Let’s Talk About the Upcoming Anti-Slug / Anti-Camp / Anti-Tunnel Changes
While it’s great to see QoL updates aiming to make the game smoother — especially for survivors — we can’t ignore the deeper balance implications here.
Yes, these anti-slugging, anti-tunneling, and anti-camping mechanics will strengthen survivor gameplay overall. That’s undeniable. But it’s also important to ask: why do killer players rely on these tactics in the first place?
It’s often a response to game design pressure. Many killers feel they have no other viable options due to gen speeds, strong survivor perks, and increasingly nerfed slowdown tools.
If these changes are implemented without addressing the underlying reasons killers tunnel, slug, or camp, then the imbalance only shifts further.
Killers need compensation in other areas, whether it’s basekit improvements, better chase mechanics, or meaningful perk reworks, Enhancing survivor quality of life is great, but it must go hand in hand with addressing the core struggles killers face.
Seeing nothing directly aimed at improving killer experience in this roadmap is genuinely concerning. It feels like we're addressing one side’s frustrations while leaving the other to keep struggling in silence.
Comments
I don't buy it for a second.
Killers ranted, raged, and demanded that prove thyself be nerfed. A perk that not only didn't overcome the base kit grouping up penalty, but also incentivized it with BP bonus. A perk now deleted from existence by demand. Ironically, the "compensation" for removing the BP incentive was to nerf the perk.
Not only that, but these things are in no way comparable. Survivors start the match at their greatest advantage, with everyone up, no pressure, and all resources available. Those resources are consumed over time, completing gens and used resources shrink the playable map area. Hooks are permanent, as is death. These are base kit features that amount to survivors having no comeback mechanic if they don't have a good start. It's also a reason the match "seems to be over" within the first couple minutes, and the "go next" epidemic.
But despite you being wrong, there's a good counter example for you: solo q are some of the least efficient players in the game. They do challenges, will actually group up early on gens, open chests, lurk for flashlight saves, etc.
And killers do not generally respond with "oh good, a match I can play casually and still have fun and likely win", instead they continue to camp and tunnel for an "easy win". There no way back for the survivors once that happens, they didn't slam gens first thing, so the game is over, go next.
That is the true problem with base kit things like camping and tunneling, is that they're always available and insanely strong. You have to play as though the killer is going to hard tunnel, or you simply lose from the start. There's no coming back if the killer eliminates a survivor before a gen is complete. Coincidentally, the killer can still easily win if a gen is complete before a survivor dies (or, as mentioned with end game builds, can still possibly win if all gens are complete… how many survivors are winning after all survivors have been eliminated do you think?)
It's been that way for years now, nearly every killer meta drives home the message that survivors need to "do gens or instantly lose the game". And giving killers sometimes overpowered tools like 3 gen and gen kick meta, doesn't mean that killers stop tunneling, no. They use those tools and tunneling for easier wins. Sorry, survivors, you didn't slam gens (or sometimes the right gens) hard enough in the first two minutes, here's your frustrating loss (after an hour).
"Gen rushing" is not base kit. It takes perks, and specifically items to pull off on top off maybe some luck. If you're getting "gen rushed" by perkless survivors, that's a not enough pressure issue.
depends on the match up, in some match ups the progression perks are not giving them much of a chance, I blame loose match making. when they’re resorting to much more efficient tactics and are highly skilled I say they’re needed a lot of the time to even have a chance against some playstyles/killer& perk combos where the killer is clearly skilled. Tbh anything is problematic if abused so many things on both sides, like if you really look at it.
problem is nerfing everything effective into the ground just makes a dull game for either side but it’s usually the go to method. So that’s why I say look at these things if it gets too crazy.
they could consider buffing anti-healing and killer haste perks if it’s not able to compete against a fast heal/survivor haste meta. As far as topic there’s ways they can go about it, I think buff on the killer side what’s lacking instead of nerf survivor would be the better move, always.
If they must, nerf toolboxes for sure.
Killers don't need buffs to compensate, SWF need nerfs and for their gameplay to be altered when queuing with friends, that's all. Any buffs to Killers just negate any changes made to tunneling/camping/slugging so the issue will still be present, as it always is. People will downvote this because SWF mustn't be touched, even if it's at the complete detriment to the entire rest of the game, but that's the only way to start achieving some actual balance for the health of the game.
there’s not really anything I can think of that would not further drive down everyone else on survivor other than some higher mmr built in static regression penalty when you ready up as a 4man high mmr. Sometimes people are just better than you, on both sides. Most people aren’t going against that most of the time though, so it will be wild to watch reality set in. Same goes when the all the anti this and that comes in.
