Invocations "sacrifice" should be unique, not Broken by default
Quite simply the penalties for Treacherous Crows are way, way too harsh to ever consider using for its gains, to the point I cant see a realistic buff that would make it worthwhile for being perma-broken... and it gets me thinking...
Why do we have to limit the ideas around Invocation Perks by making them all break the Survivor?
Let's say we want a Healing Invocation... oops... we can't, cause we've boxed ourselves in with broken.
For Weaving Spiders the broken effect makes sense, because normally the time expense is a cost in of itself.... however the time you spend in basement is paid back greater by the effect of Weaving Spiders, so the time penalty is not really a penalty for I:WS. As such a heavier trade off is needed for the powerful advantage it brings. Whether that payment is too harsh for I:WS is it's own discussion, but the design of it makes sense because overall it greatly advances the survivor objective, making the perk worth actually considering even with the broken downside.
I:TC on the other hand already has a penalty in the fact you are taking 60s off of gens to gain its effect. You haven't advanced your objective and instead decided to give your team a decent permanent buff.... but the effect is not strong enough to warrant it. Even if it had no penalty at all, the time investment is already a strong trade off to pay.
As such I don't think Invocations should at base of their design apply broken to the survivor. I'd be tempted to say buff Invocation: Treacherous Crows not break the survivor at all, simply have the time investment be the penalty. However if we want an invocations to have this "personal sacrifice" idea, why limit it to broken? Why not do something more interesting like:
Invocation: Treacherous Crows
- Invocations charge time blurb.
- Whenever the Killer scares a Crow while a Survivor is inside their Terror Radius, their Aura is revealed to all Survivors for 1/2/3 seconds.
- Survivors no longer scare crows.
- Whenever a survivor is within 4m of a Crow their Aura is revealed to all survivors.
- You become Oblivious for the rest of the trial.
This makes Treacherous Crows something you actually might consider. Survivors can now use Crows to coordinate, and you effectively have a teamwide Kindred that is active at all times, but you are now more reliant on the Crows since you can't hear the killers TR. Extra points if you make the Invocation survivors eyes and the Crows eyes glow white, as if they are linked.
This I think works much better, and we can see Invocations have trade offs and unique build combos to offset their own individual weaknesses... or some nut bar taking 4 Invocation Perks one day and be blind, oblivious, broken, and hindered... or something ridiculous.
Comments
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I agree invocation’s should have their penalty adjusted for their unique effect and strength, but I don’t think all invocations need to have "personal sacrifice". The new one could just have the time investment as negative.
Permanent broken is such a bad effect, that basically makes you and your teammates loose the match in most cases. It is extremely easy to tunnel out, because you only have half of your normal lives.
WS is so bad, because of the broken and it would be better if it only took one of your hook stages, instead of making you a free kill.
Treacherous crows is not worth with broken and I think making the negative, that the killer gains the exact same effect, would balance it out. Which means the killer sees the survivors aura for 2s after you disturb a crow.
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I also think that each Invocation should have a unique drawback.
Permanent Oblivious is a perfect fit for Treacherous Crows.
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Weeeeell, tbh I'm not convinced that I:WS is a bad perk at all myself... mostly cause of the idea of bait and predictability.
The thing is, yes being perma-broken ensures you can't have more than 3-4 health states and are vulnerable to being tunneled, but that is a problem even if you aren't broken. What makes tunneling strong is the killer interrupts people trying to heal and chase them down while they're injured for a very quick down. If the survivor doesn't have Perks to defend against it you get lots of pressure, and if the killer is gonna tunnel, each survivor has to gamble on which one of them it is gonna be... so if you take DS, OTR, etc and the killer doesn't tunnel you, then you have wasted your perk slots.
The advantage that being Broken with I:WS brings, is that you can take OTR/Dead Hard/DS etc, and be pretty confident that you're likely to get value out of them. You can take Resilience, which will help you in chase while being tunneled, but will also help if the killer doesn't tunnel you by improving your heals and your gen repair speeds. I think if you build properly for I:WS it's actually a lot better than one would think on the surface of it, and doesn't really differ that much in practice from bein tunneled like you would normally be.
