You all really have forgotten the entire purpose of Thanatophobia, haven’t you?!
My eyes are bleeding from seeing all the “tHaNa WaS nErFeD!!” claims.
Has everybody forgotten that Thana is DESIGNED around encouraging/tricking survivors into healing more frequently?!
We need to go back to understand Nurse, and all 3 of her perks. As absurdly powerful as Blinks are, its indisputable that Nurse will have a much easier time hitting stationary targets with Blinks rather than moving targets.
Enter Stridor & A Nurses Calling. Stridor to better triangulate where a survivor is hiding behind obstructions, and A Nurses Calling for a ridiculously easy Blink target. And now for a way to greatly incentivise survivors to actually prioritise healing so that Nurse can set up those easier Blink targets. Thanatophobia. The global debuff was never meant to be oppressive enough that it’s purpose was to directly slow down gens. It was just meant to be enough of a nuisance to survivors that they heal to get rid of it. It’s through more regular healing that game stall for the killer is achieved through this perk, and shorter chases when used in conjunction with A Nurses Calling.
The problem with the devs having stubbornly stuck with this idea of Thana have a global debuff is that it backed them into a corner by having to be very conservative with the percentages. The higher that number gets, the less likely Thana is going to achieve its intended outcome: getting survivors healing, and the killer more frequently catching survivors out in a compromised position. Killers, you can’t have one perk have increased percentages to slow gens down longer AND keep survivors injured longer at no additional compromise, other than simply equipping this ONE perk and doing something you’re already going to be doing anyway: injuring survivors. That just goes to show you don’t care about balance at all. If you want to commit your strategy to keeping survivors injured in conjunction with Thana’s other debuffs, you need to compromise more perk slots to that with either Coulrophobia, Sloppy, or Forced Penance. Deal with it!
This recent change to Thana in regards to gen slow down is redundant. It doesn’t matter if it’s 5% per survivor, 10%, or 15%. Survivors are not meant to just be putting up with the debuff, except where they simply have no choice to because they’re not near teammates and cannot heal themselves. What DOES matter is that healing (where immediately available to injured survivors) will be way more attractive now that they’re aware Thana has no direct healing debuff. It’s your job as killer to CAPITALISE on this behaviour, and adjust your load out and strategy accordingly.
If your using Thana as a gen slow down perk, you’re playing the game wrong.
Comments
Because my guess is the devs considered stacking, and circumstances where a survivor wants to heal/be healed but has no means to do so, and has no choice but to put up with the debuff.
I'm okay with new thanatophobia becoming a perk that forces survivors to heal, but the amount of stall that was lost is not enough to make up for the amount that we gain with this change (almost nothing). They seriously need to buff it to 8% for it to be worth using if they want to go with the no heal meta counter.
Ok but I would do that with old thanatophobia anyway, if someone is already there why wouldn't you heal them? I thought the point was to want to try to get to the survivors that are injured to remove the penalty. Not do what the same thing I already do.
This is why they couldn’t simply increase the numbers on a global debuff because the longer healing would take, the more likely survivors might not bother even if they COULD heal or be healed, especially when stacked with other healing debuffs.
You make it sound like healing is a bad thing. Ok. They heal, so what?
Thana is a below average perk tbh. After the nerf its even worse imo. It has to be paired with sloppy to even get any use out of it. The reason it was used was to help slow down gens and healing. Survivors won't go "omg 5% debuff we need to heal asap!" Most of the time they'll just stick to a gen injured or not. But now its even easier to heal.
You are stating that the Slow down to gens is redundant, that it doesn't matter whether it is 5%, 10% or 15% it is supposed to get them healing. While that is true, survivors have been ignoring healing for 16%, 20% is not that big of a difference all in all. If it doesn't matter, it no longer affects healing... why not make it actually more impactful on ignoring it? Isn't the idea behind it: Healing is more important and so if you don't help your friend and heal them... else you are punished for it.
The developers are packaging it as a buff: We cannot really make it better, because it affects healing and therefore would be easily oppressive... so we removed that. Yet if you look at the numbers objectively... not much changed and it is more like a side-grade, not an upgrade and is why people are whining about the number.
People love complaining that all killers use the same regression perks, the same combos on all the killers, regardless of anything really... yet people don't want to pull other options inline with the rest? You like to act like the number doesn't matter, but it really does... if people powered through without issues through 16%, does the 5 sec increase that comes along with 20% really make that big of a difference in motivating people to heal? The global effect is there to stimulate the other survivors to help out the one in need... yet if many just go like meh... does it make it truly more viable than it is now? Its effect does not directly slow down gens, it affects the continuation on working on gens...yet it is underwhelming and doesn't make it feel required to do.
The reason why for instance Ruin/Undying is getting so much hate is because survivors have the feeling that they need to deal with it, do secondary objectives like totems. They cannot ignore it if the killer does their job well of pressuring the generators.
Why shouldn't Thana work in a similar manner that survivors should feel that they need to deal with the health situation if the killer manages to damage all of them? Survivors already proven that 16% is nothing, not worth considering... so since it doesn't matter, bump those numbers up high so if a killer manages to damage all 4 of them at once, it might be smart to reset?
How do you ENCOURAGE healing by SLOWING healing?!
I don’t think you read my post.
I didn’t.
I want you to ask people. Ask them who uses thana to make people heal. I'm actually interested because i have never heard someone use it to make people heal. I personally used it as a slowdown to keep them injured.
My point is that is the intended purpose of the perk, what it was actually designed around achieving.
