Bad Perk University: Territorial Imperative

Timeman63

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. You know, after covering Camaraderie and Second Wind, two perks that don’t even really qualify as bad perks in my eyes, I feel like tackling some real trash this time again. How about we go with Territorial Imperative? *sigh* Yep, this one...This perk doesn’t even sound good when you read it. When a survivor enters the basement while you are 32m away from the entrance (I think), their aura gets revealed to you for 3 seconds. You also get a visual indication in a similar vein to Spine Chill. Also, for SOME reason, it has a cooldown of 20 seconds.

So why is this perk bad? There are exactly two scenarios where a survivor in their right mind would willingly enter the basement:

1. They spawned near the basement and they’re running Pharmacy or some other item based perk and want to loot the basement chest right away

2. Their teammate is hooked in the basement and they’re attempting to save them

Are you going to be able to capitalize on them entering the basement, especially when you’re 32m away or further? Probably not, if you’re playing the game correctly. I personally have a problem with every aspect of the perk (I also feel that way about Monstrous Shrine. Don’t worry, I’ll tear into that perk soon enough), so let me break it down. First, 3 seconds of aura reveal is abysmal considering all the other aura reading perks that are now in the game. You get more information out of the perk lighting up, since it lets you know someone actually entered the basement and you might want to look in its direction. Second, the perk only working when you’re 32m away. Okay, I understand that the developers don’t want killers to hook a survivor in the basement, walk like 5m away from the killer shack and then get a notification that another survivor just went into the basement, letting them know to run right back and down that survivor. But the thing is, here’s the exact wording of the perk: “The aura of a survivor entering the basement is revealed to you for 3 seconds when you are at least 32m away from the entrance.” Now is that accurate? I have no clue, but what I can tell you is that on some of the smaller maps and with bad spawns, I could be standing almost at the edge of the map and not get a notification from Territorial Imperative. But I don’t even know what I did wrong there. Was I not far enough away, or is Territorial Imperative simply bugged and doesn’t work, because I honestly believed that at one point when testing this perk! Finally, the cooldown. I guess in theory, survivors wouldn’t enter the basement so frequently and so soon after one another that a 20 second cooldown would be crazy to think about, but then why have it there in the first place? If you actually manage to catch the survivor in time to trap them in the basement, it takes you roughly 20 seconds or less to down and hook them in the first place. It just seems really redundant, and I’m sure it’s only there so the perk can have an excuse to have three tiers.

Here’s the thing about basement centered perks, few as they may be. The basement is not a priority hook location. You’re not always going to down a survivor close enough to the basement to be able to hook them down there every time. You do it when you know you’re close enough, and/or you feel like defending the basement would be worth your time to pressure the other survivors. I’ve had matches where I didn’t hook a single survivor in the basement, and heck, I won anyway. While I’m sure hooking them in the basement would have put me in an even better position, it’s not like I needed to. But more importantly, if the perk goes off while I’m busy with something, especially if I’m chasing a survivor, I’m not going to suddenly stop what I’m doing and go after the basement unless I’m about 32m away. Not that it really matters because it seems like half the time the perk doesn’t actually work anyway.

