http://dbd.game/killswitch
Developer Update | August 2025
Comments
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Basekit unbreakable for the entirety of the match LMAO it doesn’t reset is INSANE
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Ryan if you can clarify on the 6hook state if a survivor dies by any means they get perma repair speed to gens remaining trial.
This only applies to if killer activly tries to make it a 3v1 before 6hook states right?
Not if survivor gets sacrificed by the team as a teamplay or if they self sabotage to "go next"
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More questions:
If a Survivor dies before 6 total hook states, all remaining Survivors gain a repair speed bonus for the rest of the Trial.
Does that mean you have to hook 5 before you can Kill or does it mean you have to hook 6 before you?
So if a Survivor dies on the 6th hook its fine? Or can they only begin dying as a result of hooking 7?
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No, this is absolutely the correct way to do it. All the times Killers have gotten buffs in the past (be it general basekit buffs, or buffs to individual Killers), all it did was make tunneling and slugging even stronger, and thus Killers relied even more on it. Now, with tunneling and slugging properly nerfed, the devs will be able to see which Killers are truly struggling and adjust them accordingly.
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My only question is:
What if a survivor is left to die on hook before the 6 hooks?
Do the other survivors still get the buff?
I feel like a lot more people will just leave randoms on hook just to get the buff….
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On point with that statement + they already said their power roster of blight nurse dark lord wont be getting these buff rewards which will help them pin point stuff.
Then they can decide if maybe baseline corrupt is added to furthest gens in the start that lasts like mini corrupt 90s and players get access to slowly repair still not fully blocked.
I am hoping we get to see a baseline mini-corrupt that lasts 90s and gets deactivated on the first hit instead of a down.
Ill take anything to slow down early game like that.
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Honestly, this has probably has to be the best dev update in a while. I feel it's only fair if a survivor get's tunneled right off the bat, and dies, the remaining 3 survivors should have the perm gen repair speed. As someone who plays both sides, I feel that this is a healthy balance. Before all of these QoL updates, both sides has been as bad as each other. But with the QoL updates bring brought out, it's slowly making things more healthier. The anti-slug is also a good addition as well because it helps those who get's slugged almost every match to get moried/bleed out. With the anti-slug measure, it'll decrease the chances of bleeding out. Aside from the anti-slugging/tunneling, Myer's changes are absolutely outstanding! It's a pick-me-up that Myers needed for the longest time. I'm more excited to being able to switch between stalking and attack. The changes for the other killers, they are good. I really hope in the PTB patch notes, Kaneki (The Ghoul) will have all his issues fixed before this chapter's launch. He really needs it. To sum it up, everything with this upcoming PTB, absolutely perfect! I hope that all of it comes to the live release!
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hey thats me!
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What a terrible update, but this is nothing new from BHVR. They continue to prove time and time again that they have no idea what they're doing, which is why, as someone that has spent plenty of money on their micro-transactions, quit this game weeks ago.
Slugging and tunneling as a strategy is used because of BHVR's own dogshit game balance; specifically with gen repair speeds. But rather than fixing the root cause of the problem, they'd rather hold survivors' hands until they drive all the killer players out of the game. And they seem intent on doing this until their game dies because hardly anyone will want to play killer after this update. So eventually they'll roll back some of this absolutely ridiculous garbage update, but then they'll do something else stupid, and then they'll do something else stupid again, and again, and again. What a joke of a dev team.
Anyone who defends this update is outing themselves as a garbage survivor main who needs maximum hand-holding from BHVR and lacks a fundamental understanding of this game.-1 -
It's not free when the killer gets a penalizes for hooking the same survivor twice, because they lose the reward for hooking a different survivor.
And survivor already weaponize anti-tunnel perks, and this gives them extra reasons to do so.
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The penalty is only if you kill that survivor, to be fair. First hook → second hook only denies you the bonus for unique hooks.
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Fine. I'll edit the post. It's still punishing the survivor by denying the bonus.
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A little, but they are giving up a hook state to do it.
I'd say we can't really say if that's a worthwhile trade until we've seen the numbers for what the bonuses are, personally.
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- People are already weaponizing anti-tunnel perks, so it's already worth it for some people. It's the #1 killer complaint about anti-tunneling, and BHVR didn't care at all about it.
