http://dbd.game/killswitch
Second Chance Perks (Almost) Don't Exist
Provocative title aside, I do have a legitimate point I want to make her about the discourse surrounding the game, and the idea of "second chance perks" that keeps getting brought up consistently.
I've always been kind of confused by this term, because the perks people cite as supposed "second chance perks" never seem to match the way they're talked about. People bring up this kind of perk as ones that bail survivors out of mistakes and extend chases for them, to give them a second shot after being outplayed by the killer… but then the perks cited are Decisive Strike, Off The Record, Unbreakable, Shoulder The Burden, and perks in that vein.
To be blunt, these perks don't work the way they're being invoked. They don't undo survivor mistakes, they don't allow the survivor to extend chases after being outplayed by the killer. They are designed to do one thing: Add a layer of protection if the killer chooses to make a specific choice.
Decisive Strike and Off The Record are designed (in chase at least, OTR does extra things) to only work if the killer chases you off hook. Unbreakable is designed to only work if the killer leaves you on the ground. Shoulder The Burden only works if the killer tries to chase your teammate off hook. Those aren't survivor mistakes, and there's much more context than just the killer outplaying the survivor.
Some of these perks have some application outside of that primary use, like OTR bodyblocking and StB having very very highly specific scenarios where it gives a little value outside of tunnelling, but none of those other uses count as undoing survivor mistakes either. It's not a mistake to bodyblock if you have Endurance, it's not a mistake to just… be hooked for the first time, especially if it happens later in the match.
If I were to give this kind of perk a unified name, I'd probably pick "Insurance perks", as they're insurance against specific actions being taken. Just swapping one name for another wouldn't address the core issue, though, which is that these perks are being invoked rhetorically as free-value perks, or "undo a mistake" perks, which they are not.
I said "almost" in the title because, to be fair, I do think there is exactly one second chance perk in the game— Dead Hard could easily be argued to fit that definition. I don't think that really changes the argument I'm making at all, but I figured I'd mention it.
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The amount of second chances and comebacks survivors have is beyond annoying. Killers have none what survivors have. Second chance basekits and perks. Syringes and styptics. It's unbelievable that they'll give survivors even more in Phase 2 'QoL' initiative. It's almost feels like BHVR bought the game balance team from Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game.
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Only actual second chance is the hatch and gate power up after it is closed, tbh
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The definition of "second chance" has been beaten into meaninglessness at this point. There are absolutely people who use this phrase to describe a survivor perk or item that "does anything". And, even worse, it often gets applied to things that literally do nothing (AFC, for example).
My favorite are things like DS, OTR, and unbreakable. Where if you bring them, they're "second chance perks", but if you don't bring them, it's "your fault for not bringing the tools for tunneling and slugging" apparently. That's not a second chance, that's any chance at all.
The same thing happened with BT before it was base kit: you didn't have a chance, you just got unhooked (by someone else, who didn't bring the perk) and instantly downed by the killer. There's no chance there, no agency at all. But somehow people want to claim that this is a "second chance".
This isn't 2017 DbD with infinites, dead hard for distance, and resources survivors can loop consistently. This is 2025 with dead zones everywhere, and pallets held up by toothpicks.
Manny of the comeback mechanics are core to the game loop and not even perks: camping, tunneling, slugging can all turn around a losing game... Or can define the game if used as a "strategy" from the lobby. Pallets are consumed, gens completed, makes the playable map area smaller for the killer. Hooks don't even break anymore, so you literally can't screw up the killer macro game anymore.
The only real second chance survivors get relies on the killer making mistakes (probably several mistakes). There are so few actual second chances for survivors, that you will likely lose the game if the team isn't glued to generators in the first minute or two.
A lost game is pretty obvious early on, and a huge reason people decide to go next is because there's no feasible way to recover if people don't gen rush right away. You can't rely on the killer fumbling the game anymore.
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The definition of "second chance" has been beaten into meaninglessness at this point. There are absolutely people who use this phrase to describe a survivor perk or item that "does anything". And, even worse, it often gets applied to things that literally do nothing (AFC, for example).
^ this. And IMO the definition of a "second chance perk" was dead when Killer Mains started to call DH a second Chance Perk (old DH). With DH being bugged for years, using it for distance was the only way to use it and Killer Mains started to say that DH is used to correct a mistake done by the Survivor (second chance), while the Survivor was actually greeding the Loop because DH gave the ability to do so.
So instead of thinking of it as a smart and calculated thing to do, Killers decided that it was a mistake and therefore a second chance-Perk. Absolutely wild.
