Healthy DS buff
I think that the issue with DS has always been the way it impacts killers differently. 5 seconds stun was okay against high mobility or ranged killers (nurse, blight, huntress, ...), but weaker killers like Trapper or Pig suffered.
The 3 second stun makes it better for weaker killers, but high mobility / ranged killers don't even feel it. The perk feels bad no matter how you look at it.
So what I propose is this: keep the 3 second stun, but make the killers incapacitated for 7-8 seconds. So once the 3 seconds stun is gone, the killer can start moving and going after the survivor again, but they will continue being incapacitated for another 4-5 seconds. And by "incapacitated" I mean not being able to use their power. (they can still M1 hit!)
Trapper and Pig wouldn't feel it anyway, because by the time they catch up, the incapacitated effect would be gone. HOWEVER, this would prevent a Nurse from just blinking effortlessly on top of you and downing you immediately, before you even managed to lose the line of sight. It would prevent Blight or Wesker from just rushing at you at high speed, before you managed to get cover and a chance of looping/fighting. It would prevent Huntress, Deathslinger, Trickster or Plague from just firing up and downing you within few seconds.
I feel like this change would keep DS fair against weaker killers, but counter those who currently don't suffer at all from a 3 second stun and have no problem immediately downing the survivor. :)
(personally I would also love the stun to go back to 5 seconds, just because tunneling sucks, and 5 seconds would once again enable me to use DS with Parental Guidance. 3 second stun doesn't really allow for the play. However, 3 second stun would be okay, with the incapacitated effect mentioned above)
Comments
It's a good middle ground.
But the word incapacitated brings back old eruption ptsd, so maybe i would just take the 5s stun for everyone only to avoid more mechanics that stop you from playing the game.
It's also kinda sad that DS even in its current state is still the only good counter to tunneling
I mean, what I suggested would only disable the killer for using their power (not M1s, you can still do that) for 4-5 seconds after the stun is over. It would take you at least 10 seconds to catch up to the survivor anyway, so you wouldn't really be prevented from playing the game. It would only ensure that you can't immediately down the survivor again. You could still chase after the survivor and M1. It would simply be a safety mechanism against easy tunneling by high mobility or range killers.
This is also how I would have prefered Pain Res got nerfed: keep the old unlimited 15% gen regression per hook, but add a cooldown to the perk. This way, high pressure killers and camping killers wouldn't be able to just get an insane gen regression value for little effort, all while weaker killers would be able to get nice Pain res value, because the cooldown would have usually passed by the time they got another down.
I think this is a good idea, at least enough so to test it out. Things like these, ideas that hurt the strongest killers but not the ones already suffering, are what we need more of.