Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance Rework Idea
This perk far outclasses every other slowdown perk hence why it's the most used killer perk in the game by a long shot. Being able to take 25% off without actually having to traverse the map for it is huge which is why this is always the main slowdown perk of choice. There's massive upsides with little to no downsides and it compliments tunneling well as 25% loss of progress is much harder to deal with when there's only 3 survivors in the game. There's literally no reason not to run this perk. It does everything every other perk can do but 12x better. Therefore I propose the following to bring Pain Res down to a more reasonable level.
-Hooking a survivor on a Scourge Hook will only take 15% off the most progressed gen instead of 25%
Because 25% loss of progress is just too much for a perk that doesn't require you to actually go find the most progressed gen yourself especially when you don't have to spread out hooks in order to get value from the perk which I feel is what the token system was intended to do. It should go back to 15% so it'll remain more in line with other perks.
-You will regain all your tokens as soon as all 4 of your tokens have been consumed.
Since each individual Pain Res hook won't be as powerful as before, the killer should have the option to keep taking progress off of gens throughout the match. The token system will still work out quite nicely to prevent Pain Res from being used with tunneling play styles as if the killer wants to be able to keep taking progress off of gens, they'll have to spread their hooks among each survivor before they're able to get another Scourge Hook off of the same survivor.
-Pain Res will deactivate for the remainder of the trial and lose any of its remaining tokens once any survivor is killed or sacrificed by any means.
Most importantly, this stipulation will heavily prevent Pain Res from being used with tunneling play styles and will instead punish those who choose to hard tunnel one survivor out of the game as they'll no longer be able to use Pain Res anymore. Even without tunneling in mind, I still feel this clause is necessary as there's no reason the killer should be able to continue taking progress off of gens in a 3v1 as they've already acquired enough pressure with a kill and being able to continue exploding gens with the perk would simply be overkill.
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below and thanks for reading.
Comments
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Maybe not worst idea in a world where Scourge Hooks are not extremely RNG dependent and Distortion isn't endless so killers actually can find other survivors one by one.
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The perk only activates 4 times (at most) per match, tokens can be utterly wasted by triggering on a gen below 25% progress, every other regression perks (and non-regression kick perks) took a serious blow ever since 7.5.0 and are arguably not worth using when climbing the MMR ladder due to them possibly backfiring in late-game if Survivors don't go down easy. Simply making the anti-3-gen mechanic kick-in after the 4th gen is done would basically make those issues manageable while only punishing Killers holding a 3-gen at the end.
I don't like the Pain Res, Pop, Grim Embrace, DMS and tunnelling meta we currently deal with (imo the game was at it's most stable from 6.1.0 until before 7.5.0 except for a few bumps) but it's understandable given the slowdown needed when going against good Survivors. Combined with the STBFL and upcoming Sloppy nerf then weaker/M1 Killers need to compensate somehow. The limited regression events simply make Pain Res the logical choice as it offers the best regression for a single activation which mitigates the risk of running low on regression events too early.
I honestly believe Pain Res should never have been changed in the first place, 15% per uses was fine, at most it should have made Scourge Hook change locations every time someone got unhooked from a Scourge Hook to prevent "Hook recycling" by campers.
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If it stops being scourge perk, then sure. But the fact that RNG can easily stop your cycle would feel so bad.
This perk far outclasses every other slowdown perk
Could be simply fixed by buffing other slowdown perks, because most of them are just trash now, which I see as a bigger issue.
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SWF will work together to prevent the fourth onhooked. 3gen systems will have more negative effects.
The idea itself isn't bad, but it's too weak.
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Pain Res isn’t too strong. The other slow downs are too weak. You’re going at this from the wrong end.
The game is balanced around running strong gen slowdowns so we can’t just heavily nerf them all without in tandem lowering their need, but most people don’t care about that. All they want is slow downs nerfed full stop, nothing else.
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Problem with buffing other slowdowns is that it doesn't create more variety. It just makes the meta builds even stronger since people will just stack all the Pain Res level slowdown together in one package resulting in very oppressive builds that will make gens almost impossible to complete. Doesn't mean I don't think other options shouldn't be introduced, but I think there needs to a bit of both (nerfs to the best perks, buffs to the weaker ones) in order to try to create variety. (But in all honesty, I don't think there'll ever be true variety in this game as long as slowdown perks continue to outclass every other perk available.)
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Are you new to dbd? 15% regression? Deactivate when a survivor is killed? Did you not see what happened to ruin how they gutted the perk for a year from that?
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If that's the case, what Killer needs instead are perks to bring survivors down quickly, perks to inhibit healing, and perks to accelerate hook progression.