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being a second chance and using it with calculation doesn't cancel each other at all, a thing can be second chance and you can absolutely play with those in mind
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A second chance perk is a perk that prevents a survivor from going down. Prevents a survivor from being hooked. Or corrects a survivors mistake.
DS is a second chance perk that can fulfill 2 criteria. Finess is a 2nd chance perk that can fulfill the last one. Dead Hard fulfills the first and the last. Unbreakable is a 2nd chance perk that fulfills the second and so on.
If I remember right. Survivors have around 30+ second chance perks and killer have 3-4.
Deadlock is a 2nd chance perk for gens imo. NOED and No Way Out are True second chance perks.
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Insurance perks is probably a more apt name.
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finesse is not a second chance perk come on man
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By that definition, couldn't you claim pretty much any perk is a second chance perk?
Broadly speaking, you can't really avoid that every single healing and stealth perk is also unavoidably a second chance perk by this definition, and at that point it just seems like an unhelpful definition. It doesn't have any coherent point, you might as well just refer to "useful perks" and you'd be encompassing basically the same group of tools.
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Well, the premier second chance perk always have been DH and it worked exactly like you described it in your decision, ie giving a survivor a 2nd chance when they should have gone down and extending the chase way over the aloted timeframe. Back in the days, DH had rising to a 70% pick rate in the higher reaches of the game and it wasn't unheared off to go against 4 DH in one trial, 3 being the norm and just two a happy occurence to write home about.
I think back during its haydays killer numbers were at a pretty low and survivors talked a lot about 15-20min queue times in the evening. Going against DH in such regularity was just sould crushing, as there was nothing you could do as a killer and you often could see the way the chase would map out in your minds eye in perfect, excruciating detail. DS was also part of this mix and often paired with DH and essentially made it impossible for the killer to get any foothold in a match against good survivors, trapping them between a rock and a hard place. While its true that DS back then as of today only worked if the killer tunneled, tunneling was often the killers only lifeline to salvage a game that was rigged and staged against them from the very start.
Since then, the game has changed a lot, and people lable a lot of things in-game with fancy sounding lables, not really grasping were they come from and what they originally meant to describe - like I got even accused of camping and tunneling in 12 hook games were no one slipped into 2nd hook stage. Its especially those salty people that throw around buzz words that they don't understand.
After 6.1 we saw survivors experiementing with all the different exhaustion perks and I think the name kinda stuck with giving them the sorta alternative labeling of second chance perks, but besides the very rare case of a properly 99% SB, non of them are really 2nd chance perks that can rob you of your down after a long chase, a couple of frames before you get the down in any way similar to how DH did so in the past. Nearly all exhaustion perks are front loaded and after they play out their effect the killer can still chose to abandon the chase or keep going.
There was this old saying back in the days "if you outplay a survivor, but they got away with DH, did you really outplay them? Git gud, Killer. LMAO" and this really drives down the aggrevating nature of old and 2.0 DH
Other perks like Reassurance, Cameradry or OTR work a little bit different, but can help survivors to "slip out of death clutches" and getting a second chance at it, so they might be called 2nd chance perks. Shoulder the Burden is a bit differnt yet again, but I can still see why its labeled a second chance perk: a survivor who should have be on deathhook and die gets a 2nd chance to get rescued and its one of this perks that can leave a sour taste in a killers mouth if it works smoothly - which it seldom does. Bonus points for being exclusively broud by 3-4man SWFs who are already notoriously hard to beat and often thrive by harrassing killers into making bad decisions.
Adrenalin is also a true 2nd chance perk, but this one is a bit tougher to pull off. Good SWFs can do so by communicating and delaying the completion of the last gen till the exact right moment, but if it works, it snatches defeat out of the killers jaws and leave them with nothing but ash. Dramaturgy got a slight uptick in the last couple of month for the same reason, albeit less pronounced and always with the risk of getting exposed right in fron of the killer.
Syringes might be one of the only true 2nd chance items in the game: burn a medkit, but if you survive, you get the Adrenalin effect basically on command and in your pocket. Getting syringed can feel incredible frustrating and "unearned", but its still exponentially better then old DH.
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Absolutely it is. I’ve caught survivors who got absolutely blasted by a mind game and I had them dead to rights but finess stopped them from being hit even though they made an insane mistake.
Definitely a second chance perk. It also completely guts most ranged killers at windows when it’s off cooldown.
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Old DS, DH for distance, old MoM, UB, NOED.
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Nope you definitely can’t make that claim. Streetwise is 100% not a second chance perk. Object, Built to Last, Red Herring and so on. None of those can remotely be considered second chance perks.
If you’re in a chase Red Herring won’t save you. Built to Last won’t prevent you from going down, Object won’t prevent you from being hooked.
