2v8 Balancing Deep Dive

I want to open this discussion with the statement; I am not looking to rant or go on about how "X is OP" or "X is unfair BHVR plz nerf" but rather am looking to discuss/observe flaws in the 2v8 gamemode that I believe are over/undertuned or should not be present at all, along with things I find generally unfun/unhealthy.

Disclaimer: I am making these statements under the assumption that survivors are at least familiar with the game (150-200 hours) and not gen allergic Claudettes cluelessly crouching in the corner in fear of being actually found.

1, My biggest gripe: The over streamlining of DBD's core gameplay loop
I think it goes without saying they have attempted to very aggressively streamline the gameplay loop of DBD, which has created a problem I don't think enough people have really put into consideration. 2v8 lacks the main component of DBD that makes the game interesting, The Chase. The gamemode is currently balanced around chases being at most 15 seconds long (or the killers are at a severe losing pace). This results in chases feeling very uninteractive and uninteresting. And since killers can't commit to long chases and survivors never spend much time in chase, what remains in the game? Doing gens and kicking gens, which is often what most matches devolve into. The overwhelming majority of time is spent doing gens, kicking gens, or walking around looking for a gen to kick/do. Additionally, if you get into chase with both killers at once, the chase is doomed to end in about 5 seconds, which is boring for both sides and sets the killers up to lose as it leaves possibly 7 other survivors doing the objective (If all 7 other survivors were split on gens whilst 2 killers are occupied on one person, they can do 11.1% of the entire objective in 10 seconds)

2: Pallet density (This part if a bit of a rant )
Remember that part about how chases need to be like 15-20 seconds tops? Good luck with that, there's genuinely like 40-50 pallets around the map, around half of which are really safe/god pallets (some fillers are doing the weird extension thing like with what happened on Groan Storehouse II, resulting in extra god pallets). And to top it off you can rebuild the pallets as a scout every 90 seconds really quickly, making it feel like there's not even a strategy in whittling resources down/creating deadzones (this is a very core aspect of normal DBD to me).

3: Survivor Skills (Medic and Escapist being no brainer meta picks)
As the subtitle implies, there are 2 main survivor skills that are particularly problematic in what they're capable of. For some reason Medic is a partial instant heal, 2 way botany that stacks with other medics, WGLF on steroids (works on downed survivors) and unbreakable (you can use the ability once fully recovered to just pick yourself up). And despite how insanely strong this ability is, it can still finish heals on its own, can be used twice for a full insta heal, can hit any number of survivors at once if within the 8m range, and for whatever reason it can have its cooldown reduced by unhooking (I've seen it multiple times jump forward in cooldown when I unhook, allowing me to use it much sooner). This is one hell of a multi-tool for what's supposed to be a specialized class for one thing, given it has benefits in chase (no scratchies when injured and you're quieter), healing macro game (lots of time saved on heals to do gens), and short term healing if the killer is approaching.
A major issue I have with medic is it makes the Guide entirely irrelevant as the time saved healing greatly surpasses any time saved by the guide and their abilities (If I use the medic ability injured right after unhooking, I have instantly performed what would normally take 16 seconds, something I can do every 120 seconds, meaning it could be around a 15% ish increase in gen speeds if used as often as possible in this fashion), whilst the guide can only give a 8% gen boost for 10 seconds every… 90 seconds… god that's awful (less than a second of value lmfao). The skillcheck effect is serviceable but only applies to others, giving 2.7 seconds worth of progress every time they hit a great (10% chance per second for a skillcheck, should get one every 10-15ish seconds = 8.1 seconds of time saved on a duo gen in 45 seconds where both are working on it).
TL;DR Medic is way too versatile/does way too much for a "medic" and has too much of a strong impact on the macro game by saving a lot of time, particularly when stacked.

Escapist is also imo a bit overtuned, however it is atleast mainly good within its one niche, which is avoiding the killer. The only thing I'd change is making it to where anyone who doesn't have escapist equipped gets the full exhaustion of sprint burst when activating it (40 seconds) and removing the self care effect in favour of something more appropriate (it's out of place/makes no sense in that skill).

Scout is fine, but I think being able to rebuild the same god pallet with no limit is a bit silly, but I think you should also be allowed to commit to one particular pallet if you want for the fun of it, so I don't know how I would rework this to be more fair (maybe make the cooldown longer if you keep rebuilding the same pallets?)

Guide is actually in its own boat where it could really do with a buff. My immediate suggestion would be to give the guide a passive chest opening speed and a better shot at more useful items (fits thematically with knowing the place better as a "guide" and changing the active ability to be just straight up potential energy or something that somehow allows the guide to permanently lock bits of generator progress, preventing it from regressing (or just functioning like the BNP does). This gives the Guide a more distinct purpose from the rest that isn't just "gen speed go brrrr" since gen speeds are already wildly out of control.

4: Generator speeds
Speaking of gen speeds, I think we should go over a pretty obvious flaw that I don't actually need to go over since most of the community pointed it out immediately. As it stands the killers are heavily punished for fresh hooking survivors as they don't get any closer to winning (kills are more important than hooks, obviously) but survivors are given a bonus gen 2.5% gen speed every time they hook. Survivors also receive a penalty for doing their objective at 5% reduced gen repair speed per completed gen. The problem? This fails to account for gens that already had progress, skillcheck bonus progress (that entirely negates this if you hit them all), and in general the math doesn't really check out as fair, as there are a lot more hooks to go around compared to gens to be completed. If both killers get too many hooks too quickly early on, then every survivor on the map will have around a 10-15% bonus speed on 4 different gens at once. I like the idea of the catchup mechanic to prevent matches from going lopsided very quickly, but punishing killers for not tunnelling people out and not slugging (which is currently the smarter option if the person isn't a medic and will even in that case still usually buy you more time than hooking would since it takes 32s to recover and they have to burn their ability if they even have it ready).


Admittedly this is more of just me observing things and discussing random things related to the mode than it is anything specific, but I wanted to atleast get it out there as I think this has the potential to be something really cool for DBD and its future. I'd discuss killers and killer "skills" as well but they're all so lackluster/gimmicky and constantly go on cooldown so I'm not even going to go there (please just rework them entirely). If there's anything else you want to talk about, bring it up, I'm curious on what others think about 2v8's balance.

Oh also one last thing
Y'ALL GAVE NURSE 7 ADDONS, A BONUS EFFECT AND LET HER KEEP THE CONSTANT AURA READING FROM KICKING GENS AND SLINGER IS ALMOST BASEKIT IN A CORNER CRYING