Are perks that counter only certain killers fair?
There's an odd sub-section of perks that are essentially designed to counter a particular killer or multiple killers in the case of spine chill. I always found these kind of odd. It does seem the Devs don't like perks that counter a specific killer as shown by them changing old perks to no longer counter Trapper e.g. Slippery meat, saboteur and most recently, small game. However, there are still a few perks that are designed to counter certain aspects of a killer's power. Calm spirit hard counters Doctor's static blast for example. Or urban evasion to somewhat counter Hag and Pyramid head (I say somewhat because realistically speaking, crouching mid-chase will just get the survivor hit half the time). However, Spine chill is the most egregious example as it counters essentially every stealth killer's stealth. You definitely could argue that it is fair because the killer can walk sideways or even moonwalk to counter it. The issue of course is that it requires a guess from the Killer as to whether they even have spine chill in the first place. Even then, this only really applies to Wraith, Pig and Ghostface if he is willing to sacrifice his ability to insta-down. Spine chill makes it very difficult to stalk a survivor as Ghostface and Myers which is a problem because It hurts Ghostface (He loses out on his insta-downs) and cripples Myers (He is very slow in tier 1 and is only an M1 killer with a smaller TR in tier 2) if used correctly. Without their insta-downs, they are just stealthy dudes with knives. This is particularly bad for Myers as he cannot pull off any tricks with his power like Ghostface can.
Regardless,
Are perks that counter only certain killers fair? 48 votes
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Other
Calm spirit is fine. It doesn't counter the doctors static blast. It counters perks that make you scream and crows. Fyi, the doctor will laugh and you will still get a scoring event if you hit someone with calm spirit on as doctor.
My opinion on spin chill is its fine. To many threads on this perk that there is no need to discuss it without making it another spine chill OP/fine discussion.
I dont think there are any perks that hard counter a specific killers power. I mean I don't think there were many (if any) trapper/hag mains thinking oh they really need to change small game but I can see how it would tell a survivor don't go over there it's trapped. If there are any that actually do then yeah they should be changed, but I am not seeing them. It would kinda be like saying no mither counters victor since Victor can only see blood and not scratch marks. This doesn't mean victor is useless.
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Other
There really aren't any perks that actually specifically counter certain killers.
Calm Spirit yes prevents Doctor from finding you with screams when he static blasts, but you still gain a tier of madness. He can still find you with illusionary doctors or with addons. Illusionary Pallets from Order, Red Stain from Discipline, and Aura reading from Restraint all make it easier for Doctor to keep track of you.
As for spine chill, sure they hurt stealth killers a bit more. But any killer that lacks mobility will get hurt by spine chill because of the head start warning spine chill gives.
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No, it is unfair that killer(s) can be specifically countered by a perk
I think this is something that the devs should avoid, but with that said I don't think there are any perks in this category remaining in the game. When I think of perks that counter specific killers, I'm thinking of perks like old Slippery Meat, which made it easier to escape from bear traps. Small Game technically still tracks killer traps, which is outdated and hurts Hag and Trapper in particular, but that's being changed in 4.7.0.
Whether Spine Chill is too strong is up for debate, but it is broadly useful. Being stronger against some killers and weaker against others is pretty unavoidable with perks.
Calm Spirit doesn't really hard counter static blast as selflessnea calls out; it just makes one aspect of his tracking weaker.
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Other
It's fair if killers also have options to counter specific perks imo
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Most are fair but nerf some of them (Name which)
Perks like Spine Chill are incredibly easy to work around, and all good Killers using a stealth Killer will do so. And on what you said about Spine Chill? The person with it isn't told where the Killer is, and you can also tell as a stealth killer if someone has it most of the time. Ghostface can easily 99 someone who knew he was there before he was stalking by leaning, the same holds true for someone with Spine Chill. Myers is already just a Killer without a power for the most part as well, so it's not like Spine Chill can cripple him much more than his own power can. Plus, not every Survivor has Spine Chill and it's not always so easy to break LOS.
But then you have perks like OoO which completely invalidate the following: Trapper, Huntress, Demogorgon (nice portals, loser), etc. It also makes it impossible to mind game loops against anyone but the person using it, because they can just call out when you're doing it. I'm so happy this Perk is being nerfed.
Small Game also won't work on traps after the rework, so yeah.
Calm Spirit, like Spine Chill, is really easy to find out if a Survivor has it, and the perk is so highly specific it has no use cases outside of Infectious Fright and 1 not very good or common Killer.
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Yes, countering specific killer(s) with a perk is fair
Sometimes spine chill can mess solo survivors up as well because if they're on a gen and the perk lights up some will start being stealthy even though the killer is in chase with someone else and not coming to their gen at all.
