Bad Perk University: Remember Me

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. Today we’ll be going over a perk that has a rather ironic name: Remember Me. Why is it ironic? Because most people forget this perk even exists until they’re on the receiving end of it. This perk sounds very evil in concept. Each time you hit the Obsession with a basic attack, you gain a token, up to 4 tokens, and for every token you increase the time it takes to open the Exit Gates by 4 seconds. The catch is that the Obsession is not affected by this speed penalty. For the record, the Exit Gates take 20 seconds to open normally, and Remember Me increases that time to 36 seconds. That may not seem like much, but when you’re the only survivor left or the only other survivor left, it’s basically a death sentence. It’s nothing like Wake Up where it decreases the time to open the Exit Gates by a whopping 3 seconds.

So why is this perk bad? For one, it’s an endgame perk, and endgame perks have a reputation of not being very reliable, since the endgame scenario where all the generators are powered usually means you’ve lost anyway. Endgame perks, by their design, don’t do anything throughout the match until the very end. And another thing, it doesn’t work on the Obsession, so if the Obsession is still alive by the time the Exit Gates are powered, they can open the gates just fine. For argument’s sake, let’s say in the worst case scenario, you’ve only killed off one survivor and they weren’t the Obsession. If you only got one token from hitting the Obsession, you’re getting nothing done. If you have all four tokens, you still have two survivors to worry about being on both gates and especially the Obsession who can open the gates even faster than they can. In the best case scenario, where there are only two survivors left or even one left, Remember Me only serves to make sure you have a much better chance of getting one more kill when you’ve already basically won. The only thing that could stop you at that point is a key to open the hatch. So in summary, the perk doesn’t help you throughout the game when a better perk might help more, it doesn’t help you if you’ve done particularly poorly, and it also doesn’t help much when you’ve stomped the survivors anyway. To be honest, a lot of the endgame perks are like that.

The saddest part about this perk is that there now exists a perk that is basically superior to it in every way: No Way Out. This perk was also a pretty mediocre perk until its very recent buff, and now this perk is actually a fairly viable endgame perk since it blocks the Exit Gates for up to an entire minute. The catch with No Way Out is that you have to hook every survivor at least once to get the maximum effect, similar to BBQ and Chili. If you do particularly poorly, to the point where you don’t hook every single survivor, that’s when No Way Out pales a little. The only real advantage that Remember Me has over No Way Out is ease of use, since all you have to do is hit the Obsession for it to start working. But this is a rather moot point when you understand that No Way Out lasts longer, and there isn’t any counter to No Way Out (short of not opening the Exit Gates), while Remember Me can technically be countered by perks that increase gate opening speeds, namely Leader, Resilience, Spine Chill, and Wake Up (which is also a terrible perk, but it still counts).

So how do we make the most out of this perk? As much as it probably pains Remember Me, he’s going to have to rely on his cooler younger brother, No Way Out, to get much done. Oh, also his slightly cooler sibling, Blood Warden. Yeah, I think you know where I’m going with this: Super Ultra Mega Ultimate Endgame Build. If you’re going to use an endgame perk, why not throw in all your chips and go for the ultimate play, the “You know what, you guys were being especially toxic to me this match, so I’m going to make sure you’re stuck in here with me and you can’t ever leave” strat. As for your fourth perk, you have some options, but...well, I’ll address the elephant totem in the room. No One Escapes Death. I don’t like this perk. Most players I know don’t. But I won’t deny that in an endgame build, it’s incredibly easy to confirm that Blood Warden hook if you play your cards right. I also have a sense of honor when playing this game though, so I’m going to discourage the use of No One Escapes Death by instead suggesting another perk. Ideally, in an endgame scenario where you’re using Remember Me, you want the Obsession to be dead. But what if they’re not? There’s another way to make sure that happens: Rancor. Rancor is not a favorite perk of mine. If there’s even a remote chance that the team I’m going up against is a SWF, the last thing I want to do is voluntarily give them more information. However, in a casual setting where everyone is a solo, Rancor can be a fairly strong information perk. No, it doesn’t give perfect information in the form of auras, instead it’s scream notifications without the screams, but what that means is that you have information on every survivors’ whereabouts, with the only person who would be able to tell you have the perk being the Obsession, and just like Whispers, it’s a form of tracking that survivors cannot counter. Oh wait, you don’t care about that part, do you? You only care about the mori part of the perk. Yeah, if the Obsession is somehow still alive after all the generators are done, this is your insurance to make sure it gets done, ensuring Remember Me will be in play for the other survivors. If Rancor is not your cup of survivor tea, Bitter Murmur is a suitable alternative. More specifically, when the last generator is finished, Bitter Murmur shows you the auras of all survivors for 10 seconds, which is great for seeing where the survivors are running off to, including the Obsession if you’re attentive enough. Coup de Grace is also not a favorite perk of mine, but if you hold onto enough tokens and your target happens to be injured, you can easily secure that down you need for the Blood Warden hook without the loss of respect that usually follows after using No One Escapes Death. Tinkerer and Whispers are both excellent tracking perks that help you track generators and survivors, and if you have a feeling the Obsession is around, these perks also help in that regard. There’s one more problem with this endgame build, however. One huge flaw that makes it all for naught. If the survivors have a key, they can just open the hatch and completely ignore the whole point of this build. This is such a buzzkill and it absolutely sucks. But don’t worry, you have one more option here. If you see a key in the lobby, Franklin’s Demise is your friend. As of the most recent patch, keys that don’t have any charges left cannot open the hatch, and since Franklin’s Demise drains item charges again, you can put two and two together.

