Patch 10.2.0 went live on 6 October 2026 and did something Dead by Daylight has not done in years: it took the free general perks, the ones every account owns from day one, and made several of them genuinely competitive. Unrelenting, Fire Up, Distressing, Agitation, Whispers, Insidious and Iron Grasp all got rewritten numbers, and Hex: Thrill of the Hunt was replaced outright.
The numbers alone are not the story. The reason BHVR could afford buffs this large is a system that shipped in Patch 9.6.0 and quietly caps what you get when two perks do the same job — something most builds shared this week ignore completely.
Everything below comes from Behaviour's live 10.2.0 patch notes and the 9.6.0 notes that introduced Diminishing Returns. Values are PTB-corrected, which matters: two of these perks are not what the test build shipped.
Quick answer: the new numbers at a glance
Unrelenting — missed basic-attack cooldown 30/35/40% shorter (was 20/25/30%), and a brand-new 10% shorter successful basic-attack cooldown. Now also triggers on obstructed basic-attacks, so hitting a pallet or a locker lock counts.
Fire Up — 1 Token per completed Generator, up to 5. Each Token is now 6/7/8% (was 4/5/6%) faster pallet and breakable-wall basic-breaking, Generator damaging, Survivor pick-up and drop, and window basic-vaulting. At five Generators that is 30/35/40%, up from 20/25/30%.
Distressing — Survivors inside your Terror Radius now repair 6/7/8% slower, which is entirely new, and the Terror Radius increase is a flat 30% at every tier (was 20/23/30%).
Hex: Thrill of the Hunt — fully reworked. Your first hook ignites a Dull Totem, and every hook afterwards blocks all Hex Totems for 4/5/6 seconds per lit Hex Totem. The old cleansing-speed penalty is gone.
Dark Arrogance — 15/20/25% shorter missed basic-attack cooldown, nerfed down from the PTB version that covered all basic-attack recovery.
Why did BHVR buff the general perks now?
The patch notes frame this as a deliberate sweep rather than a scattering of balance tweaks. Behaviour's dev note opening the perk section reads:
"With this release, we are doing a pass on general perks - the perks new players gain access to when they begin their journey..."
That is the surface reason. The mechanical reason sits one patch earlier.
Patch 9.6.0 added Diminishing Returns, which scales down repeated identical modifiers inside a single trial. Before that system existed, giving a free perk a strong cooldown or action-speed modifier was dangerous, because four of them could be stacked into something degenerate. With a cap in place, BHVR can be generous with individual values.
Unrelenting's own dev note says this out loud:
"Diminishing Returns allows us to return the long-since-removed successful basic-attack cooldown. Additionally for cases where you're smacking a lock off a locker or hitting a pallet instead of a player. This perk now also includes obstructed basic-attacks."
Successful basic-attack cooldown reduction was removed from Unrelenting years ago precisely because it stacked too well. It is back only because stacking is now taxed.
How does Diminishing Returns change your perk math?
Here is the published ruleset from the 9.6.0 patch notes, which still governs 10.2.0:
"The gameplay modifier with the highest absolute value is always applied, while lesser ones are progressively lowered to a percentage of their original value."
The scaling ladder:
- 1st value (highest) — 100% of the modifier
- 2nd value — 50%
- 3rd value — 25%
- 4th value — 12.5%
- 5th value and up — 5%
Two important boundaries. Diminishing Returns applies only within your own role for negative action-speed modifiers and positive skill-check-chance modifiers, so Killer stacking and Survivor stacking are judged separately. And modifiers granted by Add-ons are excluded entirely — an add-on effect pays full value no matter what your perks are doing.
Now run it on the perks people are actually pairing this week.
Missed basic-attack cooldown. Unrelenting at tier 3 gives 40%. Dark Arrogance at tier 3 gives 25%. Stacked, the game applies Unrelenting's 40% in full and Dark Arrogance at half, so the second perk contributes 12.5 percentage points rather than 25. You are paying a full perk slot for half a perk.
Successful basic-attack cooldown. After the PTB correction, the live sources are Unrelenting at 10% and Help Wanted at 25% while its condition is active. Help Wanted is the larger value, so it lands at 100% and Unrelenting is halved to 5%. The intuitive 35% is actually 30%, and only during Help Wanted's 70/80/90-second window.
Generator repair slowdown. Distressing's new 6/7/8% is a negative action-speed modifier on Survivors, which is exactly the category Diminishing Returns governs. Pair it with another repair-speed penalty and the smaller one is halved.
The practical rule: a second perk doing the same job is worth half. A third is worth a quarter. Perks that cover different actions — Fire Up on breaking, Agitation on carrying, Unrelenting on attack recovery — never collide and keep their full value. Build wide, not deep.
