List of blunders this patch

AnaSepho

We're back on a new patch of DBD in the 7th(!) year since release.

Let's recap the changes, bugs, and things that still remain in the game that have not been prioritized over the things that have been changed instead. Fair warning, while much of this is fact, much of this is also opinion.

Changes:

-------- Onryo's condemn playstyle was a difficult to pull off, but problematic playstyle prior to this update. The Onryo could abuse addons to turn on TVs quicker, spread condemn through healing (which you could force them to do by slugging) and use perks like deadlock, corrupt intervention, sloppy butcher, etc. to make the game take longer giving you more time to pull of this strategy. It was problematic because the killer did not chase until you were killable on the spot. Hooking did not occur, and games moved at a snails pace. The Onryo, if she was paying attention, could tell which TV you took a tape out of using auras, and could ensure you could never put it away. This led to a tedious game where survivors would die with very little interaction with the killer.

As a result of this playstyle, BHVR has elected to make her teleport have a (base) cooldown of 10s, thereby reducing her map mobility, change her base condemn to .75 stacks per teleport, make tapes give 2 full stacks of condemn but negate teleport stacks and you no longer gain passive condemn, allow a tape to be placed into any *turned on* TV, decrease the time a TV stays off, she can walk through pallets while demanifested, and her addons now allow you to decrease the cooldown for teleports, and make the tapes only be deliverable to the opposite side of the map's TV.

What this has done is inadvertently made Onryo a even stronger version of her former condemn playstyle, while also nerfing her standard kit if you want to play without trying to purposefully condemn and slug people to kill them with 0 hooks. What these changes have done is made this killer ######### against a comp team but brutally effective and boring in every way against anyone else. She now plays like a brain-dead zombie killer who just holds W and tunnels the first person with a tape, throwing in teleports every now and then after hitting them to get a free, easy kill without putting in any of the effort.

-------- This update introduced new player icons and menu art. It's pretty good looking in most cases, quentin looks as ratty as usual. Thumbs up here, DBD's art team is great.

-------- Perks that trigger based off of hooking now trigger the second the killer begins hooking. This has buffed all hook perks, but in particular, Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance and Dead Man's Switch. Remember that combo? The combination that plagued the game for months and everyone universally complained about it? Well after nerfing it such that Pain Resonance no longer triggered a scream, thereby activating Dead Man's Switch people stopped running the 2 perks together unless they were playing a killer like artist who could pressure gens across the map. This was healthy, for a while, until BHVR decided to bring this horrid combo back again for some reason. Although they did decide to "nerf" Pain Resonance by increasing the amount of regression it does from 15% to 25%! Albeit only a maximum of 4 times per match, and only on unique survivor hooks. Unfortunately, this change has led to killers proxy camping, forcing 1f1s off hook, and abusing the combo repeatedly back-to-back, which is especially potent on killers who can pressure a hook or gens from a distance, once again like Artist, though also killers like blight, nurse, hag, etc. Killers who absolutely do not need the extra help from such a combo. Once again DBD has buffed and nerfed its way back into a prior gamestate, as if nothing was learned from the first go around.

-------- Hook grabs are no longer possible. This is genuinely a healthy change for the game.

-------- Brand new part now applies a permanent 10 charge reduction, effectively 10 seconds. This essentially makes brand new part less effective initially, but significantly more effective against killers attempting a 3 gen strategy. Using a brand new part on a gen in a 3 gen now makes that gen take 10 seconds less to do, regardless of what the killer does. Regressing the gen to 0 will now regress it to 0/80 charges, instead of 0/90 charges. This makes the gen's effective time 10 seconds less permanently. This makes a BNP less efficient at reducing game time against a killer who is playing normally, but more effective at killers who are attempting to play in an extremely boring manner. This is a very healthy overall change for BNP and i'm quite impressed with the idea and execution

-------- Spirit, Hag, and Executioner have all gotten changes to their kit and addons that all are positive for the game.

-------- Several perks have been changed for both sides, a majority of them are positive and fun changes for the game, the most underwhelming of the changes is spine chill. This perk essentially has use anymore in any build, it's great that they made the spine chill perk part of the base-kit of survivors for people who have disabilities or, for any reason, prefer to have a visual indicator of terror radius. I'm not entirely sure if this is already in the game, but if it isn't then there should be a red indicator like there is for dissolution whenever claustrophobia is active. The perk is significantly stronger now, which I think is good, but given its strength I also believe survivors should be indicted that it is active. Again, if that is not already in effect, I've yet to go against the perk since the update.

-------- Rancid Abattoir and Fractured Cowshed have been reworked, and after having played on both as both sides, I genuinely really like how they've been changed!

