Nerf to Borrowed Time and Tunneling

One of the more hotly talked about things among this community is the subject of tunneling and how Killers can just tunnel one survivor and it be very effective. Well, I'm here to change that, as well as make Borrowed Time seem like less of a necessity of a perk and more of a luxury of one.

Anti-Tunneling Mechanic

• For 3 seconds after being unhooked, you are granted complete immunity to the Killer's attacks.
• For the next 5 seconds afterward, you are granted the Endurance Status Effect.
• During this time, your movement speed is increased by 10%.
• Any action such as repairing, cleansing, healing, going into a locker or taking a Protection Hit will immediately remove the invincibility.

Now, the idea for the anti-tunneling mechanic is simple; you're granted invulnerability to attacks for 3 seconds; any attack will simply just go straight through you, as if you are incorporeal. Then afterward, you are granted the Endurance Status Effect to ensure that you aren't further tunneled.

During this time, you're given a speed boost that will make your movement equivalent to that of a 110% Killer, such as Huntress. This ensures that you can safely get away, or make it just a tad bit harder for the tunneling Killer to catch up to you. This also ensures that you can't properly take a protection hit either, which is one of the main things that stops this mechanic from activating.

Protection Hits actively aid your team; anything that does aid your team or yourself by any capacity that you can perform will just stop this mechanic much like how they stop Decisive Strike. This shouldn't be something that makes you a guardian angel over the other Survivor; this should be something that keeps you protected from the Killer and encourages the Killer to go for the other Survivor instead.

With that said, and to acknowledge the new Protection Hit activation, here is what I've come up in order to describe what is considered a Protection Hit after being Unhooked.

Unhook Protection Hits

After being Unhooked, the requirements for taking a Protection Hit are changed for 8 seconds:

• You must be within 4 meters behind the Survivor that Unhooked you or any other Survivor, so long as those Survivors are already Injured.
• You must be within 0.5 meters of the Killer in order to take a Protection Hit.
  • This is to actively discourage attempting to body block the Killer in order to take a hit.
• Projectiles will not activate a Protection Hit, and thus will not deactivate the mechanic. Sorry, Ralph, no downing that unhooked Survivor with that hatchet.
• Bubba's Chainsaw is the only physical power that will not activate a Protection Hit under this circumstance. Sorry, basement lads, no downing that Survivor with your Insidious chainsaw.

All in all, these changes would ensure that the mechanic is functionally what it's meant to do; you stop becoming tunneled by the Killer, simple as that.

Borrowed Time

Due to the change and the addition of the anti-tunneling mechanic, Borrowed Time had to be adjusted in concept.

• While unhooking a Survivor, press the Active ability button to extend the amount of Endurance that they have for 2/3/4 seconds.
• After activating this Perk, if you are unhooked, the amount of Endurance you have is reduced by how much you gave the other Survivor, up to 2/3/4 seconds reduction.
• This Perk's ability resets after 120 seconds or after being hooked by the Killer.
• If you have been given extended time by another Survivor running the same Perk, this Perk cannot be activated by you for 120 seconds.

So the idea for this is to make it so that this Perk is more of a luxury than a necessity. To achieve this, it's now an activatable ability and only extends the duration of the unhooked Survivor's invincibility by up to 4 more seconds, at the expense of you losing most of your invincibility; you're essentially letting the other Survivor borrow your own time, as it were.

Additionally, in order to prevent this ability from being spammed or used too much, the Perk is given yet another restriction; the ability of it has an active cooldown of 120 seconds, during which time you can't give Survivors the same invincibility. This is a major downgrade from the original's ability to give any unhooked Survivor invincibility, but since the mechanic is going to be native now instead of on a perk, this change is of course justifiable. Plus, you're extending the duration of the mechanic, so it has to have a setback.

The last thing to prevent this from being powerful and again, just to keep it a luxury, is to prevent all Survivors from running Borrowed Time to circumvent the third change. This change basically disallows Survivors to spam the ability to extend time without basically any penalty. This doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be used by a full team; a full team can still use this, but not to a degree where it will be effective in the long run.

Though, one thing that this still won't do is affect uncaging. That mechanic is still going to remain powerful.

So basically, I'm getting rid of the Killer's most effective (and boring) strategy while also getting rid of the Survivors' most effective (and boring) Perk when being unhooked. This change would liven up matches and make Survivors and Killers more proactive, and would encourage Killers to just go and take on the challenge of that Survivor that unhooked the other one, instead of trying to just chase the one that's just been unhooked.

What do you think? Think that this would be something to actually pave the way to a better balanced game than we already have? Will this stop tunneling in the long run?

Will I ever stop making posts like these? Join us next time on Vulgun Ball Z.