Game Balance

gondark

I have played Dead by Daylight for almost 1,000 hours. I started playing around the Blood Moon event in 2025. The majority of my playtime has been spent playing Killer (around 65%), with the remaining time being Survivor.

Throughout my time playing, I have taken multiple breaks from the game because I have found the Killer experience increasingly frustrating. My main concern is not that Killers should automatically win, but that the Killer role often has very little room for mistakes compared to Survivor.

A small mistake as Killer can quickly become unrecoverable, while Survivors have many tools available to recover from mistakes and continue applying pressure. I believe the game needs more consistency so that matches are decided more by skill, decision-making, and strategy rather than map design, perk combinations, and resource availability.

These are the biggest issues I have experienced:

Hex Totem Spawns

Hex perks are designed to be powerful but risky. However, the current Totem spawn system can make them feel inconsistent and sometimes unfair.

There are situations where Hex Totems spawn extremely close to Survivors and are cleansed before the Killer has any realistic opportunity to defend them, even if the Killer immediately moves towards the Totem.

Other times, Hex Totems spawn beside generators or in high-traffic areas where Survivors naturally discover them.

I believe Hex Totems should receive better spawn protection. They should have minimum distance requirements from Survivors, generators, and common travel paths. Hex perks should still be possible to find, but they should not be removed before the Killer has a chance to interact with them.

Pallet Density and Map Design

Pallet density on many maps is extremely high, especially on larger maps and some two-story maps.

The issue is not that Survivors should have no resources, but that some maps provide so many safe pallets and strong loops that Killers without mobility, anti-loop abilities, or strong chase powers struggle to create pressure.

Many Killers can win individual interactions but still lose the overall match because each chase takes too long and generators continue progressing.

Maps such as RPD are a good example of this problem. The combination of size, layout, safe areas, and pallet placement can make it extremely difficult for many Killers to apply pressure.

I believe pallet density and extremely strong structures should be reviewed to create more consistent chase experiences.

Survivor Items

I believe Survivors should no longer spawn into trials with items.

Items such as toolboxes, flashlights, and med-kits provide immediate advantages from the beginning of the match, before the Killer has had any opportunity to establish pressure.

This becomes especially noticeable when multiple Survivors bring strong items and coordinate around them.

Instead, Survivors should have to search chests during the trial to obtain items. This would make items feel more like rewards found during the match rather than guaranteed advantages from the start.

I would also suggest limiting item availability so that multiple high-impact items cannot stack excessively in the same trial.

Survivor Second-Chance Mechanics

Many Survivor perks exist to prevent one mistake from instantly ending a chase, which is healthy for the game. However, when multiple defensive mechanics are combined, they can completely remove Killer momentum.

Examples include:

• Dead Hard
• Decisive Strike
• Flashbangs
• Flashlight saves
• Other endurance and stun effects

A Killer can successfully win an interaction but still lose significant time because multiple protection mechanics activate one after another.

I believe these mechanics should be reviewed so Survivors still have ways to outplay Killers, but Killers are not repeatedly punished after successfully gaining an advantage.

Dead Hard

Dead Hard can create situations where a Killer has already earned a hit but the chase is extended because of an additional health state.

I believe Dead Hard should be changed so it provides defensive value without creating situations where a Survivor effectively gains extra chase time with no additional interaction required.

A possible change would be making it a delayed endurance effect, where a protected hit causes the Survivor to enter the dying state after a short delay instead of immediately extending the chase.

Generator Speed

Generator speed is one of my biggest concerns.

Against coordinated teams, generators can be completed extremely quickly. It is common for a Killer to still be in their first chase while multiple generators have already been completed.

This creates a situation where Killers have very little time to establish pressure, especially Killers without strong mobility.

I believe generator speed bonuses should be reviewed, especially when multiple bonuses stack together.

Perks, items, and effects that increase repair speed should not combine to the point where objectives disappear before the Killer has a realistic chance to interact with the match.

Generator Regression

I believe generator regression should be unlimited, with balance coming from reduced effectiveness rather than a hard limit.

Currently, Killers can reach situations where defending a generator becomes ineffective because repeated regression is restricted or loses too much value.

This is especially noticeable in 3-gen situations, where a Killer may successfully create a defensive position but eventually loses because they cannot maintain pressure on the generators.

Unlimited regression would allow Killers to continue applying pressure through active defense, while the effectiveness of each regression action can be reduced to prevent unhealthy stalling.

The goal should not be to allow Killers to hold games forever. The goal should be to ensure that protecting generators remains a viable strategy.

Generator Speed Perks

Generator speed perks and repair bonuses can become too powerful when combined.

