10s elusive has a dangerous flaw and makes tunneling easier
as we know endurance and haste after unhook was reduced from 15s→10s and elusive was added for 10s
The problem? Now its actually EASIER to tunnel , heres why:
Since the status effects are all in sync at 10s, now the killer literally has an audio AND visual cue of exactly when the endurance runs out. If im playing lets say kaneki and after i hear the unhook notification, io go back to the hook, all i have to do is follow the unhooked person and the moment i see scratch marks or hear them start groaning again i instantly know its worn off and can m1.
Originally if a killer followed you off hook, theyd either have to count the 15s and hope they timed it right or they might hit too early, now that will never happen. the killer will always know when to m1
TL;DR The existence of elusive being in sync with endurance weakens the endurance more than intended due to the fact it acts as a prebuilt ingame timer to when its safe to hit off hook. i think elusive should be 12.5 or 15s to counter this. @BHVR
Comments
Good point. Follow them until scratch marks appear then you are clear to hit. But it also makes tunneling easier in general having a shorter timer.
At most the elusive will help if you start running for the nearest line of sight breaker right after unhook, but hope the unhooker doesnt follow you there to heal lol
I'm not sure why they went with 10 second Elusive. Elusive doesn't have the same problem that Endurance has in that it can't be used aggressively. Honestly they should do something like 30 seconds of Elusive. If the killer wants to tunnel then they are fighting an uphill battle and the survivor has a much better chance to hide away on maps that are not indoors.
They shouldve just added elusive for ten seconds on top without syncing the two effects imo. Let's see how it plays out in the next weeks.
In 10 seconds it's always possible to get to a pallet or a window, with elusive if the killer was far so they can pressure gens then they will struggle to find the unhooked survivor and if they are close then other survivors can do gens and one can unhook after 50 seconds.
The issue with 15 seconds is how often it was abused, I can tell you so many times when the unhooked survivor was protecting the unhooker with no hooks or less hooks and then when I tunneled to punish them, they were complaining about me tunneling.
I didn't even think of this. They made tunneling easier than it was before the 15s buff. The killer doesn't even need to count to ten anymore.
This is a good call out. I'm not even anti-tunnel as most are, but this is something they need to fix if they're serious about the anti-tunneling systems. They added a color-coded easy-mode to tunneling, effectively. Which is wildly unnecessary.
All endurance is is pretending you got a health state back for a limited amount of time. I'll never understand folks who act like it's literally impossible to take a swing at someone with endurance. They're not invulnerable - just hit them. Poof, no more endurance.
'Oh, but they'll get a speed burst' some might say. Ok, so the solution is to waste 10+ seconds glued to their back waiting it out? No. I'll say it again - just hit them.
If someone is acting particularly aggressive with unhook protections then they're fair game as a target. Problem solved, all without having to change game mechanics.
survivors have gotten used to being able to carelessly unhook with removing hook grabs and basekit protections I think this is a good reminder to not farm your team.
a mindful unhook can help them break LoS so Ghoul can't find them as easily. whereas before, even with 15s endurance they just look for scratch marks and they are back at it.
before, if you wanted to remove your 5 star wanted level you kinda needed Iron Will/ESP and walk to the nearest tree/bush but now we have stealth basekit that's not nothing. It's such a relief being able to SPRINT without a care in the world.
Why are we pretending that counting to 10 is a particularly difficult skill or that this is going to meaningfully increase how often people get hit after endurance? Most of the killers who have hit me pre-15 on the boosted duration did so because I was going to make a tile and they wanted to negate the possibility of dead hard or ds+locker plays, not because they misjudged how long it lasted.
Yeah I don't think that's really an issue with elusive, most killers for the longest time would know just to count to 10. A 10 or 15 second endurance off hook doesn't really deter tunnelling since you're still taking that hit regardless, the only scenario where the 15 seconds matter is end game when the generators are done. That being said the addition of elusive to unhooks is nice since it works in tandem with the unhooker to try and keep the killer's attention, as long as you unhooking people in the killer's face (if it can be helped) the effect really does help the unhooked to get away.
