DS Changes that can make the game healthier
1) DS should be able to be used twice, to make it better at punishing what it's there to stop, tunnelling.
2) DS should be changed from having a timer to purely to conditional deactivation. Conditions would be the exact same as current with 2 minor changes
1st of those changes being it no longer deactivates from self healing
2nd of those changes being it now deactivates when any survivor is unhooked by any other survivor, not just you doing the unhook.
3) If a condition to deactivate decisive strike is met while you are in the dying state, instead of deactivating, it will stay active until you are out of the dying state.
Why this is good for the game:
Tunneling is perhaps one of the nastiest strategies a killer can employ, it can be very unfun to face, and the tools survivors have to counter play this strategy are quite limited and sometimes ineffective.
Additionally, while the most recent round of changes addressed many issues that DS had, one thing that was often complained about that was not addressed entirely is that keeping track of active DS as a killer could be difficult when getting a lot of hooks in short succession. This results in sometimes getting hit with a DS even when it did not feel like you were tunneling.
The new conditional deactivation means that you are usually limited to 1 possible DS at a time making it much easier to keep track of who has it active. The only way to have more than 1 DS active at a time is to have a survivor with DS be unhooked while another survivor with active DS is in the dying state. This is much more evident to the killer though and as a result, is easy to keep track of.
One possible complaint I could see about this change is that slugging is less effective a counter to DS, but the way I see it just because you put someone in the dying state and then came back to get them 40 seconds later doesn't mean you didn't tunnel them. Slugging the DS remains an effective counter to survivors who choose to body block with their DS active. They waste the time of whoever has to come pick them up, UB is a second perk and is only useable once. However slugging would be non effective against a killer using slugging as a way to tunnel the survivor, which I believe is a good change.
Comments
DS is fine as is.
DS should be changed from having a timer to purely to conditional deactivation. Conditions would be the exact same as current with 2 minor changes
Survivor will just hop in locker and stay there for 15 mins or untill another hook. Timer is needed, but since so many actions deactivate DS now, it could be maybe extended.
Other than that i dont mind other changes tbh.
Ah, make the perk that used to be THE most ran perk and was extremely OP even ######### better than it used to be... there's nothing wrong with how DS is now.
I don't think there's a problem with that, it's not like a survivor jumping in a locker is contributing to the team
I don't think the killer should be threatening a survivor with active DS enough that they feel the need to locker hide unless they are pressuring 2 survivors at once or they are willing to eat the DS.
DS was never the most used perk as far as I am aware, the devs stats have showed that self care is the most used by a significant margin.
Even before the nerf DS had a usage rate of 25% which is less than a lot of perks, I'm pretty sure DS wasn't even top 5 last time devs released usage rate stats on multiple perks, but I don't remember for sure
I do agree with having DS activate whenever you're unhooked, not just once per trial. If it is so focused on being an anti-tunnelling perk, it should stick to that like glue.
Thinking on the timer a bit, I don't think it's a good idea to make it last forever, but the timer should definitely pause itself while the killer is still on your trail, be it while the killer is in chase or in close proximity. Giving it no timer whatsoever would mean that you can run around as bait when the killer has no way of knowing whether your DS is still up or not, potentially wasting huge amounts of their time. Conversely, the timer as it is currently does punish survivors that lead the killer on a 50+ second chase by disabling their anti-tunnel perk, even if they are being very hard-core tunnelled.
I disagree on it not deactivating on self-heal though. If you have the opportunity to heal yourself, then you're not properly tunnelled.
And, rather than it deactivating on another survivor being unhooked, it should deactivate upon another survivor getting hooked. After all, if the killer went after someone else and hooked them instead of you, the killer isn't tunnelling. This also fixes the possibility of DS-bait for unhook, which is a dirty strat for survivors.
Point 3 is fine, since it counteracts anti-DS slugging, helping the perk fulfill its proper goal. It would just deactivate when you get back up.
These changes wouldn't even put it close to where it was, since the survivor would still be unable to contribute to their team if they want to use DS. DS would -only- work if the killer refuses to interact with any other survivor.
Yeah ds is now so weak we really need old old ds back. Like its first iteration. That one was fine
I think that the cooldown for DS should pause if you are chased or downed. This way DS will stay in play until you are in a safer situation, presumably away from the killer. It would also force a lot of killers to take the stun. Although, others would probably slug to counter this, but that's ineffective for them and it is a lot easier to pick a slugged person up as a survivor, if the killer is staying nearby, compared to when they are hooked.
However, I do not think that problems like tunnelling will ever be solved so long as the devs continually rely on perks as the answer. They have implemented many perks to dissuade tunnelling and camping but none have been effective. They need a find a way to change the gameplay itself, instead of forcing survivors to waste perk slots and bring something that might not even come into play, if the killer just waits it out, and doesn't actually stop the tunnelling (since most killers will just chase you straight after you've used DS).
You cannot run around as bait for the killer forever with the proposed changes. Any survivor being unhooked deactivates the DS, even if the person with the DS was not the person who did the unhook. Even if a survivor decides to run around and be bait, they are also not helping their team do gens, they may as well be on the hook while doing that and the killer can safely ignore them and chase someone else. Once someone else has been unhooked, you know for sure it is safe to chase the survivor trying to bait you to eat DS. Of course if the survivor decides to do a generator or heal someone else, you know that you are free to chase them as well.
Also its entirely possible to self heal while being tunneled. Syringes exist as well as green medkits + healing speed addons/perks (which can heal you in 5-8 seconds, something that is totally achievable mid chase. This is especially true with Jill's new upcoming perk resurgence. After coming off the hook with resurgence, you can heal yourself with a green med kit in 4 seconds. Addons and perks can make that even shorter. So it's totally possible to do a 4 second heal and still be tunneled off the hook
You could be right about it being on hooking another survivor though, I just figured it's still kinda tunelling if you get unsafely unhooked. The unhooker is thrown on the hook instantly and then he chases you right after though, but that is also the fault of the survivor doing the unhooking for making a bad play so maybe that's fine. Also just interacting with a hook is enough to deactivate your DS (as it is now) so you can't really bait a hook with DS since the moment you touch the hook, the killer knows you have deactivated your DS.
Overall, these changes would make it really hard to accidently eat a DS, you just need to keep in mind the last unhooked person probably has DS unless you see them do something that deactivates it (gen, totem, attempted unhook, heal someone else). This person can pretty safely be ignored entirely because their DS will be deactivated by not tunneling and going for someone else.