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Some thoughts on the upcoming PTB
EDIT: you might have seen it already as it is linked on the right, but just to make sure, here the reference to the announcements: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/194208
Just picking out two, as I don't want to rush over all of them before testing them. Also these are the only ones I am a bit concerned about (the others are either fine or probably don't change the pickrate / viability much imo)
Mindbreaker
I think the problem of mindbreaker was not really the duration of the exhaustion, rather than the condition to have 50% or lower progress on the gen. A positive effect that the perk still has is that survivors being afraid of TR and their Exhaustion status to leave the gen early, as soon as they hear the TR. Having to walk for 3 seconds when the killer is already in sight might either give the killer free distance or the survivor simply leaves the gen even if not necessary. I just guess that this is not really often the case, as not many survivors are that scared of TR.
I think the perk would greatly improve value if the condition is changed to "when survivors work on a gen while being inside the terror radius of the killer. We can discuss if this makes the perk useless for stealth killers, but this is at least a minority of killers, stealth is not constantly active otherwise and most important: the descision the survivor has to take, meaning the risk to take is much higher and more threatening.
I'm not sure if exhaustion hatchets, exhaustion gas and exhaustion portals are target to be changed (because exhaustion "Iridiscent King" was removed as well) but if exhaustion perk counter is a thing that should stay in the game (which is very likely because otherwise this perk makes no sense) then I think this version of the perk would be much more viable and put the initiative on the survivor side to decide if they work on gens near the killer or not. I hope you give your opinions on this change and probably the devs get an ear on this idea to maybe (although very unlikely) find its way into PTB. Because I think the announced change will actually do nothing on the pickrate and viability of this perk.
Thanatophobia
I really don't know about this perk change. The perk itself was already really bad. Mostly countered by medkits and several healing perks like We'll make it, Autodidact, Inner Strength (from which you normally see at least one in every game), and even if a full team is injured, a single team heal would only take ~2.5 seconds longer, even less when 2 survivors heal someone.
So not sure about the "lose/lose" they stated. Definitely currerntly it is a lose/lose, but the "lose time to heal" is a very minor effect. Mostly this perk was just run by killers that are countered by not healing (for example Legion and Plague). And on these two killers specifically I think Thanatophobia now gets even stronger, because Plague profits massively from cleansing and Legion has the least problem to get back to 4 stacks easily.
I don't know how much other killers will profit from that perk, when it is actually easier to heal now, so more quickly losing the benefit again, and this at the cost of having the two killers mainly using this perk benefitting even more by heavier slowdown. I just don't have a better idea yet for this perk, but my guess would be that Legion/Plague will run this perk more often and other killers will use it even less, unless the slowdown is significantly increased to kinda force healing (which would make the perk meta for Legion/Plague).
Comments
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I'm just a bit peeved that while they were running through and altering the Demogorgons perks, they left Surge untouched. While Mindbreaker and Cruel Limits needed buffs, Surge has 4 frustrating as hell conditions for activation: down with basic attack, 32 meter distance from a generator, Gen can't be blocked or regressing, and the 40 second cooldown. Considering that it only does 8% damage and saves a killer time on kicking the gen, all they needed to do is remove 1 of the conditions to make it more practical in a killers build. Many have suggested/agreed that the 2 most aggravating conditions are the "Down with basic attack" and the Cooldown:
Down with basic attack - What can I say, this requirement didn't work for Infectious Fright, and it ain't working for Surge either. The primary reason this has never been a good requirement is that it's practically useless to killers who can down with their powers, and I'm not just talking about the obvious ones like the Chainsaw boys/Oni, and Ranged killers like Plague and Huntress, I'm also talking about Pig's ambush attack, Blight's rush, Demo's Shred, etc, All of which also don't activate Surge because of this stupid as hell requirement. If they removed it like they did for Infectious Fright, Surge would become much more universally useful to all of the killers, instead of the 4 that I know of who can use it consistently: Plague, Trapper, Ghostface, Shape. Why does it work best on them vs other killers you ask? They can down a survivor quickly with a basic attack before the survivor gets out of range of any gens (in trappers case though he has to trap a survivor near the gens first). There's a strong case for removing this requirement, as keeping it in heavily limits the number of killers who can get any use from it.
