What Does "Second Chance Perk" Mean To You?
It's a term that gets thrown out a lot in conversation, often in passing with an air of assuming it must be obvious what that means. I've never really gotten what people mean when they say it, though, so I'm asking for people who actively use that term themselves to define it.
Ideally I'd like more than just a list of perks, if you don't mind, I'd like to know what links all those perks together and what exactly it's a "second chance" at doing. You know, what the first chance was, what the mistake or misplay the player made was, that sort of thing.
Now, I do intend to push back and question a few answers here and there, but I promise it's in good faith. I'd like to know what I'm missing about other people's perspectives here.
Comments
I would say stuff that puts you in a more favorable position with near effortless input on your end. I don't have an issue with second chances when they are inherently earned or are in a healthy state or largely healthy with a few exceptions. Original DS for example was not a healthy second chance perk as you just got to wiggle off for basically free and extend a chase. Now it's a healthier variant that at least requires the killer to be tunneling but can be lost by progressing the game in a multitude of ways.
There's also undying giving you another chance to keep your hex with no input other than using another perk slot. Of course you still have to try and keep your hexes but you still have that one fail safe.
There's also more I guess "gray" (depending on how they were used) second chances like: Noed, No Way Out, Sprint Burst, Dead Hard(when next to a pallet), Dramaturgy, old endurance Off the Record, release Mettle of Man and by now… with 15 second BT off hook specifically the haste part of it.
second chance means nothing to me because the term itself is meant to be derogatory.
people get upset but if we weren't meant to account for all gens being done or being killed off then the game would just end when the gens pop or survivors die instantly like MLO but that's not how the game works. 4 survivors being alive in the end game is a realistic scenario and there's nothing wrong for wanting to prepare for that. I'm not always interested in "first chance" perks like Lethal/Corrupt or "Homer Simpson with his fat rolls scrunched back with chip clips" builds like full hex builds. I like to please the Entity by offering her quality over quantity, and moring a 0 hook survivor with Rancor is peak.
I've had situations where killers were confused why I said "gg nice bloodwarden play" because all they get is salt. We all have 4 perk slots, we can do what we want with them. There is no right or wrong way to perk up. I personally love using end game builds on Springtrap because it gives me practice with no regression to sharpen my game sense but it gives me peace of mind to preserve my mentals for the worst games I could have (being bullied on Badham, for example)
There have been times where 2nd chance has been overtuned, but that's all perks. NOED is a nothingburger these days ever since we got the aura bloom on the totem. That was a cool nerf without actually touching the perk.
Original DS
We're simple, we say a perk designed to save you, specifically you, from a bad situation and effectively giving you a second chance at the objective aka not being hooked for survivors.
Following: Decisive Strike, Dead hard, Unbreakable, No Mither (yes really), Adrenaline, Mettle of Man, Moment of Glory, power struggle, arguably Deliverance.
Killers have something similar in the form of Endgame perks: Noed, Blood warden, Etc.
A second chance perk to me has always been an on demand perk that can erase a mistake. Dead Hard for example, you could/can hold on to it, be extra aggressive, and when you're lost the chase E key your way to safety. DS was another one, it used to be 60 seconds of god mode. NOED and Rancor are the killer versions, it allows you to play poorly, then secure a kill at the end.
Second chance perks don't exist anymore and haven't for years.
I’d argue that original DH, DS and Unbreakable are (or were) considered ‘second chance’ perks.
Though this is vibes-based, my read on the term was that it refers to perks that can prevent you from taking a hook state and help you back up, without the help of any other survivors. DS and Unbreakable being the most obvious examples.
DH was what I called a ‘nope-button’. It allowed you to undo a mistake, especially against M1 killers. Got mindgamed? Nuh-uh! Outpositioned?, nah I’m at a pallet now.
It extended to some M2 killers too. Did a Blight corner you? Nuh-uh, he just swung at nothing, sending him into a cooldown. Slinger zoning you? Nah! So on.
I see it as a perk that undoes or cushions a mistake directly without any real counterplay from the opponent.
