Suggested survivor perk changes
I've used most of the survivor perks affected by the PTB changes for a few games each, and while some are mostly QoL changes, there are some that I feel there is something that needs to be said and changed. As of now I haven't had the chance to use a good amount of the killer perks that have been changed, so I am keeping this to survivor perks and will be skipping over the perks I don't believe need any changes.
- Better Than New: Honestly a great change, makes the perk very usable. I kind of wonder if the condition to lose it could be getting downed instead of injured though.
- Friendly Competition: Did we really need to nerf the duration? The perk went from useless to usable, which is good, but I genuinely don't see why the duration had to be nerfed. Diminished Returns already hits repair speed bonus perks really hard since they are all low percentages. Change the duration back to 120s and it's a good change.
- Borrowed Time: The only possible use case I have seen anybody come up with for this perk is using unhook protections or OTR to take a hit, BT mends you over 30s, and then you can use DH. This idea comes with the issues that it encourages body blocking off of hook, it requires 3 perk slots, and you aren't even close to guaranteed last 30s or hit your DH. BT was fine if not better off for not having elusive. Revert it or do a different rework.
- Do No Harm: I ran this multiple games, with and without medkits with suture addons, and the change makes almost zero difference. The faster you are healing the less chances for skill checks there are, and even when you get one, even on a person with 2 hook stages a 6% increase is still worse than a single suture addon on a medkit. I would rather Do No Harm go down to 40%/80% and have the bonus increased from 3%/6% to something like 6%/12%, and have the skill check increase go from 5%/10% to 8%/16%. Although the flat heal speed would be nerfed, it would be a buff overall and would further differentiate it from We'll Make It as you wanted.
- Premonition: I understand that this perk is supposed to be used "while not in chase," however it is activated most often when the killer intends to start chase, so the aura reading often does not do much and the perk functions similarly to before, but with a massive cooldown nerf. The range should be decreased to something like 26m to make the aura reading more useful, and the cooldown should be lowered to 45s.
- Self Preservation: While I understand the intent you had with changing this perk, nerfing it in half did not achieve your goal at all. It still counters all hook based aura reading perks, but the healthy play style I've seen from many people using this perk of using the elusive to unhook and disappear with the unhooked survivor so they don't get tunneled is gone. In addition, in this patch you made a large buff to Whispers, an uncounterable info perk. Distortion was already massively nerfed ages ago, now that SP has become quite decent it's getting the same treatment. Revert this change, lessen the nerf, or if you don't like the effect the perk has on killer gameplay then the perk should be reworked altogether, as this does not even change what you wanted.
- Shoulder the Burden: I already made a post about this, but the StB change absolutely obliterates this perk for solo queue, where survivors struggle with tunneling the most, while it will still be massively impactful in decent SWFs. The nerf also doesn't actually solve the scenario where the hook stages are 2-1-1-0, and the 0 hook survivor uses StB to dissipate all the killer's pressure from that death hook. I won't elaborate more here for the sake of post length, but my post is there for a more detailed explanation. A much more effective nerf that would make it still very usable outside of SWFs is 60s of broken and make it no longer be usable when at least 3 different survivors have at least one hook stage instead of when any other survivor has used it at all. It would be a much healthier change that actually tackles the main issue with the perk, limits the amount of times it can be used in a match without making the condition if one of your teammates (who you haven't queued with) used it, keeps it more viable in solo queue and, while not giga punishing a survivor for helping their teammate who is getting tunneled, also makes it easier for the killer to know who is vulnerable and when the effect ends. We don't need tunneling getting even stronger than before.
- Slippery Meat: People's opinions about this perk seem a bit more mixed, but personally I think it could use another 5% haste. The haste still only lasts for 10s, it just gives you a nice speedboost in case the killer is waiting for the tunnel.
- Small Game: Genuinely a great change, whenever I got this perk in Chaos Shuffle I would groan because I knew I was going to be harassed by the noise notif all game. However, if this is to take place of a map in a build, I find the range to be deceptively small. There is far too much time still running around hoping to see something for this perk to actually be worth using over a map. I'd like to see the range increased to 14m or perhaps even 16m.
