Dead Hard Shower Thoughts
I'm getting close to 2000 hours in this game and I think it's fair to say I've played a fair bit. I've got half of my killer roster P3'd,I've played lots of them,even perkless as a challenge and I have almost every survivor perk unlocked.
Over the span of my playtime,I as many other players who ever booted up the Killer role in this game,have experienced immense frustration versing Dead Hard. However. I do not hold the opinion most players do about it.
Let me elaborate.
How Does Dead Hard Function?
Now,I'm sure most of you,dear readers understand the basics. Press the E button on your keyboard,drop the pallet,teabag the killer,yada yada. However I wanted to go a bit more in depth on the technical side of things.
EXHAUSTED ON THE GROUND
Prior to this patch, Dead Hard didn't always function. Why? Well,for you to actually dodge a hit,there were a few factors at play. You had to have a good connection to the server and The Killer had to,as well. If your Dead Hard didn't reach their client in time,you would go down. (Dead By Daylight in general calculates an immense,immense amount of things clientside,which leads to cheaters being able to abuse this game to insane levels.) With the introduction of so called Hit Validation,a different situation happens.
METTLE OF MAN, SERVER-CLIENT MODEL ISSUES EDITION.
When The Survivor activates Dead Hard,they tell the server they activated it,as before. However. If previously when The Killer didnt receive the Dead Hard notice from the server in time,you just went down,now AFTER The Killer's client already assumes The Survivor went down, the server checks when did The Killer swing and when did The Survivor used Dead Hard and rejects the hit. Now rejecting the hit is bad for a few reasons. While yes,it does,in fact,have the same cooldown as a missed swing,there are issues. Since The Killer's client actually thinks a successful attack happened,you will end your Lethal Rush/Chainsaw Sprint/Lunge/Shred instead of going past the survivor or lunging at them until the i-frames end if your lunging attack duration allows for it.
This screws over not only Killers,however. Survivors often now cannot Dead Hard past the killer and send them swinging into a hole,for example,when a hit is rejected. The Killer's client thought the hit would happen,so they stay in place,instead of continuing their lunge.
COMPARED TO OTHER EXHAUSTION PERKS
Now here's the the unpopular opinion part. I think,every other exhaustion perk,sucks at least feel wise and sometimes mechanically.
Sprint Burst
I really don't like using this perk. You're forced to walk extremely slowly to not immediately waste it. 99'ing it helps occasionally,but being forced to slowly walk around feels really dissatisfying.
Lithe
This one is probably the least terrible of the bunch. You vault a window and you go ZOOM. There are some fun combos and this usually can work out well. However,if your window has the SLIGHTEST dropdown,be ready to waste half of your speed boost falling and getting staggered.
Balanced Landing
You silently drop and instantly start sprinting with no stagger. Sounds great! Wish you could reliably use it. I remember something about the terrain supposedly not being flat is something BHVR was looking into in Year 5. What did we get again? Ah,yes,The Artist map had a small hole. Unreliable and incentivizes map offerings.
Smash Hit
Lol.
Head On
Now this one. It's really only an exhaustion perk because it would be too powerful paired with exhaustion perks. However,it isn't that strong by itself and is pretty much a goofy meme perk. I like it though.
Overcome
Mindnumbingly boring. Literally hold W harder,which is THE boring part of the game.
The difference in chases
Ultimately every exhaustion perk besides Dead Hard (and Head On) pretty much just incentivizes you to just gain a ton of distance and hold W. Which is not fun,at all,for anybody. However. Dead Hard is the one singular powerful perk that incentivizes you to play ballsy,greed that pallet just one more time and do insanely risky plays that can pay off. This,in my opinion,as powerful and sometimes frustrating Dead Hard can be makes it a thousand times more fun than other exhaustion perk. There is a problem though. However I don't think the problem is it's fundamental design.
The Real Problem (In My Opinion)
The Server Model currently employed by Behavior for the game is really,quite bad. It allows for cheaters to hold people hostage and creates problems in any close-call situation. Now. In my opinion,if Dead Hard's netcode variable was "fixed',it would not be nearly as frustrating to play against. You could lunge at it as blight and actually get the survivor. You could not have your chainsaw sprint not be ended by it and actually get the survivor on the edge of the i-frames. You wouldn't actually,physically get robbed of the hit your client thought happened.
I would barely complain about Dead Hard if it didn't do this. It's extremely fun to use and to even verse,sometimes as it actually incentivizes the survivor not to press that W key on their keyboard but to hug that loop tightly and not leave you to just wait until you catch up at them running to the other side of the map.
You're absolutely entitled to disagree with this post,but this is my opinion. I just wish this perk wasn't hindered by the terrible networking and I also wish the other exhaustion perks weren't so mindnumbingly boring.
Comments
You have some really long showers, maybe next time you have one, you should think of the counterplay instead of how annoyed you are by it?
I really dont mind the perk that much,it's a videogame. This whole post details my opinion that the networking side of the perk is creating the most frustration at the moment,not me detailing how mad I am over a videogame perk,lmao.
I just dont like the fact that i can outplay a Survivor and they just press E to get to a Pallet and throw it on my Face.
Its frustrating. And in my Opinion unfair for the Killer.
They should just take away the i-frames. That way, if a survivor gets cornered, they can't do silly stuff like DH through you to escape, or get a second chance even though you were already 90% through the attack animation before they hit E.
I get that,yeah. I really think it would be a lot less frustrating if it didn't have all the netcode issues,though. I find that the times when DH is most frustrating is whenever the networking janks me out of a hit.
Hm,I've seen a lot of sentiment that you should do the opposite and remove the distance,not the i-frames.
Agreed, the distance is the most annoying part. I have no problems with the invincibility, if I fall for deadhard and I didn't wait it out, that's my fault. If someone dead hards to a pallet and I physically cannot do anything to stop it, then that's when I have a problem.
They just need to rework the perk full stop. Removing the I-frames or the distance does virtually nothing as the ability to just get to a window or pallet with no downside or punishment for misplays will remain and it will stay a second chance perk.
The issue is the distance, not the i-frame. The i-frame has counter play, the distance does not.
You just greed every single loop no matter what, if the killer respects you get more free loops, if he doesn't respect and calls your bluff you just press E and win anyway making it to the pallet or window in time. It's win/win.
On a side note. The other Exhaustion perks may look worse in comparison to DH but if you compare them to the rest of the perks in the game they are still S tier. Meaning if DH hypothetically didn't exist you'd see those other "worse" Exhaustion perks on every single survivor. I'd go even as far as to say that if the only Exhaustion perk that existed period was Smash Hit you see that on every.single.survivor..and people consider that the meme Exhaustion perk... This is to kind of illustrate how over tuned Exhaustion perks are in general, even if DH is the worst offender.