How do you think about Knock Out play style
This play style is rised in Asia servers. The Key perks are Knock Out and The Third Seal. You don't hock cuz the sacrifice bar is increased to 70s, which makes hocking make no benefit, instead, you hit one down, let him bleed to die, and go to find the next. Knock out and the Third seal will make survivors take much time to rescue others. The advantage of this play style is when you hit one down, and you are chasing the next one, another survivor has to run around the map to rescue which takes much more time than rescue from hook, while only one survivor can do the gens.
Comments
Knockout is an insanely unhealthy perk ever since its release and I honestly don't understand why the devs aren't reworking it. It encourages some of the worst gameplay (slug until bleedout) and is very unfair against soloq
How about we not allow killers to take any perk?
It works only againts SoloQ, I wouldnt dare to pick this build againts discord SWF group.
Stop justifying such a playstyle because of the Hook Timer-increase, lol. Killers did this long before the most recent Update, at least own it if you want to play that way.
And I will never understand why people play the game just to be annoying to the other side. My time would be way too valuable to waste it playing a game not for fun but just to be annoying.
It's incredibly unhealthy, no questions. I tried this myself to see how effective it is and lo and behold it's ridiculous. It works even against SWFs because most SWFs are not on a high enough level to mitigate the time loss by Knock Out completely. You wear them out until someone makes a mistake or they waste all their resources and suddenly you win.
Even if you don't win, the perk is incredibly unhealthy because it makes playing survivor miserable beyond comprehension. I actually made a post about this earlier this year:
TL;DR: Knock Out needs a rework.
How about survivors start the game already hooked?
My guess is the OP would still lose the match somehow.
My thoughts on the matter when the changes were announced
Just went against the Twins using this build. We all left with about 2k each.
Zero reason for it to exist
It's obnoxious.
This is probably the worst thing to come across in the game whilst playing solo queue. Hadn't faced it for a long while until I played against a Vecna using it together with Franklin's and Weave. We all got slugged extremely quickly as when someone figured out where the first survivor was he would return and hit them and so soon he had permanent aura reading all around the area where the first survivor was slugged. Didn't take long for everyone to get downed.
Absolutely miserable game that was and hope this doesn't become a regular thing or solo q will be tragic.
You're wasting time and not removing vital resources from survivors.
Whenever they pick up / reset you don't get any progression towards your objective.
If you slug like that and dont slug the whole team / bleed them out, you lose the game with 0 hooks.
It is probably the unhealthiest killer perk in the game. Needs a full on rework, there is genuinely zero reason for it to exist. Same with Boil Over
I don’t mind it. It has its uses. I personally enjoy the perk.
I must be a masochist because I find it hilarious trying to crawl away to where the Killer can’t find me.
Slugging doesn't bother me personally, even with Knockout, but I think that’s because I really love when any opportunity opens up to use dying perks like WGLF.
People should be able to play the game however they want, within the rules. What you consider "unfun" is probably considered "fun" by someone else. Killers have playstyles that are unfun for survivors, and survivors have playstyles that are unfun for killers. If we are going to get rid of one unfun playstyle, then it's only fair to get rid of them all.
Knock Out is that kind of perk that basically doesn't work against SWFs but extremely impacts SoloQ because it's a perk that makes you rely on comms as technically only counterplay, which makes it extremely unhealthy. I would definitely not encourage using it nor practising that playstyle.
The thing is, I am very convinced that people who play like that dont care if they win. I went against a Legion a few days ago who tried to slug the whole team. It was a long and tedious match with 3 escapes in the end and I guess nobody had fun in it. And the only reason why we had 3 escapes (one person bleed out) was because we were at least a 2man SWF, probably 2 2man SWF and had the last Gens basically in every corner of the map, which allowed us to work on them when not being slugged (even tho it also meant to travel long distances for a pickup..).
I asked the Legion why they play like this just to be annoying and they said that they do not care about winning or having fun anymore and just want that Survivors have a bad experience. Great.
100% this.
Knockout and Boil Over will never be good and they are only really "useful" in an unhealthy way. Knockout is a bit easier to use, because you would need a full build for Boil Over (and probably a SWF), but both Perks will never find themselves in Loadout of players who just want to have a normal game.
I just use it for the muffle effect 😎
obviously people do it for trolling, but OP talks about it as if it's meta. It isn't.
It's not meta, but you really can't argue that the perk isn't the problem here.
