The latest Survivor Meta Snapshot with Excel Data
So... I decided to sacrifice my Saturday evening until 4am making that last 28 game push to 250 games of data between September 9th to September 27th (I realize this is a relatively small dataset but it's far more convincing to me than just throwing anecdotes around). So this is from a Rank 1~2 killer (I never depipped to R3 during this) with over 1300 hours played with "Crossplay On" for whatever effect that might have on background matchmaking.
I wiped my tracker back on September 8th which you can find here (https://us.v-cdn.net/6030815/uploads/X033A2KJSNM6/2020-meta-snapshot.jpg) if you want a point of comparison to the meta shift that might've happened. I also played more than 100 games as R1 Survivor but did not include the data from those games as the MMR might be different from my personal Killer games (Since we have no idea how 100% solo queue matchmaking could vary with duos/trios and other solos thrown in with me).
Some additional numbers that are tracked on the sheet but not included in the image:
There were 431 Steam Survivors and 569 Crossplay Survivors (I'm going purely off globe symbols).
There were 719 Red Ranks, 213 Purple Ranks, 19 Green Ranks, 49 Yellow Ranks (When I could - I determined these guys were usually paired up with 2~3 higher ranks in a SWF but couldn't confirm against crossplay folks).
While I combined Sacrificed/Single Hatch escape figures of 62.6% + 11.3% = 73.9% and consider that my win rate - this is admittedly inflated by the 6.6% DCs that usually lead to the other 3 people getting killed. There are still matches where I get absolutely smashed by good coordinated players using good items and builds, who do manage 4 man escapes against me.
The 11.3% Hatch figure does not include mercy hatches where I drop the last guy on it (That is actually tallied as a Sacrifice for data purposes). Keys # is how many I see brought in on the post screen - usually including addons. Key Escapes # also include survivors who got out obviously with a key whether it was found in a chest or not (Without gates open). I still counted Keyed Escapes or Hatch Escapes even if they abused DC on hook or on the ground to give the last guy a hatch but the DCs at that stage were considered Sacrifices.
I never run Mori's if that has some effect on the DC numbers but I also only count it as a DC if they DC anywhere from the start until first hook. If they get unhooked at any time and decide to DC - I consider it a Sacrifice for purposes of the data. I had far less if any scorescreen bugs and people going for Adept in this data set compared to the last one (Perhaps the bug was mostly resolved).
Conclusions or Assumptions I'm positing (Feel free to come up with your own)
- Decisive Strike dropped in usage almost 10% which might be attributed to this being directly after Blight and Felix's Release in 4.2.0 Descend Beyond but before the DS stun bug was fixed.
- Out of 1000 survivors only 886 ran an Exhaustion perk - most would argue (including me) that this would be pretty important to winning as Survivor so the other guys were either trying specific builds/memes or maybe don't run them on principle. Exhaustion perks' popularity is to be expected - Dead Hard - Sprint Burst - Lithe - Head On - Balanced Landing most likely because of the 2ndary effect nerf BL received awhile back (There was a time when people ran BOTH Dead Hard and UB with Vigil) and that there are still 2 maps that almost negate it's usage. Basically every killer should be pumping their camera up or using things like Wraith M2 or Doctor M2 for a second to bait the Dead Hards out when possible as a rule.
- Self-Care usage is insanely up... this might be a console gamer thing, maybe a Desperate Measures thing or combined with more medkits but even PC SWFs seem to opt for Self-Care lately over running to meet up and heal every time. As someone who doesn't run Sloppy Butcher on any killer other than Wraith and Hag - I actually found this to be annoying at times as they split up often.
- Soul Guard, Detective's Hunch, Inner Strength, Small Game have all seen increase usage most likely with the Hex: Undying shift in the meta... all these perks are far more pertinent now. I originally made a topic claiming that R1 Survivors "weren't" adapting to the meta as a whole and I now stand corrected that some people definitely are.
- Prove Thyself numbers have gone up and it might be contributing to survivors just feeling they just have to power gens and "leave" as soon as possible (I haven't really kept track of BNPs or even other item addons this time around - I might consider a few to track in the future if I see them frequently enough).
