Is Luck Viable?
Luck is often seen as a pointless mechanic as it is usually atrocious to attempt to escape the hook, and only has a very niche purpose against the Trapper. Is there any way for luck to be beneficial?
Optimizing a 4 SWF each with "Up the Ante" (+9%) and a "Vigo Jar of Salty Lips" (+3%) the maximum luck is +48% (12%*4 survivors). If the survivors were to use "Slippery Meat", they would have six attempts to escape. The odds that a survivor escapes using max luck is 98.1% , and the odds that all four survivors escape the hook is 92.6%. (math shown later if you're interested)
Granted, it is 4 survivors each running purple offerings and each using 2 of their perks, but this seems too good. Practically a guaranteed chance to alleviate pressure early game sounds busted. Is this actually possible? Does the math check out? Is luck... viable? I plan on doing some testing to see if the stats confirm this, but I figure this idea has already been explored, so here I am.
Here's the math behind the odds, just ignore if you're not interested. So with a 48% chance of escaping 6 different times, we need to calculate the odds that we don't escape 6 times in a row. that's 52% x 52% x 52% x 52% x 52% x 52%, or 1.9% The odds that at least one of those times are successful is 1 - 1.9%, or 98.1% So, the odds that one survivor can successfully escape the hook is 98.1%, basically guaranteed. Calculating the odds of all survivors escaping the hook is simple, it's just 98.1% x 98.1% x 98.1% x 98.1%, or 92.6%.
Edit: I didn't add the base chance of escaping, so it's actually 48% luck and 4% base, or 52% chance of escaping the hook. That would tweak odds of escaping to 98.8% and all 4 survivors escaping to 95.2%, even higher than the initial estimate.
Comments
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As survivor, you could probably go in perkless and still be viable. But that s only because you have other (competent) teammates.
You could go in with just Luck perks/offerings, but why? Why stack chances to escape when you can run deliverance, fill the conditions and get off 100%? Or why not equip perks that make it harder to get you on the hook in the first place.
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Considering that 5 perk slots are needed to make this work, it BETTER be effective.
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i always thought luck affects items from chests. but apparently it doesn't. it should affect chests too in my opinion. then it would be viable
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I'm not gonna comment on the math too much, because I'm downright stupid at math, but something about that doesn't sound completely right. But again, bad at math.
Anyway, like you said, you spend a bunch of stuff for one escape off a hook per person. That's one extra life essentially when each person can run all meta perks and have like 4 different extra lives.
I like luck, but I have to admit when something just isn't as good in most situations.
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Luck does literally nothing, it's not viable in any way.
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It is viable but not efficient and that is why you won't usually see any team using it. This is not a specific problem of dbd. A lot of games suffer this, the most common example being critical chance. For any luck based strategy to be efficient it has to be consistent without spending too much resources.
In this specific case, you want escapes from hooks (not always because it's not 100%). This strat requires 2 perks per survivor plus 4 offerings. The value per slot is too low, each slot used contributes 1/12 to the goal. Any perk that contributes more than 1/12 to a goal will be more efficient and should be placed in the slot.
Also luck based strats tends to be more boring because you will not use new ways to approach the game, just the same as before with some background numbers modified. A sabotage strat is funnier, adds different playstyle, it's more efficient and it's more flexible because you spend less resources that can be used for another "plan B" strat.
Just as a note, it's not needed a high chance for a luck based strat to be viable. 60-70% is usually enough.
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You were right the math wasn't quite accurate. I forgot to add the base chance of escaping. Otherwise I'm basing this problem off the idea that 1% luck translates to a 1% chance of escaping the hook, so if the numbers are distorted there (i.e if 1% luck equals .5% chance of escaping hook) it could also lead to inaccuracies. Thanks for helping me spot that out!
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Fair enough, I didn't consider that point. The build I mentioned was completely optimized, and it used 8 perks and 4 offerings to achieve this. If you were to say, remove Slippery Meat than the odds of escaping would be 88.9%, and the group escaping would be 62.5%. If you were to keep Slippery Meat and remove Up the Ante the odds of escaping would be 64.9%, and the odds of the group escaping would be 17.7%. I'll list these in a chart to make it more concise.
