DbD January 2024 PTB thoughts

ALAN WAKE
Boon: Illumination
Okay truthfully: the aura reveal isn’t that bad. It’s just kinda nice to know where gens are, and knowing where chests are is actually pretty good if you bring a disposable item like a brown medkit or a brown toolbox and just want to grab something new (potentially for a daily or something.)
But this boon does nothing useful. It gives you information that any player who’s played for more than 10 hours will already know, and even then a new player is better off running Déjà Vu for the faster gen speeds. Every other boon is objectively more useful than this. Let’s not talk about Circle of Healing and Shadowstep (the best ones): Exponential lets you recover from the dying state, and even Dark Theory gives you (a slightly weaker version of) Made For This while in the boon’s radius. All Illumination does is tell you where generators are, something you probably already knew.
Additionally, the 10% faster booning / cleansing speed while this perk is active doesn’t do anything. If you want faster cleansing speed you’ll be bringing Counterforce (which at one stack is 10% stronger than Illumination and also doesn’t need you to boon a totem first) and you really shouldn’t be moving boons around enough to feel the need to relight a totem while your last one is lit, especially since Illumination is honestly best used when far away from the action (akin to Circle of Healing.) 10% faster booning speed isn't worth wasting a perk slot.
I maybe see some minor use for this perk when you have a daily to escape with an item or a Rift challenge to open chests, because at least you are also giving that information to your teammates which is maybe helpful I guess? But you are better off just running Plunderer’s Instinct instead.

Some buffs I’d like to see for this perk:
- Faster cleansing / booning speed is always active + gets buffed (should at least be 15% imo)
- Boon effect lingers (idk why every other boon has a lingering effect but this one doesn’t)
- Boon reveals more items
> Ideally it should reveal other totems as this at least gives the perk some niche utility alongside builds running Overzealous and / or Inner Healing. It would also just make it easier to know where to go to light more boons and get the value out of this perk if it gets snuffed.
> I think revealing the auras of survivors in the boon (like how Circle of Healing does, but regardless of if a teammate is healthy or injured) would make logical sense for this boon.
> Revealing the aura of the killer while in this boon is interesting conceptually and fits with the theme. I don’t know if that would be overpowered or not but it would make this a nice looping aid alongside perks like Dark Theory and would also let teammates know they’re not in danger.
Overall currently a 2/10 perk, and the only reason it’s not a 1/10 is because at least it does SOMETHING relatively speaking.


Champion of Light
Alan’s best perk by far. Very fun but I don’t know how practical this will be overall.
Let’s start with the positives. Firstly and most obviously: 20% Hindred is freaking crazy. It massively weakens the killer when you use this perk and makes it great at pretty much any point when you use it. Use it in chase and you buy yourself tons of extra distance. Use it for a flashlight save and the killer can’t keep chasing the person you just saved.
Additionally, the extra speed when using a flashlight is actually very relevant. This notably lets you use a flashlight mid chase to just kinda… be annoying? If you blind the killer they get hit by this Hindered effect (which hurts them massively) and if you don’t blind them not much happens other than you wasting the flashlight’s battery. Truthfully, this opens a lot of potential for how you play: you can run batteries obviously (to keep the flashlight up) but suddenly distance perks on the flashlight don’t feel as bad. You can also make this perk synergize with wiggle builds: if someone has Buckle Up and you have this perk alongside something like Breakout you can harass the killer by waving a flashlight in their face and potentially make your teammate wiggle out faster. I think the speed boost that this perk provides single handedly stops it from being a complete meme and pushes it into the realm of viability despite the obviously jokey nature of it all.
It’s still not great though. For one it only works when using a flashlight: this is perhaps to be expected but it requires you to carry a flashlight which makes it obvious to the killer that you are planning to use this perk. Unless you quick switch in the lobby (which is kinda cringe) your only real way to consistently activate the perk without having a flashlight equipped in the pregame lobby is to bring Residual Manifest, and don’t get me wrong: Residual is a fun perk. I just don’t know how practical it is to bring two perks to blind the killer and get little value overall. As dumb as it sounds I really think this perk should be activatable if you use flashbangs or firecrackers without bringing a flashlight since that would open up potential build opportunities for this perk without binging Alan’s iconic flashlight, and also simultaneously open up the potential to use this perk early on (with a firecracker or flashbangs) and then find a flashlight spawning naturally in a chest for later (without bringing Residual Manifest along with this perk.)

This perk rather ironically is one of the only times that I think Lightborn genuinely ruins the game because if not for that perk existing Champion of Light would be fine. It’s just there’s no reason to run this perk that plays its hand so openly just for the killer to say “screw you” and bring the funny “No Fun Allowed” perk to counter you. Even if the killer ran Hex: Two Can Play (or the new Shadowborn) instead of Lightborn it would be fine, but it feels terrible to have so much of your build (one of your perks + your item) dedicated to something that can just be turned off by the killer bringing a single perk.
7/10 IGN too much commitment.


