Its not that hard to make original builds
So I was looking in custom games as survivor just to read over survivor perks. I was looking at many of these perks like distortion, alert and especially detectives hunch and I was just wondering about why many perk builds that you see in red ranks are so unoriginal and not varied. There seem to be many potentially strong perks and builds that you can run for survivor. When I saw detectives hunch I just thought about how insane that perk is. More perks that I would consider to be strong are
Alert: Easy information with little commitment on your end and no real requirements, likely will go off at least three times, more if the killer is running pop
Autodidact: After 3 heals you get to heal extremely fast, with this you no longer have to worry about using medkits to heal fast
Botany: Just a strong healing perk, straightforward.
Dance with me: Paired with life and quick and quiet it can
Dark sense: Similar to alert, little commitment with good information
Detective hunch: This perk is literally crazy, you get so much info
Distortion: Its slightly niche, its kind of countered by bbq so I can understand why its not run often
For the people: An instaheal
Inner strength: We already know about this perk but in my opinion its still underused.
Leader: Basically a second prove thyself
Pharmacy: A good perk in healing builds
Saboteur: You can sabo hooks without a toolbox
Well make it: You can get great healing for 90 seconds, even letting you heal on hook.
Soul guard: This perk is definitely underutilized, it has a purpose as an anti hex perk, which I would say is good due to ruin being slapped onto many killer builds when theres nothing better to run.
Theres likely more that I have not mentioned, those are just the ones that caught my eye, but you get a general idea that there are many strong survivor perks. The only viable survivor perks aren't just the exhaustion perks and ds, through my searching I have found 13 perks that I would consider to be a mix of solid and strong. With this in mind, I genuinely disagree with any survivor who believes that survivors options are very limited or that survivors have very weak perks, which are both untrue statements. There is so much room for creativity in builds for survivor, yet a very common complaint in red ranks is that there is no build diversity. This is not due to the fact that survivors perks are weak at all, it is completely the fault of uncreative survivors. There is so much room for originality yet it feels like there are so many builds that use the same 6 perks.
Before anyone mentions how killers are the same way and run all the same perks, they really dont. Killers often try to find new perks builds with niche perks, as we see with killers trying to tech in forced penance into legion or oni builds. Killers will likely begin to utilize franklins demise and lightborn with those buffs. There are many examples of killers trying perks that arent just the usual stuff like save the best for last, BBQ, and pop. With all this said, survivors should begin to utilize the many solid perks at their disposal.
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It's mainly because the meta perks are proven to be consistently very effective in most matches. For example, DS has long been heralded as one of the strongest survivor perks pretty much since it released. Running a full set of meta perks can significantly improve a survivor's chance of escape whether they are playing solo or SWF.
You're not wrong, there are other great perk options for survivors (Alert and Leader are both known to be pretty good, while Inner Strength, Saboteur, and We'll Make It actually do see a decent amount of use). However, running these perks means trading out one of the meta perks, which is an opportunity cost many survivors don't seem interested in paying.
At higher levels of play, most skilled survivors would rather use builds that will help them in chase (or to recover from being beaten in one, like with DS or Unbreakable). Dance With Me sometimes appears as part of a Lithe Combo for this purpose, but few of the other perks on your list have real application in chase. These survivors aren't usually very interested in creating builds that orient much around stealth, healing, gens, or other cheeky things. If everyone is set up to be able to lead the killer on a lengthy chase and keep them distracted, then the time you need for other things matters a lot less.
There are plenty of perks that are entertaining to use and that some players will run just for fun (Aftercare, Autodidact, Diversion, Mettle of Man, Plunderer's Instinct, Stake Out, etc). But some players just really want to win, so they will aim to use the tools available that will consistently give them the best chance at that.
And a lot of the perks on your list are not considered strong by most survivors; at least not strong enough to win a perk slot over other perks. A few examples:
-Pharmacy: Med-kits are basically the most common item in the game. This perk only guarantees the green med-kit which allows you to have a single tremendously fast heal. It is mostly worthless after that single chest search, as you only shave 4.5 seconds off the normal 10-second search time at Pharmacy's highest tier. Plunderer's highlights chest auras for you and gives you a significantly better chance to get rare items in EVERY chest you search. It's a Universal (Non-Teachable) Perk that beats out Pharmacy.
-Distortion: You only get three tokens and they are easily spent with no way to get more. The main aura reading a survivor will want to be countering is from BBQ & Chili, which lockers can handle just fine. It fails to counter many of the other popular tracking perks available to killer (Whispers, Discordance, Thrilling Tremors, etc). It's a perk that looks good on paper, but is actually very underwhelming in practice.
-For the People: A one-state instaheal, but also a health trade. If a healthy survivor insta-heals a survivor from dying state, killer can now go for either of the two injured survivors in front of them (possibly even snowball early by downing both). It's another one of those perks which fits in the "fun to run" category, but it is not actually a very effective play unless you've got Mettle of Man or Dead Hard ready to go.
