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Taking the DS early is not counterplay
I don't understand how people can say "Just take the DS". We would not make such a fuss about a perk if its consequences were not so heavy. Do you even realize how long a 5-second stun is in this game? It feels like 2 years! The survivor gets a huge lead on you, definitely makes it to a loop, and their teammates can plow through 1-2 additional gens at the least because you just gave up any pressure that you had.
I don't care if you say you've 4k'd after taking 4 DSs, because that simply means you're went against absolute bot survivors and would have won anyway.
Taking a DS earlier in the match does not lessen the pressure later either, because like I said, you give up all of your pressure when you get hit by DS. In many cases, that is what CAUSES you to do worse later because now you're at 1 gen and nobody is dead. You could tunnel that 1 person of course, but tunneling leads to ez gen rush. Or you can let that person go, basically getting stunned for nothing. You get trumped by DS no matter what you do!
Why do people say to take it early anyway? "Because you don't want to deal with it later in the game." If I'm forced to camp someone as the exits are powered, DS is not necessary for the hooked person to get out, even though it helps as an insurance perk. All they need is for their rescuers to have Borrowed and/or body block for them. They get out no matter what in that scenario, so you "got the DS out of the way" in the beginning for nothing. Another lose-lose scenario for killer!
You can also slug the person, but if they make to a locker they're invincible. And unless you're watching their body constantly for 1 minute, they will just get picked up and get away. If you do watch their body for a minute, gen rush happens. Another lose-lose, who could have guessed?
This "counterplay" is as ridiculous as the "solution" to Tombstone Meyers as a survivor. With DS, just take the stun and hope for the best. With Tombstone, you jump into a locker to avoid getting insta-moried. So the counterplay is literally to get insta-downed. Both of these examples are laughable in that you avoid punishment by a perk or add-on by punishing yourself in an arguably less severe way. And the worst part about them is you don't even know for sure if the other player has them until they use it on you! You could be playing around something that they don't even have, and that's why these things are so polarizing to have in the game. When you, by default, play around something because you must assume everyone is running it, doesn't that show how broken the perk is?
I think I've made my point. Taking the DS is not adapting or switching up your strategy. It's glorified Russian Roulette, and when you play it you lose the game most of the time, both metaphorically and literally.
Comments
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I don’t think people suggest it as a counterplay. Usually it’s just a more optimal way to avoid getting stunned later during the match. It’s a personal choice. You can say someone with BT might interfere with these chances but if you know how to play the game you will force a trade that could also potentially snowball.
EGC is not about giving you free hooks nor it is about using “camping” as a strategy. You are more than likely getting the one hook.
Slugging is the proper way of countering it. You do realize that the timer doesn’t start when they hop inside a locker right? I am not sure why you would think that unless you don’t play survivor. And if you aren’t camping and tunneling on purpose (which is how the game is meant to be played) then they won’t have 60 seconds, and more than likely if they hop into a locker they are letting you know that they have a lingering few seconds or head on is in play. Choose your next move.
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You’re not meant to keep tunnelling whoever just stunned you, you’re meant to simply get rid of DS, and then resume pressuring the other survivors.
The goal is to make sure every survivor is very vulnerable by late game because none of them have their DS anymore.
Never in any match where I have been intentionally going after someone I see that was recently unhooked to eat their DS early game or mid game have I ever regretted it. Not once.
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Taking a DS early is only good if you can afford it which usually mean when the killer is in a good position in the match. Good pressure on the survivors and the survivors not doing anything so you're confident to take a stab in the back as investment for later game when you have to be serious ergo no more playing around let's take someone out permanently off the match. The advice is awful though if as I implied the survivors are actually good and obviously you shouldn't do this with that said I don't think I ever seen anyone suggest "Eat a ds" as a counter, Usually I would see people say just slug.
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I’d like to add that it’s more than simply avoiding a DS stun late game where it has more power. It’s also about altering the survivor behaviour. They simply won’t make the exact same kind of aggressive, obnoxious plays that they usually would while they still have DS.
