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Bad Perk University: Self-Care
Hello class, welcome to Bad Perk University! I'll be your professor for today, and we'll be going over the worst perks The Entity has to offer and see how to make the most out of them. This lesson is going to cover a perk that's often considered "bad" by the playerbase for being counterproductive and detrimental to the survivor team: Self-Care. Self-Care is probably one of the most straightforward perks in the whole game. As a survivor, it allows you to heal yourself without a Medkit at half the normal speed. In addition to this, if you are using a Medkit, you gain a 20% increased efficiency when using it to heal yourself, which basically means you consume fewer Medkit charges overall.
So why do players often consider this perk to be bad? For lack of a better term, it's kind of a noob trap. It sounds like a good deal. You can heal yourself without a Medkit, that means you can bring a different item like a Toolbox and still be able to heal yourself if need be, right? Slow down Baby Claudette, there's a couple things you need to know. Under normal circumstances, you cannot heal yourself without a Medkit. You have to have another survivor heal you, and the time it takes to do that without things that slow healing like Mangled or the perk Coulrophobia, is 16 seconds. If you use a generic Medkit like a Camping Aid (Brown) Medkit or a First Aid (Yellow) Medkit, it will take you the same amount of time, 16 seconds, only this time you are spending that time yourself while your teammates can instead spend their time doing other things like repairing generators. This is great, it makes Medkits one of the best items in the game because you are taking an action that would normally occupy two survivors' time and reducing it to one. So how long does it take to heal yourself when you use Self-Care by itself? 32 SECONDS. Well, shoot.
This is crippling for a variety of reasons. 32 seconds is a long time in Dead by Daylight, where time is precious for both sides. This is time that is probably better spent working on a generator for the time being until you come across another survivor, and if you're just not comfortable playing while injured, you can bring aura reading perks to help find teammates easier. If the killer has Sloppy Butcher, or otherwise inflicts Mangled on you, that time increases to 40 seconds. The worst part about it all, if the Killer finds you and downs you, those 32 seconds were a complete waste. In other words, Self-Caring in a corner while your teammates are being chased and downed is one of the worst things you can do. You might as well be AFK (An exaggeration, but still). In a 4v1, the Killer starts with no pressure and has to create it through chases and downs. Let's say the Killer has hooked a survivor and is now chasing another one. This means one of the two remaining survivors has to go rescue the hooked survivor, leaving only one survivor left. The best thing you can do as a survivor in this situation is, if you know the other survivor is going for the save, go work on a generator. Even if you are injured, this is the best use of your time. The Killer cannot chase you if they are chasing someone else, so they cannot stop you from working towards the objective. If you instead spend that time Self-Caring, no one is working on generators anymore and you are helping the Killer. This is also why if a survivor dies and only three are left, it is a bad situation for the survivor team, because if a survivor gets hooked and another survivor is being chased, the last survivor has no choice but to go for the save, and the moment they let go of the generator, no objective progress is being made. (Also as a side note, this is also why as a survivor, it is bad form to DC just because you're up against a Killer you dislike going against or because things didn't go your way in your quest to bully the Killer. When you DC, and if the Killer is at all decent at the game, you doom the rest of your teammates and they now know that you are salty and inconsiderate, and will probably try to avoid you in the future. Please, for the sake of other people's enjoyment of the game, don't intentionally DC. *please DC more often, it makes Killer mains' lives so much less stressful*)
So with all that said, how should you use Self-Care in a way that doesn't make you "that guy"? Well, it's actually pretty straightforward: it's in the perk's description. "Increases the efficiency of Medkit self-heal by 20%". Do you know what this means? Bring a Medkit, and you will be golden. By decreasing the rate at which you use up your Medkit, you get more mileage out of it, allowing you to heal yourself one time and then some. Yellow Medkits are a little strange since they can heal you fully one time, but have enough charges remaining to heal 50% of the way. When you use Self-Care, you can heal yourself the rest of the way even after depleting your Medkit. Since Medkits also heal other survivors faster, you can use these remaining charges to quickly heal them back up, shaving seconds off of healing time. If you really want to beef up your Medkit, Botany Knowledge will increase Medkit efficiency by 33%, so slap that on as well, and you'll be Self-Caring incredibly fast. But when should you be Self-Caring? We already established that healing yourself in a corner when your teammates are in peril is a bad idea. Well, here's the thing, remember that hypothetical scenario of 1 survivor on the hook, and 1 in a chase? What if the 3rd survivor is slugged, or otherwise disabled? What if everyone is injured and nobody can go for the save because they're at risk of being downed? This is where Self-Care and your Medkit comes in! By being able to quickly heal yourself to Healthy, you are more than capable of going for the save, and you didn't even need to spend time finding another survivor to heal you. It then becomes a matter of going in, possibly with Borrowed Time, and unhooking your teammate. If you have to take a hit to protect them, do it happily. You can undo the damage in a heartbeat after you run to safety. By making "Self-Care" as efficient and effective as possible, you turn the perk into "Self-Reliant".
