A list of killer perks and why they're badly designed
I will be excluding all of the meta nonsense, (NOED, PGTW), since that deserves its own post.
Unnerving Presence - Survivors in your terror radius have their skill check trigger chance increased by 10% and skill check size reduced by 60%.
This perk is great against survivors that can't hit skillchecks. If they can, you are actively helping them. So in pretty much all games this perk will only serve to hinder you. It also wasn't changed despite relying on the inconsistency of skill checks, but Ruin was.
This perk is too weak.
Predator - Survivor scratch marks spawn "considerably" closer together.
The effect actually makes it harder to track survivors since it has a hidden nerf of not spawning survivor scratch marks on walls anymore. Meaning you have to keep your eyes glued to the ground if you want to track people.
This perk is counter productive.
Bloodhound - Survivor blood stains glow brightly and stay for 4 more seconds.
Although useful in certain situations if you happen to lose a survivor, the tracking benefit from this perk is very minor. Often times survivor blood will be obscured by grass or other obstacles in most maps, making it useless.
This perk is too weak.
Thanatophobia - For each injured survivor, repairing, healing and sabotage speeds are decreased by 4%.
For some reason sabotaging is still affected even though it now only takes 2.5 seconds or less. But aside from that, the action speed penalty to pathetically low. If everyone is injured, solo gen repairs are extended by a mere 12 seconds. That's assuming that no one helps or heals up. I'm not even going to mention the heal times since they're almost unnoticeable. I really think this perk should only debuff 1 action significantly rather than slightly reduce several.
This perk is too weak.
Dying Light - Your obsession has their healing and unhook speed increased by 33%. Every time you hook non-obsession, all non-obsessions receive a 3% debuff to repairing, healing, and sabotage speeds.
Again with the debuff to sabotage, these perks really need updating. Anyhow, if you've actually managed to hook enough people to get a decent debuff amount you've most likely already won the game. If anything, giving a survivor extra heal speed will hurt you in the long run since they aren't even affected by the debuff.
This perk is too weak.
Hex: The Third Seal - Hitting a survivor with a basic attack will inflict them with blindness for as long as this totem is standing.
A weak effect that's forced into basic hits for some reason. SWF completely negate the effect and merely competent teams won't struggle with it. There's plenty of other Hexes that are stronger than this. And on top of that, if anyone is running Soul Guard you've basically given them permanent unbreakable.
This perk is too weak.
Overwhelming Presence - Survivors within your terror radius have their item consumption rates increased by 100%.
Even before the changes to med-kits and toolboxes this perk was bad. Now it's borderline useless. At best it soft-counters flashlight blinds at pallets. But little beyond that. Just use Franklin's instead.
This perk is too weak.
Beast of Prey - Your actions in the hunting category earn you 50% more bloodpoints. After getting bloodlust, you lose your red stain and receive the undetectable status effect until you lose bloodlust.
Apart from farming builds, there's no reason to run this perk. Survivors in a chase still hear chase music. Despite not being in your terror radius. And removing your red stain would be useful if moon walking to hide it wasn't already a strategy in the game.
This perk is far too weak.
Territorial Imperative - Survivors that enter the basement while you are at least 32 meters will have their aura revealed to you for 3 seconds. This triggers a 20 second cooldown.
This perk can find some use on killers that can quickly reach the basement. But is very useless on anyone else. It also has a cooldown 20 for some reason. Because knowing when people enter the basement in less than 20 second intervals is too much I guess.
This perk is too weak.
Hex: Huntress Lullaby - After hooking a survivor, gain a token, up to 5. Each token decreases the time between a skillcheck alert is heard before appearing, with skillchecks not making any noise at 5 tokens. Failed skillchecks regress 6% more.
Oh look, another perk that relies on survivors getting skillchecks that was not changed after Ruin's nerf. Except that this one can be permanently removed from the game. The most this perk can do is waste survivors time if they go searching for it. Since keeping it up can have little to no effect on survivors if they know how to hit skillchecks.
This perk is too weak and should not be a hex.
Fire Up - For every completed generator, gain a 4% increase to breaking, vaulting, and picking up and dropping survivors.
The numbers are simply too small. By the time you have a decent buff either most, or all of the generators will be done. Rendering the effect not nearly has good as stopping the gens from being done in the first place.
This perk is too weak.
Remember Me - Every time you hit the obsession with a basic attack, the exit gates must be opened by an extra 4 seconds. Up to 16 seconds. The obsession is not affected by the extra time.
