Why I think Dead Hard needs a nerf again.
I'll preface the whole thing by saying I have about 6.5k hours in the game. Most of those hours have been on killer, most of those hours have been on the Hillbilly. I play on NA West servers at nighttime, which is referred to as the "demon hours" or "juicer-hours".
For those unfamiliar, it's when all the sweaty SWFs, God-tier solo-queue survivors and literal comp teams get on to destroy late-night killers. I have a few problems with Dead Hard. Firstly, I will address: yes, Dead Hard was nerfed for bad/average players. The people who used E for distance promptly dropped this perk and picked up something that was easier to get value out of. But for those who always used DH for the ability to dodge attacks, this perk HASN'T changed.
Some of the issues I have with the perk are: the passive deterrence it grants, the fact it's now the obvious choice for an exhaustion perk again, the immense value one-usage of Dead Hard can grant, and the fact it is ping-reliant. When I know a player has Dead Hard, I now have to play around it when it comes to pallets/windows. This means this survivor now gets even more time before I can lunge at them when they are looping structures. The standard lunge-distance is effectively shortened against anyone who is using DH. This is a passive deterrence that the existence of DH has on the game.
Having Dead Hard will indefinitely grant you maybe an extra half second or so around EVERY pallet or window. This effect is exaggerated if the survivor is using resilience or doesn't have an item (watching an item disappear when a survivor commits to a vault is how you can be certain to swing at a survivor and avoid their DH.)
If a survivor is looping a pallet, they are able to, rather easily, time their DH effectively enough to where you either hit their DH, and they get to run off to the next tile. Or if you don't swing, they get to pallet stun you. In these situations, survivors can be exceptionally greedy with little repercussions. They can choose to pretend to drop the pallet, and you respect it, now they get even more distance for perhaps another loop. Or they do a spin, run right at you, but you wait it out, and then they do it once more, but this time they actually use their DH. Either way, this enables the survivor to get an extra couple loops out of a strong pallet.
It is also now the obvious choice perk all over again. DbD has tons of perks where the option is "I can bring this off meta, kind of niche perk that could be super handy, or I could bring the safe perk that always gets value." Because Dead Hard is the best exhaustion in the game, the other exhaustion perks don't matter. Kind of like how Deadlock is a fine slowdown all on its own, but doesn't compare to eruption/brine combo.
When I go up against the God-squad Seal Team SWF who I know is here to ruin my night, do gens in 5 minutes and leave, you bet your ass 3 out of 4 -- if not all 4 -- of those survivors going to be bringing Dead Hard. I don't mean guys with 1.5k hours, I mean literal 3-6k hour survivor-mains who are deadly with Dead Hard. Those guys will very likely get value at least once -- if not multiple times -- every game.
As a killer, there are few things more miserable than when EVERY survivor in a match is running DH. I will pull off some crazy-bump logic on Blight that took my hundreds of hours to master. I'll line up everything beautifully and the survivor presses E and it doesn't matter that I landed a frame-perfect hit on them. Or if I managed to land a sick chainsaw curve on a survivor, they'll just tank it and keep running while I sit there fatigued.
Another issue is that some killers Dead Hard will work nearly all the time on, because their attacks are predictable. Plague's red vomit, Trickster's knives, Huntresses' hatchets, Blight's rushes, Nurses blinks, Oni's kanabo, etc. This is honestly one of the biggest issues with the game I can think of right now. As a killer, the meta of the game encourages you to whiff attacks on survivors. As Blight, I have to rush past them the first time, to bait out their DH. As Oni, I have to glide off of them, stop, turn around and slam, as plague I have to fake a puke. The list goes on. Dead Hard encourages killers to not use their power. If you're thinking about Legion/Slinger, okay. There are two killers in this game -- 3 if you include Pinhead with Original Pain -- who can completely ignore Dead Hard. That's 3 killers out of 30.
And now let's get into the biggest issue: dead hard is now even stronger than before when activated. Old Dead Hard got consistent value. New Dead Hard gets less consistent value, but when activated is FAR more useful than any other exhaustion perk in the game. One usage of Dead Hard easily outweighs whatever 3 Lithes, Sprint Bursts or Balanced landings might buy you. The killer is now forced to sit through a weapon-hit animation, slowed down movement, while the survivor gets an maneuverable boost of speed in ANY direction they'd like, not just one straight line like old DH.