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The best way imo to deal with DS outside of obviously not excisivelly focusing on one survivor is to either slug and force them to either waste time of a teammate or use up their unbreakabill or take it if they jump in a locker.
You do NOT chase the survivor that just DSed you ofcourse, you're just asking to get genrushed that way. It wouldn't be an anti tunneling perk if you could do that
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There are only a few killers that can deal with eating a DS and still chase the survivor that used it. Like other people have said, you're better off eating it early and leaving them, unless you find yourself in a situation where its best to slug while keeping pressure on other survivors.
I usually eat a DS when there's only 1 or 2 gens done and I know there's no progress on any more gens, or If I have a hooked survivor and a slug, that way I still have pressure while eating the 5 second stun. If I see that gens are getting done too quick I'll usually go after an unhooked survivor and eat a DS if I have to, but it's more out of desperation than strategy.
However, if you're playing Blight, Spirit, Nurse, Deathslinger, Huntress and maybe Twins and Billy, you can try to eat their DS and go after them again, keep in mind, you'll probably be leaving the other 3 survivors to their own devices if you do so, but you'll have a chance to take out one survivor early.
Whenever I play Blight I usually chew through BT and DS without much issue, but it depends on whether or not the survivor managed to get to an advantageous position. Once a survivor knows you're tunneling them, they'll be much less conservative with pallets and with a modicum of coordination their team will be able to pump out gens.
However, like others said above, I too have never regretted eating a DS early to mid game, I've only regretted not eating a DS early or not tunneling a survivor when I should have.
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Optimal depends on the circumstances.
If you're at 5 gens and the survivor jumps in a locker in your face, take the DS. Now you're free to tunnel them and they'll probably play very timidly and be less productive.
However, you go back and you find them healing under the hook. Then you have little reason to go after the unhooked simply to try to get rid of DS early.
It's about decision-making and not always there's a one-size-fits-all solution.
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I don't care if you say you've 4k'd after taking 4 DSs, because that simply means you're went against absolute bot survivors and would have won anyway.
yeah, this is literally every pub ever, there are nothing else besides bots, why are you complaining then if you said that ds doesn't matter when you verse bots?
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If I have the choice between eating a DS at 4/5 gens or respecting it and them trying to force me to eat it at 1 gen, that is not a difficult choice. Getting their DS out of the way means they can’t use it to pull a risky play later, since you can kill them.
Obviously you shouldn’t be chasing down recently unhooked survivors and going out of your way to try and force a DS out of them if they’re trying to avoid you or if you have another potential target. You’ll throw the match doing that. It’s if they do something like jump in a locker in front of you. You have the choice between leaving them (you have no pressure) or just taking the stun (you have no pressure but now their DS is gone), and the second option is better.
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DS isn’t meant to have a counter, it is meant to be the counter to tunnelling
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I don't know what to tell you, except that it works for me. I always take them as early as I can get them.
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I don't think it's really "counterplay" but it's the most practical way to deal with the perk.
Like it or not, that perk is the in the game, same as ruin/pop etc is in the game for survivors. So yeah if the survivor forces themselves in front of me just to use their DStrike early on in the game, I'll happily take it. (I don't tunnel and I don't go back to the hook, so I genuinely don't see DStrike all that often tbh). But I would much rather have to deal with it earlier in the game, rather than have the chance of having to deal with it at the end of the match where there's not much I can do about it.
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Yeah the value of DS increases as the match progresses all but guaranteeing an escape in the egc if its up. Eating it early isn't really "counterplay" but it forces the event when it is at its weakest.
Its in the game so why not get it out of the way when its most advantageous to do so.
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there will be no late game if you eat DS early
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It's not counter play because the perk doesn't actually have any counter play. I don't wanna hear that crap about "just chase someone else peepeehands!!" No, sometimes you can't, sometimes it's forced on you and some times you stomp on a team so hard that 3-4 of them have DS active all at the same time. The perk needs a deactivation asset to it, people have come up with a thousand ideas to fix it but it's current state is 60-120s of total immunity per survivor.