- Rule 2 of anti-tunneling is worded awkwardly, and it looks like even if the killer is at 8 hooks a 0 kills, if the most recently hooked survivor gets killed, penalty 2 still happens.
- The game really should detect if a survivor is purposely trying to bodyblock the killer, and remove all anti-tunneling protections if they are doing so. Maybe have the detection paused while the survivor is elusive, but survivors should not be purposely trying to weaponize their anti-tunneling perks, when the killer is actively trying to chase someone else.
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Did you expect the killer to also get the non-tunnel reward when they DO tunnel?
Which would you rather: All the non-tunnel rewards, or a survivor just hooks himself for you?
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?
What do any of these things have to do with my point…?
My point is, specifically only denying the killer the fresh hook bonuses MIGHT be worth trading away a hook state, but we can't say for sure until we see how good those bonuses are. If they're only of decent strength, it's not really worth the hook stage you're trading away.
People weaponise some anti-tunnel tools because they DON'T have to trade away their hook state to do it, at least if it's done effectively.Though as an aside, they're literally stopping post-unhook bodyblocking from being possible by removing collision, so that one's fixed.
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my immediate thought is that survivor hook count needs to be visible to killers now - i understood why it wasn't before because it just gives incentive to tunnel but now you are punished if you fail to keep track and accidentally kill a survivor you didn't think was death hook, this is especially true with four stack swfs all wearing the same skin.
a killer is punished with no gen regression and bonus repair speed because there are four steves screaming at you and you can't tell which one was hooked and which one wasn't?1 -
I have more question from discussing this on reddit, blue-sky and discord. Please Ryan
- Does other Survivors letting one of them die on hook trigger the "6th hook" rule?
- Does distortion block the new "basekit BBQ" effect?
- Does the 6hook rule mean Survivors cant be sacrificed from the 6th hooking?
or does it mean it has to be sacrificed from the 7th hooking.
I will update this list later.
5 - Does other Survivors letting one of them die on hook trigger the "6th hook" rule?
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So essentially you have had enough of playing with teammates that can’t coordinate an endgame rescue and you die so we delete the whole escape thing and you just win because you completed 5 gens?
That’s it, yay on to the next game?
How about we have an easy mode where you just have to load in and run out of the already open exit gate?
No gens needed just a 30 second run and you get your GG for being an awesome player 👍
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No, I've had enough of dealing with camping killers who are impossible to save against regardless of how coordinated my team is
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You can get up once per match instead of every time you go down. Rework some of the perks to adjust to that
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Incorrect. People currently weaponize anti-tunnel tools because it adds more second chances to the chases. A survivor running at a killer with DS, doesn't actually think they have a guaranteed chase escape after the DS triggers. They know the killer is likely to eventually win the chase.
Likewise, there will be survivors that would absolutely weaponize being double hooked, because if the killer tries to actively avoid killing a survivor before 6 hook, then a double hooked survivor is fairly safe against being killed early. It would basically punish killers that "try to play nice".
And no one literally stopped post-unhook bodyblocking, because the collision removal is temporary. And survivors can purposely remove elusive early if they wanted to. A recently unhooked survivor could tap their medkit before their teammates 100% heal them, to allow the recently unhooked survivor to bodyblock early.
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I think they will change 6 hook states into 4 and make it so self sabotage or being avoided to get unhooked and dying under 4 hook states wont count as killers fault.
This will probably require him not entering within proximity of the hooked person and if the game realizes no one even came close and continued doing gens allowing them to die out will also count towards as a normal play
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I'm legitimately pumped to see how well some of these comments will age come next week.
It's gonna be a very fun time!
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I agree. Many of the vets are guilty of what I see many accuse the devs of, which is lost connection to the average trial.
Most of the recent changes are directly with that average player experience in mind, as well as the newbies. They put together a list of frustrations encountered by the vast majority of players and are going through that.
They've never really looked at that mythical high MMR area for balancing decisions, and are doing even less so now. The focus is on that central 85%-ish mass of casuals that play the game a few hours at a time a couple of days a week, what they're dealing with on average. Which is the most common way this game is played.
