Would 5sec Decisive Strike really help with tunneling?
I'll preface this by saying I fully support buffing DS back to a 5sec stun.
Following on from a mini-discussion in my other recent thread, I wonder if buffing DS back to 5 seconds would actually reduce tunneling that much.
I don't think anyone is saying it would 'fix' tunneling, many killers would simply eat the DS as they do now and continue the tunnel. The question though is would it even reduce it a significant amount? Even back before the nerf tunneling was still commonplace and I feel like most killers have gotten even more used to it since then that an extra 2 seconds of stun wouldn't really put many off.
I think a 5 second DS would still help, but I think many are overestimating how much of an impact it would have. I think tunneling needs basekit solutions if anything is gonna change.
Comments
If a survivor is purposely bodyblocking, or otherwise purposely trying to bait the killer into eating a DS, then they aren't being tunneled. DS is supposed to be an ANTI TUNNEL perk. Slugging is unacceptable, because it's basically giving the other survivor an extra health state, because the killer has to waste an attack on someone else.
Let's be honest. People are concerned that they might not be able to weaponize the perk. I'm sure BHVR could find some way to determine if a DS user is the primary chase target, or if the killer is chasing someone else, and the DS user keeps following the primary chase target instead of running in a different direction. And if BHVR couldn't figure that out, then having false positives would be better than allowing survivors to weaponize a perk that shouldn't be weaponized.
5 second DS was a problem, because many people were weaponizing it. That's the reason it got the conspicuous action nerf. And when survivors STILL weaponized the perk, it's why it ultimately got the duration nerfed.
And it needs to disable on entering a locker, because that prevents the killer from being able to slug the survivor. If people honestly want to say "just slug the DS survivor", then the killer needs the option to actually slug the DS survivor.
That's exactly why DS should disable. It being active is a borderline guaranteed escape, but it being deactivated is not a borderline guaranteed kill. There's still the basekit anti-tunnel protection and the possibility of bodyblocks from your teammates that can help you without DS, but there's nothing the killer can do (except the highly specific and niche scenario of Blood Warden being active, I guess) if DS is active.
Right, and when they use the anti-tunnel perk in this scenario, they lose value. They are put in a losing scenario, because they're slugged on the ground and their teammate is still being chased, keeping them both off generators. That is not an unacceptable scenario, it's a winning one.
This just seems like a really arbitrary line to draw. It's not okay for a survivor to bodyblock and need to be slugged, even though that's good for the killer, because it arbitrarily counts as weaponising DS, even though DS hasn't actually done anything? I don't understand this logic.
I think everyone else understands better that DS currently can't be weaponised in any meaningful way, which is why they're wary about trying to nerf it in that regard. That kind of attention is both unnecessary and prone to backfiring, so not wanting to go that route is pretty reasonable.
It depends on the scenario though.
Maybe the killer caught someone else, maybe they were injured and rushed the save. Not every situation includes one person on struggle phase and the other three survivors alive, healthy and willing to go for the save. Sometimes DS ain't no guaranteed escape.
It increases your chances, of course, but it won't get you out every time.
However, now that the deactivation has been introduced I think it is highly unlikely they remove it.
But the survivor with DS in this scenario is getting a pity escape. As long as they hit the DS skill check they literally can't lose the game, simply because they equipped a perk. That's the reason DS (and OTR) get switched off in endgame. Survivors still have other ways of protecting their teammate after the unhook and if there are even two other survivors still alive at that point, it's pretty easy to all escape.
DS in endgame literally punishes killers for NOT tunnelling earlier in the game. If the killer doesn't tunnel, then the survivors will have their DS at endgame, where it's significantly stronger.
I still think it depends on the scenario. A survivor with DS isn't always getting a pity escape, it depends on how that end game goes.
However, the deactivation condition is already here, and I don't think it is going anywhere, even after they (hopefully) buff the perk in June.
"5 second DS was a problem, because many people were weaponizing it. That's the reason it got the conspicuous action nerf. And when survivors STILL weaponized the perk, it's why it ultimately got the duration nerfed."
No, it got the duration nerfed because it was a highly picked perk. Same reason Ruin got gutted. It had nothing to do with it being 'weaponised' after the conspic nerf, that was never even brought up as an issue because it's incredibly easy to circumvent.
"And it needs to disable on entering a locker, because that prevents the killer from being able to slug the survivor. If people honestly want to say "just slug the DS survivor", then the killer needs the option to actually slug the DS survivor."
Why do you get to have that kind of control over an ANTI-TUNNEL perk when you are TUNNELLING? You want to tunnel like that, eat the stun.