- There is definitely an increase of SWFs running with a low ranking 4th Smurf (My theory is that it's a family share abuse rather than an actual new player just from how they play competently usually for a yellow rank). This might be what newer killers like @StarLost have been encountering lately... on the bright side they run into me on some matches too where I welcome the challenge so cheers to that.
- Key usage is way up for SWFs and solo survivors - I recorded 87 Keys over 250 games and multiple keys brought in very often (Perhaps they caught wind that they're the next thing on the chopping block alongside Moris) - I might "accidentally" slug far harder when I notice them while loading in. There were multiple games where 4 Purple/Pink keys were brought in and I got post-game messages about being a sweaty slugger just to get rid of their Weaved Ring add-ons that preserved their keys anyway (I also never run Franklin's).
- Some terrible builds come up some times with no synergy what-so-ever. Some might be for Archive Challenges or people doing Old Compendiums... others might just be meme'ing. Unlike last time there were more perks that saw use - even though I recorded more games this is still something to note when looking at the data that there were more "off-meta" outliers
Comments
Yup, good to see Soul Guard creeping up the charts. I've been running it with UB just because of all the hex perks in the meta. Feels a little dirty when it works... But sometimes it's nice to get dirty.
Actually was surprised to see how many people took the outright "risk" of just running Soul Guard alone without Unbreakable considering the standing up part of it hinges on a Hex still being up. Perhaps getting picked up and having protection was enough or they were encountering a lot more hexes than I was personally throwing at them (I'm still not a fan of the RNG elements of them- opting more for consistency perks if I'm going for wins).
Thank you for putting the time and effort into these information sheets! I always enjoy reading them.
Maybe I'm a little new, but I'm surprised to see OoO so often- I rarely play killer anymore (as it SUCKS on the Switch, especially with crosssplay) so it's not unexpected for me to have only run into it literally once ever since I started playing back in January, but my boyfriend who plays a LOT of killer at rank 1 also rarely runs into it. Idk what part of the world you are (we are southeast) but maybe that's the difference. Is OoO usage up or down based on your older information charts?
I also expected to see a lot more Unbreakable paired with DS (for how often I see people talking or complaining about it) but I also assume that there was a decent amount of people who ran UB paired with SG instead of having DS, yeah? But that leaves an absolute maximum of 9%-ish of people who could run the DS-UB combo for this set of data, yeah? (Unless I'm completely stupid. Math was always my worst subject in school LMAO)
I would be interested in seeing if there was a large difference in data between crossplay on vs crossplay off, if you ever wanted to do something like that.
I've been keeping track of stats too, though not as many games as you yet. Stats are always appreciated. (I do it from the survivor side because I like killer stats too). My results aren't too different than yours, though Decsive Strike is used a bit more often than 31%. For me it's 37% (though I don't count my own perks, and I don't run DS on principle. Which bites me in the ass sometimes)
I see unbreakable a LOT more than you do too. Like 24%. Though again, I do have less games so that may equal out over time.
The old sheets were mostly non-crossplay considering it was still relatively new and why I started tracking it separately when I started this sheet
I did see an increase in OoO use with this sheet and it may be due to my focus on playing a lot more killer games than before - which may have in term pushed my hidden MMR even higher into some magical grey area where more people like using it in SWFs. It's almost a detriment to use it as a solo player - but I haven't directly confirmed with every Object user to confirm my initial bias around it. Also Crossplay survivors with globes seem to run OoO as well so I have to assume they're on some form of voice comms and a SWF. I'm from the northeast, USA if there is that specific of regional matchmaking in play but more likely due to my erratic play times. They tend to be very late at night into the early morning especially on weekends since I'm used to a nocturnal schedule and I work from home (Covid and all that) ... so I guess I fit that "sweaty" thousands of hours killer that new survivors don't seem to enjoy matching with in the early mornings.
DS+Unbreakable combo does come up but not nearly a 100% thing as the killers on these forums would have you believe. UB+Soul Guard was very common but Soul Guard+DS started cropping up too which is why I made a point about people running SG without unbreakable was "risky" since they might cross killers like me that rarely run Hexes unless an archive requires me to... and it requires that they haven't broken the "Curse" yet to stand up on their own with Soul Guard
I find it interesting that even a "low" exhaustion perk usage is still at 89%, that's crazy high. Rather than nerf exhaustion perks as that's never fun, they really need to add more counters to them in the form of exhaustion addons or better exhaustion perks to where there's actually "some" risk involved. There should be at least some decision making when deciding if you should run an exhaustion perk. Currently there's zero downsides and the only reason you wouldn't run an exhaustion perk is if you don't care about winning and want to meme. To me that isn't good design.