This is my main issue with the Thana changes. It feels like they are just making it easy to counter without any real downside... similar to Dying light. Old dying light was terrible design, and unfun to play against, but new dying light gives an arguable better buff to one survivor that is better than the entirety of its downsides. Even the perk itself becomes less effective over time due to the way it works. If it cut off half the tokens when the obsession died, I would understand. But making it deactivate completely was too much.
Same with Thana. Half of the perk is being removed for a really insignificant buff in the long run. Sure, they heal, but perks like Inner Strength, Botany knowledge, Self care and Autodidact are all good perks for survivors, all buffs to their healing or do heal them when used. Not to mention medkits are still really useful.
That, plus the Pop changes are really disappointing for me, as it shows that they are not really caring about actual balance right now. Or it at least doesn't show it. They look at perks like Ruin & Pop and just nerf them, not why they are used. But... argument for another post.
The problem is they are still being scared with the number making it not worth it. And it makes no sense how a side with a bunch of perks and items to counter it is being oppressed.
People keep talking lime healing takes a super long time to do, one medkit and its done jn a couple seconds. Outside of legion and maaayyybe plague if she wasnt bugged to hell and back, I could almost see this perk being halfway decent
It is however the only solution to stop the rush gen..
I watched a video of a Freddy on the PTB, a survivor alone on a generator it takes..... hours... There is also the perk of Myers, more others perks like ruin... The gen rush is the enemy of the killer and I think that Thanatos combined will ruin the gen rush (i hope) !
Lol. You newer players have NO CLUE just how long Freddy could make gens take before his rework.
It's been 2 years that I play DBD, I started with the Nurse, I reached the rank 2, I play also survivor but more killer... I have all the killers and I reached almost all the max levels.😀
I'm way out of my depth here when it comes to the question of intent and certain mechanics doing the whoozas and the whatzas cause I'm just your average joe 6 hook. But I knows my logical deductions and I don't think your argument really holds up well.
Your entire position is a stack of cards resting on the assertion Thana is meant to do X, though you never really justify how you come to that conclusion. It's begging the question, and if it falls apart so does the rest of what you're saying.
If it's pure assumption, then it would seem even more logical to deduce that there's clearly a dual purpose where, as you've said, it (A) creates another downside to NOT healing (ie the gen speeds) as you've said, but also (B) prolongs the healing process in order to better triangulate and blink to that survivor.
The inherent perk synergy of Thana very much suggests to me that its about creating that "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation for survivors while balanced by being very situational for the killer where you'll rarely be getting those full reductions, the effects won't last that long, and the utility of the perk diminishes as you thin the heard.
But there's another wipeout argument left on the table here still: even IF you're correct that's the original intent, well... so what? Why is that even relevant, and what makes that superior to what you're claiming is an emergent (and wrong) way of utilizing the perk?
Nurse was released at a time where there were limited Killers, and limited ways for survivors to heal: Self Care, Med Kits, a Teammate, or Adrenaline.
It’s quite obvious at the time that it was kept in mind that Nurse would have trouble hitting moving targets with Blinks (at the time, while she was still fresh, well before she had been mastered by many). Her perks were designed to encourage a hit and run style, and help players land easier Blinks. Pretty much A Nurses Calling is the main support to her power, with Thana intending to be a nuisance to survivors that they heal whenever they’re able to. Stridor is there for Nurse to still catch out survivors with Blinks when they’re not healing, but can quite clearly hear exactly where they are.
When you take a really deep dive into all killers you’ll see that a lot of thought has been put into how (most of) their perks synergise with the killer.
Balancing isn't a *finger snap*, ok it's done.
Anyone complaining that nothing is getting put back into the perk itself to compensate doesn't understand the difference between theory crafting numbers and abstract thinking. What you're doing is theory crafting, simply looking at numbers and deciding whether or not something is optimal, beneficial or a negative based on that 1 dimensional assessment. Theory crafting is what you do when you're just looking to compare numbers, when all other variables are held equal. What the OP is doing is abstract thinking, which is what's necessary for game design, because abstract thinking is what you use to run an idea from A through Z.
Thantaphobioa, with it's healing debuff, gives no trade off to doing any particular action, except that healing will remove the effect. Without the debuff, you're shaving off 3 seconds for healing and 3 seconds is a lot to a survivor. 3 seconds is the difference between healing and hiding and healing and being chased again for another 20 seconds. On paper, it looks only like you're gaining a few extra seconds on gens, so why bother healing when you can still do the gens in ~56secs. The reality is it's less risky at 16sec to heal and hide than it is at 19secs, then being chased for 20secs more. Being at 2 health states instead of one is the difference between a 20sec chase for only you and a 20sec chase plus 30sec hook that totals to 2min of survivor downtime (your chase and hook, their walk and unhook). These things add up quickly, so making the decision clear for survivors (heal now) means they are more likely to blow the 16secs healing (taking 32secs total off repairs/other actions for one survivor) than doubling up on a generator to save 40secs (Full thanta).
That fact alone puts the killer in an advantage state, but given entire builds/killers can play around that knowledge and abuse it means that you're going to have more opportunities to catch healing survivors. More opportunities means more time spent disrupting survivors. More time spent disrupting survivors means more time sunk into non-gen related channeling. More sunk time and less channeling on gens means less survivor progression and less progression increases your odds of winning.
This is the domino effect of changes like this, which theory crafting can't take into account. Your suggestion would push generator progression so far back with one perk that it could easily push killer stall/regression builds through the roof, by making it almost impossible to do generators without healing. Mix in anti-healing perks/abilities/status and you have created a lose-lose scenario for survivors.
Thank you. I’m glad someone else gets the implications of a seemingly innocuous few seconds.