I agree invocation’s should have their penalty adjusted for their unique effect and strength, but I don’t think all invocations need to have "personal sacrifice". The new one could just have the time investment as negative.
I can see the argument of not having a permanent-sacrifice on Invocations... I think with the perk as is, just having he time penalty is enough...
However from a theme point of view do like the idea of performing a ritual for a powerful teamwide effect at a personal cost to yourself... if you take meta and balance out of the equation, it just sound cool to me 😁😁😁
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I kinda like that idea, actually. Throw yourself at the complete mercy of the crows.
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Invocations are a very interesting concept that can potentially make matches much more interesting, but the devs sadly dont seem to have learned from what made weaving spiders fail. I really hope they stop adding cool perk types like boons and invocations just to limit this with universal draw backs despite differing strengths.
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You can sugarcoat everything. The reasons, you said, are interesting/funny.
WS gives you no real advantage. It does less gen progress than when you sit on a generator. It makes you permanent one hit. It can be disabled by perks. It makes the killer target you. It can be interrupted, which gives the killer an easy hook. It removes any stealth options without perks. It probably got more negatives.
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Weeeelll, I'm not trying to get too sidetracked from the point, but I wouldn't say that, 70s of irreversible gen progression across the entire map is not exactly small potatoes. You close down all of the windows the killer has to interrupt you and your team by quite a considerable margin, every decision the killer makes from this point onwards is far more costly.
The broken penalty for I:WS makes sense because if it didn't, then the perk would always pay for itself and be mandatory every game. The penalty makes itself more of an actual trade off; now it could be argued the penalty is too harsh, but the penalty has to exist in some form or another otherwise the perk does too much for roo little investement. I believe this model of perk design is quite good, and the personal sacrifice for a strong team bonus is how Invocations should work.
Like I'm not trying to claim that I:WS is overly strong or meta or anything... but I certainly wouldn't classify it as bad. As I say, all of its downsides are things you can build around with appropriate perk investment, and I say, there is no difference being tunneled with broken compared to being tunneled without broken, other than the fact that you can plan for being tunneled far more successfully with I:WS than without.
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The perk doesn’t always save up 70s tho. Often the teammates finish gens, before you can activate it, since you have to waste a lot of time finding and getting in the basement.
My preferred downside for weaving spiders is, that it takes one of your hook stages. Then it would even be good to do it later in the match, because you could play around the negative. With that change it would have a big cost, but not be as detrimental. They could even show it to the killer now like with the new hook trade perk, where the killer sees one hook state.
I wonder, if anyone will play the new crow perk. Broken makes it useless for most players.
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I think it would be funny if Invocation's downside was bleeding and making injured noises even while healthy.
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To be fair, I do actually like your downside better admittedly, especially now with the new perk to trade hook states marking it on the HUD for the killer.
I think if it did the same for I:WS, that's more than fair.
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Yeah that would certainly be nicer by comparison. As at least with Oblivious there can be some upsides to that, like killer perks/add-ons/powers that rely on their terror radius, aside from maybe doctor who ignores oblivious. I do agree that the sacrifice should be unique to the benefit. Essentially making each invocation into a faustian deal of sorts.
As-is, both Crows and Spiders feel extremely feast or famine. Even when used correctly it feels like in spite of the perk, not because of it unless with a swf. And that completing an invocation is like getting No Mither without any of the benefits of No Mither.2 -
Changes that I would do to the Invocations:
• Joining in on the Invocation no longer speeds up the process. Instead, it makes the final effect stronger.
• Replace the Broken downside with Exposed for Weaving Spiders (almost the same, but without the tracking advantage + a way to tell who exactly did it) and Oblivious for Treacherous Crows.
• Remove the terror radius requirement from Treacherous Crows.
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Perma exposed?
Thats actually genius
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This is a much better and actually genius suggestion, much better than that guy who wants to make it so Killers give noise notifs on startling crows (which would decimate all stealth Killers for utterly no reason).
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