What if instead of protection hits, DS gets the condition:
"After the killer has been in chase with one other survivor for 20 seconds, Decisive Strike deactivates."
'One other' means 20 secs on a single survivor, not cumulatively across all survivors. ~20-25 mark feels about right.
The weaponising portion of DS largely comes from SWFs, and deliberately blocking the killer in narrow spaces from pursuing their teammates, and the reason they do it is cause they know they are immune to being picked up for likely another 40s or so from when they take a hit.
Trying to tackle with protection hits is problematic for 2 reasons: -
If its tied to chase time of one other survivor, then the DS player cannot interfere unless they can get that block and be picked up within 20 seconds, and there is always the chance the killer guesses DS, leaves them slugged and only needs to accumulate what remains of the 20 seconds of chase to be able to pick up the DS player again.
This means for normal interactions where the DS player runs one way and the other chased survivor goes another, the killer has to go faaaar away from the DS player to get their chase up, or sit and wait out the 60s (I'd be tempted to make it 80 with this change).
The way you might try and subvert it would be to slug the DS player and they chase a survivor nearby enough to disable it, but 20-25 secs is reasonably long, and if players move away for 20 seconds, that's quite a distance the killer has to go first.
Ok but DH isn't as negated if you have DS since you could just use it after DS. And most of the time you could just unhook people when the killer is not on top of them and the speed boost + free endurance can take you across the map 44m and an extra health state is a lot when most killers only make 2m of distance on you during that time.
This 100% doesn't sound like an issue of a weak perk it just sounds like an issue or poor planning and low player skill if this is constantly happening. I mean you already said its good when used close to resources so why not take your speed boost to a good spot because you know if you don't then you would go down anyway (still wasting a ton of killer time in doing so because all the animation time is a minimum of 11s).
DS would still be almost useless against the best killers while punishing m1 killers 20x it's just not designed well to affect all killers equally
It was a popular perk because it could be weaponized. That's what a lot of people want. A perk that's anti-tunnel... but if the killer isn't tunneling, then the perk can still be weaponized against the killer so it's "not wasted".
If DS were changed so that it was truly only an anti-tunnel perk, that it wouldn't be as popular, because survivors would complain that "in some games it wouldn't get any value".
No, it was very popular and wasn't widely weaponized. With how high its pickrate was, you'd expect to see it 'weaponised' every match, but it was a rarity. Over the course of hundreds of killer matches played, I fell for it once and then punished maybe half a dozen survivors for trying to bait me.
Ironically, nothing about the way it was changed actually addressed this weaponisation. You can still use it in the way that folks are claiming was the only reason it was being picked up. So why aren't people using DS to bodyblock bait now? If anything, it should be MORE effective right now, since no one picks DS up anymore so killers are infinitely more likely to eat the stun!
So why isn't it being used that way now?
The fact that it's now 3 seconds addressed the weaponization. The perk needs to stay weak, unless BHVR can find a way to address the weaponization issue.
And besides, we now have buckle up + FTP, which is a much more powerful at extending chases.
But it's 3 seconds now versus 0 before. So why isn't it being used MORE?
It's 3 seconds compared to 5 seconds.
Also, DS was nerfed because off the record was being presented as a healthier anti-tunnel perk.
Also, DS encouraged tunneling, because the optimal play was to immediately pick up anyone that might have DS, maybe eat a DS, then hard tunnel that person out of the game because the DS is out of the way. It's bad strategy to try to ignore a survivor because they might have DS, or to slug a survivor because they might have DS, because the killer doesn't actually know if the survivor has DS. And yes, there were people that pretended like they had DS, to see if they could bait the killer into leaving them slugged on the ground.
Also, DS was nerfed because off the record was being presented as a healthier anti-tunnel perk.
Nope, DS was nerfed because it had a high pick-rate. And OTR is not a healthier anti-tunnel perk, actually. It is, in fact, worse for both sides of the fence. It's better for bodyblocking since it doesn't incapacitate the survivor using it, and it can be disabled by tunnelling hard enough.
Also, DS encouraged tunneling, because the optimal play was to immediately pick up anyone that might have DS, maybe eat a DS, then hard tunnel that person out of the game because the DS is out of the way. It's bad strategy to try to ignore a survivor because they might have DS, or to slug a survivor because they might have DS, because the killer doesn't actually know if the survivor has DS. And yes, there were people that pretended like they had DS, to see if they could bait the killer into leaving them slugged on the ground.
