Dead by Daylight – How to Play The Doctor

The Dead by Daylight Community looks down upon The Doctor. Many people consider him a D Tier killer. I would agree however, he still has potential despite him being one of the weakest killers in DbD. He is not utterly useless, but rather inconsistent. If you manage to master The Doctor, he becomes an anti-loop killer with high situational awareness and when you win, you feel most rewarded.

What to Know

All credit goes to ShittyM1Killer!

The Doctor is a very weak killer. Although he doesn’t have much to work with, he still has some anti-loop built into his power. The Doctor also has the ability to easily find survivors at the start of the game if you are too lazy in tracking or if you’re new, it could help you find survivor’s locations. The Doctor also has the ability to slow the game down by forcing people to snap out of Madness.

Here are some tips in playing the Doctor:

1. Never go Treatment Mode at the start of the game. By going Treatment Mode at the start of the game, you’re wasting a limited power that no other killer has – tracking. The only time you should go Treatment Mode at the start is if survivors are playing too immersed and you haven’t found anyone within the first minute of the game.
2. Never consistently shock survivors until they get into Tier 3 Madness. By randomly shocking survivors, you’re wasting time and attempts you could get M1 attacks in. It’s a waste of time to get people into Tier 3 Madness; you do this progressively as the round goes on.
3. Shock survivors before they can reach pallets or windows. You need to shock survivors preemptively. Though it may be inconsistent, you can still prevent survivors from getting to pallets and/or windows.
4. Always swap between Treatment Mode and Punishment Mode while in a chase. I will explain why in the later part of the guide.
5. If you are new to Dead by Daylight, try out The Doctor first since he’ll help you to understand where survivors are at the start of the game. The Doctor doesn’t have much of a skill cap, he slows the game down for a minimal amount of time, he’s great with tracking, and he’s decent with anti-looping.

Best Perks

Smart an experienced players know that gimmicky builds do not work in Dead by Daylight. (For example: Anti-Healing Builds – Use Anti-Healing perks and survivors will gen rush you and you don’t have enough pressure to do anything about it.) The Doctor however, is probably the only non-M1 killer where gimmicky builds could work. However I wouldn’t recommend using a gimmick build because it’s too planned out and 9/10 times, it doesn’t work.

Here is a video that I’ve made on why gimmicky Anti-Healing Builds don’t work:

Brown-Green Ranks

If you are in Brown-Green Ranks, the best perk combinations would be: Hex: Ruin, Pop Goes The Weasel, Barbecue & Chili, Unnerving Presence.

1. Hex: Ruin’s sole purpose is to slow the game down. Since low rank survivors struggle doing generators with Hex: Ruin, you can slow the game down a lot.
2. Pop Goes The Weasel is great for these ranks since once Hex: Ruin has been cleansed, you can slow the game down by kicking generators and give them a -25% regression. Since you’re in Brown-Green Ranks, survivors should be going down extremely quickly.
3. Barbecue & Chili is good since Doctor needs situational awareness, bloodpoints, and where to rotate to when you need to kick a generator with Pop Goes The Weasel.
4. Unnerving Presence is somewhat decent. It’s kind of useless once Hex: Ruin is gone, but it causes lower rank survivors to panic when hitting skill checks on generators.

Purple-Red Ranks

If you are in Purple-Red Ranks, the best perk combinations would be: Hex: Ruin, Hex: Huntresses’ Lullaby, Hex: Haunted Grounds, Pop Goes The Weasel.

1. Hex: Ruin – See above.
2. Hex: Huntresses’ Lullaby is a weak perk, but it’s annoying when matched with the three other Hex perks. Hex: Ruin might not be much of a problem for high rank survivors, but it still slows down the generator progression for an annoyingly small amount. If you manage to get 5 stacks on Hex: Huntresses’ Lullaby, Hex: Ruin is still up, and every survivor is in Tier 2 Madness then doing generators is going to be extremely tedious and annoying. Hex: Huntresses’ Lullaby also forces survivors to cleanse totems whether it be Hex: Ruin, Hex: Huntresses’ Lullaby, or Hex: Haunted Grounds.
3. Hex: Haunted Grounds is all you need in playing The Doctor. When Hex: Haunted Grounds is cleansed you need to ask yourself, “What can I do in the next 60 seconds?” Hex: Huntresses’ Lullaby forces survivors to cleanse totems. With Hex: Haunted Grounds, there’s a 70%+ chance that they can cleanse this perk first. When this perk has been cleansed, you NEED to go into Treatment Mode and find survivors. Then you slug them for snowball or if no one is nearby then hook to get tokens for Huntresses’ Lullaby.
4. Pop Goes The Weasel – See above.

Gimmicky Builds

Gimmicky builds don’t work, but on Doctor, they could (not will, not can, but could).

A decent gimmicky build would be: Hex: Ruin, Pop Goes The Weasel, Dying Light, Hex: Huntresses’ Lullaby.

1. Hex: Ruin – See above
2. Pop Goes The Weasel – See above
3. Dying Light can ONLY be used if you have a Mori (preferably an Ivory Memento Mori since it’s not fun bringing Moris; you don’t pip and the survivors don’t either). This will decimate generator progression and with Hex: Ruin, it will slow the game down A LOT.
4. Hex: Huntresses’ Lullaby – See above

A build that relies on a Mori is not fun to play as or against since you most likely won’t pip. A decent build to try with Doctor is:

1. Hex: Ruin – See above
2. Hex: Huntresses’ Lullaby – See above
3. Hex: Haunted Grounds – See above
4. Hex: Thrill of the Hunt works with these four only if you have the addons: High Stimulus Electrode with Polished Electrode. You can shock survivors from far away, preventing them from fully cleansing your totems. This gets extremely annoying for survivors and some survivors might over commit to totems and to their dismay, they might just cleanse Hex: Haunted Grounds.