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you decided to destroy your game completely by adding even more punishments to the killers for simply trying to win. Bravo! You are doing a very good job of killing your own game! I sincerely wish that the developers would seriously play their own game as killers and try to do at least something against survivors with meta skills for 2-3-4-5-6-15 chances, now with 7 skills, although it seems like survivors should only have 4 skills. I applaud you standing, no one copes with the destruction of Dead by Daylight as well as the development team!
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Right, it adds more chances to the chase without them getting hooked.
Someone trying to weaponise DS will, well, fail, that's basically impossible these days unless the killer makes a mistake, but their goal is to avoid being hooked outright (or just to have fun, some people just like baiting stuns). Same with bodyblocking- they do it with Endurance because it allows them to not go down and not have to trade away a hook state.
That's also why bodyblocking has been fixed here. They can absolutely cancel their loss of collision… and their Endurance. They'd just go down here, it stops being to their benefit.All of this is besides the point, though. The point is, trying to weaponise being double-hooked is entirely dependant on how good the bonuses they're denying you getting are. A hook state is a valuable thing to trade, they need to be getting something substantial to make up for it and we don't know if that's actually going to be the case.
It could easily be that the bonuses are nice, and very helpful for the course of regular play, but they're not better than just getting a free hook state.
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Worst case scenario they will only weaponize the whole 6 hook state dying before that by any means but that loophole will be patched too.
They wont be able to bodyblock due to no collision
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You don't balance a game by ignoring the root cause of a symptom and completely crippling one side's ability to be on equal footing. Stupid logic from the both of you. Once again, defenders of this ridiculous patch continue to prove they have no idea what they're talking about.
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6 gens to repair when?
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That's the issue though, I have no problem with the slugging changes, but the tunneling is sometimes accidental. I have had many matches where squads will come in with the same skin and confuse the hell out of me with hook states. It also invites other survivors to leave one person on hook just to get the bonus speed to gens. You can still get out with 3 people. 2, yeah, Id understand the boost, but 3 is still manageable.
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Honestly killers should have a basekit pain res of 20% instead of pop.. that way it helps low mobility killers more
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I have a few questions / concerns.
Gradual crawl speed: can we also get a fix for player falling reading? It's like a 50/50 on if the survivor falls forward, or if they fall straight where you hit them. There is also desync between when the killer sees the survivor go down and when the survivor actually goes down, so the killer can lose where the survivor is as soon as they go down.
Hook status hidden: Can there be a bit more information on this? This seems like just straight up removing necessary information from killers. Are perks going to help buffer this? What about proxy camping against survivors built on saves, is there going to be a change to help killer knowing when hooks are active or not? Perks that work with unhooking, will there still be no notification, is that really reasonable? Can we get reduced timers on hook states to even out the loss of information?
Elusive and other buffs on unhook: Does elusive negate killer information perks? If a survivor doesn't do a conspicuous action, will these buffs really stay on without a timer? Will there at least be some form of information to let a killer know someone was unhooked, at all? Will there be perks to negate elusive?
Unique Hooks: Will there be consideration for reworking the number of hooks needed before sacrifice / kill for the repair speed? 6 seems very harsh considering how much infornation killers are losing with these changes. This also works against the buffs for killers if they do unique hooks to not hook the same survivor twice in a row by mistake, will the 2 consecutive be reconsidered? Or have lesser effect if consistent rather than no bonus at all?
Most importantly; will this aura reveal on hooking a survivor have an extensive timer, like 5 seconds+? Will there be a minimum distance it's effective / maxiumum? It really shouldn't given the major loss of information killer gets.
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I primarily play Survivor, but I'm also not one of the endless generic biased DBD kids that can't see the devs are clearly holding the hands of Survivors. We all know why. An influx of new people with FNAF, etc.....we all know it. I can literally show why almost every update is laughably (and objectively/fairly) godawful. Note how they included the option of turning them off in custom games because they know for comp, nobody with a functioning brain would want them smh. As an honest player, I want fairness, not a game that's ever increasingly becoming Survivor sided.
- If a Survivor is left in the Dying State for a total of 90 seconds during a match, they gain the ability to pick themselves up after fully recovering.
Yes, let's give Survivors another perk basically in basekit. Sure, they don't have enough! Good thing they don't have teammates to come pick them up at a risk of getting caught, you know...like a fair game.
- When a Survivor is hooked, their hook status is hidden from the Killer. When they’re unhooked, there is no notification and their hook status isn’t revealed immediately.
