Bad Perk University: Monstrous Shrine

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. Over the course of making this series, I’ve come to realize that many perks that some players consider bad, other players would say that they’re not. Sometimes it’s a matter of opinion or personal preference or playstyle. Most recently, in regards to covering Third Seal, some people would consider the perk not bad at all. I personally have fun using the perk even as it is, but I believe it’s one of the more underwhelming Hex perks, which is why I chose to talk about it. In the beginning I talked about Self Care. While I still feel that it’s not the terrible perk that players make it out to be and that it’s a matter of using it well, many players would disagree with me there without any other consideration. But can we all agree that Monstrous Shrine is completely terrible? Oh yeah, today’s the day! Monstrous Shrine is terrible both on paper and in practice. For the basement hooks specifically, a survivor’s sacrifice progression is accelerated by 9%, self-unhooking is 15% more difficult, and self-unhook penalty is increased by 9%.

So why is this perk bad? The percentages don’t communicate just how monstrously awful this perk is, so let me break it down for you, because I have issues with every single aspect of this perk. First, sacrifice progression being 9% faster. Normally it takes 60 seconds to reach second hook stage and another 60 seconds to be sacrificed if no survivor comes to rescue. With Monstrous Shrine, that time goes down to 55 seconds. Yay. You know what the sad part is? That little time reduction is the BEST part about this perk, and it’s still terrible. The other aspects are far worse. Second, the 15% increased difficulty of self-unhooking. This is one is just plain idiotic. Normally, self unhooking has a 4% chance of success. So you might be thinking, oh, if it’s 15% increased difficulty, that makes it a negative chance so they can’t unhook themselves anymore, right? NO. That’s not at all what that means. Get this, it’s 15% of 4%. To do some math for you, converting the percentages to decimals, 0.15 multiplied by 0.04 would equal 0.006. Converting that result back to a percentage would give us 0.6%. So self unhooking now has a 3.4% chance of working. WOW, WHAT A GREAT INVESTMENT OF A PERK SLOT! It’s still a very low chance, but the fact that survivors can still potentially unhook themselves completely defeats this part of the perk. I’m going to move on before I lose my sanity permanently. Lastly, the 9% increased self-unhook penalty. When you attempt to unhook yourself, you get 3 chances at most, if you attempt to do it immediately after getting hooked. How many chances do you get when Monstrous Shrine is in play? 3. You still get 3 if you attempt it as early as possible. SOMEONE GOT PAID TO DESIGN THIS PERK! Okay...okay, deep breaths. We can make it through this…

So...how do we make the most out of this perk? I would say we don’t, but unfortunately we must. Since the only thing about this perk that’s worth anything is the faster sacrifice time, the only thing we can do now is basement builds. Oh, not basement camping builds, I’m sure Monstrous Shrine would be an essential addition to that strategy, but I don’t want to encourage that. Agitation, Iron Grasp, Monstrous Shrine, and one other perk of your choosing that would actually help you win the match, because this is a ridiculous strategy. It should go without saying, but if you intend on running a basement build, you have to intend to actually defend the basement. There are plenty of killers that can do that, like the ones with high mobility or lethality, or...yes, Bubba. By being a constant threat near the basement, you’ll have a better chance of ensuring those 55 seconds tick down. If by some freak chance the survivor in the basement manages to unhook themselves, you’ll at least be able to punish them if you were close by. Though you should be ready for that outcome, your goal should be to ensure they can’t try that and that their teammates have to take their chances and attempt to save them. If this sounds like having to go out of your way to make this one perk do something, that’s because it is. You know, I have a better idea, how about you don't use this perk?

Closing thoughts, how do we make this perk better? This is a real problem, because even if this perk affected every hook, not just the ones in the basement, it would still be terrible for the reasons I listed before. On the other hand, if this perk is supposed to be centered around the basement, if it were buffed in a significant way, it would encourage unfun and scummy playstyles. So this is yet another perk that probably needs a full rework. If this perk has to be centered around the basement, it might be a good idea to have the perk give a substantial benefit for bringing survivors there and hooking them, but it should give killers incentive to not keep them there. One idea that’s been thrown around sometimes is to apply a repair speed penalty and/or Broken status to survivors who are hooked in the basement until they are healed, and even this by itself would already make Monstrous Shrine actually worth using. So maybe something like this:

Survivors who are unhooked from the basement suffer a 25% repair speed penalty until healed and suffers from the Broken status for 40/50/60 seconds.

Of course, this is just one version of Monstrous Shrine that can become reality. All I know is that Monstrous Shrine cannot remain the way it is if it wants a chance to be relevant. But I suppose that’s the silver lining of being so bottom of the barrel, the only way to go is up. Thank you for coming to my lesson, see you next class!