Is Unrelenting worth a perk slot now?
This is the one the Killer community has swung hardest on. The missed-attack buff from 30% to 40% at tier 3 is sizeable, but the genuinely new part is that successful hits now recover faster too, and that obstructed swings count.
Obstructed swings are the quiet upgrade. Any Killer whose chase involves hitting objects — breaking a turret, smashing through a Survivor-dropped pallet mid-swing, catching a locker — now recovers measurably faster from those animations. Players in this week's Killer threads singled out exactly that case, describing near-zero wasted time destroying turrets and the ability to break loops mid-chase on Killers that previously could not afford the animation.
The honest caveat: Behaviour does not publish the base basic-attack cooldown in seconds anywhere in the patch notes or the game manual, so every "this saves you X seconds" figure circulating right now is a community estimate, not an official value. The percentages are official. The seconds are not. Treat any article quoting an exact second count as unsourced.
Where Unrelenting earns the slot is on Killers with frequent object interactions and on the "comfort" side of a build — the kind of perk that makes a Killer feel less clunky rather than mathematically slowing the game down. If your build already runs Dark Arrogance, pick one. Diminishing Returns makes running both a waste of a slot.
How large is Distressing's Terror Radius at 30%?
Distressing now applies a flat 30% increase at every tier, which simplifies the arithmetic considerably.
On the standard 32-metre Terror Radius that most of the roster carries, 30% takes you to 41.6 metres. On a Killer whose base Terror Radius is 24 metres, you land at 31.2 metres. Check your own Killer's base value rather than assuming 32, because the roster is not uniform.
The new repair penalty is what changes the perk's identity. Previously Distressing was a Bloodpoint and stealth-denial perk that mostly helped Terror Radius builds. Now every Survivor working a Generator inside that enlarged bubble repairs 6/7/8% slower, which turns a 41.6-metre radius into a soft, always-on slowdown field that needs no setup, no hooks and no Tokens.
It pairs badly with other repair-slowdown perks for the Diminishing Returns reason above, and it pairs well with anything that wants a big Terror Radius for other purposes. It also actively fights stealth builds, so do not run it alongside Undetectable effects you were counting on.
What happened to Hex: Thrill of the Hunt?
It was not buffed or nerfed. It was replaced.
The old version slowed Totem cleansing, scaling up to a 60% cleansing penalty, which made Hex builds extremely hard to dismantle on certain Killers. The reworked perk ignites a Dull Totem on your first hook, and from then on each hook blocks all Hex Totems for 4/5/6 seconds per lit Hex Totem.
Behaviour's dev note explains the intent:
"Thrill of the Hunt has been excelling at totem defense, especially on certain Killers. This update aims at requiring a little more input from the Killer to benefit from the totem defense powerhouse."
Two consequences worth planning around. First, the perk now does nothing until you hook someone, so an opening Hex can still be found and cleansed before Thrill ever activates. Second, the value scales with how many Hex Totems are lit, so it belongs in a dedicated multi-Hex build rather than as a bodyguard for a single Hex.
Note that the PTB shipped this at 6/7/8 seconds. The live value is 4/5/6. If you tested it during the PTB and formed an opinion, the live perk is weaker than the one you played.
Which perk numbers is the community still getting wrong?
A genuine problem this week, and an easy one to fall into. The automated perk-lookup bot that posts descriptions in the Dead by Daylight subreddits has not been updated for 10.2.0, so it is confidently replying to threads celebrating the buffs with pre-patch text.
Three cases confirmed in live threads from the last 72 hours:
- Fire Up is being quoted as 4/5/6% per Token for a maximum of 20/25/30%. That is the old value. Live is 6/7/8% per Token for a maximum of 30/35/40%.
- Scourge Hook: Monstrous Shrine is being quoted as 20% faster sacrifice progress while you are 24 metres away. The live perk no longer does that at all. It now makes Generators that are not being repaired regress at 150/175/200% speed while you are at least 24 metres from a Survivor on a Scourge Hook, and the Basement Hooks are Scourge Hooks.
- Undone is being quoted as the old skill-check Token perk with a maximum of 18/24/30 Tokens. It was reworked. Live, you earn 1 Token per hook up to 3, and damaging a Generator spends all of them for 8/9/10% progress loss and an 8/9/10-second block per Token.
If a build guide you are reading matches the bot text rather than the patch notes, it predates 6 October. Check the perk in-game before committing Bloodpoints.
Which other 10.2.0 Killer perks changed meaningfully?
