Gen Slowdown - An Abysmal State of Meta Perks
Hens just released a video of his "best builds" for every killer. After sorting through the data, this is what I found:
- Corrupt is present in 72.22% of builds
- Pain Res is present in 61.11% of builds
- Grim Embrace is present in 55.56% of builds
- Ruin is present in 38.89% of builds
- Undying is present in 27.78% of builds
- Pentimento is present in 19.44% of builds
- Sloppy Butcher is present in 13.89% of builds
- BBQ, Rapid, and Blood Favor are all present in 11.11% of builds
- The other 14 perks found were individually used less than 9% of the time
A total of 24 perks of the 124 total killer perks available were used. This is 19.35% of the total available killer perks that are being utilized for a competitive chance at winning.
Of the killers to buy for a new player:
- Artist has a 100% return on investment, with all 3 of her perks being extremely meta
- Blight has a 66.66% return on investment, with only 2 of his perks being meta
- Both Hag and Plague have a 33.33% return on investment, with only 1 of each of their perks being meta (totem builds specifically)
The question of the decade is: why?
Why is the current state of the game allowed to exist like this? People act as if they don't know why the general feeling of the game is at an all time low for survivors, well here is the data. Survivors can barely finish a single generator before the killer snowball starts, meaning all gen progression is halted. Most of the time, killers win with at least 3 gens remaining.
I understand the need for gen regression, but this is way too much. The arbitrary 60% kill rate target across the board needs to be adjusted, or the base game mechanics of this game need to be overhauled. Introduce a secondary objective as an alternative win condition for both sides (not hatch). Make chases more interactive, giving agency to both survivor and killer. Give each map interactable elements unique to that specific realm that either act as a win condition or will help whichever side spent time interacting with said elements. ANYTHING so we can get away from this stale and boring gen slowdown meta. If all those options are off the table, corrupt and pain res both need significant nerfs.
What are the community's thoughts on this?
Comments
3-gens weren't holding the game hostage. Survivors' lack of skill and team play were holding games hostage. Do the 2 furthest gens, shift W when the killer comes anywhere near, and don't get hooked near the 3-gen. That's all you had to do. Now there's a handholding mechanic with gen blockage because, "the killer kicked the gen too many times."
Killers holding a 3 gen as a strategy, without downing or hooking anyone for an extended time is holding the game hostage.
The classic "chess merchant" was a perfect example of how people played the "3 gen meta" and totally fits how the devs describe a hostage situation from the killer.
Here's the receipt:
Suggesting that survivors are grieving by failing to break a Skull Merchant 3-gen during the height of that is mind boggling to me. How did you rationalize that in your head? Maybe your fingers got tripped up when you typed it out.
First off, no he did not. If he did, he would have seen that the nature of my post wasn't "nerf gen regression only period" but rather providing alternatives to the base game loop that would provide depth to both survivor and killer to make gens not the only priority. Saying "play high MMR with no slowdown and tell me how it goes" is proof he did not read the whole post.
Secondly, 60% kill rate tells you at least 7 hook states are being taken in a match out of 12. You're right that it's arbitrary, and I think it's fair to ask why such an arbitrary number was selected.
Thirdly, saying it's the most experimental meta we've seen proves my point. You don't need 4 slowdown to win. You can run whatever you want on most killers because the devs have shrunk maps to fractions of their original sizes, they have killed almost every tile in this game and replaced them with garbage filler tiles that offer no safety, and the base killer mechanics provide so much pressure, you are almost guaranteed at least a 2k every match. Putting on 4 slowdown makes it almost impossible for the survivors to win, which was one of the points of my post.
Lastly, gens fly if you cannot secure a good chase in the first 70 seconds of the match. There are certain killers where that is understandable, like Myers. On killers like blight? That is a skill issue. There are blights that end games in 70 seconds with full aura builds. A single gen takes 90 seconds. Gens are flying just as often as pigs do. So what a killer loses one gen to a brand new part + commodious toolbox at the beginning of the match? Does that really matter when the pop + pain res + grim embrace combo grinds the game to a halt? If you can't start the killer snowball to force survivors off gens, that's a skill issue problem.
Yes they’ve shrunk some maps but most are still so big it can take 30 seconds or so to walk from one gen to another the opposite side of the map; and if you hit a survivor by it then they can just hold W and make it to the opposite side of the map, making it impossible to defend some gens on some maps unless the killer has a map traversal ability or some power to quickly down someone without having to m1 them.
