Realistically, How Many "Bad" Perks Are There On The Side You Main

I wouldn’t call most perks in dbd bad but the upper 10% are just so much more useful

Autodidact and furtive chase are the absolute worst perks I can think of though (Autodidact is still fun to use though)

I wouldn't call some of the perks that you listed bad, niche yeah, but not bad. I think the major problem is that there's a handful of perks that simply overshadow everything or rather they're more "generalist" perks.

I don't use too many different perks on Killer (I like my basic builds; one slot for info, one slot for slowdown, two slots for whatever sounds funny enough to equip).

On survivor I have made it my personal mission to stay clear of meta perks as much as possible and find the overlooked ones that you can actually get good value out of (Distortion has become more popular and I've seen more We'll Make It - but Desperate Measures and Leader are def. underrated perks and come in useful more often than you'd think). But boy, are there a lof of perks that I have failed to find some form of consistent application for (aka that don't rely on effectively throwing half the match just to get the perk working and/or the active participation of one or more teamies).

But the two perks that hurt me the most (because they used to be niche but useful in that niche) are just the very definition of bad now: Calm Spirit and Pharmacy. No matter how you define bad - they always fit the definition. Though there are more perks that fall into that category: Technician (except if you want to build a flashbang mountain...), This Is Not Happening, Visionary, Rookie Spirit, Situational Awareness, Premonition, Counter Force and Corrective Action. These may just as well be removed from the game altogether. --- Then there are a number of perks that could, in theory, have some form of useful application but don't ever actually come in handy or actively harm the team in the process; Dark sense, Dark Theory, Autodidact, Bloodpact, Soulguard, Buckle Up, No One Left Behind, Guardian, No Mither, Mettle Of Man, Object of Obsession, Slippery Meat, Up the Ante, Ace in the Hole, Poised, Potential Energy, Tenacity, Power Struggle, Flip Flop, Breakdown, Self-Preservation, Plunderer's Instinct, Clairvoyance, Appraisal and Red Herring.

What's wrong with Pharmacy? It seems functional to me.

The way I play the game is so, so different to most people. I find the most fun thing to do is to use a character's three personal perks and choose a fourth that makes sense to that specific character. For example, I main Nancy Wheeler, and use her three personal perks (which are now generic ones, sadly), and then on top of that I'll use Small Game to track down totems efficiently and to eliminate Hex Totems.

This means I use Object of Obsession and Sole Survivor on Laurie Strode, despite how 'terrible' they are. I find it really fun to have every character use their specific perks so that I never play one character the same as another.

Then, with a character's outfits, I'll choose two of their personal perks and then choose two others to go with it. So for Laurie Strode's 'Sheep in Wolf's clothing' I'll ditch Decisive Strike or Sole Survivor for something that allows me to read auras, as she's quite observant in the original movie.

I know it probably sounds stupid, but this way of playing is way more fun for me, to come up with lore-accurate perk builds.

"But if I'm running for chests to get a heal, then getting that medkit first thing as soon as possible is the better design." - In that case it should still be the exact same way it was before: if you open a chest while having pharmacy equipped you get a green medkit. - ((And if people are afraid it's gonna be abused to scatter medkits around the map, then make it that you start with one token and gain a token for every time you got injured. Each medkit you get from a chest consumes a token.))

Lets take a count then, I play as Killer and based on my experience with the game there are 44 which is about 40% of all Killer Perks which I believe would be extremely niche, just bad or detrimental to my build compared to other options.

bHVR is far far FAR behind on working on Perks to make them all viable choices.

Then our answer is 0 as anything that can be used to a positive effect which in our eyes is not bad. As an example Beast of Prey can be used to surprise a target switch. Obviously theres way better options but as long as it works and doesn't actively hinder the player without a potential payoff, its not bad.

Some of those perks are pretty decent, it’s just that the top level perks are so much better. If they removed them you would see some of these perks get more use.

You can get value out of all those perks except Furtive Chase and Predator, those two are worthless.

