Obsession Fest

Hello, it's me. I'm gonna be looking into all the obsession perks today and give some cool feedback because that's just one of the things I like doing. Disclaimer: I do not play this game constantly and I haven't played this game for too long (only about 300 hours), I'm partially doing this for fun and partially doing this because I really need an excuse to talk about some of these because the idea behind obsession perks is just so interesting to me. I'll try my best to consider both sides of the coin here when covering this (survivor and killer perspective), but I think it's worth noting that I call myself a killer player, even though I enjoy both roles. Feel free to give feedback for my feedback, as that would be greatly appreciated in light of the fact that I do not know everything about this game.

Alright, let's get started. Like my previous thread on hex perks, I'll be going through these in alphabetical order, as it's how they are displayed in game.

Dark Devotion - Literally my favorite perk to use in customs and the reason that I'm gonna get Plague. Hopefully that means I'm not too biased, but let it be known that I will be singing the praises of this perk up to its final hour, which hopefully won't be any time soon. Dark Devotion makes your obsession meaningful through causing panic and chaos. Essentially, hitting your obsession with a basic attack will cause your terror radius to emanate from the obsession, rather than you, for a decent amount of time. For this duration, the killer becomes undetectable. This perk is just bloody good fun, absolutely terrifying to play against, yet telegraphed well enough that it can be played around for survivors, while killers just get the rush of their life when they get that obsession hit and realize that they basically are a stealth killer for a good amount of time. Not just my favorite obsession perk, but overall probably my favorite killer perk. Nothing really to add, and I hate to say it, but it's honestly what I consider to be the platonic ideal of an obsession perk: make your obsession meaningful and important to keep track of. I'll be trying to judge the other obsession perks on this kind of basis.

Dead Man's Switch - This is one of the weirder ones, but I have seen it work before. When it does, it isn't anything special, but nonetheless it does its job well enough. When your obsession is hooked the dead man's switch is triggered for a decent amount of time, essentially blocking any generators that a survivor stops working on during its duration. It's kind of analogous to Overcharge, in that it's both a stalling and detection perk. The gen that's blocked becomes highlighted with a white aura, giving you a good idea of where at least 1 of the survivors working on that gen is and what they're doing at that moment (leaving a generator), and since the gen's blocked they can't go back to it. Also, it totally screws over anyone who was working on that gen with the survivor who made the poor choice of leaving it, which I find kind of hilarious. It certainly makes you care about when the obsession is hooked, but the penalty is not crazy enough to warrant caring too much, because as long as you keep working on the gen (which there's a good chance you weren't planning on leaving in any case) it won't be affected by the switch. At the same time, I think it's carved out a decent niche, even if that niche is a bit small. It's not overly powerful, nor is it amazing. I vibe with it.

Dying Light - What an interesting way to bend the idea of "caring about your obsession". Rather than make the obsession the key target via activated effects, make the obsession more powerful than their comrades. Dying Light gives you tokens for each survivor you hook that isn't the obsession, and these tokens reduce their repair, sabotage, and healing speeds by 3% for each one you get. In return, the obsession is not affected by your tokens and they get a pretty decent increase to their healing and unhooking speed. So now, the obsession has the burden of being the most equipped to heal and save survivors, due to them being less likely to be targeted and their increased unhooking and healing speed. Meanwhile, anyone who isn't the obsession will be impaired in their objective completing and protecting abilities. It's such a sadistic perk, I actually like it a lot. My only issue is that the penalties kind of take too long to build up, kind of like Lullaby without the potential for it to be instantly found and deleted. If you don't have the luxury of choosing who to chase, it'll be hard to take advantage of. Overall, though, I think it's in a good spot. It's a lot of fun.

