6.1.0 One Week In
TLDR: Killer Stonks, Survivor a smidge away from being fun.
So here are all the impacts I've seen since the patch dropped:
Solo survivor:
At first it was very difficult to escape, I was escaping ~25% of my matches (die twice, escape, die three times, escape...). However, this week it's already trending back to 50% and I have the best survivor teammates I've had in a long time.
Back when MMR went live (many months ago), I ended up with the most selfish teammates I had ever seen in DbD. I play altruistically, my favorite thing to do on survivor is pull off a dangerous late-game save. But back, all of the sudden, I had teammates who were unaware to these efforts. They only had eye for their gameplay, their escape. All of the sudden body blocks that would get reciprocated were no longer reciprocated. They were good gamers, but they all lacked game sense. And I was miserable. I took a break from the game (until January 2022) at that point to hopefully let MMR 'recalibrate'.
Things didn't improve until the recent MMR tweaks. However, after skidding MMR with all other survivors in patch 6.1.0, I now am again getting altruistic teammates who understand the meta-game. I broke up a tunneled Feng and ended up on the hook to struggle phase as our two other solos slammed gens. (This might sound scary, but read on). The Feng later returned the favor and broke it up when I was getting tunneled, the Kate who chose a gen over me earlier did the same thing in the end game, and the Meg who didn't get chased all game was already slamming the 5th gen. It ended up being two survivors out at the end. It could have easily been a 4K if my team had been unaware/careless to the fact I had already hit struggle phase.
This has continued in my other solo queue matches and my escape rate is starting to return to 50%. Nothing is perfect of course, I still get selfish teammates here and there, some killers still face camp, c'est la vie. But this is an improvement in general teammate quality.
SWF:
It is harder than before the patch, but still manageable. For some reason I see more campers when I'm in a SWF, I guess it depends on my friends' combined MMR.
Survivor overall:
I think the Dead Hard changes are really good for the game. But there are moments where if you weren't postured to be chased by the killer, you're just not making it to a maze tile after being hit once. Sure, this would happen before, but it was less likely. It's really putting a lot of pressure on survivors to play near perfect. I still think reverting the survivor hit speed boost to 2 seconds and removing bloodlust will put both sides in a healthier spot.
Killer:
Killer is stonks. I still think all the killer changes are healthy for the game long term, some perks may need to be looked at. Call of Brine has a 100% win rate in the matches I've been tracking (win: 3K+, used in 7/41 matches), that's a little ridiculous. I'm still on a win streak with killer (I haven't had more than 1 escape since the patched dropped) But overall killer is in a good spot long term.
Big Picture:
I still believe survivor only needs some small tweaks to be fun again. Revert on-hit speed boost to 2 seconds, remove bloodlust, and add in obsession-like tentacles to the other three survivors in the HUD (to bridge the gap between solo and SWF).
My early impressions have been more or less confirmed one week in.
Comments
The Survivors I'm getting have been getting better and better, I've had to sacrifice Dark Devotion for another Generator slowdown Perk (from 2 to 1 and now back to 2) if I want to win before the Generators are finished. If I don't, I'd continue rocking Deadlock on its own for mid-game slowdown and No Way Out for end-game.
Here's a quick prediction on my part about the meta:
Survivors will start running Prove Thyself consistently, which will result in a higher pick rate for Discordance, especially on Killers that don't have good Aura-reading Add-Ons, at which point I'd swap Discordance with Lethal Pursuer
I think you're onto something DemoPlayer xD
I've already started running Prove Thyself a lot.
My experience is getting better as survivor, slowly less and less people are giving up and actually playing and iv been doing really well. Even if I die multiple others tend to escape.
Biggest issues for me is tunneling, its sucks but I get why it's a thing. We need to reward those who dont and punish those who do (double incentives)
I cant say the games in a worse spot, still win more games than I lose as survivor and I dont really play killer since SBMM but it's nice having slightly longer games which needing to use x perks