So closing thoughts, how do we make this perk better? Honestly, it doesn't need any changes. Previous versions of the perk were too strong, and I'm glad that it's a thing of the past (Did you know you used to be able to heal yourself at 80% speed and have Medkits be 100% more efficient? Crazy right?). The version we have right now is perfect. Yes, there are issues with a Self-Care build. Mangled puts a heavy damper on it. Franklin's Demise will make you cry. Plague's presence will be a curse on your soul. However, in the situations that call for it, Self-Care is a saving grace. But isn't it still a noob trap? Yes, unfortunately, but this is remedied by being informed. There are countless tutorials and guides now that teach new survivors what to do and what not to do, and in the case of perks like Self-Care, it's a matter of being patient and showing new players the better way to do things. I personally like Self-Care. As a solo survivor, there are times where the only person on the team I can rely on is myself. It's also why Medkits are by far the most common item I will bring with me to a match. Help the team by helping myself. So don't knock Self-Care, it's really not as bad as people make it out to be. Trust me, the other perks I'm going to talk about are far, FAR worse. Thank you for coming to my lesson, see you next class!
Comments
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Self-Care to be honest is a bit of a junk perk. It's not really "okay" but unfortunately it's still meta in solo-q, pretty much everyone I see runs it in Solo Q. The perk used to be an A-class perk on Dennisreep but now its just B-Class, people have realized it's a bad perk but they still run it, sadly.
I do agree that putting it back to pre-nerf levels is too much given the current meta and how the game has evolved. It would be too powerful in today's game if it were reverted back to pre-nerf.
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Solo Q survivor here at rank1 who doesn't use self care and uses iron will instead. If I self cared instead of doing a gen, no gen would get done, so i'd rather do it while injured.
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I often take Self-Care AND a Med-Kit simply so I can get the speed boost for healing. I think running off in a corner to self-care is a poor choice, and would only be self caring if I had no better options. I don't think it is a bad Perk; I think people don't understand optimal use of it.
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Self - care is a good perk. It only becomes bad when you over rely on it. If you can discern when to use it then this is good.
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I'm Solo Q and I use inner strength
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Same here. I haven't touched Self Care in a long time -- except in that silly build I did with Desperate Measures, Botany Knowledge, We'll Make It and Self Care.
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32 seconds for one person is no worse than 16 seconds for two people. Unless you get interrupted while healing and downed before you can finish Self Care doesn't waste any time versus healing normally, but it gives you the flexibility to heal without a teammate wherever you'd like. I agree it's a noob trap, but it's definitely not a bad perk.
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It is worse than 2 people healing - yes you're both not doing objectives for the same time, but the killer is loose for 16 seconds, not 32. You can more easily finish healing by the time he finds you, or before he finds and downs another survivor - not so with self care
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I don't use Self-Care. When I am injured at the end of the game, I just die because I didn't bring a medkit either.
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Professor what if they run it with Botany Knowledge or Desperate Measures?
