Let's talk about Teamwork Perks
hi all!
since the tools of torment chapter introduced Thalita & Renato, a new subcategory of perks was introduced with them: Teamwork perks. there's a number of these perks that share the same Teamwork prefix, but unlike other perks of this nature (Boon, Hex, Scourge Hook, Invocation), the Teamwork perks all have completely different conditions.
some of the teamwork perks designate a survivor as your teammate. some of them apply to anybody. it's, in my opinion, something that could be utilised better.
bearing in mind that some of the teamwork perks would need to change if this were to be the case, and that i am not making this suggestion with the idea that these perks will remain exactly as they are i would love to see the Teamwork perk category become unified by one collective feature:
once every 60/120 (however long) seconds, while standing nearby another survivor, you can use the secondary ability key to designate that survivor as your teammate.
we could have perks like
"Teamwork: Press F to designate a teammate. While you and your Teammate are in chase together, X effect". or, "While you and your Teammate are repairing the same Generator". or "While you heal, or are healed by, your teammate". we could even have an updated version of something like Visionary, where the perk is outright shared between the two of you. for example: "You and your Teammate reveal the auras of Generators within 32 meters of either of you".
i think that this would make duo queue feel a lot more fun and dynamic.
i also think that in this system, a bunch of older perks could be updated to be Teamwork perks that you can share with your teammate. some examples of weaker or underutilised perks that could be buffed by being able to share the perk with another survivor so that either of you can activate it and you can both benefit:
Small Game, Quick Gambit, Cut Loose, Bite the Bullet, Rookie Spirit, Clairvoyance, Troubleshooter
what does everybody think? would this be fun for duo? perhaps you'd want to trio and give all 12 of your perks to the 1 random in the lobby?
thanks for reading!
Comments
I really like the idea of picking a specific survivor as your teammate as opposed to how it works now which is a bunch of different activation conditions that may or may not stick around.
honestly really like it, it feels like it would be much easier to understand and would be really fun to run with a duo. obviously like you said the teamwork perks would need to change, although they already do, with the only decent ones really being Power of Two (which is basically just a more flexible but weaker Blood Pact) and Throwdown (I've seen an Otz video where this could be abused by a duo in the right hands). at the very least though this change would actually make it clear what the heck a Teamwork perk actually is
Teamwork: Power of Two is exactly the one that i was thinking of when i wrote that some of them would need to change. getting that much haste just for being near someone (and, presumably, the distance no longer breaking the effect, only breaking the haste) would immediately make it a meta perk haha
it's also part of what inspired the idea. Teamwork: Power of Two requires you to heal someone, and Teamwork: Collective Stealth requires you to be healed by someone else. i think that's just too cumbersome.
since the introduction of Teamwork perks, we've got Teamwork: Full Circuit and Teamwork: Soft Spoken, both are teamwork perks that activate depending on how many other survivors are repairing the same gen as you, which is just like Prove Thyself except Prove Thyself isn't a Teamwork perk.
we've also gotten Teamwork: Throw Down and Teamwork: Toughen Up, which similarly also feel like regular perks and don't actually seem to have a teammate component to them? what makes these teamwork perks, but then Duty of Care isn't a teamwork perk?
the silliest thing is that thalita has a perk called Friendly Competition, which is a perk that gives you and other survivors that finish a gen with you a buff… but this, also, isn't a Teamwork perk?
Full Circuit, Soft Spoken. Throw Down and Toughen Up just confuse me as to why they're even teamwork perks. but at least, in this system, Throw Down and Toughen Up could become two-way perks that apply to both of you whenever one of you triggers the condition. imagine unhooking someone who's getting tunneled, then making that person your teammate just to use these perks and being able to keep them in the game longer! you take a hit to stun the killer to share Throw Down and Toughen Up, and then the killer has to go through your endurance while the tunnelled survivor can flee with elusive.
Teamwork would also be a really interesting way to nerf perks that are too strong. let's pretend, for a moment, that We'll Make It is suddenly overpowered in the current meta. well, it could be nerfed by changing it to being a Teamwork perk, and then it could become a perk that only affects you and your teammate, excluding everybody else.
i love the idea of teamwork perks but i wish that they were purpose built for actively teaming up with someone and saying "we're gonna be partners for this trial". i think it's a real missed opportunity and i think there's so much potential!