Dev Update: 10.2.0 Perks Update
Greetings, Fog Dwellers. Today we wanted to talk to you about some of the perk changes (spoiler alert: 58 perks are changing) and content that you can expect in the next PTB, as well as the reasonings behind them.
Back in update 9.6.0, we added Diminishing Returns to the game. You may have noticed that this feature did not ship with exponential balance changes to accompany it; we wanted to ease players into the change, monitoring the impact on perk selection first, while we watch to see if any issues arise before making further changes. We feel that now is the time.
Our ultimate goal is to update effects that bypass or are minimized by Diminishing Returns, and to buff gameplay effects that can safely be affected by Diminishing Returns to allow players to play around with builds and perks that aren’t picked often. Overall, we will have 26 perks affected by these changes. Today, we will start by highlighting two:
Do No Harm
While healing another Survivor for each Hook State they have:
- You heal 30/40/50% faster.
- Great basic Skill Check, grant 3% more progress.
- Increase the odds of triggering a Skill Check by 5%.
Dev note: We wanted Do No Harm to better distinguish itself from We'll Make It and other flat healing speed perks. We added a scaling increase Skill Check odds and made the great skill check bonus scale as well. It should find a home with Survivors who like skill checks and skill check perks.
Knock Out
Whenever a Survivor drops a Pallet, for the next 6s, if they move 10m away from it, they gain 20% Hindered for 3/4/5s.
This ends early if the Pallet is broken.
Dev Note: We want Knock Out to really feel impactful for those cases where Survivors refuse to loop around a pallet. We've increased the range to account for some longer loops, as our intent is that this should only impact players who intentionally run away from a pallet. We've also updated the removal effect to now also end the Hindered early if the pallet gets broken, even if it's already been applied.
On top of adjusting perks that were impacted by Diminishing Returns, we are making changes to 23 general perks to breathe new life into them. We’re also adjusting 9 perks that either promote unhealthy playstyles or are oppressive while avoiding the impacts of Diminishing Returns. We’ll be sharing the full list of changes in tomorrow’s PTB patch notes, so stay tuned!
While the primary intent behind the general perk changes is to make them more valuable to newer players, we also want to create opportunities for them to be valid options in the wider meta. We’ve focused on buffs and effect changes to general perks to improve their viability while making some of the more confusing perks easier to understand. Although in some cases, we are bringing Tier I and Tier II values closer to what players can expect from a fully upgraded perk to support our newer players.
Finally, we wanted to come back to the Survivor Intent System we previously shared with you. This feature will be making its PTB debut this week and we couldn’t be more excited! Put simply, the system allows Survivors to send and receive short, pre-defined text messages mid-match to coordinate, from splitting up, to calling an unhook.
This new system will be enabled by default but can be adjusted (like choosing which messages you want to use) or disabled in the Settings menu and comes with muting and anti-spam protections. Plus, based on community feedback, we’ve added a visual signifier to show if someone has this system disabled so you know who’s able to see your messages at a glance. We plan to continue iterating on this system in the future, including adding more selectable messages, so we look forward to hearing your feedback!
We hope that you’ll look forward to playing around with these new changes on the PTB, and we eagerly await your feedback. You won’t have long to wait, either! The 10.2.0 PTB goes live tomorrow (Sept. 15), alongside full patch notes detailing every change and addition.
Until next time…
The Dead by Daylight Team
Comments
A new mechanic not been introduced before, actually very exciting. I wonder if there is a new "effect" name.
Agreed on Dissolution needing a nerf and Blood Favor probably not deserving one, but I did feel DMS needed to be changed, it enables too many powerful synergies with certain other perks and disproportionately impacted solo survivors
From the Japanese DBD account it's nice to see that Shoulder the Burden actually has a tangible downside for what you gained from using it.
I am a bad survivor as I am a killer main and with windows of opportunity I can literally loop a lot of killers for 1 or 2 gens, sometimes even 3 (most of the time) and without it I am much worse, don't say it's low MMR, I literally looped for gens after the MMR reset and I played a decent amount of matches against decent killers with windows of opportunity. I have looped a Dracula for 4 gens while he does understand the power (I can tell that I am a better Dracula player but they are decently good), he is a very strong killer so I would say that WoO is a pretty strong perk.
WoO is just kinda brain-dead to use and quite strong, if it was bad then it wouldn't be most used perk and used in high MMR.
You can just learn the locations of the materials and not need to use the perk so I don't understand why you are complaining about it's nerf, it will still help to learn windows and FMA will help learn pallets for new players, seems fair to me.
I wouldn't say it's making me lose but it is brain-dead to use, kinda like you would say it's brain-dead to use lightborn, it makes the survivor better than they actually are and they should learn to be better (good for you that you don't use those perks).