And then what? Waste half a minute of their own time? Pull their fellow survivors off their gens to come to their rescue? This is an incredibly wasteful play that just throws the match for the survivors.
DS did not encourage tunnelling at all. The only thing it changed about tunnelling is that, for one hookstate, tunnelling was met with a 5 second stun-wall, that's it. That doesn't encourage tunnelling, that makes tunnelling flatly less efficient, by a margin of a five second stun.
How are you going to compare 'tunnelling' to 'tunnelling, except you get smacked in the face with a 5 second stun' and say 'Yeah, that second one is clearly the better option'?
If the killer doesn't know which survivors have DS, and doesn't even know if anyone is even running DS, then yes, the best option is to tunnel and immediately pick people up, to burn through any potential DS. Then the best option is to double down and tunnel that survivor, because that survivor already used their DS if they had it.
And yes, if I eat a DS, then it absolutely encourages me to tunnel that survivor, because I already ate their DS, and I have no idea if anyone else has DS.
Why on earth should a killer respect DS, if they don't even know if a survivor is running DS? The odds are, over the course of many games, that the killer is better off not respecting DS, because there will be many times when a killer picks up a survivor, that survivor didn't have DS, and the killer can just throw them on a hook.
If the killer doesn't know which survivors have DS, and doesn't even know if anyone is even running DS, then yes, the best option is to tunnel and immediately pick people up, to burn through any potential DS. Then the best option is to double down and tunnel that survivor, because that survivor already used their DS if they had it.
Yes, after eating the DS, there's no reason not to tunnel anymore.
And if there's no DS in the first place, there's also no reason not to tunnel.
If anything, you are currently arguing that DS needs an even bigger stun, because it is currently not enough to properly function as a tunnelling deterrent! If you are arguing that eating the DS and just flatly tunnelling your way through it, then that proves that DS is not strong enough to do its job!
Otherwise it'd click that tunnelling is made worse by the presence of DS, and thus disincentivises tunnelling, not incentivises it.
Again, how do you compare 'Tunnelling' to 'Tunnelling, but you get smacked with a 5 second stun' and say that the second option is the better pick? Because that is legitimately what you are doing by saying that DS incentivises tunnelling!
Why on earth should a killer respect DS, if they don't even know if a survivor is running DS? The odds are, over the course of many games, that the killer is better off not respecting DS, because there will be many times when a killer picks up a survivor, that survivor didn't have DS, and the killer can just throw them on a hook.
That's why it needs to go back to what it was. Where it was so ubiquitous that you were pretty much guaranteed to get smacked with a 5 second stun if you decided to tunnel. Because then it worked as anti-tunnel.
Now, with a paltry 3 seconds that most killers will just eat through without much trouble, no one picks it anymore, and thus there's no reason for any killer to ever think twice about tunnelling.
If BHVR could find a solution, where they completely removed weaponization from DS, without punishing survivors that were actually getting tunneled, would you accept that?
A return to the 5 second Decisive Strike may not prevent tunnelling across the board, yet it will make those players think twice about tunnelling in the first place.
Regardless, the Perk does need this stun duration returned to make it more useful.
Sure.
But they already did.
I don't want Decisive Strike buffed unless it has restrictions like disabling end game. Prior it was absolutely stupid where people would try to abuse it to aggressively defend teammates. Unfun perk to deal with when it's strong.
Not against buffing it - Just not to the OG timer unless it disables when all 5 gens are powered. Should be similar to Off The Record and other stuff designed to protect you when the killers objectives include both protecting gens and killing survivors.
When all that's left is survivors you shouldn't get a free unhook out the gates. Guarantee if you return it to 5 seconds with no restrictions you'll see a rise in slugging again.
DS isn’t going to return to what it was at release, and I don’t think anyone should have a ‘free’ anything during endgame. That goes for survivors and killers. FYI the killer’s priority is always survivors—never gens. Survivors aren’t suddenly your mission when the gens have all been finished.
Survivors asking for 5 second DS stun? Then we will go back to the "I slug you until your DS runs out" meta. You need to understand why many killers feel the need to tunnel and rather design perks/mechanics that reward a killer for not tunneling. Not re-rework a ban-aid perk that was just unhealthy for the game in its past state.
No, not really - if the killer wants to tunnel someone, they will. You can make it 7-10 seconds, it'll change nothing besides potentially give the teammates more time to do objectives. That person being tunneled though, is still going to die 9/10 times, especially in solo que.
Pretty crazy looking back when the nerf came and so many people justified the 5->3 second stun duration. So many people in this community are blatantly disingenuous and it sucks. Reminds me of Eruption.