Hex: Crowd Control discussion
Continuing a series of threads on the least picked perks according to Nightlight, next up is Tricker's perk Hex: Crowd Control (0.74% usage)
Hex: Crowd Control - The Entity blocks a window for 14/17/20 seconds after a Survivor performs a rushed vault through it. The Hex effects persist as long as the related Hex Totem is standing.
The obvious comparison is going to be with the much more popular Bamboozle. On the plus side, Crowd Control does have two advantages on paper
- Crowd Control potentially can block multiple vaults simultaneously. Bamboozle is limited to one at a time
- Crowd Control requires no action on the part of the killer to use it. It just blocks windows automatically as survivors use them. Bamboozle actually requires the killer to proactively vault through the window to block it. Since generally speaking vaulting through windows slows killers down this means Crowd Control can hypothetically block a window a survivor uses that the killer then just walks around or ignores normally in a chase.
That's all perfectly fine, but then we come to the downsides
- Crowd Control is a Hex, so it can be lost mid-match. Bamboozle is permanent. But since Crowd Control is at best only slightly better than Bamboozle, it being a Hex is a significant downside relatively speaking. Why use a slightly improved version of Bamboozle that could be lost after a minute or two when you can use the normal version forever?
- You can't preemptively block a window with Crowd Control like you can with Bamboozle. For example, say you're approaching the shack and expect a chase to start pretty much right away. You can vault the shack window with Bamboozle and the survivor could be in trouble depending on if the pallet is still available. With Crowd Control that's not an option, you'd have to actually chase the survivor to the point that they use the shack window themselves and only then is the loop weakened. This is not an insignificant downside either, especially if the survivor is just vaulting and then running straight to a different tile and doesn't care if the window they jumped through is blocked.
In all the idea of an automatic vault blocking Hex is interesting, but in practice this particular perk just isn't quite strong enough, at least not as a Hex. For this to actually be effective, it needs to potentially stop survivors from using vaults before they reach them, not after they've gone through. For example, compare this to the more effective Hex Blood Favour. Blood Favour can get you extra hits by preemptively preventing pallets from being dropped before the survivor actually reaches them.
Overall, as with a lot of these low rung popularity perks, Crowd Control could probably stand a buff. Some possible ways to do it might include:
- Make it not be a Hex. Just have it be a perk that simply automatically blocks windows survivors use, no Hex totem needed. As mentioned above, that's not necessarily more powerful than Bamboozle because of the lack of preemptive placement so it not being a Hex could be a good perk without being too powerful.
- If instead you want an effect that is Hex worthy, one possibility would be to block both vaults AND dropped pallets once the survivor jumps over them. (No effect currently prevents pallet vaults, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be in the game with a similar graphic of the Entity putting up a spikey barrier prevent the pallet from being vaulted.) In particular this additional effect would be handy at smaller pallet loops since it would force the survivor to leave the pallet or get hit, which can result in a hit anyway in the transition.
- Another possibility for a Hex worthy effect might be to have Crowd Control preemptively block vaults that a survivor who is currently in a chase comes within, say, 2 meters of. The more frequent and more often this happens the more powerful that effect would be. With no cooldown or limit it would mean no vaults are usable in chase, which I could see being too strong, but if there were some sort of cooldown on it or other limiting factor to keep it a bit in check then this could give the killer some extra hits by virtue of a survivor heading toward a window and it being blocked on the way before they can use it. Of course it's still a Hex effect in this scenario, though, so ultimately it would probably get destroyed before causing too much damage.
Comments
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Honestly, I think Crowd Control is alright as-is, it's a pretty good perk that's quite underrated. It'd be too strong if it wasn't a Hex, and blocking dropped pallets would probably be insane as well (imagine if Blood Favor blocked windows on hit alongside undropped pallets).
Having it passively block vaults as a survivor approaches would be really unhealthy as it would allow you to get free hits without any input.
I'm not sure if it even needs a buff, but I think a reasonable buff could be something like this:
Hex: Crowd Control - When a Survivor performs a rushed vault through a window within 48 meters of a Killer, that window becomes blocked indefinitely. This effect can only apply to 1/2/3 windows at a time. Whenever the maximum amount of windows is blocked, the oldest blocked window will become unblocked when a new vault is affected.
Survivors and Killers can see the Auras of blocked vault locations when they are within 32 meters of them. The Hex effects persist as long as the related Hex Totem is standing.
So, instead of blocking windows for 20 seconds. It blocks the three most recently vaulted windows until the Hex is cleansed. As a trade off, survivors are now able to see which windows nearby are blocked, as randomly running into a previously blocked window would be very frustrating (and especially effective against survivors without comms, which is a bad thing).
This would make it far more effective at blocking multiple windows, which is what really sets this perk apart from Bamboozle. It'd be more effective at herding survivors, as they wouldn't be able to return to windows blocked by Crowd Control after looping away for a little while, they'd have to keep constantly moving to find unblocked windows.
