Question for killer mains

This is correct, but that last bit of bias wasn't really necessary. Both sides have scrubs who try to blame anything but themselves for their losses. Both sides also have people who are perfectly reasonable who still think issues (including the side the play less of) are important.

So you've met a lot of salty killers whose opinions don't matter.

I don't personally believe tunneling is a "valid" strategy by most means, and I have not seen a lot of discussion around anti-tunnel perks (Such as OTR and DS) being considered "crutches".

Tunneling is a byproduct of the asymmetrical design of Dead By Daylight. We like to talk about a lot of natural things in matches such as chases, powers, maps, looping, and information to see the point-by-point aspects of how matches are determined, but the truth is that only one factor matters: "GENERATOR EFFICIENCY"

Let's take a quick step back.

The point of balance from matches in Dead By Daylight comes from the fact that it is simultaneously Killer sided and Survivor sided - but at different times. At the beginning of a Trial, the matches are Survivor sided by rote: Survivors have all of their resources, have all the pallets upright and unused, and all 4 survivors are working on generators. It is the Killer's job to SEIZE this momentum. By burning through resources such as pallets, health/hook states, and item charges - Killers attain the upper hand and eventually sap the reigns away from Survivors. Sometimes it's a Shape using T3 to down the entire team during a poor-timed hook state at 1 gen. Sometimes it's 3 hooks and a hatch game by a very talented Nurse at 4 gens. This is how the game's core is designed.

It's important to remember - time is on the KILLER'S side, but Survivor's COMMAND THE CLOCK!

Back to GENERATOR EFFICIENCY.

Survivors must complete 450 charges of generator repair to power the exit and escape - if all survivors are on generators, this goes by at 4c/s. If they could teleport from one gen to the next - it would only take 113 seconds to finish them all. Chasing one survivor lowers this to 3c/s - taking 150s to complete. Nice. But hooking that survivor means that the Killer can force another survivor to save while they chase a third, lowering generator efficiency to 1c/s - taking Survivors 450s to complete.

And so here is the dilemma.

So, why is tunneling "Valid"? Why do we see streamers and sweat-lords resort to tunneling, yet why are anti-tunnel perks so infrequent at higher pools of play.

Killer players will Tunnel because it, primarily, FORCES survivors to engage in a 1c/s efficiency if they leave their tunnel for a short time, and a 2c/s if they power tunnel. Here's the kicker - once that first survivor is gone, the potential for the Killer is heightened. Hooking another survivor in a 3 only team doesn't drop it to 1c/s, but potentially 0. The first hook may lower the efficiency of survivors to the pint where a match can take 7 minutes instead of 2, but tunneling one out can turn a 7 minute clock into an infinite one.

But, why is it NOT Valid?

Because survivors can hang for 70 seconds per phase. Keen teams know when to let their buddies hang and power through gens, or when to swoop in for a quick save and heal. High level teams are comfortable injured and spend less time on health states, and more time repairing - increasing their overall efficiency. When Killer's go up against confident, competent, and well coordinated teams - they can continue to keep the overall repair efficiency of their team high in spite of setbacks such as health states, slugging, or teammates on hooks.

TL;DR

Tunneling may be used as a tool to lower survivor efficiency, but it's not nearly as strong when survivors are efficient at loops, counter Killer gameplay, keep themselves healed when they need it, and power through gens without issue.

Anti-Camping perks, thus, are not the favorite picks of aggressive, well coordinated players - because the amount of hard camping/tunneling in higher skill levels is less of an issue. Players often know how to bleed Killers time with taking hits, exchanging hooks, and enticing the Killer away by promising a very tough chase.

When a survivor brings multiple anti-tunnel perks, it typically indicates one of two things: that they're not super confident in their chase ability, or they're used to going against lower quality Killer players.

Anti-Tunnel are great options for survivor. If you have a team that knows what they're doing and are going against a quality Killer, you probably won't need them. The stigma around them is false, and the ire is likely coming from stuffy Killers that want to tunnel. The better your teammates get, the less you will feel the need to bring builds like DS/OTR/DH/WOO and will feel more confident bringing more general quality builds like RESIL/DV/ADR/UB.

At the end of the day, play with whatever perks work best with you - that make you feel good and that you can have fun with.

If anyone calls your perks "crutch" perks or makes fun of you for it - ignore them. They're just salty over nothing. :)

A little late to the party but I'll give my two cents

As a Pinhead main, and Trapper secondary, but overall a killer main, I do what I can to not tunnel. The reason being is because when I first started playing this game I tried to balance it out between survivor and killer, and on the survivor side I was constantly getting tunneled.

That being said, it is a valid strategy; a poor one but a strategy nonetheless.

It's just like what I have to face off against a bully squad. I don't like having to deal with four flashlights, but it's a valid strategy on the survivor side.

I counteract that by using lightborn. And there's people that say I shouldn't use lightborn, well, just like you can bring in four flashlights, I can use that perk.

It doesn't matter what the devs do, because either side is going to find something to complain about.

So, is tunneling a valid strategy?

Yes

Just like running for flashlights is a valid strategy.

They both suck, but they are there.

Because the Devs have all but said some tunnelling is a valid strategy, by refusing to remove it outright, giving us Killers good at it, and giving us perks to counter it. Time to let this go and accept someone focusing a weak link is strategic, not toxic, It's not 2017 anymore.

Anti-tunnel isn't a crutch, but using anti-tunnel aggressively against Killers that aren't even tunnelling is about as cringe as slapping four gen perks on against a team that clearly has no way to genrush you and are all absolute babies at the game.

It's crutch, but it's not survivors' fault that the perks are crutch. I'm sure you could make similar arguments to killers using gen defence (if you consider it OP, which I don't). Anti-tunnel perks are supposed to be used for anti-tunnel. What you see instead a lot of the time is people using them offensively. "Let me force the killer to hit/down me so that I can use OTR/DS on him. In some really bad solo teams, that's the game-winning play." You need the killer to waste a chase (which DS does) for y'all to have enough time to do the last 1-2 gens. But that's with bad teams. With good teams, these perks are way overkill. "Oh, the killer managed to get 1 hook on us. Let's make sure he never gets another." It's really hard to find a solution for this, because both sides are getting screwed. Hopefully the stars will align and the devs will come up with something that doesn't make the game stupid for 1 side or the other. Because that's basically what base BT/anti-camp did. "The survivors are in a position where they 'can't do anything,' so we're gonna fix it to where the killer can't do anything instead." Some survivors needed those things because they were legit tunneled or camped. Others, the killer just tried to hit somebody, and got body blocked by the person's Endurance, or set up traps near the hook and then they randomly unhooked themselves. These were unsound ideas.

I wouldn't concern yourself with what other people think. Because if you start, then literally every perk item and addon are crutches

The issue is that perks can often be used for unintended purposes, including anti-tunnel ones. This is why people sometimes refer to it as "weaponizing" perks. The conspicuous action limitation helps with a lot of them, but they don't exactly do much about other interactions, like punishing killers who do switch targets with flashlights/flashbangs/pallet saves/etc during their "immunity" period. Its entirely possible for people to dislike the impact these perks can have while being completely reasonable about it.

I get that you were specifically targeting the scrubs, but its not always hypocrisy why people would dislike any category of perks, including anti-tunnel ones.

I main killer but almost never tunnel. At this point, every survivor just assumes every killer tunnels in a match…

And half of them think that not tunnelling is actually tunnelling, if someone is out early they will call that tunnelling.