How to buff some killer perks to work even against SWF, so options other than Hex: Undying matter.
So there's been some people who unironically think Hex: Undying should get nerfed because it's a killer perk that actually functions. In a game where all 4 survivors can bring any stacked amounts of Adrenaline, DS, UB, DH, BT etc - for one, it's totally backwards to be focusing on nerfing 1 killer perk that finally adds some consistency and is worth the slot it's in before looking at that. Two, if anything, it's an opportunity to breath some life into other killer perks to provide real options and alternatives instead. The fact every killer feels the need to bring Undying and Ruin because it actually works is more indicative that every other combination is weaker or lacks synergy to provide enough impact to be worth it.
Let's take for example, Enduring and Spirit Fury. This is half your perk build as a killer, and it can be completely negated from ever working by...survivors throwing a pallet half a second earlier than normal. With SWF, all that happens is the second 1 survivor sees enduring, they assume you have spirit fury, and magically, survivors you never even chased once in the match are all throwing pallets early the entire match.
The fact this "workaround" to half a killer's perk build is so laughably easy to adjust, and so easily undermined by someone saying 1 sentence in discord, is cringe. The fact this was never addressed but people actually complain about Hex: Undying, for example is ridiculous.
Here's an easy change - make it so Spirit Fury also allows you to basic attack pallets to destroy them when it's charged up. This divorces it from Enduring being necessary to make the perk work. This also removes SWF being able to instantly counter the perk for free the entire game once they have any sign it could exist. It provides synergy with Brutal Strength as an option instead of Enduring for killer players who like to respect pallets and want to chew threw pallets during chases, but also still works with Enduring because it still works like it does currently, on top of being able to smash Pallets.
Boom. SWF can call it out all they want, it doesn't prevent the Killer player from being able to utilize the perk.
Another example is modernizing status ailments and hexes to do more than they do. For instance, Blind. There are a few ways to inflict Blind, on top of using Hex: The Third Seal - but while sometimes it can provide value, generally Blind is not super difficult to work around, especially for SWF who have map knowledge, who can just tell each other where to go for an unhook or help. A good way to buff Blind while also keeping it relevant to what Blind should do, is make the status ailment delete the Red Stain while you are afflicted. You will still hear terror radius, but a vital piece of information you use your vision to rely on during loops is removed, because you are BLIND. This provides the status ailment some anti-loop benefits, which give it value beyond things easily reported otherwise by voice chat. Again, this prevents the ailment from being entirely useless against SWF, while giving it more of a place as a valuable status ailment.
When it comes to Hex: The Third Seal, you could easily rework the Hex to inflict a timed amount of blind per rank, and at max rank, it blinds you indefinitely until you break the totem. This removes it having token requirements, and allows a second option other than Ruin to be combined with Hex: Undying - providing another potential build path other than just gen regression. Changes like this, paired with some buffs to the status ailment above, could provide enough offered advantage to be a realistic build option.
A large amount of the reason Hex: Undying is constantly paired with Ruin, is because almost every other Hex uses a token system, and all the value of it being cleansed is immediately lost anyways, even if it transferred and reset. Since several of them rely on hooks for tokens, you also reach situations where it's impossible to charge back up meaningfully even after the reset.
Anyways, my point here is that instead of the rush to immediately destroy any killer perk that actually functions, consider the following: buff other killer perks to reasonable levels so that there are more options instead of just one.
Also, the fact Hex: Undying and Ruin are so constantly used are clearly indicative that there isn't enough baseline time in a game, mechanic wise, for most Killers to do their job. If there were more objectives to consider other than generators, or baseline generator times/repair speeds were looked at appropriately, then I don't think anyone would consider nerfing perks related to regression that big a deal.
If a build needs to consist of Hex: Undying, Ruin, Tinkerer, and Discordance, meaning 100% of your build is simply generator regression and info regarding which generators to go regress, then that should be a glaring red light at what the underlying problem is.
Fix that underlying problem and buff other options for Killer perks, and the meta gets a lot less stale.
Comments
The only buff killer needs against SWF is a knowledge they are facing one&being able not to a play against it/adjust their playstyle accordingly.
Argument about "friends having fun" won't work as they can always have fun in KYF where they won't ruin any games for random people, but as long as they are, other people should be given a choice not to play nightmare mode.
I disagree. I don't think the large variety of interesting perks that could be buffed to be mostly SWF proof shouldn't be, just because you could know whether or not the people you play against are premade. It's better in the long run if most killer options could be reasonably tweaked to provide benefits not entirely undermined by voice chat existing.
So no, I think plenty of killer perks could be revised to be resilient to SWF influence. That alone lessens the impact of SWF if you can rely on your perks through playing well, instead of having most of your build trivialized by a little bit of coordination and people revealing your build choices to each other.
That requires too much work& doesn't address the main problem anyway, as buffing perks&else wouldn't fix the fact that SWF can freely exchange information and coordinate themselves.
I'm not even talking about how buffing perks&powers would make solos even more unplayable.
The only thing that could be done to address SWF problem - allow killers to know if they are facing one so they can avoid negative experience of playing against legally cheating survivors. That's it. Any other solution would result in turning solo queues into hell.
How is solo more "unplayable" if killer perks function better regardless of SWF or solo player are against it? Changes that make it good regardless of SWF influence have no impact if you are solo, because you aren't receiving any SWF benefit anyways, other than you would need to adapt to a buff that makes a killer perk good.
The fact you think a killer perk being good and swf resistant makes solo games "unplayable" shows you're probably a mediocre survivor to begin with. Especially when it's perks that currently don't see a lot of play to begin with.
I play solo survivor a tremendous amount of time and have zero trouble reaching red ranks every reset at survivor. Solo play isn't even difficult. None of the eye-rolling experiences that happen in solo play are because of killer perks being functional, it's almost all because of poor mentality and game sense from strangers. None of the potential buffs I mentioned are so drastic it would "imbalance" solo play, it would be a buff that prevents SWF degeneracy from negating it existing in the game.
This "muh solo play" cope is unreal, it doesn't even exist as an argument.