I have played against HM 95% and played as HM 5%.

I personally do not think resisting the dog’s bite by yourself should take as long as it does. It is a guaranteed hit in the current state. I think it should not be a guaranteed hit. There should be skill expression.

I really like her. Despite all her initial problems with bugs, she's quickly become one of my favorite killers both to play and play against. I do wish they could improve the search aiming mechanic a bit, it's extremely janky right now and often difficult to lock on to generators. But her chase power is fun and skill shots with the dog can be very satisfying. She also has very good build diversity, there are a lot of perks and builds that are good on her.

As for her own perks, Jagged Compass is good with Gift of Pain/Floods as it makes them trigger on every unhook. All-Shaking Thunder is fun but situational. No Quarter is absolutely terrible though.

I like her a lot. The gameplay feels nice to me (when it works lol), her design and lore are interesting to me.

Her perks are situational, yes. Jagged Compass is great but the rest kinda sucks.

Her Ultimate Houndmaster cosmetic is criminally overpriced.

Pretty overrated in terms of strength, even in Solo Q it ain't difficult most of the time to get at least a draw (2 escapes) against her. Also still embarrassingly buggy to this day so not enjoyable to play as for me.

there’s a counter to the dog vault, running in a straight line isn’t it, they will get you every time doing that.

you can dodge the dog but the answer isn’t running forward after the vault because once the dog vaults it’s only going to go straight at a high speed. You gotta dodge it. You’re trying to beat the dog at the dogs strength. I can like show you in kyf or something.

Edited to say: you can’t do what I’m talking about though without a window or a strong pallet next to a window. Lockers also work if you’re right beside them. I mean like right beside.

agreed at times it does feel cheap and like there’s no counterplay too it. Just gotta be in the right spot at the right time or pray hitting a 90 degreee works.

Genuinely regret not trying her immediately after the bug fixes. I had been under the impression by the community she was awful- which made me upset since it was the only example of a "follower" power in DBD that looked like what I wanted to see. Thankfully they made it to where you get "temporary" auric cells during the PTB to buy and try out killers. I was able to try her after Kaneki, and realized she WAS what I was looking for. She is to knight what Xeno was to dredge IMO. You have slightly less control with the power, but it's still LEAPS AND BOUNDS better in the aspects I wanted the power for. Xeno can get across the map and be a constant presence, Dredge could go anywhere that had a locker- but other than that the power was just worse. Knight can summon different guards, but they don't have the threat and utility as easily available compared to the doggo. Can I go faster as knight following the guards? Sure, but HoundMaster is faster still AND I can stop survivors from booking it EVERY SINGLE TIME I get close with my buddy once they recover from taking me across the map.

As for the perks? The scourge hook one is my most preferred- It's ALSO the exact perk I'd been hoping would be added for years until she came out. The fall to lunge perk is situational in a good way- it's more potent than the more generally useful perk to make up for the situational nature. Seriously- I would only prefer COUP DE GRASP if there were literally NO drop offs nearby. Otherwise I could make a minor detour to get a guaranteed hit. Her anti-heal is the only one I am unsure of, since I haven't used it in an anti heal skill check build. However, making survivors broken mid heal is POWERFUL- even if they don't have hemorrhage.

Overall? My favorite chapter, even the survivor was neat in concept and execution when I normally don't even look twice at the survivor side of content updates.

I agree, I dont see her often. I think its because of some of her bugs. Bhvr has a list of stuff their working on and I am sure she is included. I want more outfits for her!!! lol

I don’t play her because of how janky and buggy she still feels. On the survivor end tho when playing against her she feels either like a cake walk and free 4 out or stupidly overtuned. The counterplay to wait under a pallet and let the dog bite you so you can stun the dog and potentially HM too seems boring and not much skill expression. The vault speed feels very irritating on survivor end since you can be 75-90% done with the vault animation and you’ll still get hit or grabbed on the other side of the pallet. She’s just another animation lock killers like huntress, slinger, PH where you cannot give them Los of you doing an animation because you’ll get hit 95% of the time. Overall she’s a bit meh, I would suggest doing a massive bugfix for her and then tone down the dog’s vault speed to maybe 0.65-0.7 seconds instead of the current 0.45 seconds and the 0.9 on release.

That's how it should be. The skill expression is the dog has a very narrow hit box when being sent out just like any other projectile. After Snug bites you your options are very limited. Killers don't need unnecessary counter play.

She grew on me pretty quick. Liked it better when she was mega busted and could send the dog flying thru 2 story windows via ground level. Welcome addition in my eyes unlike some killers in recent years… I hope that we get more skins like ultimate houndmaster that alter snug's breed (or his look in general) I just hope they are truly worth the price.