Hag is strong I swear (A Hag Guide)
| | Introduction | |
To start off I don't really think hag needs to have a ton of buffs aside from increased setting speed, teleport range, and LUNGE RANGE WHEN TELEPORTING. (An add-on pass would be nice too) And so what is this post about? In the past week or two I have seen multiple post and/or comments related to my Hagatha regarding her being a bad killer and whatnot while yes she is hard to play, and low tier. You too can start winning the majority of your matches with Hag! And so I decided to make a minor guide for anybody trying to pick up this killer.
| | Basics | |
Hag is a 4.4 killer whilst majority of the cast is 4.6 this means that she is slower and significantly weaker in chase. Because of this you should not be focusing on them as your main priority and instead focus on injuries in order to snowball. This also means that since you have terrible mobility you should never leave the side of the map with your web. Genuinely near zero situations unless you are guaranteed a down within a short timeframe and you need them for Pain Resonance or something along those lines.
| | Chase Potential | |
Yeah, I did say her chase is pretty terrible however there are things that you can do to improve it. You can subtly zone survivors back into an area with traps or try to push them into a dead zone for an easier chase. If a survivor drops a pallet or vaults then a trap triggers on their side, wait a second before teleporting to see if they vault back into you this will typically allow for a injury/grab. If you commit to placing a trap at a loop refer to what I previously said. If not you can also force people to leave loops by quickly placing a trap or faking one. This works best at safer pallets that you do not have time to break.
| | Trap Abusers | |
Have you ever dealt with people harassing your traps? I have and I've figured out some ways to deal with this.
- Do not instantly swing as you teleport as this will no longer guarantee an Injury
- Move the trap away from safe tiles if possible
- If it isn't an important trap forget about it and set it later when the survivor isn't looking as they will forget
- Start putting your traps further away from generators or in grass instead of directly on top of them if they instantly get wiped away.
Those were just some basic tips for dealing with those evil survivor players who try to get rid of our traps.
| | Types of Traps | |
This is the part of the guide where I make up my own definitions and explanations. There are multiple different types of traps that I use when I play hag. Here is another list explaining things!
- Generator Traps - Self Explanatory can be moved slightly further away from the generator if you do not want people immediately noticing it.
- Chase Traps - Traps that were either set in chase in order to deny a loop and/or a trap that was set in the hopes of zoning a survivor to it for a free hit these should be placed away from the pallet as if it is not dropped you can get stunned when teleporting or they can just vault.
- Pre-run Traps - These ones are the traps I tend to find myself getting the most value from as they will normally be placed far away from generators in the direction that I see survivors most often pre running away from me I recommend hiding these behind walls and rocks.
- Decoy Traps - If you can't seem to find survivors or have a more important trap that you need to keep place traps in REALLY obvious spots in order to get someone to wipe them away. Once your trap count has gone up or you no longer see the aura of the trap, you know someone is there.
- God Traps - On god pallets/windows such as the Dead Dawg Saloon windows you can guarantee an injury by placing traps these are typically some of your strongest type of traps because many survivors do not want to go out of their way to disable these.
| | Early Game | |
I recommend not using Corrupt Intervention on Hag due to the sole reason that when the match starts survivors will instantly get on generators across the map. This gives you SO much time to set up your web with some unexpected traps. Corrupt is still quite good on Hag, but be warned people will come to you a lot sooner than you expect so if you use it you have to run a +setting speed add-on. During early game never commit to any chases and only take injuries if guaranteed your sole priority is setting up your web.
| | Mid Game | |
Focus on injuries and keeping the gens on your side of the map once you have at least two injured survivors I would recommend trying to pressure them and possibly snowball. If that isn't possible that's okay just go for hooks and whatnot. The middle of the match is kinda a wildcard as you don't really know what to expect especially as hag.
| | Late Game | |
Reminder that NOED is an extremely powerful perk on Hag due to the fact that you can instantly down anybody who gets touched by her traps as if they were injured. (Hex: Devour Hope is also quite good on Hag) If you are down to your last gen I would recommend trying to force a kill. Then just force trap injuries until you are able to snowball or continue to get downs. Once the final generator is powered do not hook unless you already have two kills or just want a tied game if they're death hook.
| | Techs | |
You can see the direction a survivor is going by the direction your mud phantasm is facing you can see this through walls before you teleport. Rusty Shackles allows you to move faster out of a teleport due to the fact that there is no animation this can help quite a bit if you have trouble with survivors harassing traps. However because there is no animation you cannot see which direction survivors are going I would recommend pairing the Willow Wreath with it.
| | Add-ons | |
S Tier
- Rusty Shackles | By far her best add-on as survivors are no longer warned that you are going to hit them this works great at loops by greatly increasing your chase potential and allows for free generator grabs on occasion.
