Mid-chapter update plans - hot takes

dugman

Broadly speaking I’m behind the upcoming changes, a lot of them sound like good ideas or I’m at least neutral on. So I’m looking forward to it! 🙂

Some hot takes on various things

• The new Prestige system sounds great. I already was Prestiging just for the heck of it, now I can do it and not feel like I’m throwing out all my add-ons. 😄
• 10 seconds extra gen time is pretty significant. As a killer I can’t count the times I’ve had a generator just barely get finished in my face at 80 seconds that, with this new baseline, would still have 10 seconds left to go. I also like to run loadouts a lot of the time with little or no slowdown, so this change is definitely a buff in my favor when I use those. Of course the loadouts that are slowdown heavy won’t be buffed as much or at all because a lot of slowdown perks are being toned down, but at least now I’ll have a bit more of a buffer when I don’t use those combos.
• I never liked using BBQ personally, I didn’t particularly need the bloodpoints and there are other tracking perks I like better. That said from prior and recent polls and various streamers I’ve watched I know BBQ has a decent size set of players who really, really like its aura reading after a hook because of its consistency (you get the auras exactly when you expect and see everybody in a certain range) so I expect this perk will still see some use. Just not as much as it does now.
• Hex: Ruin sounds like it might be overnerfed. For it to pay off it’ll have to probably last a couple minutes now because of its slower regression speed, and now that it turns off after the first kill it doesn’t help “seal the deal” when it’s 3v1. It just feels like there are probably too many other good perks that outshine this new Ruin for me to bother with it.
• Pop Goes the Weasel still looks basically as good as it did to me. In fact because of the new 90 second base time it and base 2.5% regression on a kick it can even potentially give more net regression in total seconds if you catch a gen really close to completion. I’d definitely still use this perk personally.
• Corrupt is taking a hit but still probably a solid perk in that it makes it easier to get your first down without worrying as much about too much gen progress happening in the meantime. I can see killers that rely on an early game setup like Trapper and Hag still using this, as well as killers that do a lot of hit and run (since they if they take a bit to gain momentum initially it can hurt them down the line.)
• Tinkerer is taking a pretty big hit by only working on a given gen once. One of the big strengths of Tinkerer was that you could chase someone off a gen, get it regressing, and get the perk to trigger a second or third time. This is definitely lower on my list of perks to take now.
• I don’t use NOED personally, I prefer to use perks to help my early and middle games, but I don’t see this perk being hurt all that much by its nerf. It’ll still likely secure one or two downs like it usually does, it just has less potential for much more than that.
• Scourge Hook Pain Resonance still sounds like a solid perk. 15% regression per hook is nothing to sneeze at and is the main reason I used it, not the explosion. Yeah, this impacts the combo with Dead Man’s Switch, but honestly I don’t use that combo that much anyway but I do like using Pain Resonance even without DMS. I’ll still be using this one.
• Dead Hard sounds like it’s still a solid perk. Some people think this is a “buff”, I disagree there. I think in most cases it’s “as good” as the original, and in a bunch of scenarios it’s actually ineffective where the old one was powerful (e.g. dodging Deathslinger’s spear or Trapper’s traps, getting to a vault preemptively to avoid a grab). I think a lot of people will still use this perk, I’m not sure it will still be literally 75% of survivors using it though unless it turns out there’s something fundamentally broken with the Endurance.
• I never really pay much attention to Decisive Strike honestly, so it getting nerfed just means I’m even less concerned than before.
• Likewise I already play at unhooks as if the unhooked survivor has Borrowed Time. So this change won’t impact how I handle those unhooks at all, I’ll be playing exactly the same way.
• Iron Will was due for a nerf, it was from what I could tell in stat blocks people posted fairly powerful in terms of increasing escape rates and it being at 100% reduction severely hurt Spirit and Stridor. I was expecting it to go to 90% reduction, so 75% is even more than I thought it would be. Either way this will still be a somewhat annoying perk for me to deal with personally since it’s probably the leading reason I lose survivors, just less so now. 🙂
• I’m not all that surprised Self Care was nerfed considering the devs commented that it was used very effectively and had very high popularity in the highest MMR brackets. I’m also not surprised they left Circle of Healing alone since its last nerf seems to have cut down its effectiveness and popularity from its original release. Interestingly, though, with the Overzelous buff I wonder if we’ll start seeing survivors playing the Overzealous plus Inner Strength combo in lieu of Circle of Healing or Self Care?
• Spine Chill was due for a nerf, its ability to detect the killer was all on its own a perfectly solid perk, but to combine that with a nice bonus to action speeds including vault speeds made it probably overpowered. The nerf they went with, though, sounds like it might be overkill (and I say that as a killer main). After all, if it only triggers when they have a clear line of sight on me then its triggering at times they probably don’t actually need it. This is definitely a big boost to Stealth killers in particular. (I wonder how much Ghost Face has to peak around while stalking to be considered “in line of sight” enough to trigger this perk?)
• I am SO glad Overcharge is getting a big buff! I like this perk in principle but in practice it was way too easy for survivors to avoid triggering its explosion. This also will combo even better than before with Pop and Call of Brine and especially Dragon’s Grip (which puts survivors in the awkward position of becoming Exposed to stabilize a gen or leaving the gen to regress at an insane rate to not be exposed.)
• Knock Out’s buff seems … a thing, 🤷‍♂️ The main reason to use it has always been hiding the survivor’s aura and that aspect is unchanged.
• Coulrophobia speeding up skill checks won’t do much against above average survivors who can already easily hit skill checks regardless. This is the same problem the current Overcharge and Huntress Lullaby have, making skill checks ”harder” mainly just hurts average and below average survivors but not the higher end. I don’t see Coulrophobia getting much more use than it currently sees from this buff.
• I like the Dark Devotion change since it means it will trigger on all sorts of special killer attacks that right now don’t enjoy much benefit from the perk. And personally one of my favorite loadouts combined this, Dying Light and Save the Best for Last so being able to potentially use that on more killers sounds good to me! 😄
• Jolt is already a solid perk, getting buffed just makes me want to use it even more.
• I’m really interested in Lethal Pursuer enhancing other aura effects, it opens up some really fun sounding aura heavy combos. 🙂
• It’s interesting that while a lot of other slow down perks are nerfed, Scourge Hook Gift of Pain is getting a decent buff. All the more reason to play around with Scourge Hook loadouts.
• Likewise I always liked Thanatophobia on killers that efficiently injure survivors, getting a buff just makes that even better.
• Monstrous Shrine turning the basement into Scourge Hooks along with speeding up the timers on ALL Scourge Hooks could make running a Scourge Hook combo with this kind of fun to try. Also it’ll be interesting to see how many Hag players start running this combined with Make Your Choice.
• Of course, I say all these exciting things about Scourge Hooks, but the Saboteur buff could ironically throw a wrench in that (pun mildly intended). The good news for Monstrous Shrine users though would be they can’t Sabotage the basement. 😉

Looks like I’m out of time typing this, but yeah, a lot of things I’ll be curious to try out and see how they work! 😄