Furtive Chase - Another weird one, in that it's actually not run because it makes you care about the obsession: You run it because it makes it super easy to change your obsessions. In a similar vein to Retribution, it's pretty tame on it's own, perhaps underwhelming, but it's true strength lies in its ability to empower other perks like itself. Furtive Chase's ability activates like Dead Man's, every time you hook your obsession you get a token which reduces your terror radius by 4 meters while in a chase, up to 4 tokens. Pretty weak, right? In fact, just reading that you'd think that it would be literally impossible to get all stacks... but, don't judge a book by its cover. When the obsession is unhooked, the survivor that saved them is made the obsession instead. If you're going for an unpredictable obsession build, Furtive is gonna be your best friend. It's so interesting to use for the ability to switch your obsession around easily. My only addition would be that having 4 tokens could possibly hide your red stain (maybe for only a duration after achieving your 4th token), which would be scary as heck and also encourage you to actually get tokens on it rather than just using it for the obsession switch. Balance wise, I'm not sure how people would feel about that, though, so honestly it's fine as is.

Nemesis - A unique twist on the role that Furtive Chase fills, Nemesis is not only run for it's ability to switch obsessions on a moment's notice, but also for the effects that activate when an obsession switches. Anyone who stuns you with a flashlight or pallet will become the obsession, and when the obsession changes the player who was so lucky as to get the effect becomes Oblivious for 1 minute and has their aura shown to the killer for 4 seconds. Has some crazy synergy with Furtive Chase, and add another obsession perk into the mix like Dying Light, and you've got yourself a chaotic obsession-fest where the status of every player is constantly shifting, creating an unpredictable and distinctly unique experience. Enough about the potential builds, though, Nemesis is pretty nice. Great when paired up, not too strong on its own, much like Furtive. Pretty scary to realize that if the killer you just stunned decides to finish the job, you'll be severely hindered and no move will be left unnoticed.

Play With Your Food - Alright, I'm gonna say it straight up: this perk seems a bit weak. As much as I like the concept, it's really not good enough to warrant using. Basically, every time you enter and leave a chase with your obsession, you get a stackable 5% movement speed boost. Attacking in any way will remove one of your stacks... Yeah. Your best games with Play With Your Food will be against a player who uses Object of Obsession, because you can basically find and leave them without wasting much time. Even in those cases, though, it's effects are tough to use because entering and leaving a chase will not only probably tip off the fact that you're using Play With Your Food, but also waste a lot of your time which could be spent patrolling other generators or straight up just chasing them. The times I was playing against this perk I literally didn't even know until their loadout showed up on the end screen. It's really hard to take advantage of and really easy to just fail at using, I don't think its haste bonuses are worth it. You need to be really confident in landing your hits to make the best use of it. That being said, doing anything more with the movement speed than what's going on now might be too much. So, I'm gonna go more in-depth and see if I can come up with something interesting to change this perk for the better.

Play With Your Food (cont.) - Alright, so, first off, I'm slightly adjusting this perk's token-to-speed ratio, not enough to break the speed or make it too hard to get stacks. 4% movement speed per token, up to 4 tokens. I'm establishing this baseline because the math adds out pretty similarly (literally 1% speed increase at max), but I'm gonna need more tokens to work with for my idea. Next, while chasing your obsession, you build bloodlust 100% faster, but you don't gain any movement speed benefits from it. Letting your obsession escape will give you tokens based on the tier of bloodlust you were at: 1 token for tier 1 bloodlust, 2 for tier 2, 3 for tier 3. You lose a token when you enter a chase with your obsession again or when you reach bloodlust while chasing a survivor that isn't the obsession. Alright, there it is. I'm not 100% on the numbers, and I don't entirely know if going the full-on repurposing route would be the best for this perk, but having it be affected by bloodlust while making you care about your obsession more AND giving you more chances to use it is just such a fun idea to me. I'm really interested in the feedback on this perk in particular, because changing it this much might be really controversial to some people. Feel free to discuss in the comments!

