Better Than New: Give it a new niche!
Preamble (Skip to Rework below for TLDR)
After all the buffs on various other healing perks, of the healing perks in the game Better Than New is just laughably useless... even if you made the effect permanent instead of losing it on getting injured, it'd still be a very poor perk...
While looking at medkits the other day, I realised one thing we actually lack is a proper incentive to actually use medkits altruistically... the ability to self heal is so strong that no-one bothers using them to heal allies...
Lore
The perk is a reference to Rebecca being a heal station for Chris in RE1 (I've only played RE1, so if that's not the case I do apologise).
In any case, in the RE world its a sort of amusing detail we have to ignore the fact that Rebecca has a seemingly infinite set of supplies to keep healing us, and we're left wondering why we can't fill just our pockets (it's cause that'd break the game doofus). So gameplaywise this makes sense, but narrative wise we have to smirk and move on.
In any case I bring this up, because having Better Than New somewhat emulate this effect would be an interesting niche for the perk.
Rework Suggestion
Better Than New
You are an expert in combat medicine. Patients leave your care invigorated.
When using your Medkit for altruistic healing:
- Increases your Medkit healing efficiency by 25/50/75%.
Completing a Healing action on another Survivor grants them the following benefits until they are next hooked:
- Increases their Action speeds for Blessing, Cleansing, Healing, Unlocking by 15/20/25%.
Notes/Maths
The number 75% has been carefully chosen for the sake of heals to allies, heals to self (remember you need 24 charges to heal yourself), and accounting for Streetwise/Botany Knowledge: -
- You take 9.143 charges to heal an ally.
- Bandages/Self Adherent Wrap (+8 charges addon) - You get ~2.6 heals on allies with a medkit, or 1 heal with 14.857 charges left.
- Gauze Roll (+10 charges addon) - You get ~2.8 heals on allies with a medkit or 1 heal with 16.857 charges left.
- Gel Dressings (+16 charges add-on) - You get ~3.5 heals on allies with a medkit, or 1 heal with 21.857 charges left.
- You take 8 charges to heal an ally with Streetwise.
- You take 19.104 charges to heal yourself with a medkit using Streetwise (I believe, not 100% sure)
- Gel Dressings With Streetwise - You get 4 heals with a medkit, or 1 heal with 24 charges left.
- Max Charge addons With Streetwise - You get ~5.2 heals with a medkit or 2 heals with 26 charges left.
Formula to calculate the resulting Item Efficiency for stacked effects:
(1 - 'Penalty converted to decimal') * (1 + 'Bonus converted to decimal')
It should be noted that the effect of Streetwise/Better Than New is applied on top of the already penalised Item Efficiency inflicted by Botany Knowledge, so Botany Knowledge hurts the efficiency gain of the efficiency perks as well as the base Penalty. Thus:
- With Botany Knowledge you take 11.428 charges to heal an ally.
- Bandages/Self Adherent Wrap with Botany Knowledge - You get ~2.2 heals on allies with a medkit, or 1 heal with 12.572 charges left.
- With Botany Knowledge and Streetwise you take 10 charges to heal an ally.
- With BK and SW, and max charge add-ons (+26 charges) - You get 3.6 heals with a medkit, 2 heals with 22 charges left over or 1 heal with 32 charges left over.
Conclusion
If you're fully investing in Better Than New, Botany Knowledge and Streetwise, with max/near max charge medkit add-ons to be able heal an ally and yourself 1 time a piece, this all seems fair to me for an altruistic healing bulld.
Comments
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It's definitely an improvement. But I'm not really sure what you could do to make the perk even moderately popular. Maybe all three stats could get buffed to 50% for a minute? I don't know. The perk just feels really pointless.
Chest opening speed buffs suck. Totem cleansing speed buffs suck almost as much. Healing speed increases are useful, but it's eclipsed by other perks.
Maybe it needs some other effect added to it. Like making healed survivors exhaustion recover faster for a limited time? Like an altruistic but weaker version of vigil?
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Thats fair, I was tempted to add something else, but I got a bit lost in maths world and was a little concerned about overstacking it. 😅
Status recovery would be a nice buff, maybe 20%?
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That's a neat idea actually.
I personally want to see Better Than New give 50% Action Speed Bonus though, it'd be like a portable temporary Leader you could give that's twice as effective.
The altruistic medkit healing I like, though, it's an underused mechanic overall.
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i think it would be better if it just gave 5% repair bonus, 10% vaulting speed and 50% altruistic healing speed after completing a heal on healed survivor.
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I attempted to read the math. Unfortunately I was hungover, so I quickly gave up.
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My idea with it was to give +X seconds onto the next hook timer of the healed survivor in addition to the current effects. I still like that one a lot.
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RE is an actiony game.
Better than New buffs non-actiony things.
Maybe make it so that It helps the person the next time they're in chase?
Better than new:
After healing a survivor, or yourself (with a med-kit specifically?), the next time they are Injured they leave blood less frequently (or no blood pools) and have reduced Grunts of pain (75% reduction) for the next 6/7/8s.
(This could also start/be part of a line of Item amplification perks similar to Light's Champion)
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It definitely needs something added to it. 16% boost to totems, chests and healing is abysmal. The devs could make those buffs permanent and still nobody would run the perk.
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I'd love OPs changes to this perk, I love bringing medkits to help with healing others <3
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Ahahahaha, fair.
The main highlights were: -
- A basic medkit you get more than 2 heals for allies.
- Gel dressings gives you more than 3 heals for allies.
- Max charge addons gives you more than 4 heals for allies.
- Max charge addons and Streetwise gives you 5 heals for allies.
- You need at minimum gel dressings (or the 2 +8 add-ons) to heal an ally and still have enough for yourself.
- You still get 2 heals with Botany Knowledge.
- Max charge addons, Streetwise and Botany Knowledge gives you 2 heals for allies and 1 heal leftover for yourself.
Basically the more charges you have the tastier it gets on this perk.
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Its stats are abysmal and its doesnt do enough. It should be after healing: survivor gets a 50% bonus to unhooking, healing, cleansing, blessing, opening a chest, and opening the exit gate. This perk probably still wouldnt be relevant too
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