Dead By Daylight August Update - Perk Changes, Matchmaking Incentives, More

Dead by Daylight, the most popular multiplayer 4v1 horror game of all time has been releasing monthly developer updates since June 2022. Now that it's 1st August, it's time for the Dead by Daylight August 2022 update.

The developers' notes feature numerous perk changes and news about kill switches and matchmaking incentives. Here is everything you need to know.

Dead by Daylight August 2022 Perk Changes

The Mid-Chapter update featured the biggest overhaul of perks in Dead by Daylight history, with over 40 meta perks undergoing changes. As developers monitored the game and processed users' feedback, they decided to make a few changes to perks.

Thanatophobia

Many fans have complained on social media about the notorious slowdown perk Thanatophobia after Dead by Daylight's major perk changes last month. The perk received a buff to its strength in the last update, raising its individual repair penalties from 5% to 5.5% at perk tier 3, and increasing the maximum penalty to 22%.

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Because this update also lengthened the amount of time it takes to complete a generator by 10 seconds - the first change to generator repair speeds in years - Thanatophobia became overpowered. When playing as or against killers like Legion and Plague, who can efficiently keep all survivors injured throughout the trial, running Thanatophobia could result in a match taking as long as 30 minutes.

Now, in the upcoming 6.1.2 Update, Thanatophobia will receive a rework to make it not quite as strong as it was.

The new perk text reads:

• Each injured, dying, or hooked Survivor will now provide a 1/1.5/2% action speed penalty. If all four Survivors are either injured, dying, or hooked, Thanatophobia grants an additional 12% penalty to Survivors’ action speeds. 

The lower action speed penalty is certainly a nerf, but if the killer injures all survivors, Thanatophobia can still reach its old maximum value. Overall, it still sounds like it will be strong on Legion and Plague.

Mettle of Man

Mettle of Man has been adjusted to be better consistent with other Endurance perks, which lose their effect when the survivor performs a Conspicuous Action. The killer will also be notified of the survivor's location for as long as Mettle of Man's Endurance effect is active and the killer is more than 16 meters away.

Because Mettle of Man will be easier to lose now with the addition of Conspicuous Actions, activating it will now only require taking 2 protection hits.

Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance, Merciless Storm, and Dead Man’s Switch

Three killer perks will also see a few changes in the upcoming update.

Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance once forced survivors off the generator when activated, which would instantly activate Dead Man's Switch if the two perks were run together. The survivors would then be forced to wait a long time before repairing the generator again, allowing a massive slowdown for the killer. 

Pain Resonance was then reworked so that it no longer forced survivors off the generator, making it incompatible with Dead Man's Switch unless the killer physically came to the generator.

While Pain Resonance no longer combined with Dead Man's Switch, players found new synergy with Pain Resonance and Merciless Storm, with the regression from Pain Resonance making Merciless Storm create as many as 40 incredibly challenging back-to-back skill checks.

In the 6.1.2 Update, Pain Resonance will again erupt generators, forcing survivors off of them - but the killer will not be notified. This means Merciless Storm and Pain Resonance's perfect, meme-y synergy is gone, but Pain Resonance and Dead Man's Switch will likely re-enter the meta even though developers will decrease the duration of Dead Man's Switch to 30 seconds at tier 3.

Dead by Daylight Orange Glyphs

Tome 12: Discordance introduced a new challenge called the Orange Glyph, which inflicts the killer with a negative status effect throughout the match. You can view the Orange Glyph effect in action here (motion sickness warning):

After players reported motion sickness because of the Glyph VFX, the glyph challenges have been replaced temporarily but will return in the update with new effects.

Dead by Daylight Clown Reenabled

Just five days ago, developers kill-switched The Clown, making him temporarily unplayable for characters as they fixed an issue that sped him up beyond his intended speed when using certain bottles.

Clown mains rejoice - this issue will be fixed in Update 6.1.2, and players will be able to select him again.

DBD August 2022 Matchmaking Incentives

Matchmaking incentives are a new feature that debuted in the Mid-Chapter update. Players were meant to receive a Bloodpoint bonus for playing either killer or survivor, depending on which side needed more players at that point in time. Each player's matchmaking incentives were intended to be different; even two players sitting next to one another were not guaranteed to have the same bonus.

At release, though, all players were accidentally given a 100% survivor queue bonus, causing a surplus of survivors with very few killers. Because this created such lengthy queue times for survivors, Behaviour turned off the feature after just a few hours.

Developers say they have found the fix, but it won't be ready in the upcoming update. Instead, it will debut in the 6.2.0 Public Test Build and will be added to the game if all goes according to plan.

For more information about what Behaviour Interactive is up to, both for Dead by Daylight and the studio's other games, be sure to tune into the Behaviour Beyond live stream on 3rd August.

And that's all. For more Dead by Daylight news, guides, tips, and leaks, be sure to check out our dedicated category.

Featured image courtesy of Behaviour Interactive.