Don't nerf Self care, make alternatives

@Wolf74 said:
SC is meta since release!
84% pickrate, do I need to say more?
Self sufficient, unlimited self heals in a "horror survival" game?
SC does basically counter Freddy.
SC encourages hardcore tunneling, because survivor say "don't lose the injured and SC is no problem".
SC is the core thing behind gen rush, because spreading out and working self reliant is key to it.
SC is a force multiplier to DS and SB.
The nerf isn't even addressing the main issues about SC; unlimited and self sufficient.
SC got (baby)"nerfed" like 4 times and is still the most used perk.
Any killer perk with a similar pickrate would already have been gutted month ago.
Even the Devs admit that they do not dare to really balance SC, because they actually FEAR the survivor outcry.

^ This guy summed it up nicely.
No perk should be that versatile. It just gives a so much power that it makes it a rather "mandatory" perk to be competitively efficient. Any "Power" perk shouldn't exist anyway. Perks should fit playstyles and strategies, not be picked "because it's the strongest choice"

@Jack11803 said:
Just bring it to 40% speed so it’s not better than normal healing...

40% would still be better than normal healing.
In a scenario where you're 2 :
1 working on a gen (100% efficiency)
Yourself, self-caring (50% efficiency)

You're actually working at 150% efficiency

without SC :
You force someone out of a gen, bother him, put him as a risk by packing up, be unable to properly hide to get healed and such, and only make the efficiency to 100%.

SC also just forces the killers to keep chasing a target or it'll heal on the spot with 0 risks whatsoever, rather than having to wander aroudn, wounded, and find someone to get healed, and get in the above scenario

wolf and runiver summed it up pretty well. SC completely breaks so much of the game and makes hitting someone as a killer a complete waste of time unless you’re downing them. An actual real nerf to SC would also inadvertently go a long way in starting to alleviate some of the problem in how fast the games go as well.

@Jack11803 said:
@Runiver

“But muh solo players!” I think just 40% would go a long way

The game isn't heading toward solo plays. They're actually trying to close the gap between SWF and non-SWF, which is why they added so many notifications, will soon make the obsession to be visible by everyone, and such.

The only case I agree for SC to be necessary is against Nurse, because if you pack up against her, she'll just slug everyone in a matter of seconds. Other than that ? Pallets and obstacles are enough of a time waster for people to actually spread out efficiently.

What SC needs, in my opinion, is an efficiency decrease everytime it's triggered with an eventual recovery of that efficiency over the time.
Basically : everytime you stop self-caring, the efficiency decreases by 5-10%.
This way, if you actually try to heal in a killer's face and interrupt it to run away, or get actually interrupted because you picked an unsafe spot (or a pallet/vault spot to do so), you get punished for it.

It would basically force SC players to hide in PROPER SPOTS to self-care, rather than stand at juking spots, because the killer could just come back and interrupt the healing repeatedly, until you could barely heal yourself anymore if you try to do so.
Basically : No more "I vault the window and SC behind it to force the chase", "I self-care in plain view from afar to bait the killer and just sprint burst away as he comes" and such. It would heavily reduce the cockiness of survivors and make self-care to be actually time consuming, eventually risky, and it would also make Coulrophobia an actual option against SC.

Even with that nerf tho, it would probably still be the most picked perk in the game anyway.

@Runiver said:

@Shadoureon said:

What SC needs, in my opinion, is an efficiency decrease everytime it's triggered with an eventual recovery of that efficiency over the time.

>

I know all of this, since I'm the one that discussed about that nerf with Horvath (and Jeff) back in the days and he asked us for feedback about this change on discord.
Doesn't change the fact that the perk will still be a mandatory pick after that nerf, and suggesting more changes is an idea. That's why this change will be tested on PTB, and that's why we're giving feedback about what we think in here.

The reason I responded is because you stated that in your opinion something should be changed into something thats already shown in the youtube video and now you say you are aware of that video. Makes no sense typing what you said then. Could have just said that a specific change is coming instead imo.

Any "alternative" to Self Care would have to be as powerful as Self Care or even more so, and any perk that's as powerful or more powerful than Self Care would just get absorbed into the Survivor meta of using any and all safety net perks.

Fact is, Self Care needs to be nerfed into oblivion if the game is ever going to be balanced.

Self care needs nerf some people don't realize how crutch healing yourself really is but I play like 60% killer and 40% survivor so what do I know 

All I think that should be done to it is, that if you stop for longer than 5 seconds, progress drops by 15% a second, and has 20/30/40% healing efficiency instead of a flat 50%. The issue with self care isn't necessarily that it op, it's just that it heavily increases your life span and going in without it is heavily reliant on your team and medkits. None of which are as reliable as SC. However it's nowhere near a problem as DS and SB are.

