Why Self-Care is Broken Beyond Belief, and How I would Rework it

shootaman777

Self-Care; In case you're new to DbD and don't know what this perk is:

Self-Care is a perk that allows survivors to heal themselves infinitely with no item, at 50% of the normal healing speed. This means that, as opposed to the 10 second heal from fellow survivors or self-healing with medkits, Self-Care takes a survivor 20 seconds to heal themselves. It is a teachable Claudette Morel perk.

Any DbD player can tell you that this is the single most powerful perk in a survivor's arsenal. This perk is a staple at every rank, and the difference in survivability and capability between having/not having this perk, is immensely large.

Every player has access to this perk, as due to the 2.0 update, each character starts with a perk slot unlocked and all of the specific character's tier 1 perks unlocked. A brand new player has tier 1 Self-Care on their Claudette.

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Now that we've got that out the way, here's why it's broken, and what I would do to fix it:

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1) Self-Care makes relying on other survivors for heals less efficient than Self-Care healing, and as such makes healing other survivors a waste of time and irrelevant.

-I posted this in DbD Alliance Discord's #dbd-discussions chat, and rather than editing it into a wall-of-text style analysis, I will be leaving it as-is, so that this post is somewhat more interactive.
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So, just had a thought. Since Self-Care heals at 50% speed, it takes 2x time to heal? 20 seconds as opposed to 10?

So, Self-Care'ing a single survivor takes the same time that it would take for 2 survivors to heal each other in one spot, to heal a single survivor? And that's why it's balanced, because of the healing speed reduction?

Well, if that's the case, then wouldn't 2 survivors Self-Care'ing simultaneously also take 20 seconds for them both to be healed?
Meaning that the supposed downside of Self-Care, the slower healing speed, is not actually a downside (since the Self-Care and regular healing times are the exact same)?
Because on top of not being bound to a fellow survivor/having to search for a fellow survivor/both survivors stuck in the same location during the heals, at least one of the two Self-Care users is completely safe from the killer during this healing, since it is physically impossible for the killer to be in multiple places at the same time.

And now, if we consider that 3 or 4 survivors are injured, the same holds true as above (in terms of inconveniences and lack thereof of the context of SC vs not having SC), and the normal 40 seconds of healing time for each survivor to heal the other, gets reduced to 20 seconds if they all simultaneously heal with Self-Care, twice as fast.

So, isn't Self-Care actually a universal buff to healing speed and efficiency?
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-How I would solve this problem, is by nerfing the healing speed of Self-Care down to 25% of healing speed, so that Self-Care'ing takes 40 seconds, and as such Self-Care'ing will never be more efficient than finding a fellow survivor to heal oneself. The people who played DbD before Self-Care's recent buff will know exactly how long this will take to heal, since this is more or less the former healing speed of tier 1 Self-Care. The current 20 second heal would become a 40 second heal, effectively making Self-Care a perk for emergency situations, but not something to be abused the hell out of, like it is now.

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2) It is as powerful as 4x We'll Make It. 4 survivors healing each other in 5 seconds each, takes 20 seconds. 4 survivors healing themselves with Self-Care at the same time, takes exactly as long.

-If Self-Care is more powerful than 4x We'll Make It, when We'll Make It provides the largest healing speed bonus possible, just imagine by what margin it blows all other healing perks out of the water. Figured I'd mention that.

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3) It completely negates a killer power - Freddy's/The Nightmare's

Back when Small Game was an absolute counter to the Trapper because it highlighted his traps with an orange aura within 6 meters (I believe it was 6 meters, but it was so long ago that I'm not entirely certain), it got gutted because of its potential to bully the hell out of the Trapper since Small Game/Saboteur was meta at the time (as well as for the devs to be able to say that there's a perk that finds totems, since totems were new at the time).

How I'd nerf Self-Care in this regard, is to change it so that in a match against Freddy/The Nightmare, Self-Care does NOT give skill checks. At all.

So, what do y'all think?

shootaman777

Why did this post before I was finished typing it...
Finished editing it... for now!

jiyeonlee

you could type these in 1sentence

don't drag all over and say "right" at every single time its annoy to watch

yeet

healing in general is just too powerful for survivors

jiyeonlee

this game have lots of overpowered perks and devs generally doesn't care about most perks

they agreed with no penalty perks especially if its teachable perks like ruin or bc

shootaman777

@jiyeonlee said:
you could type these in 1sentence

don't drag all over and say "right" at every single time its annoy to watch

Well, I removed the 'right's, but I don't know what exactly you mean by 'don't drag all over'. And what exactly could I type in 1 sentence?

shootaman777

@jiyeonlee said:
this game have lots of overpowered perks and devs generally doesn't care about most perks

they agreed with no penalty perks especially if its teachable perks like ruin or bc

Of course the devs aren't talking about a lot of perks in the game. Because they're either in a good place, or meant to help new players (rather than meant to be effective at high ranks).

