Bad Perk University: Ruin

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. Sorry for being absent for so long, but between computer problems and helping my brother out with classes, I had to put off some projects of mine, like this one. But for now, I’m back. Why don’t start things off with a strong one? I still find it hard to believe I’m making a post about this perk, considering its history, but here we are. Let’s talk about Ruin.

For as long as I can remember playing this game, Ruin was one of the most used hex perks in the game, and was a staple in the meta basically for as long as it has existed. But then, everything changed with the meta shakeup, and now Ruin has been ruined. What it does now at the time of writing is that while it’s active, any generator not being worked on by survivors will regress automatically at 100% speed. It also has a unique caveat that if a survivor is killed, the hex will turn itself off, going from a hex totem to a dull totem. Of course, the effects of Ruin can be disabled by survivors cleansing the totem, just like with any other hex.

So why is this perk bad? If you somehow didn’t know what Ruin was like before this nerf, you probably live under a huge rock. The automatic regression rate used to be 200%, the same as Call of Brine and Overcharge when left alone for long enough. The regression it has now is just not good enough to be hex worthy. Without going into complex math, a survivor can repair a generator 4 times faster than the rate at which Ruin regresses that generator. So if a generator has been regressing for 20 seconds, a survivor can undo that regression in about 5 seconds. What made the old 200% regression so punishing is that if a killer was constantly chasing survivors off of gens, they’d have a pretty difficult time recovering from how much progress they lose, especially if the perk was used by Nurse or Blight. But with the current regression rate, you’d have to be doing particularly well for it to hinder the survivors’ progress, more than you already would in that situation.

The downside of the hex disappearing after a survivor is killed is also way too harsh for a hex that’s not even remotely potent enough to warrant it. As little as that regression is, it’s still a perk that allows you to forgo kicking generators and focus on chases, and losing it just to get a survivor out of the game is a bit much. Now don’t get me wrong, getting a survivor out of the game is incredibly important for killers. It’s the thing you need to do to give yourself any chance at winning at high level matches. But if it means I lose out on a perk’s function, it better have been worth the sacrifice, in more ways than one. The only perks I can think of that share Ruin’s downside in practice is Save the Best for Last, and Dying Light. Save the Best for Last is an excellent perk, and even when you kill the Obsession, you get to keep however many tokens you had when they die, so in most situations, you don’t mind getting rid of the Obsession. Dying Light is not that great of a perk, but it also makes sense to have it so the Obsession must be kept alive to maintain its debuff. Ideally if you ever run a Dying Light build, you leave the Obsession alive to pick up the fragments of their teammates until you decide they’re not worth keeping around anymore. But Ruin isn’t an Obsession perk. If any survivor dies, you lose this hex, and it probably wasn’t even worth keeping around in the first place. Seeing how hexes are so fragile as they are, especially with totem spawning logic being flawed, resulting in totem spawns that are almost guaranteed, you really don’t want to waste a slot on a hex that provides so little.

So how do we make the most out of this perk? This is unfortunately a very particular hex perk that won’t work in most builds. Thankfully, not all hope is devoured. There is one perk that still makes Ruin incredibly useful, and it’s one that hasn’t changed much: Surveillance. You may wonder what the point of running Surveillance is now that Call of Brine is a perk that exists, but remember that Call of Brine doesn’t inform you of the exact moment when a survivor stops a regressing generator, only when they receive a skill check. Surveillance gives you more immediate information, and louder repair noises as a bonus. Since Ruin causes all generators to regress when survivors aren’t fixing them, you can get constant information about generator repairs as long as the hex stays up. Of course, this by itself is not enough to make Ruin worth running, because once Ruin is gone, all you have is an information perk that doesn’t help that much in the ever increasing generator speed meta. The best way I’ve found to make Ruin worthwhile is to throw all your chips into a regression build. The one I’ve devised that’s given me the most success is as follows:

Ruin

Surveillance

Jolt(Surge)

Pain Resonance

The purpose of Jolt and Pain Resonance is to give you other solid means of regression to allow Surveillance to work its wonders, especially when Ruin eventually gives out. The reason for bringing these perks in particular is because unlike Call of Brine, Overcharge, and Oppression(oh yeah, this perk exists), Jolt and Pain Resonance can regress generators while Ruin is still active, meaning they properly synergize with the hex. If you care that much about Ruin, you can also switch out Jolt or Pain Resonance with Undying, but...why? You usually reserve Undying for hexes that are actually strong, and the only real use for Ruin in this build is to give survivors something to worry about besides gens. You can if you want to, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

As far as killers to run this build with, you’ll want to use killers that delay the survivors with their power, wasting their time, or chase oriented killers that can make Jolt and Pain Resonance proc frequently. Doctor, Legion and Plague all have powers that can slow the survivors’ progress with their irritating debuffs. Doctor can run addons like Iridescent Queen that make survivors reach Tier 3 Madness quickly. Legion can run Filthy Blade to make mending take even longer, though let’s be honest, they don’t even need to do that. Survivors get annoyed enough by Deep Wound as it is. Plague’s power is just a great way of discouraging survivors from touching infected gens, and she even has a few addons that increase infection time on objects. Clown, Trickster, and Deathslinger all specialize in ending chases as quickly as possible, usually. So being able to capitalize on the regression and maintaining pressure is essential to making them work.

The main takeaway from this is that Ruin is still a usable perk. Automatic regression, no matter how slow it is, is still useful, as it temporarily eliminates an admittedly uninteresting part of killer gameplay, kicking gens, and allows you to focus solely on chases, which is something I think everyone can get behind. Still though, Ruin is rather weak, and I think it’s a tragedy that it replaces Blood Favor as the weakest hex perk in the game currently. It’s nice that Blood Favor is actually good now, don’t get me wrong, but I just hate seeing Ruin at the bottom of a category of perks that people already have an aversion to. So…

Closing thoughts, how do we make this perk better? Above anything else, get rid of Ruin shutting off after a survivor is killed. It’s way too harsh for a hex that’s not even that potent anymore. Another approach you could make is to simply buff the regression rate back to 200% while keeping the current downside. But survivors are already pretty frustrated with the current regression perks as it is, so I don’t think that would be a good idea. Still, these two changes would be the simplest to make to make Ruin usable again. I’m opting for a slightly different approach. We can borrow a little bit from Overcharge, as I think that perk is actually pretty tolerable as far as regression perks go. What I mean is to make Ruin’s regression ramp up over time, going from the current 100% to the old 200% if the survivors don’t interrupt the regression. This would properly reward killers for keeping the survivors busy, while still making it so survivors can power through the regression with coordination. Or just cleanse the hex totem. Ruin was never meant to be a long lasting hex in the first place, so I see nothing wrong with removing the downside if we get a version like this. And that’s all you would really need to do to make Ruin good again without making it oppressive. Hm, that reminds me, I might have to talk about Oppression sometime. Kind of disappointed that it didn’t get buffed in the perk overhaul.

It seems lately I’ve had fewer and fewer complaints about the state of perks in the game, which is good. But there are still some I have. A lot of perks are still weak and/or forgotten. Some perks are frustrating to go against, thought not necessarily overpowered. Dead Hard is still the most used exhaustion perk due to its consistency. But overall, I’m actually fairly happy with the perks we have. I’m sure it won’t be long before we get another new perk that defies logical game design. Thank you for coming to my lesson, see you next class!