If I could pick any one perk on the survivor-side I'd like to see get re-worked, I would pick Dead Hard again. I hate Hyperfocus /stakeout as much as the next killer-main. And those do need to be addressed, but DH is still the best exhaustion perk in the game. I'd definitely take an eruption nerf in trade for a DH nerf.
Ping is also an issue with Dead Hard. If you have high ping, or the killer has high ping, your perk is now useless. That's not a good design and it rewards those who have low ping -- something the game already does naturally with vaults. The argument that "Well, I suck with it anyway. I can never get it to activate." is not useful to the conversation. I'm bad at Nurse, she still got nerfed.
What's my solution? No more third health stage. DbD has come a long way in the last 6 years and the community has gotten good enough where having a third health-stage on command is too much. It's not viable, it doesn't need to be in the game. People have had 6 years to master this game, they have THOUSANDS of hours invested in it. If you set a new level of mastery for them, they will reach it eventually. Ex. Nurse.
I have some ideas on possible rework ideas, but I know they'd not be a compelling alternative to how strong Dead Hard already is, and it would just anger those reading, so I'll leave them out of this post. I've heard a common complaint that feels necessary with new STBFL in the game, and if it would make the transition easier, I'd be all for a nerf on STBFL. Dead Hard is a problem for the meta of the game, and it has been a problem since its release. If you'd like to post your ideas for a rework, I'd gladly read them. If you want to share your opinions, I'd gladly read those , too.
Comments
The Chase is the direct pvp part of the game, right?
Looping becomes the core aspect of the pvp interaction.
The contest in looping is played based on mind-games.
Whomever outplays the other at the mind-game either avoids a hit or lands one.
Is it not true that 'Dead Hard' virtually grants the ability to remove yourself from the core aspect of the pvp interaction?
Does it really make sense in an activity based on mind games, that in exchange for a half second of timing, you are immune to mind-games?
Does 'Dead Hard' in the current form not break the game at an elementary level?
Isn't knowing when to time your half second immunity not a mindgame in itself? Isn't baiting out the Dead Hard a mindgame?
Sure. Because everyone falls for the killer faking their power. It's incredibly easy to DH perfectly against most killers when they use their power. Because every killer has either an audible clue, a visual clue or a both for when they actually use their power.
You can loop most anti-loop killers pretty easy (not Knight and Artist though, Shift + W is all you have against them). You just need to actually play the game and react to things instead of turning off your brain and running circles around an object.
Even if DH was your only option to play against these killers, it should still be reworked / gutted. Because then we could look at the actual issues with data that isn't corrupted by DH.
-"There is no comparing. DH is good at low and mid tiers. Highly skilled killers will easily bait it or do something I probably cant even think of. The higher you climb the MMR or whatever it is now, the worse DH becomes."
Dead Hard has the ability against some of the strongest killers to either force a killer to not swing during a power activation or swing and give the survivor distance with DH. The list here includes : Nurse, Spirit and Blight.
A good player can use DH to gain an 30 seconds extra in a chase by pressing E. You use it at a pallet and the killer either swings and you hit DH or they can just throw the pallet and be safe. When combined with windows this allows you to throw a TON of pallets to prevent a down. When combined with full health this lets a survivor have three health states in a chase. These are the main problems with DH.
Allow me to paint a picture of how ridiculous Eruption would be if it gave as much room as Dead Hard does now.
Dead Hard is broken because it allows a chase to be extended longer than any other exhaustion perk. The only counter to dead hard is hard tunneling. When you get off the hook I will punch you immediately so you can't use it.
I think dh is its finest now and should never be touched again for nerfs or buffs
Not if the survivor has already lost the core aspect of the game.
How cool would it be if Killers had a perk called 'Sure Strike' and could press E 0.5 seconds before a pallet stun and make the survivor take damage anyway even though the survivor won the mind game? Then if the survivor just waits it out, the killer steps through the pallet, body blocks them and hits them that way too?
It would be lambasted as complete, unskilled, game-breaking bs.
The Survivor version of 'Sure Strike' is 'Dead Hard.'
No, nerf them both. Both of them make a mockery of the game's core mechanics.
That's called the sunk-cost fallacy. And you wouldn't even need to undo all the previous work of the devs to make Nurse fair or balanced; you'd just need to limit the use of her power or change some of its rules.
