Knock, knock
That's enough for me, have fun everybody!
That's enough for me, have fun everybody!
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Niche interaction and you're unlikely to see it happen very often, but Fixated does kind of just downgrade Pinhead's M2 to the power level of a fly buzzing about your head annoying you.
Nothing you say is actually an argument against nerfing perks that are overtuned, you're just unhappy that it's happening to perks you happen to rely on. I hope that you made the same arguments against nerfing the most egregiously overpowered Killer perks too. If we actually want a diverse perk meta we have to accept that strong perks we like will be nerfed as well as weak perks getting buffed.
Vigil and Sprint Burst don't even really help against strong Killers who have total map control and you can never really escape. They help you pre-run against M1 Killers who have no way of catching up. Dead Hard is useful against almost all Killers (Nurse as always breaks the game) which is why having it basically for free like it used to be was awful for the average Killer. Same way that having a Pain Res every hook or Eruption Incpacitating Survivors was awful for Survivors and now that's gone. The game has actually been getting slowly better balance-wise over the years but my god some people have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the light.
If the game is so terrible for survivors, why haven’t you ever tried playing killer to see if it’s really as easy as you think it is?
“Thrill is only now getting a change”. Yeah, well same for Vigil, which was a very powerful perk for a long time that you would see just about everyone use in every high level match. Not sure how this supports your view that BHVR somehow wants to purposely screw over survivor players.
And if you think totem builds with Thrill are so busted, why don’t you try playing killer with a quad hex build for 10 matches and let us know how it went? Show us that you can consistently win this way, because if it’s really true that anyone can do this I must be playing the game all wrong as killer.
Then by this logic a single killer shouldn't counter an entire perk and item build, but they do. The Killer IS Stronger, and there are several killers who could be tweaked and made better for sure but that should lie in their power and not the balance of perks. Perks for the killer are foundationally different than perks for the survivor.
Survivors are all reskins of the same individual with the same abilities only differentiated by perks. Killers are entirely their own and so killer perks should be arranged to compliment an already existing power, not make or break the game. on the other hand Survivors without perks are confined to items to direct different gameplay styles and there are killers and killer builds that entirely curb stomp entire survivor builds before they even load into a match.
The Double Standard I am pointing out is that it is okay for there to be perks that are better against some killers than others, just like there are some killers that counter altruism and have better chase potential than others. the Nerf on Vigil is a standout problem because it is setting a bad precedent going forward where perks must be nerfed based on how they effect all killers across the board and that is a literally impossible standard when killers arent even balanced amongst themselves. its impossible to balance DBD to this extent and a waste of time, the only result that (already has) and will come from this is people generally being more upset about the state of the game. Vigil is Worse but a Good Nurse can still throttle a group of decent survivors, Sprint Burst is worse but Blight can still get 1000+ winstreaks, Deadhard is worse but Its still possible to tunnel someone at 5 gens and it not be considered griefing (not to open the debate over tunneling here, just to mention people hate it)
This is just outright false. It is incredible that people say Tunneling is a Skill Issue and then type something like this. If you're a good survivor player you're walking as much as possible and trying to get your exhaustion perk back online, Vigil helps you do that. you're just saying that Tunneling has reached such an oppressive state that no matter what you won't get Vigil value because you're going down before that which isn't a good argument it just points towards a glaring problem. IF the killer tunneling you is causing effects like hindered, you will recover from it faster… and the point I am making is that its an Adjacent perk to Anti Tunnel Builds, not something run in pure Anti Tunnel Builds.
The Choices for Build Creativity are just getting (and have been getting) narrowed for no reason at all, what if A survivor doesn't want to run a full anti tunnel build but wants a good generalized perk to help a little bit in the case that they do but will also give value if they don't? Vigil was one of those options. Survivors ONLY have the benefit of perks to diversify playstyle as half of their six item choices are nearly useless when compared to Toolbox, Medkit, or Flashlight and there are options for killers already to totally nullify or significantly hinder these items. why are we allowing killers multiple layers of freedom of creativity in builds but narrowing the survivors only avenue of build changes? It is a double standard.
