Bad Perk University: Poised

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. Let me tell you a story about my experience with DBD. Before I actually started playing the game, I knew about it through content creators like Otzdarva and Noob3. I was intrigued by the unique gameplay and amused by the funny clips. When I actually started playing the game, the Demise of the Faithful DLC was the newest chapter at the time. I really liked this chapter. It had Plague, one of my favorite killers, Jane Romero, a survivor whose lore changed the way future lore was written and presented for other characters, and some interesting perks. All of Plague’s perks were pretty good. Corrupt Intervention is a meta slowdown perk that can sometimes seem like a must pick perk with how fast generators are done. Infectious Fright is THE snowballing perk, giving you the information you need to know when a survivor is close by and continue applying pressure. Dark Devotion, while not the most accessible perk, is a great wild card perk that can throw off even coordinated teams. Jane’s perks didn’t turn out quite as well, but I still feel that they’re fun, interesting perk concepts. Head On is an exhaustion perk that (usually) doesn’t make players want to rip their hair out, and it’s a fun way of making an escape and making killers scared of lockers. Solidarity, while difficult to get value out of, is a serviceable perk that can save quite a bit of healing time. It’s unfortunately power crept by Circle of Healing, but others have talked about it enough. And Poised is...oh wait...uh...yeah…

Poised is a perk that sounds better on paper than in practice. Whenever a generator is completed, you leave no scratch marks for 10 seconds. That’s it. Simple as that. The duration resets if two gens get finished back to back, but other than that, there’s nothing else to talk about.

So why is this perk bad? At first glance, the perk doesn’t sound all that bad. And to be honest, it isn’t. Hiding your scratch marks can allow you to be pretty stealthy and throw off the killer. The problem with Poised is that, in practice, a lot of things need to line up for the hidden scratch marks to mean anything. One issue is that if the killer catches sight of you at any point, your chances of getting away decrease dramatically. The idea is to break line of sight so you can slip away. Not the hardest thing to do, I guess, but unless you find a particularly complex structure to play around, you usually won’t confuse the killer. They can often guess where you went based on context clues. There’s also the problem of the other forms of tracking the killer has. Besides scratch marks, there’s blood, aura reading, crows, killer instinct, and screams. Poised helps with absolutely none of those things. So if you’re injured, the killer will just follow your blood. If the killer has aura reading perks, Poised won’t hide you. If you run past a crow, you’ll disturb it. I know the average killer doesn’t pay attention to crows, but experienced killers realize that crows are difficult to avoid without running what’s essentially a meme perk (Calm Spirit), and they’ll pay extra attention to crows if all else fails. Killer Instinct? Basically just forget trying to use Poised if you’re up against a Ghostface, Twins, and especially Legion. Screams? Infectious Fright and Doctor especially are Poised’s kryptonite.

OK fine, but hiding scratch marks is generally a good thing, right? Sure. But let’s talk about how to get the most use out of Poised. Obviously the best situation to be in when Poised goes off is when you’re being chased, or about to be chased, because that’s when hiding your scratch marks will actually matter. If you complete a generator while the killer is far away, chasing someone else, you don’t really need to hide your scratch marks, because by the time the killer comes by, if at all, the scratch marks will have already disappeared without the perk. If you complete a generator as the killer is approaching, that’s actually a better application for Poised. But once again, the killer seeing you run away means they have a good chance of still being able to follow you. So it seems that the best way to make use of the hidden scratch marks is to already be chased and have a teammate finish a generator during that time. Do you see the problem yet? A generator getting finished while you’re being chased is largely out of your control. It’s cool when it happens, but it also won’t completely bail you out, and certainly not something that can be relied on. When it does happen, you need to be reactive and make a plan to use your now hidden scratch marks. Even experienced loopers may find it difficult to adapt to the sudden loss of scratch marks. Does it help? If you’re not injured, it can. But when you are injured, you better have Iron Will as well, otherwise you’re not getting away.

I’ll admit that my struggles with Poised may come down to personal playstyle. I prefer to avoid chases when possible, and help my teammates recover from chases, or being hooked. Because of that, Poised often doesn’t proc when it works best. So keep that in mind when I talk about Poised. Even so, I don’t really see Poised being used often, due to there being more consistent and reliable perks. SWF usually don’t bother with Poised, even though the extra communication does help coordinate Poised plays, when other perks are more obnoxious. But there has to be a way. Some method of making Poised more reliable.

