Killer feels horrible to play at the moment.

XenosTheProto

Recently, I have sort of hit a wall with this game. I love it to death and I want to play more killer because I adore the concept and feeling it's SUPPOSED to have, but every time I queue in for a match, I either don't find anyone, 3 gens pop in less than 30 seconds or I get BMed, even if I tried my absolute best to win. And if I win, I get salt because I didn't play the way the survivors like. I'm going to be honest, I don't like using meta perks. I don't like it as a survivor so I try to avoid them, but it has become impossible. Without slowdown, there is almost nothing you can do unless you're nurse or blight. I know BHVR has tried some fixes, but things have only seemingly gotten worse with every update. I want to have fun but just feel horrible after every match, even if I win.

Does anyone have some tips on how to make it more fun to play as killer? I really love the role and want to learn more, but every round feels like a drag. Is there anything I can do on my part that makes things just that bit easier? Like what are some hidden gems of perks you've discovered? I would love to learn!

jesterkind

It sounds like you might struggle with early game pressure, based on what you're saying here— which is a good thing in a way, because it's a clear goal to improve on with specific tips that can be given!

Do you own the perk Lethal Pursuer? It's the single best perk for guaranteeing an at least okay start, so if you have it I strongly recommend using it for a bit.
If you don't, then a good rule of thumb is that the survivors usually spawned on the opposite side of the map to you, so beelining towards that general direction and keeping an eye out for scratch marks, flying crows, or just the survivors themselves can help with the early game quite a bit.

Once finding survivors stops being the issue, and you can get into your first chase pretty quickly, Corrupt Intervention is a good early-game perk too.

From there, the best way of conceptualising killer in this context is that every one second you spend without occupying a survivor is four seconds of total generator time, at least potentially— and that sounds pretty daunting on its face, but "occupying" is actually quite broad.
The golden rule, the best starting point, is this: One survivor on a hook means one survivor has to stop doing gens to come save, and if you get into a chase between the hook and the save, that's three occupied survivors.

(Barbecue & Chili, Friends til the End, Alien Instinct, Jagged Compass are all good perks for giving you a nudge towards survivors, to minimise that downtime)

I'll leave it there because absent context on who you play and what you struggle with I can't say much more concretely, but hopefully that's a good starting point for you!
Killer isn't as daunting as it might seem, once you figure out the best way you have for keeping up pressure.

Lexilogo

A few of my personal tips for developing gamesense, because that seems to be where you're struggling at the moment. A lot of it's instinct, but there are some things I can think of:

• Finding Survivors at the start is a matter of understanding their spawn logic. Lethal Pursuer is a really obvious and good shortcut, but Corrupt Intervention is also a good alternative, the gens it blocks often correlates with areas where the Survivors will spawn, and it's inherent slowdown that works better if you have a slow start. In general, simply understanding what gens are furthest from you and going to check should get some decent results.
• Survivors don't teleport. Well, unless you're playing the wacky woohoo purple pizza guy, but even then they don't do it often. When you see one, you should keep track of where they were and what they were doing. Were they working on a gen that's got good progress? They WILL come back there. Did you hook them? Someone's coming for the save, if you can know or at least guess who, you now know where half (if you've found another surv to chase by then, 75%) of the players are. Were they running around the back of main building? You know the direction they were moving in, and those routes can often be habitual. The average Survivor movespeed in a match is probably like 2 m/s, thanks to the time in matches they have to be still, you will be able to develop a sense for where they are at any given time.
• Survivors have plans, learn them. If a Survivor doesn't have a plan, you'll win anyway, so by all means overthink what they're doing. Is this a generic timewaster chase because they got found, or do they have an area they're trying to take you because there's spare pallets, or the gens there are completed, or etc? (this is why I love Batteries Included, it completely inverts these situations from gamelosing chases into nightmare scenarios where someone's hooked on the other side of the map) "What could the Survivor be trying to protect right now?" is a pretty good question to ask, because if you go for the correct answer, you will usually find 1-2 more Survivors at that location. This is especially useful against non-SWFs, because their plans are communicated through action and consensus, which you can see play out ingame more easily.
• Survivors usually don't treat all gens equally. Survivors like prioritising central generators and avoiding 3 gens, both for obvious reasons. This is especially true for characters good at punishing those situations like Singularity or so on. If you can narrow down even 1 generator Survivors seem to be ignoring, that's a massive advantage for finding Survivors quickly. (of course, don't wager the whole match on this…)
• Learn Survivor personalities. I like to split them up as "superstars" vs "sidekicks". Superstars want or are fine with my attention, sidekicks would rather not have it. There's a lot of variance within that ofc, any good Survivor including sidekicks know how to loop and know they need to do their share, and plenty of superstars know when to get on gens, but most Survivors have an element they're most comfortable in, you can use that information. Eg. It's VERY rare I will ever see the best looper in a match ever use a locker to try and lose me.