I was more on about the dodge version, that every deems "dead hard for distance" which btw, Sprint burst and Dramaturgy exist. Oh wow it gave you enough distance to get to a pallet. Oh no it countered trappers traps, everything does.
Dead hard wasn't an issue to me until it became endurance based, killers people play were always suffering, all the old Dead Hard would do is make you last a bit longer against strong killers.
Current Dead Hard is useless versus anyone who can do deep wounds also, or tunnels off hook.
IDK I just have always found the dead hard for distance arguement so stupid.
Vigil has a 38% escape rate despite being used in 6% of games. I Haven't used Vigil in a good while myself, I do not use DH or Sprint Burst Either. My argument is super valid, you just assumed I am making points because I use these perks and that I am angry my favorite perks are being taken away but that's not even true. The Reason that I used Sprint Burst and Dead Hard as an example is because Garunteed Value should be the baseline, not the exception to the rule. Vigil had near guaranteed value because it was the universal "Recover better" perk which is absolutely fine. The reason the same perks remain near the top despite nerfs is exactly because worthless perks remain worthless, many of which are kind of just BMing your team to even bring because their value is so low. and other categories of perks are totally situational and you could go through 5 games without needing them. The argument is that perks should always provide value, and the ones that do still stay at the top despite nerfs because they always provide value, the ones at the bottom rarely do or outright do not and they won't suddenly be used a bunch more because the other ones are getting gutted.
Also, you cannot compare the impact of Pain Res and Eruption Pre Nerf to Vigil at all. you could basically render three survivors totally irrelevant for half a minute with them, Vigil lets survivors heal and recover a little sooner. I am not arguing those aren't valuable things but clearly its winrate isn't inflated, and the entire reason for its nerf is that "it affects some killers more than others" okay sure, and the Plague makes every single healing perk and build irrelevant from the moment the match starts. tough luck, that's how the game works.
I don't think it's true that build crafting variety is really going down all that much, and I think it's a mindset that can lead to being more irritated with changes than you might need to be.
Right now, we've actually got a lot of room for creativity in our builds if we want it. Let's look at your example of wanting something that helps with tunneling without needing to be a dedicated anti-tunnel option. This is a pretty good place to look, not just because there's a fair bit of variety but also because Vigil itself had pretty low impact on tunneling, meaning its peers in this regard don't need to be too crazy either.
The most obvious things to mention off the bat are just, the exhaustion perks. Specifically the ones that make distance, like Sprint Burst, Lithe, to a lesser extent Balanced Landing, and an even lesser extent Dead Hard.
None of these are dedicated anti-tunnel perks, but they're useful when you're being tunneled. In that vein, you've also got stuff like Resilience for faster vaulting, or Quick & Quiet + Dance With Me as tools that can help when you're being tunneled without being dedicated to it.
If we assume any given player is already running an exhaustion perk - not an unreasonable assumption, though I personally don't most of the time - there are lots of things that can support that too. If you're willing to run one dedicated anti-tunnel perk, you can be in a much more solid position.
For example, Sprint Burst or Lithe and Blood Rush is a solid combo that provides potent anti tunnel but decent value when you aren't tunneled. Similarly, DS and either Head On or Plot Twist pushes killers into some lose/lose scenarios while still being relatively useful when you aren't tunneled.
The list can go on and on. Second Wind may be a little awkward to use but is quite solid in this regard, Made For This improves your anti-tunnel Endurance while having some use cases outside of that context, Fixated can help you walk off exhaustion, Ghost Notes can do the same and provide an extra benefit too…
It's not just tunneling, either. Any scenario you want, provided it's not too specific, there's probably a pretty decent variety of tools you can bring. I personally find a lot of players just don't have that much willingness to change up their build, which is fine if you're owning it but kind of a concern when it's being presented as a lack of options.