-------- Disconnect bots. Great that it exists but it'll only actually be useful 1/100 games. People hardly ever disconnect with the disconnect penalties in the middle of the match. Survivors would rather run into the killer then let go on hook than experience an escalating penalty, so they do. The only time you see a survivor genuinely DC is in a rage-quit scenario, which usually happens when they're on death hook anyway, so the bot takes over a survivor that has no interaction left, they get carried to the hook and die anyway. Functionally making the disconnect bot maybe grab you an extra 10 seconds, if that. If disconnect bots are going to be useful, there shouldn't be a disconnect penalty. Frankly, I think there shouldn't be a disconnect penalty if there are going to be so many unhealthy, boring, and brain-dead playstyles that killers and survivors can adopt to make the game unfun. The fact that a killer that can teleport through walls and hit you has been out and not been significantly changed since her introduction is a travesty. Blight, the second strongest killer in the game by any metric, has by far the strongest set of addons in the game. His base kit without any addons places him as the second strongest killer, yet his addons make his kit significantly stronger. It's easier to say which addon doesn't make him ridiculously strong than it is to say which addons make him ridiculously strong.

• Instantly getting back all of his charges just from getting a hit.
• moving at mach 7 after bumping
• getting an instadown on the last charge of his power
• hindering, instabreaking pallets, and tracking all in 1 addon
• aura reading after bumping
• free hex perk blood favor after getting a hit
• undetectable while rushing
• the disgusting combo of buffs of adrenaline vial, which combo extremely well with compound 33 and blighted crow, for example

Skull merchant is still in an incredibly boring and frustrating spot, as featured in a game recently played by team Eternal and a very strong SM main, it took a professional team of this game nearly the time it takes for a game server to shut down and automatically award the killer a win to finish the match with a 3 man escape. The map Dead Dawg Saloon still has atrocious gen spawns, making this strategy brutally effective even on killers less potent at 3 genning, such as The Knight.

While many of the survivor strategies have been removed, such as locker saves for example, there still remain a few combinations of things that make playing killer often a chore as well. With the newly added Made For This, in combination with Hope, chasing a survivor in the endgame has become essentially fruitless. With a base movespeed killer around an unsafe rock loop in MacMillan, for example, with no movespeed buffs in play. It can take nearly 3 loops to secure a hit, assuming all parties loop efficiently and no pallet is dropped. Adding in just a 3% movespeed bonus may seem small, but with killer hitboxes being the way they are that adds an entire extra loop to this pallet, and makes it much easier to react to mindgames around such a loop. Adding an additional 5% movespeed to that, netting you 8% movespeed, can make that same loop require bloodlust for the survivor to be caught and hit by the killer. This means you would need to commit to the chase for *at least* 15 seconds, plus the additional loops needed to catch up. This is not to mention the fact that cheaters are quite prevalent, and reporting cheaters does nothing without also sending video evidence directly to BHVR's front door. Even getting banned is meaningless when unlock tools are readily available, if a cheater is determined to cheat, they will, and nothing substantial is being done to prevent this. Perks like Made For This in a game climate where you already have to frequently ask yourself "is this person another cheater? I've played XXXX amount of hours in this game, and the fact that they got that amount of loops/distance feels wrong, I suspect they might be cheating." throwing in a perk that gives 3% movespeed is a whack move. If there was a chance at discerning the subtle cheaters before, there's no possible way now.

Maps like The Game, Borgo, and Ormond still exist with a ridiculous amount of resources for survivor players. Additionally, there is more clutter in the maps now than there ever has been, making movement around the map on killers like Wesker or Hillbilly a chore. Maps like MacMillan and Eyrie of Crows still have hitboxes around some objects that make it impossible to use chainsaws around. For MacMillan, some trees have low hanging branches that for some reason get hit by chainsaws, but both killers and survivors can walk comfortably underneath them. Eyrie has the tall dead bushes, which have a small hitbox for the models or survivors and killers, but for some reason exhibit a hitbox that makes it physically impossible to chainsaw around. Hillbilly still has overheating, a near universally hated change from survivors and killers alike. Trapper still has the worst kit of any killer, and on top of that, still has bugged spawns on some maps, even MacMillan, despite it being the oldest map in the game. Freddy, despite having a lukewarm basekit, has some of the worst, most useless addons in the game. The same also goes for Nemesis, with addons like Licker Tongue, which if you're getting maximum value out of nets you a whole 2 seconds total of time save. Killers like Trickster and Huntress nearly require Iron Maiden, as reloading without it as many times as you would expect to per match can cost you the equivalent of an entire gen's worth of progress, not even counting the time it takes to traverse to and from a locker.

Bugs:

• Overcharge can now be deactivated by quickly tapping a gen, as the skillcheck sound will play but the skillcheck will be cancelled by letting go. This does not explode the gen.
• Some sounds are bugged, mainly screams. Scream sounds from perks like Pain Resonance or Eruption often don't play. This occurs for both the survivor or killer, and happens despite the survivor not equipping the perk Calm Spirit.
• There are FOV bugs involved with skins on Killers such as Huntress, Trickster, and Legion. The Legion's Julie, Party Crasher skin, for example.
• Huntress Lullaby now affects any skillchecks, including Jigsaw Boxes. Killers have discovered this and have been abusing it along with the addons Interlocking Razor and Razor Wire to get free injures and mending states. Additionally, searching a Jigsaw Box while in the mending state will result with you getting mended out and put into the dying state. This makes this addon combination also have the effect of decreasing the effective time you have to search Jigsaw Boxes, as you have to mend every time.
• You now slide out of the gate after exiting, as far as I can tell this happens every time.