One of the more insane ideas. Not only do we want to help the Survivors even more, let's actually give the killers disinformation in the UI itself! The devs are out of their minds on this one.
- Added new effects that disincentivize tunneling:
- If a Survivor dies before 6 total hook states, all remaining Survivors gain a repair speed bonus for the rest of the Trial.
- If the Survivor that was last hooked is Sacrificed or Killed, generators cannot be regressed or blocked.
Possibly the most insane one. SIX total hook states. Why not three, so you know the killer was actually just hard tunneling someone? Six is beyond insane. Now if a killer hooks someone and they get to death state, die on hook, or abandon, the killer is punished (since the new abandon match update, as soon as 2/3 of survivors know they'll probably lose, they just abandon. again, we ALL know it... typical DBD tweens saying 'if I won't win, I QUIT.' tell me i'm wrong). So punished for what, getting a kill before wasting time and making sure they're going around getting at least 6 hooks before actually trying to knock a survivor off?
Again, the devs could've made it 3, or done something less as a killer punishment but nope. Let's hold those Survivor hands, shall we?
I could go on, but why bother. The devs are so detached it's almost laughable. Again, this coming from a Survivor main. Tru3ta1ent's latest hour long video where he literally dismantles every single update was a fantastic watch. I recommend looking for it. What a mess.
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Thanks for actually knowing what you're talking about unlike most survivor mains. Also I like how you brought up the fact that BHVR will allow this ######### to be turned off in custom matches. If they were so confident that this garbage is good for the game, they would not allow it to be turned off in customs. But they know it's garbage. They know it'll ruin the competitive scene. And yet they won't admit it and they're implementing it into the game anyway with a bandaid off-switch in customs so they don't make every comp player quit in a single update. I have never seen a worse game company in my entire life.
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You know what would be a nice incentive to spread hooks?
Bonus bloodpoints!
Oh, wait …3 -
You have teammates and your on the brink of outing the killer. Giving survivors these benefits during endgame is just unfair.
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I am so glad to see hownthe anti tunnel/slugging works out. I think it's absolutely great! As a hybrid player ( both sides I play) IT won't affect me due to I don't ever tunnel or slug. There really is no reason to. I play xeno queen who is op even with out perks/ and her extra abilities like tail and tunnels. But I am supper glad. Now 6 hook states I may be willing to say is to much? 4 at the very least. And drags the game out a little long, but willing to see how this works.
I am sad that we are losing myers. I loved being able to try to guess if scratch mirror or tombstone myers. I loved myers how he was. He was op af. Now I am not sure. I am willing to try it. But I don't play myers. Still sad to see the best and most fun killer in the game get changed.
For those " survivor hand holding" need to be forced to play survivor matches against tunneling and slugging killers. And then tell me after the 5th time getting sent straight back to lobby after only 10 secs in game its survivor sided.
Also ending anti tunneling/slugging mechanism/perks end game is fair imo.
Now. Here is my advice to those hating the new mechs. Ok fine. But then unbreakable ds and conviction need to get buffed with conditions making they can,be activated to fully counter a killer who is tunneling and slugging. As it sits? These perks litterallt do nothing to prevent these so called strats all at. They just make you use them up and then do it any way. Can't tell survivors to " get better" or " just use these perks" and then cry skill issue when it doesn't work and they had good looping the killer just has the upper hand because we are having to waste perk slots to counter toxic behaviors and can't run chase perks/gen perks. Because we have to be proactive.
See the BIGGEST advantage a killer has? Is being able.yo see survivors and their itema before the match. Which means they can tell if a swifd( if a ttv is in the name) and leave or use perks to counter them by going into their stream and seeing what perks they have.
Survivors don't have this option which brings more dcing/go next people. Cause it's not that they don't want to " learn How to counter" it's they just dknt find that killer fun, or played that killer 6 times in a row and want some variation. Or they have a phobia and can't do that specific killer.
I think trying this new update will be interesting. And can't wait to try it. And if it doesn't work we keep trying but as it sits right now I don't see anything wrong with this but that's because as a " lower peon mmr" everyday killer/survivor I don't use the strats at all and see no point in it. If some one out plays me they out play me.
