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What do You Think of Spine Chill?

Zet395
Zet395 Member Posts: 177
in General Discussions

***WARNING: I like putting detail into posts like these, to talk about what I believe is valid points, and try to see if anybody else shares my same thoughts, or might provoke some better ideas than my own. If you don't want to read through what I discuss and point out, skip to the last 2 paragraphs (and small closing statement at the bottom) for my concluding thoughts about Spine Chill! If you read through everything, maybe you'll understand why I propose those things better, and thank you for checking out my post!***

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I'm wondering if anybody else shares my same thoughts about it. So, Spine Chill, what I think about it. Against Killers, it's great for warnings and utility. Such things are incredibly useful in terms of survivability. However, is it balanced? Playing both Survivor and Killer, I have things to say about it for both sides.

First, the Survivor side. Spine Chill is such a great perk to have for multiple reasons: faster action speeds and early warnings for a Killer coming towards you. I personally think it is an INCREDIBLY strong perk to have. Faster gen speed, vault speed, and gate opening is enough to make a HUGE difference in your games. Not only that, but it causes more skill checks for gens. If you are a good with your skill checks and hit a lot of greats, this could make you fly through gens. Admittedly, when I am playing Survivor, I love having this perk, and think it provides such great utility, that it's hard to justify taking it off, because it can bail you out of so much.

Now, we get to the Killer side of things, which means we also get to problems I have with the perk. So, with a normal Killer, or a Killer with high mobility, I don't think I mind the perk all that much. However, my issue with the perk lies in the low mobility Killers, and the "stealth" Killers. Chasing a Survivor as a low mobility Killer -- 110/4.4 Killers for reference -- can be significantly harder, because of Spine Chill's faster vaulting speed. On top of their slow speed, which gives Survivors extra time to get out of dodge before you get there, it completely nullifies smaller terror radius', which is a gimmick that is supposed to help slower Killers get to Survivors without being detected too early, and lose a lot of distance on a Survivor because of it. Not only this, but with Survivors that know how to fully utilize this perk, gens go faster, as well, because all you have to do is look in their general direction for them to get this benefit, without regarding verticality, which means they can benefit from your gaze while you could be chasing another Survivor.

That isn't where the troubles end for Killers though. The early warning can completely counter "stealth" Killers. I mentioned this before, and what I mean is this: when playing Killers like Myers, Ghostface, Pig or Wraith, one of your primary gimmicks is that you are undetectable, which keeps your terror radius from giving Survivors early warning of your presence. This, of course, means that Spine Chill removes the primary gimmick that stealth Killers have for utility. The problem with this, is that such an important tool for those Killers to get the drop on Survivors is completely negated because of one Survivor perk. Some Killers say that you can play around it. If a Survivor makes it obvious that they have Spine Chill, you can look away from where you're approaching to avoid giving them an early warning. To an extent, they're right, and it CAN work, but this doesn't mean it always will. This won't work if you're on an open map, and the Survivor can see you coming, it won't work if Survivors are on comms and see you going towards one of their friends, and not fully looking at where you're approaching means that you won't always see if a Survivor leaves or not.

So, what do I think of Spine Chill? It's a really strong perk, with a lot of utility. Maybe even TOO much utility. If you ask me, I think that Spine Chill needs a bit of rebalancing. Here are some of my proposed changes: first, make undetectable counter it. A while back, they changed Object of Obsession to be countered by undetectable, because knowing where a stealth Killer is at all times was too strong. Likewise, I think having an early warning to a stealth Killers whereabouts is also too strong, in my opinion. I don't like a perk countering the whole gimmick of stealth from Killers. If this change is unfavorable, then perhaps make it to where verticality matters, and looking down or up counters the perk, rather than looking to a side. This would also help you see a little better when sneaking up on Survivors. Then -- this might be a bit more controversial -- remove the utility from the perk. Doing gens faster and vaulting faster is unnecessary and gives too much power to Survivors because a Killer is looking at them. In a chase, this is not counterable on the Killer side, or else you'd lose chase.

Not only does the utility make little sense, but it dips into other perks' territories, too. Faster gen speed, Resilience and Prove Thyself. Faster gate unlock, Wake Up. Faster vault speed, also Resilience. These are just to name a few things that I think Spine Chill should not have within its utility belt, since other perks already do these things. And the infamous Spine Chill+Resilience combo is also very strong, because they pair very well together for vaulting and gen speed increase. At the end of the day, Spine Chill should not have so much utility for one perk slot, and I think it countering stealth Killers is unfair, and its counterplay is unreasonable and unfavorable if you need to keep track of Survivors. Perhaps we could also change its sibling Premonition to detect stealth Killers instead, so Spine Chill doesn't cover so many bases? It's rare to see Premonition nowadays -- at least, when I play Killer -- so maybe that would be a better role for Premonition to play.

What do you think? Is what I say reasonable? Do my arguments make any valid points? I'm curious to know what everyone thinks.

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