The State of survivor perk balancing is worrisome, especially with the perk effect overlaps.
The best survivor perks as of now are essentially perks that buff your movement speed and action speeds or act as mistake erasers and they activate when something happens as part of natural game progression.
Right now the worst offenders of this are :
Made For This - 3% Perma speed boost for being injured. PLUS 10 secs endurance after finishing a healing action
MFT currently makes “Boon:Dark theory”, and the updated “Buckle up”, not worth running since the effects overlap so much, making MFT a 2 in 1 perk.
Resilience - 9% Perma action speed boost for being injured
You shouldn’t be rewarded with permanent action speed boost because you played a tile poorly and got hit
Shaves 8.4 seconds per gen, after 5 gens you shaved 40.5 seconds
Deja vu - Permanent aura on 3 gens + a 6% Repair boost on said gens.
Essentially works as a permanent , no activation requirement AT ALL, repair boost aslong as you repair any of the 3 highlighted gens throughout the match.
At a 5.4 second shave per gen, after 5 gens you shaved 27 seconds.
Hope - 7% perma speed boost on gate powerup / 5 gens completed
Activation requirement is literally “you did what you were suppose to do all along so here's a free boost, enjoy the escape ig”
on it's own it makes killer endgame perks and builds not worth running, with MFT stacked on top it makes 110 killers unable to catch up at all, aswell as killer endgame builds having the same effect as running perkless
Adrenaline - Pocket Sprintburst + free instant self pickup/Heal for the gates being powered.
Again, activation requirement is someone popping the last gen
If you’re downed /Injured / chased while injured you’re given a free health state + Pocket sprint burst
A quick glance at https://nightlight.gg/perks most common survivor builds is enough to see that the perks above are used a concerning volume of times with minor variances.
Hope, Resi, WOO, MFT
Hope , Resi, DH , MFT
Resi, DH, WOO , MFT
Resi, Adren, WOO, MFT.
And so on.
(Quite hypocritical for survivors to complain about facing X killer 5 times in a row, meanwhile ignoring that every match has a variation of a Resi+MFT build to the point it feels like a new basekit)
Personally I believe a healthier state for the game would be if survivor perks were mostly focused on Information / distraction / QOL / teamwork / Alternative abilities with the Movement and Action speed perks being on a timer or another activation requirement that doesn’t directly progress the game.
For example, unhooking, sitting in a locker for a couple seconds, being in the killer's TR, cleaning a totem, things of the sort.
Most survivor perks already comply with this balancing philosophy.
Off the top of my head :
Dead hard
Kindred
Blast mine
Buckle up (Pre 7.1 it had a 10% haste after being picked up, now it grants you 10s endurance, but as we know, MFT already provides you with 10s endurance for ANY healing action)
Boon : Dark theory (2% Speed bonus after blessing a totem, while in the totem’s 24m; made obsolete thanks to MFT)
Inner Healing
Reassurance
Distortion
Renewal
Diversion
Corrective action
Etc etc.
For example, in order to make some perks comply with the balancing philosophy I’ve suggested above.
Hope and Adrenaline - Must cleanse X amount of totems before gates being powered for the perk to be active
Resilience - after being injured, activates for 90 seconds , after that it deactivates.
Deja vu - just permanent aura on the 3 closest gens
These are just concept ideals, not actual suggestions.
(And please, BHVR, if you cant come up with new perk effects, just leave the new survivor characters as skins instead of introducing Perks that are essentially "Previous chapter perk, but better" , we have 230 something perks, and only a handful get used)
Comments
Distortion has a pickrate in the last 28 days of about 7%
In comparison,
Windows 33%
Adren 27%
Resi 20%
MFT 19%
Please enlighten me how a perk that over half the time gets no value, and im sure you're aware of that, could be considered "off meta or second meta"
Please enlighten me how a perk that over half the time gets no value, and im sure you're aware of that, could be considered "off meta or second meta"
towards aura reading builds, it does following: "Point still remains, No perk should provide free, unconditional and permanent buffs to basekit.". so by your logic, distortion should be nerfed to not provide free, unconditional permanent buffs to base-kit towards aura reading builds. with your logic, every perk would be ineffective.
Its a perk made to counter another specific perk, its not "free, unconditional value" by the mere fact that if the killer doesn't bring an aura perk, you got a dead slot.
Your attempts at a "gotcha" moment are quite honestly lack luster, especially when I pointed out that distortion is a *counter perk* in the previous reply.
sure it is situational in the sense that not every game has aura perks but it still buffs the survivors base-kit in the way you describe as problematic design in your view. another aspect to talk about is that just because distortion is not proc does not make a dead perk because distortion gives information about the killers build. you can do specific actions because you know that said perks are not in play.
MFT is permanent boost to the survivor but the reward is limited to how well user uses the small boosts of speed to gain an advantage. it is still possible to win as killer for most killers. the chases are just slightly more difficult which is what the perk is design to do. makes chases slightly more difficult.
Sad but true