Killer Perks Rework (4000+ Words)
I was bored one day, so I decided to write 13K words on how I would change a bunch of lesser used survivor and killer perks. I have also included very slight nerfs to some killer and survivor perks that I feel have some room for abuse. Please leave any feedback you have in the comments.
All references to how often a perk is used do not include those wanting to complete adept challenges or Archive challenges. Buffs to all perks below are for perks that I feel are underwhelming for what they provide and are based off of my own personal experience. I attempted to write "Adds an effect:", Modifies a condition/effect:", or "Rework:" for each buff/nerf to help clarify whether or not I am suggesting a complete change or just an additional effect. I hope this is useful in providing insight or ideas. If an idea says "Alternative:", then I am suggesting an alternative to the idea before it and not necessarily after it. THIS IS ONLY KILLER PERKS BECAUSE OF THE CHARACTER LIMIT ON THE FORUM.
Killer Perks
Barbecue & Chilli - Modifies an effect: Barbecue & Chilli only reveals the auras of healthy or dying survivors.
- Justification: Barbecue & Chilli is extremely popular only due to the presence of the blood point bonus. Since most players use this perk, it should not be so reliable for both bloodpoints and tracking. By preventing injured survivors from being revealed, killers have no reliable way to focus on an injured survivor for an easy down after hooking and will most likely focus on the healthy survivors in the trial.
Beast of Prey - Modifies an effect: The undetectable status effect remains for 8 seconds after losing bloodlust.
- Justification: Beast of Prey is already never used since competent killers can end a chase easily after Bloodlust 1. Combined with Knock Out and my suggested change, this perk could allow the killer to easily sneak up on survivors outside of 16 meters in specific scenarios. This would give killers a larger potential in making a comeback after an extended chase.
Bitter Murmur - Adds an effect: If you are within 16 meters of the fully completed generator at the time of finishing, the aura of the survivors are revealed for double the duration.
- Justification: Bitter Murmur is uncommonly used in general and only some Huntresses would use it. In the situation of doubling the aura reading, killers would be able to easily track where survivors go as they pick one of the generator repairers.
Blood Echo - Adds an effect: Hooking another survivor while Blood Echo is still on cooldown will completely reset the cooldown without activating it.
- Justification: Blood Echo already has a powerful effect if survivors are injured, but the cooldown heavily limits the usage of the perk. In the rare scenarios where the killer is able to quickly down and hook 2 survivors within 60 seconds, they’ll be rewarded with a Blood Echo.
Blood Warden - Adds an effect: Hooking another survivor while Blood Warden is already active extends the duration by 10 seconds. Stacks for each survivor hooked after as long as Blood Warden is active.
- Justification: Blood Warden is rare normally because survivors will just leave the gate at 99% instead of opening it. But for the scenarios that survivors open the gate too early, killers able to capitalize on the numerous mistakes from the survivors should be able to get more than a flat 60 second reward.
Bloodhound - Adds an effect: Stepping on a blood pool that would soon completely disappear in less than 2 seconds will grant a 7% Haste status effect for 5 seconds. Does not work during a chase.
- Justification: Bloodhound is generally not used at all because it provides no benefit that a regular eye can’t do. However, a killer could benefit from a short Haste status effect to catch up on a distant bleeding survivor without providing an overpowered boost.
Brutal Strength - Adds an effect: Kicking a generator will cause the generator to regress at a rate of 120% of the normal rate.
- Justification: Brutal Strength is generally seen as inferior to Enduring because of the time saved from getting stunning by and breaking a pallet. Even though Brutal Strength does apply a speed boost for kicking generators and breakable walls, there’s still this certain preference of Enduring over Brutal Strength. Therefore, by allowing Brutal Strength to increase the regression rate of generators by a minor amount, it’ll be as good as, if not better than, Enduring.
Coulrophobia - Adds an effect: Survivors within the inner 12 meters of your terror radius experience a 50/60/70% penalty to healing speed.
