The other side of Unnerving Presence.

Unnerving Presence is one of those perks that’s seen as great against new survivors (especially on Doc), but entirely detrimental against experienced survivors because of the increased skill check chance, meaning they have more opportunities to hit greats for more bonus repair progression. This is because many only see Unnerving Presence as a (weak) attempt at gen regression.

Now although I’m hugely in support of some sort of buff to Unnerving Presence (at the very least it should also remove great success zones), we also need to talk about the actual purpose of Skill Checks.

The intention of skill checks is to keep survivors alert and give them something else to periodically concentrate on instead of situational awareness. I.e. so that survivors don’t have 100% free reign to only concentrate on situational awareness during interactions.

This means that Unnerving Presence, even against experienced survivors, is having to increase their level of concentration, causing them to be more frequently distracted from situational awareness. This can also be said about Huntress Lullaby.

In a way this can sometimes act as budget stealth. Although survivors are going to know how close you are based on TR, there’s the possibility they may not have had the opportunity to properly pin point where you are, and thus where they should run when they get off the gen because of the frequency of skill checks the survivor may have to concentrate on. Unnerving Presence can cause survivors to get off of gens sooner because they’d rather choose situational awareness over risking their concentration being diverted to the smaller skill checks, which in itself is still a kind of stall.

My point is that even if you are not hearing a bunch of regular missed skill checks, you’re probably still getting a few minor beneficial effects from Unnerving Presence.