- Spine Chill: Love that the vault speed build, even if not really the same or as powerful, is back in spirit. However, because of this perk's range, you often enter a chase with it completely on cooldown for up to half a minute. The range should be decreased to ideally something like 24m to make it worth running.
- Stake Out: I'm glad to see the HF + Stake Out combo gone, although I can't help but think Hyperfocus was the bigger issue. However, I understand the reasoning behind choosing to change Stake Out, and I support that. However, this perk is borderline unusable as it is. Not only do you have to be in the Terror Radius, but you also have to be within 24m of the killer, the duration is still 15s, and you often are still forced to waste stacks on a heal. I don't really understand why the range condition was added, as it being based on TR pretty much just served to make it more powerful against higher tier killers which is a good thing. At the very least stacks should not apply to heals, but I would also like to see the range removed or, if that really isn't an option, increased to 32m.
- Windows of Opportunity: A new perk with this effect I wouldn't mind. But I genuinely don't know why we have changed this perk. The perk was extremely popular (emphasis on was, it won't be if this goes through), but the effect wasn't overpowered or anything close. In fact, Five Moves Ahead, even after the nerf, will still be better than old Windows of Opportunity!! The perk was simply popular because it was comfortable and was good for casual players that don't have thousands of hours to memorize pallet spawns, along with good for solo queue players that would have no idea otherwise what resources were left. The perk will technically be better for experienced players, but that's at the cost of the casual playerbase! Are we going to rework Technician too? Not every popular perk is too strong, sometimes there is another reason they are popular. Not only that, but we now have 4 perks that affect window speeds. If Spine Chill gets the change I described I might consider running it instead, but why would I pick WoO over Finesse and Resilience? It's only strength is that it works in both health states (same as Spine Chill), but I could run Finesse for double the effect on both pallets and windows while healthy, or run Resi for permanent vault speed while injured with no cooldown (again, on both pallets and windows). This perk change does not really benefit experienced survivors, and it actively harms casual survivors. Dark Sense or Five Moves Ahead or maps do not fully fill the gap that would be left for casual players. I have casual friends who say they may never touch the game again if this rework goes through because they don't have thousands of hours and aren't good at looping. Please revert this change, you can keep the Five Moves Ahead nerf and the Dark Sense buff.
A little long winded, but these are my thoughts after trying these perks out and watching others use them in action.
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Perks
Comments
Nice post! :) I think Shoulder The Burden is a hot take and while it has insanely unhealthy potential it's one of most effective way how to fight back tunneling. Shoulder the burden in the end transfers hooks, doesn't remove them. So killer can either swap target or keep tunneling the same person. But killers complaining about someone being hooked 5 times to die doesn't make any sense. If you mindlessly tunnel someone for 5 hooks you should at this point lose the game automatically. Tbf, I have no idea how you suppose to help someone getting tunneled after this update. My second point, BT rework makes no sense. They didn't put elusive in the perk, neither if they would the perk still would be ok. Elusive is deactivated in the endgame so it will only get players option to get away from hook a bit further. While I hate a lot of survivor stuff, I'm beyond mesmerized how prominent tunneling is becoming.
My only change you didn't mention is Road Life. The perk is just too strong. It can remain self heal unlockable ability, but 8s heal is a bit too much for the fact that you can pressure gens at the same time. I think they can entirely removed the speed bonus so killers have option to intervene before the heal is done to maintain pressure without survivors playing against hit and run doing gigaheals in few seconds. If it's 16s heal, you would be still able to pair it with something else to make the speed faster, but 8s is just way too quick.
I think people majorly overestimate Road Life. The perk does heal very fast and comes from doing the objective, but requires you to stay vulnerable when in a lot of situations it would be unwise. I ran Road Life for 4-5 games in the PTB with a toolbox and only used it I think 2-3 times. And for those 2-3 uses it was amazing. But outside of those cases, it was much smarter to let a teammate heal me instead so that I wasn't leaving myself vulnerable on the objective the killer likely could check. If you force it every time you get injured, I feel like it has the potential to be a trap and get you killed.
