Bad Perk University: Sole Survivor

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. Have we really gotten to this point? Are we about to talk about one of the most infamously bad perks in DBD history? Well, yeah we are...but at least with this perk, there’s actually quite a bit to talk about, unlike perks like Wake Up or Left Behind. We’re talking about Sole Survivor.

Sole Survivor is actually a rather unique perk, unlike any other in the game. This perk does nothing until one of your teammates dies. When that happens, the perk grants a 24m radius around you where your aura is hidden from the killer. This means that if the killer has an aura reading perk, say for example Nurse’s Calling, if you’re within 24m of the killer, that perk doesn’t show your aura to them. This effect stacks for every teammate that dies, up to a total of 72m if all of your teammates are dead. Also this perk increases the chances of you becoming the Obsession, if that means anything to you.

So why is this perk bad? A lot of players like to accuse this perk of being selfish, in addition to just having a terrible effect. While it might seem like that, I want to dispel that notion of “selfish perks”. Sole Survivor is “selfish” because it benefits only you, at the expense of your teammates. By that logic, why aren’t people complaining about how Self Preservation is selfish? Probably because they just run Iron Will or Parental Guidance and forget this perk even exists. The point I’m trying to make is that even though Sole Survivor only works when your teammates die, the perk isn’t setting out to make that happen. It’s meant to be a safety net for the eventuality of the killer getting a survivor out of the game. The other argument for the perk having a terrible effect is a bit more valid.

At one token, 24m doesn’t hide auras against the more common perks like Nurse’s Calling. Nurse’s Calling has a range of 28m, so if you’re any farther away than 24m while healing, they’ll still see you. It’s worth noting that it will protect you from a Vanity Mirror Myers, an All Seeing Blood Wraith, or a Stylish Sunglasses Legion. I guess that’s good? At two tokens, 48m can stop a Scratched Mirror Myers, and Barbecue and Chili. At three tokens, 72m is a large enough range to protect you somewhat well against longer range aura reading like Retribution or Floods of Rage, but only if you’re close enough to the killer and not across the map. These aren’t all the examples where Sole Survivor can hide you, it can potentially hide your aura from incidental aura readings of any kind, from addons to perks. I just wanted to lay out some common examples of when Sole Survivor might help you.

There are two obvious problems with Sole Survivor though. The first one is that it only works when your teammates start dying. If you know anything about playing survivor in DBD, you know that having even one survivor dead puts the survivor team at a disadvantage and tips things in the killer’s favor. In a nutshell, having four survivors alive allows one survivor to be hooked, one to be chased, and one to go for the rescue, leaving the fourth survivor to continue working on generators knowing that they’ll be fine for the time being. But with one survivor out of the game, this same scenario leaves the third survivor to have no choice but to stop working on generators and go for the rescue if they don’t want their remaining teammates to die, which means no progress on generators is being made during the rescue attempt. If two survivors are dead, unless the generators are almost finished, the remaining two survivors are basically out of luck. All it takes is for one survivor to go down or be hooked, and the last survivor has few options left. If there’s only one survivor left, their priority is to find the hatch or open the exit gates, as the game is all but over. So for the cost of a whole teammate, you’d hope Sole Survivor would give you an amazing benefit, but no, not really. Aura blocking can only hide you for so long, since one way or another, the killer will find you, which leads to the second problem with Sole Survivor.

Auras are not the only method of tracking a killer has. There are perks or killer powers that use other methods of tracking survivors that Sole Survivor does nothing to affect. Doctor doesn’t really bother with auras. He knows where you are at basically any point in the match by nature of his power. Legion just kind of knows where you are through Killer Instinct, once again by nature of their power. Whispers, while not directly telling killers where you are, gives them a good idea that you’re nearby. Sole Survivor just kind of looks at these scenarios and shrugs at you, like, “Well I’ve done all I could”.

And even when Sole Survivor actually does work, why not just use Shadow Step? It’s more consistent, it hides scratch marks in addition to auras, and best of all, you don’t have to have teammates die to use its effect, and can actually grant its benefits to your team. Aside from just being one of the few well designed and balanced boon perks, Shadow Step is ultimately superior to Sole Survivor in terms of cost-benefits. But maybe there’s an idea...an idea for a build…

So how do we make the most out of this perk? We have to regard Sole Survivor the same way we do Mettle of Man. That is to say, we regard it as a “just in case” perk, going in with the expectation that we’re not going to get value out of it. The difference here is that while taking protection hits is something you often do incidentally, when the situation calls for it, dying teammates happen fairly often in normal matches, so at the very least in most situations, the perk gives you “value”. There’s also the possibility that the killer isn’t using aura reading perks at all, but I see it the same way as using Blood Echo when nobody’s using Exhaustion perks. You technically didn’t need it, but it gave you extra security in knowing that if they DID have Dead Hard or Lithe, they wouldn’t have been able to use it anyway. What perks do we pair with Sole Survivor then? Since Sole Survivor is intended to be a stealth perk, it’s going to work best in a stealth build. For that, there’s a decent variety of perks to choose from. You’ll want some extra stealth perks to cover up the gaps in Sole Survivor’s defenses, as well as some information perks to help you keep track of the killer or other points of interest.

