Survivor Perk Changes Feedback
Please let us know if you have any feedback about any Survivor perk changes - the more specific, the better. Thank you!
Please let us know if you have any feedback about any Survivor perk changes - the more specific, the better. Thank you!
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Comments
Are invocations ever going to get help?
These changes are great overall, I'm very happy with them from a glance
A lot of these look really good, although one I'm immediately hesitant about is the Borrowed Time change.
It was a solid perk for giving your teammates a bit of extra protection after an unhook, especially because it belongs to a free character — Bill.
Of course my opinion might change after some testing, but from the description I don't understand the use case of the reworked version at all.
I love the idea of Invocations but the risk is far too great for the reward.
They either need to increase the reward of completing a ritual or decrease the penalty for doing so.
These two perks do almost the exact same thing now except one is objectively better with a bonus effect.
(Yes, I know they technically have different requirements for use, but not much enough that they feel like different perks)
Down to the Last's new perk description is not very clear.
I love the idea of it but I can't really understand what it does from reading it.
Specifically,
Is this trying to communicate that from the moment you become the final Survivor, you get a form of Low Profile, and then it never activates again? Or is it trying to communicate that every time that a Killer tries to see your aura, it is blocked for 10s x # of Tokens?
I am disappointed in the change to Stake Out. Specifically changing the skill check from "Great Skill Check" to "special" and intentionally nerfing the interaction / synergies with other skill check perks.
While I understand the purpose was likely to nerf players running crazy gen rush builds. I was using its synergy with Corrective Action as as a way to compensate when playing with a my spouse or friends with disabilities who struggle with Skill Checks. So much so that due to this hurdle the anxiety of Skill Checks made the game unplayable for them : ( I purchased Detective Tapp specifically to accomplish this and was happily willing to "sacrifice" half my perk slots to effectively do the skill checks for them if it enabled their to enjoy the game with me.
I know this is probably a specific situation that no one cares about but wanted to share feedback as something to consider.
Thanks
I don't know, while I do think BK being as high as it is might be a problem when it comes to perk comparisons, they are different perks.
Botany is the far stronger and more flexible perk, and when you compare Empathic to it now, the tradeoff is that you get the weaker version of heal speed but with a potentially quite useful extra effect.
It's a comparison that absolutely favours Botany, but there is a distinction that matters for how the perks would be used and what value you're expecting to get from them.
There's even LESS reason to run Teamwork: Full Circuit now than there already was.
I don't see any reason why I would ever take Teamwork: Full Circuit now that This Is Not Happening is getting buffed. (Not that its effect is very useful to begin with, to be frank)
At its best case scenario, Full Circuit will still increase the Good zone by 125% smaller than This is Not Happening.
Finding 4-man gens and having all four Survivors on it is an incredibly rare scenario, in most cases you'll probably be repairing with 1 other person, which means in most cases this perk will be making your skillchecks 175% smaller than This is Not Happening or doing nothing at all.
Another shortcoming of Teamwork: Full Circuit's perk description is that it is not clear whether the Skill Check zones are bigger for you or your gen-mates or both. So there may be another aspect of this perk that players are overlooking entirely.
So, if it does affect teammates, that's not mentioned at all so players aren't taking it for altruistic purposes. And, if players wanted to take it for themselves, the effect is blown out of the water by the new This Is Not Happening. There's no reason to pick Full Circuit for either altruism or self-use.
Diminishing Returns also makes the 5% gen repair speed bonus totally forgettable and unappealing.
Full Circuit needs some serious love because this meta shakeup is rendering it totally obsolete.
Or bonus downside if you play solo q. Honestly they could just slightly buff botany to 60%
i'm sad about the change too, but i understand why it had to happen. i think the interaction with hyperfocus was making it difficult to control the speed at which generators are able to be completed. :/
maybe try running this is not happening instead? they updated it so you no longer have to be injured and both the great and good zones of the skillcheck increased in size. might be a good perk for your friends to run this one too since it makes skillcheck zones 2x bigger than normal
There’s absolutely no need to kill ‘WoO’ – a beginner-friendly perk that’s particularly useful for solo queue. The perk is purely for information purposes and doesn’t grant any additional effects.
This new version makes no sense at all, and I expect it to be reverted because it’s disgraceful as it is now.
i was expecting a change with either windows or 5 moves ahead because they kinda did the same thing previously. while i'm not a huge fan of the change, i think it is understandable. i just wish they would have given a better buff to balance the nerf of taking away pallet vision. i think something like blocking the window for the killer for a few seconds could be an interesting addition to the perk to make it a bit more valuable with the update
The ability to heal yourself faster with medkits/self care/strength in shadows is a fantastic reason to bring botany over EC, and using medkits for self-heals is really common. The difference might be simple but its pretty significant.
A lot of these are bad changed or extremely underwhelming. The changes to only lower tier versions of the perks just show how outdated the concept of perk tiers are in the first place.
However I will go through some of the worst offenders.
Friendly competition did not need a nerf and the extremely minor repair boost does not make up for this. There's no situation where someone is running this over prove thyself and due to diminishing returns no one's going to be using up two perks for a relatively mediocre effect. Also there's the issue of multiple people being on a gen in the first place is bad, I'd recommend making it 20% for 120 seconds.