30 seconds from one corner to the opposite corner of a map is extremely small, and almost every map has that time or shorter to do this. Holding W does not allow you to go from one side of the map to the other. Survivors get at MOST 3 tiles of distance before they're forced to play a tile since the middle of almost every map is either a dead zone or filler pallets, not to mention the other tiles that have already been used by the survivors.
Also knowing when to take a health state and apply pressure to gens is a game sense skill as killer. If you're choosing to chase a survivor to the opposite edge of the map when the last 3 gens are on the initial side of the map, that's a poor play. Taking a health state is massive pressure for the killer since, by that time, the survivor medkits are most likely depleted, and it would require another survivor to come heal them. Also, by that time, one if not two survivors have already been sacrificed. That means at most 1 person is doing a gen that will take them 90 seconds to complete fully. There's multiple layers of nuance for these situations, but saying "just hold W" as a scapegoat is disingenuous to the state of its effectiveness, as it does not provide as much value as killers would like you to think, especially if the killer player knows what they are doing.
A big part of it is that there just isn't really anything else to run. They're so consistent and safe that there's no point running anything else when the other options are pretty bad.
So what's left? Slowdown is just so much better than everything else that there's no real reason not to slap them onto every build. I wish there was more variety but I there isn't really anything to do about it. Even if you nerfed every slowdown perk massively they would still be the most used because of how much more value you get compared to other perks.
I said in the past they should decrease individual gen time but increase number of gens to do so total gen time remains roughly the same and regression perks get nerfed, but killers get more time to do stuff because you can't finish the game in 2 waves of gens. This also has the side benefit of feeling like the game never stops for survivors because generators keep popping and also traveling between generators gives extra chances for chases and adds extra game time.
But when I said this people were adamant that would benefit survivors too much.
Injured survivors can still finish gens, and if you don’t commit to a down some point it really doesn’t apply pressure and if they’re running Resiliance then actually makes gens fly faster.
30 seconds isn’t nothing as it’s a third of a gen with 1 survivor on it. Take into account as well that it’s not uncommon for 3 gens to pop by the time a killer has found is survivor, gotten through enough resources to injure and down the first survivor, walked to a hook, then walked to where the next survivors might be.
Time is everything for the killer and as long as survivors stick to gens unless chased off and downed it applies more pressure than at least m1 killers can deal with simply due to time to down if the survivor isn’t new and going down in 10 seconds plus the time to traverse the enormous maps.
Once the centre gen is done in RPD even though it was split in half good luck walking between gens on opposite sides; and if no one is dead by the time there are 1/2 gens left good luck stopping 4 survivors swarming them with only base regression.
Good luck with McMillian as well with that ridiculously strong main building in between and reachable from all the gens if you run as soon as you hear the TR or get hit and use the speed boost.
I don't think this comment is fair, friend.
Holding a 3-gen isn't "griefing", it has always been considered a valid strategy.
I echo your thoughts on this, it's putting me off playing the game atm even with the 300 percent rn, I mainly just keep an eye on here in hopes to see some meaningful feedback like this.
I think both sides could be improved and we should honestly be moving away from 60 percent across the board. Killer queues always take forever on EU coz of how over saturated the role is
Kinda. The devs perceive it as problematic and griefing specifically if it prohibits a match from ending before the match times out at 1 hour. I believe Peanits specifically said (and I’m paraphrasing) if a match ends by timing out due to a 3-gen or any other factor then that would be griefing as matches are not technically intended to end that way.
The strategy itself of defending a 3 generator was always valid, the only problem was both killers and survivors never progressing the game. Which is why the limit is 8 kicks per generator, because you'll rarely ever reach that number.
terrible take but not surprised
looks like a really good idea, i wish bhvr ever test something like that in the future
So the playstyle of attempting to hold a 3 gen until the server closed being a skill issue on the survivors part is so delusional. The 3-gen strat that was the issue was the method that attempted to stall until the server closed, and frankly even when i do hold 3-gens I win them before the gens get blocked.
Correct, defending a 3-gen is a valid strategy. But if all a killer does is defend a 3-gen they are not participating in normal gameplay and are thereby griefing. As long as survivors are making progress on the gens and/or recovering from hits, they are participating in normal gameplay. Survivors not breaking a 3-gen isn’t griefing, a killer just defending a 3-gen until the game times out is griefing. Normal killer gameplay is not camping 3-gens until the match expires. This has been said before.