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Yes u can do that since ur rank 1. I don't want to do that. I'm scared.
I didn't feel like upgrading Claudette so I bought self care from the shrine a few weeks ago and I use it.
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This student has the right idea. Self-Care can trick you into relying on it too much, but it is best used as a last resort when all of your teammates are injured and in danger, and there are few options left.
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Desperate Measures is a strong addition in healing builds like this, as it further enhances healing and unhooking during a time when Self-Care is most helpful, when everyone is on the ropes and can't immediately come for a save.
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This is a bit of a fallacy that many fall into when rationalizing Self-Care. 16 seconds is time being spent between two survivors, but you are less likely to be interrupted during that short time, so it is preferable to spending 32 seconds healing and risk being interrupted or being occupied when another survivor needs your help. Bottom line: bring a Medkit to the match to optimize your time and ensure that if you run out of Medkit charges, you have Self-Care to finish the job.
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What do you mean by the killer being "loose" for 16 vs 32 seconds? In theory the killer isn't pressuring the people who are healing, or healing probably isn't the play to begin with. There is the possibility of being interrupted in the second half of the heal, which I mentioned in my comment, but that really shouldn't happen much at all. I'm also not sure why it's important to finish healing before the killer downs another survivor, when the alternative is more gen repair progress by the time the killer downs another survivor.
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You're less likely to be interrupted if two people heal, but being interrupted while healing is already rare in both cases unless you're just healing right under the hook or right next to objectives.
Healing with two people can also be a sort of Self Care-esque "noob trap" that leads you to waste substantial amounts of time for the team when you get interrupted during a risky heal - for example, how often do you see someone use Self Care right under the hook? Almost never. How often do you see the unhooker heal the person they just unhooked right under the hook? A fair amount; usually at least a few times a game. How often do you see the killer go right back to the hook and interrupt that heal? Also a fair amount. Interrupting a two-person heal at 12 seconds (for example) wastes as much time for the time as interrupting a one-person heal at 24 seconds, so that's already a huge loss, but it's actually even worse because the killer is now pressuring two people instead of one. Self Care allows you to split up, which is the optimal way to reduce the killer's pressure. Even if you're not cautious while healing and the killer finds and interrupt you, at least your team is still free to do gens throughout.
You can waste lots of time healing with one person or two if you're not playing smart; Self Care really doesn't exacerbate this much, and its flexibility can be really handy if you're smart about when to use it. If you really want to optimize, of course just run a meta build with a medkit and forget about Self Care. I'm just trying to make the point that it's not bad.
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Self carer here. I dont really think SC alone is a bad perk, its just had such a light cast on it. With a little imagination, and knowing when to use it, you could 99% yourself, boost your gen speed using another perk that requires you to be injured, then pop the gen to draw attention from the killer and then pop the heal for the chase.
Also sometimes its more dangerous to actively seek out other survivors for heals (one is dead, youre playing against a stealth killer etc) or the killer is searching a gen you want to finish and healing yourself, even partially, while waiting for the coast to be clear can be beneficial down the road if you find another survivor.
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Loose as in they are chasing other players or kicking gens or moonwalking, etc.
It's important to finish healing faster because if they down another survivor and come to you, you might not have the heal completed in time, and now you're down.
"but that really shouldn't happen at all" But it does. A lot. And that's why it's worse.
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Interrupted self-heals will seldom happen in matches with competent players, and it's really not fair to make Self Care responsible for people who aren't using it well. At that point we might as well call Sprint Burst bad because of all of the people that walk the entire match to save it, or call Nurse a terrible killer because most people are bad with her.
If you're looking to play optimally, healing is usually not a good idea. If you're on death hook and your teammates aren't, 100%, heal. If you're in an EGC situation with the gates open and you want to go for a save or have some safety on the way to the gates, sure, heal. Otherwise, pretty much split up and do gens. If you have Self Care, it can give you a reliable ability to heal in situations in which healing is important. Especially in solo queue this is clearly a nice thing to have. It's far from meta, but calling it bad is a stretch.
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