Which of the free survivors has the best perks?

meg

2 S tier perks

1 A tier perk

Toss up between Meg, Feng, Claudette and Felix for me.

Meg: obviously all 3 are great/good perks for survivability in chase.

Feng: all 3 perks are solid and has a nice range of utility. V good chase perk, massively underrated info perk, and technician can mitigate some early game hiccups.

Claudette: Empathy is IMO one of the best info perks you can have. Massive range, helps with healing team, helps track the killer when combined with the HUD. Botany Knowledge is great, especially in the Sloppy meta. Self Heal can also be pretty clutch when you have limited medic pack charges, and if you need 1 of you to go back to gens but also can't afford to stay wounded.

Felix: I like every perk here... Desperate Measures saves seconds here and there that mounts up over the game, nice it affects your own medkit. Visionary is fine for gen info, and handy on indoor maps. Built To Last makes the scary toolboxes pure evil.

Count me as another one for Meggie pie. Shocking, I know.

Meg or Claudette depending on your playstyle probably.

Empathy is legit the best info perk for solo queue in my opinion, and botany is always nice if you have a spot for it. (we don't talk about self-care)

Meg, for sure. She’s great for newbies who aren’t too confident with being chased, and Adrenaline/SB still being meta all these later is a testament to their power.

I’d probably then say Dwight as a close second. Whilst he has no chase-related perks, his basekit encourages good teamwork/co-ordination.

A couple years ago I would’ve included Claudette in this discussion as Empathy/Botany Knowledge are great perks for helping your teammates. However, since Self-Care got a huge nerf I wouldn’t reccomend her to newbies. Self-care encourages baby survivors to run to the furthest corner of the map to spend ages healing themselves. Since self-heals got a nerf and anti-healing builds became more popular (Sloppy, Coulrophobia, etc.) it’s so damaging to a team for someone to be self-caring when it can take literal minutes with certain killer perks.

It's definitely Meg, she's got two S-tier perks and even the third is pretty solid.

However, Claudette is way closer than people give her credit for. Empathy is an unrivalled info perk for tracking your teammates, Botany Knowledge is one of the stronger perks in the game right now, and even Self-Care does have its place even if it's admittedly far and away the weakest of her three.

Honourable mention should go to Dwight. None of his perks are particularly flashy or stellar, but they're very serviceable and useful for newer players.

Claudette. Even with the nerfs none of her perks are less than good, especially when used together.

I would say it depends on your playstyle. I know everyone in the thread is all Meg, Meg, Meg but I honestly don't care for any of her perks except maybe Adrenaline. Personally, I'd go for Feng. I find lithe much easier to use over sprint burst and I really like alert. It gives a shocking amount of information over the course of a trial. Technician is admittedly awful.

What gets me is that 6 years later she still has the best perks in the game. Every other survivor perk since has really failed to measure up.

Claudette.

Empathy is good for keeping track in where the killer is along with injured teammates, and Botany Knowledge is really good for the speedy heals.

I understand Self-Care is considered a killer perk, but paired with Botany Knowledge can be quite strong if you have no items at the time being.

Meg is a close second, in my opinion her perks are for more experienced players who are starting to get better.

I’m talking about perks that are the best now. Not perks that were really broken/OP or good once upon a time. To use your example, Laurie’s perks aren’t good right now. OoO isn’t good unless you SWF, DS sucks, and Sole Survivor encourages a style of gameplay people here really seem to dislike (playing self-preservingly since the benefits only come into play when you’re the final survivor alive in the trial). Characters have released after Meg with perks that are currently good (like Kate, another really old survivor, and Feng. Same thing.) but all of Meg’s perks are still among the best and very, very few other survivors can claim that. I can’t even think of one who bats 2/3 let alone 3/3. And while opinions aren’t unanimous, people here loudly complain about her perks being broken/unfair pretty often.

That's kind of exactly my point though. You can't have any perks stronger than SB and Adrenaline because that is where we draw the line between balanced and broken. There have been a lot of useful perks since. But they aren't quite as strong, so people just go ahead and call them bad. This is a phenomenon that both sides are guilty of.

Take Surge for example. It was really slept on until 6.1.0 came and other regression perks were nerfed (Surge was also buffed, but that didn't make a huge difference). Just because there are better alternatives doesn't mean something is bad.

I'd say the fact that Meg's perks are still among the best is a sign of good balancing or at least a sign that they did something right. Because it shows, that they resisted any form of power creep so far. It is true though that both sides have their fair share of characters with bad perks. So, I can't say I'm all that surprised that there weren't many cases of characters with 3 good perks.

Luckily, I am not the one responsible for balancing at BHVR. That's a headache I don't need to deal with. So, I can express my opinions, hear others respond and say I either disagree or agree without it having any major consequences.

SB and Adrenaline are widely considered fair. You will find someone somewhere that claims they are overpowered, if you look hard enough, but for the most part we agree that they are fine. So, I'd say it's not just my opinion but that of (probably) a majority of players on both sides.

You raise a good point, that there is no well defined norm to measure, if a perk is just strong or overpowered. Personally, I consider SB and Adrenaline fair because 1) both perks have downsides, 2) they can be played around (<=> counterplay) and 3) they have an achievable skill cap to get max value out of, so you don't get free value without doing something for it.

Of course, though, if someone were to challenge me on this, I couldn't possibly defend it by saying: "It's the objective truth." Instead, I'd need to defend it by arguing why both perks are fine and explain why any extremes are either too niche to be considered in the grand scheme of things or aren't as bad as they may seem. There are things in this World, that can't be defined by any norm. So we can't get any number values to explain the strength of different perks and compare them.