Should Regression Perks get an "Exhaustion" Mechanic?
We've seen time and time again as long as there are strong regression/slowdown perks that work together the strongest killer meta build for just about any killer will be to use all those regression/slowdown perks together in the same build. Some of the earlier metas prior to there being so many good slowdowns didn't really see this because the only good slowdowns were ruin and pop and those two didn't work at the same time, when both were used, pop was a backup for when ruin was gone.
As time has gone on though we've seen more powerful slowdown and regression perks added to the game that work in a variety of situations. "Forever Freddy" is probably the earliest instance of misery is caused by stacking all slowdowns, but It first started being prominent on all killers when pain res was added which worked with ruin and pop just fine. The absolute worst of this was the cob/oc/eruption/pop uber gen kicking meta. Individually the perks were generally fine or slightly overpowered at best, but playing against all of them together was absolutely miserable and got every one of those perks slaughtered.
I feel like as long as these kinds of perks stack the strongest builds will basically always be to use as many of them as you can as long as they are not complete garbage (like OC, CoB, and Ruin are now) and this inevitably leads to them being nerfed to trash because they are too strong together.
Imagine if sprint burst and BL and lithe and DH all had individual cooldowns, in order to be balanced each one would have to give drastically less distance and be usable less often but they'd still be the best build by virtue of the amount of time they give you all together and it would destroy and build creativity in the process.
If regression/slowdown perks had a mechanic similar to exhaustion where only one could be used, they could be balanced such that they are strong enough to stand on their own and not need to be balanced with all the other regression perks stacking with it.
Comments
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The question is do bhvr want killers to stack all strong gen regression as traing wheels or do they want a healthy balance of different perks for chase, endgame,gens ect.
If the latter then this suggestion would be a viable idea.
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I do not see it as a problem. with perk like jolt, pop, eruption and pain res, these perks only trigger when they survivor is put into dying state or is hooked. as a result, the regression is inherent situational because you can avoid triggering the perks by preventing the down.
Overcharge and COB has particular problem with their regression. It is that they do not require killer to get a down and there is no limit in their regression. normally with other regression perks, the killer has to play actively to get hooks/downs to trigger their effect. with overcharge and cob, they only need kick gens and closest gen together are easiest to kick.
because closest 3 gen prevent survivors from progressing the game from pushing survivor away from repairing generator or risk going down. the killer is winning in regression compare progression because uptime for survivor repairing is not 100%. it is on/off means that sometimes survivor can lose progression vs regression war. in 4:1 asymmetric, the survivor is never suppose lose 4:1 regression vs progression war. if they lose the war, than the killer can hold game hostage for 60+ minutes.
What i would say in regard these perks is that they need limit in how much you can regress a single generator otherwise these perks will become too strong or non-existent in regular gameplay.
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-action speed perks are somewhat different problem. the main thing about these perks is that they do not have good scaling per perk slot. They need have certain threshold to reach effectiveness. I would say the threshold they have to hit to reach effectiveness is following:
5-10% -> weak
15% -> Medium strength
20%-25%-> High strength
30% -> Max strength(too strong)
Anything above 30% is too strong. If you have many stacking -action speed perks, they become too overwhelming to play against because the higher number you get to. the more potent the effect is. that is why forever freddy was so strong. freddy had dream world was 2% from swinging chains so he had tier 5 thanatophobia. he also had individual -action speed in jump rope was originally 9% later changed to 4%(swinging chains was 3% originally). if you account jump robe, we could say he had roughly tier 6 thanatophobia.
Note when I say tier 6 thana, i am giving approximate average in strength and not exact values of how much -action speed is in play. 7%/14%/21%/28%. these are really high numbers for -action speed. The counter to reverse the -action speed was to heal but sloppy butcher stacked action speed of healing. with it, you had -27%/-34/-41%/-48%. Looking at 3 people injured, you get 25 seconds altruistic heal. Co-op healing past 25 second is really really long for survivor. you are almost incentives to not heal because two reasons. the first is that killer is more likely to get a hit in 25 seconds then you are to heal injury. the second is that it takes less time for killer catch-up with their 4.6 m/s then healing. the current catch-up is 20 seconds. this is means that in order for survivor to survive vs killer that is actively in a chase, you need to use pallets to get health-states. pallet are limited resource. you will run out of pallets with 25 second healing.
The good news is that survivor do not have obligation to heal. -healing action speed can have no limit however artificially, the limit in which survivors become exposed from -action speed on healing is -40%. -40% healing is very close to being exposed for getting hit once. the generators on other hand are primary objective. anything above 30% with 100% up-time is way too strong. As result I am not entirely sure how you balance this sequence of perks. If i was to try approach to make these perks viable, I will make it so that there is limit of -30% repair speed so you cannot stack Gift of pain+thana+hex:penti+plaything.
After that I would just buff those perks until they are individual worth using as gen defence.
Gift of pain has obvious problem of being Scourge hook and -action speed only works after being healed. make it work when your injured.
Thana should be 5/10/15/20 -action speed for healing and generators
Dying light should be 4% with it is associated drawbacks removed. the obsession should build stacks and they should be immune to the effect.
Hex:penti works fine as it is but it is hex perk and hex perk do not have much lifespan so the uptime will never be particular high.
-Action speed perks and unlimited regression perks are most tricky perks to balance because of their explosive nature to be useless or too strong.
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Since they have to earned no. (pop, pain res, jolt) generally most people can last more than 40 seconds in chase not taking into account killer finding an transporting to hook kind of already does have a time between
ruin, cob, oppression an overcharge not earned but you won't get much valve from those
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