Dead by Daylight Is Changing One of the Most Popular Perks

Dead by Daylight’s developers are changing “Decisive Strike,” a Survivor perk that’s one of the most powerful tools players can have in their arsenal. The perk was added as part of the Halloween Chapter and allows players a one-time escape from a Killer’s grasp assuming certain conditions are met. The changes to go into effect when the next Chapter releases will make it so that the perk’s active window is deactivated if Survivor’s start working on normal objectives such as repairing generators while the perk is available to use.

Behaviour Interactive revealed a first look at the changes to come to Decisive Strike within the developer’s latest Q&A about the state of the game and things planned for the future. At the 45:25 point in the video below, we can see how Decisive Strike is changing.

Much of the perk’s description should look familiar to Dead by Daylight players since that main effects of Decisive Strike aren’t changing. The new circumstances to take note of are the ones listed towards the end of the perk’s description where it says “While active, the following interactions deactivate Decisive Strike.”

“We’ve talked about this perk a lot internally,” said Louis McLean, Gameplay Programmer. “There were a lot of different options we felt to assuage the frustrations people feel about the perk. The direction we went with was disabling the ability if the Survivor does actions that advance their objectives, essentially.”

McLean simplified the explanation by saying it’ll stay available until players do something useful. So, if a player is unhooked and is immediately tunneled by a Killer and knocked down again, they’ll be able to use Decisive Strike as intended to break free from the Killer’s grasp, assuming they can complete the required skill check. But if the Survivor is freed from the hook and starts repairing a generator, healing a teammate, or performs a similar action within the 60-second window, Decisive Strike will be disabled.

The change won’t knock Decisive Strike out of favor by any means, but it should make Survivors think more carefully about what their next move will be when they’re unhooked. They can either continue on with team-oriented objectives at the risk of losing the active ability or they can focus on getting away themselves and holding onto it if they think they’re going to be tunneled.

The changes for Decisive Strike will be implemented not in the mid-Chapter update coming soon but in Dead by Daylight’s next Chapter, the same one that’s supposed to implement the colorblind mode.