Decisive Strike Basekit rework

4Two_
4Two_ Member, Alpha Surveyor Posts: 10

DS right now enables abusive behaviour from players who want to abuse it, does not counteract tunneling, is so strong that killers will derank, then intentionally bully new players who dont have it, and can be combined with other perks to such an insane extent that it makes it literally impossible to kill someone.

My rework idea would make DS a basekit ability, all survivors can use, but be considerably neutered down.

- 10s duration after unhook, initiating a chase before this timer goes down to 0 will reset the timer. While this can be abused if a player intentionally runs near the killer, this will just waste their time, and unlike DS previously being able to let survivors run off and still do stuff, this will mean they are literally doing NOTHING.

- lasts indefinately while being chased, DS right now, does not counteract tunnelling, a survivor could give the killer a nice 60s loop but is punished for doing so if the killer is intentionally tunnleing one player

- does not proc at final survivor/all survivors downed/hooked, In endgame scenarios the killer has no choice but to go for the survivor who either unhooked themselfs or got unhooked. In this case, if all other survivors are downed or dead, DS will automatically deactivate. Unlike right now, where a killer can get the survivor and be stunned into hatch

- automatic stun, stun is automatic once being picked up, new players are often punished for missing the DS skill check vs a tunnelling killer. You could argue this promotes skill, however, if the killer is intentionally targetting someone, its either because they are insanely good or insanely bad, the good player will hit it anyways, however, the new player will most likely miss it, and get put on the hook to die. The killer still won't have to worry about it against new players as much, because a lot of new players just cant hit skill checks.

-cancels after any interaction, if a survivor touches a gen, changes health state, interacts with a locker, heals someone else or cleanses a totem, DS will automatically deactivate, to disable locker jumping and meaning it is a true anti tunnel perk, if you're on a gen, youre not being tunnelled.

-lasts forever if the killer sits on the survivor, if the killer sits on the survivor and counts down from 10s-0, it makes DS still useless, with this, if the killer intentionally sits in the area of the survivor just to wait down the timer, the timer does not go down, meaning the survivor still has oppotunity.

-Deactivates if the killer hooks someone else, If the killer hooks somebody else and you are not downed, this will deactivate automatically. The reason for this condition, is that, a killer can trade the hook, tunnel you down still, hook the other player, then, hook you to avoid it. This means: If the killer downs someone else and you're not downed, once they pick up them, you lose DS automatically.

This helps reduce the abusable aspects of DS, while allowing new players oppotunity to play vs a killer than intentionally targets/farms them for being new. It's going to have a lot of issues so leave feedback below <3

p.s. ds is still a one time use and the same stun duration

Comments

  • CupertinoEffect
    CupertinoEffect Member Posts: 11

    Might be a bit overkill, and I don't see it being part of the base kit, but I do like the timer idea.

    Reducing the timer down from the 40-60 second range to around 20, but the timer is affected by vicinity to the killer, sounds like a good change to me. Killer can still counter a survivor they suspect of having DS by slugging or walking away, but aren't forced to ignore the crutch survivor who immediately hurried into a locker for 10% of the match or take the hit and aren't completely shut out by pairing with Unbreakable or similar perks. But killers who would just camp with a shorter time limit can't do that because the time limit could become even longer than it is now if they try. Therefore it becomes harder for both sides to exploit, and punishes tunnelers, without nerfing it into the ground.

    I pitch the following:

    After being unhooked or unhooking yourself, Decisive Strike will become active for X seconds.

    For every 8 meters below Y meters you are from the killer, this timer is slowed by a stackable n%.

    If you are grabbed by the killer while Decisive Strike is active, receive a skill check. If you succeed, you automatically escape the killer's grasp and they are stunned for 5 seconds. Decisive Strike then becomes deactivated for the rest of the trial regardless of if you succeeded the skill check.

