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Niche Perk Academy ~ "Aftercare" (#1)
How it works…
Aftercare is a Jeff Johansen perk. Upon healing a Survivor, being healed another Survivor, unhooking a Survivor, or being unhooked by another Survivor, you and the other Survivor see each other's aura, this effect goes away upon being hooked.
The flaws…
Having mutual aura reading is not a bad effect, it allows teams that do not have the ability to communicate to make better informed decisions and improve their gameplay. However there are issues with this perk's design that makes it incredibly situation resulting in it not being picked compared to it's contemporaries (such as Bond or Empathy).
The fact that being Hooked removes the effect can seem as a massive downside for this perk. The aura reading has no range which can often make it stronger than Bond for teammate aura reading, but you have to earn the effect and maintain the effect. Bond should always be in a position where it is inherently weaker, the activation condition is easier and it has a set range, but Aftercare should be earned but overall by stronger.
This perk already encourage altruism but also punishes altruism since you cannot go down for the team or take pressure off your teammates by getting hooks, it leads to this very confusing design where you are both encouraged to help your team and punished by helping your team. Balancing this can often be annoying or counter-productive.
To put in bluntly, there is a reason why Aftercare is a niche perk. It is not necessarily a "bad" perk, but it has many flaws or requires you to play in a way that is not super conventional or straight forwards, which is why people often opt into other options.
How would I improve Aftercare?
To put it bluntly, I think Aftercare should be changed to a 48-meter aura reading for the first altruistic action, but actively engaging in altruistic actions (healing, being healed, unhooking, being unhooked, protection hits, etc.) should extend the aura reading range (+24 meters) on that Survivor (for both Survivors)
To make the new downside of having a set range the Aura Reading on both sides, it now lasts for the full duration of the match, hooking does not remove the effect.
This keeps the intent behind Aftercare, rewarding altruism by giving both Survivors an amazing aura reading effect, but it still has to be earned and developed through the duration of the match, which encourages playing for the team.
Comments
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Starting at 48m and then adding 24m for each further altruistic action would mean that in order to get the same map-wide effect as the current version you need to interact with each survivor in some altruistic way 4 times each (first one is 48m, then 24 * 3 = 72m to get up to 120m which is basically map-wide in most cases), which I feel like is a net nerf even if it no longer deactivates on hook. I'd rather have the hook deactivation than have to do 4 altruistic actions to get the map-wide aura reading on 1 survivor.
The current Aftercare is a good perk and is not niche at all, it's the strongest teammate-info survivor perk there is once you get it active, especially since it not only gives you information but gives your teammates info on you too.
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Keep in mind that it is altruistic actions for either Survivor involved.
You can get an unhook and then heal to get 48m + 24m or 72m. This also would apply if you are unhooked and healed by another Survivor. So yes, it does take a bit more work to get map-wide, but the effect is constant and encourages you and your teammates to be altruistic.
Another thing is that maps being large does not necessarily mean you need "map-wide aura reading", there are never cases where you are in the corner of the map and the other Survivors is in the adjacent corner of the map, you are often offset towards the center since loops and Generators are normally further from the back-walls. BHVR has also been pushing to make maps overall smaller as well, and half the maps in the game dont even need 120m for it to be map-wide, often 70-80m is just enough.
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