Bad Perk University: Blood Favor

Timeman63 · September 2021

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’m not sure I’m prepared to talk about this next perk, but I have a moral obligation to cover what might easily be the worst Hex perk in the game, or at least the one that has a significant effect on its own without perks like Undying or Thrill of the Hunt to support it. I’m talking about Blood Favor. Strap yourself in students, this lesson’s going to be a long one. Blood Favor is very difficult to gauge on its description alone. When you hit a survivor with a basic attack, any upright pallets within 16m of you will be blocked for 15 seconds, essentially meaning survivors can’t drop them during that time. This is also the only hex perk that has a cooldown, 40 seconds to be specific.

So why is this perk bad? If you didn’t know much about the game, you might be confused as to why this hex is so unappealing. While blocking upright pallets sounds really busted, it’s more of a neutral effect if you really think about it. Sure the survivor can’t drop the pallet, but that also means you can’t kick it to break it later. If anything, you’d want survivors to drop the pallet and waste it if the pallet’s that close. But this only applies to bad survivors or survivors who are panicked. What’s more important is the fact that a blocked pallet is still a pallet that can be used later in the match. But you want the survivors to expend as much of that limited resource as quickly as possible, or die trying. Also that 16m range is pathetic. I understand that the developers wanted to be careful with a perk that denies survivors of their strongest resource against the killer, but unless the survivor was injured, wherever they run off to will likely just have another pallet that isn’t blocked. And that 40 second cooldown will basically ensure that you never get value out of the perk when you need it most. My experiences with this perk can be summed up mostly as: Hit a survivor and block the pallet in front of them, they run away to a loop that has a pallet that isn’t blocked, they drop the pallet, I keep chasing, I hit them again, but the 40 second cooldown hasn’t elapsed yet, and then the hex totem gets cleansed because “Oh right, this is a hex perk, so I’m never going to keep it for more than a minute.” It’s uniquely frustrating because there seems to be so much acting against this perk, so more than anything it feels like you’re wasting your time.

So how do we make the most out of this perk? This one’s probably the toughest one to make use of properly, since so many things need to line up perfectly in order for the perk to do what it was truly meant to. Before I go into strategies, it’s important to understand exactly what it is you’re trying to accomplish with Blood Favor, the ideal situation to be in. You want the survivor to be injured, and when you down them, the pallet that you down them at gets blocked by Blood Favor. This means that unlike in almost every single situation where you have to check to make sure there isn’t another survivor nearby to get a pallet save, you’re free to pick up the survivor as you please. Of course, flashlights still exist, but I’ll get to that. Let’s assume there are no flashlights in this scenario. This is probably the biggest strength of the hex. Completely denying survivors the option of a pallet save is actually hex worthy, but it’s a situation that you’ll find rarely happens with this perk. So what this should mean in theory is that killers that usually hit survivors when they’re already injured should make good use of this perk, right? In other words Legion and Plague. The only problem with that is if you’re me. I’m the exception to this theory. Because every time I try and use this perk on those killers, my hex totem is gone before I’ve had anything happen. So um...don’t be me. But also maybe don’t use this perk. Okay no, that's not fair. We’re here to make the most of it.

As far as perks to go with Blood Favor, something I always found to be annoying with Blood Favor is that the perk doesn’t even have the courtesy to show you which pallets are blocked. Although if it did that, it would illustrate just how useless it is. So because of that, Zanshin Tactics is a nice idea. You can know which pallets and windows are near your location, so you can get some idea of which ones are blocked and, perhaps more importantly, which ones the survivor will go for next. Remember how I mentioned flashlights earlier? If you see one in the lobby, well you know what to do. That’s right, Lightborn. Bring that perk, and survivors will have even fewer options to rescue their teammates. The only way they could save them at that point is to stun you at a different pallet or with Head On. But assuming you’re not stupid, that probably won’t be an issue. Infectious Fright is a good supplementary perk for Blood Favor because it informs you that survivors are in fact near where you downed someone. Though, if you’re using that perk already, you’d probably be better off trying to snowball instead of picking up immediately, but hey, it’s an option you have now. If you feel like memeing with the rare potential of actual synergy, Cruel Limits can rarely block off windows that are nearby when you’re chasing, further limiting the survivor’s option in chase. But that perk’s so terrible and unreliable that you probably shouldn’t bother. Even if you pair it with Tinkerer, chances are you’ll block like two windows and they won’t even be the ones you need. (I’ll get to Cruel Limits someday, good grief that perk is tremendously awful) That’s why Bamboozle is a much better option. Oh what’s that, you have a strong window? Not anymore you don’t. Now you have to leave the loop because Blood Favor also blocked the pallet that was nearby...is something I would say in a dream scenario.