There's no loud people, bhvr listens to both sides and does necessary changes to both sides (they can be bad sometimes but if they are doing it then there's probably a good reason for it). If you want to talk about the "loud people" then with common sense it's the survivors as there's literally more survivors then killers, it's literally impossible for killer mains to be louder. I think you are ignoring a lot of changes that nerf the killer side and buff survivors…
Loud people 🤔
At the end it's thier game they can do whatever they want, whether for the better or worse we will see, but lets hope it's for the better.
STB nerf is absoluley absurd.
"LETS cut its limbs off and chuck it to the bottom of the ocean to die"
That wad BHVR meantality when doing STB changes.
Saw this change and it is so tone deaf had to comment right away nobody was asking for it to be changed this way. The most complaints I saw about it was 4 man hook shuffling.
Low skill killer win I guess tho.
Dissolution needs change either way. One of the worst perk designs in the whole game.
It is not the best for SoloQ, but also it neglects the sweatiest usage of this perk, which was mostly done by winstreaks teams - which funnily, i have been running into a lot lately. Also, thinks that if one of your teammates used the perk, you kinda got value from it, not the value from your individual perk, but the perks itself.
The change to WoO is just a bad idea overall. It also feels anti-newcomer.
The perk isn't the most used Survivor perk because it's overpowered, it's the most used Survivor perk because it makes the game slightly less miserable and utterly random for newcomers/casuals who don't know the pallet spawns by heart. It makes the game feel like a game and not a gamble for beginners/casuals.
Not everyone has the time or the patience to learn and remember the spawns on every maps, not with how many maps and variants there are, a number that will only grow over time.
Only showing the windows is basically useless outside of indoor maps since there's also very little randomness to most window spawns, they are usually static (shack, main buildings & larger tiles) which makes the perk a waste.
Furthermore, WoO made it so that people could learn the maps so that eventually they could play without it. It was beginner-friendly and, more importantly, it took a single perk slot, so that help still took 25% of your build. If the changes go through, Five Move Ahead will be needed alongside WoO to have the same effect… twice the grind and half the build for beginners to get a basic layout of their surroundings.
Furthermore, WoO gave SoloQ a weaker version of something that SWF have normally: The ability to know when key areas are no longer safe. A SWF can tell each other when key pallets are broken without having to go there while in chase (and likely giving a free hit/down since there's no more pallet). It helped close an information gap to a small degree (as a SWF have no distance limit to that knowledge while WoO is not map-wide) and now BHVR wants to get rid of it. Isn't closing the gap between SWF and SoloQ something that people want? A lot of QOL changes were made in the name of closing that gap, why go two steps back now?
I really don't understand the reasoning behind the change, there's literally no positive outcome from making WoO irrelevant. All it will achieve is making the game (as Survivor) much harder to learn and play for beginners & casuals, and the queue times speak for themselves on what people like to play more already.
Tone is hard sometimes, idk. Im kinda optimistic for the most part abt changes for both sides (while i prefer killer i often play solo survivor, i started as a survivor main) but felt pain res getting another nerf was over the top, its already been gutted once and its limited to 4 uses. I tend to use pain res in mid game instead of immediately to get full value from it. 58 changes is insane and i hope they do justice that is fair and even, but bhvr rarely does things evenly when it comes to nerfs. Its never 50/50 it seems like. They pick a side to nerf and then dont think abt how to balance stuff evenly in response and i feel like thats 90% of their balancing problems. Laser focusing on one side at a time is kinda a losing battle so im mostly optimistic
will we see anti tunnel come back with the nerf to shoulder the burden?? Like why not bring back the function of killers not knowing when people were pulled off of hook? Please quit gutting solo q!
For how powerful the perk is… it should be until it gets reworked.
Such a huge nerf to windows of opportunity (only windows visible) and shoulder the burden gives me hope that devs understand how powerhouse survivors become. Gladly they are reducing oppressivnes and give killers more room to achieve their victory.
WOO must go. It's handholding perk removing luck and skill and replacing it with "run to glowing aura". Now it will be much more fair if survivor is a good looper or they just run through every highlighted pallet. I hope Finess, Drama, Resilience and few other perks get nerfed too, but patch notes will show.
so what about Denuvo? i can't still go inside the game until now even though you have followed the three methods that were given?
Windows is such an oppressive perk.
Onryo's UI is currently bugged in the PTB. When a survivor gains a stack of condemn there's no visual for it on the UI. Please don't push that to live :)
Patch Notes are now available
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/kb/articles/559-10-2-0-ptb-patch-notes
Most Survivor changes are placebo buffs or adjustments for DR, almost none of them will become meta or useful. It's kind of astonishing how little Survivors got this update, on top of having standout perks like Sprint Burst, Vigil, and now Windows and Five Moves Ahead nerfed back-to-back. No one is going to be seriously using Borrowed Time to recover from the mend state for Dead Hard. No one is going to be using Boon: Illumination except maybe a half-percentage point of Survs. Reverts to Spine Chill and "buffs" to Windows are backhanded with unnecessary cooldowns.
