Knockout: Rework to encourage hooking concept

Preamble

So Knockout is not a very good perk... it's only decent on a handful of killers and even then for a niche slugging strategies... and heavily countered by comms most of the time... however for SoloQ the slugging strategies are pretty obnoxious and unenjoyable for the survivor team.

This leaves Knockout in a place where it mostly sucks against any comms tean, and only tends to get used to bully SoloQ, or to troll and/or annoy survivors with a particular build...

What could/should Knockout do instead?

Killers are currently justifying not hooking and instead slugging teams because it gives survivors more chances to save, slows the killer down to hook, and unhooking activates a lot of potent effects the killer doesn't want to deal with.

Knockout to my mind could be reworked correct one of these problems... the chances to save. Knockout could be made more about securing a down, rather than not bothering to hook.

Proposed Rework - Knockout

The trauma caused by your brutal attacks makes crying for help painfully difficult.

Putting a Survivor into the Dying State with your Basic Attack applies Knockout to the survivor for 25 seconds. While affected by Knockout the following effects apply to the Survivor:

• Prevents their aura from being revealed to any Survivor who is farther than 32/24/16 metres away from them.
• Reduces their Field of View and causes them to be deafened.
• Suffers from the Blindness Status Effect.
• Suffers from a 15% Hindered Status Effect.
• Reduces their Recovery Speed by -20%.

If the dying Survivor returns from the dying state while still affected by Knockout, the effects of Knockout persist for 10s.

"Oh, that gun's no good. The old way... with a sledge! You see, that way's better. They die better that way." — Nubbins Sawyer

What? The effect carries over?

Correct, Hindered affects you regardless of health state, even the dying state, so the slower crawl speed still applies... and since crawling is so slow anyway, who cares if it's 15% or 50%?

The effect where we continue to apply Knockout for an additonal 10s, the effect Hindered carries over to saves. If you pick up a survivor suffering from Knockout and then get flashlight saved or pallet saved, the survivor can't make effective distance from you, the saving survivor will likely need to intervene and at the very least take a hit for the saved survivor to reach safety.

The key difference here is that all effects of Knockout are temporary, so using it to slug excessively is not anywhere near as favourable, nor an as exploitable/overly punishing strategy for SoloQ specifically. It still assists with slugging for pressure, if someone is nearby, you can effectively slug... however there is a reason to return/pick up the survivor promptly before the time is up or their aura is revealed and other survivors can make their way for the save.

What about Tunneling? Doesn't this support that?

It does, but it's important to remember Knockout only applies to downs via basic attacks. This means m2 killers don't profit as much as m1 killers do, and it's m1 killers that tend to be the ones survivors swarm around for saves.

25s? Is this better than old Knockout?

I'd say so yes, as this allows the killer to pick up pretty quickly without too much fear of losing everything, you can likely still at least get a wound on the survivor who is hounding you for saves. It makes it harder to pull off various nasty bully strategies like a duo with Flip Flop/Power Struggle, Sabo Squads, Flashlight swarms, etc, as well as giving some niche benefits of its own

This also makes Knockout useful against Perks like Boil Over (16s to wiggle off), where you can walk part way, let them wiggle off, and then catch them before they reach safety to take them the rest of the way.

It even helps mitigate Decisive Strike, but again, only for m1 downs, favouring m1 killers more than m2 killers, who are generally the better killers at tunneling.

Thoughts?

I think this variant would be decently strong for killers and give it a genuine use, while also addressing its most frustrating playstyle.

Numbers are up for debate, but what do we reckon of the concept?