Not hard, just not good
This whole post was about saying all these strong perks for survs, I do kind of agree killer perks arent very strong though.
Plague is literally the least played killer in the game and also yes, perks shouldnt just give immense value every game.
You guys seem to misunderstand the purpose of this post, its to call out survivors who say all survivor perks except the common ones are bad. It is also to give survivors examples of all these perks and potential perk builds, instead of running the same perks every game as survivor. It doesnt have to be the same stealth claudette builds or the same chase second chance builds every game. Maybe those builds are better but there are more builds to use
I don't agree with all your inclusions. But there are a lot of solid perks that people don't use. Detective's Hunch is extremely underrated. Alert is also a solid choice. Botany, Inner Strength, and Leader are all great as well.
I can see why people dont like a few of these things such as saboteur, distortion and maybe soul guard.
How are pharmacy, leader, or saboteur good? Seems to me like you havent tried them at all and thought they sounded good on paper. Those perks are not good at all in actual gameplay. Leader doesn't even apply to gens so exactly how is is a second pt? Saboteur is only worth in a swf with breakout, and pharmacy is a one time use perk that doesn't even give anything good. Please actually use the perks that you think sound good on paper.
Pharmacy is good in specific builds, and leader applies to everything that isnt gen, while prove thyself is gens, doing things good id fast, I already said saboteur is situational for myself
That's fair, but the other two...not useful at all.
Soul Guards going to become meta. Imagine 4 survivors running on coms. 2 running bt, 4 with soul guard and 2 for the people, 2 running unbreakable, 4 running decisive strike. You could also switch out 1 unbreakable for OoO. This team would be a serious pain in tge ass
Original- not difficult to come up with
Effective- not so much
There are many underrated perks that can be fun and useful to use. They are just over shadowed by DS, Adren, BT, Unbreakable because 2nd chance perks are so powerful. To mess around I like running spinechill with q&q+head on and urban evs. It's actually surprising how many red killers I mess with using q&q. It's like the killer is saying "I didn't hear him vault that window so he must have doubled back.......where the hell did he go? Did he slow vault that window? Unless he's using q&q but nobody uses that at this rank"
I tend to use pharmacy to farm green medkits so I don't have to bring IS.
Sometime's I like having alert for more knowledge on where the killer is. I'll bring autodidact to heal people quickly. When I SWF we have one person who is a pretty good looper but he has a terrible habit of running to us on a gen and the killer ends up breaking chase to come after us. For that reason I sometimes run bond so I can see him coming and I can get the hell out.
It's not hard to make original builds but it is hard to make original builds that are on par with the meta builds.
Your right that Alert can be useful in a match but will it be as useful as Dead Hard?
Meta perks primary purpose is to counter the killers strongest tactics. The tactics that win games actually.
tunneled? DS
slugged? Unbreakable
camped? Borrowed Time
good loop play (or you messed up) Dead Hard
bonus: Stealth killer? Spine chill
Thats why they’re meta, that’s why they work.
As a side note to inner strength this perk will never become common at red ranks. Ironically the more meta the perk gets the weaker it becomes (one person running IS gets up to five uses, all 4 survivors running IS get up to two uses on a single person).
I love the perk and hopefully people keep sleeping on it so I can keep it all to myself >:D
Plague isn’t the least played, I see way less clowns, trappers, pigs, and have never seen a demo dog outside of his release.
the reason that ppl run the "meta" is only for themselves...
All of the strong perks are a bit selfish (or is it just me)
So while it isn't hard to come up with a build... but I imagine there're players who would flame a teammate for not running the "meta"
Because any game that has a competitive environment will eventually earn staple meta things that are normally required to be successful. TCG, Board Games, Video Games, ETC.
Magic the Gathering is a huge example of this. It's been around for so long and majority of decks that are top tier all have similar cards or share cards because those cards give an advantage over other ones.
So when you ask people why they Run X perk that's over Y perk, but it's not meta. It's simply because it gives a stronger advantage over another perk.
At the very least, when kill rates were revealed, plague had the lowest kill rate, though people also really dont play demo, but I do see alot of people who play clown, pig and trapper because of the clown fandom that surrounds him, people play trapper because otz and ill give you that pig is uncommon but thats because shes super boring.
I would also add tenacity and diversion. Tenacity is super underrated, and having the ability to position yourself while slugged is amazing. Diversion also allows you to get heals or savesthat you wouldn't usually be able to get.
Well some perks are stronger than others, so that is why many will always use DS, BT, Bond etc.
But everyone can play around with diffrent builds for fun, and sometimes they can work better than any meta build it depends on how the game goes. Here is a fun build I used recently:
Sprint Burst, Fixated, Urban evasion, Tenacity (Run fast, walk fast, crouch fast, crawl fast) 😀