- Justification: Coulrophobia is generally limited to anti-healing builds but is only a constant rate regardless of distance. This suggestion would allow this perk to shut down greedy survivors healing in close proximity to the killer.
Coup de Grâce - Adds an effect: If 2 generators are completed within 6/7/8 seconds of each other, gain an additional token.
- Justification: Gaining an additional token for this perk for generators being completed in rapid succession would help the killer in stopping the survivors’ momentum. Considering the initial nerf to the range of the perk, it should at least be more useful against effective SWF groups.
Cruel Limits - Modifies an effect: Increases the range of Cruel Limits to 40 meters. Adds an effect: Generators can now be blocked by this perk for half the original duration.
- Justification: Cruel Limits’ only application is to ensure an easy first hit when a generator has been recently completed nearby while also not able to counter pallets. Allowing this perk to stop nearby rapid generator completion would allow the killer the chance to regain his momentum.
Dead Man's Switch - Modifies an effect: Increases the activation time of Dead Man’s Switch to 50/55/60 seconds.
- Justification: Dead Man’s Switch is normally not highly reliable since it requires an Obsession to be hooked and the killer has to manually push survivors off. By extending the timer for which generators can be blocked, the killer has more time to apply proper pressure to get generators blocked for the specific occasions that the Obsession is hooked.
Deathbound - Adds an effect: Each time Deathbound activates for a specific survivor, the duration of Deathbound for their next Deathbound activation increases by 10 seconds.
- Justification: Deathbound could be slightly tweaked to make it better since it already has a lot of existing synergy with other perks like Discordance and Coulrophobia. By increasing the Deathbound timer per number of prior activations, the more the killer forces the survivors to heal outside of 32 meters, the longer they are forced to stay together thus giving more potential for killer pressure.
Deerstalker - Adds an effect: Reveals the aura of mending survivors with the deep-wound effect while within a 16/20/24 meter radius.
- Justification: Deerstalker is obviously a perk for killers whose often slug survivors, but Barbecue & Chilli can do a better job of that in the specific scenarios. By adding in an effect similar to Nurse’s Calling but with shorter range and for mending survivors, there’s more potential for synergy with specific killers who can apply the Deep Wounds status effect. Furthermore, this buff will punish survivors for mending within a close proximity to the killer.
Distressing - Adds an effect: Survivors who leave the terror radius experience a lingering terror radius for 3/4/5 seconds. The effects of other perks based on terror radius can stack with the lingering terror radius.
- Justification: Distressing is solely used in terror radius builds and has absolutely no usage outside of builds. By having a lingering effect, Distressing can synergize with more killer perks and still have a role for casual survivors.
Dragon's Grip - Modifies a cooldown: Reduce the cooldown of Dragon’s Grip from 120/100/80 to 100/80/60 seconds. Adds an effect: Kicking a generator while the cooldown is active reduces the cooldown by 5 seconds.
- Justification: Dragon’s Grip was created as a counter to survivors who hide before the killer arrives to kick a generator. However, due to the high and unreducible cooldown of this perk, there is a very low appeal in actually using it, despite its theoretical high benefit. By slightly decreasing the cooldown to match the duration of the exposed effect, there will be more Dragon’s Grip procs and overall more killers who choose to use this perk. Then, adding an effect that allows the killer to reduce the cooldown will also help make the perk feel more powerful.
Dying Light - Removes and modifies an effect: Remove the 33% bonus Obsession action speed for healing other survivors. Increase the unhook action speed bonus to 50%. Increase the effect of each token from 2/2.5/3 % to 2.5/3/3.5 %. Adds an effect: Hooking the Obsession removes one token. The Obsession bleeds out slower.