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It is fun to watch that Survivor main complain about everything leading to tunneling, while it actually discourages.😂
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yeah it isnt too strong. it just adds a 6th generator to complete in the match. i mean.. not so strong tbh
funny how it incentive killers to proxy camp and tunnel especially if you pair it with pop.
you know whats a healthy and balanced slowdown perks? DEAD LOCK. NO WAY OUT.
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I don’t see an issue with it adding a 6th generator basically. You’re also only getting that if you play fairly spreading hooks and get lucky on scourge hook spawns. If you’re gonna stretch to say it encourages camping/tunneling then you could stretch it to say that about any perk. This is hyperbolic.
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you don't see an issue adding a 6th generator of course why would you? but i assume you had an issue with survivors having a third health state back in the day with old dead hard no? its literally the same thing.
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No it's different. Killer can equip one Pain Resonance, while 4 survivors can equip 4 Dead Hard. Current Pain Res can only activate 4 times, but old Dead Hard could be used permanently in theory.
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That’s a very narrow way of looking at it and assuming a lot of me. I care about game balance. At the top level a “situational” (which you seem to be ignoring entirely) 6th gen is not an issue. Even with Pain Res the balance is skewed towards survivors at that level. If you have this opinion based on low level play where it’s skewed towards killers then I can understand your view point. However I care about the most objectively balance we can get to, which is when it’s actually good vs good players. Which is why my opinions are focused around high level play, not low level play.
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slowdown perks continue to outclass every other perk available
They don't outclass, they do something else. What you need changes based on specific killer.
That's like saying WoO outclass every other perk for survivors. It doesn't make sense.
Currently most slowdown perks are simply bad. If they introduce buffs to most slowdown perks, then I don't mind nerf to pop / pain res, but I don't think they should be nerfed right now, simply because of lack of alternatives.
Last good slowdown perk is pain resonance, that's a long time ago...
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one concern i have currently in the game is that killer has low perk variety because they're forced to run perks to reward them for being successful. at one point, i remember in 6.1.0 that they said that game-delay perks should be optional and killer should not need to use them to compete as killer.
Fast-forward to today and my killer build are still... game-delay.
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Yup basically.
They refuse to slow the game down so the requirement on slow down perks never changes. If you think about how much extra gen time gets added by those slow down perks it makes you realize the ridiculous amount they’d have to slow the gens down to make them unnecessary..like we’re talking extra entire gens worths lol. Let’s be honest, that’s never happening unfortunately. We’d be lucky if they added 10 seconds even, much less how much is necessary.
Now realistically the main issue is map design and how little 1v4 pressure most killers can exert rather than actual gen time. So this issue could be tackled in multiple different ways.
That’s one thing I enjoy more on survivor. Perk optionally. I feel like I have the room to run fun builds and just whatever I feel like, while still winning plenty. You don’t have that option on killer. Most your builds are generally locked if you want to win. You don’t have room for fun builds unless you stop caring about winning or you happen to get a really chill group.
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you can't find a single survivor without their aura being revealed to you by your perks?
idk seems like a very unrelated problem or answer to what OP is talking about.
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no it's different. killers can equip one pain resonance and be guaranteed to have value from it. now i know its range based but i've never ever seen a killer not get value from it and personally from what i've seen most pain res hooks are spawning in the middle now.
while old dead hard was and still is 0.5 sec and can be easily baited. although i know that short window when you can use it on a pallet and most killer players have no choice. but thats skill & not every survivor can do it. plus it was still counter able and a killer main " scott jund " showcased it.
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"at the top level" yeah which is 10% of the player base. do you even know that most dbd players are casuals and a lot play solo? balance decisions should not be around " top level " because top level is broken and always will be. do you watch tournaments? "top level" killer vs top level survivors and THE NURSE always wins not even with 4 slowdowns. a top level killer who plays ghostface got a 3K on the best team "elysuim" in the world right now.
few days ago on the 2 best teams faced off and on the nurse set Nurse 3-4K every match. did you even see the showcase that Otz showed? about a wraith main who says he 4K every match while also being afk at the start of the match? and when he faced the best team in the world yea he lost, but after a long boring 30min match.
i've always said it and will say it again. slowdown perks need to be removed from the game "except corrupt". make Dead lock base kit, No Way Out base kit. and run 3 good chase perks.
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big guy if they made gens 140seconds to complete for example. everyone would still run Pain res and pop. let's not lie here please.
i still remember how every killer played legion or plague after the shack up in 2022 when they gave killer base kit buffs and made gens 90seconds. everyone played legion with thanatophobia who at the time made gens 120second and 3 slowdowns on top. were you there around that time?
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The tournament is a one-shot match. That's not always the result. Generally speaking, this game tends to be a one-sided match where either the killer or the survivor wins, so it's better to examine multiple matches as a whole. I also wonder if you took tournament regulations into consideration.
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I actually don’t think they would since if they hypothetically did what I was talking about I would also want extreme nerfs to all gen slow down perks. I absolutely would not want them left as is.