I already mentioned Shadow Step, and though it’s mostly superior to Sole Survivor, it’s a surefire method of blocking aura reading that can act as the true stealth perk in your build. When teammates start to die, Sole Survivor acts as extra insurance, a way of hiding you until you can get your next Shadow Step boon lit. Distortion is also an idea. While it’s far from great, it can help cover gaps in Sole Survivor’s aura blocking as well. It’s also good to give information as to which aura reading perks the killer’s using if you’re observant enough. Iron Will is the quintessential “uncounterable” stealth perk, so it’s good to have it, especially if you’re using Shadow Step. Let’s talk about information perks now. While not essential to making Sole Survivor work, they’ll be helpful in the midgame when one or more of your teammates are dead, or in the endgame when all of your teammates are dead, or have left already. Left Behind is a perk I have so little to talk about, but it’s nice to help you find the hatch in the situation Sole Survivor was meant for: when you’re the last one left and you need to get out of dodge. Though if you really want to find the hatch efficiently, you might want to run Clairvoyance instead. Hey, does anyone remember this perk? Just for cleansing one totem, you get long range aura reading that can last you a while if you’re efficient with it. The important part of this perk in this build is using it to find the hatch, so make sure to have a little bit left for the endgame. It might also be worth a try to bring a key with you into the match, in the situation where the killer finds the hatch before you do. However, keys got nerfed into the ground (thankfully), so this is meant to be a last resort more than anything.

Besides aura reading for the hatch, more general aura reading or detection perks can be useful to keep tabs on the killer or objectives. My personal recommendations are perks like Kindred, Alert, Spine Chill, or Dark Sense. Then there are perks that are kind of just meme perks, but they benefit the endgame playstyle Sole Survivor encourages. Wake Up lets you open the exit gates faster in the event that the hatch gets closed. Urban Evasion and Self Aware help you stay hidden while still moving relatively quickly, and it might be worth learning those perks if you want to evade the killer. Diversion is such a fun perk in a build like this! No kidding, I giggle in delight every time I manage to throw off the killer with this perk, and the best part is that it’s impossible to get mad at a perk build like this. When killers see your build in the post game screen, some of them might just say, “Wow. I lost to THOSE perks? GG WP!” That’s how I feel about Sole Survivor and perks like it. Anyone who actually considers running it clearly aren’t out to win by normal means. They just want to see what silly strategies they can get away with. Though I wonder how much fun I had was because of Sole Survivor instead of the other perks in my build…

Closing thoughts, how do we make this perk better? This is a difficult perk to come up with changes for, because while it’s not very good at what it does, especially for what it requires to even function in the first place, it’s at the very least very thematic. The Halloween DLC ultimately brought some great things to the game, mainly the Obsession mechanic, and the star of the show, Michael Myers. Even if the perks had problems with their initial designs, they were very true to the characters. Sole Survivor definitely embodies the “Final Girl” aspect of Laurie, to a fault. While I want the perk to be better, I also don’t want to abandon the theme of the perk. So here’s a potential idea for a reworked Sole Survivor. It might be a cool idea for Sole Survivor to be a survivor version of Fire Up (Hmm, maybe I should talk about this perk soon), where instead of getting stronger when generators get completed, the survivor gets stronger when their teammates die. This is obviously a dangerous ability and would have to be carefully balanced to keep things from getting out of control, but if it was only tied to certain gameplay aspects, then it might be fine. Here’s my idea:

Grants 8/9/10 % increased healing, sabotaging, unhooking, cleansing and opening speeds for each killed or sacrificed Survivor.

Increases the odds of being the Obsession.

The Killer can only be obsessed with one Survivor at a time.

Those numbers might seem fairly low for the cost of a teammate dying, but again, it’s a delicate balancing act. I certainly like this idea better than the current Sole Survivor, and it’s a bit less “selfish” as well. It generally makes you better at helping your remaining teammates, as opposed to just helping yourself. Best of all, it still keeps in theme with Laurie. Though she’s often the last one standing, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t try to help others around her escape the wrath of the bogeyman as well. But who knows, maybe Sole Survivor is fine as it is. Historically, it’s Laurie’s least controversial perk, but only because it was so terrible and the other perks were so disgustingly unfun. At least when playing around with Sole Survivor, I ended up having more things to say about it than I was expecting. Maybe someday it’ll get its glow up. If Dead Man’s Switch can go from a niche, barely usable perk to a rather strong and rewarding perk, then there’s hope yet for Sole Survivor. Thank you for coming to my lesson, see you next class!

TL;DR: Sole Survivor is a stealth perk that doesn’t provide enough benefit for the cost of losing a teammate. To help cover its weakness, a stealth/info build can help, with perks like Shadow Step, Distortion, Iron Will, Kindred, Dark Sense, Alert, etc. To make the perk better, you could maybe rework the perk into a perk that gives you faster action speeds, such as healing/unhooking, as your teammates die.

Basement_Bubba420

I think they should rework the perk so that if you're the last survivor left (thus the SOLE SURVIVOR) the entity gives you a gun and big muscles so you can 1v1 the killer.

C3Tooth

I want to keep the perk theme as a self-fish perk rather than team perk.

Each survivor dies, their scratch mark removed 2sec earlier, blood drop 15% less often, grunt of pain reduced by 20%.

humanbeing1704

They should definitely rework it object and ds have gotten changes to make em more healthier and fair perks while sole survivor has been the forgotten third teachable deserves some love

MrDardon

How about, Sole Survivor: (rework)

For each Survivor sacrificed or killed, gain a Token up to a max. of 3 Tokens.

- 1 Token: Increases Healing Speed by 20/25/30 %.

- 2 Tokens: Increases Repair Speed by 20/25/30 %.

- 3 Tokens: Increases Exit Opening Speed by 20/25/30 %.

Increases the chances of becoming the Killers initial Obsession by 100%.

This is basically a different "reverse" Pentimento. It activates the same as before but with more utility. The numbers are examples but could work.

The current effect is far to lackluster, it only works against Range attached Auras, but does nothing against Bitter Murmur for example.

This suggested version would definitely help in situations with less and less Survivors.

Harold_Shipman

A perk that has a meh effect when youve already lost, what a winner.

Yippiekiyah

For every survivor that dies get a 10% increase to repair speed and 2% haste.