To clarify a few things:
When I say build Creativity is getting narrowed down, it's objectively true, because perks are getting gutted while old perks also remain unviable, that doesn't mean that there arent currently other options but it means its a problematic trend. that's the first part of it, the second part of it is that DBD itself has forced itself to be far more linear than I think it should be, more or less what I mean by that is there are entire categories (Like countering totems as you can go several games without seeing a hex at all making the perks useless otherwise since they are specialized and never guaranteed to have an impact) or bizarrely fun build ideas becoming less and less possible and that is not entirely due to direct perk nerfs over the years, but generally because of a trend towards this game being a "Comp" setting without any of the proper framework for it to be that way. Vigil isn't even amongst the top perks in escape rate, it falls decently below the 40% baseline (where 41% and above would indicate a perk is overperforming)
TLDR for this is: Build Crafting is narrowing because perks are given a narrow avenue to operate in, and even in that narrow avenue the number of perks which are guaranteed to give value are outweighed kind of significantly by those which do not guarantee value or give very little value when measured up against Exhaustion Perks. even a decent amount of the gen perks can be countered by a killer outright, if you're facing a legion but you brought a Gen Buff build for the team you're trolling the game by trying to use your build as legion is getting all of his targets in one place.
I am still in disbelief that Vigil is being written off as "not very impactful" to escape a tunneling killer, one of the fastest ways to get a killer to change their mind about tunneling is to gain distance with an exhaustion perk, Vigil lowers your recovery by several seconds. that's absolutely huge. DBD is a game of seconds.
At the end of the day what I am saying is that survivor perks being diminished further and further over the years feels terrible because perks are the only avenue of expression for survivors who are otherwise a null singular being with no individuality besides which one of six items they want to bring. there's nothing special about playing Quentin over Jill, or Jill over MIkaela… so the feeling of having generally good perks gutted is much worse because it effects all survivors in a much larger way than it does for killers to have a perk nerfed, killers have a power and addons for that power whereas survivors are a blanket statement, they are all the same. with less to play towards and at the same time more to have to know gamewise (killers will always be facing 4 survivors, in High MMR likely with the same groupings of the front runner perks) but survivors could be loading into basically anything, that was a comfort in picking Vigil, because it helped a little against a lot.
Not all that many survivor perks are non-viable, though, and even fewer are genuinely just a matter of luck if you get to use them.
You bring up a good case study here in totem perks. It's a matter of chance if the killer has any hexes, so, is that the only use those perks have?
The answer is no, they do more than that. For example, Counterforce may on its own only really be useful for countering hexes, as all it gives you otherwise is BP and emblem score, but what if you bring it alongside Inner Strength and/or Overzealous? What if Small Game or Detective's Hunch isn't used to find hexes, but spots for your boons?
This is what I mean when I say there's a lot of variety in the game if you want to go find it. Plenty of tools synergise together in obvious ways and unexpected ways, and most things in the game have at least one decent enough use case. Not to say none are bad, of course, some perks really are just weak, but I find there's a troubling trend that's existed since I started playing about six years ago for players to write off tools immediately, especially if they've recently been nerfed.
Build crafting really isn't being narrowed. Some tools are being nerfed - and some of those do actually end up bad instead of just "good but not as good" - but tools get buffed as well, and there's been plenty of just pretty decent perks in the game for years that haven't been touched in a while. The pool isn't shrinking, and in my experience it's grown a fair bit since I started playing.
its just going to be a hard difference of opinion from me, I know what you are saying but boons are in a terrible state, Circle of Healing which, outside of Exponential, was the only boon to ever be solid, got totally crushed into the ground, and I actually agreed with it being nerfed, it was pretty hard to argue that it was fine in its release state, but Behaviour loves "balancing" things by totally destroying them. Boons suck in Solo Queue, and unlike Hexes, Killers can hear Boon totems from a considerable distance. most of them are negligible in value and the better ones are rarely ever utilized by Solo Queue teams, they create a distraction rather than provide a benefit, 90% of the time players in Solo Queue have a boon they will be setting it up on the first totem they see regardless of where it is or how helpful it is rather than doing things that progress the game.