Before this perk got it's max duration slice in half it was decent. Now it's worthless. Catching someone at a gate and chasing them often just leads to other survivors coming to open the gate while you chase them. The devs didn't even bother to remove the obsession completely ignoring its effects. Just run Bloodwarden instead.
This perk is too situational and too weak.
Hangman's Trick - Get a notification when a survivor starts sabotaging a hook. While carrying a survivor, you see the auras of any other survivors within 6 meters of a hook.
The former effect is useless since sabotaging has a distinct animation and is so quick. You'll only find it in use if someone starts sabotaging a hook early that's also out of sight as you go towards it. The latter effect used to be actually useful in the ptb. But like all good things in this game, it got nerfed for no reason.
This perk is too weak.
Coulrophobia - Survivors within your terror radius heal 50% slower.
This perk can be very useful if you're snowballing by downing survivors and they're trying to get themselves back up. But often times survivors will instinctively split up after seeing the debuff. Which is what they should be doing anyway. It's better to run Nurses and ambush people healing than encourage them to safely heal away from you.
This perk is too situational.
Mad Grit - You suffer no cooldown from missed attacks while carrying a survivor. Successful attacks pause a carried survivors wiggle timer by 4 seconds.
Highly situational. It can turn a 4 man suicide squad into a makeshift morgue. Or it can never come into effect a single time in an entire game. It's often the latter.
This perk is too situational.
Iron Maiden - You interact with lockers 50% faster. Survivors that exit lockers are exposed for 15 seconds and reveal their location.
On Huntress and Doctor this perk is amazing. On anyone else it's a soft counter to Head On. But if either are not involved in a game, this perk has no use.
This perk is too situational.
I'm All Ears - After a survivor performs a rushed action within 48 meters of you, you see their aura for 6 seconds. After this a 40 second cooldown starts.
A very useful perk that all killers can benefit from. But for some reason it has a cooldown of 40 whole seconds! That's just 20 seconds less than MYC which allows you to insta-down people. Wallhacks for 6 seconds is not worthy of a 40 second cooldown. It needs to be shorter.
This perk has an unnecessarily long cooldown.
Thrilling Tremors - After picking up a survivor, all generators not being repaired will be shown with a white aura and blocked for 16 seconds. After this a 60 second cooldown starts.
Same problem as before. A good perk, but its cooldown is absurdly long. Cutting it down to 30-40 seconds is more than reasonable.
This perk has an unnecessarily long cooldown.
Furtive Chase - Each time your obsession is hooked, gain a token, up to 4. Each token decreases your terror radius while in a chase by 4 meters. If your obsession is saved from a hook, the rescuer becomes your obsession.
The gimmick of switching around the obsession each unhook is neat, but the perk's former effect is pathetic. Why would you ever need a smaller terror radius when you're already in a chase? It also removes all of your tokens when your obsession dies, for some reason.
This perk is far too weak.
Surge - After downing a survivor with a basic attack, all non-regressing generators within 32 meters will lose 8% progress and start regressing. Doing this starts a 40 second cooldown.
You know PGTW? You know how all you need to do is hook someone then kick a gen? How would you like to regress 1/3 of the progress of that but only on basic attacks every 40 seconds? This perk has far too many requirements to be useful and too little benefit when it works.
This perk is too situational and too weak.
Mindbreaker - Survivors repairing generators under 50% are exhausted for as long as they repair and 3 seconds after they stop.
Man, it's a good thing gens take so long to complete or this perk would be even more useless than it is. Gens don't take long to complete and exhausting survivors for 3 seconds is extremely weak.
This perk is pathetically weak.
Cruel Confinement Limits - Whenever a generator is completed, all windows within a 24 meter radius are blocked for 30 seconds.
A laughably weak effect that is both highly situational and unlikely to ever be useful in the first place. It should trigger based on the killer's location, not the gen's, and also block pallets. And they should change the name back, it was honestly way better.
This perk is the worst killer perk in the game. Sacrificial Shrine has got nothing on this.
Zashin Tactics - You see the auras of pallets, windows and breakable walls within a 24 meter range. Injuring a survivor puts this perk on cooldown for 30 seconds.
Another decent perk that has a cooldown for no fathomable reason. It can't even be used for mind games most of the time since the cooldown is triggered not by breaking a pallet or vaulting a window, but by hitting a survivor. It's asinine.
This perk has an unnecessary cooldown.
Blood Echo - After hooking a survivor, all injured survivors will bleed more often until healed, and become exhausted for 45 seconds. Triggering this effect starts a 60 second cooldown.
