What can we do to nerf Dead Hard and let it stay viable?
The concept of a perk that lets you parry or dodge a hit in a game where you are fighting tooth and nail to get something as small as two meters closer to your target... is a little too strong. There's really no way for a perk with that kind of design to ever be fair or fun to play against.
I have three potential ideas for it, which can keep DH as a strong perk but not an over-bearing one.
1: ""Mild"" nerf. Dead Hard makes you Hindered by 25% for 3 seconds after using it. This means you get significantly less distance for using it, but it's still not really that much weaker and probably still the best exhaustion perk in the game.
2: Scorched Earth nerf. Dead Hard no longer gives you a speed boost for tanking a hit. The perk isn't useless, but you gain basically no distance. You can still get the dopamine rush of timing your DH right, but the only reason to run it is for the fun factor.
3: Complete redesign. When you take a protection hit, Dead Hard exhausts you and gives all survivors (other than you) within 16 meters a 150% speed boost for 3 seconds. Still a very strong perk, but now it has a niche as an anti-tunneling perk that helps your teammates get away from the killer.
I'd love to hear what other people's ideas are, so we can find a way to keep Dead Hard fun to use and strong, but not unbearable to play against.
Edit: Multiple typos
Comments
It just needs a complete rework imo, there's no fixing its current effect.
Wouldn’t even care if they nerfed it to the ground after what they’ve done to the other perks.
I think there could be a few other options though.
I think smaller speed boost then it would be fine but it should debend on killer agains't nurse and blight current dh is needed.
It needs an actual downside/activation condition beyond "get injured"
The one i would propose is:
This basically means that if you get hit and the killer can down you in the next 40 seconds, then you don't get use out of a dead hard. It means that it can be countered by playing well and doesn't reward the survivor unless they play well. However, it also gives the killer a chance to decide to abandon the chase so they don't have to deal with dead hard. If i hit a survivor, and haven't seen them use an exhaustion perk, i can assume they have dead hard, and if i have a hard time hitting them in the next 20-30 seconds, i can just abandon the chase and go after someone else instead of continuing to commit and risk them using dead hard.
It also is tied to "while injured for 40 seconds" rather than like a "40 seconds after being hit" so that after you get unhooked you can start increasing your timer to get dead hard, or if you want to stay injured due to a perk like "resilience" or you are running no mither for some reason.
40 seconds is just long enough so that if you just "hold w" the killer will down you and you can't use it. But also just short enough where if you outplay them or mindgame them well, or pallet stun them one time, you'll be able to use it.
nerf it to the ground. its had its time, make it like ruin where its essentially useless
What if Dead Hard made you 50% louder while injured?
Observant killers would notice that you are much louder, and have DH. Even more observant killers will notice that you have DH + Iron Will, because you are slightly quieter than normal.
It's not as good of a tell as a unique animation, but would be very easy to implement since you don't have to make new art assets.
I like this idea. It relies on you either getting injured long enough before you're chased, or for you to draw out the chase as long as possible so you can gain access to it.
Alternatively a "charge in the killers terror radius" pre-requisite like Pebble/Stake-Out could also work. It wouldn't be particularly difficult to do, but it would require some downtime spent prepping it first, and would reduce the number of instances on average that it is available.
I actually really like that!
Edit: I bet that if that got implemented, about a year later you'd see newbie killers complaining about how you can't tell if a survivor with No Mither has Dead Hard fully charged or not haha
I disagree, we shouldn't be nerfing perks to make them useless, every perk should be usable in their own niche way, and BHVRs strategy of just making perks useless is not good, because then we end up in our current world where as it is, both sides have maybe 10 good perks each.
My idea for Dead Hard is to change it so you gain Endurance while vaulting, so a survivor can use it to get that desperate leap to safety through a window or over a pallet, but can't play that stupid awful annoying guessing game of spinning in circles trying to bait the killer while the killer is trying to bait the survivor.
I hate Dead Hard not for what it does but for the mindgame it's created. That's what I actually want gone.
90% of the games perks are utterly useless, we just got 9 new useless perks with this chapter. nerf dh, coh, genkick, the whole current meta to the ground, and buff a handful of perks on both sides for a new, hopefully less annoying meta on both sides
Right, that's my point, so why add to the mess and remove yet another viable perk?
We'd like it to either be an earned reward for actually playing well/certain way like the above reinami idea or have a heavier cost for that successful parry such as incapacitated or broken status.
Once per game is all the perk needs to be balanced
"Dead Hard needs an actual downside/activation condition"
Ah yeah, a downside. You mean like, a 0.5 sec window, that is near impossible to hit half of the time due to latency? Would that do?
Or maybe we could make DH do literally nothing but cause exhaustion if you don't time it correctly?
Wait sorry that's not a downside, I forgot y'all forum warriors only face competitive SWF squads at top 0.1% MMR.
Yeah, there are three places BHVR can go with DH from here:
You can't retain the effect and nerf it meaningfully without making worthless (which would be fine, really. getting it tfo of the meta would be healthy).
Ill take option 2.