And Still, my point is that DBD, while having more perks and characters now than it used to, has become more narrow with far less room for "sidequests", Stealth is dead, Distortion was gutted already, Lockers are obsolete regarding gameplay as a base function and are only used in interesting ways with Head on, The Dredge, Killers that need to reload, and Vecna (The Lich) or dodging Friends and BBQ despite being one of a few offered "Base" avenues to operate in the match, Pallets are more dense but less valuable, Gens take longer, Tunneling is more prevalent, unlocking chests and doing dull totems and boons doesn't advance the game for survivors benefit almost ever, the only times that boons see good value is in SWFs that are built around them, and even then I think its a fundamental problem to balance the game around 4man Survivor Teams when a ton of people play it with virtually no communication, even after the addition of the upcoming preset chat wheel its totally incomparable. Survivors are, to restate, just husks that bring nothing individually to the table and don't mix anything up, and their only avenue remains perks that may or may not have value in a match against killers who's perks definitely will have value unless they are trying to do something outlandish.
I think looking at the game this way can make it become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because most of what you're saying here I'd argue definitely isn't true.
Take stealth as a major example. I see people say stealth is dead all the time, but that's definitely not true if you stop and look at all the perks available to you.
For responding to auras, you have Distortion, Self Preservation, Shadow Step and Off The Record for blocking them, plus We See You and Object Of Obsession for knowing you're being seen and avoiding the killer that way.
For breaking chase, you've got Quick & Quiet, Dance With Me, Overcome, Lucky Break, and a few others.
For general stealth, Iron Will, Lightweight (maybe? Always had a hard time getting a bead on this one), Ghost Notes, No Mither (though this one heavily defines a playstyle), Fixated, Urban Evasion, and any killer-aura reveal perk since those help you keep an eye on where the killer is and thus avoid them seeing you.
These are just the perks that are worth using, by the way, there are definitely perks I'd say aren't really worth using at all like Sole Survivor. It's also not counting Fog Vials, which are a stealth tool as well now they're more worth using.
I'm using stealth as an example but it's something that generally applies to most things in the game. You might have to be willing to branch out into new tools, and some playstyles may not be as strong as the general meta tools, but there's plenty that's worth using out there.
in a sense you are right, because I am looking at the game as a game that used to have a much stronger sense of "there is a slasher trapped in an area with me and I have to escape them" and now it just has a sense of meta and best/worst build to survive the same old unchanged stale objective that has always existed, still do 5 gens and get out or don't, and all other survivor "goals" do not work to progress the "win condition" to the point where interacting with the killer is tedious and playing the game without killer interaction is boring. It doesn't feel like any more than a poorly compiled Half Comp game with no practical features present in every other competitive game. that translates to narrow gameplay style, I started playing this game because it has the unique ability to bring so many horror icons together into the same space for a "what if" scenario but decreases them so much so that its just tag with a different pursuer except the game of tag is riddled with gameplay choices that encourage outright griefing. the reason I still play this game is because it is still the only Asymm horror that has the reach to obtain multiple IPs. I used to main Michael Myers because he felt like Michael Myers at least a little bit, now he feels like some random guy that has very little in common with myers other than a very brief stalk and a kitchen knife.
This is why my approach to the nerf of Vigil is extremely negative, as a player that prefers setting over "perfect balance" (Which will never ever be achieved in this game anyway) I prefer to run generalized perks that get me through the nightmare games that I don't want to play at all and allow me to more thoroughly enjoy the increasingly rare games where the killer is playing the game for fun and not to curb stomp people. I don't find tunneling or slugging, or having to contest it to be a fun gameplay loop at all, and I think by further closing in the walls of rigidity towards it being a comp game while also denying basic functions of literally any comp game is bad across the board. and when I do play killer, I prefer to play killers that appear as themselves rather than a stat machine of how well they compare to other killers in comp with a X or Y skin on it based on who it was supposed to be. Ghostface sucks, but he's funny and he at least at some level embodies who the personalities behind Ghost Face were in that they're not serious and almost a parody of slashers but still very much killers. I used to like myers for the same reason, likewise as simple as leatherface is you still se a great deal of the fun exchanges in this game come from Leatherface. and survivors were never given a chance… There is no quentin there is only Wake Up!, Pharmacy, and Vigil and even then they're slowly draining the value out of it.
