Beast of Prey discussion
Continuing a series of threads on the least picked perks according to Nightlight, next up is Huntress’ perk Beast of Prey (0.81% usage)
Beast of Prey - Grants the Undetectable status effect after gaining Bloodlust Tier I. The status effect is removed once you lose Bloodlust. Gain 30/40/50% more Bloodpoints for actions in the Hunter Category. Undetectable hides the Killer's aura, Terror Radius, and Red Stain.
So there are two distinct parts to this perk, the Undetectability and the bloodpoint bonus. Looking at them one at a time:
- Undetectability and stealth in general is a great effect, but mostly only between chases. If you’re already chasing a survivor then stealth is much, much less useful because they already know you’re there and can see you chasing them. Most of the value from Undetectability effects typically come from reducing the distance between you and your target before they start running away which can translate to a lot of saved time landing hits. So Beast of Prey’s Undetectability is unfortunately of pretty minimal use at best, not only does it only trigger during a chase when you get the least benefit from it but it doesn’t even work for most of the chase, only triggering 10 seconds in once Bloodlust turns on. That makes it extremely difficult to get value out of it. (And I love stealth abilities and have tried to get value out of this and it just feels like it never does much of anything for you.)
- The other aspect is the bloodpoint bonus. Ironically I’ve seen more posts from people saying they use this perk for that bloodpoint bonus than for the Undetectability. Personally I’m not a fan of perks having bloodpoint bonuses, I think it’s better design to have their effects actually impact the match itself than to give extra currency for between matches, and that thinking is also in line with why for instance BBQ and Chili lost its bloodpoint bonus in the rework. It feels like this bloodpoint bonus on Beast of Prey, then, is just a leftover relic mechanic that maybe should be replaced by something more substantial to the match. Regardless, though, it’s really supposed to be secondary anyway, but it probably is worth up to a few thousand bloodpoints per match on average (just a guess, assuming you get like 6-7k in the Hunter category baseline.)
All in all this perk really seems like it could use a buff and revamp. Stealth during chases is just not a good effect. Some possibilities that kind of keep the theme might be
- Have the perk speed up how fast Bloodlust triggers, maybe for instance speeding up Bloodlust triggers by 2-4 seconds per level. We currently have no perks that actually change Bloodlust itself, so this is an as yet unused design space for perks.
- Along similar lines it could increase the movement speed bonus of Bloodlust by, say, 3-5% per level. Even at those levels it would make getting to Bloodlust 2 or 3 quite scary!
- If you want to keep Undetectability on this perk, then allow it to linger for, say, 10-20 seconds after the chase ends. That would at least allow an easier opportunity to switch targets to someone else.
Comments
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I agree with Beast Of Pray being weak... cause it hinges on a mechanic that (I am on the fence about)
But if they did remove Bloodlust, maybe this perk can give it back (In a way)
Then again it's like Unrelenting... "good players" don't need it so it's weak
I also like your ideas to change it (If you want to call it that)
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I think its effects (including bloodlust) should linger for a few seconds (like you said) after the chase ends. Would still be a niche perk, but at least way more useful.
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my idea for it is - get a hit, then become undetectable for 12/13/14 seconds, 30 second cooldown
so not reliant on bloodlust at all, and not being a chase based perk. kinda like a hit and run style perk desinged for non undetectable killers
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BBQ was used for its 2 functions, that's what made the skill interesting.
If you want to remove the BP gain from Beast of Prey, I disagree.
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BBQ is still one of the top used killer perks in the game despite not having a bloodpoint bonus (#2 used perk after Scourge Hook Pain Resonance on Nightlight with about 20% usage.)
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the perk is not designed to be stealth perk. its designed to be a perk to remove your red light as killer. supposedly this makes it harder for survivors to track you in the loop. before the perk gave you undetectable, it used to only hide your red light.
Red light is another mechanic where experienced survivors can use to great degree with loop the killer while less experienced survivors do not understand how to use it to their advantage. Killer really should not have red glow mechanic because it grants the survivor wall-hacks against the killer and reduces mindgame potential at high-wall loops. Looping a killer with no red light would be a lot harder then what it currently is. red light is another topic altogether for another thread.
This is designed to be chase perk that enhances the killer chase but bloodlust 1 condition makes the perk not worth using. I think just removing bloodlust 1 condition would make the perk have more usage. it would be strong perk for detaching chases and the mindgame potential would be a lot greater especially if it is paired with the perk called I'm all ears.
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Actually I'm not all that convinced that removing the red glow does much in a chase. In fact there are times when having the red glow makes mindgames easier, not harder, such as intentionally showing a bit of your glow around a corner then backtracking the other way at a loop. At best it's a very slight benefit. I don't even think a perk that made you literally Undetectable in all chases would be very good honestly.
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in fact there are times when having the red glow makes mindgames easier, not harder, such as intentionally showing a bit of your glow around a corner then backtracking the other way at a loop.
I completely disagree. red glow is another really.. really hide-level aspect for survivor looping. its like less 1% of the player-base knows how to utilize it properly so much so that I am really hesitated to explain it simply because I am afraid that survivor will start using this against the killer because once you understand how to use red glow. a lot of loops have very little mindgame for m1 killers. in fact I would go as far to say that red glow removes all mindgames from the chase.
