Patch 10.2.0 : A huge missed opportunity
First of all, I want to make it clear that I’m a Killer main with around 6,500 hours in the game, and I’ve been playing since the release of the Halloween Chapter.
Unfortunately, once again, I’m disappointed by the upcoming patch.
Once again, the devs had an opportunity to listen to the community, and once again, they chose not to. What remains painfully obvious is a lack of vision and a lack of understanding of their own game. There doesn’t seem to be a clear target, a clear goal, or even a consistent direction for where they actually want the game to go.
Everyone was expecting a real meta shake-up. A massive, radical change to a meta that has become stale, repetitive, and increasingly focused on genrush vs. tunneling.
Instead, neither side of that equation has really been addressed.
The most used perks are still the most used perks. The strongest perks are still the strongest perks. The unhealthy perks are still there. And perks that were barely used yesterday will continue to be ignored by anyone who wants to play competitively.
A perfect example of how disconnected the devs seem to be from how their own game actually plays is Distressing.
They added a slowdown effect to it. Sounds good on paper. In practice? It’s basically useless.
Killers move. They don’t stand still. They are constantly rotating around the map, chasing survivors, checking generators, hooking, patrolling, and repositioning. Even with an enormous Terror Radius — Wesker or Doctor with specific add-ons, for example — the actual impact of that slowdown is negligible and lasts for an incredibly short amount of time. 9% slowdown for what? Two seconds? Three seconds?
That is completely irrelevant, especially against actual genrush builds.
And DMS? Completely destroyed. No sane player is going to touch that perk now. And this is another recurring problem: the devs seem incapable of nerfing perks in a reasonable way. Instead of adjusting something while preserving its purpose, they just destroy it and move on.
What is the point?
The other Killer perks received some minor changes, sure, but realistically, none of them are getting anywhere near one of my builds.
And while my knowledge of Survivor perks obviously comes mostly from facing them rather than playing them, the exact same problem exists on that side.
WoO and Shoulder the Burden were nerfed in ways that make very little sense. Again, just like with DMS, there seems to be no middle ground when it comes to nerfs. The other Survivor perks got their flashy "big numbers," and sure, maybe now you’ll be able to heal an unhooked Survivor in two seconds under the right circumstances.
But at the end of the day, what perks are we actually going to keep seeing? Babysitter, Die Hard, Lithe, Hyperfocus, etc. etc.
Why? Because the meta itself has not changed. That is the biggest problem with this entire "shake-up." It doesn’t actually shake anything up.
This could have been an opportunity for BHVR to completely disrupt the existing meta, revitalize the game, improve it, and make it feel fresh and interesting again.
Instead, they chose the safest possible route: touch 58 mostly irrelevant perks, make a bunch of them slightly less irrelevant, and call it a meta shake-up.
Most of them will still be useless for anyone trying to play competitively, and will remain perks designed almost exclusively for casual players who spend half the match chatting instead of playing ( oh wait...it remind me something...)
Comments
New meta of insanely quick basic attack cooldown is coming. Meta od passive regression is coming. What do you mean? Those changes are good. You have undestroyable activatable ruin. Tunneling got buffed, now survivors will have max 10s of protection and you are guaranteed to tunnel someone out at 4 hooks if multiple shoulders are in the game. Survivors got some crazy heal buffs which will allow them to reset better now when Vigil no longer reduces antiheals. Vault speed meta is coming. There are a lot of options to pick from. I agree that meta, especially killer meta was untouched but in the end do you think people would not complain if devs completely overnerf pain res, pop, corrupt, eruption, nowhere to hide or lithe, finesse, deja vu, resilience? I doubt people will take it.
Well a "meta shakup" should be a meta shake up, not small buff here and there. So yes they should have touched those perks, create a new playstyle, new mechanics and a new way to play but, in the end it's genrush vs slowdown, same perks, same stale meta. And in a month no one will use those "new" perks, or at least no one who play to win
Genrush meta no longer exist. Perks got diminished, none got buffed over 10 % = 8.5s faster gen and hyperfocus + stake out will no longer be a combo meaning that max HF tokens will give you 2.8 % bonus as reward for hitting the coulrophobia speed skillchecks. Gens will now take longer to complete with full genrush build.
Yes basic attack cooldown perks got huge buffs / changes, so did passive regression. And yes, you are right, tunneling just became even more meta once again because yet another anti-tunnel perk got massively nerfed.
But what do you mean "crazy heal buffs"? 15% more on Empathic Connection, the same as Botany already was? Or the Do No Harm skill check buff that I tried out for several games and makes almost zero difference? The Solidarity buff that essentially was just a QoL change?
And the idea of a vault speed meta is laughable. With Finnesse, WoO, and Spine Chill you can max get 27.5% vault speed on a half a minute cooldown if they even all work at the same time, Finesse does 20% all on its own. If you run the new vault speed perks on their own, WoO is just an in between of Finesse and Resi, you can run Finesse for a much more noticeable effect while healthy or run Resi for zero cooldown, but at least WoO works no matter the health state, even if it is on a cooldown. Spine Chill is a joke because it procs while the killer is still 40m away, it's always on cooldown when you actually need it.
And yes, you are also right that genrush is nerfed because Stake Out is now completely terrible.
People are upset about the changes, people who play survivor, because they got hit the hardest. StB got nerfed to the ground and WoO, a perk that was only picked so much for comfort and for new players, got changed into something completely different, and no matter what perk combo you do, even dedicating 3 slots, you will not be able to get the exact same effect.
its crazy because we’re bringing back machinegun m1’s which was removed in the past because it was problematic and they’re bringing back old self care in the form of road life which was changed because it was problematic.
mandy is a player and she should’ve been able to tell right from the patch notes that some of these changes are going to recreate problematic scenarios that were deemed problematic in the past and changed. So i have to question why are we even needing to talk about these things, why are they being tested when we know they were unhealthy before and were removed?
Meanwhile we get nerfs/changes to perks that didn’t even need them making them become useless and wastes of slots.
I'm talking about Road Life which is by far of of the most busted reworks ever done. 8s self heal for hitting 4 greats is crazy. If you get good skill checks rng that would be dead of hit and run. Botany doesn't show auras, Emp. connection does for price of no bonus to self heal. You can also use better than new to give all survivors botany, flow state and pharmacy, which is huge. Kinda upset that more survivor meta perks haven't been touched and a lot of perk changes are tier 1 tier 2 numeric changes. Was expected nerfs to finesse, lithe, deja vu, dramaturgy, champion of light, botany knowledge, lucky break, power struggle and many more problematic perks currently in the game. But hopefully next patch will adress decent score of perks too. I'm also upset that killer's meta got untouched apart from DMS. Most of my games are combinations of Corrupt, Lethal, Pain res, Nowhere To Hide, Pop, Eruption and Surge. 99 % combo of those 4 perks. But I understand that killers are in situation where they either run full meta slowdown build or just tunnel someone out asap. Those two updates brought bit better balance to make both sides evenly strong while providing new ways to play the game. Still think that Dark Arrogance and Road Life are too much. Dark Arogance has exact numbers to deny hook trades and Road Life is just pasive giga self-heal which contradicts the self heal being always penalized.