    [blah blah blah obsession perk, not important to this pitch]

    Let's say Y is 32 meters. If we assume that, then either n can't be a number that exceeds 25%, since that would naturally cap it at 100% at 0m, or "slowed by a stackable n%" should be followed by the phrase "to a maximum of" and a hard cap, in which case n could be anything. Either way, a hard cap would still be helpful even if there's no risk of exceeding 100.

    For perk levels, on one hand X could be 10/15/20 (or whatever) with n as a fixed number. On the other hand, X could be a flat 15 or 20 no matter what and n be 10/15/20% (or whatever). The former is clearer as a fun video game reward progression, while the latter sacrifices a little bit of clarity to the non-meta gamers who won't understand why that percentage is important. Y could also be shifted, but I don't think that's a good idea.

    Personally, I'd like something like this:

    After being unhooked or unhooking yourself, Decisive Strike will become active for 15 seconds.

    For every 8 meters below 32 meters you are from the killer, this timer is slowed by a stackable 15/20/25%, to a maximum of 75%.

    [etc.]

    So if you're a legit survivor and a killer is trying to tunnel, a 15 second countdown reduced to the maximum of 1/4 speed will take about 60 seconds of camping with 16m range to time out. Same as we have now.

    Meanwhile, if you're a legit killer and you suspect that a player is trying to bait you or exploit the perk, the counter is the same counter DS has now. Slug, or just let them go. The difference is it's now significantly more effective to counter it properly, preventing tunneling without being the meta-controlling crutch perk many consider it to be now. And even if you're slugged, the timer will usually still be more than 15 seconds since most killers will probably have to spends a few seconds in the slowdown radius after downing you anyway. Killers are better off doing a patrol of the gens or chasing off the one who unhooked the survivor before doubling back.

    At this point the main issue I can see is Decisive Strike being too circumstantial as a killer would only have to even think about countering it if they were already near the hook to begin with and might accidentally run out the counter if they're just out of range for 15 seconds, though if they're 15 seconds away you could argue that it's fine? The numbers could be tweaked for sure depending on where we think true balance lies but hopefully what I have here is a decent start.

  • 4Two_
    4Two_ Member, Alpha Surveyor Posts: 10

    in a chase, will this remain active forever? i think the biggest issue with ds rn, is that if you are able to loop the killer well while its active, they dont really get punished for it. after 60 seconds the killer can just tunnel freely again.


    the reason i loved basekit idea, is because it allows low rank players to still be able to play, and it means tunnelers are punished, without having to run a certain perk, just to counteract bad behaviour on the killers side.


    however, the TR idea is a very cool one, not sure how it would work on stealth killers though

  • CupertinoEffect
    CupertinoEffect Member Posts: 11

    Stealth killers throw a bit of a wrench into the distance idea. In the version of the perk I wrote, it's a pre-determined 32 meter distance, not terror radius, so stealth killers don't auto-counter it by having no radius. Survivors could use the timer as a sort of pseudo-Spine Chill pseudo-terror radius by gauging how far the cloaked Ghostface is based on how slow the timer is going, but, it'll last a minute at most and isn't that powerful so personally I'd just leave it.

  • slipttees
    slipttees Member Posts: 846

    DS is balanced. Next!

  • Avarice10
    Avarice10 Member Posts: 482

    Agreed tbh. Not to mention most non meta survivor perks.

  • GoshJosh
    GoshJosh Member Posts: 4,992

    Great ideas, sounds like a heck of a lot of conditions to put in a perk description though. Also, 10 seconds is not nearly enough time; a killer can take longer than that to return to hook and hunt down that one survivor intentionally. I would say buff the timer to at least 20 seconds, and have it additionally cancel if you let another survivor begin healing you.

  • 4Two_
    4Two_ Member, Alpha Surveyor Posts: 10

    thanks dude! its not meant to be a perk description, this is it as a basekit ability anyone can use

  • Toybasher
    Toybasher Member Posts: 921
    edited September 2020

    One problem is what would the actual Decisive Strike perk turn into? It'd need a new ability if we rework it as a base-kit thing.