slugging in general?

Depends on the reason I slug:

if they were toxic - well bad for you I guess, funny for me. (Bleedouts)

If I just get more and more people near me so that I don't have a reason to pick up - survivors own fault, I won't ignore another down. (Normal slugging)

If I'm close to losing - I'll slug to save my game, I don't see a reason not to slug then.

Besides the first case I never bleedout (well I guess I also do that for people that just refuse to be hooked. So people with boil over making them unhookabe), I only slug normally and that's perfectly fine for me. I also don't have a problem being slugged myself, I just watch youtube besides it xY

It is a legitimate tactic in certain circumstances, though. Like if I get a Survivor with Boil Over on an indoor map, there's no hook in sight and I'm not running Iron Grasp, I'm sorry but they are getting slugged. Or if I get the opportunity to put everyone on the ground because they're swarming around the hook for a sabo / breakout play, then I'm obviously going to take that.

But I do think both unprovoked 4 man slugging and doing it for the 4K are problematic for the game's health. Plus, there are Killers like Oni and Twins that have powers which incentivise a slugging play style (and since the recent Twins rework didn't go so well, I doubt they want to touch them again for a while).

It's something that is a part of the game and the problematic aspects should be an easy fix, but BHVR hasn't done it.

There are lots of times slugging is the necessary or right call. Don't have time to hook, don't have a hook to make it to, in risk of a pallet/flashlight save, see another survivors - all are perfectly fine reasons to slug and if the killer couldn't the game really wouldn't be able to happen.

There are three problems that have arisen

Blatant BMing - just leaving the survivors to bleed out instead of picking them up and hooking them. Survivors can't DC and are trapped in the game. I am continually stunned that BHVR hasn't done anything about this. The easy fix would be to rapidly speed up bleedout times or allow survivors a surrender option if all survivors are dead or have been on the ground for 30 seconds.

Slug for the 4k - it's reasonable why killers do this, if boring. The fix here is the same as blatant BMing

Never hook strategy - something that has grown more common recently. It undermines the core flow of the game and with the use of knockout is a soloq killer and ignored by SWFs. Knockout should be changed and the above options would solve most of the worst aspect of this.

Slugging and bleeding out are different things. Slugging is done because its genuinely better to do at this point than to hook because it counters so many of the survivors unhook perks which you see in probably 8/16 total perks per game at the least and then the killer starts hooking once all survivors are on the ground. Bleeding out is just done to bleed out.

What you're seeing now is just killers adapting to the several strong unhook perks survivors have and are choosing to play around it because they want to win. If a killer didn't care about winning as much you would see them hook. All this generally boils down to BHVR failing to balance correctly by nerfing the hook perks killers have while buffing base kit hook options survivors got. I guarantee if BBQ got its BP bonus back you would see killers hook WAY more.

You put the word reason in quotes as if its not an actual thing when it is. You ignore a multitude of game mechanics and perks by slugging which if you want to win is the best way to play. Lets go over just a few of the reasons slugging is better than hooking right now:

Avoid anti camp
Avoid basekit BT
Avoid flashlight, flashbang and pallet saves
You get into chases quicker
You can still use other gen regression

And thats only to name a few.

I did no such thing. I put them in quotes because its the 'go to' reason. So much so, there's no way to argue against it. Like adding emphasis. At least that was my aim. Ah well lol

Anyway, of course its the best tactic. For all the reasons you named and more. Still a terrible mechanic that i would love addressed. Lets go over a few more things I'd love to be addressed:

Gens being less than 1 dimensional while repairing.

Being slugged, on the ground, with absolutely no game play. Just… on the ground.

Killers having to deal with bugged mechanics, like inside-the-killer Flashbang 'tech'

Matchmaking and being more transparent with information, like MMR.

All these things are just a few. The are mechanics that I feel are not fun and/or engaging as part of the gameplay loop controlled solely by the developers. I really hope people read this part. Its not discounting the reason for slugging, it's focusing on the fact its a developed mechanic(s) that go against what a game is supposed to be: fun.

Umm they can 4 % to die faster in the hook so no dying on hook technically is faster than being slugged.

The actual cases of having a killer slug me and leave me bleed out intentionally are pretty rare and from my experience, most killers don't actually go out of their way to intentionally slug survivors. More often than not, I'm left on the ground for an extended period of time because I'm under a pallet and there's a survivor nearby attempting a save which the killer knows of. Or I'm downed and the killer knows there's somebody else very close by and they either feel confident (or greedy enough) to try for a second down.

People are only really having a problem with it now because people found out slugging is just way more valuable than hooking from the basekit mechanics they added to hooks and the amount of super strong unhook perks for survivors which slugging all bypasses. If only survivors adapted to it by idk running MFT and good positions on the slug…

I see it relatively often. I know about strafing and do it effectively. I talk about ironworks of misery in the room above as example, if just one hook is broken near it chances are good that you won't get that anymore, especially because the survivor combines it with flip flop most likely.

