A 24 hour retrospective on the update
Aestri Yazar:
Decent perks, but nothing that is truly going to shake the meta game. Will be good for some specific builds, but nothing defining and forcing a reaction on any side.
The Lich - Power
Mage Hand is definitely the bread and butter, while everything else is filler while Mage Hand is on cool down. There are Add-ons to make the other spells semi useful, but Mage Hand is always useful. I'd love to see a balance tweak to make the other spells more useful baseline, and make Mage Hand less of the defining purpose of Vecna.
The Lich - Perks
The Item Aura perk is great on small indoor maps, like Heli side Police Department or The Game. Crow perk messes with Survivors by blocking their exhaustion perks without them doing anything fancy, which "can" be good, but not always good. I'd rather the vault perk just buff Vaulting "less" but without a downside. In all honesty, they're decent. Could be good, but held back because of some limiting factor.
Killer Perk Updates
Deadlock and Grim Embrace are negligible. The real nerf was pop and pain res. I don't use those perks, but I know Killers who play 4 slowdown Nurse: Eruption, Pain Res, Pop, and add some flavor here. That is the reason they got nerfed, because top tier killers can abuse their low TTK to get massive progress, nullifying most Survivor Progress. And with the chaos of solo queue, no wonder that'd stall a game to a 4k at 0 progress. I'm not against these nerfs, but I don't support it. I think BHVR needs to think about possibly having a dedicated perk slot, on Survivor and Killer. For Killer it'd be "regression" meaning you can only take 1 regression perk. Survivors, probably exhaustion, although maybe that's redundant saying the debuff exhaustion exists.
Survivor Perk Updates
Honestly, Background Player, albeit kind of stupid, wasn't really THAT bad. It was annoying, but it wasn't a problem. I think it's worse now, but oh well. The other changes are fine.
Blight Changes
How about letting his changes sit for a bit so people can actually tell what's what? I know people who haven't heard they've been updated a further 3 times since the "updated Blight" released. Slow the roll down a tiny bit.
Ehh, it's alright. Sucks his iri add-ons now feel useless compared to the Very Rare, but I also don't main Blight.
Cannibal/Deathslinger/Chucky/Wesker Changes
Haven't faced one yet, but the numbers felt fine on PTB, so I'm okay with it.
In regards to Wesker, I still stand behind that removing the Hindered all together would've been a better balance change. Make the Survivor Oblivious at full infection. That would be both more terrifying outside of Chase, and not "game losing" because you got infected.
Decimated Borg Update
Red was removed, so it looks better, but now the map is so dark, it feels like I'm playing the lights out game mode again. Maybe give it some light back, because I'd rather play it against a Freddy to be able to see the map (so yet another nerf to Freddy.)
Sabotage update
This is weird because I don't feel it... Yet. It's kind of like when survivors started running boon perks at launch: I'm seeing a few who are capitalizing on their stupid power, but everyone else kept calling them ######### players who suck. I've had hooks sabotaged in front of me with no ability to trade, but I'm also seeing baby saboteurs who didn't know the timing and died without the sabo. It will break the game, but it'll take time.
I'm honestly okay with it breaking the game, it's better than flashlight saves IMHO. For me, it's Sabos, pallet saves, then flashlights/flashbang.