The only other perk that counters a killer is iron will for spirit, however most spirits run strider anyway so that makes it pretty redundant.
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Yes, countering specific killer(s) with a perk is fair
I mean, it's a gamble for survivors, so it's completely fair.
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Most are fair but nerf some of them (Name which)
I believe the Urban Evasion example isn't something I would use as an example of counters that are unfair, both Hag and Pyramid Head can still play around the perk. Thus why I say not all counters are unfair (though this is definitely a soft counter).
However I will absolutely agree that spine chill is absolutely dumb-busted, and I've gone into great detail why in previous posts. The short of it is that a stealth killer needs stealth- the advantage of surprise, in order to operate on any level, otherwise they are just an m1 killer- potentially with a side ability like RBTs or speedboost coming out of cloak.
Not a single stealth killer has ever crossed into the realm of being broken or overpowered anyway, there's absolutely 0 reason for there to be such a direct hard counter for them.
The perk also directly affects the fun / fear factor of those matches against stealth killers, while in a practical gameplay sense it's a massive advantage and I suppose you get the pleasure of likely "winning and escaping" I would personally argue it would be more fun to actually be surprised and scared by a killer's sudden appearance or disappearance. Without having a such an overwhelming tool at your disposal to be able to tell whether they're hunting you or not.
There's also the problem that Spine Chill is one of the few perks that increases action speeds for interactions like Generator Repair speeds or Vault which are really powerful on their own, on top of the wide array of other actions like healing, unhooking, cleansing, sabotaging, etc.
On top of all this there's the undeniable universal truth in Dead By Daylight that has been tried and true - Passive Is Not Fun. Much like how OP cited how devs have been making a change to perks in the past which directly countered a single killer or groups of killers, like slippery meat, saboteur, etc.
Equally the devs have been changing powers and perks that had a passive effect. I refer you to some of the biggest reworks the game has ever seen: the Freddy Rework and the Doctor rework, killers whose previous incarnations relied heavily on passive abilities that didn't display much skill. This isn't just true for killers however, with the recent changes made to survivor perk Object of Obsession- another ability that passively revealed the killers aura based on distance and direction- has since also been reworked to be much less universally passive. Now that it only activates whenever a killers own aura reading abilities activate.
I circle back to spine chill. A perk that is still universally passive to this day, operating at all points during the match and being ludicrously accurate the entire time. Since it only ever lights up when the killer is staring at you which is a very specific condition unlike something like Premonition. Where you might be susceptible to swinging your camera around and all of a sudden it the audio cue procs and you're left wondering where exactly the killer was that triggered the perk.
Long story short (I'm not kidding, I COULD continue typing about this dumb perk) Spine Chill is quite simply too much. It covers too many bases for such a passive ability, and it disproportionately affects Stealth killers over any and all others. A kind of killer mind you, which isn't all that super-powerful to begin with, especially against SWF and teams that communicate. Spine chill's very existence in its current incarnation is summed up in one word: Unnecessary.
There's a fabulous simple change that can be made to solve this entire issue, and that's to make it so that it no longer trumps stealth abilities. That's it. It will continue to be a great perk for survivor map awareness against killers who are ranged and might be aiming at them from a distance, or killers with high map mobility that can appear at a moment's notice extremely quickly, but it would no longer affect Stealth killers whose ONLY ability is the element of surprise.
This change also works twofold- not only does it bring in line the power level of a perk that does too much at once, but it would also boost its sister perk in popularity. Premonition would suddenly become more viable than it is, by any and all metrics it's an entirely inferior perk and so long as Spine Chill exists as it does right now, there is zero reason to run Premonition. However if Spine Chill could no longer detect killers who are undetectable then that would be a huge boon to the perk, since premonition would still be able to pick up killers who are undetectable.
The difference between Premonition and SC are two major ones which keep Premonition in line as a balanced perk (but weaker in the presence of Spine Chill) while SC runs ramapant:
1. It actually has a cooldown. Unlike SC whose knowledge is omnipresent lighting up ANY time a killer looks in your direction Premonition has a whole ass 30 second cooldown at Tier III. Meaning information given by Premonition without combining context clues and a bit of smarts on the part of the player can often be outdated or even misinforming. Survivors actually have to think about what Premonition's audio cue means rather than lazily staring at whether or not SC is lit up.
2. Premonition provides only an audio cue- a single cue that hints at where the killer is, whereas SC lights up when the killer is facing YOU which is a very great distinction to make. So not only is SC omnipresent during a match, it's also omniscient in that it provides you with much greater information than premonition will at any time. While Premonitions audio cue will tell you where a killer might be, SC tells you what they might be doing, specifically, whether they are coming for you or not. Premonition can activate but the killer could just be walking past, whereas when SC lights up and it stays lit you know for a fact the killer is either heading your way or is already there to begin with.