An example of where there is good design in the exhaustion perks however is BL. You do consider if this one is worth it or not because of how situational drop offs are. There's some consideration to be made because of the risk, that's good design.
My god could you imagine the forum topic flooding in if exhaustion addons emerged on every killer not just Huntress and Clown (two that come to mind immediately). I'll agree that Balanced Landing might be "good design" but it's going to underperform outside of specific maps that doesn't limit you to like 1~2 tiles on the entire map to use it (Haddonfield and Midwich are two that BL is extremely powerful in though) when compared to these other exhaustion perks with "no downsides" as you said. The worst feeling is running BL then randomly rolling into Macmillan Estate - Shelter Woods which is just one large flat map with no drop offs other than the basement stairs and running up the side of the big tree on the middle of the map at the right angle to barely trigger it
Well, I use perks that often have no synergy. The reason? I don't need to use the meta or play my best everytime, it's not for memeing though, it's for trying diferent perks, or perks that helps in different situations.
There would be a lot of outrage but it's because people have become so entitled with how many "overpowered" things that have been left in the game for so long without any checks or balances. They've come to expect a level of strength that isn't balanced or appropriate.
"The worst feeling is running BL then randomly rolling into Macmillan Estate - Shelter Woods which is just one large flat map with no drop offs other than the basement stairs and running up the side of the big tree on the middle of the map at the right angle to barely trigger it"
I agree that situation does feel bad, but that's part of why you have a consideration on running it. To me any perk that is auto picked almost every game by someone who wants to win because it will always be universally game swinging is a perk that is unhealthy. There needs to be some risk/cost/skill requirement involved if it's game swinging.
Kind of like how perks should be either highly situational, but extremely strong when the situation does arise or not very situational and happens a lot, but just an average effect. That is balance. Currently we have quite a few perks (main ones being the second chance and exhaustion perks) where they aren't situational at all and game swinging effects. On top of the fact that they have no risk/cost/skill requirement as I said earlier, that's just ridiculous.
These perks also cause another side effect because of this which is perk diversity. Those perks are so good that they crowd out other perks from being considered because they're just that overbearing. Completely hypothetical as I don't want the perks just removed, but to make an example, if all the second chance and exhaustion perks suddenly didn't exist we would see quite a diverse range of perks being used. I think that illustrates an issue.
DS is the most used perk as I can see from these stats, 314 times this perk was brought by survivors in 250 games, then comes Dead Hard with 299 uses.
This is certainly not a reason to nerf or rework that perk like it was did to some other perk
"Hardly anyone even uses Spine Chill!"
Lol. Oh yeah. Yep hardly anyone. /s
Sorry if you felt the last bullet point seemed like a shot at your playstyle as it wasn't intended to be. I mentioned that some people have specific purposeful builds (Things like Red Herring or Diversion included) or even "generalist" builds that can help in various situations.
The last bullet was more directed at survivors* or at least one red rank that I remember running Boil Over, Open Handed, Distortion and Head On.
He didn't bring in a key (w/ aura addon) or a map to make Open Handed work, I could only conclude players like him were playing Perk Roulette like Monto since he was somehow still in red ranks.
No apologies needed, it was just a random comment haha. Just wanted to be popular :)
I'll agree with DS because it was even higher on previous sheets (since the 2s DS stun bug was going during this time) to a degree - it might also point to why survivors feel a perk like this is necessary at the moment.
As for Dead Hard - it is the most popular Exhaustion perk but take a look at @Blueberry 's point about how all of them really have no downsides with maybe the exception of Balanced Landing. Sprint Burst and Lithe are right up there in popularity as well for good reason because it's what the current game balance sort of hinges around
This is a great experiment, thanks! The only thing missing is the actual individual data points these summaries are from in order to pivot out things like win rate per number of uses of a perk. For example it would be interesting to see a pivot of win rates when 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 survivors use Decisive Strike to get a sense of the correlation of the overally impact that perk has. Likewise for Object of Obsession, it would be interesting to see win rates of apparently solo groups using Object versus swfs using Object versus swfs not using Object.
