Potential Energy: Can nobody read???
You spend 30 seconds doing nothing in order to acquire charges that give you 20 seconds of progress.
The purpose of this perk is to store charges on a safe generator, and then dump them on a dangerous generator / break up a 3 gen.
You do not… activate the perk… build it to 20 stacks… and then insta-dump those stacks on the same generator.
THAT IS NOT HOW MATH WORKS.
The amount of times I see people do this makes me lose hope for humanity.
Comments
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Seeing people use it that way hurts my soul.
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i only do that when I know the killer is about to hit me
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Oh Potential Energy. How I hate to see this perk in solo queue.
It's a shame because Potential Energy can be pretty effective when used correctly but like you said, noone seems to understand how the perk actually functions.
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People are seeing Potential Energy?
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Solo q survivors never suprise u. The perk came out at the height of three gen meta and was still pretty mediocre even then. Not sure why anyone would even touch it after all the 3gen regression perks got nerf
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at some point i dodged default low prestige vittorios just because of this perk. i guess perk isn't very intuitive or it's just that people don't care to read and learn.
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It's very bad. It would actually be usable for breaking 3 gens if you didn't lose all your charges just by getting injured, it should be when you get downed instead. Keep the penalty, but make it so you only lose the charges when getting downed and it would be a pretty solid perk.
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I am usually quite happy to see survivors using it in this way … or better yet: getting the dumb on them and letting those charges evaporate into the void.
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It's one of those "SWF only" perks, like Distortion and Reassurance.
And even then, that's only for when the Killer plays for the 3-Gen when there's still 5 gens. Most do not, even when playing pretty moderately sweaty, so as long as you just knock out close gens as the 1st or 2nd ones, you still won't need the perk more than 99% of the time.
But, that being said, it is surely the best perk in the game for knocking out a 3-Gen at the start of a game, if the Killer is playing for it. But… also THAT being said, all you have to do is play like rats, rather than bringing a perk for it. With all 4 Survivors healthy, and running off to get healed in case of chase drops, the team still gets that gen done anyway. Lol.
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There are challenges to use a fully charged Potential Energy load on a gen. Loading it and immediately dumping it is the most efficient way of doing that challenge.
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Potential energy is one of those perks that people never bothered with because they knew the meta they were designed for is going to be patched out sooner or later.
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If the amount of times that I see this perk being used is actually because of said challenges…
Can we please get rid of challenges???
Is this also the same reason I see people opening so many chests and clearing so many dull totems?
These challenges directly cause losses. It is not fun to see your whole team dicking around, "cuz mah challenges!"
Why are so many archaic things kept in the game just cuz they've always been there?…
Basement… hatch… black hole effect on notifications… Kobe mechanic… skill checks on 2nd hook phase… And a million other things, man.
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Fast Track is the superior option imo. You use the killer's inevitable progress (hooks) for the teams benefit instead of wasting your own gen time, you don't lose your tokens upon being hit and so can pick when to use them with alot more freedom. I'd wager in an average game I'd get more value from FT than others would PE thanks to time wastage and token loss/hits taken.
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There's a challenge in one of the archives to use potential energy. Might just be someone doing their challenge.
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on your point about 2nd hook skillchecks that was their solution to replacing button mashing would you really want that back?
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The problem with that is there is basically nothing the killer can do to stop you. You can run-through them, eat a hit and then still dump the stacks into a high progress gen with no counterplay available to the killer.
Potential Energy's issue is that it has potential for a strong reward, but in a limited scenario... and even in that scenario is high risk, not just in regards to being hit and losing stacks, but also the additional time penalty you're incurring that can become a major throw if you don't use the perk wisely.
This is especially true with it's vulnerability to gen regression perks becoming more impactful as a result of the extra time to complete gens that you're taking, and the ways you tie your own and allies hands.
- You stop working on gen progress yourself.
- Slow allies repairs speeds and your own perk build up on the same generator.
- Actively make gen repair overall less efficient for yourself.
- All while running a great risk of having that time investment completely erased.
One thing that would help it massively is if it didn't slow both you and your teammates repair speed while building it up. Currently it's kinda functional with Prove Thyself, but it's basically trash without it due to absolute requirement to find a "safe gen" on its own (which then has travel times included).
Alternatively giving it a small haste bonus based on the number of charges after not being in chase for 10 seconds might also be useful to reduce those travel times.
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The problem with that is there is basically nothing the killer can do to stop you. You can run-through them, eat a hit and then still dump the stacks into a high progress gen with no counterplay available to the killer.
There doesn't always need to be counterplay. By the time someone's bee-lining for a generator with a fully stocked Potential Energy, they already did their work on another gen, taking extra seconds on that gen, then also cutting off 33% of the charges they did, and then it can all be undone anyway if the gen is contested.
Survivors are already so deep in the hole that killers not being able to stop these charges from being dumped into it by the time the survivor is running up to the gen would merely make the perk 'fair'.
As it stands, it's just more of a killer perk than a survivor perk because it has really bad investment cost AND really powerful counterplay, as opposed to just picking one and sticking with that. It's currently just buried under so many drawbacks that it can't make up for it.
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Maybe people are just running it to complete challenges. So they store and dump the energy immediately.
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It's a fair point, the concern I have is the killers it punishes more are the killers that already can't down/ traverse maps efficiently as it is and have to rely more on defending gens in close proximity.
I'm not necessarily talking about hard 3-genning, but as a number of killers you have to already say "I have to completely ignore those gens yo have a chance". E.g. the Greenville Square, a lot of killers can't even realistically attempt to defend the cinema gen and the fountain gen if they don't want to throw the game.
I realise it's a tired argument, but it's a constant problem for all balance discussions... a change such as that wouldn't really make it effective against the stronger killers of the game, but it definitely be more effective against the weaker chase/map mobile killers that can't waste time walking out to far off gens...
There is the point that it's better for instant down killers, like Myers, Ghost Face, Bubba and Billy... most of whom aren't in the stronger camp... Trapper has traps, Clown has bottles to catch up, so potentially counter it... Artist gets hurt.... but mostly, that may be fair?
Post edited by UndeddJester on0 -
I feel like my soul left my body when I see survivor use this perk (and then active it on the same gen).
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Why not… not both?
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