All this time later, and I'm still tilted over the Thana nerf
I'm surprised myself, honestly. Thana was never a perk I used very often. The few times I did, it was a comfort perk. There was just something that made me feel good knowing that every injury helped me, even if slightly. I thought that after all this time, I'd get over it.
But as time went on, it still bothers me. I get lobbies with 4 medkits + CoH + God knows what else, and I keep thinking, "and they still nerfed Thana?"
I think what ultimately makes it stick with me is two things.
1) The devs broke their rule of "letting things sit" and instead nerfed Thana after a week.
Now, Thana got a needless buff. I get it. I don't know what they were thinking. Buffing it directly and indirectly in the same patch while nerfing other slowdowns? Yeah, that led to predictable results. Honestly, I advocated for lowering the max percentage down to 16%, the same as the current Gift of Pain. I still do, in fact.
But no, it didn't get that simple tweak. It was just taken out back and shot. Back when Thana's max was 16%, 2 injuries gave you 8% slowdown. Not amazing, but hey, it's something. Now, the same would give you 4% slowdown. That's just... insulting. I'd rather use Dying Light and that's saying a lot.
2) The nerf missed the point.
I get it. Thana Legion. I used it. I versed it. I know how painful it was/could be.
Thana has always been common on Legion because they are capable of injuring multiple survivors in a short amount of time. It punished survivors that didn't heal, but since most stick to the "never heal" strat against Legion, it was more or less a lose-lose for the survivors.
That said, Thana was buffed repeatedly because it was never used on anyone else. Plague, maybe, but I'd argue that's a terrible choice for her. Besides Legion, no one could get value out of it, and Legion got too much value.
So what do you need to do with the new Thana? Have everyone injured at once!
What? That's literally only feasible on the killer Thana was a problem perk on. It's the same as if Starstruck was nerfed to last 10 seconds, but would refresh its duration after a down or something. Congrats! Now it's only good for Nurse, the killer people complained about! It makes no sense!
It angers me because it makes so little sense, was nerfed so quickly, and then quietly brushed to the side like it never happened.
And before you say it, yes, gens are boring. At least the killer has to work for an injury and keep you injured. Is having a killer using CoB/Overcharge/Deadlock, perks you can do nothing about and requires no interaction with the killer, much better?
Comments
I completely agree.
They could've gone for something interesting. Max of 20% slowdown? First injure slows down by 10%, then 5% for the second injure, 3% for the third and 2% for the fourth. Max of 16%? 8% into 4% into 2% into 2%.
They could have done anything else to make the perk more interesting while making it more viable on killers who don't get much Thana value and making the killers who can get max Thana value benefit less, thus making it a much more equal perk overall and therefore more likely to be used in games.
No, instead they nerfed it on every killer except the 2 it was actually becoming problematic on.
It blows my mind.
I personally stand by this idea.
When a survivor is injured/hooked/etc: All survivors get a 4% penalty
This penalty is increased by 3% for every injured survivor
So it'd go like this: 0, 7, 10, 13, and 16%.
It's max potential is reduced but its minimum potential is increased, lowering its oppressiveness on Legion but increasing its viability on the rest of the cast.
Agreed. The first buff was stupid, and the second nerf was way overblown. It just needed to be nerfed slightly to about 4% per survivor instead of 5%. A total of 16% slowdown would be perfectly fine. It was already self limiting like the new Ruin is, by the fact that each dead survivor reduces the max by 4%.
Now, Thanatophobia is useless on everyone except Plague with a Corrupt Purge build (purely to force survivors to cleanse) and Legion with the add on that inflicts Broken, and even then, it becomes useless after the first survivor is eliminated.
Wanna know something? I did the math.
Thana at 22%, assuming no one touched a gen until everyone was injured and never healed, gave the killer about 127 seconds of slowdown. Not bad.
What does Deadlock do by existing? It procs 4 times, each being 30, so 120 seconds... by existing.
The more I learn, the more it irks me.
Because people complain about any killer strategy, even ones in which spreading damage is key. Hit-and-run slowdown gave every survivor about the same chance, getting hit once and then either needing to heal or do a 1-health state chase later. All you needed to do to counter Thana was have 1-2 people heal and the rest stay injured. Even ~20% slowdown isn't that noticable. The killer paired it with Pentimento? Cool, so then you break the totems. Maps, Small Game, and Counterforce are in the game for a reason, especially if you can't even remember totem spots. Or don't break hexes and avoid the whole thing.
Those types of builds gave the killer and survivors risk, multiple objectives, decisions, everything everyone's been asking for. But apparently everyone's belief was that the killer would always camp and tunnel, yet also get max value out of hit-and-run perks? Folly. Ever since Thana was destroyed, surprise surprise, more camping and tunneling, because you took away a playstyle that was about spreading the damage. Who could have seen it coming?
