Why "Shoulder the Burden" has horrible unintended consequences.

[Jingo]

So, full disclosure. I don't think StB is the strongest perk in the game for it's history. I would give that particular accolade to the old dead hard, but, it is a perk which is slowly creeping into the conscience of the game of just how strong it is.

So, on the face of it the effects mixed in with the drawbacks don't sound too outrageous. Trade a hook state, so it is not as if a hook state artifically dissappears. And you gain the exposed status for 40 seconds. If a killer is nearby he can probably down both. So far so good right?

Well. Not quite.

In most instances killers will not just hover around a hook. Often even forgoing securing a second stage hook to a kill.

For killers that are a little bit more competitive the issue of what ways to play are most effective can vary somewhat. Some people hard-tunnel and make trades expensive, Others likes to focus on two survivors, ignoring others unless they get something easy. However, what most will agree on is that spreading pressure evenly is the worst tactic to win a match. Imagine if a perk did the opposite and a killer which had 2 hooks spread out between 2 survivors could then use a perk to consolidate it into 2 hook stages on one of them? It'd be the most popular perk overnight even if it came with 40 seconds of endurance.

And in competitive games? It is a death sentence.

So, what does this lead to?

So right now the averge dbd player won't see too much use of this perk. And in soloque the medicore players won't even touch it yet. It does not help them anyway and the effects for being caught are nasty. Going from 0 to 2 hooks with an instadown and their chases won't last anyway. But what it does do is twofolds. SWF's that are in the know and are on coms can get such insane value from this perk that swf becomes more powerful than it has ever been at any point in the game. Those in high level games will realize this and revert early to the only strategy that is a strong counter to this perk.

Proxycamping and doing so early.

This creates unfun gameplay and will ultimately hurt the game far more than help it. The big problem is that it kind of strenghtens the things that did not need strenghtening. It deals with a real problem but has no equalibrium for that side in mind and on top of that has a large weakness that practically begs for the worst forms of counterplay.

Either way, the loser is going to be the overall game experience I fear. I've already started to see a noticeable rise in some pretty harsh early game tactics and as this proliferates I suspect we will see more of it as this perk gains in popularity and the average player starts understanding the enormous power of the perk.

I've said it before. I think the only way to get away from camping, tunneling and slugging is to create metrics or even perks that reward noticeably more that style. It's why I love devour hope as it is such a healthy depature from most designs, even if it is a totem. But it has the right idea. It prohibits proxying, it encourages to gof or more hooks, and it has a strong reward, but it is one out of a handful of perks that seems to think that way. However, I think we are in for a pretty cold winter as far as the gameplay will go.

What is your opinion? Do you think it will just blow over? Is STB secretly trash? Please share.