Already seeing more killers hard tunnel with this change, and Elusive isn't doing anything to help.
While that is true, any killer who is going to tunnel you already can count to 10 to make sure.
This is a really good point. The elusive should last longer than the endurance. It's also kind of negated if the unhooker follows you to try and heal since they end up leading the killer after you.
Hot take but elusive should just last until you preform a conspicuous action.
This will lead to do-nothing rats with permastealth.
Anyone who plays like that are already doing nothing in lockers so that's already a moot point. But sure, how about like two minutes then.
Why would you need it for two minutes though? And why would you be doing nothing for two minutes? 20s would be soild, especially since it lasts even through a hit. It's meant to be a protection, not for you to be unfindable until you decide to be so.
Elusive doesn't make you 'unfindable' though.
Sure, you can be seen, but no scratch marks, no blood pools, no pain noises, and no aura means you can just stay out of view. Run aura like Alert or Empathy with that free of a thing and you could avoid the killer constantly while also doing nothing useful for your team.
I agree. This is the same reason why I always say that the Distortion-Nerf did nothing against Rat Behavior and only removed variety from the game.
I also stand by it that Rat Behavior is more rare than people claim it to be. But: I have the feeling that a change like this might encourage more selfish plays regardless. If the game is already lost (e.g. someone tunneled out early), the remaining Survivors at least try. Obviously it is in vain, but this is another issue.
But I feel that if there might be the chance that someone gets unhooked and uses unlimited Elusive to just hide around, people might just not unhook at all. If you dont unhook someone, you have a higher chance of being the last one alive, but if you unhook someone, you might end up on the hook with nobody coming to the rescue. This can already happen, but I feel that if Survivors are scared of Rat Behavior they would rather be the rat themselves.
It's not really about the skill of counting. It's that the execution undermines the intended purpose of having unhook protection to begin with. The devs shouldn't be making tunneling easier. A built in "I can be tunneled now" timer definitely makes it easier, especially now that the protections have been shortened.
As others have said here, I believe this could be resolved pretty easily by making the Elusive slightly longer. Personally though, I'd even go as far as making the Elusive and Haste last 15 seconds, with the Endurance at 10 seconds, because unlike Endurance, the Haste and Elusive protections are purely escape tools for a survivor being tunneled, and can't really be abused offensively.
Damn you're right, that's actually nice. Even tho I have to say that it doesn't make a hugr difference, it's relatively easy to see the difference between 100 and 110% speed, so I just waited until the speed ended xD
While I don't disagree 15 seconds of haste and elusive would be a decent enough compromise that wouldn't deal with the same issues, I just can't see where the current state actively makes tunneling meaningfully easier, even if we completely disregard the benefits of LoS breaking against people returning to hook without having direct visuals. While technically yes, how it exists IS an indicator, that only ever matters if killers weren't pretty much always waiting that timer out accurately anyways, which - in my experience, at least - just isn't the case, especially in situations where someone is tunneling and not just dealing with the endurance in endgame.
People just weren't making that mistake almost ever back during 15 seconds endurance, or the 10 seconds without elusive before that, at least as far as the people I went against. If I got hit early, it was because I was about to hit a window or pallet I could drop, and the killer wanted to concede the time loss by just taking the deep wounds. The amount of times I got hit early out in the open, or during a loop where waiting a second or two would have downed me were EXTREMELY rare.
Bit much. Towards the end of the game people would exploit his to string the game out or play for hatch. I think 30 secs would make more sense, and give the player a good chance to shake the killer if they chase off of hook.
I feel like 10-12 secs of endurance, 10-15 of haste, 15-20 elusive, is more than fair for unhooked protections.
They probably just decided to put every effect at 10 for symmetry and less complexity, which is understandable but in this particular case I don’t think simpler is the way to go.
Yeah it might upset some OCD people but balance is more important.
Hell if they wanted to get really crazy they could try a dynamic unhook protection system where it varies depending on the game state, hook stages, and whether someone is dead or not. Like being strongest when someone is on death hook early in the match and being weakest if it’s endgame or if you spread hooks.