Also it if you kept track of the endgame scores it would be interesting to see how the scores line up with the 3-4 kills = Win metric. How often does the killer get the highest score at different kill counts?
While that type of data would be far more useful in drawing scientific conclusions as the dataset grew larger and larger... I'm probably not going to commit to setting that level of collection to look for significant r values without a bit more than a purely scholarly incentive :P
As for endgame scores - do you mean purely off bloodpoint values? It's rare (though I guess not impossible) if ever that I don't at least match if not barely exceed the survivor's blood point values even if they manage to 4 man escape through gates on me with all gens done. It might be 18~19k but a each individual survivor might have 15~17k even while escaping. "Winning" can put survivors as low as 3~5k blood points individually with a single person maybe being 15k~ or so while I usually have a minimum of 20k up to 32k bloodpoints before post bonuses. This should be the same for most killers though unless they just not getting ANY hooks at all when they lose matches.
I don't think I've recently bothered to pay much attention to bloodpoint scores though so I could be wrong... clearly I don't track it at all though
I'm always sad when people jump on my off meta perks. Back in the day I used Pop on nearly EVERYONE when it was 30 seconds and everyone constantly told me it was garbage. Then it got buffed and I feel bad for using a perk I liked from the get go because now it's cookie-cutter meta.
Same is now happening with Detective's Hunch + Inner Strength. I loved running that nad being a totem ######### and preventing noed every match, then they go and drop the bullshit that is Undying on us and suddenly there's someone running my 'off meta' build every match.
I normally score 20k - 32k as well as a killer. However the highest scoring survivor is usually also in that range on 2 kill games from what I’ve seen. Whether the killer has highest score versus the second highest score seems pretty strongly correlated to the kill count. The reason I think it would be interesting to pivot that out is because I sometimes see people claiming that bloodpoint scores are biased toward the killer and assume that the killer tends to get the highest score even when they lose which I’m skeptical on. Without objective data though it’s difficult to tell what bias if any actually exists.
Ah - I don't directly parse and track 0K, 1K and 2K, 3K+Gate outcomes separately but I do have a Win vs Loss box for myself that includes all 3K+Hatch with gens or doors left to do or 4Ks as wins and everything else as a loss for myself personally. Still close to a 65% win rate with that metric though.
As for the killer BP bias - I would say that's about accurate even on a loss... unless you're getting royally stomped and toyed with as a relatively new killer, events on average award the killer more points over a match. It's far harder to get 32k as a survivor for a reason and probably true that just playing a lot of killer would help you gather bloodpoints quicker if you're approaching it with speed and efficiency in mind instead of trying to ensure you get "4K"s. It's very common for me to just hook the 3rd guy rather than leave him on the ground to try and hunt the last guy because I would rather just 50/50 against him for the hatch in an attempt to close it then 50/50 him at the exit gates ESPECIALLY if I'm running something like Whispers or the gates are close enough together that I can 99% sacrifice the last guy who was ratting during the 2 minute EDC (Unless he has a key I guess but I usually don't care that much if it came from a chest)
Edit: It's usually not even a 50/50 because I usually see the hatch at some point if it spawned and keep it in mind so I can slam it shut when it opens as the second to last guy starts floating into the sky
The killer should be averaging more than the average of all the scores of all five players in the match. That’s fine. The question though is what is the frequency of how often the killer is literally the highest score in the match under various kill counts. If the frequency of having the highest score has a strong correlation to how many kills you got then you could hypothetically simply look at bloodpoint scores and say if the killer has the highest score they won the match and if they don’t they lost the match, for example. It’s not enough to simply say “killer’s average scores are higher than survivor’s average scores” for this because the question that’s more relevant is the killer’s average scores compared to the average of the highest survivors’ scores each match which is a slightly different distribution.
If you're trying to determine if players should be judging whether the match was a win purely off these score events, it might be possible and I could track it for future games without much effort... I will make a prediction that it does put the killer over if not at least closely behind to the top survivor's bloodpoints even on a 2K "Loss" though just from my own experience.