Deadline
To summarize this perk in one sentence it would be: “Good, but why do you have to be injured to use it?”
10% more skill checks really isn’t worth running a perk that requires you to both be injured and hit Doctor skill check at all times. The fact that the skill checks place themselves in random spots on the screen makes it very hard to get Greats which makes it difficult to run alongside the perks that encourage you to hit Great checks like Fogwise, Scavenger, or Hyperfocus, at least not without Stakeout backing you up.
Currently the only build I have found to effectively use Deadline is alongside Scavenger and Stakeout. And for what it’s worth: having more skill checks to refresh your toolbox more often is very strong with Scavenger. But the problem is that for soloqueue it still puts you in a dangerous situation of constantly being injured, forcing you to either dedicate your 4th perk slot to self-healing (since you must bring a toolbox to use Scavenger) or use that perk slot for an exhaustion perk, but either way it doesn’t look good for you if you are chased. Maybe it’s not that bad if you effectively use Sprint Burst or Dead Hard but even then constantly playing injured puts you at major risk, especially against stealth killers or killers who have hard to avoid two-hit powers like Chucky, Huntress, Nurse, etc.
Running this perk with Hyperfocus is just way too difficult for the average player, running it alongside Fogwise is too much effort for not enough reward, running it alongside a medkit with a skill check addon feels redundant, and on its own? …Well the one benefit of Deadline is that with all the extra skill checks it gets you good Bloodpoints, even if you only hit Good checks, but that really isn’t saying much.
I think if this perk was always active without being injured it would be fine. Honestly, I think if this perk was just “10% more skill checks at all tims” (with no changes to how they spawn) it would still be balanced and non-problematic? Yes, the problem of Greats being used to rush gens would still exist but Great skill checks have been nerfed so heavily they’re only really problematic with Hyperfocus, and that’s a problem with the design of Hyperfocus, not with the design of this perk or the game as a whole.
Truthfully, I feel like Deadline and This Is Not Happening (the free perk) should have some of their effects swapped around. Deadline could always be active and make the Great success zones bigger in exchange for making the skill checks spawn in random locations (giving you more time to hit the Great zone but making Greats harder to hit overall.) Meanwhile I think This Is Not Happening should just make skill checks more frequent while injured without any additional qualifiers, making it good alongside perks like Stakeout or if you just want more BP. This turns Deadline into the “hit great skill checks more easily” perk (to run alongside perks like Fogwise or Hyperfocus) while This Is Not Happening becomes the “get more skill checks while injured” perk (which pairs nicely with Scavenger, Autodidact, or a medkit that has skill check addons, but also makes the perk inherently have more risk.)
I understand that anything that can potentially affect generator times needs to be balanced extremely carefully but I feel like Deadline has too many hoops to jump through for such a minor award. At least I see a tangible benefit to the perk alongside Scavenger but it feels way too difficult to use, especially since you lack a way to heal yourself in soloqueue. This rather unfortunately does push Deadline into the uncomfortable spot of being yet another perk that becomes extremely strong when used in a SWF but very weak when used in soloqueue. If you can get hit by the killer and then have a teammate draw agro you can easily do gens, and then that teammate can find you and you can both heal after doing gens.

4/10 It has potential to be used in some builds which puts it above the boon in terms of usefulness, but it's just too weak overall, and is unfortunately hard to balance without breaking something.


BLIGHT
I mean, what is there to say about Blight that hasn’t already been said? Nerfs to Rat and Crow are fine, new Alc Ring is PROBABLY fine? New Adrenaline Vial is PROBABLY fine but it’s hard to judge with new Compound 33 in the game, new Compound 33 is a bit overtuned (I think it should just be a flat 33% to turn rate really, considering that Umbra Salts provide a flat 15%), and Iridescent Blight Tag is an abomination against God that should never make it to live.


SADAKO
I mean honestly it’s so hard to test the changes on PTB and no one’s playing as her (everyone’s playing either Billy or Blight) so I don’t have much to comment on. My only concern is that with TVs constantly being visible it’s way too easy not only to always turn them off or just path away from them. Either TVs shouldn’t have their aura visible outside of like a 6-meter range or holding a tape should make you gain Condemnation slowly (like it did before Sadako’s first rework.) Ideally both changes get added since I think that brings us to a healthy state of how Sadako worked before her first rework, providing a good mix of giving this killer pressure through her innate stall while being able to turn off TVs works as a good mix of both counterplay and danger for survivors.


HILLBILLY
Okay so there’s a lot to talk about here and I need to preface everything that I am about to say with the very massive qualifier that I basically never played Billy up until this point. It’s not that he was too hard to play (although that was a big reason why): the main reason I never played Billy was that before this rework his camera would bob up-and-down in time with his limp. This gave me MASSIVE motion sickness and I genuinely felt nauseous playing as Hillbilly which is why I didn’t play him even before his initial rework (IE before they added Overheat.) With that being said there’s a lot of good that I can initially see with this rework:
- They removed his limp thank god the camera doesn’t bob up and down anymore and I no longer feel nauseous playing as him.
- The Counterweight addon is actually very nice for beginner Hillbillies to learn the game. I do kinda wish that this was just in the options menu since it feels bad to run an addon just to deal with a mechanic you might not understand as a new player (it has a very similar vibe to running fake pallets on Freddy, except Freddy’s addons are all garbage so it’s not that bad to be using fake pallets lmao.)
- Probably the best change with this update is that bumping into objects is way less punishing and the hitbox of the chainsaw is just generally better. The biggest issue with Hillbilly was not his Overheat tbh but rather that the chainsaw’s hitbox was godawful and with a lot more maps getting a lot more clutter you’d get punished for bumping into things that you should’ve realistically ran past. Now you aren’t punished as heavily for trying to go for curves or just generally making mistakes (since when using the chainsaw for mobility you could stop it before you hit an obstacle to get past the punishing bump time.)

