http://dbd.game/killswitch
Slugging
I’m not sure what changed recently, but almost every game I load in to, the killer is slugging from the start. Usually with the perk knockout. This play style is painfully boring with little to no options for the survivors. So we sit there and wait to bleed out.
Comments
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Knockout is used in 1.7% of all recorded games. Meaning, statistically speaking, if you play 1000 games you see it on average in 17 matches.
What changed to encourage slugging?
Shoulder the Burden was added, Decisive Strike was buffed, sabotage was buffed, hook times were increased, Flashbangs are allowed to stay bugged in the game, perks that encourage hooking (pain res, pop, grim embrace) are nerfed meanwhile perks that punish trying to hook either get buffed (for example Flashbang) or get compensation buffs if they do get changed (for example Background Player)
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Nope.
It's easy to do, and hard to counter. And content creators started promoting it.
That's the entire reason right there.
All of those changes were about 6 months before this "slugging meta" began, and are just the typical excuse of "if you buff me and nerf them this will go away". That has never worked for camping and tunneling, and won't work here either.
The only thing that will work is what they've done with other similar bully style "strategies" that aren't intended by normal gameplay, like 3 genning for an hour, intending to escape via hatch as a team from the lobby, and double locker saves. Those took a base kit mechanic to make it impossible to pull off indefinitely to finally kill those "strategies" too.
What that looks like, I don't know. But BHVR send to be looking into this problem.
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People already complained about slugging months ago. It's not like slugging began in 2025.
It got more intense recently due to some of the recent changes (shoulder the burden, claiming to fix flashbangs but making them even more bugged, flashbangs being at the highest usage rate ever, etc...)
Also, by the time we had basekit anti 3 genning we have already long been out of the 3 gen meta and in the pop pain res meta.
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Killers' job is to kill and they'll do it in the path of least resistance and effort even if it means you're on the ground for 4 minutes. It's still a kill.
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There’s always an excuse. Go back to three years ago before the big perk shake up and the excuse was Dead Hard. Killers have always found a justification to play like this. It’s tired, it’s boring and it needs to change. The fact that there is such a plethora of excuses for it is not doing anyone any favours.
The biggest and best example of this being a ‘because it’s easy and because I can’ mechanic is that it was rife in the last Chaos Shuffle when no one knew what they were going to get and no one could depend on a specific load out.
I understand killers don’t want their easy wins taken away, but survivors didn’t want the hatch to be nerfed and it was. Thing that are problematic need change.
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How are the wins easy? Haven't you played the role?
The hatch nerf you're referring to was done because survivors almost never did all the gens, and still escaped. Compared to what it was back then, hatch is perfect now. I still don't like it, because it's a 3rd exit harder than the others for the killer to patrol, that appears even when the exits are already powered. But at least it isn't a instant escape for multiple people with gens still to go.
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the hatch mechanic you’re talking about could only spawn when the number of gens completed was 1 greater than the number of survivors left in a match. So if 3 men were getting out 4 gens had to be done. If two survivors were escaping three gens had to be done. All you’ve done is further exemplify that if such a mechanic which, contrary to the belief of killers who have clearly gaslit themselves, involved a decent amount of work needed to be changed so too does slugging.
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Slugging is only an "easy" win, if Survivors use their tools to punish trying to hook as hard as possible. Slugging is not meta, as we see by the low useage of slugging perks. It is not completely unviable, but its still not nearly as good as hooking with gen regression/blockage.
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Slugging is meta, cause its another design failure that has nothing to do with skill, perks or whatever and isnt countered by any means.
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you don’t need perks to slug. It’s literally an extension of every killers basekit.
If you mean there’s no prevalence of anti slugging perks - that’s because there’s only two and most of the time they’re not worth the perk slot.
As an aside, my first match of the day was against a slugging blight who repeatedly slugged us until we all bled out despite multiple efforts to get each other up, leave people down to do gens etc. he refused to hook. Ironic.
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There are certain perks that reward slugging. There are the explict ones (Knock Out, Deerstalker), but also perks like A Nurse's Calling that helps you see pick ups, Third Seal stops people from seeing slugged Survivors.But if we look at what perks are actually used/succesful: Pain Res and Pop goes the Weasel are two top used killer perks in the game, both require hooking. Place 5 is BBQ and Chilli, also needs hooking to work. 10 and 11 is Grim Embrace and Dead Mans Switch, 16 is No Way Out. Perks that require hooking to do ANYTHING are still the top perks in the game.
Yes Killers that only go for the slug do exist, but they are like Watterlogged Shoe Hags, rare and using a suboptimal playstyle. My last match was as Legion (for a challenge) and I got someone who ran Made for This. Does this mean Legion needs to be reworked to not use deep wounds to counter the prevelance of Made for This? Or should we accept that a variety of builds exist and we shouldn't balance around suboptimal exceptions?
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after the gen kick meta and the thrill of the hunt meta, the slugging meta just shows how killers will do anything to get easy wins.
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yes, slugging is reasonable for all the reasons you mentioned.
Is the use of Knock Out justified? No, it's a perk that desperately needs to be reworked, BHVR will come up with another bandaid where slugging in general will be impacted, while nothing will be done about hooks.
Post edited by Rizzo on0 -
I recently just started spamming locker jumps when killers slug because I don’t have the patience to have the match dragged out.
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After some time off since finishing the previous rift, back tonight to start the fresh challenges and ran into slugging killers fairly often, not fun at all.
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70 second timers
Shoulder of burden.
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Every point they said was an actual reason. People were folliwing the content creators just to follow them when the creators themselves knew the reasons why slugging is just more appealing. Personally I foresaw this being a thing for months because I'm not willingly ignorant like some people in the dbd community.
There are 3x as many reasons to go for slugging rather than hooking.
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There are a lot of really good videos made by people nailing exactly why it is happening I suggest you watch them. TO give you a basic idea going in, Hooking survivor is horrible now after being nerfed over and over and over and over. It activates the strongest survivor perks in the game, you have to deal with flashbang inside of your body BS, bodyblocking, flashlight saves plus all the wasted time walking people to a hook.
With slugging its a lot more fun for the killer. Its just chase after chase after chase which is the most fun part of the game. Slugging makes killer actually feel fun to play again.
So basically balance issues and fun issues.
Also @NarkoTri1er Your post is in violation of the forum rules. I suggest editing it before a mod sees it.. Additionally, you are quite incorrect. Knockout is run as a means of slowdown because hook slowdown kills itself and sucks complete dog water, 8 gen kick limit STILL being a thing despite SM being dead and actually just gen regression perks in general being laughably weak after being nerfed over and over and over for the past year at least.0 -
Also @NarkoTri1er Your post is in violation of the forum rules. I suggest editing it before a mod sees it.. Additionally, you are quite incorrect. Knockout is run as a means of slowdown because hook slowdown kills itself and sucks complete dog water, 8 gen kick limit STILL being a thing despite SM being dead and actually just gen regression perks in general being laughably weak after being nerfed over and over and over for the past year at least.
i'm pretty sure it doesn't violate anything.
Also, why am i incorrect? Knock Out is a perk that literally thrives off lack of coordination capabilities in soloQ, and if it gives insane results for you, it just proves that you are mostly facing soloQ teams.
We can have opinion that slugging is forced because forcing hooks is practically pointless nowadays, but defending Knock Out is simply wild and works more counterproductive than everything other.
If you find slugging without Knock Out more difficult, i really need to tell you that you are underperforming not only against SWFs, but against soloQ teams too.
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