Why Do You Think Hooks Are Weaker Now?
Pretty much just the title, but to elaborate a little bit— when people talk about the state of slugging in the game, one of the things you'll see brought up in passing is the notion that hooks themselves are weak now, and not worth going for. What I find curious about this argument is that very few people really attempt to explain it- they just skip straight to slugging being strong because of the ability to deny perks and the like.
So, this thread is to ask the people who feel this way… why? What changed about hooks to make them actively weaker than they were before?
I'm not talking about slugging here, I'm familiar with the reasons people think slugging is stronger than hooks. There's a difference between slugging being the stronger of the two, and hooks actually being weak on their own merits- it's the latter I'm concerned with here.
Comments
I've seen arguments on here stating that hooks aren't worth it because of a lot of survivor perks that activate or benefit them too much so by that logic I can only assume that they wish for more anti slugging unbreakable style perks 🤷♂️
I don't think they are weaker, or not at least THAT weak.
Hooking someone deletes 1/3 of their lifespan, regardless of how long they are there. You can slug someone 5 times and they can still pick themselves up and escape.
But, I can understand the argument that the 10 extra seconds to the hook timer plus the nerfs to gen regression that depends on hooking "made it not worth it to hook".
(I know there was a request not to mention the slug, but they are too closely related)
Increasing stage time to 70 seconds
Huge loss of pressure on the map animations + time move with survivor to hook avarage take 15 sec, this is 45% for the generators or the healed survivor
Most of the strongest survivor perks are hook related, with slug killers some time can literally disable 12/16 survivor perks in a match without risking a pallet or flashlight save and in some case free up 25% of build with dont taking lightborn
Nerf killer hook perks, and this is not only a gaming, but also an emotional aspect, the killer simply does not receive feeling of reward for the hooks
The only changes that the devs implemented anywhere close to the timing that excessive slugging started picking up traction were
All of the regression changes were at least 6 months earlier.
So, to me, the real reason is that people understood that camping hooks, and lurking near the hook with intent to tunnel, were actually getting nerfed with the +10 seconds change. And instead of understanding how to play without using those tactics every hook, in every match, people switched to slugging instead.
I don't think WGLF change has anything to do with it, except possibly to remind people on accident that slugging is powerful. Pretty sure this swap coincided with some content creator using these talking points too.
So instead of using their time to pressure survivors off gens, they went the next easy route to slug excessively.
Any talk about regression is just an excuse. People have been screaming to get gen kick meta levels of regression back, since that was the pve meta. Anyone could bind every key to "damage generator", slam their face on the keyboard for an hour, and win matches by both attrition and by default. People desperately want that back again, and will use any excuse to bring it up.
Right before the finisher mori was released, BHVR gave us slugging stats that showed slugging wasn't a problem at the time.
After the finisher mori was released, nothing really was released that would affect slugging, except for shoulder the burden, that I honestly don't think is used much at average MMR, and therefore most of the players really aren't seeing it being used well.
So the actual questions, are "do we really think the finisher mori caused a slugging problem", or "do we think there still isn't a slugging problem, but since we don't have access to any current official stats, no one can actually prove anything"?
Its a poor excuse thing made out of killer main content creators and their loyal fan boys and girls, just copied and pasted their homework. When survivors made an uproar that hook respawns is not a good idea, killers was quickly to say " chill out it is a good thing and we do not need to slug no more or very rarely". Ofc that as I expected turned out to be a big pile of horse ######### lie just to get us to stop complaining.
Bvhr added so much hooks on the map and so close that I never struggle to find any hooks and this was done because of the whole boil over issue years back. Dead saloon my fav example has like 7 hooks neck to neck of each other. The excuse of survivors having too much perks trigger off hook is a poor man excuse. There perks for killers that needs you to be hook to get value that helps for winning like pop, pain res, devour etch.
Lastly slugging for 4k certainly gotten worst with finisher mori. Before that killers would most likely to hook the third person now its the common that if its the last 2, they slug third or if they do get both down. They bm third on hook then hump fourth waiting till their bleed timer goes to 3.8 seconds then mori. Can hope that whatever bvhr got plan will finally help with this and bonus if they remove finisher mori . Cause am pretty sure with hook respawns and finisher mori gone they will probably stop slugging third for fourth.