I don't know if this idea would end up being too strong or annoying, but it's certainly cool sounding on paper.
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I think they could make it more similar to Hex: Blood Favour, but doing so doesn't benefit Hillbilly or Cannibal. So I agree on ReverseVelocity's idea, because this change would make it more reliable, more worth cleansing and actually useful for Hillbilly, Ghost Face, etc.
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you already made a thread on this perk. you should start naming some other useless perks like predator, beast of prey, overwhelming presence on killer side. Killer has long list of terrible perks of do nothing perks.
survivor has a lot of perks activate, but are not worth bringing because the reward for them is often low/insignificant to make a difference. you already named few of them. my prediction of next perks your going to name are perks like overzealous, fast track, visionary, deception, dance with me, buckle up, aftercare.autodidact.
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I did Predator and Overwhelming Presence already. I actually don’t see that I did Crowd Control before. I haven’t done Beast of Prey yet, it’s probably coming up though.
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I did not see any of those perks. I am fairly certain you did crowd control. I think my comment on that thread was something along lines of the hex blocking all windows until it is cleansed. Either way, these posts regarding perks are meaningless. they're unlikely to get changed. DBD is way too saturated in perks. survivor and killer likely run maybe 20 perks in total. The other 80 perks are very much forgotten on both sides.
their perk system made more sense when there was only 8 killers and 8 survivors. now a days, there is so many survivors and so many killers that dbd suffers from perk over-bloat.
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You're probably thinking of a different thread about Crowd Control? I might have replied in one of those. 🤷♂️
And I don't know the likelihood or not of whether various perks will be changed. The devs tweak things pretty frequently. More importantly, though, I think it's fun to look at specific perks and such in detail and talk about them. Whether anything comes of it the discussion itself is still entertaining, at least to me.
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The devs tweak things pretty frequently.
for perks? I would say given this year and last year. we get 1 major update of perk changes per year. roughly, 1 major of update on killers and rest is new chapters. Last year major killer update was the clown. this year major update was legion and... ghostface. Next year according to patrick will be Twins although given their slugging patch, this might be their update? Not really sure. the perk updates are pretty rare for dbd.
you definately already made a thread on crowd control. I remember responding to it. there was some interesting suggestions on that thread though i have no memory of what they were. hex:penti/cc/bf/dv is not that bad of killer build. you do force out 3 cleanses for hex:penti. Its just that you land up having no perks for using these hex perks.
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I don't see that I made a thread on Crowd Control as part of this set. Maybe it's a really old thread? Or one I replied to?
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I actually use beast of prey pn my BP builds, i dont think it needs a buff cuz if they were to "buff" it they would probably remove the BP bonus, which is the entire reason i use it
Yes i know there is a cap and it doesnt exceed it, but it helps reach the cap faster
they could also easily buff territorial imperitive by rewarding BP when hooking in the basement (hooking only, so it is less effecient to just camp)
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I'm definitely not a fan of perks using bloodpoints as a balancing mechanism since bloodpoints have no actual effect on the match itself. I'd much rather leave bloodpoint bonuses for offerings and rituals and events and such and keep perks and add-ons as being things which just impact the gameplay in the match.
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That's fair but you aren't forced to use them, they are for people that like to have bonuses and are willing to handicap themselves for that (that's why meme addons exist and why they give bonuses)
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I'm also not a fan of the meme add-ons, and it's not about me not wanting to use them. I think they have a negative impact on the game overall.
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Well again you're not forced to use them and the meme addons are just that. For pure meme, not to sweat for a 4k
That's why we have perks like no mither and territorial imperative lol
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Territorial Imperative isn't a "meme" perk, it's just an ineffective one. No Mither isn't really a meme perk either, and even if it was it doesn't give a bloodpoint bonus but instead gives different advantages to try and compensate for its downside.
To clarify, I'm not against perks and add-ons that have downsides but give you an in-match effect to balance it out. I'm against perks and add-ons that gives you a disadvantage and then balance that out with bloodpoints since bloodpoints don't impact the actual match. And again, I'm against it because I think it's bad game design, not because I think I'm forced to use it.
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Well you may think it's bad game design but some people actually enjoy those types of perks, it's kind of like complaining a game has different difficulties that give you more rewards for making the game harder
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Some people enjoy using map offerings and flashlight macros and leaving survivors to bleed out for four minutes straight, etc. Just because some people like something doesn't mean it's a good idea for the game as a whole.
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I used to love playing nurse with White Nit Comb (lunge -50%) and Dull Bracelet (-4m blink range) to make her fair. But they changed her in patch 5.5 and now I don't consider her fair even with these 2 addons (and I refuse to play Spasmodic Breath because that one is not fun). So I play her only for dailies now.
The point is - some killers need meme perk. And I don't care about BP bonus. That was not the reason why I took the addons.
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