You only bring knockout for one main reason, and typically people who do bring it play 100% with the slugging "for a ######### experience" play style in mind.
Similar to boil over, tho I can at least say that boil over was dealt with quickly when they considered changing it, and it's also been severely hindered by hooks respawning. No such changes have been made to target slugging like this.
ofc it's problematic, but not because it's strong.
it's one of the few perks that actually fit the definition of anti solo q.
I wouldnt mind if knock out just doubled down on its secondary effects and made recovery / crawling speed even worse and for longer. Without the primary basekit blindness effect.
As much as I agree that Knock Out shouldn't exist in this form, that's not really the issue here, is it? That player will find a different way to ruin the match for other people, if Knock Out is reworked. The only thing that can help with players like this is the ban hammer. It doesn't have to be permanent (not right away at least) but forcing them on a month long "vacation" might help.
I played a Knochout playstyle once or twice as a lore-accurate Pinhead build, but its quite unfun for both sides: the survivors are miserable on the ground for extended amounts of times and you as the killer rush around the map to find the non-downed survivors while keeping on edge for the downed ones to get picked up and possibly reset.
I mean, yeah, they will find a different way. But at least it can be made harder. I dont think that a Ban is reasonable here, since they are not really breaking any rules. I mean, you can go for "not participating in normal gameplay", but I think this would just open a can of worms, since you then have to decide what "normal gameplay" would be.
There is nothing wrong with that.
You're just using the game's built-in system to follow the tactics allowed in the game.
Now there is no benefit to hanging survivors on hooks, so this tactic is the most effective.
Survivors are quick to complain that it's not fun or fun, but the killer isn't playing the game to entertain the survivors.
You kinda have to define what "normal" is here. The same could be said about survivors who go for flashlight saves for example. They clearly brought a flashlight with the intention of using it and not just staying on gens. We wouldn't define gens as "normal" and everything else is people trying to ruin fun.
It would be somewhat fine if the auto-pickup mechanic made it to the game, but as it is, it's just awful gameplay design.
I think the idea of it is to be a sort of stealth disorientation perk, so if the killer gets a down, and then goes for another survivor near a gen, they still have the element of surprise. That on it's own I'd say is okay. But I completely agree that it sucks cause it does encourage a slugging playstyle that isn't very effective against solo q.
Knockout is a terrible perk that only serves to enhance a really unfun and boring style of play, and ruins the game for four people. It's obnoxious, it's frustrating to deal with, and it's only ever used to slug. That's all it's used for.
Say what you want about Franklin's, Weave Attunement, aura read, gen slowdown or regression, or all four in one build. None of those are remotely as problematic as this one singular Killer perk. I don't bring it. Ever. Nobody should. Ever.
It needs a full rework.
Please take a moment to think about why murderers use knockouts in their fights.If you don't like being knocked out, we recommend using VC to form a SWF. The killer is constantly forced to fight against the SWF's unreasonableness.At least for some people, Knockout makes playing the killer fun.
In soloQ, the bad thing is that you get allies who are at a level that doesn't take countermeasures against knockouts by going into lockers.
Locker-in also prevents surge and butcher.
Knockout is a bad perk, but it's not scary.
That doesn't make any sense.
1: If you don't like knock out, join a SWF.
2: Killers use knockout to counter SWF's strength.
If the problem is SWFs, knockout doesn't do anything about it. That's the point of what people are saying, its a slaughter soloq perk.
Please don't assume I only ever play Survivor, or that I only ever play SoloQ Survivor. I play SWF almost exclusively and I play a large roster of various Killers of different strength and ability, about 10 or so to various degrees last I checked. Trust me when I say I know exactly why Killers use Knockout in builds.
To slug. It's to slug.
It's used only in slug builds and that is literally its only use. It doesn't do much else, it doesn't synergize with any actual perks except those pertaining to keeping Survivors downed, like Deerstalker. Its only purpose is to make it harder for downed Survivors to be found and thus, make them die faster by bleedout due to being slugged. It's just what the perk is build to do. SWF does not counter it unless you are on comms. SoloQ is even more affected by it. It's a perk that is there to make slugging even more viable against everyone, but it hits SoloQ a little harder.
If I wanted to slug for a challenge or need to keep multiple people down for a challenge for some reason, I'd run Knockout. If I wanted to slug everyone at 5 gens as say, Dredge, I might run Knockout. I don't want to do those things so I don't run Knockout, because its only, literally its only purpose, is to make leaving people down for a long time stronger. AKA, slugging.