They are still not wrong since that is basically what is going on here.
Again, it's not a double standard.
One is complaints about a genuine balance problem, the other is complaints about the basic gameplay loop. They're not the same thing.
There are ways of complaining about gen speeds that are fair, but just talking about survivors being efficient in a general sense isn't it.
I disagree with you, it is a double standard.
How so? What makes it a double standard?
you are saying it is not fair to complain about survivor gen efficiency. However, it is apparently OK for survivors to complain about the killer efficiently completing their objective. That is a pretty textbook example of a double standard.
"If you ignore how they're completely different, they're exactly the same!"
And we need to consider that 4 survivors can bring toolboxes. If 2 survivors at least bring toolboxes you can expect the first gens to get completed very fast, even if the first chase was a very short one.
I mean, you're cutting out a lot of context there.
Like, I do think it's okay to complain about survivor gen efficiency… when it's a problem, which is not just "survivors are broadly doing gens if the killer isn't making them do something else". It'd be completely different to complain about survivors all spawning spread out, or all/most using toolbox builds— I've done that before in the past myself, because those things are genuinely problematic.
Similarly, we're not talking about killers just being efficient, either. For starters, tunnelling isn't efficient at all to begin with, it's just unbalanced enough to still be a winning play, but even if it were- it's a specific kind of efficient play that involves leveraging basekit problems.
So, in short, I am saying those two things, because the context reveals they're not actually the same thing at all.
Fundimentally, I think it is a silly argument to have. The killers objective is to kill, period. The survivors objective is to escape, period. There is nothing inherently wrong with either side trying to complete their objective as efficiently as they can as dragging your feet increases the chance that you lose. People want to win, and wanting to win is not a bad thing.
What is wrong is when BhVR does repeated nerfs to the only really impactful perks one side has to slow the game down so they can come back and complete their objective, and not touch the objectives on the other side. Notice how in no way am I blaming survivors for rushing gens. Survivor gameplay in dbd is bad there is allmost nothing else to do, so blaming survivors for just rushing the objective is just flat out dumb.
It is entirely fair to talk about how fast survivors complete their objective vs how fast the killer can build pressure and complete theirs though. Dismissing complaints that gens fly too quickly after numerous nerfs to gen slowdown is where I take issue.
I mean, yeah, the killer's objective is to kill, but if they're able to do that too quickly with too little counterplay, that's a problem. That's why tunnelling needs changes.
As for not touching the objectives on the other side, they did. Three years ago, in patch 6.1.0. They haven't done it since then because there generally hasn't been any need to, the base progression speed of generators isn't really a problem anymore. If there are problems, it comes from the other side of the equation (how well killers can perform, most typically stymied by maps or specific perk combos but occasionally from their own power level), or from progression tools.
Now that we've narrowed it down that far, we're back on track for what a reasonable complaint would look like - if you wanna say toolboxes are extremely overdue for a rework because they've been problematic for years, I'm on board, I'll agree with you. You just do need to be that specific or all you're complaining about is your opponents doing their objective.
The fact of the matter is, if you want to talk about how fast survivors complete their objective vs how fast the killer can build pressure, the first part of that isn't the problem anymore, not for a long time now. Where problems exist, it's with the other half- with how fast/effectively killers can create their pressure. For some killers, on some maps, there are some problems there.
It's not a problem because of slowdown perks being nerfed, though, they're not supposed to be the main source of pressure and they already aren't for a good chunk of the cast at this point. It's more to do with how well a killer's power can engage with the fundamentals of the game, or how the resources/layout of a map are constructed. If those two things don't get in your way, you don't need slowdown perks, they're just nice to have.
Framing that tunneling on killer is only reactionary to gen speed has already been disproven.
People do it at 5 gens all the time. Its not "due to gen speed"
You don't need perks or toolboxes with the best addons. All you need to genrush is to split around at the beginning of the match so 3 non-adjacent generators are completed at the end of the first chase. If you don't have Pain Resonance or a killer with high mobility, that game is problably already over. Those saying that base regression is enough, I would like to see is this situations, turning their words into evidence.
Assuming roughly 15-20 seconds for travel time to split up (as survivors are going to be spawning together every time soon enough), the first chase would have to take almost two full minutes in order for that to work out the way you're describing.