So again, a second long story short- nerfing Spine Chill would likely boost Premonitions pick popularity, and thus increase perk diversity across all your matches. It also creates a more healthy relationship between Spine Chill: one of give and take where both perks have something to offer, rather than the current unhealthy relationship where Spine Chill has everything to offer and Premonition just lacks in nearly every category.
There's also a second change that I think might be slightly better or worse depending on your perspective but is a bit more complex and goes against the devs design philosophy of streamlining all status effects a couple years ago. Which is to create a separate status effect for killers who have the undetectable status effect within their ability powers- create something new called "Natural Hunter" or something. Which is a slightly more powerful version of Undetectable, Natural Hunter does everything Undetectable does, but also a little bit more on top of that. Natural Hunter cannot be trumped by perks like Spine Chill or Premonition.
To explain: Killers who have Stealth as a main part of their kit won't be affected by the shenanigans of perk balance. They can't be picked up by aura reading abilities, they can't be picked up by indicator type abilities like SC or Premonition, nothing. However killers that use Artificial Means of stealth- AKA perks that provide the undetectable status effect, like Trail of Torment, Tinkerer, Insidious (lol) which are frequently used by for example killers with ingrained one hit downs in their kits like Hillbilly, Leatherface, or Myers, who were never really meant to have the undetectable status effect, can still be detected by these perks.
This would allow a new wave of perks, mechanics, and balance changes, which all have to relate with the Undetectable Status while killers who use the Natural Hunter status effect (Ghostface, Wraith, Pig, Demogorgon, Myers Tier 1, etc.) will remain unscathed by any of those going ons. You could even separate stealth killers who use Natural Hunter and those who use Undetectable so you can create strong killers with stealth abilities but aren't overpowered because their stealth isn't as good as the others, and would therefore rely on their own unique mechanics and styles of gameplay.
Spine Chill won't be as weak as the first solution since it can still pick up killers who are undetectable for whatever reason, but it won't be useful against killers who have been safeguarded by the new Natural Hunter status effect.
I typed too much.
TL;DR Spine Chill needs a nerf for multiple reasons (problems 1st and 2nd chunk stated, comparison to premonition 3rd chunk, solutions in 3rd and 4th chunk of text). Either that or introduce a brand new status effect which is a slightly stronger version of Undetectable that overrides all perks of all kinds including Spine Chill and Premonition (described in 4th chunk).
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No, it is unfair that killer(s) can be specifically countered by a perk
Wanted to hit the other option damnit !
- Urban Evasion shouldn't be on your list because let's be honest : nobody uses it to counter either Hag or PH but to be extra-stealthy.
- Calm Spirit is a counter to Doc, but also PH, Clown, Iron Maiden and Infectious Fright (which is a pretty common perk to face), but it's a pretty uncommon if not rare perk to see compared to Urban Evasion or
- Spine Chill. Tough perk to balance as it's the main counter to stealth killers, without Spine Chill you are rekted, with it you rekt the killer. for now i don't see any way to rework this perk to make it more balanced.
- Premonition i would like to see buff to be on the same level than Spine Chill. Starting by reducing the cooldown or by completely rework it into a "i can see what you can see" survivor perk : every time an aura is reveal to a survivor 8m from you, get to see the aura aswell.
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No, it is unfair that killer(s) can be specifically countered by a perk
Spine chill shouldn't work against GHOSTFACE.
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Most are fair but nerf some of them (Name which)
Iron Will is acceptable to counter Spirit, but Doctor shouldn't become a powerless M1 killer because people run Calm Spirit.
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Most are fair but nerf some of them (Name which)
if its hyper specific then change it like old slippery meat was a good example, I think the upcoming change to small game is another good change. I think perks like spine chill are fine though cause although they get better use on stealth killers it still works just fine on every other killer.
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Other
Having a perk that literally only coutners a certain killer (like how old slippery meat increased bear trap escape chance) is not, but perks like spine chill and calm spirit are fine, yes spine chill is very strong against stealth killers, but it's still useful against other killer's too because of the 6% vaulting speed and the fact that it triggers earlier than the terror radius so it's some early warning.
Calm spirit is fine because it doesn't actually stop you from getting madness or prevent you from getting the status which prevents you from throwing pallets, it just makes you not scream and it has other uses as well, like stopping crows from flying off and countering perks that cause screaming like IF.
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Yes, countering specific killer(s) with a perk is fair
it's random chance if you come across that killer and due to the meta I doubt you will. Taking a perk slot and having it be useless against all but one killer is fair
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