That being said. I'm excited to see how this works
Still sad they messed up Mike but willing to try it first before final judgment
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riiight go after someone else huh waht happens when unhooked survivor starts bugging you and body blocking you from going after another survivor what then hmmm
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You're on the brink of outing the killer because you've earned it, and even if you have good teammates it's impossible to save vs bubba and other killers without at least one person dying
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I play both sides. I can 100% get kills with out tunneling or slugging. This update stops survivors being sent right back to lobby after only 20 secs of game play.
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I guess I'll wait to see what people discover in PTB, but my initial feeling is still that it would be much simpler and less convoluted to switch to cages instead of hooks. It's much easier to get a safe rescue from a cage. It's harder to camp a cage. It's harder to tunnel from a cage. Cages eliminate the thing where people troll a dead zone with no hooks. Cages eliminate a bunch of the annoying stuff about carrying.
You could still even give BBQ when people send to a cage, and all of the extra endurance stuff when released from a cage. You could also still let people crawl while they recover — I think that's fine.
But I feel like the system described in the update creates new incentives to grief your teammates by letting them die early and new incentives to troll an area of the map with sabo plays and stuff. And I think it makes it too complicated for killers to figure out what they can and can't do because it takes options that are available to them and would help them meet their objective and artificially makes them detrimental.
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I’m all for this, I still need to test it of course on the PTB as I mentioned earlier, but my feedback would be this. If these changes go through which is fine, they need to at least show us killers hook states so we can be more aware of who’s got what.
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A good way to stop these massive gut reactions?
Give us the damn numbers of these effects, infact stop it with the whole vauge language BS in any patch not GIVE THE HARD NUMBERS5 -
They are silent mode right now which means collecting our opinions and giving it to the devs…
Going to assume that Ryan will post another post sooner or later prior ptb comes giving more explanation.
The truth is there are only few change points that need some vague explanation
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im a survivor main who suffers slugging and tunneling quite a lot, but this is NOT how you deal with it what the hell?
This genuinley just makes it harder to play killer and makes it so stupidly easy for survivors theres no fun in the challenge, theres no point to the game at this point.
Just add point reductions for tunneling and bonuses for distributing hooks more evenly??
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Disagree.
It is blatantly obvious what killers are weak. And they even have acknowledged in the post which killers they consider to be S-tier and even gave them a special treatment.
It is undeniable that the whole lot of the stealth killers are outdated. Only Wraith can keep up a bit better but that's it.
Dredge has clear RNG issues.
Dracula still has not found a more definitive spot regarding numbers.
Skull Merchant. Nothing else to say.
Twins still have a LOT of issues.
Trapper is outdated.
Hag overrelies on camping.
And more weakening issues still exist with the roster. Issues many have pointed out are there, and don't seem to be a priority anymore. Thus, those killers will be severely hindered if this update comes out (except SM and Twins, which already are). Thus, based on this reasoning, it's better to solve these issues before implementing such a game changing update that threatens the entire balancing of the game in a substantial way.
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It’s getting funny but not funny for players who actually strive to get better.
I mean, adding an option to remove all this bs in private matches proves they realize that in the hands of good players, no killer has any possibility. It’s just comical how they refuse to play their own game.
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These changes would completely kill the competitive scene, just when they have started to sponsor it. Why offer the option to disable these changes specifically?I t's a clear sign that they are fully aware of the imbalance it will create. We have to deal with the rulebook while the pro players play as dirty as the can? How hypocritical of them.
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Most people in SoloQ don't even try to pallet save/locker save. It takes too much coordination for the rando to pull off. I've heard some people asking for the whole recovery thing to be halted if there are nearby survivors like it is with self-unhook attempts. Alternatively, you could also slow recovery rate near lockers and pallets to allow more time in case of those 4man SWF situations. I'm not too sure how I feel about either option since:
1 - a slugged survivor near a person on hook counts towards the halting self-unhook bar thing (that would need to be fixed if you are going this route). Also I could see a 3man slug situation where not gaining the recovery at all would be less than ideal (as I've been that SoloQ teammate forced to pick up 3 slugs)
2 - Slow/No recovery around pallets and lockers might be okay since you would still be able to crawl from those areas and then start recovering but I'm not sure how something like this would actually work out in game. This would only really set you back to square 1 because it doesn't actually address that SWFs can utilize slugging/pickups in specific ways to waste your time.
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