Do you agree with Otz's Problematic Perks List?

abusing? the pig jigsaw always worked like this. my impression on this list is a large list of perks that player dislike losing towards. i do not agree with most the perks but i do agree that a lot of those perks represent lingering issues.

Buckle up is slugging problem with killer. Boil over and power struggle would show up way higher on list if they had higher numbers. the issue is that slugging is survivor sided mechanic where the killer low probability to bleed people out because it is only timer based. you get way too many lives towards slugging right now. putting survivors into dying state and keeping survivors in dying state should be rewarding but it is not. I said once an idea that would improve this that when a survivor goes from dying state to healthy state either by healing or perks that pick them up, they lose 10-15% of max bleed out regression bleed out bar. this would puts some limits on that FTP+Buckle up problem because killer needs counter-play towards that. second chances are part of the game but slugging too many second chances.

UB, Knock out and Hex:Third seal is another issue in the game which is textbook swf vs soloq problems. soloq relies on aura perks to make smart plays due to lack of voice com. many people play the game casually so I don't think adding voice is good and I think dbd is fine without voice. it just needs some teammate aura for survivor to do their basic teamwork actions. Blindness disables these aura actions and it is not a good interaction. it is like starting a match of soccer where you start the match as 1-0 for you. a way to keep Blindness relevant as status effect is to just make it only work on disabling killer's aura perks. The only aspect is that dev are scared to implement perks like Wiretap because people complain about the whole wallhacks removing mindgames. the player then feel the need to run blindness out of necessity. the second part of the problem is strange problem. it is little bit like Lightborn and Flashlights.

stbfl+rapid brutaltiy are perks to turn killer into baby bubba's and huntresses. I think issue that people are talking about is tunneling more so then the perks. survivors dislike the killer defending hooks and they dislike part of the game design of killer of killer going after 1 person till they die. I don't think there is any clear answer this problem because the game by nature is designed to be survival game. you could try to make it a team-survivor game like devour hope where when killer get 5 hooks, you get instant mori'd. the hooks and slugging are interesting takes on team survival vs solo survival. it is just both of these mechanics are not fully expressed in the game and it is an interesting question if there should be multiple lose conditions for survivor. 3 gens is another loss condition... but 60 minute games are not exactly fun.

So another nerf to pig? Like she is that strong killer...

To an extend, yes. Dont agree with some points on the list at all and some I would rank differently (e.g. I would rank Boil Over at the highest Tier, because you almost never see this Perk in a regular Build, only in Builds of people who want to keep running somewhere where you cannot really hook them instead of doing normal gameplay).

Funny thing is - since this video is up I saw way more Pentimentos than before. So yeah, thanks for that Otz...

And I totally agree on Pentimento, it is a stupid Perk. You waste so much time with it, not only have you a 30% Debuff, but cleansing Totems also takes time. And it is a Perk which impacts SoloQ more than SWF. Especially because you can have teammates who just cleanse Dull Totems... I went against a Wraith yesterday, they had Pentimento, Haunted Grounds, Undying and Devour Hope. After cleansing 3 Totems (Haunted Ground twice and Devour Hope) they only had Pentimento left. Yet a Kate on my team cleansed the remaining two Dull Totems, so that we had to do 5 Pentimentos in total...

And of course the point of Otz stays - Survivors should not be punished for doing side Objectives. I dont cleanse Dull Totems anyway, because you cannot afford it nowadays, but Pentimento is another reason to not cleanse Dull Totems.

Regarding Pentimento, I feel Otz explained his point of view quite well, and when you watch him often, the typical trend of perks he doesn't like is perks whose very existence and threat strongly influences player decision making.

I think what Otz is driving at is the perk is very strong when active, and punishes survivors for doing totems as side objectives, which is not a false statement. Pentimento does have an effect that is very strong when its live, and that strength always has to be factored in vs. other hex perks.

Before CoH was a strong boon, so disabling hexes with boons was common and obviously didn't help Pentimento, but now no-one really bothers with boons, so if you want a hex gone, you usually have to cleanse.