So how do we make the most out of this perk? This is unfortunately one of those perks that is simply so particular in its function that you kind of just have to run it as a “just in case” perk. I mean, I suppose you could run it in a build with perks that synergize with it, but when most people think to do that, they use it to basement camp, and then again they don’t use it anyway since the perk is kind of antithetical to that. I promise you Basement Bubbas, the day survivors wise up and just work on generators when you camp, is the day you get put out of a job. Before I talk about perks that go with Territorial Imperative, I think I should talk about which killers can potentially use this perk. Any of the high map pressure killers such as Nurse, Blight, Spirit, and Billy all have the mobility needed to potentially get to the basement when this perk lights up. The question is whether it’s worth your time and power to do so, and it really just comes down to common sense. If you weren’t doing anything but patrolling anyway, you might as well pounce on the opportunity. Know that the goal here is not to actually down the survivor, that’s simply a bonus and a free basement hook. It’s to capitalize on a survivor’s greed and recklessness to willingly go into the basement. Unfortunately, Hoarder is better at doing that sort of thing, and if I can say anything about a perk that gives survivors more opportunities for keys being better, you have serious design problems. But back to killers. Demogorgon and Hag are both killers who can essentially teleport at will to the basement. Demogorgon obviously has a bit more freedom in this regard, since Hag has to have survivors actually step on traps to teleport. In the case of Demogorgon, placing a portal at the top of the basement stairs can be strong if you find time to set it up and intend to defend the basement once hooking a survivor there. In the case of Hag, if you happen to be around the basement when setting up your web, take some time to put a trap down there. Survivors who have played against Hag before may be familiar with Hags trapping the basement after hooking a survivor down there. What they probably don’t expect is for the basement to be trapped before anyone is even hooked in the basement. Then you have the ranged killers. With it being her own perk, Huntress actually can potentially get use out of this perk. You might not be downing survivors in the basement, but you can injure them when they come out. Very skilled and experienced Huntresses can both time when survivors come out of the basement and guess where survivors will exit the shack, assuming that kind of structure. Deathslinger and Trickster don’t get much value out of knowing a survivor’s in the basement, so I probably wouldn’t bother with them. Now for perks that actually synergize with Territorial Imperative. I mentioned Hoarder already, since it’s a little better at alerting you to a basement intrusion than the perk that was designed for that. It might seem like redundant information, but Hoarder at least gives you more tracking opportunities in the form of chests and item pickups. If you’re playing Demogorgon or Hag, Make Your Choice is monstrous on those two, and Territorial Imperative can give you the heads up you need to time your teleport and get the drop on survivors leaving the basement after unhooking. Those two perks are the only ones that have any specific synergy with Territorial Imperative though, and neither of them necessarily need this perk to work well, except for perhaps Make Your Choice in a basement scenario. At the end of the day, Territorial Imperative is simply not worth the slot needed, and it’s a sad fact that has been true for a long time.

Closing thoughts, how do we make this perk batter? There’s simply so much wrong with the perk as it is now that a full rework may be in order. If anything, I’d like to maybe shift away from the basement camping strategy it slightly suggests, but we could also just keep it, because it’s not like it’s a detrimental effect or anything. Really the main issue with Territorial Imperative is that it simply does too little for it to be worth using, so let’s try fixing that. Thankfully, this perk is sort of a blank slate, there’s no special flavor text that dictates a theme that the perk has to follow, but if we go by the name itself, “Territorial Imperative”, we could make the perk about defending your territory through aura reading information. Otzdarva made a similar suggestion like this, but I think it would be interesting for survivors’ auras to be revealed the first time they interact with certain objects in the trials, like generators, totems, chests, and hooks. So perhaps something like this:

The first time a survivor interacts with a generator, totem, chest, and hook, their aura is revealed to you for 3/4/5 seconds.

It may not seem like a lot, but with this the perk suddenly has more consistent use throughout a match, since survivors always have to interact with generators at least once, will try cleansing a totem at least once, maybe open a chest or sabo a hook if they feel like it, so their aura will get revealed, at most, 4 times. Seems like a better deal than having a perk that shows auras maybe once or twice, or none if you’re particularly unlucky, doesn’t it? Why does Huntress have such awful perks? It’s really telling that her best perk is Huntress Lullaby, and that’s a perk that you can LOSE by having it cleansed. And what are you even meant to do with Beast of Prey? Huntress is such a solid killer already, but imagine if her other perks were even serviceable? Time will tell if we just decide to forget this perk ever existed and leave it for the Entity to pick at on her plate. Thank you for coming to my lesson, see you next class!

Artick

"might not seem like much"? You are asking for nearly permanent wallhacks.

Rey_512

https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/2461203#Comment_2461203

How does a one-time aura reading of 3 seconds equate to nearly permanent wallhacks?

I personally agree that Territorial needs a buff, but maybe a simple one:

Each time a survivor enters the basement, you get a notification and the survivor’s aura is revealed for 15 seconds.

Survivors should rarely be chilling in the basement so the perk would serve its true purpose without having an unnecessary cooldown or distance requirement.