There are only two overpowered perks in DbD. I define 'overpowered perks' as perks with no counterplay, or that circumvent so many game mechanics that there is never a reason not to run them other than to nerf oneself. Those 2 overpowered perks are:
1) Self-Care
2) Decisive Strike

Self-Care is why I made this thread, and Decisive Strike is already on the chopping block.

Every other perk has a reasonable degree of counterplay.

Hex: Ruin is countered by hitting great skill checks... which isn't difficult to do. But if someone doesn't have the skill to hit great skill checks, there are two counters to it that require no skill whatsoever, which are gen tapping and breaking the totem.

I can only assume that by 'bc', you meant NC as in 'A Nurse's Calling', or bc as in short for BBQ & Chili. A Nurse's Calling is countered by either not healing near the killer, or being so close to a juke spot that it doesn't matter that you're found by the killer. BBQ is countered by going within 40 meters of the hook during the hooking, or by not showing the killer where you're going during the 4 seconds of aura reading then promptly hiding after the aura reading ends.

fuzzyhobo

I'm almost entirely with you, but I would like to see self-care become part of the repertoire of survivors and removed as a perk with a nerf in speed.
Self care atm is too fast, but running solo queue without self care is almost certain death when you can't rely on your fellow survivors. Not to mention at end game when you're the only survivor left, being able to heal up to full hit points is essential.

Sarief

it's "balanced" because thanatophobia, mangled and freddy "slow down world" are doubling the negative bonus.

It's balanced. Not fair, but balanced (c)

The problem is not the perk. It's okay in my opinion. The problem is that killer cannot do anything about it: he can't stop you from healing in front of him. No SC during chase and 10 seconds after - good enough to make it much less annoying -___-
I mean, they did it to freddy =\

shootaman777

@fuzzyhobo said:
I'm almost entirely with you, but I would like to see self-care become part of the repertoire of survivors and removed as a perk with a nerf in speed.
Self care atm is too fast, but running solo queue without self care is almost certain death when you can't rely on your fellow survivors. Not to mention at end game when you're the only survivor left, being able to heal up to full hit points is essential.

There are two reasons that I'm against making a nerfed Self-Care into a base survivor mechanic:
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1) It would make perks based on the injured state such as Iron Will, Resilience, and the like worthless, since healing-based perks would take front-and-center stage.
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2) Not only would it make healing fellow survivors entirely irrelevant, it would open up an extra perk slot for survivors to add more meta perks to their loadout, or to add Botany Knowledge into their loadout to undo the decreased base healing speed and provide a universal bonus to that survivor's ability to heal other survivors.
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Making Self-Care a base mechanic is a huge blanket survivor buff. I'm not in favour of that, when survivor is already the power role.
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Soloqueue is not almost certain death without Self-Care. That's where skill comes into play, and where the hatch is useful.
There are always medkits, Pharmacy, Plunderer's Instinct, and the like that can substitute for Self-Care, as well (they're not used as often because they're not as convenient, but they're still effective).
Being able to fully heal up in end game is not essential - it's convenient, but unnecessary. Again, that's where the things I just mentioned become useful.
That's also where perks based on the injured state become useful, such as Iron Will (makes you silent when injured) and Resilience (increases your action speed, and yes, that includes vaulting speed).
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What it seems to me that you're saying, is that you can't be bothered to use an injured state perk or to use any of your other alternatives in the end game, and you want Self-Care as a base mechanic so you don't have to be bothered with it. I don't mean it as an insult, but that's how you're coming off, based on what you're saying. If that's not the case, let me know, but that's just what I'm reading.

xxaggieboyxx

I also like how the people in this forum with the most optimistic opinions and logical thinkers are people that seriously play both sides not just "oh I'm rank10 killer and rank 1 survivor and this should get nerfed" or vice versa but people that only play one side don't understand the struggles of the other side so they only care about nerfing the other side and buffing theirs. This also goes for some of the dbd YouTubers that do both, they call for fairness not just screaming for the other sides "op" thing to be nerfed.

edit: just noticed this was a duplicate and I posted this in the wrong thread. You can see what I said before this in the other thread 

Milo

Buff medkits/pharmacy