A suggested change to Reassurance
What if Reassurance, instead of stoping the timer on the hook, halves the speed which the survivor is sacrificed? I've been seen some greedy plays with Reassurance (specially on SWFs), when people smash gens and delay the save until the last seconds. If you are near the hook to punish the last save rescue, they Reassurance, and you're forced to go away or lose even more pressure.
If Reassurance, instead of pausing the timer, make it half of the speed, still would punish camping killers without making survivors able to do greed play with this perk.
Comments
That's what reassurance is supposed to do. It's to punish (proxy)camping killers. I know it feels bad to go against when you just want to secure a stage, but like you mentioned, when you see reassurance you need to go do something else or you are wasting your own time, because that's the point of the perk. If you're to the point in the match survivors are greeding to do gens and leaving the survivor on hook you need to get downs/injures for pressure, regardless if reassurance is used or not, if you truly care about getting more than a 1-2k. If you just want the 1-2k I don't see how nerfing reassurance fixes that issue, as you can still camp the survivor to death, it just takes longer and is more risky as the team can last-second double save (but once again, they could do that regardless of reassurance).
The problem is not punishing proxy camping, but rewarding greedy survivor. Survivors should feel the urge to save from the hook, and reassurance make survivor feel more confortable to leave a save to the last second possible, as they can do it when they can. If even with Reassurance the hook would go to the second stage, at least the would feel pressured to do the save soon, as it can be too late if they do any other thing while the hook bar drains.
In my opinion, reassurance should work only if the killer isn't chasing someone near the hook, because if the killer is defending the hook, he's not camping. One thing that survs don't understand is that there is an abysmal difference between camping and defending the hook. This is how I will rework reassurance:
While your near a hook, the hook timer stop for 30 seconds. If the killer is chasing a survivor near the hook, Reassurance doesn't activate.
A commom scenario: I hook the 1st person, then go chase the 2nd person right away. As i chase the 2nd, one of the other two stay on the gens. The 2 gen pops and as wHen i down and hook the 2nd one, the 1st one is almost on the second stage. Then i go back to the hook to deny the save, someone come close enough, use reassurance and then go away. So, i should leave the save for free, or give then enough time to do what they want while the reassurance timer goes down.
This does not feels right.
You have to understand, the survivor has to go RIGHT UP to the hook in order to use the perk, where you can get an m1 on the survivor pretty easily... unless you're not paying attention...
Regardless, I think punishing proxy camping is better for the game overall than slightly nerfing greedy swfs that make up a very small minority of the matches people face. Balancing around people playing super efficiently is an awful idea, as most matches aren't sweat fests, and nerfing reassurance will overall affect the non sweaty playerbase than it will affect the sweaty one, and while reassurance is a good perk, it's not super used in solo/duo queue (majority of the playerbase). Shrug.
Can it be abused?
Yes
Should it be nerfed?
No
This perk is currently preventing full face camping strategy, just by existing. It's not really used that much.
If you nerf it, it will come back. Noone wants it back.
I don't think this perk needs a nerf, it's good, and I rarely see such a situation
It also does not guarantee victory