Why do people say second wind is bad?

Second Win isn't a bad perk it's just the requirements to get the perk to even work. You have to go out of your way for the perk to even activate and that's why it's not used very often. It's a great perk but there are just so many better options. You're probably better off bringing a Med-Kit instead of wasting a perk slot for Second Wind because you'll just save so much time, hell even being healed by a teammate is probably more efficient than using the perk. You could use Botany with Self-Care and that will save a lot more time. There are just so much more better options when it comes to healing perks that make Second Wind not worth running because it is just such a hassle to get the perk to even work.

Because it is. It has an unnecessary activation condition and no synergy. Wasted perk slot.

I didn't say it needed both. I said that the fact it has neither makes it unworthy of a perk slot.

This is another thing I realized when I was thinking about it in retrospect, since I don't actually run the perk often myself. Second Wind is basically lying about being a health-sustain perk you're right it is an anti-tunneling perk. But here's the thing, what if you're not being tunneled? For most of my games as a survivor this is the case and that would means for most of my games this would be a wasted perk slot.

Because one of the conditions is being unhooked, that means you have to be hooked to get it to work, which means you'll only ever get it to work twice in one game because everybody knows that your third hook is your death hook. That just sucks by comparison, when I can use self-care an infinite number of times or even inner strength there are five totems on the map.

Not to mention, even with the tier 3 version of the perk it still takes an entire 30 seconds to activate, when I've got Inner Strength over here that activates in 8. That's way more reliable to cleanse a totem and then after you're unhooked find a locker and hop into it and get out already full in less than 10 seconds (for T2 / T3).

And fine, I'll give credit where credit is due: using second wind can allow you to get healed while performing other critical actions like saving someone else, repairing a generator, cleansing a hex, etc, and not wasting any time having someone heal you or (even finding a locker on certain maps which can be more difficult than others) or if a killer is tunneling you right off the hook and you can't jump into a locker or self-care sure you'd want second wind.

But it's just not worth it, those are such situational benefits for that many hoops to jump through. It is far more trouble to use the perk than it is actually worth, and I think that's what it comes down to.

This is what really gets me about the perk.

It's important to note that just a few small changes would actually make second wind worth running, but in its current state no thanks. I'd take Inner Strength over Second Wind any day of the week.

The thing about the unhook requirement isn't as problematic as you'd think.

The most common reason for why you'd never be hooked is simply that the Killer never committed to chasing you, maybe because you hid but that's not really important.

But the point is that most of the time, a Killer will injure you and then follow up to actually down you for good.

Obviously this is not exclusively the case, but I'd say this holds about 70% of the time. Yeah I know the 30% is significant but whatever.

Point is, if you become injured you will probably also be hooked. So the unhooked requirement overlaps with the being injured condition in the first place. Making the limited use nature of the perk a bit less problematic.

Plus if you aren't being hooked then there really isn't a problem anyways.

And then when it comes to the 30 second time it takes. You really shouldn't think of it as a heal that takes 30 seconds. It's more accurate to think of it as a 30 second vulnerability period going along with a 0 second heal.

Because you aren't actually doing any kind of healing action during that time.

Inner strength may only take 8 second, but that's still 8 seconds more than second wind takes.

The REAL condition is the healing someone else requirement. Which again: annoying and inconsistent if you don't run healing perks, trivial if you do.

You run second wind if you already are running healing perks for whatever reason. If you do not run those perks then you shouldn't run second wind by itself.

Because I DO run healing perks (and did so before second wind even existed) I run second wind and get plenty of use out of it.

Problem is it only activates twice, requires you to heal someone first, and makes you broken for 30 seconds before it works. Compare it to Inner Strength, which is similar but only requires a totem cleanse and a locker and it’s obvious which is the better perk. Why would I run Second Wind when I could run Inner Strength or even just a medkit?

It has many downsides.

A lot of people run self-care and even if you unhook them, they start self-caring for 0.5 secs, wich means the perk won't be active.

If you're chased the first then the perk use get reduced to one, if you're being camped or tunneled then you won't have any use of it. Since you only had two times to use it.

Even if you get unhooked, there is a small chance that you will run into the killer in less than 30 seconds. So if the killer downs you in less than 30 seconds, the perk becomes disabled.

not really since it takes 30 seconds of being broken then you heal it is evenj sllwer than self care and can only be used once a match

It's delayed but it's still instant.

Self care is 32 seconds of standing still doing a channel. So self care takes 32 seconds.

Second wind just automatically heals you after 30 seconds has past. So while the heal may only happen once you've waited 30 seconds, it isn't taking up that time. So you're spent 0 seconds on healing yourself.