I’m going to mention map offerings now, because Blood Favor shines a little brighter on indoor maps. Yeah, you know a perk sucks when it only really works well on specific maps. The particular maps I’m referring to this time around are Hawkins Laboratory and The Game. In the case of Hawkins Laboratory, it’s an indoor map that has a lot of pallets to block, but they’re also mostly unsafe. With Blood Favor in play, those pallets will become even more useless for survivors, ensuring they can’t even use them to slow you down. Unfortunately, you’ll only be able to use this strategy up until November 17th, so either don’t bother or try it while you still can. In the case of The Game, there are at least a thousand pallets, but they also tend to be clumped up together more due to the two story structure. So you’ll see a little more success with Blood Favor here if the survivor tries to drop down only to find the pallets below are also stuck. In other words, this perk works well on two specific maps in the game, one if you’re playing after November 17th. Great perk, isn’t it?

Finally, if none of those options have worked, you’ve tried and failed to make anything happen with this hex, there’s still one strategy you have left. Decoy hex. Pair it with basically any other hex perk, and hope the survivors cleanse Blood Favor instead of your other hex. See, the thing about Blood Favor is that since the effect is so nonthreatening to most survivors, a lot of them will either leave it alone or cleanse it right way for bloodpoints. There are ways to take advantage of both mindsets. I’ll go through each notable hex synergy. Undying and Thrill of the Hunt are only useful if you care so much about Blood Favor that you want to preserve it for longer. Undying is more my pick, since the nonthreatening nature of Blood Favor tends to prolong its lifespan, and Undying makes it last even longer. Why use Undying with this hex? I don’t know, but you can if you want. Ruin is very risky to pair with Blood Favor and is much better used with Undying, but worst case scenario, if Ruin gets cleansed first, you still have a marginally useful hex that can sometimes mess with survivors. I don’t recommend it, to be honest. Haunted Grounds and/or Devour Hope? That’s more like it! With Haunted Grounds, if the survivors are bothered enough by Blood Favor to want to cleanse it, they’re in for a nasty surprise if they cleanse the wrong totem. And with Devour Hope, survivors might get complacent if they see you using Blood Favor and put off cleansing totems for a while until someone gets hit with Devour Hope. Now they’re scrambling, and if they cleanse Blood Favor instead of Devour Hope, they’ll be in trouble if they don’t act fast. I tried my best to make it sound good, but in the end, you’re still using Blood Favor, and the bottom line is that the perk just isn’t good enough to be hex worthy. Even Third Seal becomes rather problematic if left alone. Blood Favor is just kind of inconvenient for survivors a lot of the time, because they can’t waste pallets anymore. It’s not a counterproductive perk like Predator or anything, but I wouldn’t use this perk even for the Adept Blight achievement (I love playing Blight, but not enough to only use his three perks).

Closing thoughts, how do we make this perk better? Once again, I give the developers credit for being precautionary with a perk like this. A perk that denies survivors of their most valuable resource against the killer is just waiting to be unchained and let loose. So while Blood Favor desperately needs a buff, buffing it too much wouldn’t be good for anyone. If Blood Favor is going to affect pallets in the way it does, it being a hex is enough to balance such a potentially strong effect. Ruin, the meta hex perk, is balanced by the fact that it can be disabled. So while there are a few ways to buff Blood Favor, making it not a hex perk is not a good way to do so. Here are some suggestions I’ll throw out there in the hopes that others may discuss them and see what sticks. I think more than anything, if the perk stays mostly the way it is, that cooldown definitely needs to go away or be toned down. Out of all the restrictions this perk has, that 40 second cooldown is too much and makes the perk frustratingly difficult to get real value out of. The 15 seconds that pallets get blocked is enough of a cooldown as it is. If you make it so during those 15 seconds, the perk can’t proc again, then it would be fine to not have the cooldown. So basically what Hysteria does. The other direction you might go in is to keep the cooldown but buff the range from 16m to 24m and make it so dropped pallets also get blocked by The Entity. That might be too strong, but I think with the cooldown it would prevent the perk from getting too out of hand. So here are the two versions of the perk I’ve proposed:

1. Hitting a Survivor with your Basic Attack prompts The Entity to hold all Pallets within a radius of 16 meters from your location in place for the next 15 seconds, preventing Survivors from pulling them down. Hex: Blood Favor has a cool-down of 25/20/15 seconds

2. Hitting a Survivor with your Basic Attack prompts The Entity to hold all Pallets within a radius of 24 meters from your location in place for the next 15 seconds, preventing Survivors from pulling them down or vaulting them. Hex: Blood Favor has a cool-down of 60/50/40 seconds

For that second suggestion, if you REALLY want to make the perk scary and cause survivors to seek out the hex totem, instead of blocking dropped pallets, you could have The Entity break them instead. But once again, this is a perk that needs to be balanced carefully. At the very least though, I’d like other hexes to be stronger to shake up the meta, and Blood Favor has a good concept behind it. I’d certainly use it more if it did its job better. If I’m going to bring a perk that can be disabled, I want to be sure it’s worth bringing. Let’s hope I never have to cover a hex perk in this series again. Thank you for coming to my lesson, see you next class! Hmm, is that a box I hear?

TL;DR: Blood Favor sucks because it usually doesn’t block pallets when it matters most. To make it work more often, use it on Hawkins or The Game and bring perks like Bamboozle or Lightborn to supplement it, or pair it with other hexes to make it like a decoy totem. To make the perk better, either make the cooldown much shorter, or increase the range and make it so dropped pallets get blocked or broken.