And no I don't justify anything here, I can tell you dead serious in your face, that I tunnel people out as soon as I get the chance to do that, even at 5 gens, I just won't go out of my way to do that. I don't really care if my playstyle is super liked, so I don't do that generally xD

Slugging is something some Killers are better at than others, but it is usually a last resort and niche tool if you need pressure and genuinely can't find a hook in time. It should be used for nothing else.

I prefer to always hook if need be since I want the points and also to pip, and slugging does not give you pips. I genuinely don't understand people who play for slugs at 5 gens, it's boring, I want chases. IMHO, Slugging is only useful if you are a) desperate for pressure, b) there's a lot of Survs swarming and it makes sense to slug someone, c) you literally cannot find a hook in time, d) they are doing wiggle sabo tactics (slugging is the proper counterplay to this), e) you legitimately downed them and lost them and cannot find them again to hook. There is never any other reason to slug.

You don't need to leave downs for more than about 30 seconds in my experience, and unless your Killer excels at it, it shouldn't be your go-to playstyle. You simply don't need it, just take the loss if you lose and move on. I would like to see all toxic slugging eliminated, there's no reason to leave someone down for four minutes until they die - that's just rude.

This game is not Slug by Daylight nor is it meant to be. This game is not supposed to be about winning efficiently on any side, I don't care what your skill level is that is an excuse. If I can go in at my 4000 some hours, at my MMR (which isn't low, I get decent Survs all the time), and still 4k as an M1 Killer like Wraith or Trapper or Ghostface or Sadako without slugging everyone at five gens, so can anyone else. It's not that hard.

Learn to be okay with losing sometimes, and you will never have to slug for a 4k especially not at 5 gens in your entire Killer career. In fact the only time I ever have had to slug or had a 4k slug at five gens is against literal sabo-wiggle abuse squads and Survivors who don't know enough yet to realize that altruism isn't always the best policy.

To be fair you can also do that while slugged as you still see everyone.

But I agree that it is boring and at the very least the idea of someone being able to waste 4 minutes of your time with no counteracting that should be removed. Self bleed out maybe.

Just a quick note, its 140 on the hook. Everything else though I agree with.

Might be a hot take, but I'd like the bleedout mechanic just removed or increased to 10 minutes?

My thought process is right now, slugging/bleeding out is the most time efficient and success efficient way to win games and keep queueing up. If this process is prolonged at some point, in this case bleedout timers being huge, it will begin wasting killer time as well and discourage such behaviour.

This method doesn't remove the mechanic, so it is still viable when slugging is called for as the play, such as survivors swarming with flashlights after a down.

Thoughts?

It is the most efficient way a killer can play. And this is a design BHVR has created, implemented, and is carrying out. Either they want it like this, or they were just blind af.

ohh yeah, the good ol' excuse for people lasting so short in chase, the mighty "maps are getting smaller and have less resources" even though 5 maps in total are prone to this argument. What about the other 54? Do you maybe want to tell me that 54 maps are not enough to pull the average chase speed above 20s? Dude this is just plain coping with lack of self awareness in the game, the easiest thing you can do when you lose is constantly blame game and your opponents and never turn back to your mistakes and mistakes of your team.

In case of average pub player, SBMM, or i should better say lack of it, has pumped up egos of so many players thinking "ohh i am playing at top MMR and i am constantly losing, this game is sided to the role my opponents are playing".

Oh how I feel this rings true to the core.

It's clear that most people complaining about slugging have never played killer before. Yes, sometimes killers to it just to be jerks, but it is often required to counter things the survivors are doing, like lying in wait for a flashbang/flashlight/pallet save. I'll give you my own perspective as someone who actually plays killer. I don't slug people just for the hell of it unless they are intentionally BMing me (t-bagging at pallets, flashlight clicking, etc.) I do it because it's the right play given the situation. In so many of my killer matches, I've downed someone, noticed someone else close by, gone after them in a chase, and then later come back to find that the first survivor has crawled away, nowhere to be found. I'm not going to waste minutes trying to find that first person to hook them, so you're going to just have to stay slugged. This "slugging problem" is often self-inflicted by what the survivor players are doing. If you want to make it easy for the killer to come back and find you and hook you, don't crawl to the other side of the map.

I can't believe I'm gonna say this, but this is probably the first time I agree with Danielmaster87.

Slugging, not to check for pallet or flashlight saves, but heavily and for a multi-survivor down, is an easy way to bypass core game mechanics by putting very little effort, essentially working as a shortcut to victory. It disables about 80% of the survivor perks and can transform a 0 hook game into a full wipe.

It would be foolish for the killers not to slug when you can essentially bring a game to a halt the moment two people are on the floor. If anything, if you think about it, killers going for hooks are essentially just either throwing or flexing, when heavy slugging is just the most efficient way to gain an advantage over survivors.

If they implemented this, then slugging and leaving indefinitely would be taking the game hostage and reportable. You wouldn't be laying long at all. Bet.

BUt you're correct with everything else. It should never be the only strat you go in with. But… humans have all types of varying degrees of skill/intelligence/etc etc. Gotta deal with the low and the high.