Boon: Illumination, overall still horrible and easily the worst boon even with this change. Being able to bless 200% faster is nothing since it requires a boon to already be set up. And whenever a boon is up you don't want to be wasting time and throwing the match to set up a boon in a slightly different area. Easy fix is to just make it so the faster booning speed is not tied to having a boon already set up given that the main effect of the boon is nothing.
Borrowed time: already bad design as it heavily punishes two specific killers (legion and ghoul) and I thought you guys don't want perks that are essentially anti X killer? But also the effect is so mediocre that it's nothing. I'd recommend changing it so that it gives endurance for like 15~20 seconds after you fully mend so it turns into an actual anti-camp/anti-tunnel perk for killers that just m1 off hook. Seriously though I do not understand the thought process of the perk, like there's not a whole lot of scenarios where you are going to be in the deep wound state to begin with since it's typically only there when being tunneled. But at the same time if you are being tunneled there's DS and Off the Record which are just better perks for this. Right now Borrowed Time is just straight up dead as a perk and needs a massive buff.
Down to the Last: I can understand wanting to rework a perk since it's used primarily by selfish people. But it does not make any actual logical sense. People who play selfishly are going to keep doing it no matter what. You can't force people to play a certain way and since there's no comeback mechanics in 1v4 this was a saving grace many times in a match that got lost in lobby. All it does is remove a perk that was uniquely good in dire situations. Now onto the actual new perk, it's okay but underwhelming since it forces people to be even more useless and selfish. Like, a lot of times you should be unhooking someone in a match, but this encourages you to let people die on hook and not even try to save others when the game is going badly. It also encourages people to throw themselves at the killer early on to farm tokens and then rat late game and do nothing. Overall very confusing intentions with the perk given you changed it because you wanted people to be less selfish but ended up with a new perk that encourages throwing the game and being more selfish.
Do no harm: Still just a worse botany/empathic connection? I guess it could be used with autodidact but even then the healing speed bonus has anti-synergy with autodidact and the skill check bonus is not high enough really. I'd recommend reworking the perk entirely or maybe giving a temporary haste effect when the heal is finished to fit in with Orela's concept. Still as is, just a dead perk.
Plunderer's Instinct: People who are running a dedicated chest build are going to be bringing keys which already unlock the chests extremely fast so the new addition does nothing in practicality. Also since there's the issue of most items being hot garbage especially with all the nerfs to the chest item pool with the maps rework chest builds are not in a healthy state right now. I'd recommend changing it so you can only find medkits or toolboxes from chests. That would instantly solve the issue that chest builds are facing right now where opening up a chest is more often than not going to result in something awful like a worthless fog vial/map/flashlight/broken key. Truthfully speaking I don't even think plunders instinct is all that usable given there's other better chest build perks and since chest builds are only really usable in a 4man swf who all bring coins it's just extremely awkward right now trying to justify spending a whole perk slot on something that is done ten times better by a key.
Road life: This is just a total misunderstanding of why the perk was bad. Being injured on a generator is possibly the riskiest thing a survivor can do so the payoff should be worth the extreme risk you are putting yourself in given how many killers can get easy injuries with little to no counterplay from survivors. Now this could work if the payoff was worthwhile but it's not. A single heal that requires you to get four great skill checks is nothing especially with the RNG nature of skill checks. A simple way to fix it is make it so it's no longer a one time use perk. It's a lot riskier than shadow step or self care so the payoff should be better.
Shoulder the burden: Guys, seriously stop buffing tunneling. It's already the strongest thing killers can do since there's now even less counterplay to it. Also just… stop nerfing perks to the point that it makes OG deja-vu look good. This is more of an active detriment rather than something usable. Just totally awful in every conceivable way. Easily the worst change in this whole patch.
Slippery Meat: Extremely counter intuitive decision making. This perk as is, is perfect for people who want to be tunneled out. Seriously you get unhooked fast enough that you can take the protection hit for the survivor unhooking from a basic m1 attack. This could maybe work if you have a whole build dedicated to anti-tunnel but if you wanted the perk to be for anti tunnel then you've missed the mark so hard you've made it the go to perk for people who want to be tunneled.
Solidarity: Just buff it to 100% conversion. The niche situation of two injured people finding each other and being able to heal is niche enough already outside of ghoul and legion games and in both cases it's still probably not worth healing up.
Windows of opportunities: Easily the second worst change. Most maps have very few windows and not many of them are even usable. Removing a perk that is helpful for new survivors who have to learn the counterplay for 40+ killers and dozens of maps is not a good thought at all especially since the new effect does nothing at all in terms of gameplay. Vaulting ten percent faster? Seriously? If you are going to make it only usable on windows with a ridiculously high cooldown at least make the vault speed bonus something equally silly like 100% Overall this perk is dead as a doornail if you go through with this.
Windows doesn't need a compensation buff, at least not right now. People have been asking for perk changes to get rid of the current meta. Windows has been one of the most meta perks for a while now. It deserves to be brought down for a bit.
IMO, the perk has been a detriment to the skill of the survivor playerbase. Too many survivors use this perk and essentially let the perk do all the thinking for them in chase. Not helped by pallet density increase last year making it much easier to run pallet to pallet. This is much healthier design for the perk.
Pretty glad WoO and Five Moves are getting minor nerfs, I genuinely hate playing against running to yellow and predropping. Aside from that I'm a little disappointed that some perks buffs were just increasing the numbers at lower levels.
My main concern currently is Borrowed Time. I feel like making it mend you passively is worse than its current effect. Just don't have it extend the Elusive buff, the 10 extra seconds of Haste was really good for an altruistic anti-tunnel perk.