- Justification: Dying Light had a short surge in popularity after its rework, but now has almost no usage with a few rare occasions. Probably, the reason for this was the lack of appeal for perks that guaranteed a buff for survivors. By removing the more influential and impactful part of the buff to survivors, killers will have less of a disappeal to use this perk. Another factor that has a role is the prerequisite number of hooks before this perk can actually have a meaningful effect, so an increase in effect per token can really help. However, to force the killer to be more mindful and careful and to prevent Dying Light to be too mindless to use, removing a token for an Obsession hook would keep the Obsession slugged.
Forced Penance - Adds an effect: Hitting a healthy survivor taking a protection hit also inflicts the deep wounds status effect requiring 16 seconds to mend by themselves. Forced Penance also inflicts the Hindered status effect on the hit survivor for 5 seconds.
- Justification: Forced Penance is considered a useless perk because it requires a relatively rare condition to occur and the benefits often are negative towards the killer. Forced Penance has a higher chance of occuring in the end game after exit gates are powered since survivors often take protection hits when running to the exit gates. Even if Forced Penance activates in the end game, it does absolutely nothing for the killer. Adding a Hindered status effect for the survivor who took the hit would increase the chance that the killer can catch up and down them. Furthermore, in the early or mid game when Forced Penance somehow does activate, it causes no urgency for the survivor and essentially motivates them to get on a generator because they can’t heal. This is not what the killer wants at all. Adding a mending effect would at least give this perk some benefit during the early to mid-game for the relatively more rare scenario of a survivor taking a protection hit.
Furtive Chase - Modifies a limit: Increase the maximum number of tokens to 3/4/5 from 2/3/4.
- Justification: Furtive Chase is typically used for the purpose of easily switching the Obsession, but the reduced terror radius in chase has little effect either due to the pallets being immediately accessible or just aware survivors. Increasing the number of maximum tokens by one allows for a bigger impact on 32 meter terror radius killers by reducing the radius to 12 meters and an even bigger impact on killers such as Hag who can benefit from a minimum of a 4 meter terror radius while in chase.
Gearhead - Adds an effect: While Gearhead is active, the chances of survivors getting a skill check while on generators is increased by 15%.
- Justification: The applications of Gearhead are heavily limited due to the following conditions: the short window of time where survivors have to hit a good skill check is fairly limited; the relatively restrictive 2 Basic attacks; and the counter where survivors can avoid the perk’s effect by simply hitting a Great skill check. Since the window of effect is already so limited and any adjustments to the 2 Basic hit requirement may not make the intended change, increasing the chances of survivors getting a skill by a set percentage will help make this perk be more useful in general.
Hangman's Trick - Adds an effect: Slows down sabotaging times by 25%. Re-add the respawn timer for sacrificed and sabotaged hooks.
- Justification: Hangman’s Trick is meant to serve as a counter to sabotage squads, but it only gives information and provides nothing more to help the killer actually stop the sabotage. Adding the additional slow down will help the killer interrupt the survivor in the case that someone is sabotaging. Furthermore, adding the effects of the old Hangman’s Trick would be a small but nice plus as a counter to Breakdown and Saboteur, and it would quickly respawn hooks used for a final sacrifice.
Hex: Blood Favor - Modifies a range: Increase Hex: Blood Favor’s range of effect to 32 meters.
- Justification: Hex: Blood Favor is lacking in multiple areas. Firstly, the 16 meters radius is extremely small when the survivor gets the mini-Sprint Burst after being hit. Secondly, the perk does not block nearby windows or dropped pallets, so survivors still have those nearby tools. Thirdly, this perk has a relatively long cooldown for being a Hex perk. Fourthly, this perk requires a Basic Attack, so killers like Pig and Demogorgon get less value. Fifthly, the perk has an effect of only 16 seconds which is quite short considering its short range of effect. Lastly, it’s a Hex perk, so it runs a risk of having no effect for a significant part of the game. In essence, this perk will only have an impact when a survivor camps a pallet and they wait for the killer to hit them before dropping the pallet. By increasing the range of effect, you increase the chance that a survivor will have to rely on windows (or dropped pallets) which allows for synergy with Cruel Limits. Since this perk is still fundamentally a Hex perk, it should have a more powerful effect early game. In essence, this buff would allow the killer an easier chance to gain their initial momentum before losing this Hex perk.
