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Bad Perk University: The Third Seal
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. I haven’t talked about Hex perks in a while have I? Let’s change that today, with The Third Seal. Third Seal is a pretty simple Hex perk. Upon hitting a survivor with a basic attack, you apply a permanent Blindness status effect to them until Third Seal gets cleansed. That’s pretty much it, and Third Seal has a token counter to show you how many survivors have Blindness.
So why is this perk bad? It’s important to understand what Blindness actually does, since it can sometimes feel like a nothing debuff. It makes it so you do not see auras for as long as the status effect lasts. You immediately think of your aura reading perks like Object of Obsession, Empathy, Bond, Visionary and so on, but even without those perks, you have basic aura reading that happens in a few instances:
1. You see when a teammate is downed
2. You see when a teammate is on a hook
3. You see your teammates’ auras when you are downed and hooked
Blindness will prevent you from seeing all of those things, and while only having the effect for about a minute with certain killer addons is not really anything to be worried over, having it active all the time, on every survivor, can get out of hand very fast. Nobody knows where anybody is or where they’re getting downed from, and if the killer can continue to apply considerable pressure, your team will be scrambling for the totem faster than Ruin. But the issue here is how long it can take to get to that point. Finding all four survivors and being able to land a basic attack on them at least once can be a feat, especially if you’re up against really good loopers. And remember, this is a Hex perk. You’re lucky if the totem lasts a minute in a lot of matches. Even with Blindness, survivors still have many ways to play around it. When you hook a survivor, Blindness does stop others from seeing them...after the fact. But when a survivor gets hooked, there’s a special bubble that pops up for a few seconds and then disappears. And since every survivor with functioning ears and eyes can see and hear when a survivor is hooked, hiding that aura will only delay them for so long, and might only be effective if you’re somehow sending every survivor into a panic. But perhaps worst of all is that Blindness is almost completely nullified by the existence of voice coms. It doesn’t matter how many survivors you inflict Blindness on, if they’re communicating through Discord or other such means, you are completely wasting your time with this perk. Now the perks in Dead by Daylight weren’t designed with that fact in mind, but the truth remains.
So how do we make the most out of this perk? Once again, we’re operating under the assumption that the Hex totem lasts long enough to inflict Blindness on most of the survivors, but not all of them. How do we make sure this effect lasts long enough to make a difference? To do this, we’ll need to employ the strategy that Third Seal was designed for: slugging. Will you get nasty comments in the post game chat? Yeah, probably, but keep in mind that slugging is a universal method of creating pressure, and a survivor on the ground basically can’t do anything. A Killer’s time is far more precious than that of the survivors, and they have to give themselves breathing room whenever possible. If you go around hooking every survivor after you down them, you will not stop the generators from being finished. So what perks work well with Third Seal? It’s pretty simple actually, we need a perk that simulates the entire team having Blindness but not quite. More precisely, Knock Out. Knock Out is a very unpleasant perk to be hit by, but the idea here is that since the survivor we downed with a basic attack is blind, and Knock Out hides the survivor until someone is within 16m, they’re going to be there for a while. This helps to potentially land a hit on all four survivors so you can get the full effect of Third Seal. Sloppy Butcher along with Coulrophobia are also perks to consider, as they are excellent slugging perks that help make sure survivors can’t pick up others quite as quickly. I might make a mini lesson about Coulrophobia going more into detail about the strategy to employ with it. Like with any Hex perk, Undying can be used to make sure your totem survives one cleansing, if you care about Third Seal that much. You can also potential run Third Seal along with a stronger Hex perk to sort of act as “bait”. Of course, it’s a 50/50 chance there, and it may draw more attention than it’s worth, but it can sometimes help to try. Finally, with an upcoming Hex perk, Plaything will work incredibly well with Third Seal, because not only will the survivors have to deal with Blindness, they also have to deal with the much more problematic status effect that is Oblivious. They won’t see or hear you coming now. In regards to Plaything, Blindness will stop the survivor from seeing their totem within 16m, so it’s a scary synergy if you can keep it protected for a while.
