Dragon's Grip discussion
Continuing a series of threads on the least picked perks according to Nightlight, next up is Blight's perk Dragon's Grip (0.63% usage)
Dragon's Grip - After damaging a generator, for the next 30 seconds, the first Survivor that interacts with it will scream, revealing their location for 4 seconds, and becoming afflicted with the Exposed status effect for 60 seconds. Dragon's Grip has a cooldown of 120/100/80 seconds. Exposed Survivors will be downed by basic attacks even if uninjured.
The good thing about this perk is Exposed hits can be really valuable. Even one or two instant downs on a healthy survivor can build a lot of killer momentum. And 60 seconds is a pretty decent amount of time to be Exposed as well, it's long enough that the killer has an ok chance of finding the Exposed survivor again and maybe hitting them before it runs out. And it even gives the killer an idea of where the survivor is when it triggers.
The perk does have some downsides though which is probably why it doesn't get used too often
- The perk has a fairly long cooldown. So if you kick a gen to place it then it takes a while before you can do it again. Realistically you're probably only going to be able to place this perk on gens a few times a match before time runs out, so that means the number of possible times it might trigger is likewise limited. And unlike, say, Haunted Grounds, it only affects one survivor per trigger, not all of them, so the number of survivors potentially hit by this perk is going to be small.
- Even if you kick a gen to place this perk, it lasts for 30 seconds and then goes away. It's quite possible for survivors to simply move to a different gen for that time and never trigger this. Of course, the upside then is the gen you kicked will be regressing for 30 seconds, so if you combo this perk with Call of Brine or Overcharge then the survivors will lose a lot of its progress, so at least when paired with those it can put the survivors in a tricky situation of stopping regression and becoming Exposed or not becoming Exposed and losing time.
- Also a minor downside is that Exposed only triggers on basic attacks and some killers simply prefer to use their special attacks instead when possible (e.g. Huntress, Wesker, Victor in the Twins, etc). And since the killer doesn't necessarily know specifically which survivor is Exposed from this perk unless they saw it happen they might not know to use a basic attack instead of their special one when this is in play. That probably cuts slightly into the number of killers that try this perk out in the first place.
Overall Dragon's Grip might not be used much but still be kind of ok, especially if you pair it with Call of Brine and/or Overcharge on a killer who primarily uses basic attacks and maybe has decent mobility to reach survivors who scream at a distance (e.g. I could maybe see this being a decent combo on Dredge since they can teleport close to a scream and, during Nightfall, even have an ok chance of ambushing the Exposed survivor quickly.) Dragon's Grip by itself on its own might not be that exciting, though, so I could maybe see it benefiting from a very slight buff to increase its usage a bit?
If it were to get modestly buffed, some possible ways to do it could include:
- Increase that 30 seconds time limit so it lasts longer on the gen you kick. The longer it lasts the more likely it will trigger.
- Increase the 60 second Exposed time. 60 seconds is already pretty good in my opinion but obviously the longer it lasts the more likely the killer can take advantage of it.
- In addition to the scream, show the aura of the survivor who triggers Dragon's Grip for a short time. That would help the killer get a better sense of what direction they were running away from the gen to better catch up to them.
- Reduce the 80 second cooldown. The lower the cooldown the more often you can place the effect on gens and the better the chance some of them will pay off.
- A more unusual buff might be to highlight the outline of the survivor who is under the Dragon's Grip effect to make them stand out from other survivors if they're in line of sight of the killer (similar to how Freddy's ability highlights survivors who are in Dream state or Sadako's ability highlights survivors who have high amounts of Condemned status.) If the killer can differentiate who is Exposed from this perk versus who isn't it could maybe help them prioritize their targets when there are multiple survivors in view. Or you could even simply have Dragon's Grip have a side effect that it highlights ANY Exposed survivor for the killer, making it have additional synergy with other Exposed effects from things like Haunted Grounds or Devour Hope or various ultra rare add-ons, etc.
Comments
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too long cooldown is one issue. I would consider using this perk if the cooldown was 30 seconds.
If not for reduced cooldown, then maybe the perk not go on cooldown until it is triggered. 80 seconds would be reasonable if you could apply this perk on multiple generators and it only goes on cooldown if someone touches a dragon grip generator.
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The Blast Mine had a bug in that it had a cooltime of 0, which was fixed some time ago.