Hex: Huntress Lullaby - Adds an effect: After Hex : Huntress Lullaby has been cleansed, survivors suffer from a 0.2/0.5/0.8 % regression penalty for skill checks per token obtained before Lullaby had been cleansed for the remainder of the trial.
- Justification: Huntress Lullaby is a Hex perk that requires the killer to gain some sort of momentum with hooks before this perk can even become significantly useful. Since this perk requires a bit of work before the survivors are significantly affected, the Hex totem will most likely be cleansed before it becomes a significant factor in a match. Furthermore, this perk might not even significantly affect competent survivors with 5 stacks. By granting a beneficial effect for when Huntress Lullaby gets cleansed, this perk will at least have some effect after the Hex totem is cleansed dependent on the killer’s effectiveness prior to the cleansing.
Hex: No One Escapes Death - Adds a condition: Requires 3 minimum hooks to activate. Modifies an effect: If the killer has gotten 6 hooks by the time exit gates, then increase the movement speed boost to 5/6/7%. If Hex: Undying is active and NOED has no dull totems to replace, then NOED replaces Hex: Undying.
- Justification: NOED has a largely controversial perk. It can’t be argued that NOED can be easily used as a crutch perk on killers who struggle to get even a single hook in the game. Even with the most competent SWF groups, they will often go through 3 hooks before finishing the last generator. Killers who focus solely on a single survivor for an extended period of time without shifting pressure to other survivors do not deserve the rewards of NOED. By also adding a movement speed buff to killers who managed to obtain 6 hooks, NOED will be more rewarding for the killer’s efforts and will help the killer snowball during the endgame. NOED replacing Undying is more of a minor quality of life type buff.
Hex: Retribution - Adds an effect: Survivors who cleanse a dull totem have their aura revealed to the killer for 5 seconds. This effect does not occur after Hex: Retribution is cleansed. Survivors who cleanse any totems after your Hex: Retribution has been cleansed suffer from the Oblivious status effect for 20/25/30 seconds.
- Justification: Hex: Retribution has minimal effect by itself without any synergy. A one-time 10 second aura reveal is not always guaranteed and is not activated always at a good time. By allowing Retribution to affect dull totems for the survivor who cleanse it, the killer may be able to capitalize on their Oblivious status effect. In addition, since Retribution is one of the less impactful Hex perks, it should at least keep some of its original effet after survivors manage to cleanse said totem.
I’m All Ears - Adds an effect: Hitting a survivor with any attack while I’m All Ears is active reduces the cooldown of I’m All Ears by 5 seconds.
- Justification: I’m All Ears is a good perk for killers such as Nurse, Pyramid Head, or even Huntress, but it often gets overshadowed by other perks that provide more significant effects. If this perk got some sort of cooldown reduction for killers who successfully capitalize on the aura revealing, then skillful killers will be more incentivized to use it.
Insidious - Adds an effect: The Undetectable status effect remains active for 1/2/3 seconds after moving. When Undetectable, your terror radius disappears 100% faster. Modifies a condition: Change the required time to stay still from 4/3/2 seconds to 3/2/1 seconds.
- Justification: Insidious is obviously highly ineffective and useless at upper ranks. This perk typically only sees light for basement camping builds, which is ineffective against coordinated teams. By making Insidious activate faster and last for a short duration after moving, Insidious can temporarily hide the killer’s red stain long enough to play a role in mind games at loops in which the killer is not visible. Furthermore, by allowing this perk to cause the killer’s terror radius to disappear faster, there is synergy with different killer powers and different perks.
Iron Grasp - Modifies an effect: Increase the reduction of the effects of any survivor wiggling to 100%.