You can inadvertently mess up your ally's build if they're using Made For This, for example. Such a player would likely prefer to stay Deep Wounds if hit off hook. The only time this effect will really be useful is if the unhooked person is running Dead Hard.
Couldn't they use the new This Is Not Happening to help with this?
I'm glad to see the debuffs to Calm Spirit finally being removed. I like the changes to Sole Survivor, reworking it's anti-social aspects and giving it a unique but niche effect on top. I would have liked more tweaks with this same level of creativity.
Overall, I'm underwhelmed. I really dislike the Self-Preservation nerf, and think it's completely unwarranted. I also dislike the WoO changes, but I can't deny that WoO is a massive crutch of mine, so my opinion isn't worth as much here. Road Life is still bad. Borrowed Time is worse than ever. A lot of the rest of the changes are simple tweaks that are welcome but hard to get excited about.
i think you might misunderstand because borrowed time is now an effect for yourself if you get hit into deep wound while having endurance rather than being a perk to help your teammate out
First impressions from the post:
Better than New: Looks good
Emphatic Connection: I'll be upfront, diminishing returns never should have applied to healing perks. Stacking them was never a problem (outside absolute extremes which could have been dealt with differently) and created some interesting builds. We now just have multiple healing perks and you should never run more than one and they all do about the same thing with slightly different flavorings. So yeah, its another bland healing perk.
Flow State: Not a fan of 'win harder' perks, but being they are part of the game, looks okay.
Friendly Competition: SWF boost? Not sure they need it, or why BHVR is leaning so heavy into 'gen rush good', but okay. I look forward to the world record escape being broken again.
Bound by Obsession: This I was not expecting to see buffed. You sure? This just seems like if you have a really good survivor player they can pop this on and invite chase, if they aren't chased they just hammer out gens even faster.
Blood Pact: It's fine, but again feels like boosting a perk that SWFs have an easier time with, which seems counterintuitive to where changes need to be.
Boon: Illumination: Another looks good. Actually, full out, really good job on the idea here.
Borrowed Time: I'm taking an idea from the general forum, but this is a massive nerf. If you make it so it doesn't extend the elusive it would actually be a pretty good anti-tunnel perk.
Dark Sense: As mentioned, don't like the 'win harder' perks, though this one isn't as egregious. Sure, looks good.
Down the the Last: Better than it was certainly.
Do No Harm: "We want Do No Harm to better distinguish itself from other flat healing speed perks." It won't, you've just got a bunch of healing perks that will differ ever so slightly from each other. Otherwise, fine.
Five Moves Ahead: If you're going to take out the windows ability it deserves more.
Pharmacy/Plunderer's Instinct: These are fine, but chest builds will always be a problem as long as chest offerings remain and people have to sacrifice BP offerings to actually get value out of them.
Premonition: Sure, simplified, good.
Road Life: It's better, but it would have been hard to make the perk worse. It's unclear whether the heal on others still remains (it should, then it would be an interesting perk).
Self Preservation: The reasoning here is really bad. Survivors are too hard to find so the killer just camps the hook? That seems like its own problem that needs to be addressed.
I do look forward one day killer perks being nerfed with the reasoning of 'survivors just stop doing the objective and hide', but I don't think we'll get that.
Shoulder the Burden: "We still fully expect the perk to be strong in the right hands." So if the survivors are good they get to have anti-tunnel? This logic is backwards. Tunneling is the most problematic for newer survivors, skilled players, especially SWFs have a lot of other ways to counter it. But you've now made a perk that whose value will remain in SWF, but soloq can actually disable each other's perks?
The injury/broken and disabling are entirely unnecessary. The idea of the perk is to prevent tunneling. If the killer tunnels so hard that survivors get to use it multiple times, that's the point of having the perk and having sacrificed multiple slots for it.
The way this is getting changed seems like BHVR has been listening to some bad arguments. If you wanted to nerf STB here would be a suggestion - if the killer gets three unique hooks, STB deactivates.
Slippery Meat: Good, probably not actually useful, but the perk needed to die. Can we just go all the way and fully remove random unhook chances?
Small Game: Good, simplified, sure.
Solidarity: Yeah, fine.
Spine Chill: Good. I do find the note funny that you're keeping an eye on it. Wouldn't want things to get too crazy with '10% vault speed'.
Stakeout: I really don't like the idea of this perk even though it needed changed. So really good survivors just regularly knock 16% off a gen and its actually detrimental to newer players.
Wake Up!: Sure, good, needed buffed.
Windows of Opportunity: Best of luck to the new players I guess.
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Some of the positive changes are good, far from meta shake up though. Survivors are getting that via nerfs I guess.
It's a nice try on healing perks, but all of them are basically slight variations of each other.
A few times in the patch notes it is referenced that BHVR wants to help new players. That's an admirable goal, its just not close to being accomplished. You've buffed some perks that will only be advantageous to good players / SWFs, while specifically worded your explanation for Shoulder the Burden as if counters to problematic gameplay will only be available to the "right" players. Seriously, if you're ever typing out a sentence like "We still fully expect the perk to be strong in the right hands" take a moment to think on who you are designing the game for. Experienced strong players and SWFs, or everyone?
Botany needs some kind of change as well, It is literally functionally a worse version of empathic now. Or empathic needs to be brought down slightly.
