I really started to hate Exhaustion perks.
I play as a survivor very often and very rarely as a killer, and I don't use exhaustion perks often.
But I'm done, after the last update where they killed Vigil and turned it into a crippled version of Ghost Notes perk.
They killed anti-haemorrhagic add-one and make it useless.
Any rework of a perk—whether for Survivors or Killers—inevitably ends up being tailored to either support or counter Exhaustion perks, all this is because of 7 speed-boosting exhaustion perks.
It makes me feel like the game was literally designed for every Survivor player to use Exhaustion perks, and that everything revolves around them—as if the game is balanced around Exhaustion perks only.
They give killers plenty of anti-exhaustion perks and add-ons, just to nerf Sprint Burst, It is as if the developers have no idea what they are doing.
Just remove all exhaustion perks (but keep head-on and maybe overcome?) and bring Vigil back without exhaustion effect.
Comments
Removing exhaustion perks is 100% unviable. It would tank game balance.
No? You don't need to run exhaustion perks and the game is certainly not balanced around survivors having them. 12s SB with og Vigil showed this the most. Vigil is still better at recovering exhaustion so it's definitely not a worse Ghost Notes.
As for add-ons and perks, most exhaustion add-ons are hard to read and get value out of so they aren't used that much compared to add-ons that make your power simply better. There are about 5 anti exhaustion perks, each with it's flaws and drawbacks preventing them from being meta.
The newest Hex from Judgement doesn't even fully counter haste perks while being a Hex perk. So this doomposting "oh my god most exhaustion perks are just countered and are not worth running" is not even true to a slight degree. Remember Sauna Rock add-on that got nerfed? No? Well what a damn shame.
Exhaustion perks are fine for the most part, aside Lithe that is. It not being nerfed in the same update that nerfed SB is beyond bizzare but ey, that's the DbD devs for you.
I used the Vigil for a long time without pairing it with any exhaustion perks; it was fun, but now it’s been completely killed off, and now, it is completely useless without any exhaustion perk.
I can guarantee that if they simply removed Vigil's effect on exhaustion, players wouldn't really use it much.
I mean, if the problem lies with exhaustion perks, they should fix the issue itself rather than killing off the perk entirely or turning it into a useless counter or support perk.
For these developers, it turned into a quick, cheap fix: need to change a perk? Make it counter exhaustion for killers and support exhaustion for survivors.
Exhaustion perks themselves aren't a problem, Vigil was.
Although Exhaustion will always be stronger against killers with weak or no chase powers - there isn't much it can be done - the biggest issue was that a Exhaustion + Vigil build countering every status effect, not just exhaustion.
For example, if you had the common Sprint + Vigil build and the killer brought a mangled + hemorrage build (Sloppy Butcher, Gift of Pain, Mangled addons) you would counter the killer build; if the killer used exposed (Haunted Ground, Starstruck, Ravenous, Make Your Choice) you would counter the build; if the killer even used a Blindness build with Ultimate Weapon you would counter it.
Most of the players brought Vigil to reduce exhaustion and removed all of the status effects for free. I personally hope that they add parts of the Vigil effect to other non-meta perks - Mangled and Hemorrage timer Reduction for Solidarity, for example - , turning them into more attractive choices without making a single perks which counter so many builds.