Run the test above for at least 60 seconds. Here is what each
number means for this game specifically.
Red lines (packet loss)
Loss is what makes hit validation work against you. If the packet carrying your pallet drop never arrives, the server sees a survivor still running in the open and the hit stands - entirely correctly, from its point of view.
Jitter (loops and windows)
Looping is a timing game measured in a few hundred milliseconds. Jitter moves the killer's model unevenly on your screen, which is why a loop that worked five times in a row suddenly does not. Watch this number if your vaults feel inconsistent rather than slow.
Ping (who wins the trade)
Hit detection favours whoever has the better connection to the server. Under 40 ms you are on even footing in most lobbies; above 80 ms you will lose close pallet and window timings against a lower-ping opponent regardless of skill.
What you see in game, and which number on this page explains it.
Dead by Daylight started as a peer-hosted game, where the killer's machine was effectively the authority. That produced the era of complaints about hits landing metres past a pallet, and it was a real effect rather than a perception problem. Two changes fixed most of it: dedicated servers, and then a doubling of the server tick rate from 30Hz to 60Hz, which halved the window in which the server is working from stale positions.
Behaviour then added server-side hit validation on top. The server checks whether a hit was geometrically plausible given the positions it knows about, and rejects it if the survivor was too far away to be reached. For players with stable connections this is invisible. For killers on weak connections it removes the free hits that latency used to grant them.
The part that is rarely explained is what this means for a survivor with packet loss. Validation works from the server's picture, and your pallet drop only enters that picture if the packet carrying it arrives. If it does not, the server sees a survivor still running in the open, and it validates the hit correctly. The system is working exactly as designed and you still go down. That is why loss, not ping, is the metric survivors should watch here.
At 60 ticks the server updates every 16.7 ms. A single wireless retry is comfortably longer than that, so one burst is several consecutive updates in which you were not where you actually were - which is exactly the length of a pallet window.
If the chart above shows packet loss or high jitter, work through
these in order.
Why do I get hit after dropping a pallet?
Because the server never received your pallet drop in time. Server-side hit validation checks whether the hit was possible from the positions the server knows about - if your update was lost, its picture is out of date and the hit is valid to it.
What tick rate does Dead by Daylight run at?
60Hz on dedicated servers. Behaviour doubled it from the original 30Hz, which halved the window in which the server has stale positions.
Does high ping help the killer or the survivor?
Whoever has the better connection to the server has the advantage in a close trade. Hit validation limits the worst abuse from very high ping, but it does not equalise a 40 ms and a 150 ms player.
Is packet loss or ping the bigger problem here?
Packet loss. A steady high ping is something you can play around by starting loops earlier; a lost packet at a pallet is an outcome you cannot influence at all.