I’ve been around since near release and over 10k hours so I remember then. That old Legion or Plague with Thana was not an issue at all though. People had placebo effect hate from seeing a red bar.
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I disagree. Comp matches are a joke not because of top level being bad it’s because of what is made to be the best play style and poor balancing. Trying to call Ghostface good because he can camp and tunnel someone out from start to finish isn’t accurate. We see what’s actually balanced when a game is played normally. Nurse is irrelevant to mention as she ignores fundamental game mechanics.
When you balance for top level it actually doesn’t effect lower as mmr will simply lower your invisible rating until you’re winning/losing just as much as you were before, but now the higher level would actually be more balanced.
I have nearly the same hours as Otz so I understand the game quite well. Anecdotal games don’t change the general rules. Nurse is an exception to all rules and should be ignored in game balance conversations.
I want the game balanced around no tunneling/camping where a 12 hook game is feasible without slow down perks stacked. If the game was slowed down like that all those perks could be gutted.
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Slowdown Perks are a necessary evil, that have been around since the start of the game. Despite all changes, gens fly by really fast and its difficult to deal with an organized team. Pain Res is really strong to this day don't get me wrong, however limiting it to 4 times is something that is needed, its way better then just infinite -15% for being near a hook. Current pain res punishes tunneling, and rewards targeting many survivors.
Most well designed slow down perks reward you for doing something you should do, which is good! perks like Pain Res, and Pop reward you for doing your job well with more slowdown, eruption exploding on down. While weaker perks (Except deadlock) Grant it to you for free, but aren't that good (Overcharge, CoB) More perks need to reward being good, with slowdown, so you have more room to be good, however old Pain Res was too strong, although it did reward you for doing well, it rewarded you too much, and combined with DMS it was brutal.
Survivors get rewarded for playing well because of this. If a survivor loops a killer for a while, they deny the killer their perks, and give time for teammates to work on gens without any disruption. (This is also why Deadlock should be earned, not free)
A good change to "Nerf" Pain res is to change DMS to only work on letting go of the gen, willingly, and then increasing the time back to 45 seconds. That way it can fix some nasty combos, while not killing both perks.
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You are joking if you think it wasn't an issue. we still get red bars and its fine. 120-140 seconds gens were INSANE
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I disagree with this change since pain res is most effective on killers who can't traverse the map as fast or as well as others and it creates a dynamic of if one survivor hides the perk only gives 1/2 the value it currently does which incentivizes a bad gameplay loop for the killer because the survivors don't give them much of a choice
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I would agree my friend 💯
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BALANCE IS BORING. it's what making people quit dbd more than ever right now. nobody wanna do gens for over 120 seconds. have weaker loops and 6 pallets total on every map. chaotic is what made dbd fun for everyone. busted perks and mechanics is what made the game very engaging.
being able to Mori someone after their first hook. " survivors are scared and trying to avoid that "
unbalanced maps. going to old haddonfield as killer was challenging knowing you have to do your best to compete. next match you get midwich and the coin flips survivors have to try their best.
escaping through hatch when one survivors dies and 1 gen left " different objective " which people want since years.
things like this is what made me and many others love DBD. not the current state with people just racing with time by just sitting at gens because knowing the survivor that being chased are going down no matter how good their looping is. ITS BORING.
i personally would remove base kit BT because that was also something fun questioning:
" did they bring BT ? "
" please don't farm me off hook "
" i should bring DS in case my teammate not gonna bring BT "
etc.
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...for hooking each survivor individually. How does that encourage proxy and tunneling exactly? Especially when paired with a pop, a perk that literally does nothing if you dont leave the hook. Also no way out isnt a slowdown perk, its endgame. I'd rather see deadlock changed since you get value for doing literally nothing.
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Balance is not boring. I’ve seen zero reason to think that. Also, none of those things you mentioned are what I’m asking for so that’s strawmanning or just hyperbolic.
Balancing moris was not making it boring, it was fixing unbalanced stuff.
Comparing old Haddonfield to Midwhich is a joke. Midwich is a more killer sided map but very easily winnable on survivor. Old Haddonfield was not just more survivor sided…it was you’re losing as killer unless the survivors are just really bad. Those maps are not even remotely comparable. Fixing this was not making the game more boring.
Escaping through a hatch early when losing isn’t a different objective, it’s a free pity escape. Fixing this was not making it boring.
Going down no matter how good their looping is, is just factually false. Most the issues with current dbd have nothing to with any of the things you’ve mentioned.
I don’t feel like fixing any of the things you’ve mentioned here made the game less fun, at all.
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It really wasn’t and you’re exaggerating on those numbers.
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with new sloppy nerf, I wish they bring back thanatophobia with -5% healing per stack. new mangled debuff will expire or improve nurse calling. who knows, maybe rework twins is strong with mangled or something so preemptive changes.
