𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞'𝐬 𝐦𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝 8.0.0 PTB

Echonius

(I swear, this reply is going to be longer than the patch notes itself.)

I would appreciate criticism from anyone, and if someone could push this to a bigger content creator or even potentially a developer for review.. I'll give you every single Steam Award or something idk.

Also, I'm a survivor main so I haven't tested Vecna too intensively.. but I tried him out and have played lots of matches against him so I'm very familiar with his play style, his counters, and his pros/cons when going against him.



(Please excuse the randomly bolded words and buggy/bad number formatting. Not sure how that happened when copy pasting this from my notes file, but I can't even fix it when editing it here.)

PTB // 8.0.0 //
LOG 1 of 1
5/17/2024 - 5/20/2024

• (completed) - - -

"Aestri Yazar and Baermar Uraz" PERK STUDY

Bardic Inspiration:

Just perfect and I have no criticisms about the perk other than it needs a bit of bug fixing when it comes to labeling in the description why it shows your aura to survivors as you're performing, showing on the icon in game how long left of the performance you have just for quality of life in the same fashion as something like spine chill shows for its effect, and maybe adding the ability to see how much bonus you're getting on the buff icon in the bottom right as well(since it stacks with others using it too).

Still Sight:

It's "good"... but kind of in the wrong way. It doesn't work on a gen which is a positive for both sides since that would just be outright OP against the majority of non-stealth killers, and promotes the natural flow of the game instead of "wait for the aura and then just hide"... but then again, it also doesn't work when you're doing things like opening chests, working on totems, or even healing someone else(but it still works when someone is healing you, which personally.. I think it would be more positive if it worked in a reverse sense).

To be honest, the perk as a whole is really bent towards not even playing the objective. It works with a few niche perks like diversion, distortion, and stakeout for its proxy value so you can position better.. but that's where its value ends. You're pretty much sacking a perk slot just for slightly better angling when following the killer as they search or chase your team, and as a whole; its negatives highly outweigh its positives when it comes to value for your team in general across the majority of the match(even if you're running it with its synergy perks).

The best build I've found to get the most value out of it has been Still Sight + Open Handed for a good radius to see the killer as soon as you see the heartbeat so you can stop on a dime and figure out where to go, and Diversion + Distortion for making sure the killer doesn't just spot you out of nowhere when they pop an aura effect, sending the killer in a direction, and since they both are terror radius charging perks.. they work hand in hand to outright spam pebbles(and if you set them up right, you can either mess up their scratch marks when they're chasing someone or you can send them to a dead zone searching to give your teammates some more time to finish a gen).

This build works especially well when you position yourself a bit more towards the area where the killer would be coming from away from your teammates working on a gen with the sound cue, crouch down in a corner or behind cover, and just wait for the aura to show so you can throw a pebble in a different direction as they start heading for your teammates on the gen, so the killer looks and potentially goes the other way for a bit.

And right there, that's entirely where the value ends except the slight value of seeing which direction the killer is coming from when you are getting healed by a teammate(which since it doesn't work when YOU are healing someone, you can't even viably use it in a healing build).

You could change the perks up to your liking and tastes, but outright the point still stands that it contributes and promotes towards a game play style that completely goes against the standard flow of the game, and against a good killer(or even if they just pick Legion since it 100% counters Distortion), your entire build is just useless.

A good way to fix the perk would be to make three changes:

1. Allow it to work while healing, opening chests, and cleansing/blessing totems. This would allow much more potential in viably using it in other builds.

1. Have the perk just completely temporarily turn off when working on a gen, performing a killer object interaction(e.g. Pig's boxes, Plague's fountains, Vecna's chests, Trapper's traps, etc), being in a locker, being carried by the killer, being healed by another survivor(but not if you're healing yourself or are the one doing the healing) or being hooked/being unhooked/unhooking a survivor. This will make sense in the next part of the change.

The perk will also take 3 seconds to re-enable after these deactivation conditions are no longer true

1. Make the perk token based up to a max of 7. After standing still for 6-5-4 seconds(perk tier respective), you will be able to see the aura of all chests and generators in the 18 meter radius.

While standing still after the 4 seconds, and the killer is not in the radius, you will begin charging tokens at a rate of 1 token per 2~ seconds.

If the killer is in the radius, you are moving, and you have tokens, you can see their aura but will lose a token every second.

If you are not moving, you will not lose tokens even with the killer in the radius if you're standing still for longer than 4 seconds, or if the perk is temporarily disabled(e.g. doing a gen, being hooked or unhooking, in direct contact with the killer, everything said in change 2).

If the killer is being currently being revealed in the radius, and you are in chase, you will also see all chests and generators in the radius like if you were manually triggering the perk standing still(which could FINALLY give perks like Quick Gambit a BIT of value, but maybe that perk also could get a bit of a range buff so you don't need to get so close to a generator that you scare people off to even get the effect).