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This advice is awful. Pressure is how you win games never surreneder an inch. Eating ds loses you games. It detremental to your success as killers victory condition is best defined as removing as many hands off gens and snowballing your downs.
You will lose the attrition game. You will lose the tunneling game never ever give someone ds. Your 100% right op. Slugem up and have a clock close by to count the seconds if there on the ground then thats just as good as them being hooked. Seek other chases in the interim and if you see someone heading back to the slug smack em down.
If you don't regret giiving up pressure your blind to the consequnces of your actions. This is another active survivor and precious time surrendered to potetntially tunnel someone down later. Ds will always be a problem perk but understand the slug method is best. If you wanna burn a powerful perk let it be there unbreakable not the ds which will just drain way more time.
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That’s why I love the twins lol if I suspect ds in play I can slap victor down and track camp them and wait out the timer then hook them or my best case made a red rank dc because they decided to was there ds near the basement on haddonfield and then tried to loop the building but victor was down so I could easily track them and I down and go to basement they dc then say I’m a bad player when they decided stay in victors tracking range to loop
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It is so rare to see a DS have benefit in a match much less win the match in an endgame scenario. When it happens, it is a nice clutch like a killer using blood warden to catch someone at the exit gates that didn't leave. Oh, but DS is soooo unfair endgame!!!
On the other hand, killers have the pleasure of having guaranteed benefit of Ruin/Tinkerer/Undying, etc.
DS is a weak perk, especially compared to perks like dead hard (free health state multiple times a match) and NOED which skips a health state.
The fact DS is complained about when all these other perks exists in their monstrosity shows how powerful tunneling is. If a killer can tunnel someone out of the match early, it is a guaranteed win for the killer.
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Guess today was finally the day that someone decided to defend endgame Decisive Strike.
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If it was a weak perk every survivor wouldn't run it. The same cant be said about undying hex ruin. Many killers can't run it because they lack the mobility required to make it work.
I cant believe someone can say ds is a weak perk. I challenge you to enter 10 games and count the ds in play ill do the same. Ds is ingrained into every killers conscious as a thing to play around. Its mere existence threatens a killers ability to tunnel. Without current ds dbd tunneling would be on another level.
Ruin undying dosent play nicely with a tunnel playstyle. If you tunnel with ruin undying then ruin dosent work. Ruin undying works when the killer splits his focus across the map and is continously pressuring survivors off gens. You need more killer experiance if you have no concept how even the build works.
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A lot of things in this game aren't counterplay.
Breaking totems to get rid of Ruin isn't counterplay. In the same way that you took DS and wasted time getting stunned and have to chase again, breaking totems is time wasted not doing gens. Getting into a locker to avoid Aura Reading on BBQ is not counterplay. You still wasted time hiding instead of doing gens. Tapping a gen isn't counter play to PGTW. It still regressed 25%. Moving across the map to find a gen that isn't hit by Corrupt Intervention isn't counterplay. You still wasted time and risked discovery instead of doing gens.
etc.etc.
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The idea of "eat the DS early" doesn't mean to continue tunneling the guy. You eat the DS and move on to another target, such that later when you find the other guy again THEN you can tunnel him out of the game.
If you eat a DS and continue to tunnel you are doing it wrong. Maybe stop tunneling so much and DS wouldn't be as much of an issue. Or leave the guy slugged and got for someone else. There are ways around it.
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"I don't care if you say you've 4k'd after taking 4 DSs, because that simply means you're went against absolute bot survivors and would have won anyway."
I don't disagree about a DS nerf, but by that logic you would have lost to those survivors without DS anyway?
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But that's true of BBQ. It's the #1 killer perk and it is so ingrained in every survivor's mind that they have to play around it.