That is why I said it is a hard disagree and its not going to get reconciled, I am never going to agree with Behaviour trying to balance this game as if it were a comp game while simultaneously denying almost every necessary feature of a comp game, the whole outline of this game is averse to proper comp. but if Behaviour would at least make it public that they don't care what players like me think, its going to be a comp game and here comes proper ranks and MMR, and Seasons, Comms, etc then thats great… I will leave and find another game to play because I am not interested in seeing what makes Asymm so unique slowly be meshed into being yet another comp game. but while there's still hope of the game returning to the idea of the setting over the perfection of the perks, and the identities of the killers and the survivors over the next three to six perks they're going to add that people are going to complain about then I am going to continue to be vocal about changes that are pushing farther out of reach of returning to that.
The current vigil which we just talked about.
No, thats not the case. The game is literally a 1v4, by DEFINITION AND DESIGN the one should be stronger than the 4 when looked at individually. The killer SHOULD be stronger in the 1v1. If an entire team of survivors are all taking altrustic perks and get countered by a plague, that is on them for all playing the exact same build. It is a team game for the survivors, they need to coordinate as a team to win.
"thats on them" okay buddy Solo Queue exists. Its a team game dominated by solo queue where people barely coordinate at all until upper MMR. Totally Nullifying dozens of perks is not a matter of "the killer should be stronger" because the plague isn't even in the upper tiers of killers, its a matter of bad design if you want to put DBD fully in the light of a comp game. there should NEVER be a character like that in a game that is supposed to be taken seriously as an Even match (Even as in 4 survivors equal 1 Killer) but it does. that's the reason I am using it as an example against Vigil, this game just isn't capable of being reasonably balanced because its an Asymm with different killers that have different counters and perks are RNG because you don't know what you are facing. if we go the route of "this perk disproportionately affects two characters but is generally fine against the rest then a ton of stuff has to get changed in this game. personally I don't think it does but people appear to think DBD can be perfectly balanced despite a total lack of comp framework
'Completely' counter? Vigil? Really?
A single perk slot that makes the killer's power go from gaining 3.6 seconds of distance every time they land it to 1.2 seconds of distance? Yeah i'd basically call that nearly a complete counter.
That's not to mention clown who is actually hurt by it even more.
Have you tried playing as freddy or clown against someone with vigil?
I'm sure all the non-existent Freddy and Clown mains are celebrating the Vigil nerf. Really why would you balance something around two of the least used killers in the game.
If the killer is actually pressuring you, that won't happen with or without Vigil. If the killer ACTUALLY tunnels you and is actually pressuring you, you won't get to walk for a total of 24 seconds and free your exhaustion perk, unless the killer is playing badly and being looped to a point being tunneled is not even a problem anymore. If you had less than full exhaustion when the chase started, then the killer wasn't tunneling you. A perk having value once in a while against bad killers doesn't make it an anti-tunnel perk.
You do realize you don't need to down a survivor to prevent them from recovering from exhaustion, right? You only need to not give them time to walk or stand still… which they are not supposed to get much in a chase anyway. One thing is stopping in check-spots a few times and reducing the timer a little bit, the other is getting almost half a minute standing still. And that is not a state that was "reached", not a "glaring problem" and not even something unique to tunneling (the thing about tunneling is: it suggests you're in chase right off the hook, so you don't get the downtime where you usually recover from exhaustion). It's been like that since exhaustion was nerfed to work like that all the way back in 2018: you're intended to use an exhaustion perk only once in a chase. If you manage to do it more than once, than the killer is doing something really wrong. If you are able to do it consistently, then the perk is working better than intended and it would be even more reason for a nerf. You are not supposed to consistently get a second use of an exhaustion perk.