There is a very clear and obvious line on what is a 2nd chance perks and what’s not. It’s very simple really:
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lol
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I'm hardcore toolbox repairer and streetwise and built to last is absolutely a second chance perks, because my chance is solely based on existence of toolbox
Without toolbox, we are nothing
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I've been playing long enough to remember when Borrowed Time was needed to give the survivor protection against being immediately re-downed, and people called it a "second chance" perk, too.
So I've always rolled my eyes at that term. I was a fresh new player in those days and even I, as I still do, wonder what "first chance" the survivor had upon being unhooked while the killer was camping and ready to slap them right back down if they got unhooked.
The implication seems to be that never getting hooked is the solution, which isn't realistic. Generally speaking, if the killer really wants to, they will down you even if they have to throw the game to do it.
Edit: And now I'm seeing people call NOED and No Way Out "second chance" perks for killers… which I disagree with just about as vehemently.
Those are end game perks. And in No Way Out's case in particular, you need to earn it. Meanwhile for NOED, you give up a portion of power you could use all game long in exchange for a burst of power during the final moments of the match.
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Sure, there's some perks that don't fit this mold, but again: Every healing perk and every stealth perk, as well as every chase perk, would fit this definition. It's broad enough to cover several entire archetypes of perks, which leads me to think it's probably not very constructive or useful.
Object would count, since it's a chase aura perk, as an aside.
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Chase perks won't do much for someone who doesn't play well but some killers act like everyone is invincible when they use them. They can observe their own games and see this is the case but they won't, instead tribalism reigns supreme.
What I find funny is how after all the map and perk nerfs over the years they still want more. It's never enough and won't be and it's evident when you watch some streamers these guys look up to. They can win every match in one day and if they struggle just a tiny bit they will call survs op.
This is why we as humans suck because you can see this everywhere even outside gaming. Every group wants to eat the other and language is just a tool for manipulation, but I don't want to derail further.
Post edited by Shaped on12 -
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Just thought your last comment was funny that's all appointment/apartment name.
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it's the right word :(
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Apt means suitable or appropriate.
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Oooo my bad xd sorry now I know, see never too old to learn new things, appreciate you both.
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Day 384 asking for a buff for FIRE UP
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Object 100% doesn’t count. It gets you in trouble more often than helps. Doesn’t work in stealth killers or perks at all.
Healing perks can be but aren’t always. We’ll make it is not. Desperate measures is not. Self Care Is since it allows you to heal yourself without a team mate or item.
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I'm just sort of stuck on what the purpose of the term is, if that's the definition.
If it covers for tools that range from worthless to top tier, it covers tools you'd use in a wide variety of different ways, and the tools it covers make up a noticeable majority… I don't see how you could use the term to make an informed criticism or complaint about the game, and I don't see what other reason there'd be to define a term like this, functionally speaking.
What's the point of even talking about "second chance perks" if the term is this broad and nebulous?
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"They are designed to do one thing: Add a layer of protection if the killer chooses to make a
specificchoice."
Yes or otherwise known as a second chance. Just because the killer doesn't do said option doesn't not make it a second chance perk. Oh you guys played bad by grouping up against a killer that can get fast downs? Well here's another shot with unbreakable! Sure you still might not win after the pressure your team has on them but you still got that second chance to bring it back.I'm just glad they're making second chance perks more conditional.
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Most killers hate most second chance perks. But I don’t think any killer hates self care even though it’s very clearly a second chance perk.
They complain about the blatant ones. DH is personally very annoying to me to this day. I call it Crutch Hard because it literally can not be countered by me as a Huntress main. You can’t fake throw a hatchet. Robbing me of a down and a hook and huge pressure. It feels very cheap and unearned. It’s abysmally easy to press E when a hatchet is heading your way.
DS is absurd as well sometimes. I’ll down a completely separate survivor very quickly and rotate back to the unhooked survivor because I stumbled into them and I get punished for being good at chases and get punished for their mistake of running into me. (It should deactivate if I hook someone else imo)
But Mettle of Man is very clearly a second chance perk that I would never complain about because it is hard to get. And comes with a huge Aura reading downside.
It’s just a general thing to complain about. Not all second chance perks are annoying. Some are very much so.
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The terminology made more sense before conspicuous actions became a thing. When you could be caught out by a stealth Bubba/Billy in the middle of nowhere while doing a gen but because you were hooked 59 seconds ago you get to extend the chase for the low low price of one skill check & a perk slot.
Nowadays I agree with the insurance terminology.