However, I disagree that second chance perks are innately bad and hate that the discourse gives the term a negative connotation by default. Perks are meant to be bonuses. If no perk eased/flipped a bad situation into a good one, then we'd have a severe lack of perk variety, so some are going to invariably have uses when you're on the back foot, instead of making you stronger when you are already winning. People say it's unearned, but the game has unearned victories all the time. I cannot tell you how many times I lost a killer in chase not by winning a mindgame intentionally, but by doing something so abjectly moronic due to panic that I'm rewarded because the killer played the chase expecting competence. Goes the other way too. I lose track of a survivor in chase or just go the wrong way, and accidentally mindgame them straight into my knife.
There are some that I think are just bad design, even if they're not overpowered. I'm a NOED hater despite not thinking it's busted, because I hate how it makes people play and I think it breeds bad habits/expectations of newer players that rely on it.
I think it's a term that had some validity many years ago with the original iterations of NOED and DS, and it stuck in the community lexicon.
There isn't really anything I would classify as a second chance at this point, at least not in a negative sense. I think people use the term "second chance" when they're running head first into an opponent's perks and can't accomplish what they're trying to accomplish.
I'd argue DS is still a second chance perk, a necessary and more healthy one than previous iterations I will add but by definition it is THE 2nd chance perk considering what it does for you.
Personally I consider "Second chance" perks to be the ones that let you stay in the game longer after a mistake. Unbreakable and DS are the main ones that spring to my mind. You could argue Coup De Grace is also a 2nd chance perk as it gives you a very strong chase effect in exchange for losing one of your primary objectives
This is the thing that's always stuck out to me. What mistake does DS cover? Unbreakable, too.
The situation those perks work in aren't related to mistakes. DS requires the killer to target you after an unhook, which isn't your mistake, and Unbreakable requires you to be left on the ground by the killer, which also isn't your mistake.
I've never really understood calling these perks "second chance" perks because they cover situations where you didn't have a first chance.
To me, DS is boiled down to "You were unhooked and downed again quickly, this perk will give you another chance at that chase". I know it's not really used that way anymore these days, aggressive DS and all that but that's what I believe the perk is INTENDED to be. An anti-tunnel perk that lets you have a 'second chance' at the chase you just lost.
UB is a bit more nuanced, it needn't necessarily be the survivor who has it that made the mistake but in those positions where the survivor team will lose due to slugging, unbreakable grants a 'second chance' by letting you get out of that scenario.
That's my logic anyway.
DS is just a minor inconvenience, very often the survivor is downed again within 10 seconds.
Dead Hard takes some skill and is dependent on ping.
Second Chance Killer Perks:
Unrelenting, Rapid Brutality, Predator, Dissolution, Nowhere to Hide
First Chance Killer: Ghoul
No Chance Perk: Lightborn
Yes, survivor main here.😅
"Second chance" perk is largely a rhetorical framing designed to disparage survivors, and by extension, BHVR for "coddling" survivors.
When I hear second chance it means someone is about to make a really bad argument.
It means:
-Pain Res
-DMS
-Turn Back the clock
-BBQ
-Friends til the end
-Furitive chase
For all the illiterate players who don't realise it works both ways IMO, coz DS etc is similliar to all of this.
This exactly. I don't use this term and think it's idiotic. Perks are meant to do things. That's all there is to it.
DH, Sprint Burst, any perk than can erase a player error that would have either led to a hit or a down. I would not count DS/OTR or perks like that as 2nd chances because they're meant to prevent the killer from doing something unfun like tunneling, not necessarily giving the survivor a 2nd chance they didn't earn.
You could argue NOED is a killer 2nd chance perk because it rewards failure to kill the survivors before they complete the gens.
a survivor dies after taking damage 6 times. any perk that increases that number without an associated resource/time cost is a second chance perk
Oh and I suppose it's fine when a gen takes damage/blocked 6 times coz of perks that dont have an associated resource/time cost either.
Perks do their job, it's not a big deal
IMO, perks like DS, Unbreakable, OTR, StB, all exist as stopgaps to killers' ability to shortcut a lot of games very quickly.
Complaining about these outright would basically be complaining that the obviously strongest strategies have a potential counter to them, which would make the complainant look silly and the complaint easily dismissible. And so, to make nerfcalls more palatable, the term 'second chance perk' was coined.
I see the term in a similar light as the complaints around Distortion, which initially fell on deaf ears because of course a major power creep in intel perks is going to make their counterperk popular. But then the 'how do you do, fellow survivors?' argument got invented around rat play, which BHVR took to, hook, line and sinker.