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Possible Distortion Nerf
Comments
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Not every build a killer uses is either all regression or all aura so I'm not sure if your implying that's the reason why distortion is fine or not so correct me if I'm wrong. Say I'm playing as Pig and I decide to run Lethal, BBQ, Deadlock and Corrupt, why does one perk with no activation requirement, cool down etc get to almost indefinitely shutdown half my build?
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I think aura denial should be earned by something more stringent than existing on the map with the killer. A survivor's perk shutting off a killers' should be a very very rare thing, as it's 1/16 perks denying 1/4 killer perks.
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I've gotta be one of the few people that ran distortion when it didn't recharge and while it was fun to figure out when I want to spend my tokens vs BBQ n chili, it absolutely was not good.
Make it start it with 2 tokens and give one per unhook/heal/gen % or something. There's dozens of ways to nerf it in a common sense way. Since it's a survivor perk I expect it to get a gentle tap on the wrist.
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Say Im playing Champion of light, Residual Manifest, BG player and Flashbang. Why should Lightborne shut down more than half my build, not to mention ANY item i bring/get during the match via perks or otherwise?
Currently, balance is the reason I want Distortion as it is. Because just like Lightborne, if the killer doesn't bring aura perks, I've a completely dead perk. Balance.
As for implying, I am not implying anything currently, just stating my thoughts and opinions. :)
This is the game by design though. 1v4 you're gonna have that. Not really sure what to say other than maybe try survivor more? But I'll bite and see what happens lol.
Even if only 3 survivors bring distortion, you still get value out of aura builds. A lot less, but you still do.
Lightborne shuts 100% off, all the time, for existing on the same map as any of the other 4 players playing the game.That's my response as in my mind Distortion and Lightborne are two sides of the same coin. I feel its the most balanced spot in the sea of survivor and killer perks that gives equal levels of power for simply existing. That said, Distortion still has conditions, can run out into nothing, and often is a dead perk anyway.
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That's what I just laid out, though.
Aura perk + Lethal exceeding Distortion's limit means one of two things.
1: You have two tokens available, it consumes them, your aura remains hidden. Distortion still works as intended.
2: You only have one token available, and it's consumed. You now have six seconds before your aura is shown, which also itself means two things:
- You have six seconds to find + hop in a locker, and your aura remains hidden. Slight downgrade but Distortion still works as intended.
- The killer probably isn't looking for you anyway because they're looking for survivors that were revealed at the start of their perk activating. Gearhead is the only exception here but it's also already the exception, Gearhead + Lethal chews through two stacks of Distortion because it lasts twelve seconds.
In both scenarios here, Distortion still does what it's supposed to do, it just becomes a little bit weaker and a lot less passive in some scenarios. That's a good thing, in my book, that's what a healthy nerf would look like.
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I'm still just flabbergasted that we're thinking of changing the symptom and not the cause.
The only reason Distortion is even seen as good is because of most killers' over reliance on aura reading to play the game for them. It's just like how I dislike survivors' over reliance on Windows of Opportunity as a crutch perk because they don't want to learn the map or pay attention to what pallets have and haven't been thrown in a match.
Like I dunno, maybe it's just me but when I play killer the only aura reading things I use are killer add-ons. I rely on map knowledge, audio cues, and a general awareness of how survivors think in order to find people.
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I don't personally think that Distortion is a high priority for nerfing. I was careful to say that this is only something I'm thinking about because Distortion is on the roadmap.
Since it's happening either way I'd prefer it to be a healthy change, and I think there are healthy changes you could give Distortion. It is very effective, after all.
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I see. Rereading, your example change does keep the perk in tact. But I want to make sure I'm sturdy on my lil hill here.
Again, as it stands, I feel Distortion is one of the more balanced perks currently in game. This is mostly due to both sides having one perk that is pretty much God tier. Messing with Distortion will change that, so I'd ask how you would keep this balance between the two perks, Distortion and Lightborne. If one side has a total build shut down perk, I want both to have one.
Still, I dislike your changes but understand they would probably work. 6 seconds just doesn't wrk for me. 8 Would have to be the minimum, because just hopping in a locker as you said isn't as easy as 'just hopping in a locker.' I'd have to have Quick and Quiet, or slowly get into the locker and be spotted. If you get seen at ALL with Distortion, the perk failed. Half a glimpse is all the killer needs to get info, and thats what it's supposed to prevent. <3
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Lightborn is kind of its own beast, but if we are branching out into bringing those two into parity with each other… well, just make Lightborn work like Distortion, right?
Token system, recharge tokens by chasing survivors. I think it's always kind of going to be stronger than Distortion by default, at least insofar as it having the stronger effect when it activates, but if you want the two to be considered pairs, you'd probably look to make Lightborn function like Distortion rather than the other way around.