That's a huge IF. Again, the vast majority of builds DON'T have hindered as an effect. There's a chance you play for days without suffering from an actually impactful hindered effect once. And as I listed, lots of those other effects only trigger after the killer hooks someone else and are not effective for tunneling. So again, it's not a VIABLE OPTION against tunneling like you said.
Well, that's not what you said at first. You suggested Vigil was a VIABLE OPTION against tunneling. If the perk normally doesn't even do anything while being tunneled but has an effect that some rare times gets value in chase and some even rarer times gets that value on a chase while you're being tunneled, then it's not a viable option against tunneling. By that logic, then any survivor perk that does anything in chase, as minor and rare as it is, is suddenly a viable option against tunneling… which then implies the game still has many.
Now you're changing the subject, but funny enough, now you recognize there ARE still viable options against tunneling and Vigil wasn't one of them to begin with. And anyway your claim of "double standard" is false. Killers get perks nerfed just as often as survivors. That includes perks being taken off the meta, but also perks being nerfed into uselessness too. Thrill of the Hunt is getting a nerf this patch too, but the last time it was nerfed in the past was much harder than that and made the perk useless for years after getting a feature from it removed to stop it from countering boons, which were being introduced to the game. Eruption was nerfed until it became much weaker than it was at release (while Vigil is actually still stronger than it's original version), Coulrophobia was recently nerfed and Sloppy Butcher was nerfed by the Mangled update. Franklin's Demise got gutted into being weaker than ever even thought it was a niche perk, the only reason for it was the change for item charges, but it did not get a new effect to compensate for it like Streetwise did. Save the Best for last was one of the few consistently useful chase perks for killers and got nerfed too after negative feedback from survivors. All the slugging perks got changed to something else entirely to appease survivors too.
The thing is, both sides get perks nerfed from time to time for many different reasons and that has caused the meta to narrow in certain times, yes, but also to widen in others. The thing about survivor perks is that their strongest perks were always so ridiculously strong that it's hard to make comparable perks in strenght for people to pick in their place. Back in the old days they were straight up overpowered and even then the devs were always careful not to nerf them too hard and make them still viable… and that's why they kept getting nerfed more and more, because they were too strong and were never gutted at once, not because the devs have something against survivors. That applies to CoH, Dead Hard and Sprint Burst, all mentioned in this post, but also to DS. Killer perks were nerfed more often and that lead the killer meta to change very often while survivor meta kept mostly unchanged. It started changing on the patch that gave us the first major perk overhaul, and what's been clear since then is that the devs are taking a lot of feedback from both sides and nerfing stuff from both sides accordingly.
Plus, you don't have to play in the meta. I NEVER play with anti-slugging builds and I only play solo queue, I can still handle myself fine and get a lot of value from other builds. While playing killer, while there are still lots of DHs and DSs, I still see a bigger perk variety than I used to before the perk overhaul, because what people forget is that the devs also buffed tons of perks over recent years to widen the survivor playstile. Vigil is being nerfed now after being one of these buffed perks.
Moving the goal posts again. Ever think that perhaps the reason there are so few is because of this perk?
no, we don't. there aren't many Clown and Freddy mains because people like other killers more. Freddy is based off of the far less popular remake of Nightmare on Elm Street and the Clown is a low draw non IP Killer, Ghostface sucks too but I see him a fair bit because people like scream, his entire kit is countered by exhaustion perks which are way more common in different forms and more relevant than Vigil.
and for the people who play to be as optimal and win as brutally as possible they are playing killers with more aggressive powers than Freddy or the Clown, they will not be played more all of the sudden because Vigil was nerfed. if you look at the killer options you have stuff like "Teleports through terrain with a low cooldown", "Almost Constant Exposed + Long Lunge + Pallet Break", "Throws Spears, can move quickly while obscuring vision, blocks vaults, has an execute built into his kit", and then "Fat Bottle Guy" or "Knock off Freddy Krueger" that disparity isnt changing with the vigil nerf.
