Bad Perk University: Saboteur and Breakout

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. Welcome to another double lesson! This time we’re tackling the dynamic duo of Saboteur and Breakout. As a disclaimer, these perks aren’t terrible (at least, one of them isn’t) in the traditional sense, but I often see them used ineffectively or fail even when used to the best of their ability. It seemed like an interesting path to explore, as I actually like one of these perks, occasionally using it in casual builds. If you’re an experienced DBD player, I think you can guess which one. Let’s first talk about Saboteur.

Saboteur is a perk with a bit of an interesting history. What it does is that while a teammate is being carried, you see the auras of every hook within a 56m radius from where they were picked up. It also allows you to sabotage a hook without the need for a toolbox, taking 2.5 seconds to break a hook, roughly the same time it takes to break a hook with a toolbox with no sabotage modifiers. Once attempting to sabo a hook with this perk, whether you succeed or are interrupted, the perk goes on cooldown for 60 seconds.

So why is this perk bad? Trick question! I actually think Saboteur is a pretty decent perk. Just the potential of denying the killer a hook state on a survivor is fantastic. But if that’s the case, why am I talking about it? Well, the reason for that is mostly due to the perk being fairly difficult to use and somewhat underwhelming in application. The way Saboteur used to work had a lot to do with how sabotaging used to work. Sabotaging a hook was not a short, channeled action like it is now. It actually took quite a bit of time to break down a hook, especially without a toolbox. But the difference was that sabotage progress did not reset, and this meant if you were coordinated enough, you could wait until the killer was approaching the hook and break the hook near instantly, denying them of a hook with no real counterplay to it. So in short, sabotaging a hook was difficult and lengthy, but when done right, it was incredibly unfun to fight against. Oh and if you thought that was bad, you were also able to sabotage Trapper’s bear traps. Worse yet, when you did this, it would be rendered useless and irretrievable for over 3 minutes, or if you were playing even older versions of the game, forever. You know, because Trapper wasn’t bad enough as it was. Nowadays, sabotaging can only be done with hooks, and the action itself takes a couple seconds to do, succeeding if you don’t get interrupted, or failing if you do. What does all this mean for Saboteur? It means this perk has a potentially powerful effect of denying the killer a hook, but you have to be careful with it, and you have to work for it. This is where the hook aura reading comes in. What it’s meant to do is give you information on where the hooks are located, allowing you to make an informed decision on which hook the killer will move towards, usually the closest one. But depending on where you are in the map, rescuing your teammate may not be possible. And even if you are close by, you won’t always be able to stop the killer from getting to a hook in time.

This is intentional and healthy design, as denying objectives is something that should not be done too easily. In the case of hooks, making it so the killer can’t possibly hook survivors means they have to slug. While this isn’t fun, it’s sometimes necessary due to certain circumstances. Perks that make hooking survivors difficult such as Boil Over, Flip Flop, or Breakdown have to be kept weak so the killer isn’t put in unwinnable scenarios just because the survivor brings a perk and exploits bad map design. Boil Over was unfair for a short period of time when it got buffed to give a chunk of wiggle progress when the killer drops from any height, and look where that got it. It had to be nerfed again because the developers remembered why Boil Over needed to be weak to begin with (I’ll talk about Boil Over some other time). In the case of generators, they only ever get blocked temporarily, or by meeting a certain condition. Corrupt Intervention only lasts for 2 minutes, Dead Man’s Switch requires you to hook a survivor and chase the other survivors off of generators, and Grim Embrace requires you to hook ALL the survivors at least once. For balance and health reasons, generators are never blocked for too long or too frequently.

Back to Saboteur. In theory, this perk makes getting successful hook sabos easier, but many players will find this to not be the case, for a multitude of factors. Maybe the killer is right next to a hook. Maybe you’re too far away. Maybe you know which hook the killer’s going for, but you can’t make it in time. And what happens when you go for a hook sabo with this perk and get interrupted? The perk goes on cooldown, and you can’t try it again. Oh but that’s easy, right? Just go for the hook sabo after the killer hits you first. But the problem with that is that if you time it even a little too late, you’ll still fail. At best, you’ll still break the hook and go down for it. Mission accomplished, I suppose?