- Justification: Giving Iron Grasp a simple buff to negate all wiggle effects would help counter Boil Over more, considering the buff I suggested for it earlier. This won’t significantly affect basement builds with Agitation and Mad Grit since the effects of survivor wiggles are not noticeable with this synergy.
Make Your Choice - Adds a condition: If a survivor completes an unhook within 5 seconds of a recent hook, then Make Your Choice also activates.
- Justification: Make Your Choice is completely useless in the scenario of extremely altruistic survivor teams. Survivors may be able to abuse Borrowed Time to have the unhooked survivor take an extra hit with the killer having a useless perk and unable to counter. Since the cooldown associated with the normal activation of Make Your Choice is still the same, then this perk can’t be abused to proc infinite number of Exposed effects.
Mindbreaker - Add an effect: Survivors suffer the Oblivious effect while working on a generator under 50% progress.
- Justification: Mindbreaker normally applies Exhaustion while working on the generator. However, this perk at best will either leave a survivor without an exhaustion perk as they try to finish the generator or will motivate the survivor to leave the generator 5 seconds early to hide before the killer arrives. By granting the Oblivious effect while working on the generator, Mindbreaker will have a greater impact on the game whether that is gen grabs or simply a free hit. The added effect only remains while the generator is under 50% because having the increased possibility of a gen grab for the entire duration of the generator is most likely slightly too strong.
Monstrous Shrine - Rework: Hooking a survivor in the basement grants a token. For each token obtained, all hooks on the map (including the basement hooks) receive the following effects:
- 1/2/3 % faster Entity progression.
- 3/4/5 % increased difficulty on escape attempts.
- 1/2/3 % increased penalty to escape fails.
- 1/1.5/2 % decreased action speed on unhooking survivors and escape attempts.
Survivors in the basement cannot see auras.
- Justification: Monstrous Shrine is undeniably one of the most useless killer perks in the game. Although this rework won’t make Monstrous Shrine top tier, it’ll allow basement builds to have some sort of positive effect for all hooks while also strengthening the basement in general.
Overcharge - Adds an effect: Allows the difficulty of the Overcharge skill check to be modified based on generator kick and regression perks (Pop, Brutal). Overcharge skill checks appear randomly between 0 seconds to 2 seconds after a survivor works on a kicked generator.
- Justification: Overcharge has a major problem. It only works effectively once per survivor (or per team for SWF). If the difficulty of the skill check could be affected by generator kicking perks like Pop or Brutal, then it would open up a lot more synergy between perks. If the timing wasn’t always immediately after touching the generator, then survivors will have to be a lot more focused to succeed the skill check. If this is too powerful for Doctor, then Overcharge can be slightly nerfed to be unaffected by Madness.
Overwhelming Presence - Adds an effect: Survivors in the inner half of your terror radius suffer from a 1% action speed penalty. Survivors in the inner quarter of your terror radius 5% action speed penalty. Survivors in the inner eighth of your terror radius suffer from a 50% action speed penalty.
- Justification: Overwhelming Presence’s job is to really remove consumption items from the game as soon as possible. However, this is completely useless when the perk Franklin’s Demise exists which also has a level of baiting survivors in it. By adding an action speed penalty for when survivors enter a certain interval of the killer’s terror radius, Overwhelming Presence can actually be overwhelming. The intervals are meant to ensure that terror radius builds on killers like Myers and Doctor cannot be abused with this perk. This change would allow the killer to prevent survivors from completing a generator within 4 meters of you after you interrupt them while also being a small penalty to survivors in general.
Predator - Adds an effect: After 4 seconds of losing chase with a survivor, reveal the aura of that survivor for 4 seconds.
- Justification: Predator really is not worth an entire perk slot for the value it brings. Most likely, if you’re already bad at tracking and seeing scratch marks, you probably won’t be able to catch up fast enough without wasting excessive time, even with Predator. By revealing the aura of that said survivor, Predator can help you restart the chase easier after you might have completely lost them.