People don't like Clown cause he's ugly and people don't like Freddy cause his power is boring, not to mention he's kinda average. I've never seen anyone say Vigil was the reason they don't like these killers. Even when they overtuned Clowns yellow bottles and no one used the purple, people still weren't playing Clown.
So just because they aren't played that often its ok if there is a perk that counters them? How does that make sense?
That wasn't my point, though, It was yours. I was just responding to your point that the nerf might bring back clown and freddy mains all of the sudden, which It will not.
My personal stance is just because something counters one killer more than the next doesn't make it OP. that's why I have repeatedly brought the Plague into the discussion, because her power destroys healing in its entirety, totally invalidates dozens of perks and builds, do you think that is OP? I Don't, because the Plague is a lower tier killer who doesn't get played much anyway. but saying that Vigil needs to be gutted because it is disproportionately affecting Freddy and Clown is the exact same thing as saying that the Plague should be gutted because she counters healing. to reiterate yet again: This is a double standard.
Its not necessarily OP just because of that, but it is problematic. Things can be inherently unhealthy for the game while not actually being overpowered. In fact things can be unhealthy for the game and still be completely underpowered.
okay and I think its pretty easy to argue that a single killer totally negating an entire avenue of survivor gameplay just because that's their power is WAY more unhealthy than Vigil providing a faster recovery against negative status effects. I think you can argue that One survivor being sacrificed before the other three survivors get hooked is WAY more unhealthy than Vigil, its a problem of picking out the wrong things to balance. Vigil, as has been mentioned in this thread, is already below the 40% winrate target for escape rate as a perk and therefore is not unreasonably powerful. it can be measured this way because it is a perk that works as a passive and not an active, you have to look at perks like DH and DS differently because they provide an active skill component and might be better than direct winrate actually reports and people who are dying with those might just be losing more because they can't use them well. Vigil is a status cleanser and its fine… or was fine… now its pretty bad.
Are you using nightlight stats to determine pick/escape rate and overall strength? Those stats are notoriously unreliable, both because of reporting bias and the fact that a lot of perks or even some incredibly strong killers aren't really problems until a certain level of play, and you're not going to see those levels particularly represented in nightlight stats. Like, if we were to base our interpretations off of the stats right this very second, Pig would be the strongest killer in the game, even above the current Power 5, having a higher kill rate than even the lowest skill floor killer of the lot (Ghoul). I think its safe to say thats not the case in reality. Not to mention there isn't a single killer even vaguely meeting BHVR's 60% goals according to these stats.
Even if we were to account the fact that Vigil a passive, its also a passive gets its power by enabling the strongest meta perks that the more casual playerbase aren't using well or even bringing very often. The exhaustion perk its most effectively used with, Sprint Burst, is pretty well known as a perk that takes a fair bit of awareness and effort to use super effectively without wasting it, to the point a lot of people bringing in new players will warn people off the perk entirely, even though it seems the simplest on paper. Then you look at other strong perks that Vigil is a problem with, namely Deliverance and Shoulder The Burden. Both of these are perks that have a high skill floor and are DIRECTLY countered or outright prevented by common mistakes in solo queue, especially at the lower levels most represented by that site in the first place.
Besides, a perk can still be unhealthy for design reasons, not just direct strength that translates into kill or escape rates. Vigil in its live state acts as a pretty heavy enforcer of the current meta without really enabling any interesting side strategies on survivor. It makes the best perks better while also having a pretty heavy chilling effect on a wide variety of perks and add-ons on the killer side (many of which are already middling in strength, and would likely be unhealthy if they were buffed enough to compensate for Vigil's existence) just because invisibly wiping off almost half of any given status (in a LINGERING AOE no less, meaning you can't even tell who has it) just removes the fun or viability of the majority of recovery based status options.
