The STBFL is actually awful. Here my suggestion.

Are you sure about those?

Right now it should just be Basic Attack and Special Attack, not any power use. Pinhead's Possessed Chain isn't a Special Attack, and nor is Doctor's Static Shock, but the Knight's guards and Skull Merchant's drones are.

Have you tested these to make sure that the powers you're referring to actually cause token loss?

STBFL has been widely used as a perk for mid-tier and higher-tier killers to shorten the chase time, but this update has made it useless. Let's all practice being nurses quietly.

So, can confirm the following removes tokens (this is not everything but just some of the more interesting ones):

-Pinhead possessed chain hits (even without Engineer’s Fang)

-Deathslinger shot (regardless of if damage is dealt or not; the follow-up M1 also takes 2 tokens for a total of 4)

-Trickster knives (2 stacks per knife)

-Nemesis tentacle strike (even if it doesn’t cause damage)

-Artist crows, even if not causing damage

-Artist crows spreading to the obsession when using Severed Hands

-Wesker slamming a survivor into a wall

The following list of attacks/injuries do NOT remove STBFL tokens:

-Trapper traps + Bloody Coil addon

-Pig addons that cause injuries/deep wounds for missed skill checks on jigsaw boxes

-Vile Purge (Corrupt Purge does remove tokens though)

-Breaking the chain off as Slinger causing injury and/or deep wound (the shot itself still costs 2 tokens though)

-Zombies

-Dredge locker grabs (when teleporting to an occupied locker)

-Wesker throwing a survivor into a wall/object causing damage (strange that this one doesn’t count, it probably should)

-Knight guards

-Skull Merchant drones

Yeah I remember that Blood Favor PTB, lol. That didn’t last long.

The issue is with Blood Favor it was an easy fix because they could just make it health state based instead and that was fine. With STBFL that isn’t really fair either since then the obsession can remove stacks on their own volition with certain perks without really putting themselves in danger. Ideally, they find a way to make it so that all killer power injuries remove stacks while preventing stuff like individual Trickster knives from doing so.

The STBFL change is going the wrong direction and now encourages tunnelling further while not fixing the only issues with the perk. It goes against everything that should be wanted out of a chase perk.

STBFL is one of the handful of perks that weaker/M1 Killers can use effectively but that Nurse and Blight can barely use (due to 90% of their attacks being M2, if a Blight or Nurse go out of their way to preserve/gain stacks then they are actively handicapping themselves, even Wesker is actively losing slowdown and chase power if going for M1 during chases for the sake of stacks) which is a good thing.

What can be unhealthy however is it's camping and tunnelling potential when going over 5 stacks. As it was, a Killer with 5+ stacks, if the rescuer and hooked Survivor are NOT the obsession, can hit the rescuer and recover quickly enough to not only force a trade but also might be able to land a hit on the basekit BT before the unhooked gets far.

If the Obsession goes for the save, the Killer effectively has no reason to attack the obsession after the unhook unless they have an M2 attack (which is slower most of the time and gives enough time for the rescued Survivor to leave). Unless the Killer player goes out of their way to tunnel, using an M2 usually is too slow to risk going on a potentially long chase (this is especially true when climbing the MMR ladder where every seconds count). With the current version, the Killer has no incentive to not tunnel as M2 attacks don't make a difference and the perk needs more stacks.

The current "healthiest" scenario is when the Obsession is the one hooked since the Killer has no reason to tunnel as they would lose stacks, however this encourages proxy-camping and will often lead to an unavoidable trade when going past 5+ stacks. This is the closest to healthy gameplay in a STBFL camping scenario (not exactly healthy but common).

By making both M1 and M2 lose 2 stacks when hitting the Obsession, it encourages the Killer to ignore the Obsession completely (making the game rather boring for the Obsession) and instead hard-tunnel when punishing an unsafe unhook to gain/preserve stacks.

The new version of the perk actually encourages tunnelling and camping more than before since any encounter with the obsession will likely take away 4 stacks (or more depending on the Killer). Not to mention that without the coordination of a SWF, there is a good chance that the Obsession won't even be aware of STBFL or even have the initiative/courage to throw themselves at the Killer.

A healthy change could be the following;

When within 10 meters from a hooked Survivor (distance can be tweaked), Save The Best For Last deactivates. The bonus recovery speed does not trigger and no stacks are gained if hitting an unhooked Survivor still affected by Endurance (or within 15 seconds, that's a decent starting point). Everything else should have stayed the same as the previous version.

This change would keep all the good from the perk (good chase perk for weaker/M1 Killers, average for the powerhouses, mitigates Endurance hits unless the Obsession gets in the way but the Killer has options to avoid losing stacks that are in their control alongside a mean to not tunnel) while fixing the bad (too powerful when camping and making attacking Survivors off the hook appealing).

The change is just making the perk much weaker for weaker Killers while not bothering stronger Killers while at the same time making tunnelling and camping more appealing than before. It's everything that could be wrong with a perk.

It's the same logic as PWYF.

Curiously Engineers Fang from Pinhead doesn't count for losing stacks, but regular chains does.

So any of the above you have listed don't constitute bugs, it was known when the change was made. So the real talking point is for both PWYF and STBFL, what should be on the list and what shouldn't be? What would you call a "special attack"?

Personally I would say Trapper traps shouldn't be considered a "special attack", as Trapper didnt attack the survivor. Plague bile shouldn't either because the vomit itself doesn't damage the survivor, its the infection it caused.

Deathslinger spear should, because it is an attack, as is Nemesis Tentacle and Trickster Knives, though wounding hits is more intuitive. Pinhead logic should be reversed in my mind.... by these are things you can call "attacks", and STBFL basically is saying "leave the obsession alone".

Pinheads chain was changed to be counted as a special attack because of the add-on Engineer Fang not removing token's from Play With Your Food. It was a rather lazy way to go aabout it, instead of making Engineer's Fang making it count as a special attack instead, so now you can't even use PWYF with Pinhead when not using the add-on.

Knight should be losing tokens with his guards, as they fall under the same rule for PYWF, which was a very weird decision as it wasn't abusable, unlike Engineer Fang + PWYF. Skull Merchant you can argue isn't a special attack, but thats a discussion for another time.