Changing Kindred

I don't think that's a controversial take at all, in fact, I've seen it numerous times over my years on this forum. I completely agree, too. I hate that an added downside of solo queue is that I have to sacrifice some of my perk slots for must-have things like Kindred or Bond or play without them but feel at a serious disadvantage.

I used to think Kindred basekit was absolutely necessary, but I've found the addition of survivor icons has fixed most problems that used to come with blind unhooking, and that it generally handles itself nowadays. It's only baby players who don't understand that two people on a gen and one person being chased means that someone needs to get off the gen and go for the unhook. Or gen rushers, or partial SWF who don't care about anyone outside their SWF, or hatch hunters who are waiting for everyone else to die. And those are all players whom giving more information doesn't change anything. They wouldn't help you anyway. The only time I see the current model fail when Kindred would have helped, is when you have a player that's wasting time hiding or AFK, and the other two think the person with the blank icon must be going for the unhook until it's too late. Which is very annoying, but it isn't that common.

To be clear, I'm not opposed to it as long as the killer aura is removed from the perk, but I don't think it's needed either.

Here is the deal if your playing a SWF team they already have equiv of Kindred and Bond up at all times. Solo Q players need the same footing to not just benefit them but we get a better read on what killers need for updates.

i also don't think that corrupt is the way. i think buffing base regression so that kicking is more rewarding like 150%-200% is more logical. i don't feel like early game is that bad for killer. what i do feel is that i can't keep map presence on majority of killers because my ability regress is non-existent. it is just hook rush vs gen-rush game that favor's survivors. Of course survivor need to be good at chase for it to favor them but i have to massively outpace, outplay my opponent as killer to remotely keep up.

survivor can make ton of looping mistakes, gameplay errors and still put a ton of pressure on killer. i feel like killer play should be a little bit more impactful on outcome of gen pressure.

Deal, that is extremely fair.
I main Pig, i'm losing either way 😅

i don't really use bond in swf. the perk will help soloq more than swf especially at medium levels. At medium level of survivor, saving a survivor from the hook in the end game vs m1 killer is so poor. it is ridiculously for how many people die in end game because of their poor coordination.

a big part of why soloq does gens so slowly is because they don't loop in correct places when other people are doing gens. it gives killer free generator defence. I also think that healing is not nearly as optimized in soloq as it could be creating unnecessary attachment to med-kits.

high-level swf already bodyblock without needing it. it is more that soloq becomes able to bodyblock. My position on bodyblocking remains the same. decreasing the cooldown of basic attacks+reducing survivor sprint burst is my suggest change to lowering the potency of that.

if healing become too weak, than maybe make healing 12 seconds but slightly buff anti-heal perks like mangled being 30% instead of 20%. Maybe they'll revert thanatophobia to apply towards healing like before.

If this is your example you want improved, than kindred is doing way better job at this anyway. You know, survivor on hook....

that is just an example. there is many other cases of survivor playing poorly due to lack of aura.

Either way, just show where other survivors are for everyone, and even killers with range of 4-8meter around hooked person, go wild and do everything

but swf already gets "win-more" effect at good level. why does soloq need run perk taxes to be as good as swf? a top-level soloq player should have same chances to win as top-level swf. this makes survivor much easier to balance.

Funny you want something basekit and counterplay against the issue it creates it on perks...

In my ideal version, i would attempt to make m1 killer less perk dependant by giving them -20% successful cooldown and a reduction of speed boost to 1.5 from 1.8. STBFL would be weakened to 2% per stack.

One could argue that perhaps healing would not be as enjoyable with less speed, so i am suggesting that to reduce healing time from 16→12. In order to keep anti-heal perks somewhat relevant, mangled would be increased from 20→30% which is 15 second heal and thanatophobia would apply to healing at 5%. at max stacks, it would be 21.25 second heal which a little bit more then current mangled.

I don't know about mangled timer. i don't think this is good change i am not going to judge. this is sort of different topic altogether.

If perks are fine as "fix" then just use Bond if you want it so much.

I do use it. I just don't think it is healthy for soloq to be running Bond and Window of opportunity in the meta because it restricts any perk variety for 80% of soloq player-base. It is same thing with killers and the game-delay perks. there should be better base-kit game-delay for killer so that killer rely less on them. I am completely fine if they even weaken slowdown perks by like halving their numbers. the thing is, i don't think they need weaken slowdown perks because survivor technically have game progression perks.

For the record, aura is stronger than comms because the information it gives is more precise than what people can usually call out - it requires four people with thorough knowledge of every map to be able to accurately communicate their locations and where they're heading to be able to equal Bond or Kindred.

But at the same time, general location of teammates is definitely one of those solo-SWF gaps, and it's one that hasn't already been addressed like Kindred has (others that need address, imo, are chat wheel/being able to call out your intentions, shared map knowledge re: traps and totems, and knowledge of each other's perks.)

I think my main fear regarding basekit Bond is that there's another difference between solo and SWF players that no amount of basekit buffs will ever change. SWF players are a team that like each other, and when they do sandbag, it's usually playful. Solos are a mixed bag. Most players want to help their team and play well, but you also get players who are selfish or just stupid and will use Bond's information to do the exact same thing that it's meant to avoid - dump the killer on their teammates on gens so that they can get away, at the expense of their teammates' lives and the survivor objective being able to progress. And I think this would be especially bad in low MMR, in the area before survivors have developed any game sense, but selfish players will always be an issue. Which isn't a reason not to do it, but I don't think it would solve the underlying problem as much as people think it would. Part of the issue with solo is always going to be that the players simply don't have the same goals.