The pass was wide. The buffs most likely to matter to a general-perk build:
- Agitation — 14/16/18% Haste while carrying (was 6/12/18%), so tiers 1 and 2 are dramatically better. Terror Radius is still 12 metres larger.
- Whispers — now 28/26/24 metres (was 48/40/32 m), and grants 5% Haste while outside that range, which is a completely new effect.
- Insidious — Undetectable after only 2 seconds idle at every tier (was 3/2/1 s), ending 6/7/8 seconds after you act.
- Iron Grasp — wiggle is 75% weaker and Survivors wiggle 10/11/12% slower (was 4/8/12%).
- Bitter Murmur — 20-metre Aura reveal for 10 seconds on each Generator (was 16 m and 5 s), and 16/18/20 seconds on all Survivors at the last Generator (was 5/7/10 s).
- Dead Man's Switch — now triggers when a Survivor stops repairing for more than 2 seconds, blocking for 30/35/40 seconds on a 30/35/40-second cooldown.
- Ravenous — 1 Token per first hook on each Survivor, giving 4% carry Haste and 4% faster hooking per Token, with Exposed for 80/85/90 seconds at 4 Tokens (was 40/50/60 s).
- Help Wanted — up to 3 compromised Generators at once (was 1), 25% shorter successful basic-attack cooldowns for 70/80/90 seconds, and 150% regression on unrepaired Generators.
- Shattered Hope — reworked to block Dull and Hex Totems for 16/18/20 seconds whenever any Totem is blessed, cleansed or destroyed.
Frequently asked questions
Does Unrelenting work on special attacks? No. Every value in the perk is written against basic-attacks. Power attacks such as chainsaw sprints or ranged hits are unaffected. What is new in 10.2.0 is that obstructed basic-attacks — swings that connect with a pallet, a locker lock or similar — now count as basic-attacks for the cooldown reduction.
Should I run Unrelenting and Dark Arrogance together? Not for the cooldown. Both reduce missed basic-attack recovery, so Diminishing Returns applies the larger one in full and halves the smaller. Dark Arrogance still brings 15/20/25% faster window basic-vaulting and a 25% longer blind and pallet-stun duration, which do not collide, so it can earn a slot on those effects alone.
Does Diminishing Returns apply to add-ons? No. Behaviour's 9.6.0 notes list add-on modifiers as excluded entirely. An add-on that does the same thing as a perk pays full value regardless of what your perks are stacking.
Is Fire Up good now? It reaches 40% at tier 3 with all five Generators done, which is a real number, but it ramps in exactly the order you least want — it is weakest while the game is still winnable and strongest once the Generators are gone. Treat it as a late-game comfort perk that makes breaking, carrying and vaulting feel sharp, not as slowdown.
What is Distressing's exact Terror Radius? 30% larger at every tier, so 41.6 metres from the standard 32-metre base and 31.2 metres from a 24-metre base. Base Terror Radius varies by Killer, and add-ons and powers that modify it apply on top.
Is Hex: Thrill of the Hunt still a totem-protection perk? Yes, but it protects by blocking rather than by slowing cleansing, and it only starts working after your first hook. It also scales with the number of lit Hex Totems, so it is only worth a slot in a build running two or more Hexes.
Which patch do these values apply to? Dead by Daylight Patch 10.2.0, the Mid-Chapter released on 6 October 2026, following Chapter 46 on 25 August 2026. PTB values differ from live for Hex: Thrill of the Hunt and Dark Arrogance.
Where can I read the official source? The live 10.2.0 patch notes sit in Behaviour's knowledge base, the PTB notes are archived alongside them, and the Diminishing Returns ruleset is documented in the 9.6.0 notes. Patch releases also mirror to the Steam news feed.
The short version
Patch 10.2.0 made the free perks worth considering, and it is a measurably different build environment than the one most tier lists were written for. Unrelenting is a genuine chase-comfort pick for object-heavy Killers, Fire Up is a real late-game speed perk, and Distressing quietly became a no-setup slowdown.
The mistake to avoid is doubling up. Diminishing Returns means the second perk doing a job pays half and the third pays a quarter, so the strongest 10.2.0 builds spread across different actions rather than piling onto one. And verify any perk text you read against the in-game description — a lot of what is circulating this week is still pre-patch.
Keep reading on Dead by Daylight:
- DBD 10.2.0 PTB to Live Changes — which PTB decisions BHVR reversed before launch
- DBD Perk Changes: All 58 Killer and Survivor Perks — the full 10.2.0 perk sweep in one place
- DBD Best Killer Perks Tier List 2026 — where these buffs land against the meta slots
- DBD Abandon, Surrender and End Trial — the other system 10.2.0 rewrote
- DBD Skull Merchant Rework — everything BHVR has confirmed so far