This translates in higher levels of play to people understanding cleansing for Pentimento is not a good idea, as it has a potent effect the killer can then defend, so you basically ignore majority of hexes cause the gen/healing slowdown from Pentimento is more dangerous than most other hexes, with the exception of Devour Hope, so survivors just don't bother so they don't have to deal with Pentimento.

This means the perk has value, even when not in play, which is something Otz tends to be quite critical of. Survivors affected by Hex:Ruin or Hex: Plaything will not bother with totems because of the possibility of Pentimento, so the killer can ignore defending them and gets more value off these hex perks than they otherwise would, just because Pentimento exists..

That said I'm not sure Pentimento is such a huge problem myself for organised teams... though it is a little rougher on more casual and solo teams. However I'd be more on favour of making boons better instead of gutting Pentimento

Hell no!

Most of his arguments in this video are so arbitrary. Like killers with M2 powers being able to save their stacks on STBFL. Really? What's the problem with that? These killers won't use STBFL anyway because they have a power that allows them to get easier hits. Bringing STBFL into the equation would afford them to play M1 killer way more often, which means they would commit to a weaker play style. The point about end game camping is somewhat understandable but his suggestion would only reverse the problem. Either the survivors can guarantee an escape or the killer can guarantee a kill. There is no in-between.

NWO is not a problem for the 1v1. Yes, the survivor is basically screwed in that situation but how is that a bad thing? The killer already won TWICE before that. First they got 3 kills, then they found the hatch first. Does the last survivor really need a second chance to their second chance? Also, considering that the killer could just slug for the 4k, which would work without NWO too and is less engaging for the survivor, I really don't see this as an issue.

Boil Over in my opinion also isn't problematic anymore. It's a bit annoying to play against at times but the real issue is that there are still hook dead zones on some maps. If they didn't exist, then Boil Over wouldn't hurt as much.

Pentimento being a problematic perk is a stretch. How hard is it to remember the spot where you just got rid of a totem?

OTR is also completely fine. 80 seconds is a long time but an anti-tunnel perk should be strong enough to actually warrant a perk slot. DS does that against 50% of the killers in this game. The others don't care because they can instantly down you again. So you could make an argument that DS belongs in the "Kinda Weird" category.

NOED is kinda dumb honestly but his suggestion to fix it is just weird. Make NOED relocate to another totem when the killer hooks close to it and be done with it.

At this point I give up on defending UW. Just nerf it already. A handful of killers are extremely oppressive with it but since we aren't going to address the actual problem, we can just as well repeat the whole Awakened Awareness situation again. Plus, it counters Windows of Crutch and we can't have that.

Pentimento is outlandish to me. I have to say I disagree with a large part of the list. I don't see much of a problem with stbfl although I understand how it's a good perk, but not overpowered. Things like forced hesitation are also strange to me as I really don't see it being that problematic. Deli is another questionable one, I don't think its that problematic and meanwhile rancor exists

Agreed on both. Survivors don't need a buff to vault speeds, that's what the whole slow/medium/fast vault distinctions are for.

Adrenaline is an unhealthy perk that enables genrushing. The delayed heal is nonsense that deserves to be removed. I'd love to remove the heal from injured to healthy entirely so that survivors can't just crank out gens to negate the pressure that's supposed to stop them from cranking out gens.

Exactly my thoughts!

He forgot Dark Theory

the perk that made him lose his mind when it was on PTB

Haven't seen pig for months so if that bug makes more people play her I don't complain.

Thanks for the correction and yea you make good points. Can be easy to forget sometimes that killers have 4 vs 16 survivor perk slots. The 4 killer perk slots are much more important for killers and so replacing a slowdown perk should be meaningful.

I feel like nearly everyone here is missing the forest for the trees. Otz isn't saying this is a list of perks that are poorly balanced or ruining the metagame, he is saying that, in his opinion, their core function/ability leads to less fun games.

