As a Veteran player, I am extremely concerned about the perk reworks.
I am sure many of you saw the 40 perk rework announcement. I personally think for the perks listed it would be unnecessary. I realize that the meta is stale, however that is because there are a ridiculous amount of perks on both sides that are simply bad or outclassed by other perks. Like who would honestly run Off the Record over Iron Will? I think if the Devs want more perk diversity, they should buff weaker perks and add secondary effects so they aren't simply outclassed by other perks. For example, Off the Record could perhaps show the killer's aura to you right after you are unhooked or maybe make it so your rushed actions after being unhooked are silenced for a period of time.
I think that every perk they listed on killer side is fine, and this is someone who primarily plays survivor. I have no problem with BBQ or any of the Gen Regressions perks they listed. I think perks like Pop goes the Weasel are already well designed in that they reward the killer for getting hooks and encourage leaving the hook.
The only perk I would like redesigned on killer side is NOED because it is often very predictable when a killer has it; yet, if a killer chooses to camp and tunnel survivors simply won't have time to do totems, especially if they are solo. If you are the type of killer that hates SWF I can honestly say frustrations around NOED are primarily the reason I play in a SWF, and I'm sure other survivors will agree. It leads to boring gameplay where killers feel empowered to camp or tunnel 1 person out because they know a huge power boost will come endgame that can be impossible to deal with even with the best of coordination. Let's not forget it can stack with other broken things like Moris or be used with Nurse.
The perks on survivor side I also believe are fine. BT and Decisive have had a lot of reworks, and I think they are in a healthy state right now. They are quite literally the only tools survivors have to counter camping and tunneling. You may argue that killers should feel powerful and have the ability to camp or tunnel if they want, and I agree. But games where the killer camps and tunnels leads to a fun game for maybe one person, while the other 3 are left playing gen repair simulator. I think it is healthy for them to be left alone as a deterrent to a boring play style.
Iron will is another perk I don't understand why they want to rework. Yes, it is a good perk but it's not broken. If you lose a chase because of Iron Will, that is completely your fault because there are many more indicators that can be used (Crows, Scratches, Blood pools). Iron will also encourages survivors to make riskier plays (Window Techs, Jukes, Flashlight saves, Trying to lose the killer). If Iron Will is nerfed I am sure gameplay will be more boring for both killer and survivor at a high level.
Lastly, I would like to address Dead Hard. Dead Hard has been in the game since David, and I am surprised how many 200 hour killers are talking about how it's uncounterable and broken. Yes it is used more than other exhaustion perks, but I think people are forgetting that's because of the inherent risk of using something like Lithe or Balanced Landing and then getting a map like The Game or Shelter Woods where your perk is useless. Not to mention that it only works when you are injured, a huge disadvantage with the amount instadowns in the game. Dead Hard is a well designed perk as it does require skill and understanding of distances. There are many survivors I have downed after they messed up a dead hard, and there are many times I have messed up my dead hard and have gotten downed as a very experienced survivor.
Dead Hard is also in a way healthy for the meta because it encourages survivors to greed pallets, which believe it or not is better for the killer. A simple experiment can confirm this. Load in KYF with a M1 killer on a pallet heavy map like Blood Lodge or the Game. First play a round with a stipulation that survivors must drop pallets immediately or after one loop. Then play a round where survivors are encouraged to play as efficiently as possible. I guarantee you that you will perform better when survivors are playing greedy, because that often leads to survivors making mistakes and getting downed. If survivors pre drop pallets, it's often worse for the killer as there is little counterplay. I've personally played many games as Clown or Myers for example where the survivors instadrop every pallet, yet I lose anyway because there were simply too many pallets and nothing else I could do.
Comments
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Dead Hard being healthy for the game is a take I didn't think I'd see today but here we are.
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I think it shows the devs think the perks should make the game. But it's the map designs that need the rework instead.
Dead hard is still terrible and I still say they shouldn't be able to interact after using it.
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I'm tired of the current meta even if it is balanced, I'm happy to see a change in perks because hopefully it'll encourage players to run more diverse builds.
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The current meta is not balanced, gen slowdown is boring, second chance perks are too strong/annoying. I hope they do this right and can revitalize the game somewhat
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I'm really excited for it, especially since they said that after this "shuffling up the meta" would be a regular occurence. I'm so sick of a game where the same perks stay in the top meta for literally years at a time, and they're so scared of the backlash of nerfing any one of them that reworks take a full year after being announced.