I already argued for it in my own post here:
Its not really that strong of a nerf, it just ensures that DH play makes the gameplay progress. Pallets/windows or smarter play being a requirement of a good Dead Hard play in the future. No more DH to save resources, especially when its such a good time waster of the Killer in the right hands. Preserving the fun and normalizing gameplay is a good thing and a good compromise.
I did a little thinking on number 1 & 2.
For number 1, the Hindered actually brings it roughly on-par for other perks in terms of distance gained. I'm too drunk to do the math right now (deepest apologies), but most Exhaust perks gain you around 4 meters of distance if you activate them right in front of the killer and you both hold W in the same direction. Current DH is the exception to the rule and gains you around 12 meters of distance, because the killer moves so slowly while doing the weapon wipe animation (and therefore cannot hold W to catch up).
With the Hindered effect your post-hit speed boost would make you travel a shorter distance during your speed boost, but the killer is still moving extremely slow during the weapon wipe. So you would gain closer to the normal amount of distance other Exhaust perks give you. 25% might be way too much, the right number is probably around 15% to 20%.
For number 2, It's actually not so different from dodging a hit in the open with old DH. Killer swings, survivor DH's, killer whiffs, survivor walks like three feet and gets hit anyway. Only difference here is that the survivor can't dodge the killer's power with DH, and Save the Best will hard counter it (so it would be worse than old DH by a mile). I still think this is an inferior option, since taking such a fun perk to use away from survivors is kind of lame.
I'm curious to hear your thoughts, as I greatly value your input.
With seasoned players, the primary problem with dead hard atm is that it can pardon you from losing at the most basic aspect of the PvP interaction (looping). If you've been outplayed in the loop, you can't be allowed to nullify all the work the killer had to do to outplay and catch you with nothing but pressing a single button on time.
I support the OP's #3 option.
As for the Nurse and Blight kits, those need actual (not pretend) nerfs.
Yep - this one.
The old version but only 1 time and it would be fine.
would you like fries and a drink with that?
yes, make it Large and to go. (I prefer to eat in my Car, alone.)
The meta needs to actually change. Perks don't need to be viable for 6 years. Just gut it.
The point of the perk is to "force" killer making mistake mid chase when being injured.
A success spinning that requires more skill isnt as strong as DH. Since you dont make distance and Killer cool down faster (with missing attack instead of hitting attack).
I would say removing the speed boost on hit, since Killer hitting attack cool down is longer, but STBFL would make this perk completely un-used.
Fighting tooth and nail to get even 2 meters close enough? LMFAO! If you have to fight tooth and nail to hit a survivor then you’re just bad at the game. Killers move so much faster than survivors. Even when I do miss it’s not the end for me because it’s so easy to catch up to them again. You have to learn to make quick decisions while in a chase, just like survivors do.
We just got a nerf to DH. Let's see how it plays out.
Why is it okay to take away a pardon for survivors who got “outplayed” (even when Dead Hard does require actual timing skill to use) yet killers get perks like NoeD which can completely alter the outcome of the game when they’ve been “outplayed” and the only defense against is having blessed and/or cleansed every totem on the map. That requires no skill on the killers part, and it feels like a free pass. In fact, plenty of killer perks and powers cause Exposed which completely removes a health state. But survivors can’t benefit from a chance at avoiding losing one?
Not that I like NOED, but the killer is in a 1v4. When survivors have really strong perks, it's often not just 1 survivor who has it. So when survivors have a single strong perk, it compounds into a problem when multiple survivors bring it.
Not to mention NOED only activates in the end game and reveals it's aura to nearby survivors. It's not uncommon for a killer to pick up a single kill, because survivors either cleanse the totem or just leave. Sucks to be the person caught by NOED.
Why is it okay? Because if a survivor is exposed, the killer is still required to outplay at the tile for the down.
Post 6.1 DH was quite literally the most reasonable change to a perk ever, and it did not need to be nerfed further. It went from being extremely strong against weaker killers and kinda meh against nurse and blight to the complete opposite. Lithe, SB, Balanced, and even overcome were better than DH against M1 killers after the nerf. DH became stronger against nurse and blight while losing effectiveness against every other killer
The new version is perfectly viable, while also limiting it's uses per game to 2 per survivor, and eliminating any uses before the first hook.
You’ve not convinced me. First of all, this whole “outplay” term is silly. Just because you escape a killer or hit a survivor doesn’t necessarily mean you outplayed them. Second of all, a killer doesn’t have to work as hard for an exposed target because they only have to hit them once rather than twice. Killers already move much faster than survivors and can enhance that speed with perks, powers, add-ons and bloodlust so there’s a reason survivors have two health states. Third of all, Dead Hard required the right timing to use effectively so if a killer was unable to anticipate and counter it then can’t we say they were “outplayed?” You speak as if a killer is entitled to downing a survivor but they’re no more entitled than a survivor is to escaping a chase. It’s also not as if using Dead Hard immediately loses the chase for you. So you have to work a little harder to down this survivor? So what? You have to work half as hard to down an exposed survivor.
Claims that dh needed a full rework are such bs. The waiting out aspect of it is completely fine, if u cant handle waiting a few seconds its literally a skill issue