True, but I think Predator still needs a buff or rework because it’s just a hindrance more than it is useful.

Furtive Chase is so bad and the worst part about it is that it somehow keeps becoming even more useless. Nemesis and now Game Afoot do the Obsession switching better and just made it obsolete. Not to mention the killer it comes with is already stealthy in chase

There are only a few bad perks in this game. Most perks can come in handy. However, I think Beast of Prey, Territiorial Imperetive, Furtive Chase, Nemesis, Unnerving Presence, Predator and Leverage qualify as bad perks. You might be able to get some use out of them but mostly you need to dedicate a complete build and playstyle to it, that will probably still be worse than running no perks at all and playing normally.

Killer has a lot of Niche perks, but I believe there are only 8 killer perks that are truly bad. For the most part, these are ones that are actively detrimental to you, are reliant on survivors doing certain things, or provide potentially useless bonuses.

Coup De Grace: Can actually make your chases take longer, cause you want to save your tokens for when you need them, making you walk all the way up to the survivor to hit them.

Claustrophobia: I can count the number of times this has helped me on one hand. Extremely map dependent, requires you to lose generators, and a few seconds of running is all it takes to leave it's effective zone.

Forced Penance: Requires survivors to bodyblock for you to get use out of this. Unlike mad grit, does not really prevent bodyblocking from happening. Broken is a status effect with debatable usefulness anyways. If a survivor is not healing, they're going to work on objectives because what the hell else can they do?

Gearhead: First of all, it's reliant on skill checks, which is a famously inconsistent requirement. Secondly, the survivors must be hitting great skill checks specifically. Lastly, you could miss the intel this gives you entirely. Sometimes the aura of gens blocks the aura of the survivor you're trying to see, and it doesn't even give you a noise notification when it procs.

Insidious: As a killer you always want to be on the move. Also, survivors can tell when a terror radius suddenly drops to 0, which alerts them that something's up. Really only good for camping, and at that point you've basically lost anyways if the survivors play well.

Predator: An actively detrimental perk. Can cause you to miss scratch marks that would have appeared on a wall.

Territorial Imperative: Typically if you're hooking someone in the basement you want to stay relatively close to basement anyways, and this requires you to go away from basement. And even if you're playing a killer that can actually capitalize on the information it provides, you're now chasing someone near basement, which pretty much always has a strong structure of some sort near it, whether that's shack or main building.

Unrelenting: Why are you missing basic attacks in the first place fivehead?

Honestly, realistically, very few perks are genuinely bad.

Some are weak enough that making them work requires a fair amount of effort, so I suppose you could include those too, but even they tend to do something noticeable in their niches. Take Furtive Chase- that always comes up in conversations about bad killer perks, because its "main" effect is borderline useless, but its secondary effect can be really solid depending on your build. If you want to target the Obsession, or open yourself up to more variance in avoiding the Obsession, then any perk that swaps that around is good- and all Furtive Chase requires for that is an unhook.

So, is Furtive Chase a bad perk? On its own, absolutely. But in its correct niche, it can be the binding agent that lets builds function properly. I wouldn't call it bad, personally, because it has a clear use that does work and does provide value- even if it's mostly for gimmick builds.

The perks you're left with that are legitimately bad would be ones that either hinder you more than they help (for example, Predator) or perks that just fail to reach even their proper niche (Deathbound, especially after the weird scream changes). There really aren't that many of those, what you're far more likely to see are perks that work perfectly well and do provide value but are simply outclassed by other perks- Spies From The Shadows, for example, is a perfectly serviceable tracking perk that just happens to be outclassed by most other tracking perks.

I love Hex: Huntress Lullaby.

It works great on my facecamp bubba build.

People are so worried about doing gens or unhooking that they aren't looking for the totem. Tons of missed skill checks, which leads to a 3+k.

Most perks need others to make stronger

Some are just outshined by others

Some are counterintuitive to Killers powers