I would love to see:
BBQ loses its bloodpoin bonus, which now becomes baseline. Same for WGLF, perhaps with a rework to the perk's effect as it's mediocre af without the points. Neither has ever been a great perk, but BBQ's BP bonus makes it feel mandatory to use or you simply feel like you're getting halved value out of playing killer. It would remove a perk from the killer meta, while not punishing the side for losing it, and allow better perks to take its place.
Second chances and slowdown being nerfed across the board. If survivors can't drag the game out excessively with free extra health states constantly, then the killers won't need multiple sources of slowdown just to bring the game back to baseline levels. I'd almost be down for some sort of debuff like exhaustion for both sides, where multiple sources of similar slowdown won't work together, and where multiple second-chance perks don't work together. Ie, if you wanna bring DS for a match, you can, but you can't have Unbreakable at the same time. You want Pop? Sure, but no Ruin or Pain Resonance alongside it. It would mean each individual perk could see better tuning and value without the threat that a buff to any will break the game because it stacks with everything else to be miserable.
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Aint healthy at all but against killers such as blight and nurse is a must because those killers aren't healthy aswell.
Playing as nurse with double range vs no ds or dh at all will be very fun and healthy i guess
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DH will still probably good vs killers that go into fatigue after a miss like nurse, blight, legion. Hopefully though it wont be cancer like it is today.
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It's not worth a perk being disgustingly gamebreaking against 25/27 killers because it's a "must" against the other two. You know how we see less sweaty Nurses and Blights everywhere? By making the rest of the cast less miserable to play.
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People want to win, they can make 25 killers as strong as blight yet you will still see 9/10 nurses because she is the strongest.
If killer players wanted to have fun they'd be playing all killers regardless of what they'd achieve
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How? If it's still good vs top tier killers it's even stronger on all m1 killers. They either make it decent vs m1 so that it becomes useless vs top tiers or they keep the same issue as it is right now
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Everyone talks about perks but what about Nurse? She doesn't need any perks to be OP, literally just have a half decent player who plays killer enough to defeat an entire lobby. Even a good team can be overpowered by a good Nurse..
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Missing a single attack means way more for blight/nurse/legion than it means for m1 killers thats how. If they nerf dh to have a shorter range or if they nerf it by making you unable to vault/drop pallets as some others suggest, than it wouldnt be that good vs say trapper because they are still on you and youll just get hit in a second. Vs killers that go into exhaustion though, it means they lose sight of you for a second or 2 then have to wait for their power to recharge.
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If SWF were removed from public matches, this wouldn’t be a problem. The game won’t die. Thats a lie. Buffing solo que wont help.
#removeSWF
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Let's see first how they plan to change the perks.
These last few days I've been positively surprised by the announces and changes the devs have done.
I'm cautiously optimistic about the future.
I don't despise DH as much as some (and Nurse is my main killer) however the peek is busted against most killers.
Yes Nurse is horribly punished by a miss. But M1 killers end up having to waste more time on another loop. That's way too strong for a simple key to press.
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"dead hard is healthy" and nothing, i stopped to read after this...
Post edited by Tostapane on16 -
Pray tell, when was the last time you actually went against a good Nurse that was using no perks?
Nurse's basekit, while strong, has counterplay, that being breaking LOS as much as humanly possible, doubling back, and tricking the Nurse into making a bad read
A Nurse with Range addons and a bunch of slowdown perks is defintely miserable to play against, but that says more about her addons and the slowdown meta more then anything else
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I hope BHVR does the fromsoftware way of balancing, not making things weak and killing a playstyle (like bleed on ER) but buffing things to let them on par with the meta.
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The meta outclasses other perks like you mentioned, but for survivors, buffing those weaker perks would still not allow them to compete with the meta unless they were busted, because the current meta is simply too strong. The last 2 perks to compete with the survivor meta were coh and boil over when it was buffed. And they were so incredibly broken they had to be nerfed multiple times.
