Nemesis (perk) discussion

dugman

Continuing a series of threads on the least picked perks according to Nightlight, next up is Oni's perk Nemesis (0.81% usage)

Nemesis - A Survivor who blinds you or stuns you using a pallet or locker becomes your Obsession. Anytime a new Survivor becomes the Obsession, they are affected by the Oblivious status effect for 40/50/60 seconds and their aura is shown to you for 4 seconds.

You can only be Obsessed with one Survivor at a time. Oblivious prevents Survivors from hearing or being affected by the Killer's Terror Radius.

At this point in the series I think we're starting to get into the realm of perks that are on the lower end of being "ok". (Basically I think the perks at around 1% usage tend to be effects that aren't necessarily broadly useful but are good enough in specific builds that they see some use.) Nemesis probably qualifies as a perk that isn't quite good enough on its own to see a lot of use but does see use in builds that combo it with other things, such as pairing it with Play With Your Food so when someone stuns you and breaks chase they become Oblivious, you maybe see where they went, and you have a speed boost in the following chase.

In terms of the effect, the combination of making someone Oblivious to you for a full minute and also hopefully getting a sense of where they're at is potentially solid. After all, it's a lot easier to ambush someone when you know where they are but they don't know where you are. 🙂 And even if you don't capitalize on the Oblivious condition right away, it lasts long enough that they may just accidentally stumble into you later or vice versa for a quick hit.

Really the main downside to the perk then isn't that the benefit is bad, it's that triggering it is kind of a roll of the dice. It relies on you getting stunned by someone, which certainly does happen, but then also after that being in a position to capitalize on that afterward. This unpredictability in the triggering makes Nemesis a bit weaker, I think, than some other perks that give you Undetectability or that inflict Oblivious. For instance, even before Pentimento came into the game, Hex: Plaything was more popular than Nemesis because the way it inflicts Oblivious is more consistently useful.

The other aspect of Nemesis is that it swaps the Obsession around. That's kind of a minor effect in the general scheme of things, but some people do specifically use this perk primarily because of that, such as pairing this with Rancor so that if you hypothetically kill someone with Rancor in the endgame you have a way to get a new Obsession to do it again to someone else. Myself, I don't think intentional Obsession swapping is really more than a fun gimmick and not a particularly useful tactic, but it does definitely account for some of the current use.

I'd personally be ok with Nemesis getting a small buff to give it a bit of a wider appeal. The simplest way to buff this perk is either extend the 60 second duration and/or extend the aura duration or both. Another more unusual way to buff the perk might be to make it apply its conditions at the very start of the match to whoever is currently the Obsession, so right out of the gate you immediately see the aura of someone who is Oblivious to you for the first 60 seconds of the match.