Cooldown - Surge has a 40 second cooldown, which seems fair as the devs obviously didn't want it going off all the time but with its other requirements for activation, the cooldown is excessively flawed. Scenario 1: I down the only survivor near a gen with my basic attack and activate surge on said gen. another survivor comes to get a flashlight/pallet save, I lose the survivor and they go running back in the direction of the gen, I down them a second time before the cooldown finishes so surge doesn't go off, but since the gen was still regressing, surge wouldn't have activated anyways! Scenario 2: I quickly down 2 survivors within the right distance of a generator, surge activated once from the first survivor downed, but unless someone tapped said gen, It wouldn't have activated again anyways because it was already regressing, so what's the point of the cooldown again?... I could go on and on with these scenarios, but you get the point, once the gen has been hit by Surge it starts regressing and can no longer be affected by another surge attack unless someone taps it, and most survivors will simply flee the area when a killer is downing people nearby, so really, without a cooldown surge would only punish a survivor sticking to a gen while their teammates are going down nearby. Add in the time it takes to down a survivor, the distance they can get from a gen, and the minor amount of damage Surge does from its initial hit... Is the cooldown really even necessary?
I'm really upset that while the devs were taking initiative in reviewing and altering the Demogorgons perks, they completely ignored Surge which has been the topic of many discussions and suggestions for buffing it, much more discussions than either Mindbreaker or Cruel Limits. With that many complaints and forum posts about it, they could have at the very least made 1 of these suggested alterations to it for PTB testing only, even if they never intended it to go live. Sigh... well, here's hoping they read this and consider trying one of these changes for the next chapters PTB.
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Good point. If they do a Q&A stream, that would the the question I would raise, why this perk was ignored. Hope they have some explaining stats on that. The feedback to this perk was big enough on the forums.
NB. that Surge was discussed that much over Demo's other two perks because it had the potential to be a viable perk. I guess the other two perks will not increase in pickrate with the changes anyway, they are still not worth the pick. I can imagine Cruel limits with Bitter Murmur, but that is two perks for a most likely very minor effect (a possibly 'easier' first hit if you are not already occupied while the gen finishes). And my thoughts on the Mindbreaker change are above
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When they said Thana is a lose lose, they mean the effect is inherently always punishing. Not that it is currently a huge deal with it's current numbers to all playstyles.
Their solution to this is a small magnitude, which makes the issue negligible but causes a balance issue in return. In other words, the perk effecting healing speed forces them to make the perk underpowered.
Thus, by removing the heal speed decrease, they can make the perk actually balanced without making it overbearing.
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Then this is a strange understanding of "lose-lose situation". What would they say about Sloppy Butcher? Basically the same isn't it? If you don't heal, you go down instantly, if you heal, you waste more time than necessary. Just exchange "insta down" with "slower gen progress". I think it is totally ok if a perk is "always punishing".
Because, as I said: A full injured team on Thana Tier 3, meaning max value, causes ("only") the first heal done by a single survivor or medkit to take 2.5 seconds longer. Several ways to counter that, subsequent heals slowed down less. I know that every second can make the difference in certain situations. But just as comparison: a brown toolbox saving 5.33 seconds on a gen is regarded useless. I think survivors waste more time crouching around than this perk can waste on healing.
I know that the pure definition of lose-lose might fit here, I just think that, regarding this minor effect, this is a "got nothing else" reason. Like "new players struggle with Ruin skilllchecks" while new players barely faced that perk due to the stats they gave and the fact that this is a DLC perk, that needs to be bought, unlocked and then found in others' bloodwebs.
But regardless, this wasn't even my main point on the Thana change. Good we talked about it anyway ^^
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Not true. With the Sloppy Butcher thing I mean. Because you are counting the innate punishment for being injured as part of the perks effect, which it isn't.
Whenever you are EVER injured you can either heal or not heal.
If you heal you lose some time that would otherwise be spent on gens
If you do not heal you are a 1 hit down
The entire game is balanced with the specifics of healing in mind, as such this is less a lose lose as it is simply the baseline for which a lose lose would even be established.
So looking at sloppy, the perks effect makes healing take longer thus punishing the first option, but has a negligible impact on the "I'll just be a 1 down" scenario.
However, this is not the case for thanataphobia.
Thana both reduces healing speed AND punishes not healing. Meaning it punishes both options.
You bring up magnitude as a counterargument, but that isn't really valid here. The only thing magnitude shows is that the perk is not currently OP, to which I say duh, this isn't a thana nerf. The issue isn't that thana is right now OP, but that with the healing speed being one of the perks factors, a buff would MAKE it OP, or at least overbearing in the non-balance sense.
2.5 seconds may not be an issue, but a bigger number like 4 or 5 seconds very easily could be when combined with the gen speed slowdown, and we do want that larger gen slowdown effect because 4% is just not enough.
Btw if you increase the slowdown to 6% then it would in fact be an over 5 second slowdown. And they could very easily be increasing it by more than that given that they are removing the healing modifier to counterbalance.
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