Unfortunately, the average ego for online multiplayer games isn't going to be happy with that sort of assessment even if the game put big "VICTORY" or "DEFEAT" across the screen. Just look how many forum killers rage about a single survivor "escaping" through hatch even when they aren't doing some specific achievement or challenge - 27~28k BP doesn't matter when they "deserved" the satisfaction of a 4K.
Devs are trying to get rid of the ranking colors/number system as well since it just creates frustrations for something that shouldn't even matter if skill based matchmaking was reimplemented as they planned.
Whelp here I go derailing my own topic.
Scrolled right past by response for some reason. Actually found something similar when comparing with another killer's stats of a similar nature. For this time around though I feel like a lot of survivors were trying to sub in Soul Guard to take Unbreakables place (Maybe it was even working for them if they kept running into hex builds).
Personally in my own matches as killer I think of 0-1 kills as a loss, 3-4 kills as a win, and 2 kills as a draw with the tiebreaker being the score. It is possible sometimes for the killer to have the highest score in a 1 kill match but I think it’s not common, in part because escaping is a 5k point bonus all on its own which is a big point swing. And usually when 3 survivors escape the highest scoring survivor did a lot of the work so got a good score just from that. I also can’t recall a game where I’ve gotten no kills but had the highest score. It might be possible but obviously with no kills your score is going to be that much lower just from that and every survivor is getting the 5k escape bonus plus between them all the point for having all the gens completed and probably at least a couple of hook rescues and/or cleanses and heals.
I appreciate the dedication to collecting these stats and sharing them. While I definitely expected to see DS take top spot as the most popular survivor perk, it was quite surprising to see just how much lower Unbreakable is on the list (only used by ~10% of the survivors you encountered vs ~31.5% for DS).
It's also pleasant to see that some "off-meta" perks like Dance With Me, Botany Knowledge, and For The People are only marginally behind the strong Exhaustion and Second Chance perks (not sure how their popularity has changed since the last time you did this). Variety is definitely good.
Botany Knowledge seemed to come up a ton more with Desperate Measures (Probably people trying out Felix's new perk Synergies) and Self Care as well - overall a fairly weak perk setup considering how many slots that's taking up but that seems to be the route many people sought.
I still play around Unbreakables when I slug by returning wtihin 20s if possible but it's rare to see more than 1~2 even in confirmed SWFs unless they're "dedicated" to running that specific DS, UB, BT setup across the board... which isn't a 100% thing from personal experience as noted here.
The number of Lithe users that pair it with Dance With Me was surprisingly high - even more than Quick and Quiet (Though quite a few used both). QnQ came up almost exclusively with Head On users for good reason I guess
Compare it to the CONFIRMED stats from the devs- Ruin was used at 45% across all ranks, and an astonishing 80% at red ranks. And contrary to popular belief, the high usage of Ruin was NOT the reason for it's nerf. But if that's what people want to believe, we can play that game here with OP's data.
Even if you took OP's data and pretended that all 314 instances of DS were brought solely by the red ranks in his data (719/1000 survivors), that just barely reaches 44% usage in red ranks. And I guarantee you that the DS usage was across the board and not only concentrated in red ranks, bringing it closer to the score of 31% in his data overall. Even accounting for the DS stun bug (many survivors brought it anyways despite it being virtually useless against many killers while it was bugged), OP said it was decreased in use by 10%- a decently large percentage number, but still doesn't bring the perk usage up past pre-nerf Ruin numbers.
I actually was surprised by the lack of DS (and the notorious DS+UB perk combo, only being about 9-10%)- for how much I see it get talked about, it's not quite as prevalent as I was made to believe, at least by his data.
I'm sure BHVR has even better and more clear and accurate data that pinpoints the usage of "crutch" perks across ranks and at high ranks. But if I go by OP's data I definitely don't see the raging epidemic of every game having multiple DS/UB survivors. 250 games at r1/r2 is a pretty okay sample size.
Like I said, 250 games is a nice sample size. But it doesn't account for all regions and all players, of course. I would actually love to see BHVR release something like what ZCerebrate did, maybe not with numbers but at least showing percentages of perk usages. I would 100% wager that DS would be the most highly used perk (because it is, without a doubt, the BEST survivor perk in the game), but it would be nice to see their data on it.
