Healing meta killing DBD
Healing meta have been since since medkit rework, but not much people payed attention and mmr wasn't a thing so it wasn't so bad, and also almost every killer release was chase oriented, so the problem went unmentioned, however after releasing boons, and specially, CoH release and mmr being a thing made this problem go skyrocket, everybody running pretty decent medkit now, that's enough to heal at least 2 times with decent speed, while coh is buffing speed while healing with medkit, it also helps after it will run out of charges.
And the recent onryo release another nail in the coffing, or more like, newspaper where tite says that DbD is getting nail in the coffin, playing as sadako "as intended" which means hit and run playstyle absolutley pointless, if hit takes less than ~8 seconds, then it doesn't worth, because time to heal as survivor with medkit and CoH buff takes such a small amount of time, so survivor can heal and get back to the gen he repaired before, small reminder, shift+w meta also applies to this problem. While legion's problem was "why heal if you will be injured anyway", now it's "why don't heal, because it won't waste much time, but even legion will take longer time to hit me than to heal", Oni also suffers from it, I've stopped played him because 1st hit is so important to him, however even after getting that hit, downing some people if there's WGLF and CoH which is really common, you can't snowball, pretty much same applies to twins, you just can't snowball. And if you are pretty experienced player, you know that you just can't beat good players, no matter, if they are solo players or swf, as long as they are not making stupid things aka mistakes, you can't win without snowballing. Also a lot of survivors started to take protection hit which is really powerfull thing.
So I have no idea how to play with such playstyle now, most likely you just can't, even against decent survivors, you can't count on hit and run playstyle. Yeah sometimes there are no medkits and CoH, then it's most likely win but I haven't played game without some of these things in a while.
There is one thing that is able to counter this thing, which is hex ruin, but less and less people are using totems now, because survivors learn about totem spawns because they need those totems for CoH, so hexes are basically useless and even more, they can harm you more because you can try to protect them with hit and run, otherwise it will be broken, which leads to repaired gens, which also leads to gen slowdown perks meta because there is no good perks that can afflict healing aspect of game.
So there is no possible counter, except playing as plague, but since dead hard exists, she is not a threat too. I am exhausted to play as killer, performing really well and then all my pressure begone because of medkits and CoH, not to mention dead hard. I've used to be killer main but every game is very stressfull if im not playing top tier killer, so now I am only doing dailies and archives as killers, and only sometime I am playing full time killer, but this is not comparable to amount of time I play as survivor now.
Conclusion or TL;DR, healing perks (CoH) and medkits are harming killer side, and also survivor side, because killer pool is smaller due to bad condition of hit and run/reliable on injury killers. Expecting survivors to stop running dead hard, coh and medkits is unrealistic and stupid, so we have to wait for some actions from the devs, but I'm not expecting BHVR to accept their mistakes with mmr and coh, so while playerbase will be decreasing further and further, we only will get BPS and shards
Comments
Which is kind of a shame, because there are 197 perks total in the game, and maybe 20 or so see regular and frequent use. Any new perk that looks fun, could go nicely with some other non-meta build, may as well not exist because it is never going to see usage. Something is definitely not right here, and it sucks.
idk, boons brought me back to the game ... also Sadako is a breath of fresh air
Agree about the speed of healing. Hit and run killers are suffering because we can’t consistently keep them injured enough to keep pressure up.
I think boons should have tokens or something like you can only set up a boon on one totem twice. I don't know if it would make much of a difference, but I think it could be helpful!
No matter how you spin it, they are balancing the game around the level of casual players which is a fundamental flaw. That combined with their "MMR" was a huge mistake they made and it shows in the player count and satisfaction/feedback from experienced players.
Circle of healing combined with the fact that some totem spawns are absolutely horrendous to get to, being able to infinitely reboon those totems and have multiple boons up at the same time is a disaster. If you think having the ability to constantly heal slows down gens, you're just wrong and probably don't play the game at anything resembling average and above average gameplay. Not every killer has the ability to down survivors fast like Nurse and Blight to be able to stay competitive. O wait, Nurse has the lowest kill rate, my bad.
Probably we have to go punishment way I guess, those two secondary objectives are almost akin to win button, aka main objective.
Like, if side objective give you advantage which makes generators more efficient, what's the point of it? it's basically main objective with different skin.
The issue is not a healing meta.
Healing metas can be great for killers because perks like Sloppy Butcher and Nurse's Calling can really shine in stalling the match out and giving the kille great opportunities.
The issue is that healing in the current healing meta has no downside.
Circle of Healing essentially buys you time for every use in comparision to Self-Caring or getting someone else to heal you normally. The pace at which survivors can heal and reset the whole match mean effects like mangled are redundant because you can't even bring healing speed close to base speed even with debuffs. Even Nurse's Calling has pretty poor efficiency against it because Shadow Step is a decently common pairing alongside CoH.
The issue is not healing. The issue is the addition of unbalanced perks with no reasonable counterplay, and the bullheaded inability to admit a mistake and give the perk the nerfs it desperately needs.
I would disagree.
The real problem is that gen sentinel killers without chasing potential cannot make a hit and run approach, and are forced to take really bad extended chases. One strategy that should be viable for them is go to a gen being done, hit the surv doing it, kick the gen, extend chase to force a pallet, break it, repeat the process on another gen. That way the killer would be creating an influence area around a few selected gens, depleting resources around, and the survs would need to make decisions and sacrifices to finish them. In case gens or healing are too fast, the first gen will be finished before the killer returns from the second gen in the strategy. There would be a perk combo that would make a killer safely do that strategy in two gens and have enough time to return to the first gen. I have one optimal test for this case: a Wraith with Pop, Call of Brine, Save The Best for Last, Brutal Strength, "All Seeing" - Spirit, and "Shadow Dance" - Blood. Notice that this build has optimal gen surveilance (the killer can see the gen progression through aura, and is notified about returning survs after kicking by Call of Brine) and regression (200% from Call of Brine). Even with this build, the Wraith will have a bad time if cannot hook in a single chase to get Pop if the survs have medkits and CoH. In current game state, the Wraith will probably have a very stressful game against decent suvs, running between two gens until one of them is eventually finished, and the others will probably have significant progression at that time. The Wraith probably will have just one or two hooks when that occurs. Surprises me that even with the killer knowing exactly the gens being worked, they cannot focus on what it is intended to do: protect gens.