Dead by Daylight: A survivor perk is so bad it even helps the killer

Perks in Dead by Daylight are important. But with the wrong choice, a survivor can even help the killer… this often happens, especially for newcomers.

The Dead by Daylight community loves discussions and sometimes big fights. Rarely are there points on which a large proportion of all killers and survivors agree – but this is the case with a particularly bad perk. We’re talking about a perk that survivors like to choose, but it’s actually so bad that it mainly helps the killer win the round.

What perk is it? We are talking about the perk “Self-Care” or in the German version “Self-Care”. The perk allows an injured survivor to heal themselves without relying on another survivor or a med kit. This allows a survivor to fully heal themselves back up. A good thing in theory – unfortunately only there.

Why is the perk so bad? While self-care sounds useful on paper, the perk is one thing above all: a waste of time. Because self-care can only heal at 35% of the normal healing speed – so a full healing takes a whopping 46 seconds.

This is such a huge waste of time and takes a survivor out of the game for almost a minute just to heal a single health condition. Most killers would wish they had a perk that powerful that would kill survivors so efficiently.

From the point of view of many survivors, the better alternative would be to take something like the Boon: Circle of Healing perk to bless a totem and then heal yourself. This takes almost as long together and has the added bonus that other survivors can then use the totem as well. That’s why Circle of Healing is one of the best survivor perks out there.

This is what the community says: Self-care is also a hot topic in the Dead by Daylight community. In one of the more recent threads there was a demand: “Remove the nerfs to self-care or remove the perk completely!”

Below are some opinions from players who seem fed up with constantly encountering teammates who rely on this perk. This is how the thread creator TheMaddKing writes in the Dead by Daylight subreddit:

“Using self-care is, because I can’t think of a better word, give up. A 45 second interaction where a teammate does nothing, a heal that takes the same amount of time as half a generator.

Killers WISH they had a perk that just knocks out a survivor for 45 seconds at the cost of one health level. It would be the best slow perk in the game – except it’s not a killer perk, it’s a survivor one.”

A view that many others agree with, after all, the post has garnered more than 1,500 upvotes:

• “I see the perk so often in my games. It’s not that hard to just equip a med kit. Even a brown med kit with no addons is better than self-care.”
• “It’s just sad what’s happening with self-care right now. It was a bad perk before, but now it’s even worse. Self-care helps the killer more than the survivors.
  Even with [Botany Knowledge] self-care is rubbish. Should there be a downside? Yes. Should it be that big? Hell no.”

Has it always been like this? no Even if “self-care” has always been smiled at, especially in the high-ranking area, because it takes up a lot of time, the perk has gotten even worse in recent patches, because the time for self-healing has been increased drastically again.

There are also some niche applications where self-care can be worthwhile. So it’s possible to combine self-care with “bite the bullet” to be completely silent – something that’s pretty much impossible any other way.

What do you think of self care? Are you still using the perk? Or do you see that as a waste of time as well?