IK what you mean but unfortunately DBD doesn't provide proper stat breakdowns like it should, I made this point somewhere else earlier today: DBD has (unfortunately) become a Comp game in spirit in a lot of ways but BHVR has not provided almost any of the basic functions required of a Comp game, one of which is fully broken down stats per MMR Bracket so all we can use is what we have.
I am of the belief that a perk having "too common" of a high impact is a very bad grounds for a nerf. I will agree Vigil helps fortify an already solid Exhaustion perk meta but the only reasons to bring it apart from with exhaustion builds just got entirely nuked from it. I think perks across the board should guarantee an impact if we want to go that route, that's why losing Vigil is such a bad thing. If I am bringing a perk into a game with so many elements of RNG (what killer, what map, what build, what tile layout, what teammates, etc) I want it to be generally good. that is whats enforcing the meta more than anything, it is that Exhaustion perks ALWAYS have an impact, the line of perks related to chests do not, the luck perks do not, the totem perks do not, so on down the line.
And as I said already in this thread: We are going to have to clarify what is unhealthy for design reasons in this game because apparently it is beyond me… Vigil is too unhealthy but Plague isn't, and Tunneling isn't, and that the likes of even the new killer, The Judgement isn't… its an entire killer designed to win by slinging beams of light at people on gens from across the map… i think that's unhealthy, Voiding the point of loops and pallets is unhealthy… the game is absolutely full of unhealthy mechanics and ideas and that is because it doesn't have the framework for a comp game but people are pushing it to be one.
(and to clarify, I am not trying to justify the removal or change of any of those things except for Tunneling as I think its the most unhealthy thing in the game currently and has been for a long time, I am just saying that if we're going to start deciding things are "Unhealthy" rather than OP for kind of non-solid reasons "ehhh just does a little too much" then we better start fixing the glaring issues that are way bigger.)
Oi! He's not boring and average lol but i can confirm that Vigil has never bothered me personally
For me, in this case, I think the reason I think Vigil in its live state is a problem from a non-strength position is that it doesn't really add much particularly interesting or new while actively preventing players from branching out on the killer side. Like, even avoiding the meta discussion (which is still a little relevant as it makes Vigil more likely to show up). Like, I'll talk exclusively about non-meta perks on the survivor side that will be particularly sad to see the additionals on Vigil go. The only one that really cares all that much is For The People (a perk I love!), the other perks that inflict Broken that aren't Deli are all timer based if I'm remembering right, so it doesn't help at all for them, and the only perks that self-inflict Exposed are both good perks that either don't need the help or are explicitly overtuned as-is respectively. The exhaustion is sticking around, albeit weaker (which I think is a bit of a mistake and they should reconsider doing both nerfs at once) which is the main draw for picking Vigil, and ensures its going to show up often enough to matter as a consideration.
Meanwhile from the perspective of balancing and perk variety on the killer side, Vigil is just kind of a massive wet blanket for no particular reason? Very, very few recovery based status options are in the meta, and the majority of perks and addons that Vigil effects aren't strong enough to be worth picking even from just the fun perspective if it shows up regularly at all. The devs also have to either balance every new perk/addon they add or buff thats relevant to it on either side around 'well, what if one or two people bring vigil', or shrug their shoulders and let a fairly common perk just kind of shove these choices right out the window, often making those options an actively frustrating downside to try and use. And, like you said, its a passive - it doesn't really do anything particularly interesting on its own merits to justify any of it.
You must not know me very well.
I think tunneling is a horrible thing for the game and needs to go, but i just disagree with the methods the devs have tried to deal with it. So bringing that up isn't gonna be a "gotcha" for me.
we aren't arguing lol, I'm not looking for a "Gotcha" im making a point that the game isn't balanced and the devs are drawing weird lines with what is okay and what isn't that are very inconsistent, how would I know you?