The nerf to Windows of Opportunity is a change made for no good reason. The perk was never overpowered; it is being changed simply because it is widely used. This change will primarily impact new players, and the way it was announced is misleading: even when combining it with Five Moves Ahead, you cannot achieve the original effect. Both perks have cooldowns that disable aura reading, and the reason people chose Windows over Five Moves Ahead was precisely the constant aura reading. Ideally, these changes should be reverted, as they only disadvantage beginner survivors and solo Q; Windows has always been a comfort perk rather than a game-changing one requiring such a massive nerf. If you are determined to keep these changes, you should at least modify both perks so that the aura-reading component doesn't go on cooldown alongside the faster vaulting and pallet-dropping effects; that way, the claim made in the patch notes—that the old effect is still achievable—would actually be true.
Technically speaking no. Botany includes your self healing speed. It's not great don't get me wrong. But if you are running self care which from my understanding is very popular in Asian servers I think it's probably fine?
Wait the perk is not an altruistic effect you put onto others anymore?
Well I don't hate the effect if that's the case, I just wish it was a new perk rather than being a rework to Borrowed Time.
I understand why the change to "Shoulder the Burden." It’s a good counter to tunneling when playing as a SWF. But my question is: how are those of us playing Solo Queue supposed to know if another survivor has that perk? I use it whenever necessary (which is almost always, since tunneling is very common these days), but I play solo queue, and in recent weeks I've noticed it's become very common to run it because of the rise in tunneling (at least one other person besides me always brings it). But if things keep going this way, at least two of us will have it in our build, and in Solo Queue, we won't know the other person has it. We’d essentially be down a perk because we wouldn't know someone else is running it. It doesn't seem fair to do something like that to Solo Queue players. I feel like people often think about SWFs, but the solo player keeps getting left behind.
I mean, ultimately, if this change is implemented, I won't use it anymore because I'll never be able to tell if someone else is carrying it... I mean, if this change actually gets implemented, I won't use it anymore because I'll never be able to tell if someone else is carrying it. And for those thinking about the chat... I play on console, so... So I'd like to know if you're going to implement something to determine the solo queue.
I'm loving pretty much every change I've read; my only concern is that the duration of Self-Preservation may have been cut slightly too much. Imo, the 15s of Elusive should be brought up to 20s.
This may be one of my favorite patches of DbD of all time. Great job y'all!
I don’t understand some of the criticisms of the survivor perk changes.
I’ve seen people say the nerf to shoulder the burden will destroy solo q, but what percentage of solo q games have more than one shoulder the burden activation? And what percentage of the people that are complaining about this nerf are actually using this perk?
I think we should normalize that survivors can have high risk high reward perks, where the effect is strong, but they might not get value from their perk every game. And shoulder the burden’s effect is super strong in SWFs. The massive survivor win streak team had 3 people using shoulder the burden, because they knew how game changing the perk was when stacked with good team coordination.
And the player intent system is a huge boost to solo q survivors, that we’ve been asking for a long time. You guys show that you care about solo q by implementing this, so I think it’s a disservice when people say shoulder the burden’s nerf will destroy solo q, even though the player intent system will have a far greater impact on solo q’s quality of life.
I also don’t understand the complaints about the windows of opportunity nerf. I’ve seen so many people say people use it in solo q to know where the unused pallets are, but people can still do that with five moves ahead. People don’t need a perk that shows windows and pallets if their goal is to see the unused pallets in solo q.
I’m very excited for the survivor perk buffs and the player intent system, and think that outweighs all the survivor perk nerfs.
Feedback for the : " This is not happening " buff effectivelly replaces stakeout when paired with Hyperfocus . No longer requires you to build tokens nor does it require you to be injured. I will be honest i was never insane at hitting great skillchecks back to back so hyperfocus and stakeout was a good combo for me despite me always thinking the combo to be a bit too strong . The " this is not happening" skill checks are huge and for myself who plays on a good pc with the skillckecks bound to m4 i can just hit great skill checks all day now with this perk . The perk just can't work with hyperfocus on it's current state because it is just the best combo to cut a gens time by over Half . I'm a just hoping this was an oversight because this combo trumps any other gen speed up perk for survivor by a Very large margin.
Please, please, revert the Windows of Opportunity change. It’s one of the first perks that newbies get and a great perk for learning maps. If you’re not going to listen to me, then at LEAST make it so the aura does not go on cooldown for it and Five Moves Ahead. I’m so blind I literally need this perk to know where to go. We’re effectively having to run two perks instead of one and they both don’t even have permanent aura, it should match both bond and empathy.
My stance is always to buff the solo queue experience so we can buff killers. Was windows of opportunity really a complaint by Killer? I get changing the meta, but this is one of those solo q perks that make playing dbd enjoyable. I get some survivors find the aura distracting, but knowing what pallets are still up are a game changer. I always thought killers main problem was always map design and pallet density.
My feedback for Windows of Opportunity is that changing this perk is a massive mistake.
Of course the Devs go off based on pick-rate and see a perk that is picked a lot. This datapoint can make it easily be mistaken for an overpowered perk. However, I want to make the case that Windows of Opportunity is UNIQUELY justified in being left as a highly picked perk that should not be touched, now, and in the future.
DBDs UNIQUE CHALLENGES
Due to DBD being an assymetrical game, it brings unique challenges with it that other games don't bring; As it has 2 separate factions (killer and survivor), it also introduces 2 uniquely separate learning curves to learning both sides.