Remember Me - Modifies an effect: Allows Remember Me to stack up to 6 times up to a maximum of 24 seconds.
- Justification: Remember Me with only 4 maximum stacks promotes one obvious thing: Tunneling the Obsession in order to get maximum stacks. (Two hits from downing the survivor, hook, down again, hook, and remove from game). If the killer tunnels, obviously they won’t get 6 stacks, so this perk would incentivize allowing the Obsession to heal up all in order to delay the exit gate opening.
Territorial Imperative - Adds an effect: While you are in the basement (not including the basement stairs), the aura of all survivors within a 16 meter radius of the basement entrance are revealed and any survivors inside the basement are revealed.
- Justification: Territorial Imperative is never used because it simply only provides situational information that you also most likely won’t be able to capitalize on. This perk won’t even be used in basement builds since it essentially promotes leaving your territory (basement). By allowing this perk to have some effect while you yourself are in the basement, this perk will be able to have some meaningful effect in basement builds. The most obvious application of this buff is for when survivors hide near the basement entrance to wait for the killer to leave.
Thrilling Tremors - Adds an effect: When Thrilling Tremors activates, for each uncompleted generator not blocked, reduce the cooldown of your next Thrilling Tremors activation by 10 seconds.
- Justification: Thrilling Tremors is simply overshadowed by BBQ & Chilli because of the bloodpoint bonus and the ability to use BBQ & Chilli when exit gates are powered. People who use Thrilling Tremor generally complain about how long the cooldown is for it to be actually effective. By allowing this perk to reduce its cooldown more based on survivor pressure, Thrilling Tremors will be able to proc more frequently and give more information to help direct the killer to which generator to go to.
Trail of Torment - Adds an effect: Injuring a survivor while Undetectable reduces the cooldown of Trail of Torment by 10 seconds. Downing a fully healthy survivor while Undetectable reduces the cooldown of Trail of Torment by 20 seconds.
- Justification: Trail of Torment is a gimmicky perk because when it activates, it causes all survivors to be more alert and has a lengthy cooldown regardless of the killer’s success or failure with the perk. To make the perk feel more valuable for when the perk actually works, rewarding the killer with either a 10 or 20 second reduction in cooldown. This perk will also reward any killers who can manage to apply a Expose status effect (power or perk) on the survivor and also catch them off guard with Trail of Torment.
Unnerving Presence - Adds an effect: Survivors within 28 meters of the killer’s terror radius suffer a 20% decrease in the recovery rate of status effects.
- Justification: Unnerving Presence is used exclusively in Doctor terror radius skill check builds. Outside of that, there is almost zero reason to actually use this perk. By granting a 20% status effect recovery penalty while within 28 meters of the killer, it’ll help counter the overall usage and availability of survivor exhaustion perks.
Zanshin Tactics - Modifies condition for cooldown: Change the cooldown to require downing a survivor and increase the cooldown to 50/45/40 seconds. (I wrote this prior to the developer update buff)
- Justification: Zanshin Tactics favors killers who can instantly down survivors while forcing M1 killers to receive no information after their first hit. By adjusting the cooldown to start when a survivor is downed, M1 killers will be able to have this perk help them more often. The slightly increased cooldown is to compensate for the increased benefit of the perk.
Comments
Some of these ideas seem great. Others seem like they don't do enough.
BBQ doesn't need a nerf. It should be good so that killers don't need to feel like they are gimped for bringing it in to make the grind less painful.
Blood Echo: Almost useless buff.
Bloodhound: A great idea!
Distressing: Cool buff.
Dragon's Grip: A good start!
Dying Light: On the whole, you didn't make this perk better, and it's VERY bad.
Forced Penance: Great!
Hex: Retribution: Fantastic!
I'm All Ears: Now meta on Trickster!
Predator: Cool!
Territorial Imperative: Cool idea, but would be an absolute fun killer against basement-dedicated killers. Would cement the need for gen-rushing if you thought someone had it and would be unhealthy for everyone.