This ######### sucks; it's so bad that it only solidifies for me that the community consensus is right. You don't actually play your own game. Consider this: if inexperienced Survivors are having to bring two perks for the same effect Windows gives now, do you think they will have MORE or LESS perk diversity? No one is going to be bringing stuff like Better than New - a perk that doesn't even benefit the person equipping it - if they have two perk slots already taken up by ######### Windows and ######### Five Moves Ahead, or second chance perks to make up for not having real Windows. You nerfed Survivor perks all around and pretended like you gave us more options when really, there's even less build diversity now. This just feels demotivating.
@Mandy I wanted to see the full PTB notes but since there is no mention of it and it's very likely we won't get a third hotfix before the update; can you share any information about the recent Judgment buffs from the second hotfix? Many people, especially the ones who play Judgment, agree that these buffs are a bit too much and she was fine after the first buff.
I main her myself and I'm a bit worried about her status
Some good ideas but overall it's a nothing burger, I'll stay on Deadlock.
The nerf to Windows of Opportunity is a change made for no good reason. The perk was never overpowered; it is being changed simply because it is widely used. This change will primarily impact new players, and the way it was announced is misleading: even when combining it with Five Moves Ahead, you cannot achieve the original effect. Both perks have cooldowns that disable aura reading, and the reason people chose Windows over Five Moves Ahead was precisely the constant aura reading.
Ideally, these changes should be reverted, as they only disadvantage beginner survivors and solo Q; Windows has always been a comfort perk rather than a game-changing one requiring such a massive nerf. If you are determined to keep these changes, you should at least modify both perks so that the aura-reading component doesn't go on cooldown alongside the faster vaulting and pallet-dropping effects; that way, the claim made in the patch notes—that the old effect is still achievable—would actually be true.
I really disagree with having survivor perk nerfs, but only killer buffs. This is not an easy game to pick up and learn, definitely not friendly to new players. Windows was arguably the best perk in the game for new survivors. Higher MMR & experienced players likely know their pathing & don't truly need it anymore. It doesnt give much advantage other than knowing where to go, so that overwork was not really necessary in my opinion. Also, shoulder the burden, five moves ahead, as well as SB not too long ago. Its starting to seem like K mains are getting favoured as of late. I just hope Behaviour does not steer this game in a more unfavourable direction for everyone. I understand making it balanced has it's own set of challenges. Honestly, I don't truly see why diminishing returns was required either. Again, it's hard to balance between competitive and casual players. Maybe a ranked mode would help.
I am often very critical of the devs decisions when it comes to balancing, but the perk changes are pure gold. Very well done guys.
They're still not over with their recent obsession with "newer players", heh? Also, why is every single "its" but one incorrectly typed as "it's" (5th grade level grammar mistake btw) in the patch notes?
Kinda was hoping they nerf all of the meta perks then buffed a ton in exchange, but honestly I like the buffing every generic perk more.
you will be pleased to know then that survivor also got buffs and killers got nerfs as well. its pretty crazy to think that believe it or not when changes happen its not alwasy completely one sided and being upset a perk you like being chnaged doesnt mean that the "enemy" didnt also recieve changes they may not like either.
Negativity Aside. I am genuinely excited for this shakeup. This has made several people in my friendgroup re-download the game just to test the PTB!
I am really excited for this kind of update, almost all of these changes are good, more of this please! I will say though, I really don't like the proposed changes to Windows of Opportunity or Five Moves Ahead. I think having broad information perks that are always available is a really important tool for new players and solo queue survivors to have access to. The aura reading parts of those perks should not be tied to the same cooldown as the "power" for those perks. The Aura reading provides no extra capability for experienced players but allows newer players and solo queue survivors to "catch up" a little bit on the knowledge curve which is crucial for comfort and onboarding. Veteran players and SWF stacks don't need aura reading to find resources around the map as they have the experience and communication to always know where to go when in a chase. The same cannot be said for new players or solo queue survivors, they are the players that need these information perks to learn the game and to see what resources the rest of the team has already used up. The change to Dark Sense was a good start, but I feel like the changes to Windows of Opportunity and Five Moves Ahead is a step in the wrong direction. The communication wheel is a great tool that will help bridge that gap a little more, but there is still lots of room for improvement. Making parts of things like WoO, FMA, Kindred, Bond, Small Game, etc. base kit would really help.
So with the rework of Slippery Meat is Up the Ante and the luck offerings borderline useless.
You can now only self unhook when only when two survivors remain. I'm glad that play style is gone but Up the Ante could've been reworked to maybe increase the odds of skill checks or something.
I really don't enjoy new perk design where perks are put in a cooldown. (WOO, FMA)
That's the reason I am not using them at all.
This update may trick players into thinking some killer perks got buffed and some surv perks got nerfed. I feel bhvr have just hired/promoted someone, now it tricks more people.
Love this update as someone whom plays survivor way more than killer btw.