Dead Hard is most certainly not healthy for the game. Pressing E to fix my mistake isn’t skillful. Sure a survivor can mess up their DH but in almost all cases if it’s used for distance, that’s not the killer outplaying it, that’s just the survivor screwing up on their own. DH for distance does not have a counter when used properly. If a survivor is just DHing in a deadzone then yeah you can wait it out. Also it isn’t really “greeding pallets” when DH ensures they get away with it because they either won’t need it, or they will need it and will use it. The killer can’t get the down either way unless the loop is so long that the survivor can’t make it back around even with DH, and in that case the survivor simply just doesn’t greed if they are smart.
BT and DS are “healthy” only because they are the only ways to truly counter camping and tunneling which needs some baseline changes. I should not have to rely on a perk to counter a killer playing like that. They are strategies which are simply too optimal in the current state of the game and they should not be as effective as they currently are.
IW I think would be okay if survivors just had their grunts of pain replaced with regular breathing.
For killer, any decent slowdown perk can make its way into the meta along with the others (and BBQ). BBQ I think is meta mainly because of the points, not the aura reading. If they just made its BP effect baseline they could remove it from the perk and it would be fine after that with just the aura reveal. The rest of the killer meta consists of slowdown which is pretty much required on most killers against decent survivors. The strength of slowdown perks is fine for right now, but ideally they would be toned down anyways to shake up the meta and more baseline changes would be made to reduce their necessity. I will say if slowdown perks are nerfed and there is no baseline compensation, that will not be good. And the same goes for if BT and DS are nerfed and nothing else is done about camping and tunneling.
I do agree with your assessment of NOED.
(Also, Shelter Woods should have a hill on it for BL, or alternatively the center tree could be made into a tree house or something.)
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To clarify, the devs didn’t say they’re “nerfing 40 perks”, they said they’re changing 40 perks plus also making some changes to base game play to shake up the meta. So a bunch of those 40 perks are probably weak ones that are getting buffed.
And they specifically said they’re not just nerfing, say, popular slowdown perks but looking at why those perks are popular and making some base game changes as well. So for example they might slow down gens across the board, since slow down perks are perceived as being “necessary”, and then since all gens are slower compensate by tuning down actual the actual slowdown perks so they don’t become overpowered in the new envrionment.
So it’s not just 40 nerfs.
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I'll preface this by saying, when I play survivor, I run Sprint Burst.
I really think Dead Hard has gotten a bad rap, because it is being run by the most skilled survivors in the game. So it looks so good because the most skilled survivors are using it, not because it tremendously better than the other endurance perks.
When you have a skilled survivor using a perk, that perk is going to look over-powered.
The second all these skilled survivors start using Sprint Burst, an endurance perk that is 100% guaranteed to work correctly, instead of Dead Hard, Killers will have the exact same problems, maybe even worse because Sprint Burst gives you more distance.
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The reason Killers hate Dead Hard isn't because of the distance it covers, they hate it because it essentially erases a mistake and can extend loops to a insane degree, and even out in the open, you have to just sit on the survivor's rear and bait out the Dead Hard, which is a waste of time, Sprint Burst cannot do that nor can it erase a mistake on the survivor's part unless they are very good at 99ing it
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You're talking like sprint burst is some new or obscure perk that no one has yet managed to divine the hidden powers of when it's really one of the most common alternatives to DH and has been in the game since launch. Everyone here has will have ran sprint burst and faced off against sprint burst, probably a lot. It's strong, it can be annoying, it can be 99ed, and it is still not as bad as DH.
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Tbf I agree that Sprint Burst is hardly thrilling gameplay but like Dead Hard isn't healthy
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That's why nurse and blight needs nerfs so then dead hard can be nerfed as well.
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I look forward to the change up
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I really hope the make good changes.
As i am not using all the meta perks i notice to have a quite big disadvantage sometimes.
Some metas are simply way too powerful.
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There will definitely be a difference because of the survivors playing it. Your talking about every high-MMR player switching from DH to Sprint Burst. They are going to be playing it way more effectively than in the mid-ranks, where you see Sprint Burst. You don't see it much in high-MMR games, much less 4 survivor mains playing it every single game. That's a massive shift.
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I'm waiting for them to give more information about what is getting changed both with game mechanics and perks before I start to worry or get excited about the changes. Only thing I know is that they said they are reworking perks and game mechanics that have caused the current meta. The changes could be great, they could be terrible, or they could just be mediocre. Have no clue until we get more information.
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I'm only concern with how broken they will make the perks. Like how they thought the initial Boil Over change was ok.