I am really bad drawing so I am going to use a google image of shack and then try explain how you can use red glow to remove mindgames in loops. Perhaps one of the most famous loops in dbd is none other than shack. what red glow allows you to do as survivor is visualize the depth and perception of the killer position in a loop without physically requiring direct line of the killer. here's image to showcase what I mean by this.
there are specific positions(vantage points) where survivor can stand at and if you look at the floor, you can see red glow shadow going deeper and deeper which tells you where the killer is standing across the wall. so if you ever wondered, how does this survivor always know when to vault the shack window across that doorway. Why is he is not falling for any of your mindgames? If you try to show your red glow to me and just back track along this wall, I am just looking at red glow on floor and see that the red glow is moving -> away from doorway so I am not going to vault window. Likewise, if you walk forward into doorway, I will already be in the position where i am vaulting the window as you walk through doorway. I am turning your mindgame into reaction in which i can perfectly do the correct play every single time.
There is plenty of these little places where you can deduce the killer's positioning the loop and through process of elimination, you can know where the killer is in a loop precisely which removes a lot of mindgames at loops. I think red glow is really high-level mechanic, so I do not expect many survivors or killer for that matter to understand it. more experienced killer manipulate and hide red glow in key positions to give the opportunity for the survivor to make a mistake at the loop. With this perk, if it was activate all the time, it would be continuous red glow mindgame through out entire loop. complicated mechanic to explain.
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The difference with BP gains from every other perk that grants them is that they can still only max out the scoring categories (10k each now). BBQ was granting up to double bonus for every category above the traditional scoring limit. I don’t see any need to nerf the bonus BP gains from the remaining perks that provide bonus BP, since they don’t function this way.
What I find very interesting about Beast of Prey is that it belongs to Huntress, the first killer in a set of killers to have a lullaby. Now that the perk has been buffed/reworked to give undetectable, it is less appealing due to the remaining lullaby to give away your position to survivors. A decent buff to me then would be not changing Beast of Prey, but buffing undetectable to pause all lullabies across killers who have them.
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I actually only rarely lose the mindgame you're talking about at shack, it's pretty reliable. Also if someone does seem to be up on it you can double-fake it by showing the red glow, backing up slightly and doing a 180, then backing up into the doorway. A survivor who was watching for the mindgame fake will possibly think you went back to the window and still be standing in the middle of the shack when you back in, giving you a hit or pallet drop in that case.
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Just to clarify, I don't want Beast of Prey "nerfed", I would prefer they replace the bloodpoint bonus with something else that's useful in the match, or just make it a better perk all around.
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the only issue with that is if youre an m1 the survivor can stand in a perfect spot where they can clearly see you enter shack and also get the guaranteed fast vault, so no matter how many 7000iq quadruple double triple faking of the faking of the faking of the faking of the pretending to be faking the faking of faking the fake, you dont get a hit
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its reliable because most of the survivor player-base is not top % looping. Red glow is something that high-level survivor use to remove mindgames from loops. Red glow never helps you as killer. it just helps the survivor loop you longer. Its just that most of the survivor do not know how to use red glow to their advantage. You can't mindgame good survivors that understand the depth in perception of red glow. that whole diagram i am showing at shack window has no mindgames vs strong loopers. You can never physically hit them. The best your getting is early dropped pallet. It has no mindgames. Anything that your trying in term of showing you red glow is not going to work against me or any strong looper.
beast of prey is suppose to be a perk that removes red glow. removing red glow really changes the mindgame potential for the killer. Its way harder to loop a killer that minimizes the information at loops and all of this gameplay is really subtle. this why its hard to know the difference between a strong looper and weak looper.
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But that's true for perfect loopers regardless of whether or not you have the red stain. You're not actually gaining anything in that scenario by being Undetectable.
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We'll just have to agree to disagree on how much losing the red stain helps in chases.
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Theres a lot more perks/killers that need reworked than this. IMO i think its fine as it is, solely due to the bloodpoint bonus, it doesnt need a "buff" like calm spirit
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I agree there are other perks that can use buffs, that's why I've been posting a whole series of threads about individual perks this month to talk about them individually including possibly this one.
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i think red stain is the type of mechanic where 90% of survivor do not use it so it does nothing, but the better you are at looping for survivor, the more relevant this mechanic becomes. I would say looping a killer that does not hide their red stain is exponential easier to loop compare to one that hides their red stain in key points on a loop. it makes you guess a lot more as survivor over just know ahead of time the expected outcome.
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BoP would be worth a perk slot if you just turned off the killer's red stain forever and always as long as you have that perk. Now the survivor has to have LoS on you to decide how to play.
The top 10% of players can loop for minutes and it breaks the game when they loop well. Good players listen through barriers and really dont even need the light a lot of time in loops as they can tell killer movement by sound.
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Why not lean into that mechanic a bit more then? Upon pressing [Button], a copy of The Stain appears where the Perk is activated for x/y/z seconds, during which The Killer's Stain is suppressed.
It can be used to creatively place the Stain in certain parts of a loop, while also giving some on-demand use of Stain suppression.
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Also just stare at the wall while moving sideways so there is no stain to be shown across the doorway.
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your talking about another advance looping trick in regards to TR that I think is better worth skipping. to be honest, I dislike the direction of old dbd took towards weakening looping which was to weaken window looping(bloodlust) but keep pallet looping strong. I kinda wish it went in the other direction where it kept window looping very rewarding but weakened pallet looping & doing generators quickly. I understand why it went in that direction, I just wish it went in the other direction because I think that too many killer power degrade window looping to being ineffective but get destroyed by pre-drop pallet gameplay and shift-w.
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why would you ever play a killer that gets destroyed by pre pallet droopping?
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