True the killer does get more BP for hooking but if the killer is struggling to get hooks then bleeding 1 person out and hooking the rest could be the way to go. I play tombstone Myers alot and the BP rewards are often pretty bad because there's minimal hooks, minimal chases due to stalking, and people don't last long. bleeding people out with tombstone Myers makes very little difference to BP, still better to bleed them out than to not get the 4k

But slugging is normal play.

Killers routinely slug for pressure and survivors have as many basekit and perk counters to slugging as they do for hooks.

The problem isn't slugging as a function, it's obnoxiously refusing to hook, it's extreme slugging for the 4K, it's bleeding out in spite. These are mechanically outliers, they're abuse of the system.

Basekit Unbreakable punishes all forms of slugging, as it halves all the pressure it generates by no longer requiring survivor coordination. Why stop repairing the gen to help your teammate when they can just pick themselves up in a few seconds?

However conditional basekit Unbreakable, that ONLY activates when ALL survivors are in the dying state or hooked, would mean that it only comes into play in those extreme outliers where slugging is being abused to troll or prolong the game to secure a guaranteed 4K.

Basically; if no survivors are standing, i.e. all survivors are either dead, hooked or dying, THEN, survivors gain the ability to pick themselves up, and the moment one of them does, it's deactivated again.

This would turn any potential 4K slug scenarios into a fruitless game of whack-a-mole that the killer will eventually lose unless they commit to a hook.

Something like this already works in 2v8, where survivors on death hook gained basekit Unbreakable. It meant that when down to the last 3 survivors, to prevent hatch spawns, if one or more are on death hook it's impossible to keep all 3 down and stay on top of them indefinitely.

Killers do it because it's optimal, slugging wastes Survs time since going for hooks is a detriment and hook spreading is severely punished in SWF games. Killers also do it because it's the most toxic thing to do as it removes almost all gameplay and they are all tilted from their unpleasant matches with SWF groups.

In the current game, any nerf to slugging would benefit SWF immensely and any buff to hooks will destroy SoloQ even more. The issue always starts and ends with the balance around SWF being completely out of whack and ruining the rest of the game, preventing real solutions for the games many problems.

No offense, but that video basically confirms that slugging helps avoid survivors’ perks and being troubled by the mechanics of the game.

Killers still wont hook, theyre basically saving the 15-20 seconds it takes to pick up and carry to hook.

I have a short question.

If slugging is in every game like some people say, why wouldn´t you take unbreakable, exponantional or we gonna live forever, since DS, StB or DH are useless?

Don´t get me wrong but wouldn´t that be the next step in meta?

Killer won´t hook so why bring anti tunnel? Maybe we need to adept, instead of asking for basekit changes so we can run the same build over and over again?

Getting something in return is bad game design. Like I'm a survivor main and I'd be fine with nerfing or reworking toolboxes straight up.

Yes and no.

The problem with 'meta' discussions is that if there was a clear one, then yes, it could be countered. Historically, killers have had spreading hooks, spreading pressure, snowballing, tunneling, camping, 3 genning, and slugging as broad overall strategies. If all 4 survivors guess right ahead of time then the killer will probably be in a lot of trouble.

But DbD is a bad game when it becomes a guessing game in the lobby. Not to mention soloq's difficulty in coordinating a strategy.

DbD is an even worse game when you need to bring a perk to counter a strategy. Even if you don't bring the right perks, there are strategies to counter tunneling. Old 3 genning? Did anyone bring potential energy? No? Well, 40 minute game here we come.

Slugging is in the position of old 3 genning. Not only do survivors need to win the guessing game, if they don't, its an incredibly boring game.

My suggestion to combat slugging has for a while now been some variant of, when in the dying state:

• Hold the rush button for 5s to enter Desperation.
• Bleedout increased by 50% (1.5 c/s or 240s→ 160s to bleed out)
• Grunts of Pain are 50% louder
• Crawl Speed increased by 75%
• Desperation ends after releasing the rush button and remaining still for 5s.

I believe the biggest problem when a killer is slugging is the killer can keep easy tabs on the survivors they've slugged cause they are so slow. You can't get apart or move anywhere really while slugged. This means the slugged survivor can't get anywhere safer to be saved, and if you/a survivor get caught trying to resolve the slug, you double the killers pressure and can't split up to then try and break the slug chain.