And finally, if you ever enter the dying state.. you lose all your tokens.

These changes would promote a much, much better flow of the game for the perk.

It's not too strong against the killer since in chase it's only temporarily active, it doesn't work on important actions like working on a generator or killer objects in which lots of killers have add-ons to utilize them even more than normal, and can't be charged mid chase so it's not like it has the infinite loop potential of blocked + wiretapped generators.

It also would keep the original capabilities of being able to use it with stealthy perks like Diversion and Distortion, but allow it to properly be utilized with a variety of other builds to give players a nice helpful boost to the start of their chases if they like to play more aggressively with the killer instead of defensively. Healers and Boon users could also have a nice little surveillance boost so they can get a head start on running away the right way when the killer is walking up on them in a tight spot.

And thinking about it from the killer's perspective.. I don't see it being much of a hindrance. A person camping in a bush with distortion and still sight is about as much of a problem as a person camping in a bush with distortion alone right now anyways, and it's not like it's going to interrupt the flow of walking up on a gen since it's temporarily disabled when they get off the gen after hearing the heartbeat.

The ONLY thing I'm a bit hypothetical about currently, is Nurses Calling. If the survivor has Open Handed to boost Still Sight, they'll see the killer before they can see them. This may or may not be a good thing since it's situational and knowledge based, and would require actual in game testing, since unless you're outright playing the nurse and telegraphing the idea you have it on it might not be a big issue since most people with it on in a good hiding spot would think to just keep healing unless the developed meta strategy would be to just stop healing immediately after the killer starts approaching.

If that became the case, or just outright Nurses Calling became completely countered and unusable against these players(which, lets be honest, all stealth killers are going to hard counter Still Sight anyways except for the during chase part, especially killers like Ghostface or Chucky who can pop undetectable immediately IN the chase), maybe an added effect could be that while healing or performing actions like it, the base 18 meter range is cut in half to 9 so Nurses Calling could still see farther than Still Sight + Open Handed could.

(Oh, and just to clarify, there's currently a bug with the Knight where if he drops a guard in the radius while Still Sight is active, you'll briefly see the spot where the guard got dropped through the wall.)

That was a LONG segment for one perk, but necessary. Let's move on.

Mirrored Illusion:

Honestly, out of all three perks.. this one has to be both the most buggy, and the most underwhelming... yet somehow, the coolest concept.

(besides strumming the lute, that thing is too funny.)

First off, it's bugged where you can't see the progress of how much longer left you need to work on a gen for in the bottom right like all the other gen-charge perks. Also, you can charge the next one while it's still active, even while the timer indicator in the corner is still draining.

Also, when you do place it down.. there is no movement animation to make the killer look twice, no noise notification of a being repaired gen to draw the killer in to check it, and sometimes the illusion will be slightly hovering off the ground. Even at a distance it still looks like an illusion partly.

And for using it on totems, chests, or even the exit gates? Even less worth it. Using it on totems or on chests is about as effective or less effective than using it on a gen, since in most cases the killer wont even go over to it or look twice. And if you're putting it on a hex totem, wouldn't you rather just.. cleanse the totem?

Even sitting in the illusion doesn't work since again, there is no animation and the models are slightly different.. and even at a distance, the killer can tell if it's an illusion or not since you can still see how transparent it is. If you're sitting inside of it, even if they don't notice the weird overlapping double models.. they'll still see that it's not see-through + there's still no noise effect.

And if you decide to save one to use it in end-game, you still need to make it to the gate to put it down, and then stealth run ALL the way to the other gate(in which by then, especially if the gates are close enough for the killer to proxy them better, they will have already figured out your plan and will end up putting you in the exact same situation again anyways as if you never had the perk on at all).

In short for everything I blasted; running this perk is about as effective as running an empty perk slot currently.

So, to fix it.. again, I have some changes. One of them is a major change that could make the perk genuinely useful in a lot of combinations and builds.

1. The Illusion should not be see-through until you're within 10 meters of it. This will fix the issue where the killer could just glance at it and see it's not an actual survivor.

1. The Illusion should have animation, and also produce repair sounds(maybe at a slightly reduced range). Again, this further fixes the issue where it doesn't draw in the killer.

1. Mirrored Illusion should take 80% gen progress to charge(+30% from it's current 50%). This will be explained in change #5.

1. The Illusion should disappear when either the action it's been set upon(totem cleansing, chest opening, or gen repairing) has been completed/blocked, the killer swings at it(which for cool-down reasons would be as long as an actual hit, which will be explained later), or its lifetime expires. Only one Illusion per survivor should be allowed to be up at a time.

(The Major Change)

1. The Illusion should actually be able to repair generators, cleanse totems, and open chests.. but at a HIGHLY reduced rate. For reference, an Illusion cleansing a totem would take 100 seconds(it's entire lifetime at tier 1), which usually for a regular survivor it's only 19 seconds to do.

