Do you think spine chill is a crutch perk?
Basically the title, I’m not saying this perk is op or anything but do y’all think it’s a crutch/unhealthy in terms of survivors becoming dependent on it to be aware of their surroundings for them?
I think I should try to explain what I mean by crutch a bit better. I don’t mean crutch as in the perk is meta. When I say crutch I mean is if any random player, especially a newer one, were to use this perk for a long time, if it’s a struggle for them to play without it I feel the perk qualifies as a crutch.
Do you think spine chill is a crutch perk? 45 votes
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14 votes
31 votes
Comments
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Yes
It used to be my crutch as I literally could t take it off for a while. I’ve maybe only used it like 3 or 4 times now ever since I dropped it.
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No
I was a big user of the fast vault build (Sprint Burst/ Resilience/ Spine Chill/ any other perk) for a long time, then I changed for the fast Sprint Burst recovery build (SB/ Fixated/ Vigil/ any other perk), but didn't pick Spine Chill as the 4rth perk, and I never felt I messed it.
Yes, it's a very good perk in many different ways, but if you don't know how to use it, it's just an anti-stealth perk. And as a killer, just moonwalk if you think there is a spine chill user.
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The reason I made this is because of the anti stealth aspect. I can’t speak for everyone but speaking for myself when I was still a baby survivor I put this perk on but it ended up screwing me in the long run as I ended up depending on it to tell me when a killer who isn’t just 4.6 with 32 meter TR was coming towards me. I eventually got better without it but I feel it’s a perk that definitely can mess up newer survivors
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No
its strong but it isnt something that can save your ass (unless youre up against tinkerer or a stealth killer). it helps you determine if the killer is after you if youre in his terror radius. i think its obvious why its not meta. i wouldnt say its underrated either considering so many people use it
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No
Well, sure as a new survivor you can be dependant to Spine Chill (when to go, when to be alert, when the killer gave up the chase, etc).
But I think it's a good way to learn how to act when you think the killer is on your way. When you'll want to change your build and quit your good ol' Spine Chill bro, you'll have to learn to be more or less alert until you know who is the killer. This is skill gap between baby survivor and a pretty decent survivor.
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Yes
Yes. And know that I say this as someone who uses Spine Chill as a mainstay perk in nearly all of my loadouts more than 1k hours clocked into the game. It absolutely is a crutch and I can't help but run it, so whenever I advocate for it to be changed it's always with a heavy heart. I don't really want it to change but for the sake of the overall health of the game I think it should be.
The fact is Spine Chill does too many things at once and it does it too well, especially in the hands of veteran players who know how to maximize the use of it. The real problem with the perk is that it is a direct flat out hard counter to stealth killers- killers where 90% or 75% or however much of their power is allocated in the stealth aspect of their ability. If Spine Chill didn't trump all stealth abilities, it would not be in the unhealthy position that it currently is, although an argument could be made it still would be because of the other effects it provides.
It's at this point that I will copy and paste something that I wrote just a few days ago, just because I'm too lazy to re-type it out again.
"Spine chill is surprisingly absolutely dumb-busted, much more than people actually think, 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
I don't think it is because of how easy it is to work around, and how game awareness just comes naturally after awhile. It's also just nice to have for the speedy vault build, which I'm a fan of.
I definitely think it could be relied on a bit too much to get close to that, but it isn't a guaranteed crutch or anything. Though, to be fair, nothing will be a crutch for everybody who uses it.
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Yes
Any perk can be a crutch perk if the user starts relying on it. Spine Chill is no exception.
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No
From my point of view, I see crutch perks in a different way. Spine Chill is a pretty healthy perk that helps survivors be aware of their surroundings. Crutch perks are moreso second chance perks, like old DS, Dead Hard, NOED, and even Unrelenting (it gives killers a second chance to hit a survivor if they miss, however it is a healthy perk because it was made for beginners). Adrenaline isn't crutch because it rewards survivors for completing their objectives, giving them a chance to escape the trial a lot more easily.
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Yes
Yes, I do, but I still usually run it because it's the most overall efficient and effective perk that I can bring as Survivor.
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Every single perk is a crutch perk. No perk is a crutch perk. With that said, Spine Chill is totally unfair and unbalanced versus stealth killers.
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