This Desperation suggestion included a slight increase to bleedout speed, for which I have for 3 reasons:

First it's thematically satisfying. If you're injured yet desperately crawling away, you're disregarding your injuries to go faster.

Second it gives a meaningful choice with appropriate trade offs of whether you want to use it or not, since you do bleed out faster and can be found easier. This gives slugged players some actual agency of trying to get away from hot spots and key objectives to somewhere where their teammates can potential save them.

Third in a hopeless situation it gives a small means of mitigating slugging for the 4k and full team slugging, without heavy handedly going NOPE! BAD KILLER! HOW DARE YOU TRY TO WIN! Because like it of not, a successful 4 man slug is a victory for the killer, and trying to remove that completely doesn't just hit aggregious startegies, but also affects opportunistic slugging when Survivors are being aggressive too.

So yes I agree a lazily implemented "super fast bleedout" or "give up" mechanism is dreadful, an increased bleedout time built into a more reasonable mechanic has a place.

Basekit Unbreakable is too much of game changing effect to manage... every suggestion I've ever read always has some outlier, some situation where it breaks the game and can create scenarios where the killers hands are tied and they can't pick up.

Instead of acknowledging that fault, players tend to just wave it off as not important, or try and shoe horn in some really ugly additional rules/conditions to combat it.

The Crawl Speed route is a much more innocuous change that isn't gonna suddenly completely rewire and break the game.

Have you been the last days online in this forum?

If the Thread isn´t 2v8 related its most likely a slug theme.

So it´s not the survivors fault if they bring Anti Tunnel vs a Slug build

But it´s killers fault if they bring Totems/Aura/Hook builds vs Anti Totem, Aura or Sabo builds?

I have a honest question.

What do we even want?

A stale game where everything is predictable, say same Loops on every map, same playstyle every game, same perks what so ever or do we like dbd cause its not predictable?

The point was each of those incremental nerfs continued to slowly and surely eat away the edge of hooking over slugging, and now we've reached the axis point where slugging is showing to be the smarter, more efficient play mathematically. So while they don't seem to a major problem individual, their cumulative affect has finally become significantly noticeable.

No, hooking was nerfed for killers outside of even the perks. The 20 second increase on hook states for example. And other perks have enabled pickup saves to be even easier such as Background player. Flashlights can still be avoided with looking at walls but Background Player + Flashbang enables survivors to run up, drop a flashbang in the killer model, making it unavoidable, in addition to all the other anti-hook plays survivors have at their disposal.

Again, each of these individual changes did not shift the meta, it's that their cumulative effect has now shifted the meta.

Also your scenario doesn't work. One hook and chasing one survivor is only two engage and not doing generators. Meanwhile one slugged and one in chase requires another survivor to first locate the downed survivor, then get them up, which with knockout becomes more difficult, thus engaging three survivors for longer than hooking.

People have already done the math in the thread already, so I won't belabor the point.

Honestly I don't think my complaint is much lack of rewards for hooking, it's that those rewards can be short-circuited so easy by just one other survivor utilizing a flashlight, flashbang, sabotage, or body block. If I was able to do the 2v8 thing and put survivors on hooks instantly I think you'd find most killers would accept that.

How does giving survivors an extra 20 seconds to finish generators give the KILLER value exactly?

Also, no, hooked survivors are easily located thanks to the notification upon hook (also if one survivor is running kindred they are seen at all times including killer aura when close to hook). There is no searching for them as opposed to a slugged survivor with knockout, THAT'S where the time difference come in. Also thanks to the longer hook states survivors can unhook another survivor at their leisure, usually after they complete a generator, while slugged survivors have to be located quicker since bleed out meter does not reset upon being picked up.

"Hooking directly progresses your objective faster". No it doesn't, my objective is not to get 12 hooks, it's to get kills, and I can accomplish that through a variety of means including Mori, 3 hook states, or bleed out.

"it fully immobilizes someone instead of just slowing them down a lot" Again the value in slugging is not the slug itself, it's forcing them to be searched for via knockout.

"puts a sharper time pressure on survivors to come rescue" again no it doesn't, bleed out meter doesn't reset, meaning it's one timer cumulative that has to tick down, as opposed to two individual hook states with their own separate timers.

"As for hook denial strategies like flashlights and the like, we're on firmer ground because there is one issue there… but we're also downgraded "hooks aren't worth it" to "one specific perk has one specific interaction that is unfair". Those are extremelydifferent situations. Actually getting the hook gives as much value by default as it ever has, it's just slightly harder in an unfair way in one specific scenario."

