Perk Reworks Megapost

On this post I will go over reworks for several perks I believe need to be reworked in some capacity. For the most part this involves buffing the weaker perks of the game, but there are also some perks that could stand for a nerf. For each of these perks I will give my reworked definition and go over what changes I made and why I made them. For all of these reworks I tried to keep the perks as close to their original vision on possible. This was easier on some perks than others. With that preface out of the way, let's get into the reworks.

Here is a quick index of the perks that were reworked, in order of appearance, so you can scroll straight to the one's you're most interested in if you want.

Survivor Perks: Adrenaline, Boil Over, Buckle Up, Decisive Strike, Slipper Meat, Sole Survivor, This Is Not Happening.

Killer Perks: Blood Warden, Cruel Limits, Dead Man's Switch, Dragon's Grip, Forced Penance, Furtive Chase, Hex: Blood Favor, Hex: No One Escapes Death, Hex: The Third Seal, Insidious, Monstrous Shrine, Predator, Shadowborn, Territorial Imperative, Unrelenting

Survivor Perks:

Adrenaline: When the exit gates are powered, sprint at 150% your normal speed for 5 seconds and recover one health state over the course of 15 seconds. For every generator you successfully repaired, gain 1 token, up to a maximum of 5. Each token you possess shortens the time to heal a health state by 1 second.

Adrenaline is on hold if you are disabled and will trigger upon being freed or recovering from exhaustion.

Adrenaline will wake you up if you are asleep when it triggers.

Adrenaline ignores exhaustion.

Causes exhausted status effect for 60/50/40 seconds.

What was changed? Added a delay to the health regen and added a token system that reduces the time for the health regen to apply for each generator you successfully repaired.

Why were these changes made? Adrenaline suffers from a similar issue that Ruin used to, in that it is very passive and you don't have to do much to make it apply. It can also be very frustrating for killers to spend a long time chasing someone and suddenly have them spring away and regenerate a health state, undoing all their progress instantly. With these changes, it gives killers a chance to catch up to the survivors again before they need to get yet another additional hit in. This also incentives survivors to get gens done in order to improve the effectiveness of adrenaline, adding a more active element to the perk.

Boil Over: 

Your struggle effects on the killer are increased by 25%/50%/75%

The Killer’s movement speed while carrying you is reduced by 5%.

What was changed? Added an additional effect that slows the killer's carry speed and removed the effect that hides the auras of

Why was this changed? On most maps, the ability to hide auras of hooks doesn't do much, as there will typically be a clear sight line to nearby hooks. The struggle effects of boil over can be noticeable and sometimes effective, but tend to be a small inconvenience at best. With the addition of a carry speed to decrease, it increases how difficult it is for a killer to reach a hook before you struggle out, especially if there are no hooks nearby.

Buckle Up:

Improves your awareness and effectiveness regarding dying survivors.

The recovery progress of dying survivors can be determined by the intensity of their auras at a distance of up to 48 meters.

You receive a 10%/15%20% bonus to healing speed when healing a dying survivor.

When you heal a survivor from the dying state to injured, both the healed survivor and yourself see the killer’s aura for a duration of 4/5/6 seconds.

What was changed? Added an effect where you can heal dying survivors faster.

Why was this changed? This effect provides a much needed buff to the perk. While you can see how recovered a dying survivor is, survivors wont always be able to reach near full recovery before they're picked back up. With this buff, you will be able to move in to help out fellow survivors sooner and be more likely to rescue them from the dying state.

Decisive Strike:

Using whatever is at hand, you stab at your aggressor in an ultimate attempt to escape.

After being unhooked or unhooking yourself, decisive strike will become active and usable for 40/50/60 seconds.

If another survivor is hooked while decisive strike is active, the remaining time Decisive Strike is active is reduced by 15 seconds.

While decisive strike is active, when grabbed by the killer, succeed to automatically escape the killer’s grasp and stun them for 5 seconds.

• Succeeding or failing the skill check will disable decisive strike
• Successfully stunning the killer will result in you becoming the obsession.

Increases the odds of being the obsession.

The killer can only be obsessed with one survivor at a time.