Despite me saying all this, I still like this perk. The one problem I have with it is a minor gripe more than anything. It’s the fact that the perk goes on cooldown no matter if you succeed or fail at the sabo. This is fine when you’re actively trying to prevent a hook state, but not so great when you’re just trying to heal a teammate under the hook and you accidentally start sabotaging the hook behind them, putting the perk on a 60 second cooldown that didn’t need to happen. Again, a minor gripe, all things considered. Now, let’s talk about the perk I think ACTUALLY sucks. Breakout.

Breakout is a perk that sounds really strong on paper. When you get within 6m of a survivor being carried by the killer, you gain a 7% speed boost, and the survivor being carried wiggles out 20% faster. This means that if you stay within 6m the entire time the survivor is being carried, they can wiggle out in roughly 13 seconds. Not great, but not terrible either.

So why is this perk bad? I think by now you understand that this perk is bad for balance reasons. Breakout is a perk that makes hooking survivors harder, but it’s typically not very good at doing so. 13 seconds is still plenty of time for the killer to get to a hook. That 7% speed boost is actually fairly significant though. Survivors already move faster than the killer when they’re carrying someone, with the killer moving at 92% speed compared to a survivor’s 100% speed when sprinting. So being able to move that tiny bit faster means you can get close to the killer and quickly move away to bait a hit, or in the case of hook sabos, being able to reach a hook in time to break it. The issues with getting value out of Saboteur are similar to Breakout’s. You might not be anywhere near the killer when a teammate gets picked up, the killer might be too close to a hook to do anything about it, or you might do everything right and still not save your teammate because another hook was close by. It’s a perk that often just doesn’t succeed. Again, good for health reasons, but not good for the sake of being a reliable perk. So what is there to do? Well, I think you know.

So how do we make the most out of these perks? Saboteur and Breakout were made to be paired together, at least their current iterations are. And if you’ve read my Mettle of Man post, most of the explanation is already out there. But as a refresher, Saboteur and Breakout make for the ultimate sabo build by providing two things to help you: information and speed. Saboteur, like I mentioned before, gives you information on which hooks the killer is most likely to go towards. Breakout gives you the speed to be able to overtake the killer and beat them to the hook. It should be mentioned at this point that bringing a toolbox, preferably with sabotage speed addons, is nearly essential to making this build work. Remember how when you use Saboteur, it goes on a long cooldown? That only happens if you use the perk itself to sabotage a hook. If you instead sabotage with the toolbox you brought, the perk doesn’t go on cooldown, and you can even attempt to sabotage again if you were interrupted before. Saboteur is a lot like Self-Care in this way. The key to success with Self-Care is bringing a medkit to make the medkit last longer. The same idea applies to Saboteur, but instead of making the toolbox last longer, the toolbox complements the information given by Saboteur. It’s also worth noting that if your toolbox runs out of charges midway through sabotaging, Saboteur will take over so you can still complete the action, just like how Self-Care allows you to keep healing after your medkit runs out. And all this time, while you’ve been at work with your toolbox, Breakout was there to help give your teammate a chance to escape their predicament. The great thing about Breakout is that it’s rather subtle. A less observant killer may not even notice you moving faster near them, and go for riskier plays. And when you successfully break a hook and cause the killer to move elsewhere, you simply keep following them to keep Breakout’s effect active. When everything lines up, you can make some incredible things happen, or at least serve as a nuisance to the killer.

There are other perks that help assist Saboteur and Breakout in accomplishing their mission, so I’ll talk about them now. I’ve already talked about Mettle of Man, and while this perk isn’t key to making Saboteur and Breakout work (they work perfectly fine without Mettle of Man), Saboteur and Breakout help Mettle of Man greatly by giving more opportunities for Protection Hits. And when Mettle of Man is activated and you go for a hook sabo, you can greatly catch the killer off guard with the extra health state, all while Breakout lets your teammate wiggle out faster. I’ve also stated that bringing a toolbox is ideal for this build, but if for some reason you don’t want to, I would recommend the perk Flashbang. I’ve used this perk in this build before and it’s awesome when you get it to work, because it can often put the killer in a Catch 22. If they don’t look away from the Flashbang, they get blinded and drop the survivor. If they do look away, they might give you enough time to break the hook with Saboteur and lose time. Note that if you attempt this, you’ll often blind yourself due to how close you need to be to your own Flashbang, but the important part is making the killer look away and respect the Flashbang, and you don’t need to see to sabotage a hook. And of course, you can also do this with firecrackers, if you really want.