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You can still tunnel after DS, it's so easy and effective and that's a problem the Survivors are often faced with. Every discussion about DS is strictly from the perspective of the poor killer but never from the poor survivors that are getting relentlessly tunneled and deleted. Imo DS is a chase extender unless the Gates are open and you're close enough to run out. The Killer can easily (and frequently) will continue to tunnel after successfully stunning them.
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I wouldn't have a problem with DS tbh; except for survivors being jerks about it. Like it's some grand 100% get out of jail free card, surprise, it's not. That You have to leave them alone if they hit you with it.
Like they get unhooked, jump on a gen, okay w/e, you come back later and that gen is almost done and they let you grab them right off the gen, and then DS you and then jump RIGHT back on it right in front of you. Maybe they finish it maybe they don't but of course you bloody hit and hook them again why wouldn't you? Yet as soon as the game ends they are like "WHY DID YOU TUNNEL ME NOOB KILLER?!" like anytime they use DS EVER they scream tunnelling killer and that's just nonsense. It's not tunnelling when you are throwing yourself in front of the killer and jumping in lockers in front of them to DS them, but sometimes a killer runs them down after that and kills them and they throw a fit like "NUH YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO JUST LEAVE ME ALONE AFTER I STABBED YOU IT'S THE LAWWWW!?!?!"
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Ah yes comparing a BP grinding perk that is only necessary because the grind in the game is awful to a Meta perk that is run due to the power of said perk. What a joke of a statement.
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I agree but I ignore people like that. I still don't blame those Survivors that go out of their way to redeem their one-time limited use perk especially considering the fact that the bulk of killers really go out of their way to circumvent it. This compounds the problem further bc now people bring UB to help counter the circumvention employed by killers. And then killer players want to cry about how unfair things are.
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“Eating ds loses you games.”
I already made it explicitly clear that I do this, and never regret it, because I still win most of my games.
And yes, this is at red ranks.
So no.
No it doesn’t lose me games in a majority case.
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“Obviously you shouldn’t be chasing down recently unhooked survivors and going out of your way to try and force a DS out of them if they’re trying to avoid you or if you have another potential target.”
This.
Sorry, but if you were unhooked in my face, I’m first testing if there is BT, and if so, I want you wasting a little time mending.
No BT? Sorry, but I’m picking you up to test if you have DS, and force you to use it.
I happen to see someone freshly unhooked while resuming patrols or mid chase? Again, I’m gonna try and get DS out of you.
It’s no different that Pallets: get the survivors to waste their resources as quick, and as early as possible. The more coordinated and skilled the team is, the more important it is to do this.
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Ds = you can die on the floor
Just as
Ooo = nobody needs to die more than you
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We can agree to disagree. A stun is stun is a stun. It is lost time, but hardly the end of the world. Even if EVERY Survivor took DS and all of them used it on me, I lost a total of (20) seconds. I would rather lose that early in the game than late. More to the point, if I'm keeping up good Generator pressure, twenty seconds is not a concern.
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Lucky you.
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I would be shocked to find myself in a game where I get hit by DS and ONLY 0 or 1 gens have been done. But like I said, unless you're against bots the stun will cost you a gen or 2 more.
Post edited by danielmaster87 on1 -
It’s pretty offensive to imply that for those of us this strategy works, we just must be coincidentally be matched with terribly bad survivors 100% of the time.
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You either aren't a red rank killer or you're just lucky. Half the time or more you'll be facing SWF. There are not bots a majority of the time, and you'll be lucky if you can even find a weak link.
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Yes but it also works against non-tunneling killers, and in scenarios where you have to tunnel them or else they get out the gate. A survivor is on a gen while injured and the killer is coming? No worries for them, because they're invincible for another 45 seconds. DS allows survivors to get away with such risky plays and you get hit by it even after you've hooked someone else, which is the definition of not tunneling.
