Meta Shakeup is Here!
I just read the patch notes, and holy am I hyped.
I’m super excited for machine learning and unrelenting, as well as slippery meat and illumination and obviously the comm wheel. Houndmaster and dredge gonna be eating so good after the patch.
What are your favorite changes?
Tagged:
Perks
Comments
As a rebecca main that mostly uses just her 3 perks most of the time, the Better than New buff if huge. Won't be able to pair hyperfocus or bardic inspiration with stakeout anymore either. But they can probably pair with the new This is not happening which doesnt require you to be injured anymore. And stakeout by itself is now gigabuffed and i always liked using it.
Aside from that they reworked a few into totem hunting perks. Like small game you just now see the aura of totems when you get close enough without any cooldown lol that is huge. And calm spirit now not only stops u from screaming but cleanses totems 10% faster instead of much slower
And then the chest perk to see where they are on the map now sees them all at all times, and opens chests much faster. Alot of big changes.
But one i am confused about is empathic connection where people can see your aura when they are injured and now you heal as fast as bottony knowledge (+50%) so is bottony knowledge now just for healing yourself (and others) faster? As it did not recieve a change.
to quote The Rock… Finally. This has been needed for a long time. Perks like Dark Arrogance and Monstorus Shrine getting giga buffed is insane, can't wait to use em.
I like most of them. Bit sad a bit of the "56 perks changed" is just making them more consistent at lower tiers.
I agree with not liking the empathic connection change but for a different reason. I use it with autodidact so teammates can find me if they need a top up so I don’t have to travel to them wasting time. Everytime they increase the healing speed it makes my build worse because I get less stacks if heals are completed too fast early game.
I dont know why OP is getting down voted for being positive.
They are good changes. Maybe could have given more buffs on the survivor side regarding invocations but none are bad changes.
You make a good point, would’ve loved to see treacherous crows on the list for changes.
I think something easy they could do is let you get both invocations up at once instead of one at a time, like boons, but I think treacherous crows is still far too weak, needs a rework or massive buffs for sure.
Most of the survivor changes are trash perks remaining trash perks, or currently useful perks becoming trash perks. I see nothing to get excited about as tunneling gets easier yet again and killers get multiple new strong perks. Chest searching, blessing totems, minor heal buffs. None of these shake up anything on the survivor side. You nerfed every useful survivor item and boon perk, remember?
Nerfing the Google Maps survivor perks (5 Steps, Windows) was long overdue.
Nerfing anti-tunnel perks (BT, Shoulder) is a huge slap in the face (again) after being strung along for years that the devs would address tunneling itself.
Nerfing the only decent aura reveal counter (Self Preservation) while buffing even more tracking perks for killers. As if aura spam hasn't already been massively powercrept in recent years. Really makes me want to come back to the game vs Judgement. /s
Removing unhook chances from Slippery Meat takes all the fun factor out of the perk. Yes we know it was only useful in luck builds. That was the point of the perk. Now its just trash.
Hex builds for killers getting hit like 5 different ways this update seems like overkill and I doubt they will see much use going forward.
Dissolution nerf will be nice vs a couple of braindead builds (Ghoul, Legion)
Outside of a slight nerf to DMS, none of the meta killer slowdowns were touched. Quad slowdown remains as strong as ever.
The monstrous shrine change was definitely one I wasn't expecting. Im gonna be testing that one for sure. Dark arrogance too is probably gonna find its way onto at least one of my builds.
this kinda mindset is exactly why a shake up was needed, too long we’ve had to sit and fester is this state.
Everyone got use to either broken overpowered or useless, no inbetween, so when bhvr starts actually correcting the meta and making things balanced people start crying saying everything is bad when in reality it’s just by comparison it looks terrible because the power ceiling was so high.
If you’re gonna be stubborn and use the same 4-8 perks after this patch that’s on you don’t fault the game for that. Theres so many good perks now that making a unique a strong build isn’t hard with some creativity.
Trust me when I say this is 100% better for the long term.
Yes the BT change is pretty dumb, and S tier sweats are still gonna run quadslow, but other than those 2 outliers this whole patch is a major improvement for longevity and perk variety especially at lower end, which is super important because dbds player retention is garbage.
Hex builds will definitely see use thanks to dominance and nothing but misery. Slippery meat went from a meme to actual good perk that can come in clutch in the end game or saving time mid game. Unrelenting is a huge boon to dredge who’s been needing help. Whispers is no longer stuck in 2016. Self preservation nerf is a buff to solo queue rats that don’t contribute to the team. Small game/calm spirit are now a very effective (most importantly free) at dealing with totems which new survivors struggled with. Roadlife is actually good now.
last but not least the biggest survivor buff by far being OW style comm wheel, it’s important can not be understated.