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You lost me when you started talking about DH
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Oh, forgive those people who want to win at the game, that'd be dreadful if the didn't want to play useless twins or garbage trapper ect
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The main thing with the perk rework, as the graphs in the blogpost showed, is that at higher MMR you are consistently seeing the same perks over and over...which many players feel leads to a very stale meta. This is a way of shaking up that meta and maybe changing the playstyles at least a little and give people more variety in what perks they can choose and make other perks more appealing.
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PLEASE use SB, at least when I hit you, it's a fricking GUARANTEE that you are hit
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You would be surprised at how many hit's I've avoided with Sprint Burst.
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And everyone else has avoided twice as many with DH
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I think this would be the best thing to do. Let the current meta perks as is and then go in and improve perks, so that we have more choices in what we bring in.
If you don't do that, then it will wind up the exact same way it is now. A new stale meta where everyone is using the exact same 6 to 8 perks. Don't nerf the current perks, bring the other perks up to the level of the current meta perks.
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With SB or Lithe you can still miss even when aim assist triggers.
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I think without reworking these perks...replacing the meta will be very difficult as the other perks would need to have some considerable changes to make them seem as equally viable to players. Don't forget we have confirmed that we will be making some small base changes as well, so we looked and considered the why behind these perks were used so frequently.
I think in general, the announcement of meta perk changes has gone over extremely well, I think people are looking forwards to seeing these changes put into effect for the most part.
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I more so mean if they are just holding W and nothing else, I can get my guaranteed hit
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SB is underrated in general. I don't know if players don't know how to use it or what. It's an omega Dead Hard from 20m away to start a chase, it can be used to get away with sketchy positioning, or it can be 99'd for mid-chase.
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I fully believe they will nerf the survivor meta hard and then barely improve the other perks. Likewise they will hardly nerf killer meta and significantly boost their other perks. All survivor perks will be crap after this change,
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I hate hate hate the iron will "just use scratches and blood to track" argument. Scratches are horribly inconsistent and more importantly, you cannot perceive either of them through walls so that tracking becomes absolutely null when trying to mind game. Footsteps? Audio occlusion in this game is so buggy that they cut out half the time. Iron will is a sleeper busted perk.
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You know at least one thing that's being changed: BT in some form is being basekit. Information icons are coming. What's up in the air is what they're gonna give killers, if anything.
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You see if they add secondary affects there's most likely gonna be situations like boil over where its so obnoxious to play against its just not worth playing.
Also about dead hard... assuming you really are a veteran and NEVER used the perk for its stronger part of it which is for distance which is literally uncounterable and forces the chase to extend at least 20 seconds with a decent survivor concerns me. And if you down a survivor because they used dead hard horribly doesnt make it not busted as a perk.
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The only part of the “dead hard is healthy for the game” argument I agree on is that it encourages survivors not to predrop pallets.
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yeah.
It's just annoying.
Sprint burst prevents/ends chases, dead hard makes them longer at no cost. Head On extends chases, but it only has one use, and it's not exactly easy to use in chase.
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Hopefully they will be extremely careful doing this. If they screw this up, they will lose a massive amount of players on either side. Can you image if they released this change and one side or the other side is always getting a 4k or a 4e.
A lot of this game is fun because on the current set of meta perks. If all of the sudden one side or the other side has boring perks, this could also cause a massive drop in their player base.
You can say what you want about Dead Hard being bad to play against as Killer. But you can't forget the other side of this story, there's a lot of Survivors that absolutely love Dead Hard because it's a fun perk. It gives Survivors a chance to out-play the killer, which a huge majority of survivors like. The other survivor perks really don't allow outplays like Dead Hard (Is there any survivor perk that lets you counter a Killer?)
I love Sprint Burst and use it almost exclusively, but I will be the first to admit, Sprint Burst is boring. Baiting out Killer hits right at the start of the chase, is about the extent of the interactions you can do with SB.
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I think most people haven't openly criticized the changes or have only had their doubts and concerns. Me on the other hand, I think that update isn't as good as people make it out to be.
I do want the game changes, but I think focusing on the meta is just a bad move.
Post edited by Bran on0 -
I hope they tone all perks a bit down.
This game needs a bit less speed not everything faster better higher.
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Borrow shouldn't be used as a aggressive tool against killers. I had people body block with borrow as well after an immediate unhooked.
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