I know playing Killer when you're outmatched can feel like trying to grab smoke, it can feel frustrating and futile, but once you've built your gamesense, and can actually pull off stuff like a slow head turn into a locker grab with NO apparent clues, the payoff is worth it.

JimbusCrimbus

OP is right. Killer feels miserable. Queue times during peak hours prove it.

Anti051

Well…even if you get good at the weaker killers, they are positively crippled by the inevitable flood of endurance you'll encounter no matter what perks you use, so the only real huge tip is to base all your gameplay off a foundation that can easily recover the momentum lost from endurance effects by playing the stronger killers.

A few lighter tips: Lethal pursuer allows you to start a chase immediately and floods of rage is great for finding people throughout the match. Grim embrace/pop goes the weasel or grim embrace/pain resonance can be nice for getting more of a chance to get some real damage done before the gates are powered.

However, I'd advise you to brace for things to only get worse for the killer experience as that's what the pattern has been since 2018. There's always something looming on the horizon that aims to further limit what the killer can do based on what novice/intermediate survivor players find "fun."

Elan

It's two sided coin, the outcome of game truly matters on how often survivors sit on gens. As I play both sides I know that some games we split and min. 2 gens are done within the first chase, mostly 3 if the survivor can hold the killer for at least those 70ish seconds. But then sometimes no one does gen anymore, sometimes yes. So it depends. On the other hand it happens that I get chased for pretty long time and no one is doing gens at all. So the consistency is pretty meh. So it goes match by match. I mostly also am getting genrushed when playing killer. At this point you have to make decisions to get advantage. Best tactic atm is to focus two survivors and pinball between them. Friends till the end with Nemesis is also nice way to get from chase to chase, however there are limits for it being successfull.

brewingtea

I want to have fun but just feel horrible after every match, even if I win.

Are you sure you like DBD?

Gandor

@Anti051 said:

Well…even if you get good at the weaker killers, they are positively crippled by the inevitable flood of endurance you'll encounter no matter what perks you use, so the only real huge tip is to base all your gameplay off a foundation that can easily recover the momentum lost from endurance effects by playing the stronger killers.

A few lighter tips: Lethal pursuer allows you to start a chase immediately and floods of rage is great for finding people throughout the match. Grim embrace/pop goes the weasel or grim embrace/pain resonance can be nice for getting more of a chance to get some real damage done before the gates are powered.

However, I'd advise you to brace for things to only get worse for the killer experience as that's what the pattern has been since 2018. There's always something looming on the horizon that aims to further limit what the killer can do based on what novice/intermediate survivor players find "fun."

Wait what? DBD in 2018 was super survivor sided compared to today. Did you forget all the maps? Did you forget all the timings for every killer's action? 2018 was long before 6.1 update? It was time when true infinites were still part of the game. Basically all the maps were about 2x as large on average. Haddonfield was clearly survivor sided compared to today.

With a few small exceptions like legion release - how can you say the experience got worse for killers? Majority of updates since 2018 buffed killers resulting in kill rate very clearly above 50% as compared to 2018 stats