Closing thoughts, how do we make this perk better? I’ve mentioned before that the best way to make Hex perks better is to make totem placement better. Some of them are fine, but they should not be placed near generators or out in the open, a survivor should have to actively be looking for them to discover them, in my opinion. This is what I would say for Blood Favor as well, so I’m saying it now so I don’t have to say it again. As for the perk itself, I still think Blindness is an underrated debuff. Any addons that inflict it for a duration are mostly not worth using, but permanent Blindness can easily get out of hand before you even realize what’s happening. That said, the perk only working on basic attacks is a little too restrictive for a perk with a rather underwhelming effect. Third Seal actually used to work on killer powers long ago, I say it should be reverted back to that. Hey, if Hysteria and Eruption can work with killer powers, why not Third Seal? If you want a more threatening effect for the perk, don’t worry, that’s what Plaything is for. Perks are meant to be used together after all. If anyone has any ideas for any extra effects Third Seal should have, let me know. Thank you for coming to my lesson, see you next class!
Comments
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Third Seal isn't bad. Imo the perk just doesn't have anything to complement or synergies with it, until Hex: Play Thing comes along.
But Hex perks are a problem within themselves not because of the perk, but the totem
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third seal is a beast on maps like RCPD, but worthless on the macmillan maps, so, yeah, it's the totems, or rather their placement
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It’s not the worst Hex Perk in the game. In all honesty it’d probably be better to buff the Blindness Status effect rather than Third Seal.
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How do you buff Blindness, since there is no way to buff because there is no other better thing to blind than hooked & dying survivors
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I actually went up against the 3rd seal for the first time last night, didn't realise it was a hex and the ghostface landed hits on everyone early on we were all bloody blind for the entire match and eventually everyone died because it turned into a mess lol
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I think i'd like it more if Blindness got a buff.
And the buff i've always had in mind is that it doesn't just block Auras, but all the "supernatural" things.
We're talking Auras, loud-noise bubbles (noise still happens though), the Red Stain, maybe even make Hex Totems look like Dull Totems.
Killer Powers unaffected of course.
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I thought that you can't see the people on the hook while The Third Seal is active?
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You can't, but you still get the big hook notification circle.
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you should really rename this series "pretending good perks are bad"
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Blindness just needs to go. All it does is destroy solo queue whilst barely affecting SWF at all.
Third Seal should be reworked into something completely different.
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When Plaything comes my Blindness Hag us gonna be even grosser. Right now she's Third Seal, Undying, Franklin's, BBQ, deffo gonna swap Undying for Plaything and see how people react to being Oblivious on top of blind for a bit.
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Add an additional effect to blindness. One thing I think would be good it making it to where Survivors can't tell the difference between a Dull Totem and a Hex Totem when they suffer the blindness status effect. This would also be an indirect buff to Third Seal as it would mean that survivors would have to cleanse totems at random until they cleanse the right one.
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It's already good. Just play a mobile killer with Thrill Of The Hunt and you'll get good use out of it.
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Before I would have suggested that The Third Seal should inflict oblivious as well as blindness, but now Hex Plaything kinda fills that niche.
I still think you can still add oblivious to Third Seal as the two perks have different strengths, as Third Seal would be a powerful effect tied to one totem, while Plaything functions as game delay due to it spawning multiple totems only one person can cleanse. Plus they would still have some synergy as Third Seal would hid auras from Plaything.
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I don't like Third Seal just because it's so effective against soloQ. When versing a group of solos, it is the strongest Hex perk in the game, the strategy is simple. You down the first survivor, it honestly doesn't matter if they get off the ground or not, then the next step is to hit everyone else with a basic attack once, if the survivor is out positioned then down them. Never hook anyone. 4 man slug and auto win. If you can pull this off before anyone even realizes that you've got the perk you win.
This strategy does not work against a SWF of any size, and this perk provides minimal value against a SWF of any size, but it's super busted and cheap against SoloQ. So if you like bullying the weak than this perk is for you.
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It's pretty jarring just how wide the gap is between solo and SWF in regards to this perk, yet the very existence of SWF makes it so I almost never see this hex used to the extent of the other hexes. I've gone up against this perk maybe 5 times at most, and it managed to kick my rear maybe once, and that was because the killer using it was very good. So yeah, despite the major difference, I don't really see this perk discussed very often, and that makes it difficult to come up with any potential changes.
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Third seal is really really good at what it does, the fact that it's a perk that requires a basic attack is why it's not good.
Apply it to any effect the killer gives the survivor(including the cursed status effect), and it would be so much more powerful. It's not that powerful in a SWF, but absolutely terrifying for Solo's.
Third Seal is my favourite hex, but also by far the hardest that is to apply to cause chaos. Even harder than Blood Favour as 1 working Blood Favour can cause enough chaos for an entire team if even applied to 1 person.
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