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"if you want stealth, you should be actively playing in a stealthy way, instead of just equipping perks and having it happen for you"
okay but if you wanna find a survivor maybe you should go looking for them and not have a perk do it for you? lol
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Or leave them be. They're both doing their purpose very well.
But since Distortion is getting changed, your change wouldn't be the end of the world. I'd stop playing survivor a bit and just stick to killer to see how things pan out. If Aura builds are viable against Distortion, it's a dead perk.
And I've been pairing the two. Its just no one has touched it because… why would they? I feel I am very justified in my reasoning as it's yet to be dismantled.
Tit for tat is all I've been doing in this thread. No one ever addresses it.
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You're acting like I'm mad at Distortion for existing or something, lol.
It's being nerfed and I'm pitching a healthy way of doing it, nothing more.
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Eh, they're somewhat similar but I don't think they're properly linked.
The equivalent to something like Distortion is probably Blindness on the killer's side, and Blindness that works passively, so… probably Fearmonger?
It's a bit of a moot point, though, Lightborn isn't on the roadmap so that's why I didn't factor it into my idea for how to address it healthily. I could see wanting those two to be changed in tandem, but it is a little bit aside the point to bring it up in this thread specifically.
As for them both doing their job very well, that's kind of the problem. Distortion - and Lightborn too but you see that one less so it's even lower priority - is really good at its job. Probably a little too good for how passive it is. That's probably why it's on the roadmap to begin with. Is it the most unbalanced thing ever? Nah. But I do understand why BHVR would want to change it.
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Sounds good. Good spot to bow out for me. :) Ty for the discussion! I'll nervously wait to see what they do.
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I think the not blocking scratch marks would be a good change actually. You blocked the aura, now you actually need skill in being stealthy to remain unseen rather than being given it for free.
It would also open up more thought to using something like Fixated or Urban Evasion in your build to get out of the way unseen.
I think the recharge in chase change is better, simply because Distortion let's you identify aura perks in play, so even if you have no tokens, you can still avoid the auras because you know they're in play... having it recharge in chase means you can get the advantage of blocking aura reads back by actually working for it, but even if you don't, the value of Distortion has already been attained.
However the need to actually build for stealth is also a good change rather than having it for basically free off a single perk.
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in what world is an aura perk of all things a crutch perk? If anything distortion would be the crutch perk given its free and total countering of an entire perk category.
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Someone else also brought up the point about Distortion letting you avoid auras, but my question to that has always been "which perks are you referring to".
That's true of BBQ and NTH, but it's not reasonably true of most other aura perks. There's no reliable way of avoiding Gearhead unless you're cracked at skill checks, and there's no reliable way of avoiding Floods of Rage, I'm All Ears, or Bitter Murmur at all without basically throwing. Against some killers, there's no way of reliably avoiding A Nurse's Calling without extremely consistent info on where the killer is. Even some perks like Alien Instinct and Friends Til The End are hard to avoid because it's hard to ascertain if your aura is gonna be revealed.
Knowing what aura perks the killer has is still useful, because it adds a layer to your decisonmaking to know that you're being revealed, but I'd honestly say a clear majority of aura reading perks aren't something you can reliably dodge like BBQ or NTH. I don't think we have to be worried about survivors being able to dodge aura reading as a class of perks from one Distortion activation telling them which ones are in play.
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charges while in chase. That’s all we need to stop the abusers
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You don't think my suggestion would be a healthy change? Any particular reason why?
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True enough some of these auras are harder to dodge, but in all those counter examples the point is that they are not as consistent as BBQ and NTH anyway, so the fact your perk can block them is a bigger deal.
- Alien Instinct only hits one survivor, if that is you in the locker, it gets 0 value, whereas BBQ can get multiple hits of value regardless.
- I'm All Ears needs to be in chase, so you're actively countering it with Distortion recharging in chase as you'd be getting tokens back as you go.
- Friends Til The End gets totally slowed down by Distortion, you're investing in it's aura reading and screams to ensure you can keep getting into chases fast, a single blocked aura read from a locker can seriously halt the snowball power of FttE.
- Gearhead is a fair shout, but having this perk as a weakness reduces the "one size fits all" countering nature of Distortion. Having a weakness like this gives a potential slot/niche for a new perk to fill this role.
- Floods of Rage is tempered by the fact the killer isn't in control of when they get that aura read, thus is far more likely to be out of position in order to capitalise on the aura reveal.
- Nurses Calling ofc can't be blocked by lockers, but even if you had Distortion stacks, your ally gets revealed anyway, so is a moot point regardless. Even if that wasn't the case, to explore a hypothetical world where Distoetion could hide both players, I'd also argue that with the buff of Iron Will, Leon's perk Bite The Bullet kinda lost its purpose, and I think having that perk block auras while healing would be a great change for that perk. As a permanent unconditional effect, this would give BtB a niche to be better than Distortion in this scenario, rather than Distortion being the go to counter for everything aura related.
