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Bad Perk University: Camaraderie

Timeman63
Timeman63 Member Posts: 185
in General Discussions

Hello class, welcome to Bad Perk University! I'll be your professor for today, and we'll be going over the worst perks The Entity has to offer and see how to make the most out of them. Today I’m going to cover a rather unusual perk for this series: Camaraderie. Full disclaimer, when I make these posts, I usually make sure I own the perk first and test the perk out in different scenarios and with other perks to make sure I fully understand how to best use the perk. This is a bit of an exception, because I’m not confident that I’ll be able to obtain the perk before it gets renamed in November, and I wanted to talk about the perk before then just because I felt that it’s the best thing to do. I’m fairly confident that even though I don’t own Camaraderie, it won’t be hard to imagine what it’s used for. With that out of the way, let’s actually talk about it. Camaraderie is unlike any perk that’s come before it. When you’re in the struggle phase of being hooked, whether it’s because you were hooked twice or because your team neglected to rescue you on your first hook, this perk will pause your struggle timer for a whopping 34 seconds the moment another survivor comes within 16m of the hook. And yes, that’s all it does.


So why is this perk bad? Truth be told, I’m not entirely sure it’s actually a bad perk. 34 seconds is an absolutely ridiculous amount of time to be added to your hook timer. It’s currently the only perk in the game that makes you survive longer in a state where you’re normally on the ropes. That being said though, it’s an extremely niche effect, similar to the issue that Mad Grit has. When you use this perk, one of two things happen. Either a survivor comes up to your hook and is immediately able to rescue you, in which case Camaraderie did almost nothing, or Camaraderie actually works as intended and buys you a lot of time for your teammates to find a way to rescue you. While the second scenario is preferable since it justifies you bringing the perk, it’s also its only purpose. I suppose I should explain what Camaraderie is intended to be used for. It allows you to survive your second hook state for longer against a Killer that’s camping your hook or one that’s patrolling your hook and an objective, prioritizing both of those things. Maybe there’s a generator that’s about to be finished that they need to regress, but they also need to get you out of the game because they’re in a losing position and getting one survivor out of the game could be enough to turn things around. Camaraderie, when another survivor attempts a rescue, puts an abrupt stop to that plan. Taking an extra 34 seconds to die on the hook is enough time for one generator, or even two to be finished because the Killer is suddenly wasting their time trying to make sure you die.


The only real problem with that is that Camaraderie doesn’t pause your timer when the Killer is within 16m from the hook, that would be unfair to Killers that aren’t even camping you. So if, by some really rotten chance, your teammates don’t come try to save you, Camaraderie will do absolutely nothing to save you. Thankfully that’s a pretty extreme scenario. 9 times out of 10, your teammates will at least attempt to unhook you even if the Killer is in close proximity. Borrowed Time exists after all. But believe it or not, not every survivor runs Borrowed Time, and if a Killer is dead set on facecamping you, Camaraderie is only going to help you so much, since your teammates would have to worry about being grabbed. Most survivor players want perks that are easily usable and highly applicable, with opportunities to use the perk many times throughout a match. Strange how I say that when Decisive Strike, Unbreakable, and especially Adrenaline are single use perks that cover relatively niche situations. How come Camaraderie just kind of sits in a corner collecting dust? I think it has to do with the fact that the very existence of Decisive Strike and Unbreakable in particular causes Killer players to adapt their behavior in matches. If they don’t want to be stunned after picking up a survivor, they have to assume Decisive Strike is in play when there’s an Obsession. If they want to, or have to slug a survivor, they can’t do so for very long because Unbreakable may be in play, so they have to time themselves, or just pick up straight away. Camaraderie doesn’t cause killers to suddenly not camp the hook just because it exists. If a survivor is using that perk, they were probably going to be unhooked anyway, especially if the killer leaves the hook and patrols generators, as they should in most cases. Like, Dead Hard is an obnoxiously powerful perk in the right hands because pretty much no killer in the game can bypass its function due to invincibility frames. Its very existence causes killers to wait a couple moments before swinging their weapon just to make sure you have the perk or not, which might be enough for you to make it to a pallet before going down. Camaraderie is nothing like that. Depending on the killer you’re up against, and if the killer wants to play extremely dirty, they can snowball off of camping you and them realizing you have this perk isn’t going to suddenly make them stop camping you. If anything they’ll probably double down on it and make sure your team wastes their time trying to save you. The solution to that is usually to go work on generators as quickly as possible, since the Killer wastes time standing around, but somehow, most survivors don’t know that.