That's not impossible, sure, but there are so many points of failure. If the killer drops chase to pressure someone else off gens, you only get two done before first hook. If the killer gets the first down quickly, you don't get any done before the first hook. If the first chase does take over two minutes but the survivor being chased uses up all the resources for that half of the map, you get three gens in exchange for probably losing the game.
Don't get me wrong, splitting up is the right call and efficient play, but calling it "genrushing" when toolbox builds exist is a huge stretch in my opinion. I don't see the value of a term that ranges from "good play" to "overwhelmingly, disgustingly overpowered" with zero distinction, personally, that's always my hangup with this claim.
As an aside, it's not basekit regression that's strong enough, it's basekit slowdown. You slow the gens down by playing well and spreading pressure, you don't even need to kick gens for that to work out on paper.
K disproven.
Dont move the goal post now
It's a non-starter. I'd rip SWF out of the game if it was designed just for my enjoyment, but there is no chance BHVR will ever treat SWFs differently than soloq.
If you are going to argue with some random screenshots, at least try not to go from prestige 0 to 3 between them. And since the pictures are taken from some kind of video/stream, it wouldn't hurt to share with us the actual video to know if the start was as bad as I was talking about, or if those survivors that don't even reach 10K BP were tunneled. I can go trough long streaks even perkless, but that's not what I was talking about.
You don't need to hold the killer for two minutes, because the killer will have to go and kick a gen for a measly 5% regression that will be reset in a matter of seconds. You can't prevent them from eventually being completed, since the time you spend traversing the map is greater than the regression you can apply.
It happens more than it should and in many occasions it is not even intentional. This leads to matches in which you escape against killers who most likely would have destroy you in a direct confrontation, but you go like "Well, that was an easy match", when it was just an unfavorable start.
I mean, you do have to, that's numerically how long it'd take. 90 seconds for each individual gen (done at the same time) plus 20 seconds for splitting up is 110 seconds, just shy of two minutes.
Obviously you can't reliably stop any gen from being done, but you do have some control over how long it takes, broadly speaking. Survivors spawning split up made matches unfair, but that's being fixed soon, thankfully.
I can understand the spawn changes not being done yet due to the other gameplay changes but I don't understand why the map offering change hasn't been done yet. It's literally just changing a number. They introduced a whole new Eyrie map just to nerf the offering but they haven't changed the number on % chance you go to the map. Seems sus. I don't think they're actually going to change it
"They've been doing this in every patch for 3 years"
As killer gen regression that rewards hooks is gutted for the last year. :)
That's still pretty good for killer, to be fair.
Absolutely everything else gets stronger on average, specifically regression gets slightly weaker on average. That's a pretty good trade to me, I'd rather be able to run the fun variety builds with a higher potency than the same old same old every game.
A good trade - for the top 5 or 6 killer characters in the game. Which is less than 1/4 of the entire killer roster.
I just said not to move goal posts and here we are.
You initially say:
I show you several screen shots, of not having any regression perks, on one of the weakest killers in the game. And getting 3 and 4ks.
On my pig which is barely setup.
This directly addresses your point. And counters what you have said.
You are now pivoting to:
"well I need to see the match now"
If you want detailed videos of killers using 0 regression perks and doing fine that have reduced movement. Google is your friend and so is youtube/twitch.
Here, heres several links that took no time to search up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-Vie2CAoYU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szij0Xe7RQw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdqRbZitgnc (8:15)
A lot more from D3AD he does this all the time. Hours of this stuff he does live as well.
Otz vods from yesterday:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2454336667
Several matches with no regress, low movement, even a pig match with no regress as well. In just one vod.
So still disproven. Dont move goal posts x2
Nah.
Really, it's only about five or six on the lower end that can't benefit from the steady buffs we've been getting, and that's being pretty generous - if I were being as strict as possible without going overboard I'd probably say there's only two killers who truly struggle to engage with the game on a fundamental level.
out of curiousness alone, which two would you say those are in your opinion?
Trapper and Skull Merchant.
I don't think that's a particularly shocking answer, haha. I think most people are on board for those being the weakest two in the game.
Both have something going for them - Trapper has snowball and some nasty addons, Merchant still has pretty solid stealth to lean into - but they're just operating on such a lower power level than everyone else.
That's just an incorrect opinion.
I could say the same about yours, friend. Do you want to discuss it at all? I'm open to chatting.
oh okay, thank you for answering. I appreciate that.
minute long chases are not even remotely out of the question. The problem with what you were saying before is that survivors do not need to bring any toolboxes or gen progression perks to slam gens way faster than the killer can build pressure if they dont tunnel or slug.