Also, for clarification, If you placed down the Illusion and worked along side it with a perk like Prove Thy Self, it would not count the perk for you.. but it would receive the benefit since you're an actual survivor.

For every other Survivor repairing a Generator within 4 meters, Prove Thyself increases your Repair speed by 6/8/10 %, up to a maximum of 18/24/30 %.

The effect is also applied to every other survivor in range, which means even though only one instance of the perk can be active... everyone has it.

All that would need to be changed is having the effect and other effects like this(such as the new Bardic Inspiration perk) not just be applied to every other survivor in range, but also illusions too. Although survivors wouldn't gain any additional 6/8/10% repair speed, the illusion would to its already very sluggish speed.. which would make it SLIGHTLY better, yet still not nearly as good as an actual survivor.

And for more clarification, they would not have the perks of the survivor who placed it.. but they would still get random skill checks that would ALWAYS count as just good skill checks and never great ones.

1. Only one Illusion should be allowed on an action at a time. Of course you can only fit one survivor on a totem or a chest, but only one Illusion could be on a generator(which means you can't stack 4, one from each survivor, all together).

1. A survivor should be able to sit and perform actions inside an Illusion to pause its own actions and expiration timer, and let the survivor resume it's progress from where it left off. This mainly applies to cleansing totems since if you stop, the progress restarts from zero. Vice versa; If a survivor stops performing an action inside an Illusion, the Illusion will resume performing the action and it's timer will also resume(which is helpful if you're doing something like finishing a gen, and then want to leave a little early before it pops and the killer can see.. or rather, the killer starts walking towards you on a totem and you need to run, but want to save your progress).

Of course the Illusion would still disappear under the other conditions already listed in change #4, but if the killer swings at the survivor and hits the Illusion instead, then although the Illusion is gone.. the killer now is slightly more delayed from resuming the chase as if they actually landed a hit.

Also to clarify further so you can picture it better; If a killer was mid swing going in for a hit, and the survivor gets off the generator/chest/totem fast enough to escape the Illusion's hit-box to put it between the them and the killer, the swing could potentially just collide with the Illusion, granting the survivor a "bonus" hit.. but, if the killer holds the swing to go through the Illusion(since it's not supposed to be a solid thing), It could still hit the survivor like normal. It's not supposed to impair the hit distance for the killer coming around a corner, it's more like the same slight aspect of a flashlight where you should be careful about it so you aren't punished by it.

Also, if the survivor DOESN'T get off the generator/totem/chest fast enough to make enough distance out of the hit-box, a swing from the killer would collide with not just the survivor.. but also the Illusion too, providing an injure on the survivor while also taking out the Illusion with just one hit.

A very niche, but important aspect to account for.

1. This perk should be disabled when endgame starts after the last generator completes. Illusions don't need to be slowly opening exit gates, and outright making predicting which gate actually has a survivor become an over committing gamble on the killer's expense. This with all the other changes, or even just the visual ones, would make endgame builds severely overpowered.

Also, this perk would completely ruin perks like NOED being effective, since you could find it and set down the Illusion as bait for the killer.. where they'd either over commit to protecting that and you could start opening the gate/trigger NWO freely, or by letting it work.. it would just finish the totem without needing to risk your position in the spot the killer already knows it's in.

All of this would outright change the perk from being a waste of time and use, to a genuinely enjoyable and positive experience to run and combine with a slew of other perks. Potentially, this could be TH'E most unique perk in the game if built, adjusted, and tested correctly. Taking in consideration on how much work this would take to alter and change, it's no small feat to make these adjustments.. but it would give this perk actual utility and outright massive synergy potential that would work for not just SWF players, but also solo que enjoyers. It compliments the ideas of one side of the spectrum where you could be having a compensation for players whose teammates are not coordinating with them the way they want by having a backup, all the way to giving multi-tasking individuals and regression combatants more methods to distribute their pressure.

But the most important part is that it's a very tempo'd perk that wouldn't get out of control considering how technically "minimal" it is to deal with.. especially with how critical it is in an asymmetric game to have balance.

The long charge time being nearly a whole generator offers a sweet reward for lots of progress to survivors, while also still being easily punishable if wasted and used incorrectly by a mere swing.

Value can be gained by survivors by leaving it in different places(where they could always exchange risky extra value for safe longer up-time depending when and where they place it, and what they need it for) to either defensively protect themselves, aid their progress, or simply give them the option to resume from where they left off.

Value can also be gained by killers as they follow the normal flow of the game of checking their most important aspects(Generators for most, Totems and Chests for some) as they do their patrols since by taking out the Illusion, that's removing the value a survivor had to work 80% of a generator for by just doing what they're doing: Checking generators.

Overall, with proper evaluation and consideration(and maybe some good testing beforehand), this perk with it's changes speculatively seems very balanced, and to the majority of players in the community would probably be well taken if they could see it in action compared to what it is now.

• -End Of Log- - -

5/17/2024 - 5/20/2024

• (completed) - - -