Potential Energy, Coulrophobia, Deception, and Darkness Revealed [Perk Check-In Feedback]

OnryosTapeRentals

Introduction

For those unaware (as I was until about an hour ago), BHVR are starting "regular Perk check-in[s]", in order to gather focused feedback on specific perks. They posted this on their YouTube channel, asking for feedback on Potential Energy, Coulrophobia, Deception, and Darkness Revealed.

I think the idea of this is great! And will hopefully lead to improvements to a lot of underwhelming perks. I've decided to give my thoughts here, since I'm pretty unfamiliar with YouTube's comment system.

Potential Energy

Starting off with a perk that was hyped up upon release to be a new meta perk, before delving into obscurity. Potential Energy sounds good and interesting in concept, but doesn't work well in practice. The best way to use this perk is to:

1. Repair a generator in a relatively safe location (i.e. the corner of the map) and once it's near completion, fill up your Potential Energy.
2. Complete the generator.
3. Run to a generator in a more risky position, and use the stacks to get a +20% headstart.

The perk should be great for alleviating 3-gen situations and pumping out risky generators quickly, but it comes with too many caveats to be useful:

• Getting Potential Energy stacks is ~33% less efficient than regular generator repair, which means charging up the perk is a significant time sink.
• Not completing a generator immediately in favour of getting Potential Energy stacks can come back to bite you -- especially in today's meta. All it takes is for an unfortunately-timed Jolt or Pain Resonance, and then your 99% generator is regressed and you haven't accumulated enough PE stacks yet to compensate.
• Moreover, if you get hit, the time spend charging PE is immediately rendered a waste since you lose all stacks. Wasting time for the possibility of a head start on the next generator is high risk: mediocre reward.
• And then there's the problem of the perk being used inefficiently by teammates. I can't count the number of times my teammates have hopped on a generator, built up 20 PE stacks, and then just dumped them on the generator they're currently repairing -- only to do it again and again on the same generator! When the perk first released, I saw this constantly (as I'm sure many others did too) and PE quickly became one of those perks I dread my team running (along with No Mither, Technician, etc.)

I don't think the perk is fundamentally bad, I just think the numbers are too safe. An easy fix would be to either:

• Up the conversion rate of repair progress:stacks -- a 66% conversion rate is too low.
• Or reduce the amount of stacks you lose upon a hit. Losing all of them is excessive.

Perhaps consider rewording the description too since a lot of people dont' seem to understand how the perk works or how to use it properly.

Coulrophobia

I have mixed feelings on this one. On most killers and most maps, it's an incredibly mediocre perk. All it does is force survivors to waste a few seconds positioning themselves outside of your Terror Radius before healing. Most survivors do this anyway out of fear for A Nurse's Calling or being interrupted. It's not particulary impactful.

But slap the perk on Wesker or Doctor with a whole build around it (Distressing, Overwhelming Presence, indoor map offering etc.) and it's a complete nightmare in solo queue. Instead of just staying injured, my teammates always seem to stubbornly insist on wasting entire minutes Self-Caring, failing skill checks left and right, and then the whole match just falls apart.

I'd say this is more of a problem with matchmaking though. If the game actually matched me with others of a similar game sense and skill level, I'd dislike the impossible skill check gimmick a lot less. Playing in a SWF, it's not a problem, but random teammates either seem to not know how to deal with it or they just give up.

Deception

Another perk that I almost never see in my matches. The concept of the perk is fun, but it's very rarely effective. I think the biggest problem with the perk is that it just isn't very believable -- why would a survivor loudly vault into a locker mid-chase?

When a survivor is in chase, you can get a good idea of their experience level and game sense based upon how they path, mindgame etc. A survivor who is an efficient looper deciding to randomly hop into a locker at the same tile as me? I'm immediately suspicious of Head On or Deception. I just can't think of a time I've ever gotten value from Deception as a survivor, or fallen for it as killer.

I think upping the duration of hidden Scratch Marks and blood to 5 seconds would help make it a little better. Honestly though, I can't see this perk ever being used outside of a niche, meme build.

Darkess Revealed

A very fair information perk in my opinion -- particularly good on Huntress and Trickster given that they search lockers frequently.

My only complaint is that some maps have locker deadzones, which means you aren't getting full value from the perk. But that's more of an issue with map design.

Devil_hit11

oh so they're finally going change perks?

Darkness Revealed is solid perk but it is map dependant on locker density. it does not need 30 second cooldown. that perk is typically only used on midwich elementary school because it does not give guaranteed information on other maps.

what would push that perk me to use that perk more is 8->10 meters.

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Coulrophobia has really strong effect. -50% healing is a lot of anti-healing. almost nobody will be healing in your TR with that perk but it is tied to terror radius. as a result, it is not consistent to choose it over other perks. Sloppy butcher gets used more because it is more consistent effect.

the only way to make this perk more consistent to run a killer perk called Distressing which increase your terror radius. As a result, how effective Coulrophobia is directly based off how much distressing is at making coulrophobia consistent. Since distressing is not worth perk slot, Coulrophobia is not worth perk slot on average killer build unless you pick Gideon's map offering to use it.

the only thing that would make me use this perk is if distressing was bigger % like 40%. at that point, it is become stronger sloppy butcher for higher perk slot cost. even then, I think many people that would use the perk are killer that have natural ways to stack higher TR such as Wesker or Doctor with calm add-on. The reward you get for this perk is getting pseudo exposed because player is unlikely to heal for entire trial.

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Deception is a perk with too many drawback with not enough reward to use it. it has 3 problems

1) too long cooldown. 40 seconds is not needed. 20 seconds would do just fine

2) The duration is really short. 3 second is nowhere near enough. This would need to be at least 10 seconds duration before I would begin consider the rewards of using this perk.

3) it produces loud noise notification. this does not help you juke because.... your revealing location of where you last were across wall. When survivor uses the perk, the killer becomes extra vigilante because survivor never ever go into lockers with loud noise notifications. Perhaps removing noise notification and only giving the locker opening animation could be another possible buff to the perk.

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Potential Energy design is meant to counter 3 gens when a killer is camping 3 gens from the start. the drawback of the perk make ineffective at doing the job.

1) The first aspect that makes it ineffective is 8 second time to activate the perk. If your facing war of attrition where you have 3 gens close together and 1 gen remaining. you will eventually complete generator that is remaining because of 8 second requirement to begin stacking the perk.

2) killer can hit you and remove progress of the perk. this further made easier by... activation requirement

3) most player do not want trigger this perk in regular gameplay because of slower repair conversation rate. doing so is like triggering free gen regression for the killer.

almost no killer would want this perk to be good because it makes any 3 gen strategy unviable. the main two drawback that hold the perk back is requirement to activate the perk and slower conversation rate. The two buffs that would make usable is making conversation rate 1:1 and reducing activation time from 8 second to 1 second.