Why do Killers use Slowdown Perks in Dead By Daylight?

Given that Dead By Daylight's gameplay is split into two parts, Killers and Survivors, it is not uncommon for conflict to occur between the two factions. One of the most controversial issues among the game’s community is the use of "Slowdown" Killer perks. These perks grant the Killer the ability to directly hamper with Survivors' abilities to complete their objective of repairing generators.

While admittedly not very fun to play against, Slowdown Perks' importance in Dead By Daylight's balance is key to the power dynamic the title presents. Nevertheless, many Survivor mains feel that these types of perks should be taken out of the game entirely. However, this would be detrimental to the balance and would make Killers almost unplayable in higher-MMR lobbies.

Note: Some aspects of this article are subjective and solely reflect the writer's opinions

---

What's the deal with Slowdown Perks? A deep dive into Dead By Daylight's most "unfun" perk archetypes

Official artwork for The Clown, one of Dead By Daylight's many killers (Image via Behaviour Interactive)

Just like how Survivor perks can be broken down into four main categories, Killer perks can also be categorized in Dead by Daylight.

Killer perks mostly fall into the categories of On-Hit, Slowdown, Information, and Hooking. They can often spec into two or three categories (like Pop Goes The Weasel being a Hooking and Slowdown perk).

This is the biggest difference between perks for Survivors and perks for Killers. Since playstyles are most often tied to the Killer the player chooses to control, this leaves a lot of niche or less-used perks falling into obscurity. This also means that Killer perk metas are much more important to learn for these players.

In a recent post by the official Dead By Daylight Twitter page, the team released collected data showing the 10 most used perks for both Survivors and Killers. Of these perks, five of the Killer perks out of the top 10 can be identified as "Slowdown Perks." Sloppy Butcher's anti-healing properties can be classified as Slowdown since it increases the time needed for Survivors to heal.

Compared to the Survivor data, the prominence of generator repair speed-increasing perks has only decreased with the exception of Resilience. Due to this, the value and potency of Killer Slowdown Perks are only increasing as can be seen from the Killer data. The top five perks displayed are mostly generator-damaging and only seem to be increasing in usage.

A large part of why most Killers prioritize running four slowdown perks is simply the fact that no other perk is mandatory.

A lot of Killers in Dead By Daylight possess mobility options or ways to cut chases short. This is mainly due to how certain Killer powers like those of The Wraith, The Nurse, The Clown, and The Mastermind are designed. Very rarely does Behaviour release a Killer whose power directly impacts objectives like The Plague, The Nightmare, or the zombies spawned by The Nemesis.

Since a lot of commonly-played Killers have ways of closing the distance to Survivors or quickly finding a chase, bringing perks that increase the effectiveness in these aspects can feel redundant and like blatant overkill to many.

As such, a lot of players focus their builds on controlling the one thing a lot of Killers cannot: the progress of generators. This is why these types of Slowdown Perks as used so often in the modern state of Dead By Daylight.