Perks in Dead by Daylight are important. But with the wrong choice, a survivor can even help the killer… especially beginners experience this often.
The Dead by Daylight community loves discussions and sometimes even great disputes. There are rarely points where a large number of killers and survivors agree – but this is the case with a particularly bad perk. We are talking about a perk that survivors like to choose, but is actually so bad that it primarily helps the killer win the round.
Which perk is it? This refers to the perk “Self-Care” or in the German version “Selbstfürsorge”. The perk allows an injured survivor to heal themselves independently, without relying on another survivor or a med-kit. Thus, a survivor can fully heal themselves. In theory, a good thing – unfortunately only in theory.
Why is the perk so bad? Self-Care sounds useful on paper, but the perk is primarily one thing: a waste of time. With Self-Care, you can only heal at 35% of the normal healing speed – a complete healing thus takes a whopping 46 seconds.
That is such a massive waste of time and takes a survivor out of the game for almost a minute just to heal a single health state. Most killers would wish they had such a powerful perk that removes survivors from the game so efficiently.
From the perspective of many survivors, the better alternative would be to take the perk “Boon: Circle of Healing” to bless a totem and then heal. This takes almost exactly the same amount of time and has the additional bonus that other survivors can also use the totem. That’s why “Circle of Healing” is one of the best perks for survivors overall.
This is what the community says: Even in the Dead by Daylight community, Self-Care is often discussed controversially. In one of the recent threads, there was a demand: “Revert the nerfs to Self-Care or remove the perk completely!”
Among them are several opinions from players who apparently have had enough of constantly encountering team members who rely on this perk. The thread creator TheMaddKing writes in the Dead by Daylight subreddit:
“Using Self-Care is, for lack of a better word, giving up. A 45-second interaction where a team member does nothing, a healing that takes as long as half a generator.
Killers WISH they had such a perk that simply takes a survivor out of the game for 45 seconds at the cost of one health level. It would be the best slowing perk in the game – only that it’s not a killer perk, but rather one for survivors.”
An opinion that many others also agree with, as the post has collected 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 without addons is better than Self-Care.”
- “It’s just sad what’s happening with Self-Care right now. It was already 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 trash. Should there be a drawback? Yes. Should it be that big? Damn, no.”
Has it always been like this? No. Even though “Self-Care” has always been looked down upon in higher ranks due to its time consumption, the perk has become even worse since some patches, as the time for self-healing has drastically increased again.
In addition, there are some niche applications where Self-Care can indeed be worthwhile. It’s possible to combine Self-Care with “Bite the Bullet” to be completely silent – something that is almost impossible in other ways.
What do you think about Self-Care? Do you still use the perk? Or do you also see it as a waste of time?