- Mint Rag | I personally don't use this add-on as it requires too much brain power but this is extremely powerful as you can teleport in order to cut people off or if you see someone across the map you can teleport there without them having to trigger your trap.
A Tier
- Increased Settings Speed | Very powerful add-ons they save you significantly more time than you think.
- Increased Range | Makes it so you don't have to move too far before teleporting to a trap really far away useless if you play into a three gen
- Aura Reading when triggered | Helps you guarantee hits if a trap was set at a loop
Everything else isn't really worth using.
| | Perks | |
I won't be going into much detail about these as this guide is already too long and it has been written in one sitting on mobile.
Non Gen Slowdown
- Monitor & Abuse - Helps stop excessive pre running.
- STBFL - Allows you to teleport injure, and instantly teleport and injure comes into play more than you'd think.
- Plaything - Quite good when paired with rusty shackles and hurts survivors.
- Sloppy Butcher - One of her best perks as keeping survivors injured allows for easy snowballs.
- NOED - Also very good as it allows for late game clutches if a trap gets triggered the survivor gets downed.
Gen Slowdown
- Corrupt Intervention - very stronk
- TBTC - VERY STRONK
- Pain Resonance - Pretty stronk
- Surge - Overrated
- Deadlock - very stronk
| | Builds | |
The main two builds I run is add-ons are interchangeable:
Monitor & Abuse Pain Resonance Hex Plaything TBTC
NOED Sloppy Butcher Deadlock Corrupt Intervention
| | Conclusion & Credentials | |
This took me a while to make and I am very tired and am simply here to help out the people who thinks she desperately needs buffs. (I personally think she is very bottom of B tier or the best C tier atm) For my credentials as a hag main I have been playing her and killer in general for the past 5 years. Other hag mains feel free to give me anything to add on to the guide.
Comments
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The following are a few people who requested tips from me or wanted the hag to be buffed recently and I wanted to let them know I made a short guide for Hag in order to help people improve while we wait a few more years for her to be buffed.
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All fun and games until you get a map with no grass.
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I should probably add a section for that but on indoor maps or stuff like eerie you just hide your traps on the other side of doorways/obstructions
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I really appreciate that, on my days off I'll experiment more with this! I might try and rework my "Balance Changes" with this post and my own person findings. I appreciate your dedication for us Hag enjoyers!
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It's a really good guide, but for context, Hag is my highest kill rate (over 80%) and is not someone who I struggle with (generally speaking).
However, my main point of frustration are survivors who know how to harass Hag's traps and face no consequences. It's awful that maps like Eyrie can puts Hag at a massive disadvantage… but with my suggested changes (increased lunge on triggered teleports), Hag would feel bearable on a map like Eyrie (imo).
Hag needs to be a killer who survivors need to approach with caution, not someone to bully. Again, I know just as well as anyone how good she can be in the right hands and has so much potential. BUT, it is worth addressing these frustrations.
On a side note, it's interesting how we play Hag differently. I'll very rarely run any gen slowdown and I win based on hooking solely one survivor and slugging the rest (trapping their body or webbing the slug) with a hit and run playstyle.
For example I'll always run:
- Franklings; Sloppy; STBFL; and Coup (to deal with people harassing my traps)
- Monitor; Nurses and MYC on occasion; mixed with Sloppy and Franklins
Regardless, it's a really great guide and I appreciate you taking the time to write this. I have gained a new and interesting perspective from this.
I'll update my post soon and tag you to get some feedback :)
all the best with setting your web!
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never touched the killer, ill try her out with this info. ill be right back
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Yeah hag for sure needs increased lunge from teleports bare minimum. Aside from that I just run gen slowdown because I commit to chases a little more than I should, along with the fact that Hyperfocus + Stakeout is running rampant rn. I also don't tend to slug for more than a minute or two at a time because I tend to run into WGLF pretty often too along with the fact that I use hook based slowdown perks I rarely need to apply that much pressure.
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We gotta make Hag an S tier gang
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I don't think she's terribly bad its just near impossible to try to learn her without getting bullied for your 10 matches because people harass your traps, hence why I suggest buffing the lunge range post teleport.
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I'm one of the few masochists who actually plays hag once in a while. At least in my experience survivors either tend to find even well hidden traps on maps like rpd or simply destroy my net while i am occupied with hooking.
Im currently testing out basement and slug strategies. I also find mint rag with aura reading interesting.