TLDR: If you think there’s nothing worth running other than quad slowdown, or second chance/exhaustion perks after this patch you’re unequivocally wrong.
Theres plenty to work with if you get creative.
perk shakeups are great. I enjoyed the big Attack on Titan update even though it wasn't perfect and some perks I despised (it gave us overbrine) but we got some nifty things like Calm Spirits silent bone tickling. For some baffling reason we gave Calm Spirit a restriction out of fear of a bird meta but we finally did away with that!
And again my feelings are the same as last time....some good some bad. But its progress. I just wish this one had a bit more meat to it rather than mostly bring tier 1 and 2 adjustments
Still don’t know why perk tiers are a thing, all they do is slow development time because they have make basically 3 perks in the code, and it adds unnecessary clutter and grind for new players which already have a ton of grind as is.
It not like perks are balanced around the first 2 tiers anyway, they should do away with them altogether.
Current meta is camping, tunnelling, slugging.
Anti-tunnel was nerfed, camping and slugging were untouched.
How is this going to shake up the meta?
anti-tunnel- is your only leg to stand on, I agree it could be better especially against the better killers but STB needed a slap on the wrist
Camping- is only as good as the survivors let it; is only effective in end game for the average killer, or if the killer is running a meme build (basement bubba)
Slugging- situational, killer dependent, and lastly anti slug perks are super good right now.
Yes killers with still slug, tunnel, and camp but what do any of the perks in this patch have to do with those playstyles? (besides BT, STB, and insidious)
Uhh… the meta looks more stagnant than ever tbh. Like… I guess instead of steakout people will use this is not happening. And killers won't use deadman anymore. That's about it. Tbh they just ruined several perks and made mediocre tier perks slightly better but not enough to actually make them usable. I haven't seen really any that are going to change the meta.
Why?
I've seen a couple of people echo the same sentiment, but never explain what is so OP about STB.
Tunneling should never ever have a downside, even after 10+ years of it being a dominant meta wildly overpowered mechanic.
Ahem...your meta shake up, sir..
Yeah it needed a slap on the wrist. not a sledgehammer to the ankles.
The other thing i really noticed was 2 perks decreasing basic attack cooldowns for the whole game. Dark arrogance, if you are good at baiting pallets and avoiding blinds, then you get to attack and vault 25% faster the whole game lol. And Unrelenting is now a flat 10% faster attack cooldown ontop of the 40% faster cooldown on missed swings. Id say even help wanted got a decent buff as you can now kick 3 gens to apply ruin to them and if any of those 3 get finnished you get 25% faster attack cooldown for 2 minutes.
I read all of the perk changes in patch notes and I like almost all of the changes. A lot of weaker perks have been buffed, perk tiers don't matter as much now and some things like Insidious might be more fun now. But aside from Thrill getting reworked, WoO & 5MA getting nerfed and Pharmacy becoming THE item perk, the meta hasn't shaken up much.
I think Pharmacy should have 3 tokens though, so it can just generate 3 rare medkits and 3 rummages and that's it, but still retain the faster & quieter unlock rummages after the tokens are gone. Pharmacy combined with coins is a recipe for unlimited medkits and way too many items.
spies from the shadows and flow state buffed?? best patch ever
im just a bit down about slippery meat, i like running a ~niche~ build sometimes that wont be viable anymore (slippery, up the ante, breakdown, second wind + vigo's jar offering)
Not that much is going to change. a "meta" shakeup will really happen when BHVR actually does something interesting to the core gameplay loop that requires a rethink and allows players for both killers and survivors to formulate new ways to play around it, stomping popular perks into the ground just because they're popular rather than addressing the gameplay reasons around why they are popular isn't even a valid way to balance let alone shake up a meta.
Extremely strong effect for not that bad of downside, especially is the killer isn’t proxy camping. People already hate proxy camping/back to hook Barry’s and STB encourages it to be countered; because the broken is so long killers like wraith can finish up whatever they’re doing across the map without feeling rushed to run back to hook immediately, and can catch people at the tail end of their broken for an easy down.
And it’s value exponentially increased the more people who have it so the survivors can essentially control the flow because they can keep spreading hooks states out across the team keeping everyone out of harms way.
It now making you injured and broken is a way better effect across the board for every type of killer, and it not being able to be stacked solves it edge case problems of top end survivors stacking it. Now it’s more comparable to something like weaving spiders when it comes to a trade off perk.
Additionally now it can be used in combination with injured perks which has the potential to be fun, one off the top of my head is dead hard if you’ve been hooked and use STB you still have a safety net to fall back on if the killer finds you.
