The main goal of killers in Dead by Daylight is to find and hook survivors until they die, but the most important secondary goal is to stop survivors from fixing generators, keeping them trapped in the game until their bloody end.
While injuring, downing, and hooking them is a good way to do that the time from chase to down is variable, if you catch them at all and there are three other survivors probably working generators in the meantime. However, with these perks, you can impede and even undo their progress, giving you plenty of time to offer them to The Entity.
Related: Best Perks For Endgame Killers In DBD
Updated on August 23, 2022, By Christopher Padilla: With the 6.1 patch update came a lot of changes to the game, not only in terms of the perks but also certain base mechanics. In regards to stalling the game, generators now take 90 seconds to complete instead of 80, and kicking them deals a small flat percentage of damage and happens much quicker pre-6.1, even without Brutal Strength. To balance these global buffs, certain staple perks were hit with nerfs while other, more niche perks were buffed. Hex: Ruin and Pop Goes The Weasel arguably got the worst of these changes, but are still worth running in certain situations. Here are our updated recommendations.
13 Merciless Storm
This is a perk that triggers when a generator is repaired to 90 percent, forcing whoever’s working on it to deal with back-to-back difficult skill checks, blocking the generator for 20 seconds at max rank should they fail any check or let go. Merciless Storm is one of those perks that sharply lose effectiveness as you rank up, since, at a certain skill level, survivors rarely miss skill checks, no matter how difficult.
Still, this perk has potential with certain killers like Freddy Krueger, Sadako, or The Hag, that can teleport across the map reliably to force survivors off generators, or Doctor, who can make skill-checks even more difficult. Also, this perk works well with Tinkerer since it informs you when generators are almost done, meaning you can go do something about it, and if you make it, the generator gets blocked.
12 Thanatophobia
Thanatophobia gives survivors a stacking debuff to repairing generators, sabotaging hooks, and cleansing totems for every injured, downed, or hooked survivor-- two percent per Survivor at max rank with a substantial bonus of 12 percent if you can get all four Survivors, putting it at a total of 20 percent at max rank. While it’s blunted by the prevalence of Boon: Circle of Healing and the usage of Medkits, it still has value in slowing down the game since it forces survivors to heal or deal with slower repairs and if they’re healing, then they’re not doing generators.
Because it's relatively difficult to get max value from this perk, it's best used on Killers that can injure Survivors in rapid succession, like Legion or keep them injured for a long time, like Plague. Another option is to run builds that hit Survivors with the Broken status effect, which prevents them from healing, which you can reliably apply with the Pyramid Head perk Forced Penance or to apply the Mangled and/or Hemorrhage status effects which slow healing down and causes survivors to lose healing progress when not healing, respectively.
11 Hex: Pentimento
This perk allows you to rekindle cleansed totems, giving a different effect for every revived totem and, if you can get five rekindled totems, blocking all your totems from survivor interference. However, the chance of that happening is near zero.
Of course, you don’t need all five totems to get big value from Hex: Pentimento since as long as you can keep one or two up, which reduces repair speed and healing speed, respectively, then this perk is already doing work. Similar to Thanatophobia, survivors have a choice, deal with the totem or deal with the slow repairs, either way delaying their progress. The other effects, which reduce recovery speed while downed and gate opening speed is less consequential but still useful and the slowdown across all effects is a hefty 30 percent at max rank.
With the 6.1 patch changes to the game, Hex: Pentimento is one of the more powerful ways to slow the game. Run it alongside Hex: Plaything and you're almost guaranteed use of it, since Survivors will have to cleanse their Plaything totem or be afflicted with the Oblivious status effect. Either way, a win for you.
10 Grim Embrace
Grim Embrace is a straightforward perk, hook all the survivors once and Generators are blocked for 40 seconds at max rank and the Obsession is revealed to you briefly.
The effectiveness of this perk primarily comes down to how quickly you can down and hook survivors. Still, if you can pull it off before the last generator is completed, you get a good chunk of time to work over survivors and there’s little they can do about it. Of course, the earlier you do this, the better since more generators will be blocked.
9 Deadlock
This perk blocks off the generator with the most progress whenever a generator is completed for 30 seconds at max rank.
Related: Powers of the Cenobite, Ranked
While it requires a bit of give-and-take, Deadlock will likely serve you throughout the whole game, especially at higher ranks where survivors more reliably complete generators. It has a secondary ability to highlight the blocked generator so that you know exactly which one the survivors are most likely to be invested in and deal with it accordingly.
8 Hex: Ruin
Hex: Ruin is a decent perk hampered by an easy deactivation condition, which is necessary since this perk would be too powerful otherwise. As long as its related totem still stands, Hex: Ruin regresses the repairs on all generators-- at the same speed as if you kicked them, at max rank, as long as it’s not being actively repaired, meaning that if you can keep survivors off generators, they actively lose progress down to zero.
The tricky part is keeping this perk alive, especially since totems are of particular interest to survivors thanks to Boon Perks and despite your best efforts, it’s not likely that this perk stays in play for the whole game. Still, while it’s up, it can be quite oppressive, which can be quite a while when paired with Hex: Undying. On top of that, you can run the ‘trap’ style Hex perks like Haunted Ground and Retribution which will punish survivors for cleansing totems, which they will have to do unless they want to perpetually be in Ruin’s shadow. Unfortunately, all good things have to come to an end, so even if they don't find the related Hex totem, this perk deactivates when any Survivor dies.