Personally, I think self care should just be built into survivors as base, and reduce its efficiency to like 25%. There's a reason it's got such high usage, why not just make it base but have alternatives like medkits/team mate healing be a much more efficient and preferable to self healing. Then they could replace self care with a more interesting perk.

@Yaboi_Gengarboi said:
As a killer main and an occasional survivor player, I know a lot about this game, and I also have my opinions on both sides. I've seen and heard about the ideas for nerfing multiple survivor perks. Most of them I agree with. Decisive Strike and Sprint Burst mainly are the most frustrating survivor perks to deal with, but I don't agree about Self Care. I don't find the perk frustrating to deal with at all, nor do I find it too strong, despite always using the perk whenever I play survivor.

I, and many others, mainly use it because it is almost necessary.

In DBD, you need to stay in the healthy state for as long as you can. Being injured puts you on the doorstep of death. Self Care is by far the most RELIABLE way to achieve safety in this form. Not only that, all alternatives are EXTREMELY unreliable. Medkits often only heal you once, Pharmacy and Bond are too situational, and so on. Self Care is like Brutal Strength before Freddy came out; if you didn't use it, you were SOL.

In my opinion, and from what I gather from discussing this with others, it would be better to grant alternatives to survivors, so that Self Care is an OPTION. For example, the following could be changed to make the game more dynamic in terms of healing:

Brown and Green medkits: Focus on healing yourself and last longer
Yellow and Purple medkits: Focus on healing others and last longer
Having stronger medkits would certainly make matches more dynamic. You would have a choice: Bring a medkit and you can use a perk other than SC, or bring SC and bring a different item. Maybe flashlights and toolboxes wouldn't be the go to choice for some people anymore.

Bond: Increase range by a bit
I know that some people like using this instead of SC, but it has a glaring weakness in that it puts your fate in the hands of your allies. Risk and Reward in this way. Bigger range might help to compensate.

Streetwise: Increase efficiency boost by a bit
Maybe having longer lasting medkits would give a reason to use this perk more.

Self Care itself: Remove increased self heal medkit efficiency
It might need to be removed if medkits are buffed.

If you've read this far, please give your thoughts!

The problem with this idea is by buffing medkits you are effectively giving survivors another free perk slot. Self care should simply have charges or a cooldown to make "stealth" a more viable option. If you keep buffing other things to offset the balance of 1 perk you add so much power to the overall selection.

@Dragonredking said:
You can give them one thousand alternative if you want and they'll still use selfcare if it isn't nerfed in some way.
Because not only does it have unlimited stack unlike medkit but it also negate the need of a teammate to heal you.
The only way to have people move out of selfcare is either to give them a perk that is even better than it or nerf it.
Self care as been meta since the game got released and it's time to stop.
The survivor meta is sooooooo [BAD WORD] stall
Having a game with even only one person not running it is like spotting an unicorn.

What if self care had a limit? For example, can be used to heal you for for 3 full health states? (obviously can't be used to heal from dying state still) Number could be tweaked slightly, but I feel like 3 or maybe 4 at most would be a good healthy number for it at rank 3 perk. Could increase as you level the perk up? e.g rank 1 could be 2 full health states, 3 for rank 2, 4 for rank 3. Also give it a small use bar on the side by the perk, to show much how much self healing power it has left? My thoughts with this is that you could heal yourself halfway to healthy, and then if you find a teammate, get them to heal you the rest of the way, and you'd still have 2.5 health state recoveries left. So it could be a small bar by the perk, with a 3 at the top, the bar depletes as you heal up one full health state. So say you get injure, you have self care, you have a tiny full white bar next to the perk with the number 3 on it. You start healing you self and the bar depletes going from 3 to 2.9, 2.8, 2.7 etc until it empties once you've healed yourself, it resets, then becomes full again with the number 2 at the top. The next time you're injured, you heal yourself halfway, then get another survivor to heal the rest of the way. Your bar is sitting there half full with the number 1.5 on it. You have 1.5 health states of self recovery left.

Just my thoughts on it.

What I want to see from Self-Care, now that killers look like they're getting some love (if things keep up in this direction anyway):

• Self-Care is no longer a perk, but a built-in feature
• Self-Care skill checks will no longer wake survivors up
• Self-Care takes 30-45 seconds to fully heal yourself
• Self-Care healing progress resets if you're interrupted

Basically, nerf self-care hard, but make it a feature that no longer requires a perk slot. You can still use it if you need to, but having a survivor heal you will be far more efficient and reliable. Under this system, medkits would still be amazing since they wont have those downsides and take the usual amount of time to heal (12s base I think?).