Take his top choice, Hex: Pentimento, for example. Under his (and my) assumption, survivors should have a secondary objective or something else they can do to help them with a match that isn't just sitting on a gen. This will not only allow for a bit of slowdown from "gen rush" from the killer's perspective but can do so in a way that allows for survivor interaction which allows more diversity in gameplay and feels less like the game is arbitrarily slowing you down with no input on the survivor side.

For a while, totems were kind of that secondary objective in regular gameplay. Cleansing them could clear hexes (obviously) but also prevent something like NOED, give stacks of Inner Healing, but also just give a bit of a BP score. So, at worst, you were trading a bit of your time for a few extra bloodpoints and one less spot to check for NOED.

After Pentimento was introduced, cleansing a totem became an actively bad thing to do. Survivors have no way of knowing if Pentimento is there (until a totem has been cleansed) so the best course of action is to completely ignore them and not to bring perks that encourage cleansing (as a single heal or a slightly faster gen speed increase for a single survivor is not generally worth it for a universal slowdown that can be defended once activated). Without this side objective, it leads to more time just cranking out gens.

Add on top of that the tome challenges that often specifically require cleansing totems and now you have an issue where solo queue can feel even more miserable because you can't coordinate expectations of your intentions in the match. Now, the Leon who normally was just wasting time with his side quest is now actively harming the team.

This is also consistent with his complaints for other survivor perks like Deliverance then. If the killers main goal is to sacrifice survivors, spreading hooks between survivors can be seen as a "secondary objective". Spreading hooks can lead to additional slowdown (as it occupies a survivor with rescuing/healing) as well as make for easier options on who to chase when it comes to the end game (as you may have multiple people on death hook) and either way, gives some bloodpoints. It's obviously arguable how efficient this "secondary objective" is and not the point of my argument but having it is as an option is a good thing in Otz's opinion (as well as my own). Deliverance then can actively punish a killer for pursuing this secondary objective. That additional slowdown I mentioned as a small bonus for spreading hooks is completely eradicated if it procs Deliverance as no one needs to get off their gen to go for the rescue.

In both these scenarios then you can see how doing the secondary objective is actively punishing because of the mechanics of these perks. Killers should want survivors to spend time clearing totems and survivors should want killers to spread hooks but these perks are a hindrance to that.

You can agree or disagree with this sentiment, but if y'all are going to deride someone so bad, at least address what is actually being said instead of whatever you presupposed the argument was going to be based on a thumbnail without actually viewing it yourself.

And thats good! I see your perspective and understand. Totems, especially once at a high level of play, really are inconsequential and I 100% agree. But that's why I think they should do more with totems to make survivors want to actively cleanse them. Make totems have a generic slowdown effect in a radius around them, allow killers to "activate" totems to give them a speed boost in a radius around the totem (with caveats around hooked survivors), I'm even not opposed to making something like the NOED speed boost basekit where the killer gets additional power for each totem still standing during end game. All of these would, of course, require game balancing changes but the point is I want to encourage more interactions and choices when it comes to totems to try to make them an actual secondary objective.

A perk like Pentimento though runs contrary to my ideal improvements though. Any perk brought by the survivor/killer shouldn't actively punish the secondary objective, in my opinion. If totems aren't meant to be the secondary objective for survivors, fine, Pentimento can remain where it is as its interaction with things like Plaything or Devour Hope are an interesting dilemma for survivors to work around. It just means that survivors will continue to have no secondary objective (boring for the survivor and even more gen focus from the killer) and tome challenges will continue to have huge swings in the solo queue experience.

Makes sense. Looking back and re-watching, I can see Otz focused more on the punishment of cleansing totems aspect instead of what "healthy" changes should be encouraged to move away from something like Pentimento. I didn't interpret his video as meaning anything about how these perks are used currently in real world examples and why they need nerfs but more the implications of having them and what the concept of the perk means for strategies and the trickle down effect they have on the gameplay experience.

Either way, I appreciate the insight and thoughtful response! Can be a rare experience around here some days.