The problem was that people were comparing old Thana, with 80s gens and 20% slowdown, to new 90s gens with 22% slowdown. On their own either the gen time or the thana buff were less than negligible, but together it produced numbers that were just big enough to induce a psychological effect that this was far too oppressive. If survivors weren't already reeling from- and adapting to the 90s gen times, it probably wouldn't have been an issue. As we now know, with the 90s gens having settled into the game, gens are still going too fast. 50 extra seconds isn't that much of a difference against any kind of repair speed perks or toolboxes, and the biggest factor isn't the flat repair speed, it's the lack of secondary objectives and being able to pressure survivors. Simply increasing gen times does nothing, it's still possible for a well coordinated team to knock them out in no time, while uncoordinated solos struggle, and it just makes repairing the gens more boring.
Deadlock isn't quite the same thing though. A flat 22% slowdown is a flat 22% slowdown, you know what you're getting. Deadlocks conditions mean it's very hit or miss, you only need survivors working on either more than two gens at a time, or exactly one gen at a time, and there's a possibility it does almost nothing. I know there was one example from Otz, where two gens still popped in quick succession, because they had three going at once, and there were two Deadlocked gens at the same time, and all gens were still completed in record time. The only Deadlock that had an impact was the last one, so it gained him 30s of slowdown.
I want to sit whoever did the nerf down and ask them, slowly, how they thought the nerf would fix the "only viable on Legion and Plague and way too annoying on them" problem.
Because they were mentioned by name when the perk got this nerf. They were specifically outed as to why this perk was getting changed.
And then they did this. 2+2=βƌℓƌηᘓ⋲
This is true and a fair point.
I suppose I was trying to show both in an ideal scenario while making note of the effort required to achieve it. Thana requires mass injury and maintaining them. Deadlock requires you to do nothing. It just happens.
I don't get it either. It boggles my mind and keeps bothering me, despite knowing I should long since be over this.
For that two weeks or so when Thana was untouched after the patch, it was the most frustrating time playing dbd. Not because of just Thana, but every killer running quad slowdown every single game. Thana was everywhere suddenly, and that was the problem.
Thana+pentimento had gen times at roughly 165 seconds. One Jolt on that gen removed 25 seconds of progress. It was stupid. And anyone advocating to revert this perk absolutely didn't touch a gen playing survivor during that time.
The Thana change is one of the few times the devs have actually reworked something to where killers might possibly have to reconsider tunneling someone out of the game as fast as possible. Because one less survivor basically means your perk stops working. We absolutely need more changes like this, not less.
they should just make it slow healing too
Really? Because for over a month, my games were ruined by rampant disconnects. Heck, people are still very DC happy, so much so that when the penalties were off due to crashing, it was so bad they had to turn them back on.
Your description of quad slowdown is just... the present? That's always been a thing. And if there's Pentimento, someone did a totem. Go cleanse it again.
Look like you still have not gotten past the loss of the perk. Deadlock is pretty good. Its major issue is that survivor can counter the perk by co-op generators. If the survivor is not near generator that is blocked, then the perk has no value. an empty generator that is blocked is the same as a generator that is not being worked on. thana was pretty decent perk at 5.5%. it's gone now though. I hope you get over it.
its called cleansing the pentimento totem.
I know! I really need to get over it but I can't. It drives me crazy! It's a borderline obsession with me, despite knowing the irrationality.
Yeah, this trend of making perks useless just to remove them from the meta is pretty worrying.
They shouldn't have buffed it in the first place, and if they wanted to buff it, they should've just added it effecting heal speeds back.
They should add the slower healing at this point
Cause how many perks slow healing... 2 that I can think of off the top of my head
Also Gift Of Pain only applies once that Survivor heals... and goes away once that Survivor is injured again
And how many perks speed up healing... a lot (can't think of the number... LOL) that I can think of off the top of my head
Also Resilience speeds up healing and repairing... it boggles my mind by this point
How do you think survivors feel. We lost spine chill. SPINE. CHILL. The only unjustifiable nerf in my opinion, I disagreed with all of them but at least the rest had decent excuses like dead hard, spine chill had no decent excuse and was completely unjustifiable...
This is how the disparities occur, I think. Like, change 1 will be a buff to bring a power or something up to par. Then in a bugfix patch, change 2 will be a nerf made to addons or cooldowns to balance for the buffs of change 1. Then later, they will decide that change 1 was too much, and weaken it, but they won't buff change 2 as well. Over time these things build up and turn into imbalances and end up requiring patches like 6.1.0.
Like in the case of thana, as @VideoGameMage said, bringing the heal speed reduction back would have been a good buff. Heal speeds were very different when they removed the debuff from Thana, but now they're more than fast enough for a debuff to be ok on a perk.
This is beside the point, but somewhat related, I wish nurse's calling detected people recovering from madness again, now that it only takes a few seconds, and can be done in spurts without losing progress.