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i never understood this whole argument about survivors having so many "second chance" perks in the first place because you mean to tell me that the role that's literally called SURVIVOR has perks and mechanics that are meant to help them (wait for it) SURVIVE!? Le gasp
but also, the real main reason why Survivors have so many "second chance" perks and not Killers is quite simple.
Because unlike survivors, killers can't:
- Die
- Get tunneled out of the match in 3 minutes or less while getting minimal bloodpoints and a miserable experience
- Facecamped to death by Bubba
- Get slugged and left to bleed out on the ground for 4 minutes
As killer you don't have to worry about any of this happening to you when loading into a match as you control the flow/direction of things. And even if you have a rough match as killer, in my experience you still walk away with usually more bloodpoints than at least 2-3 of the survivors
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I don't think there are any perks in the game that I'd call "second chance perks". Most of what people call second chance perks are just things that guard against actions that shouldn't be done most of the time anyway. Anti-tunnel perks can kind of be used to extend chases, but are mainly there to prevent tunneling for players who feel they need to spend a perk slot on that. If tunneling doesn't happen, then someone with OTR or DS needs to go try to use the perk, which could end up getting them another hook. Maybe UB could be called a second chance perk.
Something similar could be said for gen regression perks. I run Pain Res a lot, but people could tell me that it's just a second chance because I wasn't fast enough in chase. I made mistakes and now I'm getting free gen slowdown or even regression to make up for my failure in chase. But I think most people don't want to call slowdown perks "second chance perks".
Self-care is just a perk that lets a survivor heal; if we call that a second chance perk, then we should also say people have second chance medkits and second chance teammates. You're right that Dead Hard has some added effectiveness against hatchets throws, but certain perks are better against some killers than others. Like Hardened; almost never useful, but hilarious against a Doctor. Overall, I tend to agree with @jesterkind about the terminology here. Most of what some people call second chance perks are really more aptly referred to as insurance perks.
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Is healing a second-chance action then? Because it would seem to be, by your definition.
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Broadly agree and have always found the term 'second chance' strange.
The game isn't designed to be played perkless/item less/addon less. Part of the game is the strategy of what things you take to buff your survivor / killer. Perks that can extend the chase are a big part of that and have nothing to do with whether the survivor made a mistake or not.
I call it Crutch Hard because it literally can not be countered by me as a Huntress main. You can’t fake throw a hatchet. Robbing me of a down and a hook and huge pressure.Aren't hatchets just 'second chance' attacks for the killer? Stop 'robbing' me of my loop by just downing me with a hatchet.
No one is being robbed. Both sides have powers / perks / items that they use to play the game.
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You're bringing up all these extreme, emotional scenarios to justify survivors having broken stuff. The fact you're bringing up blood points screams casual. If not that, then the suggestion that killer controls match flow. Sure, the killer trying to tunnel someone out puts pressure on the team, assuming they want to get all 4 out, but what's the response to that? Gen rushing. They were gonna gen rush the killer regardless! What is a killer to do against a team that can do all gens in, let's be generous and say, 7 minutes? The killer's chases are like 30 seconds minimum, not even counting the downtime of carrying to hook, finding the next survivor, and/or kicking the gens. He's gonna have like 5 hooks by the time all the gens are done, and that's with him playing the best he possibly can.
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Yeah, that's the cheapest thing. I beat you. Oh, wait. You have a chance at a random free escape now. I closed it. Now I've got you for sure, right? Oh, what? Doing that automatically powers the exit gates, even though you didn't even do 2 gens as a team? Wow, so fair.
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No. I said already healing is very clearly not. Unless it’s self care. Because self care allows you to heal for “free” with no teammate and no medkit. Albeit a harder second chance perk to use. If you did not have self care you would be caught because of your grunts of pain. Or you would be downed instantly because you were injured.
So in a scenario where you should be injured and easy to catch. You get to heal yourself for “free” although it takes like 40 seconds. Definitely a second chance perk.
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Clearly not even remotely the same. A killer power in which you injure a survivor can never be considered a second chance anything.
Pigs RBT COULD be a second chance at killing survivors in the endgame if there trap is active.
A Hatchet being a second chance attack is just moronic, plain and simple.
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A Hatchet being a second chance attack is just moronic, plain and simple.Kind of missing the point. I'm saying the way you're talking about second chance means that hatchets are second chance. If even self-care is a second chance because it allows survivors to do something they normally couldn't do, then hatchets must also be second chance because they give killers a second chance at getting a down.
Or how about this - when Huntress got buffed from 5 to 7 hatchets, did that mean she got both a 2nd and 3rd chance? Or in fact is every hatchet after the 2nd a '2nd chance' hatchet, so she has a 2nd through 5th chance?