Hooks still aren't worth it as the nerfs to slowdown perks and the continued length of hook states gives survivors more leniency on when to unhook while not providing enough slowdown to counter the pressure from slugging with knockout. No we are still not in agreement here, but I appreciate you acknowledging the Collison issue.

We're going to be at an impasse here, but the truth of the matter is killers didn't wake up one day deciding to slug, and slugging results in fewer bloodpoints and also higher risk because if the strat doesn't work. Clearly there had to be a significant shift over time that cause a bunch of killers who WERE using hook perks up until recently to suddenly all switch en masse.

Who's we? Your alt accounts?

So then why do Killers slug? Why does that P100 Blight slug at 5 gens or why does the p100 Nurse slug at 5 gens? In fact, why is every Killer in DBD constantly slugging…. or camping/tunneling if they even do hook? Why in comp DBD, is the Killer pretty much required to tunnel out one player in a nerfed SWF?

The game balance will always be ######### if SWF are not brought back down to earth where the rest of Survs play, which is why this game has gotten more unpleasant as time has gone on. You're all aware of that though, you just ignore it because you want your current power role playing with friends, I'm not going to be bullied by people like you for simply stating reality.

We Rulebreakers is this shared account. Believe us if we had alts you'd be getting alot more snark than you are now.

Why? Because they want to. Because they "believe" that they can't win without doing so. Because they had an opportunity presented and took it. Because they're scared of hatch. Everyone has a different reason just like how not every killer slugs. We swear we had conversation kinda like this with someone else…but we digress.

The funny thing is that being in a SWF doesn't make a survivor instantly good. Your aware of this correct? Thats a reality right there. We're not really ignoring anything, your just blowing swfs so far out of proportion that we want to make sure if your genuinely serious or not. Does a swf have an advantage? Sure. Does being in a swf multiply the threat of survivors to demonic levels? Nope.

The solution to the slugging meta isn't to make more perks basekit. The solution to the slugging meta is to unnerf hook perks like pop and pain res and dms, and bring back 60 second hook stages - which was an unnecessary nerf to killer considering they had already introduced anti-face camping.

A) none of these changes were even within 6 months of this becoming a "slugging meta". The only changes anywhere close to this timing are the extra 10 seconds per hook stage (which do nothing if you go spread pressure and don't camp or tunnel), and the nerfed to WGLF healing speed. So maybe we should buff WGLF by your logic?

B) this line of thinking has never worked. They've made endless buffs to killers and nerfs to survivor that people claimed "were the reason killers camp and tunnel" and yet, strangely, every time they "fix one" the goal post moves to the next flavor of the month.

DS, DH, adrenaline, MfT, CoH, prove, BNP, reassurance ptb, gen speeds, maps, pallet strength, tile logic reworks, distortion. Every single one of those was the "reason for tunneling" at one point supposedly. Yet here we are. I think this month is woo and gen speeds again.

I do actually agree with you that people should practice it, cuz some people automatically think "oh tunneling is the best strategy I'll just do that every game". going out of your way to "spread pressure" is a bad strategy but you only learn that after years of trying it.

but its used as a buzzword by people who want to gaslight you into thinking youre just bad at the game and that you can 8 hook as trapper if youre just good enough, which is not the case

No need to be condescending.

I've always said that camping, tunneling, and slugging are situational. In fact, I consider it a measure of game sense to know when and where to apply those tactics.

And I agree that a lot of people consider all of those things to be the only thing they know how to do. "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". And it's actually a measure of poor skill, imo, if you always do the same thing.

I do find it funny though, the most recent stats they have is sure that survivors only get, at most, 66 seconds on average for chase per match. So actually, if you're 3 hooking a survivor, each chase is going to last about 20 seconds. And the rest of the time is wasted, especially if you're kicking gens, or wandering blindly without information.

I don't personally care about the competitive side of things. I want the game to be fun, for all 5 players. I generally consider myself to be average, maybe above average skill. Although to read the forums I've found a way to still kill 60%+ of my survivors, win most of my games, have a fun game that I play how I want, and not "be forced to sweat". So apparently I've cracked the code of DbD, and all it seems to take is not having a meltdown when I occasionally do lose a match. Game sense, understanding how to macro, and using all the tools in the killer kit is apparently a big ask for a lot of people.