I had a killer game without any DH or COH, and it reminded me how fun DBD can be.
I only play Bubba and Wraith, and on average 3 out of every 4 bring dead hard (and probably 75% of games have a COH too). Occasionally there is a 2 DH game, or 4 DH, but anything out of that range is rare.
Today, as Wraith, I had the most wonderful experience. I managed to catch someone out in the open and hit them immediately. They ran to a pallet, and misplayed it. My thought was "Wow! They have to waste DH really early in the chase". So I lunged at them, and...hit him?? Wow. Someone was down, and only one gen was done. What luck to get the one non-DHer as the first chase!
Since only one gen was done, I thought it was worth it to actually find a second person. I did, and...no DH again??? I hooked and tried to find a third victim.
That's how the entire game went. I ended up with a 10 hook, 2K game (misplayed the ending and let the third guy escape). But afterward, I was...happy? With a 2K? Yep. I had fun in chases, and occasionally even ran into survivors that were injured more than 10 seconds after I last saw them! Everyone said "gg" in end chat, and meant it. I even apologized for running Corrupt/PR/DMS/NOED (genuinely felt bad about it).
My normal Wraith game is 3 health states on the first chase, which means 3 gens pop. Then I tunnel that guy to ensure I will get one pathetic kill (since everyone else has 3 health states too). If lucky, my NOED is still up and maybe I get a second. I (and the survivors) end the game angry, and stressed, and taunting each other about our respective BS perks.
This rare experience was how MOST of my games went before the "improved" DH and COH. Until I got a game completely free of those perks, I had forgotten how fun DBD can be. The greatest puzzlement I have about this game is how the devs can't see that two perks and two perks alone - DH and COH - have driven down player numbers and materially degraded everyone's (even survivors') experience.
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Yeah I've said it a few times but Dead Hard is as much if not more a massive frustration then a balance issue and why rather then nerfing it that they just change what it does entirely. In what game as a predator/killer do you not attack a guy in point blank range? Like seriously. Never mind all the other ways to use it which have no counterplay at all.
For what's its worth though the NoED example you give is also why I dislike that perk. Both are stupid for the same reason. They cheat health states in an instant. NoED has more conditions attached but still... I'd much rather let them run away. I will never use Dead Hard or NoED in their current states.
What a day to be alive - I'm jealous :D
Yeah its really fun to not have to worry about dh
I started running blood echo as legion, its so fun to be actually able to lunge attack instead of sniffing the butt of survivors for 5 seconds
I had a match vs 4 Meg in Crow map as no Gen slow down Trapper, they had 1 HD and 1 Sprintburst.
I didnt tunnel,camp, not even able to use my power on that map. Yet I managed to have 6 hooks with 1K.
Kill doesnt matter, but 6 hooks is impressive for no power Trapper without Gen slowdown. That match was much more fun than I expect how its going to be before playing.
That sounds weird. Are you sure you played DBD?
I think you’re over estimating how many survivors have Circle of Healing in their loadouts. The dev stats they released a month or two ago show only 10-16% of survivors have it in their loadouts (it’s the dark green band in the chart below.
It’s still relatively speaking a popular perk, of course, but it’s unusual for multiple people to run Circle of Healing in the same match let alone it be used by 3/4 of survivor players. At 16% of loadouts though it would appear in roughly 1/2 the matches since about 1/8 survivors use it.
Dead Hard is a totally different story obviously, it’s far and away the most used survivor perk in up to 75% of loadouts among high skill survivors. So that one you literally do see almost every match and often on multiple survivors.
His statement isn't significantly off. He said 75% of games have COH too, not 75% of survivors run it. In most SWF mixes at least one person brings COH. This lines up fairly closely with the 16%.
I still think CoH is perfectly fine now, especially comppared with the current meta. It's strong, but not op anymore. DH is arguably stronger now.
Medkits are the big issue in my opinion, when it comes to healing. Those can still cut healing time in half, and without any setup.
Fair enough if he meant most matches versus most survivors.
COH definitely feels fine now, but most killers, myself included, do not like the playstyle it inspires and that issue still exists. If I hear the boon sound go off, I know I can't hit and run, or divide and conquer. I lose a lot of interaction with the other survivors because now I'm playing 1 v 1 for each hook state instead of 1 v 4.
I don't think it's a leap to say most killers would like to be able to get into more chases, and create pressure through more interactive playstyles.
You only need one person to bring Circle of Healing in a SWF, that's one reason why it's usage rate is going to be significantly lower compared to something like Dead Hard or Decisive Strike.
To reference the OP, great post, and I agree with you how fun the game can be. Dead Hard is just disgustingly overpowered considering how fast the game goes. When killer mains like myself complain about the current state of the game, it's not that we want easy 4Ks or people not to be able to play with your friends. What we want is to be able to play a long, fun, challenging chase that doesn't automatically lose you the game because the gens are extremely fast or the survivor had Dead Hard to extend the chase 30+ more seconds that gets used multiple times every game.
I play in a SWF Duo, and neither of us run Dead Hard or CoH. I can't count how many matches we play on average, but we typically play for about 4 - 5 hours with matches lasting between 5 and 15 minutes on average, with the longest ones being against Legion.
Roughly 70% of our matches have at least one dead hard. Only around 5% of them have CoH. Typically, we'll see two near-identical loadouts that consist of the following perks every third match: Iron Will, Self-Care or BT, Exhaustion Perk, DS.
the good old days. (no worries about kicking a extra objective and no fear to fail an attack if you are close enough to the survivor)😪
You know that one per team is enough, right?
I don't think CoH is as bad as it used to be tho. I might still be playing actively if they released it like this and not waited 5 months to change it.
I mostly play solo queue survivor and I only really ever see CoH when a default Mikalea appears in my lobby. From time-to-time I see an experienced survivor bring it alongside their meta-perks (DH, DS etc), but generally speaking, I'd say it's like 1 (maybe 2) out of every 10 games maximum.
Also, I used to love CoH and used to use it in my build sometimes. However, I think killers underestimate how it can actually help them. The number of times I've been on hook and can see the auras of survivors running right to the other side of the map just to heal up and get hit again a second later. The time survivior's spend running into the CoH radius and self-healing is precious time not on gens/doing anything productive. Also, when it's used in matches against killers where you're likely to be injured for most of the game (Legion, Plague) it's virtually redundant. It's clearly not a meta perk and you can see that in how much it's used.
I never said it wasn't. I was correcting the original poster saying that "75% of survivors run the perk" which isn't true.
Most likely old data (his experience), but before nerfs I would say it was like that.
I don't know how many players keep using it. I have stopped spamming it with my SWF group even before nerf, but for different reason.
The dev stats on how many people use it as of about a month ago are in the reply above. It’s around 10-12% of survivors depending on the MMR bracket (never more than 12%) So about 1/8, which means every other match or so one of the four people has it.
Well, that is after nerfs so it seems right, isn't it?
I wonder what % after like 2-3 months after release. It didn't get any nerf and people learned how good it is.
I don't think it got over 30% just because there is no point in stacking it more than 2 per team, but it was rare at least for me to see a game without CoH. That perk was just easy mode imo.