What was changed? Added an effect where if another survivor is hooked while decisive strike is active, the time remaining where Decisive Strike is active is reduced.

Why was this changed? Decisive strike is largely supposed to be an anti-tunneling perk. As such, it can feel frustrating when killer's don't tunnel but end up getting punished by this perk regardless. However, making it inactive entirely if someone else gets hooked felt far too drastic and potentially abuseable, so I went with a time reduction instead. This feels like a reasonable rework to me, as if you get tunneled directly off of hook, as some killers do, you won't even notice this effect is there.

Slippery Meat: 

You have developed an efficient way to get out of bear traps and hooks.

Grants up to 3 extra attempts to escape from the hook.

Increases your odds of escaping from a hook by 2%

The odds of freeing yourself from a bear trap are increased by 15%/20%/25%

What was changed? Added an effect that increases the odds of escaping from hooks slightly.

Why was this changed? I felt it would increase the overall usefulness of this perk to increase the chances of escaping from hooks. This essentially increases your chances of escaping from hooks (having used up all 6 attempts) from 24% to 36%. The increase had to be a small percentage to keep from being too powerful if combined with Up the Ante.

Sole Survivor: As more of your friends fall to the killer, you become shrouded in isolation and the killer’s aura-reading abilities towards you are disrupted.

Your aura-reading abilities cannot be reading abilities towards you within a maximum range of 6/7/8 for each time a survivor other than yourself is hooked.

Increases the odds of being the obsession.

The Killer can only be obsessed with one survivor at a time.

What was changed? Changed the effects of the perk to activate when survivors die, to activating them when survivors are hooked.

Why was this changed? The original perk promoted a rather selfish play style, where you need to sacrifice your teammates for the perk to work. This version of the perk grants the same benefits as the original, but it can now activate sooner and promotes a more altruistic play style. If you unhook your survivors, they are hooked more times before they die which means you gain more of the perk's effects.

This Is Not Happening

You perform at your best when you are under extreme stress.

Great skill check success zones while repairing, healing and sabotaging become 10/20/30% bigger and grant an additional 3% progress when you are injured.

What was changed? Added a bonus progression reward to great skill checks while injured.

Why was this changed? If a perk is going to require you to be injured to use it, it's effect should be stronger than just making it a little easier to land great skill checks. I believe adding an effect so that it also increases the reward for landing a great skill check is a step in the right direction.

Killer Perks:

Blood Warden: As soon as the Exit Gate is powered, Blood Warden becomes active. The Auras of any survivor within exit gate areas are revealed to you.

Once per trial, hooking a survivor while Blood warden is active calls upon the entity to block both exit switches and or both exits for 30/40/60 seconds.

What was changed? Set the perk to be able to block off the exit gate switch as well as the actual gates.

Why was this changed? Adding the ability to block the switches circumvents the issue where this perk won't be activated in a match because survivor will 99% the gates, not opening them until absolutely necessary.

Cruel Limits: Your ties to the otherworldly manifest when your prey attempts to get away. 

Each time a generator is repaired, all windows and vault locations are blocked for all survivors for a period of time dependent on their distance from the completed generator, with a minimum time of 10 seconds and a maximum time of 20/25/30 seconds.

What was changed? The perk now blocks every vault on the map, and functions on a distance from completed generator, with a min and max block time.

Why was this changed? There are usually very few situations where a killer will reach a generator just as it's being completed. And even if they do, survivors don't have to run too far to reach areas of the map where the blocked windows aren't a problem. This change makes the entire map more dangerous instead of a small section of it. The min/max block times make sure that some sections of the map are safer than others.

Dead Man’s Switch: You become obsessed with one survivor.

After hooking the obsession, Dead Man’s switch activates for the next 35/40/45 seconds. 

While activated, any survivor that stops repairing a generator before it is fully repaired causes the entity to block the generator for 30 seconds.

Affected generators are highlighted by a white aura.

You can only be obsessed with one survivor.

What was changed? Set the perk so that generators are blocked for a consistent period of time.