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First Ever Hag match i ever played i was getting bagged and blinded left and right but then a bright idea of not attacking and setting up a web came to my head, i set down one trap and started chasing. i realized im basically horrible with no traps anywhere so i started to build my web and i did better, harrassed the squad and won the game with a well earned 4k
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I struggled while playing her true but thats because i did not build a web i charged into chase, put traps on gens and called it a day. until i realized i had no way to outsmart this team, it was a full swf bully squad too, getting blinded and bagged left and right, i eventually ran off build my devious little base of traps and decided to push them towards there. it all went downfall for them. and i got the 4k
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DUDE
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my hag and i guess all my killers i use a hex build with. currently i run undying and thrill to protect just 2 perks: the third seal and blood favor.
The third seal is a super slept on perk, its incredibly powerful on non discord call teams and is in my top 5 perks. and blood favor is super usefull since hag is incredibly useless against pallets and so being able to secure that first hit and actually having time to chase a loop to get the second is useful.
But hag is strongest with trapping the hooks, if you trap hooks right you can almost always guarentee a trade at minimum or a down on an injured before they lock into the unhook animation.
devour hope is awesome on her but you shouldnt use devour if your hook trapping unless you wait till after you get your 3 stacks first.
Rusty shackles is a almost must run for her in my opinion, it makes it much easier to get those initial hits or maintain momentum as you often lose alot of time in the early game
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You got a lot of basic stuff down but you could expand more and there's stuff you're not really correct about. Hag requires a lot of game-sense, general macro knowledge, and on-the-fly decision making. Your strategy and/or what you are forced to do can change radically depending on the map, rng, and game state. I don't have the energy to make an actual guide about all of this so I will just speak my mind and give some tips. This isn't going to be very organized.
I hate corrupt on Hag unless I am pairing it with Secret Project. Generally one of the worst things that can happen while playing Hag is getting spotted early in the trial. Moment you get spotted you are likely to get harassed if you don't address it or can't break line of sight. Especially against a SWF whom can call your location. While corrupt prevents survivors from hopping on generators right away, it also generally pushes them in your direction immediately. The undetectable from Secret Project makes this less of an issue.
The build I generally run if I want to be most effective is TBTC, Pain Res, DMS, and Agitation/Sloppy. The slowdown is extremely helpful, but this slowdown is especially helpful because she both lacks mobility and needs to focus on a lot of other things. Pain Res/DMS is just great info in general too. In terms of addons I run blue necklet and cicada generally. Necklet frankly should be basekit but I digress.
Trap Placement- A rule of thumb that will help a lot with getting better at your trap placement as both Hag AND Trapper. While playing through a trial and you go through a scenario where you're like "man I wish I had a trap there", remember that. Keep it in mind both in the moment and going forward.
- Trapping downed god pallets is not really a good idea. Better survivors will know that they can just immediately crouch after fast vaulting to not set off the trap. Best to just break the thing most of the time unless you want to get bullied.
- Try to avoid having traps close to one another. Bunching traps together means they will get burnt through faster, you won't have as much area coverage, and it lets survivors W through multiple traps in succession.
- Survivors are more likely to path towards a downed pallet than a broken one. With this in mind, you can choose to (or not to) break a pallet to better predict or wrangle where the survivors are going to path.
- Pre-trapping certain hooks can be pretty helpful due to their convenient placement. Hooks can spawn near loops, inside loops, or just in general convenient places of pathing traffic. This multi purposes your trap. You already have the hook trapped ahead of time so you don't need to bother trapping the hook, and you also have a helpful trap for use in general. Saves you time and traps.
- Try to put your mind in the head of the survivors. Where are they gonna go? How are they going to run? What will they want to do? What might they be doing right this moment? These are all things you should keep in mind when choosing where to place your traps. Same applies to Trapper actually.
For some general tips off the top of my head…
- Be unpredictable
- Don't be afraid to slug people but never exclusively slug people. Usual slugging downsides on killer aside, no hooking means no trapped hook. Also means you can't as effectively control where the survivor is on the map as they can crawl around.
- When a survivor sets off a trap while you're chasing them/while you can see them, try to quickly recognize whether or not they are gonna just keep running straight or flick. That way you can recognize whether you should insta-lunge, not insta-lunge, keep running at them, or just not react.
- It's ok to commit to chases depending on the situation. If you just huddle around your little hole all game with survivors running off and healing all you might be doing (depending on the situation) is stalling the game out and making no progress. Use your game sense and macro awareness. Keep in mind people's locations and pay attention to whether or not they are healing or something. Getting a down at all is also important to even get a snowball rolling. If you get a map like Ormond Mine or some ######### where you can't hide traps effectively its especially important to more freestyle your traps and focus on getting a down to snowball rather than defending a sandcastle.