This video shows why Doctor can easily protect totems:

This totem build could work well however, if you want a gimmicky build that has Anti-Healing then try this:

1. Distressing is a perk that increases your Terror Radius. It’s a very bad perk that has no use. However it’s only usage can be seen with Doctor since when you go Treatment Mode, his terror radius becomes extremely massive.
2. Coulrophobia is a perk that increases the healing speed by +50% when within the killer’s Terror Radius. Since this Doctor Build forces you to have a big fat Terror Radius, it’ll be way too tedious to heal.
3. Thanatophobia, besides the placebo effect it give to you, is a near useless perk. At maximum stacks, it only adds 5 seconds to healing and repair speed. It slows the game down in such a minuscule amount; I really wouldn’t recommend using this perk. Why I would recommend it with Doctor is because since survivors won’t heal because of Coulrophobia and Thanatophobia, smart survivors would be utilizing their time doing generators.
4. Surge is a new perk exclusive to the Demogorgon. This perk activates when you down a survivor. When a generator is within that radius, it loses a set amount of progression. This punishes survivors when they a rushing through generators. This allows you to slug and gain situational awareness of where survivors are since their generators would be exploding. Since survivors won’t be healing, everyone will be an insta-down (similar to Tier III Myers and Plague).

Best Addons

The Doctor has only 4 strong addons. Everything else is decent and/or mediocre. These are the strongest addons:

Iridescent King – there are way too many requisites to this addon for me to put into my own words. I’ve taken a screenshot for you to see what this addon is capable of:

Why is Iridescent King good? There are many reasons:

• Survivors constantly hear a heartbeat.
• Survivors constantly see a red stain.
• Survivors see fake pallets.
• Survivors suffer from infinite exhaustion.

This removes a survivor’s basic defense – exhaustion perks. This renders every exhaustion perk essentially useless meaning survivors cannot get greedy and if they’re injured, they’ll feed you pallets. You can also sneak up on survivors since they might not know where you’re coming from since they already can see a red stain behind them and hear a loud heartbeat. This helps Doctor with anti-loop since you don’t need to bother with hiding your red stain when mind gaming at loops.

Moldy Electrode – slightly increases the shock therapy’s charge time, but it increases the range by 25%. This Brown Addon what makes Doctor somewhat viable. Why is it better than the others? The others take way too long to charge up and you don’t need an absurd range when shocking survivors. It’s unnecessary; still good however. This addon is what gives Doctor anti-loop potential, but NOT unloopable.

Polished Electrode – moderately increases the shock therapy’s charge time, but it increases the range by 50%. You might think this is better than Moldy Electrode, but it isn’t. Shock range, though it is necessary, absurd range isn’t. Not only do you have an unnecessary “overkill” power, but you also take longer when charging your shock therapy. Shock therapy is what gives the Doctor anti-loop potential. This is still a very good addon.

High Stimulus Electrode – considerably increases the shock therapy’s charge time, but it increases the range by 75%. I will not reiterate why I feel this addon is worse than the previous one and the first one. This is still a very good addon, but not good enough for anti-loop potential.

Good Combinations

There are only two good combinations that work against good survivors:

Moldy Electrode with Iridescent King – Moldy Electrode is used for shocking survivors before they can get to a window or a pallet in time. This covers 25% more distance than his normal power, but takes slightly longer to charge. Iridescent King is used for exhaustion on survivors and the constant red stain which makes looping a bit more difficult with survivor since mind gaming would become a lot easier since your red stain is already behind them.

High Stimulus Electrode with Polished Electrode – Though it is not good for anti-looping, it is good for protecting generators, totems, hook saves, etc. By using these two addons, you can cover less distance while traversing through the map. I wouldn’t recommend this combination over the other one since this one is limited to anti-loop capabilities.

Best Maps

The Doctor only has 1 excellent map that is truly Doctor orientated.

1. The Game – this is a very small map with two floors. When you go Treatment Mode, you can easily find survivors when they scream. Not only is this map good because of it’s size, but it’s good because as The Doctor, you can prevent the survivors from getting to any safe pallets.

The Doctor can essentially win on any map. There is only 1 map that is awful for The Doctor:

1. Temple of Purgation – this is the largest map in Dead by Daylight. It is appalling for Doctor since it’s way too large. If you apply Hex: Haunted Grounds on The Doctor, you won’t get much usage out of it since tracking survivors will be extremely difficult solely because of the map’s immense size. You can still win, but it won’t be as easy as other maps. Playing Doctor alone, is enough to get you frustrated and stressed, but getting this map just addons on to the insanity.

How to Use Doctor as Anti-Loop

In these videos, I show you a visual representation of how to put Doctor to work with anti-looping. This is also on Blood Lodge; arguably the most difficult map for killers.

1. In this video I show you how to use Doctor at the killer shack. Notice my movement. I went Treatment Mode at the corner of the wall and I hugged the wall as well making Adam unable to vault the window.

You could essentially block windows and vaults like that in any loop. However at Killer Shack, Doctor could become unloopable. Just make sure that you understand when to time your shock therapy; it has to be PERFECT timing.