A pass on Exhaustion perks.
Smash Hit
No changes are necessary to Smash Hit.
The best execution of high risk high reward; if you make a successful outplay at a pallet, you get a large reward.
Adrenaline
This perk is also in a good spot, since it's a massive reward in exchange for a stringent requirement (basically requiring you to win outright with just three perks).
That said, it could use a little QOL buff to help make team plays with it in solo queue.
When the last generator reaches 70% progress, Adrenaline gives its user a notification.
When only one generator remains, all players running Adrenaline gain an icon on their portrait visible to all other survivors.
Head On
This perk is, for the most part, completely fine.
I have no issue with its current effects. In fact, I want to expand on them a little bit to make team Head On plays more viable in solo queue.
Once Head On is primed and ready, the locker is indicated in yellow to all survivors.
Balanced Landing
A little bit problematic, but not the worst.
The fact that it's as situational as it is makes it inherently less of a problem than other Exhaustion perks, but the ability for survivors who are near a drop to use it as essentially a version of Sprint Burst that forces the killer to waste a lot of time before the speed boost (ie into a building or around a hill) makes it a pain in the ass.
Increased stagger reduction from 75% to 100%
Only triggers if you hold the Sprint button when you hit the ground
Balanced Landing duration decreased from 3 seconds to 1.5
If the killer attempts an attack or special attack within the initial effect duration, the speed boost duration is extended to 4 seconds
With this version of the perk, you get greatly reduced value from the perk if you don't use it to bait out an attack.
This means that once the killer knows you have Balanced Landing (so long as he remembers it) he can largely mitigate its effects by holding back his urge to swing at you as you land.
In exchange, the perk can now be held (potentially tricking the killer into thinking you don't have it), and it lasts much longer if you can actually pull it off.
Lithe
Essentially the same deal as Balanced Landing, but much less situational and used to simply hold W more often than Balanced Landing, making it a bit of a problem.
As such, it requires a bit of a more fundamental change.
Press the active ability button to initiate a Lithe Vault while approaching a window.
Lithe vaults are 50% faster than regular vaults and are followed by a shoulder roll that lowers your profile for 1 second.
If you use a Lithe vault to dodge an attack, break into a sprint at 150% your normal speed for 3 seconds.
Causes exhaustion for 60/50/40 seconds.
This basically means that you win close calls at window tiles, and that goes double for projectile killers.
If the killer sees Lithe coming and doesn't attack into it, the reward for this is mild; simply a vault speed boost.
If they swing into it, you get the current Lithe boost on top of the better vault and automatic projectile ducking.
Sprint Burst
The most basic exhaustion perk in the game.
Very strong, but it has some problems.
- Immobile killers and stealth killers are left with no real recourse against the perk
- Running Sprint Burst makes your initial positioning in a chase virtually irrelevant.
- The bane of solo survivors everywhere is a teammate trying to "save sprint burst" by walking (or worse, crouch walking) across the entire map.
The solution here is pretty simple; low risk, low reward.
Decreased Sprint Burst's effect duration from 3 seconds to 1.5
Decreased Sprint Burst's exhaustion duration from 60/50/40 seconds to 30/25/20 seconds.
With this change, Sprint Burst is now much easier to manage outside of chases, but the effect itself is now weaker (matching the effect of a post-hit speed boost).
It can still make up for minor lapses in positioning, but not nearly as much as the old SB.
In exchange, you can more or less rely on the perk always being available for use.
There's a bit of opportunity cost for using SB instead of a perk that gives more distance, but the low exhaustion timer and ease of use are great.
Dead hard
The most problematic exhaustion perk.
Have you found yourself in a situation where:
- You misjudged distance to a pallet/window?
- You tried to transition to a tile out of reach?
- You flat-out got outplayed at a tile?
- You got dead-ended by somebody like Trapper?
Press E and you're good. Get to that pallet, buy yourself an extra 30 seconds or so of chase.
3+ times per game. Per person. On potentially four people.
Yes, certain bad players (and bugs) can make it seem like this perk has counterplay, but when used (and functioning) properly is just doesn't.
This perk needs a full rework. The current version is not only bad by design, but is something the devs have clearly proved incapable of making work on the back end.
Vault over a pallet into a stunned killer to kick them into the face, extending their stun for an additional 2 seconds.
For 8 seconds afterward, your blood, scratches, and moans of pain are hidden from the killer.
Causes exhaustion for 60/50/40 seconds.
Similar to Smash Hit, but with some key differences.
Using Smash Hit will grant you an insane amount of distance, but doesn't necessarily cause the chase to stop.
Reworked Dead Hard doesn't give you that much in the way of distance, but is excellent for dropping chase, as using it places you behind the killer, gives you a head start, and removes all of their means of tracking you.
Comments
Perks don't need to have counters, but they do need weaknesses or counterplay if they're sufficiently powerful.
This goes double for survivor perks that potentially give them extra chances, since there are 4x the number of survivor perks in a match.
Balanced Landing at least requires some very specific terrain to do its job (not a valid weakness on a lot of maps, though).
Lithe and Dead Hard have no such drawbacks, while SB's "weakness" is so easy to work around that it just doesn't matter.
So many survivor perks counter killer perks, but the second a survivor perk doesn't have a counter..."perks aren't designed to have counters".
Seems legit.
Except many of them are, and by design.
Sit down.
Don't be obtuse and disingenuous. Most survivor perks aren't made to counter another perk. They may counter abilities that may also counter a perk but it's very rare that one perk is made specifically to counter another perk.
Iron will was literally just changed to counter Stridor. It was the entire purpose of the change. WDYM.
No it wasn't. It was changed to nerf Spirit. If Spirit didn't exist, Stridor would never have been nerfed.