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Concept(s) for Changing/Reworking Mettle of Man

anarchy753 anarchy753
in General Discussions

So by now we all know that Mettle of Man is extremely problematic as a perk. (But muh free hits!)

  • It punishes killers HARD for just playing the game and has no counterplay besides giving up on playing half the killer cast permanently.
  • It primarily hurts M1 killers, while already high tier killers with power-based attacks, or high mobility, either never trigger it or barely care when it goes off.
  • It grants a LOT of momentum swing with no actual requirements, taking hits is a passive part of the game and in a vast majority against an M1 killer, it will be charged and activated before you die.
  • It has little to no repercussions, almost all survivors using it use self care to reach 99% healing and finish the heal as soon as they're in danger, avoiding the aura reading entirely.
  • It cannot be forseen (besides the existence of an obsession) and can be on all four survivors at no penalty to them, with no indication that more are coming, destroying a killer's ability to maintain any sort of tempo in a game just for having perks.

Now, I do not have a problem with perks making survivors more... survivable, but the issue is that this perk STILL harms all the wrong killers most. It now affects Nurse as it should have, but like old DS, it buys a hell of a lot less time against her and is almost certainly not going to break a good Nurse's timing.

I have a few ideas for reworks, the first to make the perk more fair and a much better risk/reward tradeoff, the second a completely new perk designed to target much better aspects of killers that REQUIRES countering in the first place.

  • Replace the "aura reading when fully healed" with permanent broken status after the perk has activated.

Now, that may seem extreme, but remember, for Mettle of Man to activate you must have taken 3 M1 hits, making MoM the 4th hit, and the next hit that downs you your 5th hit. That's 5 hits for your second hook. After this you would be broken, meaning if you didn't heal between any of those other hits you still die after 6 hits.

I understand this seems bad compared to the current perk. It's meant to. A free extra hit for every survivor is breaking the game for the lower tier killers at the moment, especially in SWF stacks with 4 added before even considering other perks. This change would put it more in line with what the original perk was intended to do; drag out your second hook and lower the killer's momentum, while making it easier to go on your final hook. The only difference is that currently survivors are cheesing the mechanics to avoid the "easier to go on your final hook" part. Also on a strong survivor, aura revealing isn't even a real downside, let's be honest.

This would make the perk more interesting and less gamebreaking. It would be a choice to shift around where and when you want your hits distributed in a match, changing from 2-2-2 to 2-3-1 and relying on that change in momentum and timing to be able to get further in a match.

Alternatively, and my preference:

  • Mettle of Man - Each time you are hooked, gain a token up to a maximum of 1. Whenever you have a token, any effect that would take you from the healthy state to the dying state will be resisted, leaving you in the injured state instead, and a token will be consumed.
  • After resisting a hit, all healing towards you will be 30/40/50% faster until you next reach the healthy state.
  • The Obsession may hold a maximum of 2 tokens at once.

This rework would change Mettle of Man completely, and make it a survivability perk that protects against the effects of the exposed status (ie, noed, Nurses with MYC etc), chainsaws, one hit down add ons.

These are all effects that grant killers a LOT of strength and downs that survivors often complain are unfair. (*cough* noed *cough*) It would be much better targetted at high tier killers, and rather than completely destroying M1 killers' ability to keep game timing, it would instead only block effects which already reduce survivability.

It would add an element of counterplay to a mechanic in the game (one hit downs) that currently has no counterplay at all, and would make killers less likely to bring hated perks like noed if there's a chance its effect may be blocked.

This change would still increase the possible hits a survivor can take, but rather than adding 1 to the base amount, essentially for free, it removes 1-2 from the amount killers take away.

Comments

  • Boosted_Dwight Boosted_Dwight

    I feel like Mettle of Man should work like this


    When you heal yourself to a new health state you remove all negative status affects on you. This can only be done two times. I can't think of anything else :P

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