Your definition is so broad that it seems like everything can fall under it, but you just want to apply it to the survivor side.
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The issue with hatch is that you can't remove it at this point, not unless you want the DC epidemic to go overboard.
Because, if say, Hatch got removed altogether, survivors would just give up once there are two or one left. Every game.
Maybe they could make it so that closing Hatch will not cause the Exit Gates to get powered, and maybe improve chest odds (they are mostly a decoration anyway) so you could possibly get a key.
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THIS! Truer words have never been spoken and it is something every killer main seems to argue against.
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Not even close. I specified Deadlock and NOED as killer second chance perks so nice try.
The system I came up with is not broad at all even remotely. 2nd chances are second chances. A killers power has nothing to do with 2nd chances unless it can keep a survivor from leaving the game.
Pigs RBT. Pinhead Possessive Chain Gate Blocker and so on. A power that allows you to down has nothing to do with second chances. It’s common sense.
I’m not sure what’s so hard to understand honestly. 2nd chance explains itself.
- Deadlock 100% a second chance perk
- NOED 100% a second chance perk
- Dead Hard 100% a second chance perk
- DS 100% a second chance perk
- Built to last ZERO percent second chance perk
- STBFL ZERO percent 2nd chance perk
Do I really need to go through every single perk to teach people what a second chance perk is? It seems self explanatory to me.
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It seems self explanatory to me.Literally the point of the thread is about how calling things second chance doesn't make sense. I agree with the OP on that and you're using a broader definition of the term than anyone else I've seen, so clarifying the definition would be helpful.
Looking at your list and other ones that you mention throughout the thread are second chance and ones that aren't seems like you're just picking things at random.
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"You're bringing up all these extreme, emotional scenarios.scnario.."
Funny, because this uis exactly what killer mains do all the time. Heck, you go on to do it in this very same reply.
But to address your point on tunneling and Gen rushing. Are you really gonna try to rewrite history by pretending that Patch 6.1 wasn't a thing? Because let me give you a brief reminder of what happened:
Killers were given max slowdown meta (CoB, Eruption, Overcharge, Surge, Pain Res, Deadlock, even Ruin and Pop, which were technically nerfed, were still very viable) while survivors had pretty much all available tools that helped against tunneling basically removed (Strong perks like Dead Hard and Iron Will were nerfed/gutted, DS was a complete joke with it's 2-second stun, the extra endurance hit from OtR did absolutely F all especially against killers like Nurse and Blight, and the basekit BT was a very pathetic 5 seconds) and not to mention the additional 10 seconds added to every generator
So with all these slowdowns + extra 50 seconds on gens + shorter chases + lack of anti-tunnel for survivors, what did killers go and do? Oh yeah, that's right, I seem to recall that they only camped and tunneled even HARDER and MORE OFTEN than ever before. Despite having the clear advantage in most matches during this time. Why? Because they simply could. There was no punishment for it and instead Killers were usually only rewarded for it.
So let's stop pretending like Killers tunnel survivors out at 5 gens because they feel like they need to because of survivors forcing their hand with gen speeds. Killers who hard tunnel will always do it simply because they can/feel like it. Which is exactly why "second chance" perks and mechanics need to stay as an option for Survivors until at least BHVR actually does something to address tunneling and find a way to punish killers who do it while simultaneously rewarding/incentivizing those who choose not to.
EDIT: Also, you say that me mentioning things such as hard tunneling is just me bringing up extreme scenarios that are rare, yet in the very same breath you go out of your way to defend tunneling as some necessary evil that killers are forced to do because something something gen rush and pressure. Make it make sense.
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So We'll Make It, Second Wind, etc etc are all second chance perks, as are med-kits.
They all allow Survivors to do something they wouldn't normally be able to do/do it far faster than normal.
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Are you postulating that killers don't have broken stuff?
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I agree with @jesterkind on this… the term second chance is used in a way that it makes it so generic and broad that too many Perks fall into it
Exhaustion Perks: are used to give the Survivor a speed up (SB just works by… sprinting, Lithe works by vaulting, BL works by falling from a height, Smash Hit works by stunning the Killer with a Pallet)
Gen Perks: are used to either A. find Gen(s) or B. speed up repairs (PTS works by having 2 or more Survivors on the same Gen, Daja Vu works by existing… since it's both an aura reading and repair speed up Perk)
Healing Perks are used to either A. speed up heals or B. allow one to heal by themselves (BK speeds up healing, Self-Care allows one to heal by themselves, B: COH allows Survivors within a set range to speed up healing)
Yes there are ways to say that most of the Survivor Perks are "second chance" Perks but that just leads to a question What are first chance perks???
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