Why was this changed? In it's original state, this perk had the potential to block generators for anywhere from 45 seconds to 1 seconds if you're particularly unlucky. For a perk that requires you to hook a specific survivor, the results should be a lot more consistent.

Dragon’s Grip: After kicking a generator, for the next 30 seconds, the first survivor that interacts with it will scream, revealing their location for 4 seconds, and becoming afflicted with the exposed status effect for 60 seconds. 

Once a survivor has become exposed by Dragon’s Grip, Dragon’s Grip has a cooldown of 120/100/80 seconds.

What was changed? Made it so the cooldown only applies if the exposed status effect is successfully applied to someone.

Why was this changed? Player's should not have to suffer a cooldown of over a minute if the perk didn't even fully trigger.

Forced Penance: Those who stand in the way of duty will suffer harsh judgement.

Survivors who take a protection hit are inflicted with the broken status effect for 40/50/60 seconds. When the afflicted survivor recovers from the broken status effect, you see their aura for 3 seconds.

What was changed? Added an effect that reveals a survivor's aura when they recover from broken.

Why was this changed? If you apply broken with this perk to someone, and chase after your original target, the broken survivor may recover from their status effect before you can take advantage of it. If you change targets to the broken survivor, it doesn't much matter that they're broken. This change gives you a better chance of taking advantage of the fact that a survivor is broken.

Furtive Chase:

You become obsessed with one survivor.

You lurk in the shadows, eliminating your victims one by one.

When your obsession is hooked, furtive chase receives a token, up to a maximum of 2/3/4.

Each token decreases your terror radius by 4 meters.

When a survivor rescues the obsession from a hook, the rescuer becomes the obsession. You lose all tokens if the obsession is sacrificed or killed.

You can only be obsessed with one survivor at a time.

What was changed? Removed the "while in a chase" requirement from the terror radius shortening.

Why was this changed? Being able to hear a terror radius from further away doesn't matter much when you can just look behind you and see where the killer is. By removing this requirement, this perk will be much more effective overall.

Hex: Blood Favor

A Hex that gains the favor of the entity when blood is spilt.

When a survivor is hit with a basic attack, all pallets within a radius of 16/20/24 meters of your location are held in place for 15 seconds and cannot be pulled down by survivors.

Hex: Blood Favor has a cooldown of 15 seconds.

What was changed? Increased the range as the perk tiers up and significantly reduced the cooldown.

Why was this changed? For a perk that runs the risk of being removed from the match, a 40 second cooldown felt excessive. The 15 second cooldown makes sure the perk sees more use, while still making sure it doesn't apply more than once at a time.

Hex: No One Escapes Death 

A Hex rooting its power on hope. You are animated by the power of your hex totem when the survivors are on the verge of escaping.

Once the exit gates are powered, all remaining dull totems on the map have this hex applied to it.

While Hex: No One Escapes Death is active, survivors suffer from the exposed status effect and your movement speed is increased by 2/3/4%.

Every time you put a survivor into the dying state with a basic attack, one lit totem becomes a dull totem again.

Hex: No One Escapes Death becomes inactive when no more lit totems are remaining.

What was changed? Set the perk to take over every dull totem on the map, with the lit totems becoming dull again when a survivor is put into the dying state by a basic attack. The perk deactivates when all lit totem become dull?

Why was this changed? NOED in its original state was a rather unfair perk that could lead to some killers getting wins they truthfully didn't deserve. With this system, killer's still gain a chance for a comeback, but limits how long they can be dangerous for. It can also require killers to play smarter, going for alternate attacks if they don't wont to use a totem on someone who's already injured. Also in it's original state, if survivors manage to cleanse 4 totems but can't find the last one, they still have to face the full wrath of NOED. With this sytem, even if survivor's don't get each and every dull totem, they still have made progress towards countering NOED.

Hex: The Third Seal

A Hex that hinders one’s senses.

Hitting a survivor with a basic attack while the hex totem active applies the blindness and oblivious status effects.

This effect applies to the last 2/3/4 survivors hit.

The hex effects persist as long as the related Hex Totem is standing.

What was changed? Added the oblivious effect to the Hex.