1 Resource = 1 perk = 2 offerings
Resources Used: (x4 survivors)----------------------------Chance you escape-------------------------------------------Chance everybody escapes
Vigo, Up the Ante, Slippery Meat (10)----------------------98.8%--------------------------------------------------------------95.2%
Up the Ante, Slippery Meat (8)-------------------------------95.3%--------------------------------------------------------------82.3%
Vigo, Up the Ante (6)-------------------------------------------88.9%--------------------------------------------------------------62.4%
Up the Ante (4)---------------------------------------------------78.4%--------------------------------------------------------------37.8%
Vigo, Slippery Meat (6)-----------------------------------------64.9%--------------------------------------------------------------17.7%
Vigo (2)-------------------------------------------------------------40.7%--------------------------------------------------------------2.7%
Slippery Meat (4)------------------------------------------------21.7%--------------------------------------------------------------0.2%
Nothing (0)--------------------------------------------------------15.1%---------------------------------------------------------------0.05%
As we can see the the most bare bones viable strat is to use Vigo and Up the Ante for four survivors, a total of 4 perks and 4 offerings used, which gives the chance of you escaping 88.9% and everyone escaping 62.4%. By trading 1 perk slot and an offering you can achieve a better, yet slightly riskier Deliverance. (Although everyone has to run these perks and offerings)
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IMO a SWF team would get more reliable results from running Deliverance on all their Survivors if they really wanted to spam self-unhooks- Or, you know, just running co-ordinated hook rescues like normal.
Luck can get some pretty crazy results but all that is a reaaally elaborate setup for honestly sub-par returns. Other crazy optimised SWF strategies like rescue setups are less likely to backfire and require less investment.
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I am surprised to see a brand new forum user who doesn't go on to complain about killers/survivors and game mechanics. Bravo, fine sir.
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As someone who uses a luck build in my regular survivor build, I'm glad someone finally mentioned this topic. The build I use is Up The Ante, Ace In The Hole, Slippery Meat, and Plunderer's Instinct, a build that completely relies on RNG to be successful. So far, luck affects only two things in the game, escaping from a bear trap and escaping from a hook. The fact that luck only affects these two things limits its capability to possibly be better and suffers from inconsistency due to how often it may actually work. To make matters worse, Luck does not affect multiple other elements in the game, making it more of a forgotten and outdated game mechanic. Here are a few things that could make the luck mechanic more interesting, balanced, and more enjoyable to use as survivor and to play against as killer (somehow).
- Luck affects chest searches. Currently, Luck does not affect chest searches. If it did in the current state of the game, then combining luck and plunderer's would be overpowered. One solution would be decreasing the chances of getting powerful items from chests using plunderer's (keys), but compensating this nerf to make it so that Up The Ante's luck boost stacks with Plunderer's. This can give players the option to sacrifice a perk slot for Up The Ante so that they can still hold onto their original odds of getting good items from chests.
- Luck affects escaping from a Reverse Bear Trap. If this were done, then luck users would have a soft counter to another killer, but The Pig would need a considerable buff to compensate for this buff to luck (maybe base kit Rules Set #2 or End-Game Traps activating again?)
- Luck affects Ace In The Hole. I don't think this would be too severe of a buff to luck, but I could be wrong.
- Luck affects Technician. Technician is already an underused perk so if the percent chance was able to be stacked with luck, it could make the perk better.
These were just a few brainstorm ideas to possibly make luck better. The luck mechanic is definitely outdated and needs to be looked at. Perks like Deliverance put half of the build that I use completely out of commission provided the user just gets one safe unhook (which is not difficult to do) and rewards the user with a 100% chance of escaping. Up The Ante and Slippery Meat alone offers the user a 13% chance to unhook yourself and an extra 3 attempts (for a total of 6 attempts. I find counting up to 5 after the escape attempt notification shows up to work out the best). Each attempt at escape you make is always 13% provided no teammates are dead.
I'm ranting at this point, so to answer your question, no. Luck is not viable. However, it can seriously throw off a killer and can even be the reason why you escape certain matches. This build is kind of like Mr. Game and Watch's hammer from smash bros (with an 11% chance of getting a 9 in the more recent games). Even if the perks or character you use suck, don't let that stop you from using them. So many new perks have came out since Ace's release and I have yet to change my build from the luck setup. Luckily, Slippery Meat is one of the perks that the dev team confirmed was getting looked at and I hope it gets a solid change next mid-chapter patch, but there is no confirmation whether it will be the next update or not.
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Can confirm, quad up the ante and slippery meat does its job well. It's just a matter of if it's worth all of those perk slots
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