This perk has far too many requirements. Injure people, down someone else, hook them, then chase the people who you injured earlier. Oh, and don't do this again within 60 seconds. Out of all the cooldown perks in the game, this one is by far the most arbitrary.
This perk has an unnecessary cooldown.
Gearhead - After hitting a survivor 2 times with a basic attack, any survivor that gets a good skill check while completing a generator in the next 30 seconds will have it highlighted in yellow.
Basic attack? Check. Relies on skillchecks? Check. Has an absurd activation requirement? Check. All it needs is a cooldown and I'll have won perk design bingo. Can you even believe this perk was nerfed from the ptb?
This perk is absolutely. Undoubtedly. Pathetic.
Dead Man's Switch - After hooking your obsession, any survivor who stops working on a generator within the next 45 seconds will have it blocked for the remaining duration. Blocked generators have their auras turn white.
Super situational and killer dependent. Freddy and potentially Demo get easy value from this by teleporting right to gens. Everyone else has to travel to gens manually or use their power for extra distance. And if that distance is across the map and you have no mobility the perk loses all value.
This perk is too weak and situational.
Hex: Retribution - Any survivor that cleanses a dull totem will become oblivious for 45 seconds. If a hex totem is cleansed, including this one, all survivors are revealed for 10 seconds.
If the perk told you whenever a dull totem was cleansed it might be useful. But using this on its own, especially without Haunted Grounds, is not advised. The aura reading is neat but too limited to take up and entire perk slot when there are plenty of alternatives that aren't permanently removed from the game.
This perk is too weak.
Forced Penance - Whenever a survivor takes a protection hit, they become broken for 60 seconds.
Useless incarnate. If you chase the broken survivor, then making them broken only stops them from popping styptic agents and nothing more. If you chase the survivor that was protected, then the other survivor will just do gens until the timer runs out and then heal. There is no reason, on any killer, to run this perk.
This perk is too weak and too situational not useful in any situation.
Trail of Torment - After kicking a generator, you are undetectable for the next 16 seconds. During this time the generator is highlighted yellow for all survivors and starts a 60 second cooldown.
Oxymoron, the perk. No other stealth perk in the game tells survivors that you are using it except this one. Maybe it's because doing so would completely negate the point of using a S T E A L T H perk? Nah. The survivors wouldn't know what was going on.
This perk is astoundingly weak and should not be run instead of Dark Devotion, Tinkerer, every other stealth perk in the game.
Comments
@NuclearBurrito
Here are the results from my last 3 games. All of which had at least 1 person DC during them.
Game 1: Deathslinger - Shelter Woods - 1 Heal
Game 2: Freddy - Crotus Asylum - 2 Heals
Game 3: Huntress - Badham Pre-School - 4 Heals
Forced penance is fairly decent on legion IMO, I have gotten quite a lot of people broken with it due to how easy it is to hit them. Though, it may be a waste of a perk slot due to the fact that they already have an add-on that does the work forced penance does even better.
The pin is just a better version of FP.
Most of the perks you named here don't deserve a Nerf or buff because they're already powerful enough to work with other perks as it is. The game is supposed to be equally challenging for both sides and I play both sides. Fire up, remember me, and bloodhound don't need a Nerf and neither does zenshin tactics. But perks that could use a buff are thrilling tremors, trail of torment, and dead man's switch
I don't understand why iron maiden is even up there. The two killers you mentioned don't even benefit from it but bubba,Billy and nurse all do benefit from iron maiden. It's meta on nurse. At least I see good nurses with this perk all the time. The other two have it as a good filler perk. I personally run iron maiden on all three of these killers.
Yeas these perks ars bad on there own but perks like overwhelming presence and huntress lullaby synergize with other perks and can make some of the best builds
This post wasn't about buffing or nefing perks. But about why certain perks are designed poorly.
I scarcely mentioned how to change them except if the change was obvious.
There is not a single viable build in the game that includes the perks you just mentioned.
They're awful and their uses range from niche, to completely useless.
You must be new.
IM cuts down on Huntress's reload time by half. This also stacks with her reloading add-on, allowing her to reload in less than a second.
A common tactic against Doctor is to hide in lockers when he begins charging his static blast. But IM reveals the survivor after they exit the locker, giving the Doctor more map knowledge and making it harder to avoid him.
Saying stuff like "it's meta on Nurse" kind of gives away your inexperience with the game.
You'd think that be high priority wouldn't it?
Or at the very least on the back burner as new content is added. But it seems that most perks are just left untouched despite how badly they are designed.