My argument is that, due to the nature of DBD's design, this means that beginner survivors will severely struggle compared to beginner killers, where as, as time goes and and both become more experienced, survivors start gaining the upper hand:
(Graph showing power levels as y-axis based on play time as x-axis)
This difference in learning curve is rather easily explained by the random map generation and how killers and survivors interact with that differently in terms of difficulty. Where as its way easier for a beginner killer to simply follow a survivor in a map they don't know, than it is for a survivor to to navigate over a dozen of maps with random generation, where they have to navigate the map efficiently while running mostly looking backwards.
This single phenomenon creates the biggest learning gap between killer and survivors, leading to killer stomps at lower levels, and an overall less balanced game.
The period it takes to learn so many configurations of randomly generated maps among a sea of dozens can take a significant amount of hours played that a large sizeable portion of the players base doesn't have.
And what perk has helped this large portion of the playerbase overcome this unequal learning curve? It's Windows of Opportunity, easily accessible on a cheap survivor that has been saving the learner playerbase.
As windows of opportunity has helped newer players partially overcome the massive learning curve, it has not pushed survivor strength to any new level of over-the top strength: Everything that Windows of Opportunity gives, experienced players and SWFs already get for free; Comms and Map knowledge can completely replace Windows of Opportunity, hence why this perk starts to significantly lose value for teams and veterans.
This creates the following effect:
Windows helps push lower level survivor gameplay into more balanced games, in the area where survivors struggle most. Due to a large portion of the playerbase being permanent learners due to the brutal nature of learning randomized map configuration in such a sizeable amount of maps, therefore the pick-rate will always be required to be high. That is not a sign of overpoweredness. It's a sign of its success, as a learners perk that helps overcome one of DBD's oldest problems; the unequal learning curve caused by its asym nature.
My argument here is that, nerfing Windows of Opportunity will lead to a less well balanced game, harming survivors in the wrong places, based on data without the comprehension of why its picked exactly so often; This perk UNEQUELY doesn't reflect how "overpowered" it is, but is directly correlated with the brutal learning curve of the sizeable map pool of random generated maps. And with more maps being added, Windows of Opportunity is going to play an ever more increasingly important role, which makes the current nerf that more tragic. Should there ever have only been 1 map in DBD, then the pickrate of this perk would be severely lower, and this key point is very important to be understood by the devs. Because the Devs need to understand that WoO plays a Unique role in solving one of DBD's oldest issues, and is therefore UNIQUELY justified in being frequently picked, and should not be changed, now, or in the future.
To give an idea of what an overpowered perk would look like, you would have to look at a perk like Shoulder the Burden, Sprint Burst, etc. that DOES boost maximum survivor strength, leading to the following effect:
Such perks should be eligible for nerfs, as, as you can see, it increases the maximum gap between the killer's maximum power and survivor's maximum power at high levels of play.
My argument is that for proper balancing, we should try to ultimately align the red and blue line for a perfectly healthy game. And I hope I've helped conceptualize why nerfing Windows of Opportunity would undermine that exact goal and hurt overall game balance, and why making that decision based on high pickrate would simply be a mistake.
There is no such thing as a perfectly balanced game. Imo, I wouldn't expect Windows to have such sustained use over time if it was just used as training wheels for survivors. While I agree with you that old Windows helps newer players do better, I also believe that at this point many use it as an excuse to not get better at the game. I agree with the devs' decision to split seeing auras of pallets and windows between two perks.
I wouldn't expect Windows to have such sustained use over time if it was just used as training wheels for survivors.You would exactly expect it to have so much use sustained over time.
Like I said, it's use is literally correlated to learning time of randomly generated maps, and thus directly correlated to how many maps there are in the game, which is ever increasing. This means that new learners are stuck longer and longer inside the learning phase and many casual players never escape that due to not playing enough.
I do not think the Borrowed Time change should go through at all.
I understand that according to the patch notes you do not wish for it to extend the elusive effect. It already works this way on the live build, it extends haste and endurance but it does not extend elusive, and ironically this actually makes the perk better than if it did extend it because it tricks the killer into thinking your unhook protections are over when they aren't. It was completely fine the way it was, and there's no rule that says all of the unhook protection effects have to have the same duration.
Furthermore, the reworked effect is incredibly niche and not good. To get any use out of this you need the killer to hit you after being unhooked or you need to have endurance from only a small handful of perks, and it doesn't even work well with one of them (MFT) because in that case you actually don't want to be auto-mended. At best, this perk does very little, at worst, it could get you killed against Legion by auto-mending a deep wound at the wrong time and extending their frenzy chain.
Do not go through with this rework, this is not a perk that needs to be reworked in any way.
Windows should be totally reverted. I have not used the perk in ages but it was essential for learning the game. It along with deja vu are the perks I recommend to newcomers as their best bet for learning the game. Unless we are doing this in a custom match this already requires them to unlock a survivor and level them up. Needing to also unlock and level another significantly more expensive survivor and take up an additional perk slot in order to get the same effect is just going to push newcomers away and I am already extremely hesitant to recommend this game to anyone, particularly if they are interested in the survivor role (killer role I can still recommend). At the very least the perk should not be going on cooldown after a slow vault, medium/fast only.