Bother to enlighten me how 719/1000 survivors bringing DS equals 43% of usage?
314 instances of DS
719 red rank survivors (out of 1000 survivors total)
314 DS perks/1000 survivors= 31.4% of survivors using DS.
314 DS perks/719 red rank survivors= 43.7% of red rank survivors using DS
Sorry if my comment wasn't super clear- his data makes it clear though so I presumed it could easily be checked against that if there was any confusion :) The part that is probably slightly confusing is how I decided to make a scenario where I ignored the non-red rank survivors but kept every instance of DS. Like I said in my comment, I'm positive not every DS was used solely by red rank survivors, but it was for the sake of my hypothetical scenario where his data on DS only was from red ranks. Hopefully this explanation clears up what I meant for you.
" I definitely don't see the raging epidemic of every game having multiple DS/UB survivors. 250 games at r1/r2 is a pretty okay sample size."
@CheyeneKL - It happens when you get a rare 4 stack with mirrored builds but coordinated teams usually only around 2~ Unbreakables because thats all you really need. The "constant" encounters with SWAT SWFs is also greatly exaggerated on the forums but it does in fact exist which might be the point of those concerns to begin with.
No idea what you were attempting to show as significant with that % here.. It's very likely a more popular perk at red ranks because the people who gravitate there are more likely to be the type "trying to win" by their various definitions and use of the perk* at the top of the meta influences that in one way or another.
But for @Justalittlepeeck and any who may or may not have been confused by how the spreadsheet is setup, it's just simply perk usage / total number of tracked perks. Then since any one survivor can't run multiples of the same perk that number is then multiplied by 4 for percentage of use.
DS is definitely the most popular perk over hundreds of matches that I play but it's also not uncommon to see plenty of survivors who don't run it by personal principle, lack of access (maybe not even having the teachable) or because they value something else higher in their builds.
I'm not denying the existence of sweaty SWAT SWF squads- it's natural for very good players to congregate to play together and try to win. And it's normal for players (killers and survivors) to run the best perks for their win attempts. DS/UB is obviously a very strong combo when it is used together, even if it isn't actually as common as many forum posters here had me believing it was.
By your data, at maximum there are 9%-10% of survivors running DS/UB, since the highest number of UB usage you have is at 96 instances of it equipped. That's around 39% of games with at least one person who could be running that perk combo. If the majority of DS/UB perk combo users are concentrated into tryhard SWFs with two DS/UB users, that's 19%-20% of games with the combo... right? Ugh my brain can only take so many numbers LOL so please do correct me if I'm wrong with any of this! Also, I'm ignoring the existence of a possible rise of DS/SG users (or even DS/SG/UB) since that's newer to the meta and the perk combos aren't included in your data. If SG is paired with DS that obviously raises the number of anti slug + anti-tunnel (or anti-momentum, however you choose to view the perk) builds. Regardless, the possibility of there being 19%-39% of games with at least one DS/UB perk combo user is nothing to sneeze at, but I truly did expect to see something closer to 60%-80%, if I'm being completely honest
As for what I was saying with my reply to the other guy- he was talking about the Ruin nerf and how some people believe that it was nerfed due to its high usage rate (80% at red ranks according to dev statistics). I made the point that DS usage does not quite get close to that level of usage. Points can be made that multiple DS procs per game can be devastating to a killer trying to win a game, but all I was showing him is that by your data, DS doesn't get close to being used as much as Ruin was at red ranks pre-nerf. If I misunderstood how you present your data, then I of course would have gotten my math wrong- but to my understanding it did look like only 31% of survivors ran DS (which of course means that there could have been a 100% chance to have at least one DS per every single game, but information like that was not included in your data, so I couldn't make any venture about that with certainty)
The rest of my reply to him was to show that even if you took the 281 non-red rank survivors out of the equation, the percentage of DS users at red ranks doesn't go past 45%.
None of my reply was saying whether or not the DS/UB perk combo is overpowered or not, it was merely an attempt to compare numbers from your data on survivor perks to the pre-nerf Ruin data from the devs. Nothing more, nothing less :)
Again, if I misunderstood your data and was totally off on any points I tried to draw from your numbers, feel free to correct me haha, math has never been my best skill!