Mettle of Man Buff Suggestion
M.o.M. recently got a well deserved nerf. It used to be impenetrable to M1 killers, and just plain annoying to killers overall.
But now it's on a similar level to Autodidact. where in VERY niche situations, in builds COMPLETELY based around the perk, it can have some use. I think that this could be done just a little bit better.
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Mettle of Man
Evil has a way of always finding you.
After unhooking a survivor, taking a protection hit for the unhooked survivor 5/10/15 seconds after the unhook will activate Mettle of Man.
Once Mettle of Man is activated, a 60 second timer will start, and your aura will be briefly highlighted to the Killer. While the timer is active, you will be put into the Broken state.
Once the timer ends, the next hit that would put you into the dying state will be ignored.
If you are downed before the timer ends, Mettle of Man will deactivate.
Mettle of Man will only allow you to ignore one hit per match.
Increases your chances of being the Obsession.
The Killer can only be obsessed with one Survivor at a time.
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This allows for a lot of counter-play on both sides. In this situation, the killer has to make a choice. Either:
a.) Hit the savior, and take a chance at activating Mettle of Man.
b.) Hit the saved survivor, and take a chance at activating Borrowed Time.
If they decide to hit the savior, they will be notified (hence the brief aura highlight), and will be encouraged to chase the savior further. If they fail to end the chase in 60 seconds, then they will be punished. If the savior can't be chased, then this perk is useless.
This acts as an anti-tunneling tool off of the hook, but it's in a really healthy way. It involves a lot of choices, a lot of strategy, and a lot of chases. This creates a little game within the game. How fast can you catch the savior?
It's a high risk, high reward scenario, it synergizes well with some perks (Borrowed Time comes to mind), but also doesn't synergize with others (Adrenaline on the saved survivor also comes to mind.). It counters one-shot downs (notice how you don't need to be in the injured state to ignore the hit), and has some major benefits, but it requires you to not get hit for 60 seconds (Not even Adrenaline can save you in this chase, as you are in the Broken state! Even more risk.). This is a perk that still needs to be set up, but can lead to some amazing benefits. It's not a perk that leads to a free escape, it's a perk that can lead to some really interesting moments on both the survivor and killer side.
I could really talk about this perk all day because I find it really interesting, and a really healthy buff to M.o.M. with lots of counterplay and strategy. But I'll leave that to you.
Also, a quick shoutout to @NMCKE, who (by pure coincidence) posted an idea to buff this perk that's actually really similar to mine just a couple hours ago. I only noticed it while I was writing down my ideas, so I couldn't pull much inspiration myself, but it's still another really cool idea regardless. A link to that post can be found [here].
Let's get this perk changed!
EDIT 1 (9/28/19): A quick thank you to everyone for the discussions that have arisen from this post. I made this post less to encourage THIS change to be implemented (as much as I wish it would), but more to start a discussion about MoM as a whole. Please remember to keep things civilized, and I'll keep responding to your comments as time goes on!
Comments
Nothing needs to be changed. The protection hits need to register. If they can’t make that happen then we need a rework
I mean this is a lot for just a simple fix. That being to give MoM the ability to gain stacks off of safe unhooks as well as protection hits, or simply make it so that the perk only requires two hits instead of three. Also the whole revealing your aura if you get healed should get removed.
Simply fixing the protection hits doesn't really make this perk usable. Because you still need to follow injured survivors around to tank a hit for them. Three times! I've played games where the hits themselves were smooth (As in not glitchy), but it was the situations in which you need to get them where the problem lies.
Of course, you could just cross your fingers and hope that you'll get smacked when saving someone off hook 3 times, but that just encourages things like hook bombing and one for ones, neither of which are good ideas nor healthy for the game.
BHVR actually tried your first idea in the PTB right before they nerfed MoM. It was certainly helpful, but it was still REALLY strong. In fact, it was even comparable to pre-nerf MoM in some cases. Can't say I recommend this idea.
As I've said before however, I also agree with the two-hit idea and taking away the aura reading. If my idea doesn't get implemented, I hope that at least this one would.
Stop trying to make the perk work in that way to get a free health state. The perk needs a complete rework, meaning a whole new function needs to be made. That's it.
I actually really like the free health state mechanic. It's really unique to the perk, and it's one of the things I wanted to preserve, that and the whole idea of "Evil always has a way of finding you". Honestly, as long as it's not too too easy to get, I don't think that an extra health state would be a problem.
What should it do instead of give a new health state?
The safe unhook wasn’t the problem with that change, the problem was that they applied 2 things that made the perk better than before (that being gaining stacks through safe unhooks AND being able to use the perk when uninjured). They unfortunately doubled down and removed both, making the perk worthless instead of just removing one to make the perk usable but not OP.
I disagree. I think that getting three unhooks is just as possible as getting three hits. Obviously it depends on the killer, but each can be relatively easy.
But that's not the main problem I have with this change. It would encourage multiple survivors to rush hooks instead of doing objective. Perks that encourage overly altruistic play styles are fun and all, but not really good for serious gameplay. Not the kind of perk that we should be going after. Sure, this wouldn't really be a problem if one person is running the perk, but what about 2? 3? All 4? It would be a madhouse of farming. That's not healthy, that's not fun. Perks shouldn't cause people to choose between throwing the game or losing a perk slot.
Do I think this change is better than OG MoM and the current MoM? Absolutely. But it can certainly be improved upon.
So. The issue is this perk is seriously overpowered. It is VERY strong. Making it a challenge or not easy to activate is kind of the point I think. With that said, I do also think certain protection hits should count which don't currently. And that seems to be more the issue than anything else, imo. And I think they should really fix that. Which if they did this then the perk may become more easily obtained... and may or may not even need a tweak when/if that happens.
No matter what it has to take a certain amount effort to achieve in order to be balanced.
I agree and kind of disagree. I've said this a few times, but the idea of just having an extra hit is really interesting. It's not really overpowered, because it could really go in either direction (It could get burned right off the bat or at the most critical moment.). But it is strong, regardless. I do agree that it needs to be difficult to obtain, but protection hits just aren't the way to go.
Making protection hits easier to obtain isn't the problem with the perk. The problem is that you need to base your entire strategy around it in order for it to do so (Both in playstyle and build.). I've played games where getting the hits wasn't buggy or anything, it was just really inconvenient, to the point where the extra hit just isn't useful.
If this perk is going to be changed, it needs to be a balance of difficulty. Not so hard so that it's effectively impossible to get it to proc, but hard enough that it isn't just OG MoM. Personally, I think that this idea accomplishes both of these things, along with a lot more interesting twists.