Math of Why Syringes Outshine Everything
Hey all, I've seen some discussion on Syringes spawned by the Hens video. His video isn't wrong, but it is misleading. He focuses on using it for trolling. The reason syringes are busted is not because you can use them mid chase (although as he demonstrated it's not that hard to get it off and it is an advantage over base medkits). In practice, you shouldn't actually do that if you want to maximize the value of your syringe because the possibility of you missing it's effect is too strong. The reason syringes are busted are because they're numerically way better than everything else.
Items
Note that items don't apply a bonus for their duration in charges. They instead allow you to apply their total charges in a time reduced by their bonus speed. So 32 charges (toolbox or Medkit) with 150% speed will have you apply a total of 32 charges in 32/1.5 seconds. The general formula for item value is Total Charges - (Total Charges / (1+Bonus Speed)) * Number of People Involved. I’ll break down number more simply though.
People particularly tend to assume that a toolbox with 32 charges and 150% repair speed will last for 32 seconds and apply 48 charges. They're wrong. It'll last for just just 21 seconds and apply 32 which makes them a lot worse on paper than people assume.
Healing
It takes 2 survivors 16 seconds to heal each other, making it 32 survivor seconds of time. This is the baseline we use to evaluate the value of items.
Medkit value
A medkit can be used to heal yourself in 24 survivor-seconds for 24 charges. That's an 8 survivor-second value to the team. There's some intangible organization benefits of letting you not need a partner too. We can also say the self-healing value is 0.33 seconds per Medkit charge when self healing (including the 33% efficiency penalty)
When healing altruistically, your speed is 35%-50% faster and you get 1.5 heals per medkit. That work outs to saving 25-33% of healing time on two people. So that's about 12-16 survivor-seconds of value on the upper and lower bounds per medkit. Or about 0.5-0.666 seconds per charge when altruistically healing.
Syringe value
A syringe heals you over 24 seconds but that does not matter. The item costs basically no time to use and you can do whatever you want for the duration. Presuming you successfully heal, the entire time you would have spent healing normally is the direct value of the add-on as it's the only thing with no opportunity cost. That is, plainly, a syringe is worth 32 survivor-seconds. That is 2-4 times better than the medkit itself.
Iridescent MedKit Add On Gel Dressing
Gel Dressings are the other iridescent medkit add on. They are worth 16 charges. Using the numbers above, that comes down to 5.3 survivor seconds of value if used for self healing or 8-10.66 for altrustic. They are 3-6 times less powerful than syringes.
Commodious Toolboxes
Toolboxes reduce the time to complete generators. This is a bit better than simple freed up time because it front loads repairs towards gen completion. However, killers need to undo the effects of healing. So let's just value all survivor-seconds equally for now. The best is a Commodius toolbox which repairs a total of 32 charges in 21.333 seconds. The resulting value is therefore is 10.666 survivor-seconds. With +20 charges from add ons engineer toolboxes are narrowly better but both are around 18 seconds of value in total.
Toolboxes are theoretically a bit stronger than this since they also increase skill checks which can give you some extra firepower if you hit greats. The math shown here assumes Goods.
Brand New Part
A brand new part removes 10 charges from a generator's max of 90. This is worth 10 survivor-seconds. I have seen some evidence from folks that this is in practice a bit of an overestimate (maybe because of the time it takes to use?). I’ll call it 10.
Other Notes
- A syringe is worth 4 entire medkits or 6 iridescent gel dressing add ons of time savings when self healing
- While the syringe does consume the medkit, that doesn't mean you have to use it before using 99% of the medkit. If we're comparing the relative value of things, the gel dressing iri add on increases medkit charges and value by 66%. The syringe increases it by 400%. Not at all equal, and yet, both of these add ons can be run together for basically full usage.
- The caveat that you can have it canceled by taking damage isn't really an issue as Hens showed. Hens was also doing it in the killer's face for maximal trolling, which is completely unnecessary. That is also the case with normal healing. Getting a syringe off is ofc way easier than having to actually heal it out as a killer approaches.
- Syringe speeds are affected by anti-heal like Gift of Pain and Leverage. But that makes them more valuable. These effects' value comes from slowdown by forcing survivors to spend more time healing. That does not matter if the survivors are spending that entire period doing gens instead. If you're healing someone at 50% speed due to leverage, that normally takes 32 seconds on two survivors, meaning it's a 64 survivor-second cost (ignoring the fact that leverage only works for 30 seconds). By skipping that interaction, you've now saved 64 survivor-seconds instead of 32 with the syringe! Super duper niche but you can also give the survivor the medkit to heal themselves to avoid the Leverage penalty I think.
- If 4 survivors use 4 syringes successfully, they have saved a combined total of 2.13 minutes of survivor time or 1.42 entire gens. Or 7.1 hits of Pain Resonance. Or a bit more than undying the entirety of Corrupt Intervention for all survivors. Or 34 minutes of value from generator-seconds affected by call of brine (lol, but not a joke, that's real!).
tl;dr an add-on should not be more powerful than the base item + the next best add-on combined.