I think fundamentally the real value from Distortion is knowing the aura effects in play... everything else is a happy set of strong effects that make it even better.…
Is why I'd be happy to take the Scratch Marks nerf you originally proposed (though I think shortening the aura block guts it too much), it still has a lot of value, but still requires effort from the survivor to remain undetected, this is a good direction.
However I still feel that the recharge in chase change is also a healthy change, since you can still avoid auras by knowing they're in effect (or make them very hard to capitalise on), and it again puts a skill element onto the survivor to stay hidden, or take chase at the right time to get your aura blocking back.
Making it conditional in this way gives chances for other perks to exist to satisfy the aura blocking role (such as bite the bullet), instead of "why use that aura block perk? Just take Distortion".
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Like Lightborne. Balance.
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The 10-second duration is not the problem with Distortion. While reducing the duration to 6 seconds as you suggested would make it burn through tokens more quickly in some cases, it would be a more inconsistent solution than just nerfing the recharge system, as shortening the duration would only really be a nerf against aura perks that last longer than 6 seconds (and many of them don't). Ironically, the perk that would benefit the most from this is probably Gearhead, which just so happens to be the aura perk that is the best at countering Distortion as it is since it can activate multiple times in quick succession and is able to actually keep up with Distortion's recharge system, and allowing it to instead consistently take 2 tokens per activation would be excessive. Any combination of aura reading perks with shorter durations would still be countered as much as they are right now, and for those perks Distortion would remain just as strong as it currently is and that's not ideal at all.
Keeping the 10 second duration the same and nerfing the recharge system would be a much better approach because that nerfs it equally across most aura reading. There isn't a whole lot that lasts longer than 10 seconds. The specific change I want to see is to change the recharge system to gain tokens while being chased by the killer, rather than it being based on the TR. That way, you are forced to interact with the killer to regain tokens and can't just stealth a majority of the game. And encouraging survivor vs. killer interaction is a good thing + this will also make Distortion a little more consistent against killers who are undetectable very often. If that ends up making it too situational, the actual recharge time could also be shortened a tiny bit to compensate, but it would still make the perk a lot healthier than it is now.
As for the scratchmarks being hidden, I'm indifferent as to whether that gets removed or not, it's not really the important part of the perk.
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Yeah that is the game by design. Which is like, why I said that? I play whatever the incentive is. These accusations of "you're an X main" are incredibly limp-wristed. Don't care for em. I also couldn't care less about lightborn. I don't use it. Get rid of it. Give it tokens like someone else suggested. Whatever. They aren't equivalent.
My point that killer perks should not generally be shut down by survivor perks stands. They're supposed to be stronger because there are less of them. If I run alien instinct and like you said, 3/4 survivors have distortion then no, I'm likely not getting that perk to proc once. That's funneling me into perks that I know I'll get value out of. Grim embrace, pain res, surge, etc etc. That's unhealthy for the game. Full stop.
There's dozens of common sense ways to nerf distortion that allow it to do it's job while also not nullifying weaker aura reading perks entirely. It's not fine the way it is now. Sorry.
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Agree to disagree. All good!
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Whenever I see people saying that Distortion should recharge in chase, all I can think is that the perk would die instantly for the average player and would promptly get replaced with yet another gen-speed perk.
Newcomers/casual survivors tend to have chases that often don't even reach the 30 second mark (especially when pallets are getting scarce and they end up in a deadzone). Making Distortion recharge on chase would essentially make the perk nearly useless for newer Survivors but still good on cracked Survivors that don't need it.
There are enough perks as it is that only experienced Survivors can truly get value out of. Making a stealth-focused perk bad for those that need it most but still functional for those that don't need it is just counter-productive.
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Just like Windows of Opportunity, it takes the guesswork or human error out of the game. There's no need to patrol gens or search for a survivor near objectives when you can just see exactly where you need to go next.
Distortion is also not the end-all be-all counter to aura reading as well. There are plenty of times where my stacks get eaten faster than I can recharge them. I also get chased plenty even while running it, because I'm actively working on objectives, rescuing people from hook, etc.
I'd be fine if it didn't hide scratch marks, because it is pretty ridiculous that I can not only hide my aura but actively turn a killer's own perk against them to escape a chase (like with I'm All Ears for example.)
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this would really help the new player experience and help people learn when they are being affected by perks and what they do, this should happen.
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Well, rip Distortion I guess, for the vast majority of Survivors they will get 3 uses per match tops since all their chases will end on a hook. Complainers won.
Goodbye altruist-stealth build, hello yet another gen perk or Sprint Burst.
Good ol' perk variety getting lowered again...
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Not that I'm agreeing or disagreeing with you here in general, but it feels odd to comment that on this post specifically lol
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It was a followup to my previous post sorry.
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