A good medkit still is better than Road Life overall. With Sutures and Iri Bandage, you can get 2 unconditional heals that take around 11s. It's not much slower than Road Life, doesn't require staying injured, and can be used any time you want. I'd still take the medkit over Road Life, but Road Life is definitely viable. Who knows, I could be wrong if people find more use in the long term, I just don't think people are taking the context of a match into account enough and are focused too much on how fast the heal is. Either way, that's why I didn't include it, although I know some people are concerned about it.
The issue isn't the effectivness of the perk. It's obvious that it's more of extra tool to heal yourself and working on gen intentionally injured isn't smart unless it's legion or such killer. But my issue is that Strenght in Shadow allows you infinite heals at decent speed while at basement and only issue of that perk is that it's not very effecient. Travel time to basement, time to heal takes time and I believe Strenght in Shadow can easily be 100 % base speed without making the perk much stronger. If you desperately need heal and there is no one to heal you, you have option to do it on yourself which is fine. Self Care is a joke. 0.35 charge of heal per second is laughable even when paired with botany. It has no restrictions and no requirement but still suffers massive penalty for what other things can do better. If you pick good medkit and built to last, you can heal yourself up to 6 times which won't probably be even neccessary unless you do some duty of care, for the people or whatever build. On the other hand road life works passively, you can pressure gens injured when there is no one to heal you and heal quickly in the process if killer isn't pushing you off. This will be a nail in the coffin to thana legion, which I'm actually looking forward to because im tired of iri buttons undfury thana legions but tbf they will suffer a lot. Killers like Wraith who's more viable around hit and run, Onryo and those killers too. It's issue of the game that weakest killers suffer from otherwise mediocre or okish perks the most. Think of Made For This, why it was so hated? Because back in the day not that many killers had dash powers or speed traversals. In the current version of the game I can't imagine made for this working when simply injured being problematic against most of the killers - fe. Freddy has stationary puddles, Pig had shorter dash, Myers had no dash etc. I only mind those changes because killers who are already struggling will struggle even more while strong killers will become even stronger as tunneling will be more efficient, gen speed got hit hard with many perks being nerfed and holding w against them to waste time doesn't work. I'd like Road Life to have those changes: Now doesn't deactivate when downed, heal takes min. 12s, time of disrupt before perk deactivates may be increased to 8s so it's more viable to heal someone and yourself in the process. I don't think it needs hard nerf, just tiny heal penalty and would be fine.
I agree that Strength in the Shadows could easily be buffed, the perk is just not great right now, especially on bigger maps that require more travel time. Self Care, although I'd personally never run it without Botany and usually on a protection hit build like you mentioned, is actually insanely popular in Asia since they play much more independently there. Even if it's not popular in the US or in EU, if it has such a massive place in Asia's pick rate I think it's good as is.
For Road Life, yes when the conditions are ideal you can get a fast heal from simply doing the objective, which is very powerful. However, the key words are "when the conditions are ideal." For example, you said it will affect Wraith's hit and run play style since you can get a heal up from doing the gen for a while and then heal yourself. If I had Road Life and I had any viable option to get a heal from a teammate, even if it took longer, I would take that instead. Sitting on a gen that a hit and run Wraith knows you were near while injured is borderline suicidal. Same with any stealth killers or killers using Undetectable addons / perks. For Legion, although being able to self heal with Road Life affects his ability to use Thana, so does the ability to self heal in general. Having even one teammate with a medkit to avoid 4 stacks of Thana has the same effect on it without having to take any time.
I wouldn't be absolutely opposed to Road Life being increased to 10-12s, I just think that at that point there would be almost no reason to run it over a medkit. I think people have an over inflated idea of how this would affect the game, but we'll have to wait and see.
Premonition cooldown nerf is so annoying. Its cooldown needed a buff not a nerf if aura is the problem, remove that part. It's use is for detecting undetectable killers and helped solo q alot since stealth killers thrive in solo q.