OVERDRIVE
It’s… weird. Again I can’t really comment on how balanced Overdrive is since I have literally no experience playing Hillbilly. I will just say that the reduced charge time is nice for backrevving and the increased speed is a bit of a mixed blessing since it messes with your muscle memory of your overall speed. Idk if it’s a bad ask for Overdrive to give you more turning control in exchange for not messing with your speed, as I fully understand that changing your speed is a big reason why Hillbilly curves are so strong and why his old engraving addons were so strong.

ADDONS
Now let’s start with the most obvious mention: there are a LOT of addons that affect how Overdrive is generated and they feel excessive. These addons include:
- Thermal Casing (Yellow)
- Off-Brand Motor Oil (Yellow)
- Clogged Intake (Yellow)
- Ragged Engine (Green)
- Discarded Air Filter (Green)
- High-Speed Idler Screw (Purple)
And honestly all these addons except for Off-Brand Motor Oil and Clogged Intake feel pointless. Ragged Engine just feels worse than Discarded Air Filter, and holy shit Behaviour we don’t need THREE SEPARATE ADDONS that affect how long it takes before Overdrive starts to drain (Thermal Casing, Discarded Air Filter, Idler Screw.)
Inversely I genuinely think that both Off-Brand Motor Oil and Clogged Intake feel too strong for their rarity? I think both these addons could be moved up a rarity (Motor Oil made Green, Intake made Purple respectively) and have some other addons of similar rarity be moved down to compensate.
Also because we don’t need FOUR SEPARATE ADDONS that affect the drain rate of Overcharge I think all but one of the Overdrive drain addons should be changed. I vote that we keep Discarded Air Filter (15%) as either a Green addon or possibly even a Yellow rarity addon. As for the other addons… well I understand that to keep Billy balanced we can’t give him any addons that affect either the chainsaw’s charge speed or your movement speed while using the chainsaw, so here’s some other potential suggestions:
BUMP HITBOX / “collision zone”: I don’t know why old Billy had an addon that did this (Heavy Clutch) yet current Billy does not. It seems like a very nice QoL addon to have for more beginner Billy players, and could easily be a yellow addon (replacing Thermal Casing) or possibly even a Brown addon with the Steel Toed Boots brown addon being moved to yellow rarity.
REDUCED COOLDOWN AFTER MISSING A CHAINSAW: I’m very confused why Hillbilly has two addons that reduce the cooldown after hitting a survivor with your chainsaw (Greased Throttle / The Thompsons’ Mix) but nothing to help you if you miss. I think both these addons could stay but Idler Screw (the purple addon) could be buffed to decreased missed chainsaw time.
BIG BUCKLE: This was largely a joke pseudo-stealth addon but I still think it’s interesting conceptually to give Billy an addon that decreases his Terror Radius (either while in Overdrive or while not in Overdrive) to enable some potential alternative playstyles. This could easily take the slot of a yellow addon I think.
This would leave us with one last Overdrive addon that I haven’t suggested changes for but maybe the Billy mains have a better suggestion for that.

Other than the overdrive addons I think it’s worth talking about Cracked Primer Bulb - This thing is just way too weak for its downside. I understand what this is trying to be conceptually but it’s not worth gimping your power for 15% faster Overdrive gain, especially when Off-Brand Motor Oil does the literal exact same thing as this addon with no downside. Running this addon alongside Motor Oil also isn’t nearly strong enough to consider for Primer Bulb’s massive downside.
This addon either needs to be buffed massively (I’m talking like 50% faster Overdrive gain) or needs to be reworked entirely. I honestly think that making it so this addon makes the chainsaw sprint 10% faster (in exchange for no one shots) would be reasonable: this allows the addon to pull double-duty as both a fun item for players who want to use the chainsaw primarily as a mobility tool and for people who wish to challenge themselves with Billy curves that value more cool plays than practicality.
Also like… just give us more bloodpoints for hitting chainsaws with this addon? I don’t understand why the meme BP addon doesn’t give us more BP.

SOUND
The only other complaint I have about Hillbilly is perhaps a little silly, but it is also perhaps the most obvious problem I see with him, and that’s his sounds: put bluntly Hillbilly is WAY TOO LOUD and this rework makes him even louder! From first-person the chainsaw is far too loud and now you must deal with the sound of Overdrive constantly being activated both from a first person and third person (Survivor) perspective. Please Behaviour make the chainsaw quieter while playing as Billy and make the Overdrive sound effect quieter in general!