7 Dead Man’s Switch
After hooking a survivor, this perk activates, and for the duration of its activation, 30 seconds at max rank, any survivor who stops repairing a generator before it’s finished will cause it to be blocked for the remaining time on the activation. Generators blocked this way are highlighted in white.
Dead Man's Switch works best with Killers who can traverse the map quickly to harass Survivors off generators, like Onryo, Nightmare or Wraith. Otherwise, you'll want to run it with Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance, which it synergizes with perfectly.
6 Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance
Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance, like the other Scourge Hook perks turns four random hooks on the map into special Scourge Hooks that apply its effects when a Survivor is placed on it. In this case, causing the generator with the most progress to explode, losing up 15 percent of its progress and then starting to regress normally.
This perk also has the additional effect of causing all Survivors on that generator to scream and let go of the generator, which makes it a good fit to combo with Dead Man’s Switch and Merciless Storm which punish Survivors for letting go of the generator by blocking them. This one-two punch means that not only will the generators regress, but also be blocked, with Survivors having little recourse but to watch the generators lose progress.
5 Corrupt Intervention
Corrupt Intervention is a good perk on most Killers, but works particularly well with Killers who require a little setup, like Trapper or Hag. The perk essentially stalls the earliest parts of the game, allowing characters who require a little time to gather the steam needed to get going, whether they need to set up traps or hit Survivors with status effects.
Related: DBD Best Perks For Killers
At the beginning of the match, this perk blocks the three furthest generators away from you– almost half of the seven total generators in the game, for two minutes at max rank, delaying Survivors should they happen upon a blocked generator. While not flashy, this perk can do some work, and there are very few builds that aren’t compatible with this perk. Unfortunately, Corrupt Intervention is weaker on Killers that can get a down quickly like Nurse or Blight, since sending any Survivor to the dying state will deactivate this perk early.
4 Eruption
This Nemesis perk affects any generator you damage, giving it a yellow aura. When you put a survivor in the dying state, it triggers. This damages all affected generators, causing them to explode, losing ten percent of their progression before regressing normally. As a particularly nasty bonus, if any survivors were interacting with the affected generators, they scream and are hit with the Incapacitated status effect for up to 25 seconds, which prevents them from interacting with most non-chase props. In other words, no working on generators, healing, or totems.
Eruption works well with most perks that apply when you damage a generator and can be devastating with some good luck and canny gameplay, especially if you run it on Killers that can travel the map quickly and apply it often. Just keep in mind that it goes on cooldown for 30 seconds after you trigger it. Also, Eruption and Jolt are compatible, making for some truly ludicrous generator damage accompanying a downed Survivor.
3 Call Of Brine
Essentially a more potent Hex: Ruin but only to generators you kick. While it won't affect as many generators at once, this perk makes up for by doing double the regression of Hex: Ruin, in addition to not being tied to a Hex totem.
On top of that, it will highlight affected generators for that duration and give you a loud noise notification should anybody complete a good skill check while working on it. This perk works quite well with other perks that activate on a generator kick, like Dragon’s Grip, which makes a survivor who touches a generator affected by it a one-shot down, Overcharge to double dip in regression effects or Pop Goes the Weasel which can potentially add a good chunk of damage to Call of Brine's already weighty regression.
2 Pop Goes The Weasel
Perhaps the Killer perk hit hardest by the 6.1 patch changes, this perk is still far from useless. Pop Goes The Weasel activates after you hook a Survivor and for up to 45 seconds (max rank) the next generator you kick loses an amount of progress before regressing normally. Previously generators lost a flat amount of progress, 25 percent of the generator's max progression. Now the damage is 20 percent of the generator's current progress, meaning the more work done on the generator, the more damage it takes, but if it hasn't been repaired much at all, then the damage would be negligible.
While this is quite the nerf, you can still do some work with this perk, especially on Killers who are good at patrolling generators like Nightmare or Onryo, Killers who can afford to stop and kick a generator mid-chase like Legion or anyone who runs Brutal Strength. Wraith is probably one of the best Killers to run this on, especially on smaller maps since he has the highest action speed and movement speeds of all Killers while cloaked, so he can patrol gens AND kick them while still continuing the chase. If you're running Pop Goes The Weasel, it would also be a safe bet to use other perks that activate on generator kick, like Call of Brine or Eruption.
1 Overcharge
This perk used to be utilized only in niche situations, like in impossible skill-check builds, but since it was buffed in patch 6.1, it has seen widespread use. Overcharge, one of The Doctor’s perks, activates whenever you kick a generator.
The next survivor who interacts with that generator will face a difficult skillcheck that takes a good chunk of progress away when failed as well as causing an explosion that the Killer will be notified of. What truly makes this perk insidious though is that if no one interacts with the generator, the speed at which it degrades ramps up, maxing out at 30 seconds and leaving Survivors with a sad*stic choice: potentially get the Killer's attention as well as damage the generator or watch their hard work dwindle away. Since they do very similar things, Call of Brine pairs nicely with Overcharge, undoing the Survivors' work rapidly.
Next: All Dead by Daylight Killers, Ranked
