Shoulder the Burden rework
I just had a good thought about this perk, an amazing rework with some really punishing downsides. Not disrespect to the developers but I don't like the rework, I know it was a strong perk before but only being able to use it once per match is something I am not a fan of.
Rework 1
The perk should be like it was a while ago, where you don't even need to be hooked. You take a hook state from another survivor but it has a few caveats.
- For each survivor you Shoulder the Burden (Max 2) you will gain a permanent 10% action Speed penalty to Repairing, Sabotaging, Healing and Cleansing.
Rework 2
- After using Shoulder the Burden on another survivor, you will gain the Incapacitated status effect for 60 seconds.
Meaning you can not Bless/Cleanse Totems, Heal, Repair Generators, Sabotage Hooks and Use Items.
Comments
People have issue with ability to distibute hooks, not the downsides. Some killers will swap targets to avoid antitunnel while still having someone on death hook.
More of reworks like these.
1: Press F to unhook survivors. Unhooking emits no sound and has 5s delay before shown on the UI.
2: For each hook stages the survivor has increase they're elusive duration by 10s.
3: Press F to unhook survivor. They gain broken for 30s and are healed after that.
Shoulder is fundamentally broken due to providing a game breaking interaction. For 8 years, the games fundamental was:
-Hook states are permanent progression.
The more you hook someone, the closer they are to being killed, which is the killers objective.
Shoulder says "nah", it does not undo progress, but it gives survivors the ability to intentionally spread hook states to buy more time and stretch a game out (killer is always racing against time).
>Just go after someone else/target the person who shouldered
Still does not defeat the point, if you are down to 2 gens, you need someone out ASAP if you want to actually create pressure, someone being shouldered gives you 2 more chases on the said survivor, which can lose you the game.
Bonus points if its stacked.
You have 2 survivors on death hook.
With 2 shoulders, now every survivor has 1 hook state, while the progress is the same, it is definitely not the same, each survivor needs to be downed 2 times for an elimination versus 2 survivors being out in one down, which on its own applies pressure by making them unable to pull aggressive/reckless plays.
Game has changed a lot. You can now stall gens more, you can now repair gens faster (untill ptb goes live)… Modern killers are not those old who had average chase of 2mins, new modern killers are capable of downing you in matter of seconds if they play well. Some of them have very low or none counterplay (Henry, Judgment, Nurse…). So shifting hooks isn't "this never was a thing" excuse. I'm glad they are making stronger killers but both sides must feel like they have chance to win and not like "It's Legion, free win." or "It's Nurse with full aura, gg."
I don't really agree with this argument because you're lumping several completely different balance issues together.
Yes, modern killers are generally more lethal in chase than a lot of the older roster. But a killer being capable of getting a very fast down doesn't automatically mean the overall hook economy needs to be made more forgiving for survivors. Chase strength, map pressure, gen pressure and the ability to actually convert downs into kills are all different things.
Nurse is probably the worst example to use for this too. She's an extreme outlier who fundamentally ignores most of the normal rules of a chase. If Nurse with full aura is oppressive, then Nurse/full aura is the thing that should be looked at. You can't balance universal mechanics around Nurse without also applying those same changes to Trapper, Legion, Myers, etc.
And the game hasn't just universally shifted in the killer's favor either. Gens went from 80 to 90 seconds, sure, but regression has also been heavily restricted compared to what it used to be. Killers literally have a cap on how many regression events they can cause to an individual generator now. Meanwhile survivor gen efficiency and killer regression have both gone through a million perk/meta changes over the years.
If Henry or Judgment can down people too consistently with too little counterplay, tune Henry or Judgment. If Nurse + aura is ridiculous, address Nurse or the interaction with aura. If Legion is hopeless against good survivors, address Legion.
Trying to use the hook system to compensate for a roster where the weakest and strongest killers are miles apart is just treating the symptom instead of the actual balance problem.