So how do we make the most out of this perk? Poised on its own will rarely work out for you. So we need other perks to cover its weaknesses. There are a lot to choose from, thankfully, so let’s go over them. While technically not necessary to run, Self-Aware is very helpful to run with Poised. Being able to see your own scratch marks is useful when you’re trying to juke the killer. One of the unspoken issues with Poised is not being able to see your own scratch marks by default, and Self-Aware helps with that, allowing you to see when your scratch marks disappear and how they look to the killer so you can make an informed decision on where to run to hide yourself. To help escape chases, Quick and Quiet is fantastic. If you vault a window or jump into a locker after breaking line of sight from the killer, you can throw them off long enough to make them give up or continue the chase at a different loop. Be careful when hiding in lockers however, because when a killer doesn’t see scratch marks after chasing you and has a strong suspicion that you haven’t left the loop, their next move is usually to check the nearest locker, so try not to make it obvious when you do so. Lucky Break is an effective, if temporary, way of hiding your blood, allowing you to potentially get away even after being injured. Of course, if you’re using Lucky Break and using it in a build, you might not have to bother with Poised, but hey, you have the option. Iron Will is a good way to help you make use of Poised when injured, for reasons I probably don’t have to explain at this point. Calm Spirit, as niche as it is, helps with two weaknesses with Poised: crows and screams. While running away with Poised, you can feel extra secure knowing you won’t give yourself away with crows and if a Doctor shocks you, he won’t be able to instantly know where you are. Parental Guidance is a nice supplementary perk to pair with Poised. Cool, I get to talk about a recent perk. Stunning the killer will hide your scratch marks, blood, and mute your injured noises, so if you need to make those 10 seconds last longer, this perk can help. Finally, Adrenaline is pretty awesome with Poised. You want to really make the most out of those 10 seconds? This is the perk to use. Sprinting at 150% for 5 seconds with no scratch marks? It’s as awesome as it sounds. Now that I think about it, pretty much all the exhaustion perks work well with Poised if you time it well. To that point, Lithe would be my perk of choice. It’s one of the easier perks to use on demand to get away from a loop and leave no scratch marks behind. Though if you wanted to do that, it would actually be a better idea to just use Dance with Me. Oh hey, I found a good use for this perk!

But how do you know when a generator is about to be finished? The best way to use Poised is to be in a chase when a generator procs after all. Unfortunately, there isn’t a perk that lets survivors know when a generator is about to be completed. There’s plenty of perks that trigger when a generator IS completed, but not before that, because that’s something that normally the killer has to worry about, not survivors. The closest thing to that would be Situational Awareness when another survivor is using it, since it shows you the gen aura in yellow to let you know a survivor is working on it, but that’s it. Poised would definitely be a lot easier to use if it gave you a unique notification when a generator is about to be finished, similar to Tinkerer, but we’ll talk about that when we get there. For now, the only way to know when a generator is about to be finished is for a teammate to tell you. Therefore, SWF. Having a friend tell you when they’re about to finish a generator can give you time to plan your movement to best use Poised. It’s also a pretty good idea for your friend to bodyblock for you when a generator gets completed. That requires some ridiculous coordination, but when you pull it off, it all but guarantees your escape. What’s important to know about perks that help you escape or win chases is that they’re usually (except for Dead Hard, that perk is just broken) not the strongest. Because in a 4v1 game, the 1 (killer) is meant to have the advantage in the 1v1. When you get chased as a survivor, if the killer commits to a chase and they’re skilled enough, you’re meant to eventually lose that chase. In order for you to escape that chase, another survivor needs to bail you out and take a hit for you, making it so the 4 can match or exceed the 1. If survivors were able to consistently win chases on their own, killers would stand no chance (see Dead Hard, again. Isn’t the way this perk breaks 4v1 game design and balance with uncounterable mechanics so cool?). Perks like Poised pose a challenge to the dedicated survivors, the ones who make perks like Diversion or Deception work in their favor. Those are the survivors that deserve respect and gg in postgame chat. It’s a challenge I gladly accept.

Closing thoughts, how do we make this perk better? Considering the perk procs when a generator is finished, I think it should have a better effect than just getting rid of scratch marks. Detective’s Hunch is a perk that I think gives an appropriate reward for completing a generator, for example. I don’t mind pairing it with other perks to make it better, but I’d at least like to make Poised better on its own. I mentioned before that giving a notification when a generator is about to be completed would help you plan ahead, so I’d like that to be a change. You could also make it so blood disappears for 10 seconds if you wanted, but honestly, if you just made the change I just proposed, I’d be OK with that. It’s not like Poised needs to be meta or anything. Perks like Boil Over made me realize that sometimes, buffing perks for the sake of buffing them can be a dangerous endeavor. Poised is OK. It’s not unusable, just tricky to use. But I’d rather have that than a perk that gives you too much value for little to no effort. Thank you for coming to my lesson, see you next class!

TL;DR: Poised is a perk with an effect that either isn’t needed in your situation, or is tricky to use to escape the chase. To make the most out of the perk, bring perks like Self-Aware to see your scratch marks disappear, Quick and Quiet to make fast actions quite, Lucky Break to hide blood, Iron Will to silence injured noises, Calm Spirit to prevent screams, or Adrenaline to sprint away with no scratch marks. To use the perk at its most effective at any given time, play in a SWF to communicate when a generator is almost finished. To make the perk better, you could give it a Tinkerer-like notification when a generator is about to be completed, and perhaps have it hide blood, in addition to scratch marks.