Survivors are able to literally have 4 health states at this point between DS, OTR, and syringes. If a survivor just has a syringe and doesnt have OTR or DS, do you honestly know how much time that adds to a chase? Not only is that not a once per game thing (its up to 4 times per game) but even if it were, one bad chase can be game destroying for the killer, and syringes, DS, OTR ect are almost guarantees that chases will go well over a minute when survivors know how to loop. The issue with trying to convey that to people is that many survivor players don't know how to loop and path very well and cant take full advantage of these tools otherwise people would see just how disgusting they really are.
Well coordinated survivors have tools so powerful that they can slow any killer but maybe S tiers down to the point where it doesnt matter if all the survivors are slamming gens as fast as they can. They dont need toolboxes or gen progression perks, because they can drag chases out to over a minute long and thats IF they go down, often the killer has call the chase a lost cause and give up and go somewhere else because there are so many god pallets and windows on some maps.
And they've said this before, due to popular request, and we went along with it for a few years. But I've seen nothing of the sort when it comes to killer buffs. Peanuts is what we got. People like to refer to 6.1.0 as the patch that ruined the game for survivors, but the only meaningful thing the killer has retained from that patch (because pretty much everything else buffed at the time has since been nerfed) is the slightly less sprint burst survivors get off being hit, so that they can't use a single hit to shift W and get from 1 end of the map to the other. But even then, you hit a survivor and it's like "Rocket boost to outer space! 20+ guaranteed seconds' lead on the killer!"
I don't think we're gonna see any great killer buffs like that in the next 6 months, or the 6 months after that. In fact, the devs recently said that killers have been pandered to enough, and that now it's time for survivors to get some attention. That's the biggest joke.
I’m so glad for the dislike option
I feel the anti-slug should just be kindred if they more then two slugged.
Id agree with this.
id throw in pig solely to actually give her m2 a bit more of a hit. Only slightly buff it, just slightly, as they didnt do enough last time. Grease is basically required in your matches if you want that thing to hit anyone.
I would've said Sadako as well, but I think their map design philosophy and changes have all but eliminated that idea.
@ChuckingWong
The hell are you talking about. You are literally cutting my quote in half, removing its context at your whim. Then providing some random result screenshot as they prove anything, when they could come from any random streamer like the videos you are pointing me now. You may be forgetting that the conversation is about the changes coming to the game, so knowing the circumstances under which someone dies with less than 10K BP is everything.
Exactly, not every change needs an equivalent on the other side. But that's what survivors have gotten every patch. You say that killers have been buffed every patch. I mean, maybe? But any reasonable rundown of said patch notes will be able to gage the killer changes as follows: "nerf, nerf, nerf, nerf, buff, about the same, buff, nerf, nerf, nerf." Just look at Ghoul and Chucky. Their nerfs will a billion times more impactful than their buffs (if you can even call those buffs). There comes a point where you've made such a damaging change to a killer that no buffs, bar returning them to how they were, is gonna make them viable again. It's a joke and dream how they thought that Chucky's latest change would make him viable again, or that they still consider killers like Wraith or Freddy or Deathslinger overtuned.
And the "survivor nerf" changes you refer to really show how hard y'all are grasping at straws. "Deadzones." What maps have deadzones besides farm? Name 1. "Bloodlust." Oh, you mean the only thing that actually enables M1 killers to get hits sometimes, of which Bloodlust 3 isn't even enough at certain loops? "Gen tapping." You mean survivors actually have to work on gens for more than .0001 seconds to stop the regression? Crazy concept. And it's more than up for by the 8-kick limit, which survivors don't need in order to win. "Hooks respawning." You mean the thing that made zero sense from any balance perspective, and was just there to screw over killers? And it's not even gone. I'd say they didn't go far enough, making the hooks respawn after a minute. They shouldn't be destroyed at all, because now you're just punished for downing too fast. "I should've had a hook here, but now the next one isn't for miles. Guess I need to drop them and let them get picked up/crawl out the exit for free."