So just to recap, Rancor, Bitter Murmur, Coup de Grace, Tinkerer and Whispers (Franklin’s Demise if a key is in play) are all my suggestions for your fourth perk in the ultimate endgame build. What do these perks have in common? They help in the endgame, or near the endgame, but they also help you throughout the match. The most important part of the match is what happens near the beginning and middle of the match, because that dictates how the endgame plays out, should it reach that point. These perks are helpful in the endgame scenario, but unlike if you were to run No One Escapes Death as your fourth perk, you have a fighting chance before that, since you at least have a perk that does SOMETHING in the beginning or midgame. I know I was talking about throwing in all your chips when talking about endgame builds, but that requires you to also use No One Escapes Death, and I certainly don’t condone that, so this is the next best thing. This build is about the slow burn, waiting for the fuse to reach the end before springing that surprise trap on any survivors that happen to still be alive. And if you actually manage to get them all, they’ll certainly remember you for a while.

Closing thoughts, how do we make this perk better? This is an interesting case, since it’s clear that Remember Me was made this way to prevent completely inescapable scenarios for survivors and hold the game hostage. This perk actually used to be stronger before the Endgame Collapse was implemented, but adjusted to compensate for that. When the devs have the foresight to make changes like this and be considerate of the implications, I respect them for that. That being said, this perk is still quite underwhelming, and the fact that it actually used to be stronger than its current iteration is tragic, so maybe we can fix that. 16 extra seconds of exit gate opening time is fine...if there’s one survivor left and you’ve already closed the hatch. At that point, escape should be nearly impossible, because the survivors let this happen. If they actually manage to escape even after that, that’s mostly on the killer. But in the scenarios where there are three or even all four survivors still alive, Remember Me just doesn’t cut it, so maybe there’s a way to have the perk be strong in both cases. Rowby’s idea to rework the perk was such a nice idea that I have to share my version of it here, because I think it works great in the current version of the game we have now.

You become obsessed with one Survivor.

Each time you hit your Obsession with a Basic Attack, Remember Me gains 1 Token:

The Opening time of both Exit Gates is increased by 4 seconds per Token, up to a maximum of 24 additional/28 additional/32 additional seconds.

The Obsession is unaffected by this penalty.

This penalty is halved once the Endgame Collapse has started.

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

In this version of Remember Me, it’s on par and slightly stronger than its previous design when the Endgame Collapse hasn’t started yet, that is when the Exit Gates are still closed and the Hatch hasn’t been closed by the Killer yet. When the Endgame Collapse does start however, it’s the version we have now. This makes it so the perk is strong in what’s usually a losing scenario, while being more fair in a winning scenario. 32 seconds is a long time, but when there are multiple survivors to attempt opening both Exit Gates, it’s more manageable. 16 seconds is also a long time, especially for one survivor, and they’re usually dead at that point anyway, but it at least gives them a chance. This version of Remember Me has the best of both. If you really want to make the perk even stronger, you could make it so the Obsession also suffers the longer Exit Gate opening time, but I’d try this design first before trying something like that. I definitely have a lot of mixed feelings when it comes to this perk. I want it to be good at what it does, but I also know that it can easily become too oppressive when paired with all the other endgame perks. Time will tell if we care enough about the perk to make it better. Thank you for coming to my lesson, see you next class!