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Not at all. If DS was not a thing, assuming I'm not just tunneling, I wouldn't have to stop every time I downed someone and ask myself "Has it been long enough since they were last hooked?" I would not have to waste time by slugging or taking a stun for each survivor instead of hooking, but because DS is ran by almost all survivors, I have to do that. The mere possibility of DS forces you to waste that time or else suffer a stun.
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I almost never play around BBQ and I do fine. If the killer comes to me, so be it because he isn't on the other 3. It is so inconsequential to be spotted by BBQ, unless you're the last 2 survivors or on death hook or something.
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DS is not 1-time use. Assuming you don't get 1-hooked or 2-hooked, you get 2 minutes, split into 2 1-minute bursts, where the killer can't pick you up. You get even more time if the killer isn't specifically counting down the seconds, and waits 10 more unnecessary seconds just to make sure they don't get hit by it.
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No he isn't blind because everything is easier once ds is gone and if youre scared at 4 or 5 gens maybe you need to derank
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It is in fact one time use. Avoiding the killer for 60 seconds or them slugging you for that time doesn't constitute a use of the perk. You've successfully redeemed the perk upon successfully hitting the skill check within 60 seconds of being rescued. Thereafter the perk is permanently deactivated for the remainder of the trial.
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Well I'm sorry but I get my skills and luck questioned all the time. I'm not allowed to do the same? And I never said 100% of the time, but I am saying in general.
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This game is snowball by design. Not just for the killer side but also survivor. Longer periods of time without pressure with more hands on gens equals so called "gen rush". But i have an answer and reasoning backing my statement you are merely accusing others of being skilless.
No explaintion on how it becomes easier. The only time a person can eat a ds is with a lead or going even for a lot of medium experiance killers eating a ds can very well be a death sentence. My experiance is often demonstrated to be true when you see the amount of slugging that occurs frequently in higher levels of dbd play.
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Your forfeiting slug pressure that is far more valuable. I can buy that if you have enough experiance you can facetank a ds but chalking it up to 20 seconds discounts additional hands in play on gens which multiplies the total gen pressure. It creates active survivors that's the core issue I have with this way of play.
It important killers with less experiance get guidance on how to play more optimally so they can respond to difficult situations. Getting killers to embrce slugging is paramount to improving as killer and helps when behind.
Tldr at certain levels of play eating ds just dosent hurt as much. However its important to respect slug value when going even or behind. A place a lot of average killers struggle to come back from.
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I have been saying this for a while but its always ignored. I think I'm going to not bother mentioning it since its dismissed and people mock you for jt.
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This is exaclty what I'm talking about your assuming that a killer is playing as a vetran with a large amount of experiance. Reality is many middling killer players need some playstyle thats going to get around ds and minimise its dmg. Not everyone is gonna be able to tank that pressure loss.
Telling someone to "git gud"/up there game is useless. Slugging the ds player is a sensible solution for middling experiance killers. Its also mandatory vs sweat squads but they are not that common I concede on that. Keep in mind killers of all level if you cant comprehend the middling killers dificulties and are unable to offer guidance beyond git gud then your wasting there time.
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Those people do drown it out but ignore it. It's easy to tunnel, it's also effective thus majority do it for whatever reason. Some are brazen and others try to pretend they don't or justify it in some way.
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Or you know, go after another survivor? It's really not that hard and costs nothing. Jfc
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Another post on why DS is unfair for killers, huh? Well, you know, I have always despised that perk, and always refused to use it because I felt it was cheap, just like I still refuse to pick NoeD, for the same exact reason. But at least DS has a purpose, which still very rarely becomes a thing: "avoiding tunneling". As someone else already said, killers who get hit with a DS will almost always proceed to tunnel that same exact survivor, no matter what. It's just how things are, sadly. Still, there is a good solution to this. Remove DS from survivors and remove Bloodlust from killers. Done. No endless chases in which the killer gets you just because of Bloodlust. And if he gets to you, you will have wasted enough of his time (hopefully), but no DS will be there. Even tho I still think there should be a way to counter tunneling in some way, if it really needs to be a thing.
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