Legion can force that perk too, since they can force protection hits in frenzy far more often than many realize. : D
Legion can force the proc but doesn't get as much value out of it compared the other Killers I listed.
He doesn't synergize with anti-heal since his power gets max value on healthy Survivors. So you want anti-injured perks not anti-healing perks.
Stopping for a few seconds during a chase is not even close to hard my guy. This perk is awful. It should make it so survivors cant lose exhaustion while working in gens. That would make it incredible. They would have to wait for exhaustion to come back which would signifcantly slow down the game and since they are not likely to do it they will not have their perk which is likely to make chasing them much easier. Either way the killer wins
Iron maiden is terrible on huntress and I don't see why it's good on doctor. But my point still stands that it's good on nurse bubba and Billy. Why call me inexperienced? I have over 3k hours on the game. I just have a different opinion about iron maiden and actually most of the perks you put on hear I don't agree with but I'll leave that for later. Saying it's good on huntress is proof that you're inexperienced.
I find it very hard to believe you when say you have 3K hours and yet don't find IM useful on Huntress.
Tell me, what part of cutting her reload time from 4 seconds to only 2 is bad? The other effects of IM are completely negligible compared to this huge upside. And as I said, even stacks with her reloading add-on. Allowing you to fully reload in only 1 second!
Once survivors realise you have the perk they instinctively avoid lockers. With Nurse or Bubba, this means that after a free down or two smart survivors will not enter lockers and the perk will become useless. That's why I put it on the list to begin with.
I'm curious as to what other opinions you have on the perks in this list.
While Legion can indeed triggered more you will still get far more value out of using the Legion pin and you ever will that perk.
You have an add on that does what iron maiden does already. It's a waste of a perk slot. On nurse they can't locker juke which is the best and most safe way of not getting hit. Iron maiden completely throws that out the window. Which is a blessing. Billy is the same thing you can't locker juke so you just die instead of taking an M1.
IMO iron maiden on huntress seems pointless because unless you're not very good or are reloading a lot for some reason than it's just better to have the deerskin gloves and have let's say monitor. Point is it's not worth the perk slot on huntress.
I have read everything, and yep, these perks definetly need a buff. It's a shame there is only few viable perks for killers. It would be more fun if we had more choice
I agree with pretty much everything here, aside from the fact I'd still run surge and thrilling even with the cooldown
That would be interesting from a survivor perspective because it would make each of them a little different if one of there teachables was actually not. Like claud could teach self care and botany but she could not teach empathy.
Hey! You actually did it.
I will say that Thana has the upside (or downside) of being really good on one or two killers in particular so buffing it is... somewhat problematic. Seriously, Legion can make really good use out of Thana. They can get people injured really easily and then Thana tricks the survivors into thinking that healing is a good idea when Legion can peel that health state off them again in a matter of seconds.
Also for Trail of Torment... yes the fact that it announces that you are using it isn't great. However in spite of that...the Survivors don't really know where you are going with it so I've actually been able to use it to fairly good effect. Your point about Tinkerer and Dark Devotion are valid, but ToT is much much nicer about its activation requirements. Just kick a generator. You control it so you won't be getting it mid chase. Gens are almost always easier to find than your obsession. So despite announcing its presence, it is a lot more reliable than the other two.
Yes there is certain perks designed poorly but you practically listed every perk in the game. I admitted that there is a few that need it. But at the same time there is so many that are already good as is because they are designed to work in sync with other perks. No perk is perfect and that's why you have 4 perk slots, balance each perk instead of focusing on the purely bad parts of every perk.
Distressing and infectious fright work perfectly together, so does overwhelming presence and distressing. Distressing and huntress's lullaby. Pretty much any perk that works off large terror radius mixed with distressing is a great 2 piece combo. Just be smart about the perks you select and you won't have the problem of a perks counter measures screwing you over completely. Know what perks are still in cool down and know where to use your perks to your advantage.
Skill check reliant perks really need to go.
Autodidact/huntress lullaby/old ruin, it was so inconsistent and about luck it's just not even useful, the whole part of skill checks needs to be revisited so they actually have some real weight in the game's pace rather than being there for the sake of it.
Also Thanatophobia just doesn't make sense when a survivor is dead but it doesn't count as a debuff anymore, that's just silly, the name implies as much ._.
It's pretty tiring that this game is trying to promote all kinds of builds and playing around with many perks, yet so few of them are even remotely decent to be used, they need to revisit most of them, hopefully soon enough.
That's how we get rid of the meta and people can actually have a fun time, just saying, I hope it happens.