Post edited by Devil_hit11 on1 -
Well I’d personally rather them return Thana to its old stronger form on gen slow down rather than having it effect healing again. Keeps it with more clearly defined strengths and weaknesses.
Sloppy nerf itself just makes no sense. Not even something needing a nerf. They wonder why we all just stack the same gen slow downs when they nerf all the other options out of usefulness. We’re just using the only good things left. They keep the pool of actually decent perks so small and just changing the few perks in it rather than continuously adding more to increase diversity.
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i prefer -healing. in their mangled update, they also weakened gift of pain. a perk genre that i wish was stronger in dbd for killer is exposed genre. there is no good expose perks besides devour hope which for me get cleansed after 1 down or hex:haunted grounds. sloppy was only perks for an exposed related play-style through anti-healing.
that is why i miss thanatophobia. it was good gen defence perk while being good for fishing 1 hits downs. sloppy filled that minor niche.
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Yeah it’s too bad, Sloppy will be dead if the changes go through.
Wild to see Gift of Pain nerfed as well, I already thought it was trash before.
DH is probably the only okay exposed perk and it’s honestly too rng for me. It will do nothing on most matches but the one it stays up it will win it for you.
I always thought Haunted Grounds was trash and I still do. One of those way overhyped perks to me. If both totems stayed up, not just one, then maybe I’d consider it alright. Maybe.
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Hex:Haunted ground for me is most consistent expose perk. I nearly always trigger it when running devour hope. You get even more odds if undying is used. I get like 1-2 downs of haunted ground per game but it is not worth it because you like... lose most your entire build.... leading to perkless-type gameplay..
Other options are not good.
Iron maiden is crap
Starstruck is too short of duration
Dragon grip has too long of cooldown and activation time is a joke.
Friend till end is too short duration.
Make your choice is too predictable and it creates false sense of security to purposely proxy camp in admiration of a reward. I prefer playing offensive and this perk makes me play defensive. Survivors will often like delay unhooks when you get value out of it.
Hubris requires you to run enduring spirit fury and I hate using enduring spirit fury. waste of perks slots.
Rancor & Noed are end game perks so they're not good for building pressure in mid game.
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Yeah I agree. This kind of illustrates why everyone runs the same perks, most the others are just so bad.
When it comes down to it dbd is all about time management. The perks that give you the most time back are the ones you pick and in almost all cases that’s just gen slow down perks bar a few exceptions.
Like if I’m going to run a chase perk for example it needs to save me more than I’d save just running another slow down. However most are tuned so low that they do not.
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for me to select an instant down perk, it has to give around 4 instant downs per game. none of those are going give me 4 instant downs consistently. sloppy butcher is only perk that allowed you to do that because in many instances, you could chain down hook survivors and prevent them from healing leading to many instant down's. haunted ground is closest out of those but your more likely to get 1 or 2 downs.
that is what it needs to compete with game-delay and it is not there at all.
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Yeah 4 down sounds about right. Less than that isn’t providing equivalent to another slow down.
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right. thats why when they started " FIXING " these stuff they are losing players.
right. midwich and old haddonfield are not compare able i agree. but if i wanna be like you i'd say versing a nurse or a blight "good killers you know, same concept of versing good survivors on haddonfield" on midwich is gg right? on the flip side old freddy and blight used to be able to win on haddonfield.
balance is boring. balanced DBD is like racing with time, you either do GENS 1 second after the match starts. or you simply die because you won't have resources to use ;)
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nope. gens used to take around 120/140 seconds if you play legion with thana and penti after the meta shack up in 2022.
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You’re confusing correlation with causation. Them losing players does not mean your reason is why just because that also happened. Ice cream sales go up in the summer and so does crime. Does that mean ice cream sales are causing increases in crime? Of course not, it’s correlation. We shouldn’t draw conclusions so quickly from things matching up.
Your comparison of nurse and blight to Haddonfield only works if I didn’t also want changes to those killers as well. Which I do.
You’re equating fun to having imbalanced things. Maybe that’s you personally but is not objective as obviously fun is subjective. I find balance more fun as fun for me is winning or losing based on my skill, not winning or losing because of balance problems.
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Oh well now you’re also combining penti into it as well, which is easily removable or ignored depending how the team wants to play it. Penti also requires the killer to actually play well, it’s not free. Do you think stacking those was more gen slow down overall then the meta we have now of stacking the other gen regression perks or gen blocking perks? I’d argue at best it’s the same if not worse than what we have now. Also the best case scenario with something like Legion is kind of balanced out by the fact of Legion being bad in general. Most killers aren’t that effective at keeping the entire roster permanently injured and is also them committing to spreading pressure rather than tunneling, so it’s asking them to play more fair, which is handicapping them in itself.
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