Bad Perk University: Iron Maiden

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. After covering the atrocity of a perk that was Predator, I think we need to go back to tamer perks. Ones that are usable to an extent but many players consider not worth the perk slot in many cases. Perks like Iron Maiden. Or as Huntress and Trickster mains call it, “Ha ha, locker reload go zoom”. This perk has two rather simple effects. Your locker opening speeds are 50% faster, meaning the animation for opening a locker is faster, regardless of what you’re doing. If you find a survivor hiding in a locker, you grab them faster too. Like I said with Huntress and Trickster, you reload your hatchets and knives faster, respectively. In addition to that, any survivor that exits a locker will suffer the Exposed status effect for 30 seconds, scream, and reveal their aura for 4 seconds. The scream notification will often get in the way, so you might not even notice an aura reveal, but if the survivor exits the locker quickly and runs off, you might catch a glimpse.

So why is this perk bad? We’re far beyond the territory of perks like Predator that are almost completely useless. Iron Maiden absolutely has some applications. The issue mostly resides in the niche nature of the first effect, and the duration of the second effect. Opening lockers faster is only really useful on Huntress and Trickster as I keep mentioning, since reloading their power takes precious time away from patrolling and chases, but it’s something they have to do due to the nature of their power being a limited supply of projectiles. You could also pair Iron Maiden with Wraith’s Shadow Dance addons to open lockers blindingly fast, which is amusing, but mostly pointless. Then there’s the Exposed effect. The duration of the perk’s effect used to be 15 seconds, which was not nearly enough time to capitalize on the Exposed status. Now that it’s 30 seconds, you might capitalize on that if you’re relatively close to the locker that the survivor left, but most of the time that’s not the case. Heck, it doesn’t even synergize with the Killer it comes from. Legion’s power doesn’t down survivors, so what use is Iron Maiden there? You do at least receive information when the survivor tries to leave and escape your notice however, so that should at least be commended. But all of these things are usually not worth equipping this perk for, when so many others would serve you more consistently. Devour Hope applies the Exposed status in a much more effective and scary way. Whispers gives you more reliable information to a survivor’s location. There are other such examples, but these come to my mind the most immediately.

So how do we make the most out of this perk? I’ve already mentioned enough the reason to use it on Huntress and Trickster, so I won’t mention it again. The issue now is finding a way to make Iron Maiden a commonly useful perk in regards to its information and Exposed status. Many of these are just theoretical, but I have used Iron Maiden in these ways to varying degrees of success, so these are some things to consider. One idea is to use the perk on Bubba. Lockers are already a sort of deathtrap against this killer, so Iron Maiden ensures that even if the survivor times getting out of the locker perfectly, there’s nothing they can do about being Exposed when they get out. A better idea is to use other information perks as a way to cover Iron Maiden’s weaknesses, and vice versa. I already mentioned Whispers, but in particular, Whispers will provide consistent tracking by informing you when a survivor is within 32m of you. It won’t tell you exactly where they are, but you can be sure that they’re somewhere within that 180 degree cone in front of you. If they’re in a locker however, Whispers can’t let you know, and Iron Maiden can help with that. Once the survivor leaves the locker they were in, you can go right back and chase them down. It’s also an interestingly good synergy with BBQ and Chili, by revealing survivors that decided to hide in lockers to hide from BBQ and Chili’s aura reading. It’s also a nice counter to Head On and Flashbang. Even if survivors using Head On successfully stun you, 30 seconds is a generous amount of time for you to punish them for it. And survivors that attempt to craft flashbangs put themselves at risk each time they do so, revealing their location to you. Let’s not forget one of the best counters of all: Inner Strength. Yeah, that’s right, heal up in the locker, see what good it does you...as long as you come out when I happen to be in the area, but still! When things line up right, Inner Strength is its own undoing when Iron Maiden is playing.

Closing thoughts, how do we make this perk better? This is an interesting case, because I think Iron Maiden in its current state at this point in the game’s lifespan is actually perfectly fine. 15 seconds was definitely too short of a duration for the Exposed status, and 30 seconds makes it more threatening while not being overly punishing to the more stealthy playstyles some survivors like to employ. I myself sometimes play more stealthy than some other survivors, because you can’t go down in a chase if you never enter one. The thing about Iron Maiden is that the introduction of newer perks that involve playing around lockers soft-buff it, because it naturally causes more people to use lockers and thus fall victim to Iron Maiden. It’s worth giving it a try in the scenarios I described, even if you’re not playing Huntress or Trickster. I’m not saying the perk needs to be meta or anything, it’s just a perk. And just like with Solidarity, sometimes that’s alright. Thank you for coming to my lesson, see you next class!