But that requires a hell of a lot more overhauling and testing.
Nah man, tunneling needs to be nerfed. Ideally it'd be permanent. But to explain by making it last an actually decent time you are protecting the tunneled survivor from a lot of nonsense aura readings killers can use to find you and if the killer is proxy camping giving them an actual possibility of loosing the killer in chase rather than just having to accept the fact you aren't going to be able to play the game. Keep in mind elusive literally cannot be used offensively and is purely defensive, there's no reason to not make it last a long time as it can only be used to protect a survivor from being tunneled out.
Yeah rat behavior stems from the simple fact that there's no catch up mechanics for survivors so once a game starts to go badly it's next to impossible to recover so if you only care about surviving the only logical play is to go for hatch and do nothing but rat. This can be easily solved by removing hatch and balancing it that for each dead survivor generators require dramatically less progress to finish to make it so there's still hope if someone gets tunneled out early or if the killer is just stomping while also encouraging spreading hooks and eliminating the reason for ratting which is the hatch.
And yeah like you said if people are going to rat they are going to rat anyway. Changing perks like distortion or anything really cannot change the fact that you can't force people to not rat. Honestly that's one of the main reasons I hated the distortion change since it meant that rat players are even less useful since they are just hiding in lockers more often rather than being on generators or being useful.
So… people just do this already by hiding in lockers on edge map so you need to come up with a new argument. By making them elusive all you are doing in reality is empowering people who have no reason to do risky plays like go for saves or anything to potentially be useful. Also 30 seconds is nothing in terms of a chase especially since killers can just proxy camp.
They could make the hook notification silent like they tired with the Anti tunneling/slugging PTB last year. Or at the very least add it to some a low usage perk like Low Profile or Borrowed Time.
Slippery Meat is the perfect pick for that, it's thematic and also a universal perk so everyone has access to it.
The unhook notification does have legitimate use, so tying this effect to a perk is more reasonable imo
I mean part of what you said is true about it being very hard for survivors to turn a game around but Rat behavior is most definitely a playstyle, I see it in solo queue semi often, definitely not every other game but there are games where you're in like the first chase and theres a Nea behind a rock in the corner for 2 minutes… I went against Judgement yesterday and had a steve perpetually in a locker, the killer response to the crows is oftentimes knowing that that person isn't participating very much (obviously) so they just leave them until last.
Overall I think the biggest issues in this game right now come from balancing the game around perks and not around gameplay… that's why tunneling is still highly viable, because the perks and buff/debuff changes don't change the fact that the killers objective is to put people on hooks and they can kill two birds with one stone when they proxy camp and tunnel because it forces survivors away from their objective to make coordinated saves and that is entirely a benefit to the killer from the beginning, even if it goes badly and the hooked person gets away, the killer got a win because they forced people off of gens. its also why SWF bully squads are so annoying, when the game is so linear then its easy to abuse. there's not many real moving parts in DBD its mostly RNG but once the RNG is over with its 4 survivors with perks that may or may not match up well against one killer who's perks may or may not match up well in a map that people know from the outset is neutral/killer sided/surv sided… the playing part of the game is just hooks, gens, and lit totems and a consolation hatch. it's been that way for a decade…
I'm not convinced these changes were good in general. Elusive as a whole is just not helpful in this situation if the killer was already near the hook planning to tunnel and knows where you are anyway. I understand that 15s of endurance was abusable when used aggressively but overall it feels like tunneling just got a pretty massive buff and we're not really any better off now than we were pre-9.3.0. I feel like there has to be a better solution and it needs to be tested on a PTB that doesn't have a new killer, and especially not one that bypasses the normal hooking system anyway.
Until they fully commit to making tunneling near impossible and balance the game around that it's just a stop gap. If a killer wants to tunnel and your teammates don't know when to unhook you will eventually die.
Elusive makes it 100% easier to hide like that though. Even jumping in lockers has it's risks. If you're injured killers can still hear you, elusive removes any risk at all of being heard and even lets you run without scratch marks and avoid aura read.