Why was this changed? Blindness is only effective if survivors are running perks or items/addons that reveal auras. Oblivious will always be useful, and as a result, so will The Third Seal.

Insidious

Unlocks the stealth ability. Standing still for 4/3/2 seconds will grant you the undetectable status effect.  For however long you stay undetectable using Insidious, you remain undetectable after you begin moving again, up to a maximum of 5/10/15 seconds, or until an offensive action is performed.

What was changed? Added the ability to retain the undetectable status effect upon moving again, with the length of this depending on how long you stayed still.

Why was this changed? In its original state, Insidious only effectively works as a tool to help with camping. This addition makes the perk more flexible.

Mindbreaker

Your distressing presence drains and weakens your prey. While repairing generators with less than 75% repair progress are afflicted by the exhausted status effect.

Any existing exhaustion status effect timers are paused while the survivor is repairing a generator. After ending the repair action, the survivor is afflicted by the exhausted status effect for 3/4/5 seconds.

What was changed? Buffed the numbers.

Why was this change made? Upping the numbers both makes the perk useful for longer, but increases the chances for Mindbreaker to synergize with other perks, like Tinkerer.

Monstrous Shrine

Your fervent care of the hooks found it the basement has aroused the entity’s interest.

The basement hooks are granted the following bonuses:

• 4/7/10% faster entity progression.
• 5/10/15% increased difficulty on escape attempts
• 4/7/10% increased penalty to escape fails

Survivors hooked in the basement receive a 20% speed penalty to repairing, healing and sabotaging for 60/90/120 seconds when unhooked.

What was changed? Buffed the entity's progression and failed escape penalties. Added a slowing effect that applies where action speed is decreased upon unhook.

Why was this changed? For a perk that only applies to a very specific portion of the map, the effects need to be more powerful than they are. Buffing the numbers and adding a long term effect provides additional incentive and payoff for hooking survivors in the basement.

Predator

Scratch marks left by survivors stay visible for an additional 2/3/4 seconds. Additionally, survivors that are walking leave dull scratch marks that remain visible for 2 seconds. The duration of these scratch marks is not affected by Predator.

What was changed? Reworked the perk entirely, making it have scratch marks last longer and making walking survivors leave dull scratch marks.

Why was this changed? In its original state, Predator hinders your tracking abilities more than it helps them. If you run this perk, you may miss out on seeing scratch marks on walls you would have seen without it. With this rework it better accomplishes what the original was trying to: making tracking scratch marks easier.

Shadowborn:

You have keen vision in the darkness of the night.

Your field of view is increased by 9/12/15 degrees.

You view the fog as slightly more transparent.

Field of view increases do not stack.

What was changed? Added an effect that makes it easier to see through fog.

Why was this changed? There are no perks right now that affect fog, and I felt this could be a good addition to a perk that's purpose is helping you see more.

Territorial Imperative:

You maintain your dominion over your territory.

Survivors’ auras are revealed to you for 3 seconds when they enter the basement and you are more than 32 meters away from the basement entrance. This only applies to survivors once per basement entry.

Survivors that enter the basement suffer from the oblivious status effect. This effect persists for 20/25/30 seconds after leaving the basement.

What was changed? Changed the cooldown to a "once per visit" system. Added an oblivious effect to survivors in the basement?

Why was this changed? In it's original state, Territorial Imperative's range of usefulness is small. This version removes a largely unneeded cooldown while also making sure it doesn't trigger too often. It also makes the perk still useful if a survivor manages to leave the basement before you get to it, and more dangerous if you do get there before they leave.

Unrelenting:

You attack ferociously with your main weapon.

The cooldown of missed basic attacks is reduced by 20/25/30%.

Your lunge attack range is slightly increased.

What was changed? Added an effect that increases the lunge range of basic attacks.

Why was this changed? On it's own, the missed attack cooldown is not fantastic, but I was afraid buffing the numbers too much might make it too strong. By adding an effect that increases lunge range, the effectiveness of attacks with your weapon is further improved without making the player attack too many times in a row.

What do you think of these changes? What perks do you think are in desperate need of a rework? Make sure to let me know down in the comments.