- Her being 4.4 does not mean you shouldn't do M1 chase. As stupid as being 4.4 is, you shouldn't solely rely on your traps or commit to setup.
- You are not Trapper. Hag's trap are not permanent like his are and you don't need to waste time picking them up. This makes you flexible but also requires you to be constantly on your ass in terms of trap placement and macro.
- Not really a gameplay tip but don't stress over win streaking and #########. As Hag you can get ######### over by a number of things out of your control and your gameplay experience isn't going to normally (if the survivors aren't stupid) as laidback as much stronger and straightforward killers. Kinda goes for a lot of lower tier killers but still. Don't let the stress get to you.
- Don't waste time bumbling around. Every decision you make matters. Goes for playing DBD in general but its especially so with Hag.
MINT RAG BAD
Sometimes I feel like I am insane for thinking this way but Mint Rag is awful and it annoys me how commonly recommended and hyped it is. The addon is horribly jank. Teleporting to specific traps is bound to the same key as normal trap teleports. This means a trap is set off, you physically has to turn your camera to face the trap to teleport to it. If you don't you are most likely teleporting to the wrong trap. Even if you DO face the direction of the trap, you can still end up teleporting to the wrong one. Additionally, every time you teleport with the addon you are burning through a trap you need to reset.
The addon also encourages a playstyle of hopping between specific areas rather than having proper trap coverage and constantly setting traps across a wider area. Something which is much more easily countered by people Wing through traps than normal and generally very inefficient on maps like Ormond Mine where you need to focus on the aggressive snowball/camp more than anything.
Mint Rag also makes running Shackle mandatory which means so speedup or trigger range reduction addon, no mind gaming with Traps, etc.0 -
I adore how Hag mains are always passionate enough to drop dissertations about our muddy girl. Thanks for this one, OP!
I will add a couple of things:
- Hag is extremely vulnerable to the "s tech" (which tbh feels less like tech and more like unintended gameplay). So much so that there are some games which are unwinnable from the start. If teams are coordinated and just run around mostly looking backwards just in case then she'll struggle for a 1k. There are very very few other killers who can be beaten like that with just about no counterplay from the killer side. This is her biggest issue in my opinion, as no killer should be placed in an unwinnable game. To that end, while I think increased lunge out of a teleport is a great buff that she desperately needs, it won't be enough. I run coup every game and even that doesn't come close to countering it. I've tested coup extensively and the tech still beats it every time. So while basekit lunge increases are needed for other reasons, for it to fix the problem here it would have to be significantly longer than coup, which feels a bit silly. I think that bhvr should experiment with some haste/hinder effects in addition to a weaker basekit coup to nullify the problem and ensure that traps set off are always dangerous.
- You used to be able to see the aura of your mud phantasms turn and face survivors. At some point, the Devs added a loud noise notification bubble over the phantasm, so you can't really anymore. I'd love to see that change reverted.
- I liked your perk list, though I run very different ones that I think you and other hags might enjoy. Getting injuries and keeping them is a good strategy but I got tired of strong healing builds shutting me down. With how rare hits can be in some games, I've now opted for exposed perks over slowdown and I'm having pretty good success and more enjoyable games. My build right now is: make your choice, starstruck, friends till the end, and coup. If you prefer a more "defensive" style, drop myc for agitation. The build forces you to rely on a snowball for a win, so you need to be the most aggressive hag you can be. Focus on chase traps and shut down important loops early. Ignore Gen progress, it doesn't matter, the only thing that matters is getting a snowball of exposed effects. I seriously can't recommend it enough if you play a more aggressive style already.
I'm also of the opinion that mint rag is awful and I hate shackles because you lose out on mind games and opportunities that come from the camera swing. That's personal preference though.
OP, thanks again for the post. We are all on the same side here which is so nice to see. We love the hag, we can win with her, but she's got some issues that shouldn't be ignored.
Gl in the fog, everyone!
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I have a similar kill rate on Hag and I agree re: trap harassment. There's little no consequence for intentionally setting off traps if the survivor knows how to S key out of lunge range.
Hag has a massive dropoff in power level against 4 players with good game sense. It's a dropoff that I haven't felt on other killers. If every survivor pre-runs edge map or pre-runs away from the web, you don't have a mechanism to actually down anybody.
She's held afloat by the matchmaking algorithm that almost always puts 1 or 2 survivors with significantly worse game sense than the other players in the lobby. It's not even a SWF vs solo thing. She struggles unless 1 survivor runs the wrong way or doesn't pay attention.
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