So how do we make the most out of this perk? Camaraderie’s passive nature and insidiousness is only to its benefit here. All you need is to have a teammate get within 16m and you’re all set. Whether or not you get saved immediately or after the 34 seconds is nothing to worry about. But what you need is to make sure that actually happens in the first place, or else it’s all for naught. Unfortunately, Camaraderie gives no prompt to your teammates that it’s in play, and both the killer and survivors could be forgiven for not realizing it’s there. Again, that’s to its benefit. The idea is to make sure the Killer doesn’t realize that you’re wasting their time. Now if only there were a perk that shows where every survivor is, and shows them the aura of the Killer whenever they’re within 16m of you when you’re hooked...oh wait, that’s right! Kindred!

Kindred is such an underrated perk in my opinion. The information it gives you and your team is invaluable, but the strategy in pairing it with Camaraderie is that it lets your teammates know exactly who is busy on generators and which available survivor is closest to your hook, encouraging someone to go rescue you...usually. It’s more of a suggestion than an insurance. Just know that in some cases, things won’t go your way. But you can at the very least rest assured that your were going to die whether you had Camaraderie or not. Better luck next match, I suppose. Now ideally, at least one of your teammates would be running Borrowed Time. Let’s be real, more likely than not, someone’s using it. This makes unhooking you very safe, and is simply more insurance on top of Camaraderie. Bonus points if the survivor is running Desperate Measures or even No One Left Behind. It’s interesting how Camaraderie gets the most mileage out of perks that OTHER players are running. Speaks to the uniqueness of the perk, I suppose.


Closing thoughts, how do we make this perk better? It’s worth stating for the record that Camaraderie is definitely not a bad perk to the extent of Predator, Up the Ante, or even Babysitter. It’s more along the lines of Solidarity, where the effect is quite underrated but is not applied very well. Camaraderie sees a bit more use in coordinated games, like tournaments, since the amount of time it buys for a coordinated team is incredible. SWF can potentially use the perk to great extent as well, but they’re too busy bullying killers with those other perks that they tend to use. The effect of Camaraderie is potentially strong, but it’s not very appealing to solo players because they can’t quite make the most of its effect or even realize it’s being used. This one issue can be solved quite easily, just like with Solidarity. I would simply make it so when you have Camaraderie and another survivor comes within 16m of your hook, they get an icon that tells them that you have Camaraderie. This lets them make an informed decision to either save you straight away because you’re about to die either way, or go finish working on generators because they now know that they have time to do so and still come back to save you. This simple change could make the perk more appealing to use without ever changing its effect. I really wish it were this easy to fix all bad perks. Some perks like Save the Best for Last are absolutely flawless in their design, as few as they may be, and the game designers who came up with them should be awarded medals. On the other hand, perks like Monstrous Shrine, the old Object of Obsession, and the original version of Decisive Strike are all horrendous disasters of design, and the designers who came up with them should wear dunce caps and sit in the corner while they think about what they’ve done. But then you have perks that are so close to being perfect, this close to greatness, but fall flat at the last leg. Solidarity, Huntress Lullaby, and Camaraderie all fall into that category for me. If they could receive a grade, I’d give them a B. Because I can tell that they tried their best, it’s worth commending. Learn from your minor mistake, because you’re destined for great things in the future. Second Wind also falls into this category too. Yeah...Second Wind. I think it’s time I gave you some attention. Thank you for coming to my lesson, see you next class!

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