I've also always found the invention of the term "gen kick meta" hilarious, because it directly implies that killers going around the map kicking generators (a basic mechanic which they're supposed to do) is too much for the survivors to handle. Seems pretty disrespectful to survivor players. Yes, the killer isn't just kicking gens; they're getting a hit every now and then too. But they're not getting any real chases in until all the gens are kicked, basically the greatest gift of momentum the killer could ever give to the survivors. If you, as a team of 4, take 45 seconds to get back to a gen that's been kicked, then of course that seems like a daunting strategy to overcome. But those people would have no right to complain that they couldn't play any better. And that's what this whole thing is about. It's about making it to where baby survivors, who can't handle basic gameplay elements like killers chasing them OR kicking gens, can beat (or have a really close match with) any level of killer, turning the game into a killer bullying simulator at mid-high level, because they actually understand how to abuse that imbalance.
Wow, because those nerfs to DS and DH made nobody run them anymore, right?
I mean, yeah, 3 second DS was pretty garbage, and I will die on the hill that a perk that relies on a Killer's ping to be good is a bad perk.
I'm not cutting your quote out of context, I directly addressed your core claim; that without Pain Res or high mobility, base regression isn't enough and the game is “probably already over.”
I showed matches, both mine and from the community, where killers with no regression perks and low mobility, still perform well. That directly contradicts what you said.
Now you're shifting the focus to things like bloodpoint totals and hypothetical tunneling, instead of engaging with the core argument.
And if you want to pivot to tunneling go look at the matches I provided you, some have tunneling some dont. So you arent even right there anyways.
You're making a general claim that base regression isn't enough without Pain Res or mobility, that has already been disproven, multiple times now.
I think the better counter to anything I have said. Is real world examples from your direction as you actually havent provided anything to back up what you say. Whereas I have.
What is this question? Why are you responding like this to me?
I put up survivor meta perks that were nerfed since the counter claim was said it didnt happen at all. That was the discussion.
And now you are pivoting to something else entirely? What are you even saying here that applies to the conversation I was having?
This is the last time I will answer you.
The full quote is:
"You don't need perks or toolboxes with the best addons. All you need to genrush is to split around at the beginning of the match so 3 non-adjacent generators are completed at the end of the first chase. If you don't have Pain Resonance or a killer with high mobility, that game is problably already over. Those saying that base regression is enough, I would like to see is this situations, turning their words into evidence."
So yes, you are cutting my quote in half, completely ignoring the context of the comment. I would like to see you all in this situation, not your result screen where you may have slugged, camp, tunneled or even use The Trapper with 8 traps on shack. Or even use other as example when they do all this when needed.
You're pivoting to a different argument entirely thats fine if you cant address the fact that you're now repeating the same claim and dodging the evidence again.
I provided multiple matches, mine and from others, showing low-mobility killers with no regression succeeding even when gens are split early, which is the exact situation you described. Some matches involve tunneling, some don't. That’s reality, different strategies, different outcomes.
You even asked
And you go "oh its not good enough, I need videos"
I provide links to videos
And you go "oh thats not what I said, dont misplace my words"
You're dismissing it all based on speculation, “well maybe they camped, maybe they tunneled, maybe it was Trapper with 8 traps”. You're grasping at maybes and what ifs because you’ve got nothing concrete to offer in return.
If you think your scenario is so decisive, show it. Let’s see a match where the killer loses purely because they lacked Pain Res or mobility, and where base regression was truly "not enough." Because until you do, you’re not arguing, you're just deflecting.
@AmpersandUnderscore I think pivot is my new favorite word on this forum. You see what I mean? Its just constant with these replies.
those perks sucked when they originally got nerfed into the ground and I still saw people running them in mass even though it bought them like 2 seconds. I think that says a lot. They could nerf them to a half second and people would still use them.
Thats insane. the power from DS isnt even primarily from the stun. Its that it gives a survivor who lost the chase a get out of jail free card with no strings attached. Good survivors who know how to loop super well can also take that 3 second stun and spiral it into an extra 20-30 seconds in chase.
That 3 second stun was functionally 2 seconds after animations.
"Good Survivors"
As if good Killers wouldn't either avoid it outright (like me) or eat it tactically.
Can't believe I'm seeing someone argue that 3-second DS was OP in the big 2025.
You do realize that there are situations where the correct decision is to eat it right? And DS, even at 3 seconds gives enough distance to the survivor to often make it to the nearest safe loop and that adds at minimum 10-20 seconds to a chase and sometimes more.
On Gideon? Against Trapper? Sure.
On Rotten Fields? Against Blight? Nah.
As stated, I think whatever they do for the last two won't be enough but will solve the worst issues. I am worried about antitunnel though, because how is the game going to decide what a tunnel is without overstepping and accidentally harming the weaker half of the roster or Killers who just want to innocently pressure unhookers at hooks?