My one big wish is to let you see other survivor perks in the lobby, because in solo queue if multiple people are running STB are running it only one gets to actually use it leaving however many people with wasted slots. So that’s pretty dumb.
It went from OP to balanced (as I mentioned in another comment before, it just looks like a super bad trash perk by comparison, the community has long since misunderstood what an actual balanced perk is because for some reason everyone [hyperbole] thinks not broken OP = trash), if it were to get buffed what would you change? I’d say decrease the broken now that vigil has been nerfed if it’s too long, or increase the available STB’s per trial to 2 instead of 1 so it’s not a dead perk slot for some people.
This isn't really giving me anything to work with.
'This is OP'
'Why?'
'Because it's really strong'
Like, I get that that's the part that you're saying, but no one is able to illustrate what's so far outside the boundaries of normal play. Like old heal-stacking going so high that you can heal survivors faster than the killer can injure them, that one I absolutely get, or direct comparisons between perks to show that one is just objectively better than another option, fine.
But StB is moving a hookstate around and everyone's parroting the word 'strong' without actually explaining why or how. I get that being able to pull someone off death hook without them immediately being at risk of getting killed is good, sure, but the value of hookstates fluctuates tremendously anyway.
If killers can get a kill in as little as three hooks, why is it a problem when survivors stack their perk loadout in order to make the first kill take more than three hooks?
It just feels like a repeat of the Distortion debacle where killers push the envelope on how much they can shortcut the game, and when survivors get something that resets the playing field, 'that's too strong'.
If you spread the first four hooks, StB is only going to help the killer. So why is that so strong?
it’s strong because the killer is weakest, conversely, the survivors are strongest when all 4 are alive. StB pushes this concept to the enth degree compared to similar perks that prevent a survivor death.
It also throws a wrench in the macro play of the game by removing most of the pressure you’ve built up trying to get that first survivor out of the game.
’just spread the first 4 hooks’ is a hell of lot easier said than done. Survivors can hide, the good chasers can make themselves known, a weak link may be present, different killers also play a role; on trapper or skull merchant I’m not gonna waste my time chasing someone outside of my web. There’s just too many factors at play that work against spreading the first 4 hooks (although this is getting better with perks like ravenous after the patch, or grim embrace), but for the average killer it’s not worth spreading hooks early game.
Even if you do spread hooks, if the best player on the team uses StB on someone him being on death hook won’t matter too much if the game is already over by the time you can secure the down, you could argue skill issue here which is fair.
Trying so hard to secure that first kill only for that pressure to be taken away can be a massive kick to the nuts.
It harms the Marco and moral of the killer if you don’t play in a specific way or you have to go in expecting to play against it, that’s why it’s strong. Kinda like post rework dead hard where you just had to assume every survivor had it and hold off on the M1 because it was so good.
And can you remind me of “distortion debacle” so I know what we’re talking about?
Tunnelling's been tolerated for all these years and has been getting buffed lately, which is basically the mirror version of this, so if that's fine, why isn't this?
You can't expect to pass tunnelling off as 'no big deal' and then stamp 'OP' on a perk that blocks it, specifically because it blocks it.
And this isn't so much to do with your personal opinion on tunnelling, but it's abundantly clear that BHVR is moving the game in that direction, so with that in mind, why would this perk be considered strong?
Not from a design perspective.
The term 'macro' tends to get tossed out when killers are forced out of the single strategy that is the answer to every problem.
It's not 'macro play' when your obvious answer, every time, is to go for the one with the most hookstates. And you can still do that here, because StB doesn't void hookstates, it just transfers them.
Tunnelling just becomes less rewarding when you slam your face into a wall of 3 StBs, but at that point, that's very much a you problem for not adjusting your strategy accordingly.
But then, we also had this with DS and in that case, the 'macro play' of just unga-bunga tunnelling won out in the end by getting DS knee-capped so that you could just tunnel through it.
As long as they're not doing gens, what do you care? Keep in mind that every survivor hooked once means one less StB to worry about, since you can't meaningfully use it on someone with one hookstate, and you can't meaningfully use it when you're on one hookstate yourself.
Ironically, this 'problem' you bring up is actually macro play, just expanded beyond 'target weakest link until dead'.
And now it might be, which expands your macro play.
Not only is this skill issue, but this is also the opposite of what you're arguing.
If the best looper on the team ditches hookstates for the benefit of weaker teammates, that's the survivor team's most valuable resource being swapped for worse, with added risk of losing even more.
But that does require macro play beyond 'if unhooked = chase'.
Massive powercreep in killer aura reading → Survivors pick up Distortion → Killers complain → Distortion dumpstered, cementing new baseline.