The unhook notification does have legitimate use, so tying this effect to a perk is more reasonable imoBy legitimate I'm guessing you mean the info the killer gets. I've always thought that's way too powerful for something to just be free basekit (not that you would use this phrase I think, but in the community parlance, very hand holdy basekit).
The problem I think with going the perk direction is how easily it would pair with something like Resurgence to take lots of the risks out of healing under hook. That's why I think a basekit hide of the unhook notification would make implementing a trade off much easier - something like mangled/broken off hook to also make healing under hook under the protection less easy.
The 10 seconds is already really noticeable, already got tunnelled a few times where I thought "Wha?" but yeah 10 seconds. Great!
Also if the Judgment tunnels, you can go right back to Exile and they don't even need to M2 you.
My guy, no one's going to be checking lockers on the outskirts of the map unless it's to tunnel someone out.
Funny thing to say when this is actually standard game sense for decent killers.
If they want to decrease Elusive, then increase the anti-camp meter and let it fill up faster plus increase its range, especially for the basement.
Bro is actually trolling. No killer is going to edgemap to look for survivors unless they had aura reading telling them where to go for the tunnel.
I think people need to be more mindful of the unhook situation and the unhooker should be prepared to take aggro if the killer is proxy-camping. If the unhooker just farms you and runs off while the killer is nearby and sees you, the elusive does nothing and you are indeed weaker to being tunneled out. But there's still anti-tunnel perks that can be brought. Use DS, DH, Off the record, Babysitter, maybe revive BT, I dunno, maybe we just got too comfortable about the 15s basekit-BT and need to rethink our gameplay now.
A good change was the 15s to 10s endurance/haste bonus in endgame, though, being unhooked now doesn't give a free escape anymore, people have to play for that and killers get another chance for and endgame-down. I like that.
Hear me a killer main here who only tunnels people who behave toxic…
I believe current antitunnel is just poorly designed, it mainly served to negate farming survivors unhooking in killer face when they had no borrowed time perk equipped, yet back then killers were mostly way weaker. The main issue of tunneling is to understand why killers tunnel - speaking of killers not tunneling at 5 gens because they can. Tunneling helps gain pressure when the game is not in your favor and you need to lower efficiency of survivors by margin amount. If survivors spread on gens and pop 3 of them before you hook first survivor it's mostly only call and affects the lowest tier killers drastically.
How I'd change antitunnel:
→ remove haste and endurance
→ give survivors 20s of invincibility, meaning they can't be damaged, infected, can't be bodyblocked
This would prevent agressive weaponizing from survivors as well as help against killers with massive camping potential, such as Bubba, Trickster, Huntress…
This would be deactivated when last generator is repaired or if survivor performs any conspicious actions.
How I'd make tunneling less reasonable:
→ Each time survivor is freshly hooked you gain following benefits:
25 % haste for 10s when moving without using power, extra 5-15 % damage on next generator kick depending on killer (5 % per Nurse, Blight, Oni, Ghoul… 10 % for Nemesis, Alien,… and 15 % for GhostFace, Pig, Legion…, aura reveal on all survivors with same or less hook stages than currently hooked survivor and extra BP multiplier that gives extra bp post trial, think of old BBQ.
This mechanic would be permanently removed if any survivor is dead.
honestly a better way to do it would be elusive off hook pauses in chase and 15s
If you are good killer, you should win every game. That's how the game should work. The only issue I have even as killer main is that you can now bodyblock stairs from basement and with shorter bt you can easily confirm a kill.
??? If you are a good killer you should NOT win every game? what kind of estimation is that?
"The other side should have no chance If I am good"
Yea, but how much easier? This doesn't seem to me to be at the level of game changing. Chase music drowns out survivor sounds, scratch marks have a slight delay and won't be noticed if a killer is breathing down the survivor's neck. But sure, increase elusive to 15s. Somehow killers will still try to hit you at 10.
Yes! If you are good with playing certain killer and master them, you shouldn't lose unless you verse coordinated comp team.
thats just horrible game design philosophy, in what world do you think that would be an appropriate way to balance the game?