Overall, the survivor perk changes are nearly worthless. I considered listing them all but there just isn't anything worthwhile to say about them (StB and Borrowed Time changes speak for themselves on BHVRs stance on tunneling). Some of the buffs are OK, I guess, but do not incentivize me to alter my builds in any way. Survivor builds are already heavily constrained by the need for anti-tunnel, anti-slug, an exhaustion for higher tiers, and some info particularly in solo queue. The changes suggested in this patch alongside the killer changes (which are much more significant changes) has solidified my decision to drop the survivor role in its entirety outside of 2v8. Enjoy the queues.
there's nothing wrong with people not knowing every facet of every map btw… it's totally unreasonable to call a perk a "crutch" for people who "don't want to get better at the game" when at this point DBD has maybe even a higher game knowledge learning curve than games like LoL or DOTA…
There's also absolutely nothing wrong with people playing this game casually, I think there's a significant portion of the playerbase who would rather play the game casually as opposed to min/max run the best everything and coordinate with a SWF to win all of the time.
At least from my testing Pharmacy and Apprasal are bugged together, you can rummage all chest twice without losing tokens. I don't think it would be an issue in a solo setting, but it seems exploitable by more cordinated players with the perk Specialist, coin offerings and keys.
The video has no sound, but I wanted to show the bug.
https://youtu.be/B6kcM3C0WLI?si=RaAr3AwU5QOdU80S
WoO is buffed, not killed. And stop pretending that you care about beginners when you clearly are an avid user of this perk yourself.
And now that you have to use 2/4 perks to replicate the same effect you have more incentive to take them off so you can try other perks and builds as you learn more.
I get people don't like change but I genuinely believe this is healthier in the long run. Windows is not as "necessary to play the game with" as others have made it out to be.
But maybe my view is biased by the amount of time I've put into the game. Or maybe I'm overestimating the number of people who care to get better. If I'm wrong I look forward to seeing 2 or 3 people running Windows + 5MA every game and gladly change my mind.
I will skip the perks where t1 and t2 was adjusted to be closer to t3 as I believe those changes have no impact on the perk usage for most people.
Better Than New - great buff, fair numeric change, goes on level of lend a hend time-wise. Good!
Empathic Connection - now is same number as botany but doesn't work on self heals, again decent if you run altruistic healing build.
Flow State - now has better output in the midgame and some decent endgame value. In good spot, still perks like do no harm, botany or empathic will outshine it in the most time as the healing is most appealing thing but faster totems and unhooks offer some supportive options! Good!
Friendly Competition - this perk remains meh, splitting on gens is way more efficient and 10 % repair speed for 90s isn't that crazy for pushing same objective together. You can run Steadfast, Deja Vu or whatever and have better results will less conditions. Still bad perk but not laughable at least.
Blood Pact - remains swf perk, you can now pair it with decisive strike to counter tunneling and regain it later in the match. Pretty much no change in most cases. Meh!
Boon: Illumination - faster relocating sounds crazy but in the end placing boon 8s faster for price of less perk slot and must have boon somewhere isn't that crazy. Now when shattered hope is buffed and basekit snuffing destruction is talked about, I'm worried that boons that are already very unpopular will be played the same as invocations. Very strange for weak effect the boon has.
Borrowed time - probably my least liked change. Unhook protection being 10s and nerfing shoulder the burden and on top of that reworking borrowed time that recently found reason to be used is very weird. I feel like instead of disentivizing tunneling we are incentivizing it now. With killers having minimoris, unhooked protection now cannot exceed 10s and babysitter is mostly only effective against lower mobility killers. Tunneling might be strongest it ever been. Very bad change. The effect of the perk is weird too. I can see you running off the record and after 30s using dead hard, but this will be so very rare scenario that borrowed time will settle in dust. Most killers can down you quicker than that and it requires 3 perks to achieve something inconsistent. Very bad!
Calm Spirit - yeah, dowside wasn't needed. It's still meh perk, whatever.
Dark Sense - weird short lasting woo, 5ma, hyperfocus combo that isn't worth over better information perks like kindred, wiretap… still meh perk.
Sole Survivor - do the most work to make people open gates faster. Sound crazy but truly isn't. If you are hooked once and repair 1 gen they gain 20 % faster opening speed = 16s? Is it worth? Not really, you won't achieve the potential the perk has most of the game. Opening hatch seems like ratting with this perk will be still good.
Do No Harm - yeah, whatever. Still better to run botany, lend a hend, we'll make it and other perks but at least you can now create some crazy great skill checks combo builds.
5mA - Yeah, whatever. The perk will be now top used perk instead of WOO, nothing else expected.
Pharmacy - with medkits being all same on self heal Pharmacy is doomed to never be good again. You can buff it to insane amounts but most players will save medkits to heal themselves in clutch situations. Bad perk still.
Plunders Instinct - now kind of allow you to not run keyes to zoom through chests which is fine but chests builds were never very popular and nothing much changed even with perks like moment of glory, apocalyptic inguenity, specialist etc. It's still buff, but you could do the same before so, it's ok.
Premonition - I love that they kept the antistealth part of the perk but the cooldown being doubled is very strange. I expected them to lower it to like 25s but in the end this perk is nerfed, which is weird. Please, make it at least 40s as it used to be. Perk mostly won't change much because you already see where killer is coming from so nerf to cooldown isn't needed.
