Are Slowdown Perk Builds Needed Anymore?
Before this update, you generally needed 1-2 gen slowdown perks to ease things on the killer side. Of course, it was definitely possible to win without gen slowdown perks, but it required the killer to play near perfect in most matches and for survivors to make more mistakes than the killer did assuming everyone was around the same skill level and were adequately doing their objectives.
However now, the base-kit changes seem to have created enough wiggle room for perk build experimentation. Since the launch of the update, I have used different builds more frequently than I ever had before such as aura tracking builds, chase builds, anti-healing builds, scourge hook builds, entire hex builds, utility perk builds just for the heck of it and it seemed no more stressful than having 1-2 slowdown perks before this patch. Survivors, too, could still get far in their objective progress when using these builds and all depended on which side was causing the most pressure from their objectives. All in all, it has all been very fun and not stressful.
The question is though that does having 1-2, or even 4, slowdown perks in a killer build cause too much pressure on the survivor side? For most of the slowdown perks, they usually do not activate unless the survivor is injured or hooked, but once this happens a snowball effect of pressure could usually occur before this patch. However, I'm not really sure if slowdown builds are even as effective as using other perks now. This is because most of the slowdown perks were nerfed in some way that kind of inconveniences the killer unless they synergize well with that perk. For instance, Ruin does not help anymore as the regress is so slow, Call of Brine or Overcharge require you to kick the gen but the effect stops if a survivor touches the gen, Corrupt will not do much for killers that get downs quick, Pop barely does much unless the gen is already at a high progress bar, Pain Res does not give you information on if the perk worked unless you pair it with Surveillance (is Surveillance still bugged or was that fixed?), etc.
As I stated, some killers of course synergize well with some slowdown perks such as Legion/Plague with Thana, Trapper/Hag with Corrupt, and Freddy with really any gen regress perk. But most of them still have counterplay to their power and can be avoided (most common method is spreading out and doing individual gens).
Comments
Currently, stacking slow down perk is not that influential anymore as you are not in arm race with suvivors on reparing gens. There is a feel of diminishing return when you stack more than 2 slow down perk.
Info perks and utility give you more value now. This is based on my opinion
you didn't need quad slowdown to win before, and you most certainly do not need quad slowdown now
Why is most people still using 4 slowdowns then? even more now that BBQ is not needed for BP anymore.
On Demogorgon, the only slowdown Perk I use is Deadlock.
The rest of my Perks are Lethal Pursuer, I'm All Ears and whatever I'm feeling at the time, tried STBFL but I still don't see a reason to use it
I don't know, i'm not those people, i can't speak for them
Depends. I imagine they are rather good on m1 killers. I'm only running PR as slowdown atm though and every game has been more than manageable. To the point im considering replacing it with a 4th aura reading perk.
Also Lethal Pursuer is more addicting than crack now.
Because they are arguably still the best options. At least certain slowdown perks.
The devs will hopefully monitor this and keep nerfing certain slowdown perks a bit if they notice that they are being used too much. I still think that Eruption, Thana, and perhaps Dead Man's Switch will need some slight adjustments. I don't even care if they buff baseline slowdown another time to further nerf slowdown perks properly, but it surely would be nice to have a more varied meta than just slowdown perks.
This game is essentially a race between killer and survivors. As long as the slow down is impactful will be meta regardless of how much generator speeds are set to because slow down will make the game easier for killer.
I think that good killers will move away from slow down because other perks will make the games faster and more games means more blood points.
Either way though, it's pretty bleak for survivor. Bad killers will win with slow down and good killers will win incredibly quickly with chase perks.
New meta is stacking 4 slowdowns for easy wins.
I believe they buffed the chase mechanics and gen timers and nerfed Survivor chase perks in hopes of people focusing more on chasing since the main narrative was always "I need to camp and use gen regression because chases last too long and gens go too fast so its the only way" and BHVR bought it and complied.
Thing is, now that the Survivors dont really have any kind of tool to avoid the Killer and the Killers dont need any kind of tool to help them with chases there is no reason to not pack up slowdown to the max, why wouldnt I use Overcharge, Brine, Eruption and PGTW? I dont need chase perks because now they are a cakewalk and I dont need detection either for gens act as beacons for Survivors, may aswell put every slowdown I can since those always give value.
I suppose now the narrative will shift to "No no, I dont use any of that, I use [Insert averageish perks]" while in truth in 2 hours of Survivor today at morning I saw just one person who wasnt using any slowdown at all and very few with only 1.