A coordinated team using repair-focused builds can complete objectives extremely quickly, leaving little room for the Killer to make meaningful plays.

I believe generator speed bonuses should not stack to extreme levels. Strong teamwork should still be rewarded, but it should not create situations where the Killer has already lost before they can establish pressure.

Exit Gates and Large Maps

Large maps create additional difficulties for Killers, especially those without mobility.

When exit gates are placed far apart, it can become extremely difficult to defend both during the endgame.

I believe larger maps should receive adjustments to exit gate placement or opening times to create a more consistent endgame experience.

Overall Suggestion

I believe Dead by Daylight needs more consistency between the Killer and Survivor experiences.

The problem is not that Killers should always win. The problem is that Killer mistakes are often heavily punished, while Survivor mistakes can frequently be recovered from through perks, items, map resources, and coordination.

The goal should be a game where:

• Killers are rewarded for good decisions and pressure.
• Survivors still have meaningful opportunities to outplay Killers.
• Matches are decided more by skill rather than overwhelming advantages from map design, item stacking, or excessive second chances.

I enjoy Dead by Daylight and want the game to continue improving. These changes would help make Killer feel more rewarding while keeping Survivor gameplay engaging.

rCrimsonWolf

I would add to this, that unhooked survivors should not have the benefits of unhooking protection when:
-they unhook afterwards (I hit so many people unhooking someone, while they are wounded, only for nothing happening to them)
-they bodyblock the killer. You got unhooked, you should run to safety, not stand in the doorway so your friends get away, because hitting you makes me slower and puts me on cooldown.
-stun the killer.

Next, I would add a stun protection to the killer, being pallet stunned, only to be flashlight stunned only to be flashlight stunned while I am flashlight stunned is riddiculous. Either give killers stacking haste buff for each subsequesnt strun in 3 second windoe of recovering from a stun of any kind, or make the subsequesnt stun last 50% less than the previous one.

Survivors should fear the killer and try to avoid it, not hunt them to make their life misserable, just because the game provides so many safety nets for survivors.

Also, since survivors get an option in the setting for visuals for heart beat and lullabies, Killers should get visual indicators for loud breathing and footsteps. If not, give those to Draculas bat, it should be using eco location and unless you have expensive headset, the bat and spirit are useless againts people with half a brain functioning.

On the other hand:
Survivors should be able to use the pallet with killer underneath it. I personally cant pallet stun killers, because my wrongly wired brain waits for them to be under pallet to go for it and I simply never even begin the animation for it. in conjunction with this, killers should not be stunned by a pallet they are not under, being stunned by pallet, because I am near one end of it is ridiculous. Reward survivors for precision, dont punish killers for survivors quality of life.

Both Survivors and killers should be able to simply do the thing they press the button when prompted. The amount of time I stood looking as wounded survivor, because me pressing and holding the button to heal them did nothing or I dropped the survivor, because pressing and holding the hook prompt button did nothing if infuriating.

Sorry for highjacking, I just had to add to this.

Arcturus

Killer mistakes having a higher impact is naturally going to happen because they are the only player on their team, their mistakes have 4 times the impact. However, the reverse is true as well, a killer's good decisions and plays are often rewarded more, sometimes it's just hard to keep that in mind when the effects are happening where you can't see them. One quick down makes it so that you effectively get 3 survivors off gens as soon as possible (one on hook, one to unhook, and one you are now chasing), but it's hard to feel these effects when you can't see them.\

The killer also has the opportunity to take advantage of survivor mistakes and completely snowball the game. There have been many times where I have found survivors lurking around someone I just downed and end up with 2 downs, 3 downs, or occasionally when they mess up enough, 4 downs. Even if you just catch and down one person going for a flashlight save, now you have 2 hooks at a time, half the team needs to reset after they get off hooks, and they need to get off the hooks in the first place.

As for the specific suggestions:

• Hexes are inherently risky, sometimes you get really unlucky and sometimes you get a totem hidden in the grass in the corner of Backwater Swamp, which is why Undying exists. I understand wanting more consistent value from totems, but the perk design is inherently supposed to be a tradeoff of if you're lucky you get a very powerful perk and if you're not it gets cleansed. The devs also probably would never implement this spawn logic because it is difficult when maps are not 100% static.
• Personally, I think RPD is not a good example of pallet density. Going into a killer match, I know exactly where pretty much every pallet is and how to (if I can) outplay it because it's one of the few pretty much static maps in the game. I think pallet density is much more obvious on certain maps where you have eaten through 8 different filler pallets in one chase and you don't know how there are still more in the area.
• If you just got rid of survivors' ability to bring items into the match, it would be akin to not letting killers bring addons either. Not only does this make certain builds borderline useless unless you get the right item out of a chest, but it's a huge nerf in general that isn't mirrored in any way. Certain items with certain addons are still too impactful and need a nerf/rework, but the same can be said with killer addons. I've heard the idea of survivors having to get their items from chests at the start of the trial, which isn't entirely out of the question, although you'd need to add more chests. The majority of the game is also solo queue, so restricting builds based off the rest of the lobby would never work, solo queue players just wouldn't be able to run their own builds.
• I'm not entirely sure what you want to be done about survivor "second chance" mechanics. Dead Hard is a good perk, but can easily be countered by waiting 2 seconds. Flashlight saves can be countered by staring at walls, and even people who took the time to build up a Flashbang you can still do a quick look around the downed survivor and usually catch them. DS I will give you is flawed, as it can be used aggressively or a killer can eat it even when they've already hooked another survivor in the meantime, but it's unfortunately a necessary deterrent. Most of these perks / play styles (even DS to some extent you can wait if you think the survivor has it) are already counterable so I don't know what you would want changed.
• I don't know exactly how you're playing, but even with gen regression perks I rarely run into the 8 event limit. The regression limit is required to ensure the game isn't infinitely stalled. Even after Skull Merchant got reworked, Singularity players were able to stall the game indefinitely by kicking gens dozens of times until the survivors eventually go down in 30 minute long games.
• I'm not sure if you're referring to repair speed perks or gen rush perks as a whole, but repair speed perks got majorly nerfed with Diminished Returns, as with every item or perk that affects repair speed, the bonus gets smaller and smaller. For genrush perks as a whole, I'd say Hyperfocus is the biggest issue and has needed changes for some time now, and it's only used to genrush. Some other genrush perks like Tammy Time and Bardic are used outside of genrush builds as well though, and they're extremely weak outside of them so it's harder to balance them.
• Exit gates shouldn't be always able to easily be defended both at once. Large maps are indeed an issue for especially DBD's older killer designs, but if exit gates were always close enough to defend both of them it would defeat the purpose of having two. It would also make it impossible for a last survivor to get out through an exit gate because the killer would be guaranteed to have line of sight on them, which already happens on a lot of maps anyway.

I understand that you want this game to be better, and we need that kind of mentality in this community. However, a lot of these frustrations come from survivors having powerful things, which is the same for survivors having frustrations about killers having powerful things (eg. quad slow down builds, or just perks like Pain Res in general when you're about to be done with your gen. Or even certain killers like Nurse). If those frustrations needed to go away, neither side could have anything worthwhile. I also understand certain frustrations with mechanics, but those mechanics sometimes need to be there for that portion of the player base that will abuse it if given the chance.

This all being said, DBD is just a very hard game to balance to be consistently fun on both sides, and I think part of the "consistency" problem is that some of the fun of DBD comes from when it isn't consistent.

Elan

Balance-wise apart from nerfing rest of exhaustion perks I'd like them making killers more even in strenght before focusing on balancing survivor side.

→ gap between potentially new strongest killer Judgment, Nurse and Trapper or Ghostface are simply too big creating unfair matches where you spawn on same map with same RNG and while you will dominate with one killer, other killer on same map, with same rng with same build will struggle. Let's say you play on forgotten ruins with Jason who can constantly port between levels, snowball well and get the pressure and then you have Huntress who has to go all across to map to portal or staircase to get down and by the time the gen is done. This is also issue of the map, not only killers.

→ Difference between stacking full slowdown and running no slowdown is too big. I don't say that you can't win without slowdown coz a lot of killers prefer aura builds or antiexhaustion builds, although I'd like to see some base game slowdown to help killers vary their loadouts as well as maintain pressure by completing their objectives well. I'd already said that I was fan of fresh hook rewards in term of extra BP, extra damage on next gen and aura reveal on least hooked survivors in exchange for better yet less weaponizable antitunnel. Example is simple, you play as Pig. You manage to down someone quick enough, now you hook them see other survivors as they all have less hook stages and can deside who to go for as well as what gen you can pressure with additional 15 % regression on kick (Nurse, Blight or Jason would have 5 % only)

Speaking of buffs, those killers would need bigger buffs: Wraith, Hag, Doctor, Huntress, Bubba, Freddy, Pig, Clown, Legion, Ghostface, Deathslinger, Pyramid Head, Nemesis, Artist, Sadako, Dredge, Knight, Skull Merchant, Chucky, Houndmaster, Springtrap

If those killers are buffed more towards Oni level, who's imo the level of strenght that should be then we can say if that compared with fresh hook rewards is enough to balance killer vs survivor or if additional balances have to be done, as I believe that the game around top 10 killers is probably balanced but not so much to others.