Road Life - I initially thought that the perk is gonna be busted ah. But in the end without skillcheck build - either toolbox or 1-2-3-4 you will rely heavily on rng to get those 4 stacks and even when the heal is very quick I feel that built to last with medkit, strenght in shadows or simply letting others heal you will be more attractive. The perk is not joke anymore, but I wonder whether it's pickrate will change now. Sometimes I got no skillcheck per almost entire gen so letting someone hook me off hook would be more efficient if cought off guard.
Self preservations - strange nerf but whatever. It's anti BBQ and serves the point. Kinda strange to nerf antiaura perks when aura builds are getting more popular.
Shoulder The Burden - as I mentioned with BT, this change makes tunneling better, that's it. If killer desperately goes for same survivor when 3 other survivors you STB on him, is it truly a perk issue? I feel that this is overkill. The potential of the perk deserves nerf but that potential is achieved in 0.01 % of the games. You hardly see STB more than once per lobby and my teams don't run STB most of the time. The broken for 2mins is a massive downside making you a clear target for the killer. On top of that disabling it for every other survivor will make this perk very limited. I don't know, I feel that tunneling gor buffed heavily over last few weeks but if that's the way devs want to go, well so be it. Good luck being tunneled as solo survivor. There will be nothing to help you other than DS which is already not that crazy against modern dash-slop killers.
Slippery Meat - I saw this coming. Feel like all options of self unhooking will be shortly removed. Good luck when you are hooked along with other survivor, someone is chased and someone is hiding in locker or basement. While self unhooking isn't possible in most games soon you won't be able to unhook unless you are in 2v1 scenario. I don't know. Kobe dead, misery spread.
Solidarity - nothing crazy, medkits are mostly saved for self heals. It's buff in the end but with medkits nerfs back in the day, solidarity kinda lost it's chance to be meta. If you were able to heal someone 2x from ranger medkit base and now you have to run iri add on to achieve it, you won't have so kind teammates. It's fine, in some meme builds it's gonna be better.
Stake Out - while this seems like a buff in the end it's nerf. You gain tokens less frequently than before and can't pair it with other perks such as Road Life, hyperfocus, fogwise etc. Hyperfocus gives currently 30 % bonus, max 2.8 % bonus, with stake out 3.8 % bonus so if someone is good at hitting skillchecks they won't be able to keep getting the big chunks off gen anymore. hyperfocus will be max 2.8 % and stake out 4 % with BNP skillcheck so already less accessible to many players. Hyperfocus stake out meta dead, stake out with much healthier perks combos are also dead. Well, hope no one will ever complain about genrush anymore.
Spine Chill - decent perk, problem is that most games are high ping killers and increased vault speed won't have much impact on the hit denying.
This Is Not Happening - beginner friendly perk, most people either can or can't hit greatskill checks and those 30 % won't change much. it's still meh perk. Can be new hyperfocus brother as people will think that they hit those great easier but in the end it's not true as I used to experiment a lot with this perk and you can hit great without it about the same. But more begginer friendly perks are fine imo.
Wake Up - whatever it will never reach it's best era. Opening exit gates is one time interaction, already not very long. Can rarely be good against endgame build that you see once per 500 games. It's fine perk.
Windows Of Opportunity - good change, this will make perk more interactive while providing more space for mistakes while running into dead zones. Will make solo q significantly harder, which with buffed tunneling and nerfed gen perks will be rough. Well, good luck.
It's weird that they nerfed a lot of survivor meta perks - sprint, vigil, woo, 5ma, stake out,… but all killers meta that are in the game for years as well - pain res, corrupt, pop, eruption, lethal, bbq are not touched at all even when used the most for years. This is not meta shake up I was hoping for. While new perks are decent to very good, will you as killer trade slots for pain res, dms, corrupt, pop, eruption, nowhere to hide…? I don't think so.
Spine Chill ######### with my muscle memory on M1 killers so hard, and makes some loops actually painful on said M1 killers. Maybe tone it back just a hair?
All the survivor meta perks are not getting touched either though, meanwhile all the mentioned killer meta perks got nerfed several times over the years, the devs are trying to make useless perks better, so that you can see more different perks
About shoulder the burden and other perks that are disabled when one person uses them in a trial… I REALLY think we whould be able to see peoples perks in the pre-game lobby, so I don't waste on perk slot on something that I can't even use if someone else does it before me.
okay but Windows was a comfort perk, there's actually nothing wrong/op/unfair about it at all, the entire rework stems from the fact it's "used a lot" which is a blatantly terrible reason to change something. now survivors have to run two separate perks in place of a perk that formerly provided map knowledge for less experienced or less dedicated players, two perks means that the accessibility is further limited for new players rather than long time players because it's an extra survivor prestige requirement. yet another harm to new players rather than the people who do use it for a comfort perk.
if a survivor was using Windows to reach resources that has no negative effect on the killer, because there was no other bonus besides knowing where it is. it didn't help them reach it faster than they could if they didn't have it.
if anything it functionally helped killers, because it required a perk slot, which turned survivor perk builds into 3 perk builds rather than 4.
If anything this change disproportionately effects new players twice over because long time players will likely know where resources are and they'll know how much 10% vault speed changes things when choosing to vault a window.
It does nothing to "shake up the meta" either. Lithe is already the most favored Survivor Exhaustion perk especially now that SB got destroyed. Lithe + a 10% Vault bonus and knowing where the good windows are, throw in Dance With Me for a combo that disproportionately affects newer killers negatively.