Empathy is a perk that can be helpful on its own, but it can also let you know where a survivor is being chased, so you can make the informed decision of going over to help them. The idea here is that even if you can’t body block for them, you’re at least close enough to attempt a hook sabo. Note that hook sabos are not something you should g out of your way to get if you want to be efficient, but if you really want to make them happen more frequently, Empathy is a must. You might also consider bringing Streetwise to make your toolbox last longer to sabotage more hooks. Would Streetwise be more useful to use with medkits? I mean yeah, but you already have Circle of Healing to give you healing for free, can’t you just use that instead? You might think of using Open-Handed to increase the aura reading range of Saboteur. While this does work, I’d argue it’s unnecessary. 56m is already plenty of distance, and the killer is likely going to go for the nearest hook anyway. But hey, you could for the memes. Resilience is fantastic for a build like this, because being injured with this perk actually makes your sabotaging speed even faster. In that same vein, Spine Chill makes your sabotaging speed faster when the killer looks in your direction, which they inevitably will because, you know, you’re breaking their freaking hook and they’re not happy about that. Pair these two perks together, and you might not even need a toolbox. There’s another perk I was thinking of that also works well in sabo builds, but I can’t seem to remember – oh right, Dead Hard. *sigh* When you successfully sabotage a hook, Dead Harding away afterwards can allow you to live another day, as well as completely irritate the killer. There, that’s what you wanted me to say, right?

Before I end things, there are a few killer perks you need to look out for when attempting this build, because they can make sabo attempts difficult, or suicidal. The most obvious one is Starstruck. If the killer is using this perk, don’t even attempt to body block for your teammate. The best you could do is try to sabotage a hook before the killer gets to it, but make sure the killer is far away enough. Mad Grit, as uncommon as it is, also shuts down this build, especially in regards to Breakout. If you notice your teammate stops wiggling after the killer hits you, cut your losses and get out of there. Agitation is also a problematic perk, because it allows a killer to move at roughly 108% speed while carrying, just barely faster than your 107% speed with Breakout. Be wary if you notice this, because chances are the killer is also using Mad Grit, or Iron Grasp, or Starstruck. If it’s the latter, you’ll know pretty much right away. Perhaps worst of all, if you notice the killer is using Save the Best for Last, basically just stop trying to go for hook sabos. If the killer builds up enough tokens, you often won’t be able to break the hook before their attack cooldown after hitting you ends. If you happen to be the Obsession, that’s a different story, but still, I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re absolutely certain you can pull it off.

Closing thoughts, how do we make these perks better? Breakout and especially Saboteur are completely fine where they are right now. I don’t want Breakout to be buffed into a nightmare like Boil Over was. Saboteur is perfectly fine when you know how to use it. That being said, one tiny change I’d make to Saboteur is to make the perk go on cooldown ONLY on successful hook sabotages, to eliminate the frustration of accidentally putting the perk on cooldown due to a simple mistake. This isn’t really necessary though, that mistake’s on me, really. Out of the many bad perks I’ve talked about so far, Saboteur and Breakout are probably the perks least in need of changes at the moment. And what a nice thing that is. Thank you for coming to my lesson, I’m going to tackle a really bad perk next. Wish me luck, and see you next class!

TL;DR: Saboteur and Breakout are difficult perks to get value out of, but are made weak intentionally for the sake of balance. To make the most out of using them together, bring a toolbox and use perks like Mettle of Man, Flashbang, Empathy, Streetwise, Resilience, Spine Chill, or Dead Hard to enhance the effectiveness of the sabo build. Avoid trying this strategy if you notice perks like Starstruck, Mad Grit, Agitation, or Save the Best for Last are in play.