Some players were upset about this, but none of them were concerned about the fact that Dragon's Grip did not have a cooldime of 0. And now that Blast Mine has successfully added a cooltime, my argument that the cooltime should be 0 if Dragon's Grip did not trigger is no longer convincing.
Still, 80 seconds is a very long time (you should expect nothing to happen for 110 seconds if you also factor in the activation wait time). And 60 seconds after activation seems sufficient, but in the end it becomes meaningless if you are too far away, and you even need to be within some immediate return distance.
I suggest a 60 second cool time, albeit modest.
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How recent are the stats? I mean. Before meta shakeup I never saw the perk. But now with gen kicking meta.... I mean dragons grip is still not meta perk, but I would say I see it every like 15th game. Which should be often enough.
Anyway I think the CD is ok, but the perk should reactivate immediatelly if it did not trigger exposed (same way as blast mine used to work). Using this perk together especially with Overcharge should be strong combo in this case making it decent (but not meta) perk choise.
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Here's the historic chart for Dragon's Grip. 6.1.0 was the perk rework, and you can see it got a bump for a bit after that but has since fallen out of favor back to its pre-rework usage numbers.
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I see about 100 killer perks and if I take the graphs recent usage, I see something above 1%. That is already not horrible. I mean some minor buff still makes sense, but perks above 2% should probably not get any more buffs (with 100 perks and 4 per game 4% usage on every perk is equal distribution - meaning all perks are equal and people pick them uniformly). But it's funny that I see (or at least perceive) much more usage of the perk.
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Your math is off, keep in mind that players have four perk slots. So the average perk usage is actually about 3.5% for survivors (with 113 perks) and 4% for killers (with 100 perks), not 1%.
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Pls reread 🙂 I agree 4% is average (hence my uniform distribution)
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Sorry, my bad, I misread what you said.
I do agree that perks over 2% very likely don't need a buff. This range we're in now of about 0.6-1.0% usage perks are the ones that still probably could benefit from a slight buff but it shouldn't be anything major if they get one at all. So we're in that borderline area now of "it's kind of a bad perk but maybe seeing some niche use" type thing.
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its because casual survivor complain about instant downs, so perks that give instant downs are taboo perks for killer. I would say that every perk that is like below 2% might as well be ghost perk that nobody really uses. I looked at make your choice which is way better perk for exposed and it had 1.62% play-rate on your site. Make your choice is near unpreventable for triggering instant downs. it is way better instant down perk and it still has low usage rate. the chart suggests a float 2% play-rate. If you play around make your choice, you can get 1-2 downs per game that are instant downs.in most situations. MYC still has poor usage rate.
with dragon grip, its just pointless. you might as well be rolling dice for instant downs. i would rather roll haunted ground dice over dragon grip dice. Haunted grounds according to your sit floats between 2% to 4% perk. As you can see, HG has more relevance then this perk which is to be expected since HG in my experience from playing killer is most consistent exposed perk to trigger during 1-5 generator marker. the stats line-up with gameplay experience.
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There are WAY too many killer perks with outrageous CDs that invalidate them. Dragon's Grip is a great example of this. 80 seconds makes it totally useless.
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I think Dragon's Grip should apply to a generator for 30//35/40 seconds. If a survivor touches the generator, they become Exposed for 35/40/45 seconds (effect applied like Make Your Choice, so it will have no cooldown in a sense) and scream. Multiple generators can be affected by Dragon's Grip at one time, and generators affected by it are outlined in yellow, if a survivor touches a generator affected by Dragon's Grip, all other generators with it applied have the effect removed (to prevent it from getting out of hand).
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I don't like that. Expose time on a generator being 1 full minute makes sense, because if you play normally and don't camp a generator - it will take some time to find survivor that got exposed - especially because he will be trying to hide. Once you find him you will likely not be able to catch him in time DG is up. Contrary if you camp your 3 gen with 3 regression perks this would become a bit too strong, because you can stay in the middle of those 3 and wait for 1st person who touches any gen (where you have OC) - making for some really long and boring games.
No the perk is strong at what it does. It just needs to be rearmed immediately if it does not trigger exposed effect. It should trigger 2-6 times when played around the perk like this making it possibly better then haunted ground (and possibly worse if survivors play around it better).
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I think the 80 second cooldown should start when you kick the gen, rather than when a survivor touches it or after the 30 seconds. This effectively decreases the cooldown. I think that's all it needs honestly.
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