-"I still dont feel DH should be touched"
Then Maybe Eruption should work the way I outlined. In a more realistic way Eruption should get gutted if DH gets gutted. If not then change eruption to be a base kit mechanic that works as follows: it takes 10% of the total completion when a survivor goes down. The kicked generators will be blocked from survivors interacting them for 30 seconds and continue to regress at speed set by the killer's kick perks.
DH is the biggest kick in the teeth to a killer. It changes the way you are forced to play because it exists.
It should never allow you to have a third health state.
It should be like Lithe or Sprint Burst where most of the time it delays a hit by 5-8 seconds.
This literally already happens.
I can't count how many times I've been hit by a pallet AND injured/downed the survivor. And it's by design, there is a small window between "pallet falling" and "pallet hitting" in which hits can and are meant to be able to connect.
At the level I am currently at, I still regularly get teams where 3-4 people pick DH, even though I have learned to bait it out, or maybe that's just the survs I play against being bad.
I recently heard something that makes a lot of sense to me, which is that for a killer your success seems, more often than not, more dependent on the survivors skill rather than your own.
That's why I barely get fun 1k, 2k or 3k games, it always flips between "getting stomped by people running every loop at a pace where I cant compete with the gen progress" or "these 3 survs keep orbiting the same 2 gens and expect me not to abuse their inability to spread out" and if I get 2k/3k kills it's often people sacrificing themselves for gen rushes, or games where I get teabagged at gate.
This is important here, because it seems like DH applies to that pretty well. I currently only play knight, and I dont yet get why he's supposed to be "anti loop" as soon as I go to spawn a guard survs go "haha goodbye" and are already running to the next loop.
I can honestly say, that at my current rank, when facing a non-swf, non-stomp Surv team I can outplay Dead Hard when I know someone has it. Get close, wait for the funny animation of them ducking slightly lower, press M1.
This is the lower skill level, agains this, I can do something, but if you get people who know how to utilize it, it probably goes down the drain pretty quickly as I cant lunge at pallette.
I suck at this game. I'm not gonna lie. Probably because I insist to play with those 4 perks only, and because I have 0 ideas how to break loops. I always feel like at every pallette my option is to take the stun, chase them for 1 minute and have 2 gens pop, giving up the chase, or breaking the pallette so I can chase them to the next one. So, you can take everything I say with a grain of salt, but I feel like if something is unfun to play against at low levels, just extremely bothersome in mid-ranks, and dominate the mindgame at high level, then there is something wrong with that aspect. I think that is what dead hard is. One of those things where as a killer it either means a surv wasted a slot or it dominates the whole games mindgame.
I feel like while this can happen, the window is probably way more narrow than 0.5 seconds.
If I look at the DH animation and how long it goes on for when I bait it out, if this was the window in which I can take a stun hit, and hit a M1, it would be extremely generous to killers. Even more so, if the stun triggered Hubris.
(which is honestly not that good a perk considering I need to win a chase I got stunned in to utilize it, and the surv must be healthy)
Your success relies on the survivor's skill unless you're playing one of the top-tier killers.
-"But its a 0.5 second window, and typically useless after one use in a match vs a competent killer."
And that 0.5 second window can allow you to extend a chase for 30 seconds. That's not fair relative to SB or Lithe - much less to the killer's objective.
Losing 30 seconds in a chase against one survivor means the enemy team has three characters working during that time. That's 30 seconds * 3 = 90 seconds gained by the enemy team.
Imagine for example a DBD parallel universe where the killer had a perk named "despair". Once per game you can "rollback" a completed generator to 0% progress after it has been completed. Press "E" on the completed generator and it will reset as if it had never been touched.
That's one instance of 90 seconds gain for the killer. Would you want to play against this new perk I have called "despair"? No one would want that. Imagine if "despair" could be recharged every time a new surviovr uses DH against you. If 4 people use DH then you can use Despair 5 times in total. Would that be fun? It would theoretically theory be "fair" in terms of time saved/chase.
Nobody enjoys playing against Dead Hard. Fundamentally speaking it breaks the "fair play" rule. If a game element is not both fun to use and fun to play against when on the receiving end then it is does not abide by fair play.
How about this for a nerf to DH? Equipping dead hard removes one of your hook states. That would be a rather "fair" nerf in terms of time gained/lost for the risk/reward. It would not be "fair" for the game because a killer would just camp you out after hooking you every time.
The more I think about it - DH should be a "once per game" move or it should make you broken for the rest of the game. That keeps it powerful with proper risk and reward.