DbD's perk design is bad

Whenever a new perk gets added into DbD it often feels like the devs played a round of roulette with random attributes on each number. And then combined all of the results into the new perk. To showcase exactly why this is, I'll be using two perks on both the survivor and killer side as examples.

I'll start with a survivor perk first. Boon: dark theory.

This perk requires so many things before a survivor can even begin to get value from it.

1. The survivor must find and bless a totem.
2. The boon must be in a location where the survivor can loop.
3. The survivor must be chased by the killer within the boon's radius.
4. The killer has to ignore the totem during the chase.

And even after all of these conditions are fulfilled all you get is a measly 2% speed boost. Now there might be a scenario where that 2% makes the difference between getting hit or dropping a pallet in time. But the speed is so difficult to make use of that you'll rarely ever be in a situation to be affected by it in the first place.

Now compare that one of the newest survivor perks: Made For This

The difference in power is staggering.

MfT has only half the requirements to activate compared to dark theory, those being be injured and not exhausted, both of which are extremely easy conditions to meet. It also gives 3% haste instead of 2%. Which sounds small. But is mathematically 50% extra speed compared to dark theory!

And not only is MfT easier to activate and gives more haste, it also has yet another benefit. By giving you endurance whenever to heal someone. It is fundamentally better than dark theory in every way.

Keep in mind that the point of this post isn't talking about how strong/weak perks are. But rather how good/bad the design of the perks are. And in a game like DbD with multiple perks options its important for build variety that as many perks as possible be worth using.

Since dark theory is an objectively worse version than MfT, there's no reason to run it when players have limited perk slots. And if players have no reason to run a perk, then it isn't well designed. And I'm left wondering why dark theory was blatantly power crept into irrelevance instead of being buffed.

Now for the first killer perk. Grim Embrace.

The effect of this perk is very underwhelming for the effort required to activate it. Hooking every single survivor isn't easy and takes a lot of time. Especially for killers that don't have powers that help in chases. So although being able to halt all gen progression for the next 40 seconds isn't bad, it is not as rewarding in proportion to the amount of work needed to hook every survivor.

The aura reading it grants is also bizarrely limited to the obsession. Despite the perk having nothing to do with the obsession mechanic. And doesn't even give value if the obsession is the final survivor to be hooked.

Now compare it to next perk: Deadlock.

Whereas grim embrace requires you to hook everyone to trigger the gen block, deadlock triggers automatically after a gen is completed. Which is so easy to activate you can get value out of it by literally being AFK.

Not only that, but it can activate multiple times. Blocking gens for a total duration of 120 seconds overall. Dwarfing the 40 seconds of grim embrace. There is no reason to use grim embrace when deadlock is easier to activate and blocks gens for longer.

These examples show a pattern with most of the perk design in DbD. Where a collection of perks help with a certain task or situation, but one perk is definitively strongest than all of the others for doing that task or being in that situation. Which leads to everyone using that single perk and rarely if ever using the others. Which has lead to the incredibly stagnant meta that has plagued DbD for years.

Despite some of the strongest perks in the game being changed as the game has been updated over time, there has never been a single time in the game's entire lifespan where there was a big selection of perks for both sides to choose from that were viable. Because although the amount of perks has never been higher, the design philosophy behind them has never changed. That being: seemingly nothing at all.

To harken back to the start of this post, perks really do seem to be designed on the whim of a roulette wheel. With no consistency with power level, viability, or even general use in mind. It really seems like the devs haven't learnt anything from their 7+ year experience developing this game and are still throwing stuff at the wall to see what works.