Rancor - Like an aura-centric version of Dying Light, Rancor gives you and your obsession extra aura-tracking abilities and, as a bonus, exposes and allows you to kill your obsession at the trial endgame, sort of like a lite NOED and Ivory Memento Mori. Very interesting idea, and I think it works pretty well. Realizing you can see the aura of the killer after a gen is done and you're not running dark sense has got to be one of the most dreadful feelings I've ever experienced (thank you for running For the People that one time, Dwight. You know who you are <3), and having Bitter Murmur and a Mori all rolled up in one package is pretty nice. Best part, it fits in with the idea of making you care about the obsession by giving him free dark sense! Against groups of survivors, it can be a blessing and a curse. I approve of this perk.

Remember Me - Wow, I thought Play With Your Food was bad, I don't even feel like sugarcoating this one: this perk is really underpowered. For every time you hit your obsession, you increase the time it takes for the other survivors to open the exit gates by 4 seconds up to 16 seconds. That's all it does. I mean, if it's any consultation, the perk fits in with the "caring about your obsession" idea, but it's effects are so arbitrary that it hardly matters for anyone that isn't the obsession regardless, the fact that the obsession opens gates at normal rate is just the nail in the coffin. Its effects are only endgame, except even in endgame the effect isn't even good except for patrolling the gates, and yet the fact that a survivor that just hides and waits for you to leave the patrol and can instantly get back on it and finish the opening just makes the perk borderline dead in the water. My biggest issue with suggesting changes for this one, though, is that endgame perks are really hard to balance fun-wise. We all know the rampant discussion of NOED and the recent uprising of the AFK Deathslinger. I don't want Remember Me to be extremely unfun to play against, but I want to make it at least useful in some way. Let's take a shot.

Remember Me (cont.) - What I'm thinking here is that this still only activate any real effects in endgame, but the obsession's status, namely their health state, affects the exit gates in a significant way. I'm thinking the current effect stays, every time you hit your obsession it increases the opening time by 4 seconds up to 16 with the obsession still unaffected by the opening penalty. If the obsession is injured or downed when the last generator is powered (decided BEFORE adrenaline, so if they activate adrenaline while injured this effect will still activate), the exit gates will regress their progress at a 100% regression rate (rate of regression is the same as the rate of progression) over time if worked on by a survivor that isn't the obsession. When the obsession works on opening exit gates, their progress will be considered permanent and will not regress past what the obsession managed to get to. Again, with these more unique changes I don't know how they would be received, but exit gate regression just seems natural for this perk. Additionally, it makes the obsession's status and his help more impactful in endgame. As with Play With Your Food, please tell me how you think about this in the comments! I love seeing feedback, especially from players that are probably way more experienced than me.

Save The Best For Last - So, I have a friend who plays Demogorgon as their main, and they swear by this perk, even on killers that aren't Demo. Just from playing with him a lot I can see why he likes it so much. For every hit you deal to survivors that aren't the obsession, you get a token that reduces your successful basic attack cooldown by a small amount. You can get up to a whopping 8 tokens, though, so it can get pretty crazy. Every hit on your obsession takes away 2 tokens. As its name implies, you're intended to leave your obsession alone as much as you can so that you can come to them with a good amount of stacks later. You'll definitely be seeing faster downs when this perk gets good stacks. At the same time, there's interesting counter-play in making the obsession a reluctant distraction so that the killer waste stacks trying to get their obsession out of the way, for example. Biggest issue is that it's kind of annoying to go against, because you have to rely on the obsession taking that responsibility for their team to make the killer weaker. If I were to change it, perhaps lose 1 token when missing a hit? Would give it a higher skill cap, for sure, and I don't think it would alter its effectiveness too much. Otherwise, this perk feels good, just tough to play against sometimes.

Phew, this one took way longer than Hex Bonanza, but it was a ton of fun! If you have any feedback, leave it in the comments as I'll love reading them when I can get to them. I'm especially interested on the feedback on this one, I got a bit "creative" with Remember Me and Play With Your Food.