Is Treacherous Crows the new worst perk in the game?

Oh dear lord

The effect looks pretty damn good, though it may not be worth the channel time + Broken downside.

Definitely not the worst in the game, but it might need tweaking. I'm actually curious to test this one.

I can't wait for the release of two more invocation perks so we can stack them together to at least justify essentially killing ourselves for using our perks.

Imagine the killer having to give the survivors a whole hook state back after a 60 second channel just to regress all gens 10% and have a weaker version of spies from the shadows. Wouldn't that be some awesome perk design.

Oh, no. I am an Invocation enthusiast, and yet I can’t see how is this perk not a detriment.

So, throwing out a rework right now, because the perk is garbage

The perk has a small reward, and a big risk.

So, first thing: remove the broken, this one will not break the game devs, it’ll be fine. Instead, you are permanently Blind, with the exception of auras revealed by crows.

And second: Make the duration 2/3/4 seconds.

Yes, it is. Hands down.

I don't think it's that bad. Sure, having to do an invocation to this doesn't help, but according to the description, EVERY survivor gets the effect when you complete it.

And killers usually never bother paying atention to the crows they are scaring off themselves, they are usually a tool for the killers to locate survivors and not the opposite. Finally, an AURA READING perk is far better than the notification from Spies from the Shadows (which is already an underrated perk in my opinion, it works well on the right map), because it shows you a more precise position and the direction the killer is going. At worse, it can tell you which direction the killer is coming from when there is no line of sight. At best, it can tell you the direction they are going on certain loops and allow you to avoid a mindgame.

Sure, having one survivor broken because of it sucks, but it's far from useless.

To be fair, based on the description, the survivor does not need to be in chase, just in the terror radius, and one activation of the invocation means everyone benefits. I've not been on the PTB yet, is any of that inaccurate?

I've seen some people say you can't stack it with Weaving Spiders though and that seems flat out like an oversight, they should obviously be the same interaction like boons.

All of the new survivor perks are garbage and so far I guess innovation perks are met to be killer perks . Gonna be funny seeing none of them used unless aiming for adept. The characters are so gaudy jesus ill go as far as to say even skull merchant looks better design wise.

Yes, this is bad, very very bad. I'd argue worse then No Mither since you have to waste 60 seconds to become broken for basically zero effect.

I think it might be better making it a chase perk instead; reveal the killers aura periodically every few seconds or so when someone is in a chase.

If they want to keep it similar it should be in general whenever a killer spooks a crow their aura is revealed, no TR needed. Still not good but at least it gets rid of the TR requirement.

Edit: Even better, make it so it bypass's undetectable. Now you have an interesting perk

That's still kind of bizarre, I feel like they should be the same interaction for both invocations. Definitely something that should be fixed, imo.

I like the idea of Invocations. Maybe they can drop the broken status? I’d be okay with that. Even as a Killer main.

agreed my fellow killer main

maybe just a temporary exposure or broken status y'know to add a lil debuff other than just being in basement, like 20 seconds?

Personally I would like to at least see them as-is minus the broken part. But I’m also willing to experiment to see what works and what doesn’t. I like that the penalty to Invocations is time itself. I would even like to see slight buffs to their effects if it means increasing casting time.

But I’m also willing to compromise and try just making it a temporary debuff like you mentioned. The only problem is that even with the slight debuff they still might not be worth it.

The idea is so cool, there just has to be a way of making them work. I saw someone mention that the Invocations don’t stack? What?

I love the horror genre, it’s why I prefer Killer but supernatural stuff is also part of horror. And the Invocation aspect of the game from a horror theme pov is so insanely cool. It’s so sad that the gameplay part of it makes the story part of it suffer.

I get the idea of being cautious with new perk ideas, but I'd honestly love to hear what the design discussions were with this perk and Weaving Spiders. How exactly do devs picture games going that they feel the need to throw all of these negatives onto a perk?

Invocations require the survivor to take three negatives:

Risk being in basement (minor)

Time wasted (significant)

Be injured the entire game (massive unless you face Plague)

You could throw one of those out, potentially two, and it still might not be worth it. Would it be worth it to take this perk if the effect happened automatically, but you were broken the entire game (presume you couldn't pair it with no mither?) Would it be worth it the broken effect was gone entirely, you just had to spend the basement time?

Even in those extremes, the answer to me seems like maybe (which is a good spot for a perk to be in).

I think not making them stack is the right call. The problem with balancing boons is whether you try to balance them around the idea that they get run on their own or in combination. Limiting it to one invocation should make it easier to balance/design, but so far they've been incredibly weak.

I think that would be the right call at this point. Taking the risk to go to the basement and spend time there is a huge investment. If that isn't enough, potentially something like a 60 second broken or broken until next hook.

In the hands of any other dev team, these new concepts could work.

BHVR, though, gets it 100% wrong and stubbornly refuses to learn.

Broken until hooked could be good. Alternatively a new status effect that permanently hinders heal or generator speed. Something other than perma-Broken because that's too much of a penalty.

This perk is not worse than no mither, but it is BAD. At least you can choose not to use this perk, and it doesn't break you for the whole game if you don't use it…

The key problems with this perk are the reward not being worth the risk. Mainly:

1. The activation is tied to terror radius. Now it is useless against certain killers and hard countered by many perks, which is bad when it already has a huge penalty by breaking you for the rest of the game and takes 60s.
2. Due to the nature of chases survivors will be scaring most of the crows, not killers, as they follow more than they lead, usually the survivor is the first one to reach a new place or tile then the killer changes the direction inside that tile if they wish, but the crow is already scared.

They could make it 2s of aura reveal whenever the killer scares a crow and it would only be an issue against comp teams on discord. At the very least I would make it "whenever a crow within 32m of the killer is startled, reveal the killer to all survivors for 2s".

Question - do the aura read effects of Treacherous Crows disappear once the survivor is dead? The person casting the effect essentially guarantees they won't make it out alive (or at least drastically minimises their chances by putting a big old target on their head) so I'd hope their sacrifice means the team gains some continuous benefit.

Edit: they do linger after the caster has died