Self Preservation - I do not like this change. The perk still has a fundamental flaw in letting one survivor hide for free (like old Distortion) - it is too easy to not be found while your team dies around you. Reducing the duration will either make it useless or not solve the issue.
Two suggestions:
Kindred, NOOLB, Resilience, We'll Make It - remove perk tiers.
You cant use one to buff your own healing, so it's not the same thing, botany is often used with medkits or self care
This is a very good analysis, and the devs need to rethink this. I believe they’ll be reluctant to revert the perk changes, even with all the feedback, so we should try to get them to at least modify Windows of Opportunity and Five Moves Ahead so that the aura-reading effects remain constant. These effects shouldn't share a cooldown with the faster vaulting (from WoO) or the pallet-dropping mechanic (from FMH); that way, using both perks together could at least replicate the current effect of Windows of Opportunity, just as the patch notes suggested. With the nerfs as they stand, where both perks have cooldowns that disable aura reading along with the other effects, there is no way to actually achieve the constant aura-reading effect that Windows of Opportunity currently provides.
I tried the survivor perk changes, and I thought they were all good, but I was having some issues with the player intent system. It is very awkward and disorienting to get a skill check while the player intent selection wheel is blocking most of the screen.
The best solution I could think of is this
The other solution is having the option for the selection wheel to show the message options horizontally along the top of the screen, and each selection would have an arrow on it to tell the player which direction belongs to each selection. This would allow people to have the functionality of a selection wheel, without it blocking the middle of their screen.
I think most of the perk changes are great EXCEPT Borrowed time which I feel really missed the mark. The effect it gives is just way too niche of a use in my opinion. If it helped against legion, deathslinger, and other killers that proc deep wounds then it'd be somewhat decent. But as it currently stands its just not good unless you literally make a whole build around it.
Bringing some nuance that I feel is lacking a bit in discussions around this, and hopefully a new perspective on a few things that can inform future decisions!!
My immediate gripe with this PTB was the Windows of Opportunity change. I never used the perk, Five Moves Ahead was an objectively better version of its effects and deserved the nerf it got, but Windows sits in a relatively unique spot;
There exists a stigma around Windows, one that it has largely earned, of being a perk overly friendly to new players. We've all had experiences where someone running Windows goes pallet to pallet and throws everything, leaving nothing for future chases and ultimately forsaking the team's success. That was definitely annoying lol
But I think having a good option for beginner players to learn the fundamentals of looping a Killer is an incredibly important thing for the game to have. It could be a crutch in a lot of scenarios, but in its current state it almost exclusively caters to veteran players that can make a 10% vault bonus look incredible, and is now even worse in comparison to Five Moves Ahead than it was before; Kwon Tae-Young being a character with a 9k iri shard requirement compared to Kate, who comes free with the game in some versions.
There could definitely be a valid argument to nerf the perk, because maybe it can be too much of a crutch pick. But it's really important to account for, when balancing a perk like Windows, who actually uses it. The people that used Five Moves Ahead before will continue to do so; I know I will at least. But the people that used Windows before will be almost entirely alienated by this change, and while nerfing the most used perk in the game is a good idea in theory, I think there will be a good number of Survivor players feeling a lot more lost in the fog than before. And frankly, if you were a Killer player that thought Windows of Opportunity was overpowered, you're kind of telling on yourself.
Another change I was slightly confused by was the one to Sole Survivor (Down to the Last). While I absolutely love the idea behind this change, since nobody likes when their teammate decides to rat out with any perk for their whole team to die, I think the changes the perk received leave it in a state where it doesn't really accomplish anything? Making other people open gates faster is useful, for sure, but it relies on your teammates to know the perk is in play and be able to open the gates, and you to not be in a position to do so yourself, in which case the 7 or so seconds saved in a best case scenario might not be of consequence.
Again, I love the thought behind the change, but I think it has to go back to the drawing board. In the meantime, we get left with a perk that, once at 3 tokens, arguably functions even better as a rat perk as long as you have a way to find the hatch (Left Behind, Extrasensory Perception, Clairvoyance, etc).
Final large complaint then I can get to good things: new Borrowed Time is useless.
I've seen a lot of people saying it's broken, and while IF combined with Off the Record, and Dead Hard, and you're hit <40 seconds after getting unhooked, and the Killer then pursues you without getting a hit for >30 seconds, and the Killer then falls for your Dead Hard CAN allow you to take an extra hit in chase that you wouldn't have otherwise been able to, we can surely agree that that is a lot of conditions to get any sort of value from the perk.
Allowing it to cleanse any deep wound passively would at least make it decent against a couple Killers with deep wound effects in their basekit, but overall the design is just a little bit niche compared to the general anti-tunnel applicability that BT used to provide on a new player's kit. If you aren't interested in extending the duration of the Elusive status off hook, I see no reason why it could just only extend Haste and Endurance, as it does currently? Maybe it could be slightly confusing but it'd at least be functional.
Ok, compliment time. Let's go bullet round
Overall this PTB felt like Christmas morning to me, and I'm really happy with the direction a lot of the perks are taking now! A few gripes here and there but as a whole? Pat yourselves on the back BHVR, you knocked it out of the park with this one
Now please, please. Do this kind of thing yearly instead of semi-decennial! I can appreciate the time effort and care that went into all of this, and it really shows, but this kind of large-scale shake up does so much to keep me interested in the game!
This game has been my greatest love for just over a year now, and I look forward to another year in the fog :]