Nerf Gen defense perks, buff the basekit.

Reinami

Over the years, BHVR has looked at addons on killers that are seen as "required" and often they end up buffing the basekit that the addon changes, then nerfing the addon to make it about the same as it was before the basekit buff. This does a few things. First, it makes it so people who like the addon can keep using it, without much changing. Additionally, it makes it so, when you DON'T have that addon it doesn't feel bad. This makes it so many addons that feel like they are "required" aren't required anymore.

A few examples of that are:

• Wrath in patch 4.6.0, they increased his movement speed while cloaked, then nerfed the windstorm addons.
• Demogorgon in patch 4.7.0, they increased his movement speed while charging his attack, and nerfed the addon that did the same.
• Doctor in the recent patch 7.6.0, they reduced the detonation delay on shock, and nerfed the addons that did the same.

There are others as well, but in general this has been a thing that has been done many times in the past. Where if an addon feels "required" to play the killer, they buff the basekit, then nerf the addon.

So why do i bring this up. Enter Gen Defense perks.

It is pretty much commonly accepted by most of the community, that gen defense perks in some capacity are required. If you play a build that has 0 gen defense, you likely aren't going to win nearly as many games as you would if you ran gen defense perks. This also leads to other problems where killers will often stack 4 gen defense perks, making the game feel miserable to the survivor. There is probably some happy medium here on gen defense, but in general. Without it, you are gonna have a bad time as killer, and you can go overboard with it.

This is why i propose that all major gen defense perks are nerfed, reworked to be less annoying, or reworked into entirely new perks, , and we buff the basekit regression killers as a whole. This would make it so gen defense perks feel far less "required", but that when you run them, you are still about as powerful as you are now. This would create a larger variety of builds that you would see from killers. You would start seeing chase oriented builds, or maybe deceptive ones around terror radius. In general, you'd see a wider array of builds from killers that would become viable.

Yeah, you'd still see killers that run 4 slowdown perks, but in general, they would be less miserable to go against than they are now because they would be significantly weaker. And gen regression becomes much more predictable for the survivor.

In like of that, here are the changes i would propose starting with:

Basekit changes for all killers:

• Increase basekit gen kick regression from 5% to 10% of total progress.
• Increase basekit passive regression from 0.25 charges/s to 0.5 charges/s
• Add a basekit Corrupt intervention that lasts for 30 seconds and has the same effect as the current one does now in addition to blocking hex totems.

Perk Changes:

• Call of Brine - Can stay as is for making regression 0.625 charges/s (125% of new base)
• Corrupt Intervention - Now Increases basekit Corrupt to 60 seconds from 30 seconds (down from 120 seconds)
• Dead man's switch - Slight rework, reduce the gen blocking from 30 seconds to 15 seconds, but the buff lasts 30 seconds (I.E. for 30 seconds, when a survivor stops working a gen, it becomes blocked for 15 seconds, can only work once per gen per cooldown)
• Deadlock - Reduce blocking from 30 seconds to 20 seconds
• Dying Light - Rework this perk entirely to something else, its just badly designed
• Eruption - Change the perk to create a skill check that is impossible for the survivor to complete. (I.E. it has no bar so can't be done) this gives it some counter play (letting go) and gives survivors ways to counter it. and makes it so it doesn't double dip into regression events.
• Grim Embrace - Rework, tokens 1-3 cause all gens to enter a regression state instead of blocking them entirely, 4 tokens can stay. Less annoying to deal with now, still decently strong if you can pressure survivors off gens. (basically a free map wide ruin until the survivors repair the gen a bit)
• Hex: Pentimento - Reduce repair penalty from 30% to 15%
• Hex: Ruin - Can stay as is now that regression is 200% of what it is now
• Merciless Storm - Probably fine as is, perk is relatively weak.
• Oppression - Probably fine as is, could reduce cooldown to 60 seconds as a slight buff.
• Overcharge - Remove the "bonus" regression penalty when a survivor misses a skill check (I.E. it just creates a hard skill check, no bonus if they miss it)
• Pop goes the Weasel - Rework, after kicking a generator, it explodes again, causing another 5% regression immediately (basically this makes the gen kick 15% basekit, but it applies 2 regression events instead of 1. Making it so you hit the 8 twice as fast), each hook gives a token, so it can be stored up now if you want. Caps at 3 tokens.
• Gift of Pain - Reduce the penalty from 16% to 10%
• Pain Resonance - Reduce the regression from 25% to 15%, make the survivor scream properly again (shows the scream)
• Surge - Probably fine right now
• Thanataphobia - Rework this perk entirely, the numbers on it have always made it useless, or too OP, and as it stands its only good on 2 killers now.
• Thrilling tremors - I included this because some people would ask, but i don't see this as a gen defense perk, but an information perk, so i'd leave it as is.
• Undone - Too early to tell on this one, its new, so i'd leave it as is and see how it goes.

Reinami

The general point here is, make it so if you don't take gen defense perks, you don't feel so helpless as killer, but if you stack the common 4 slowdown perk build we have now:

• Corrupt
• PainRes
• Pop
• Grim

Instead of getting 100% regression on pain res, and another probably 100-150% on total pop uses, plus 120 seconds early of having to patrol less gens plus having 88 seconds of all gens blocked from grim, you end up more with:

• 60 seconds of blocked gens early
• 60% regression with pain res
• 30-45% regression with pop
• Some regression with grim
• and 40 second blocking with grim.

Significantly weaker, but then you have a much better basekit.

fussy

Kinda feel it will hurt low level survivor players even more, but slightly weaken killers on high level. But i like this on a paper, i'm bored from gen perks on both sides.

Dying Light is fine, just remove obsession part and maybe buff it to 3,5% per token. Maybe not with basekit buffs, need testing.

Oppression with 60 sec cd is still #########. 45 sec is max for this perk imo. Maybe i'm wrong and with regression buff it will be nice.

Your suggestion on Pop is meh, ngl. Just make it another 10% from overall progress, same 45 sec after hooking, and it will be fine.

Other changes i'm fine with.

Edit: forget about Pain Res, also meh. Who will bring it with all its restrictions for only 1 time per survivor slightly higher basekit damage? I would like to see 10% for every hook, as it was before.

RpTheHotrod

Frankly, I'd rather have basekit regression and gen defense and absolutely no gen related perks. That waybwencan actually use interesting and quirky perks instead of mandatory gen perks.