0,6% pickrate), even though both perks had practically the exact same effect.

50 second of gen time is not /= 10 second of hook time. each 10 second is = 10 second of 3 gens worth of progression. if we say that half of the hook are looking for "altruistic" value. 10x6 = 60 seconds of gen time across 3 gens. that's almost 2 free gens.

increasing hook time was poor choice by BVHR in the end because it reduced urgency for survivors to unhook players. the killer requires the survivor to perform altruistic actions to gain value out of refresh hooks. with 70 second hook-states, survivor are less incline to take altruistic actions and rush gens meaning that killer is punished for hooking survivors because hooking is a large time sink in itself. the way they get back time-sink from hooking survivor is by survivors injuring themselves. hook is strategy to group survivors up but when timer is so long, the odds of survivor grouping up is lower.

i don't think slugging is stronger than hooking but skill-floor has risen for hooking compare to before. you get punished hard for not soft tunneling efficiently to get value out of hooks.

Wouldnt that mean slugging is more effective?

Slugging for the bleedout is like a sudden "Oh no!!!" moment. Everyone is sitting on their gens and letting them pop, besides that one survivor that desperately tries to pick up their mate. Eventually everyone notices that 1/2 of the bleedout timer are up and they come rushing and poking at you and you can take potshots at this or that one, sometimes they might pick the slug up, but without certain perks you send them down immediately and maybe get a second down. This is where things get extremely dangerous, because when you can get the third one, the game is effectively over, so you can now more deliverately hunt down the others.

By this time the first slug is probably dying, reliving the killer of a big pressure and basically handing them the game. One of the two remaining survivors might even give up at this point, so that hunting down the last one becomes just a small task of whittling down ressources and maybe defending the general area with the slugs.

This is how a typical slug-for-bleedout match could play out, I experienced this a couple of times during my bleedout test and yeah, its pretty effective, because you only have to deal with UB once per survivor max. Its not fun, but its more effective then going for hooks and/or tunneling. And THATS the problem. Hooking shouldn't be this weak.