I don't think this tactic is wrong, as there is no benefit for the killer to hang a survivor on a hook.Most of the popular abilities can be nullified, so everyone should take the initiative and use this tactic.
The real thrill of competitive games is doing things your opponent hates.If you want to care about your opponent, shouldn't you play another game?
Pyramid Head is the best for this playstyle to still hook because you can cage survivors and no black bubble pops up over them so the survivors don’t know where the cage is. Many times I caged a survivor using this build and they die on the first hook because they can’t be found, especially if you go relocate the cage.
They specifically stated in Asia. Are you from there? Because if not then you have zero room to make that statement.
I’ll remind you the Asia region plays DBD very differently compared to the rest of us. As highlighted in an Otzdarva video where a good sample size of their player base were polled on different things and they have drastically different opinions. Like Huntress being accepted as a Mid B Tier killer and Self Care still being an S Tier perk.
No region is the same
ive played on asian region for a while to tell you as a matter of fact that anti solo q build would work with equal efficiency anywhere. just as it would fumble when you are not dealing with solo q (that also lose chases fast enough to let you ramp up).
The real thrill of competitive games is competing. What you are talking about is griefing.
"Survivors can't have fun playing, so the killer should be careful."
"Survivors don't have fun playing, so killers should limit their playstyle."
"Killers don't do what survivors don't want to do because they can't have fun playing."
HAHAHA
Tbh, just flipping the effects round of the timed/permanent part would solve a lot of the problems, and would make it much harder to successfully slug the whole team.
It still wouldn't be the healthiest perk, but it would be a lot healthier, and would have a genuine non-slug-for-4k use of making it harder to reach a pallet and slugging when people are hovering around for flashlight and pallet saves, countering Unbreakable, Flip Flop/Power Struggle, etc, etc.
It would also be good vs. Sabotaging, since the recovering of the survivor remains bad, and picking them up takes longer.
Would be a decent anti-bully perk, especially combined with the likes of Forced Hesitation and Infectious Fright.
Extremely unhealthy perk. Should have been reworked, not buffed.
How do I think about it?
Very carefully.
Oh god…. What is this, 2017?
It's the year 2028. DBD killer queues are over 10 minutes long, and survivor teams have to be filled out with an extra bot to keep queue times from going too high. In an effort to bring the kill rate down a little bit from the 93.6% it's held fast at for the past four months, devs make gens progress 2% faster if the killer stays near a hooked survivor for 30 seconds. "This is unplayable!" forum killers complain. "I'm just going to slug now. There's just no point to putting survivors on hooks anymore, we've lost all pressure!"
I feel like the original intent of Knockout was to be paired with Leatherface's sweep ability in the scenario that if they were to down multiple survivors they could continue chase since they can multidown. DBD was a different game back then but Knockout got changed iirc because it worked with other killers and was from what I would guess too strong working with powers. Both Leatherface and Knockout functioned completely differently when they were released.
Right now I feel like it's one of the remnants of older DBD and could easily be changed. Forced Hesitation essentially does what I'd imagine Knockout would do today if it was designed for current DBD. I don't see an issue with keeping Knockout as is BUT I wouldn't see a loss at all if it were reworked into something thematically appropriate to Leatherface and the reference it makes with the perk but just discouraging slugging.
That being said - This perk can easily be played around once you realize it's in play. The main offender here I would have said is Nurse but since Nurse's blink attack is a special attack now I don't believe Knockout even works on her anymore. It's just M1 killers that can use the perk now. So ultimately it's kind of a garbage perk because M1 killers need more viable perks rather than a dedicated slugging perk.
Is it an unfun garbage perk? Yes absolutely.
Do I feel like it's something that should be priority to change? No not really - There are far worse things to deal with that make slugging much worse - I feel this perk only affects solos where you don't know where someone went down.
Prior I would have said it's problematic on Nurse but Nurse specifically was the problem not this perk.
I've played this kinda build on twins a few times and it does seem effective but it's a lot of micromanaging slugs and it just turns into whack-a-mole after a while so I don't find it that fun.
I do think if you have the patience however it could very well be meta just unpopular do to how much work the build is. To hear it's taking off in Asia doesn't surprise me one bit as they've always been hyper focused on efficiency.