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Question for those who think Spirit is OP/Unfun (not her addons)
What aspects of her do you think are OP/Unfun and what changes do you think would be needed to resolve the issues you have with her?
Or in other words what does a balanced Spirit look like in your opinion exactly?
I'm not here to argue if she is balanced or not, so please do not comment if you're going to say something like "omg she's fine just leave her" because that just misses the point. There are plenty of other threads for that.
Comments
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I find really boring that you have 0 chases against good spirits. It's just hit - power - hit. Or power-hit-power-hit. Nothing you can do if she predicts you well. Of course there are cases where you are chased by her but in most of them at least at rank 1 it's just a really boring and quick chase.
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wait... is there even anyone who says she's OP? With the exception of prayer beads (and maybe wakizashi) there is nothing "op" about her.
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The biggest gripe I have is "the mindgames" at pallets. I put this in quotes because the Spirit player isnt losing anything by just standing there watching. Its up to the survivor to simply GUESS at which point the killer stopped standing still. Thats not a mind game, thats a guessing game.
Beyond that, lemme ask what you think @NuclearBurrito. If a Wraith could simply run up to a survivor while cloaked, thereby having the extra speed with the cloak, and hit them without ringing the bell first... would this be fair? Thats pretty much what happens with Spirit, except theres no shimmer.
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I think they just need to remove her collision when phasing. The husk can have collision but Its a little unfair that she doesnt have to be aware of were a survivor is sometimes she just needs to bump into them while phasing, this would also make gen grabs with prayer beads happen less often since she has to guess what side to appear on
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Prayer Beads are obviously Bullshit.
But apart from that, Spirit is fine. The only thing that could indeed change is her collision while Phasing. ScottJund mentioned it in a video and I would agree to that.
Because if you do not have Iron Will, you will have a hard time anyway, and even then, it is not easy to get away from a Spirit. But her Collision makes it even harder.
I see versing Spirit as some form of Rock-Paper-Scissor. If Spirit wins, she gets a Hit. If the Survivor wins, he gets distance or maybe is even able to lose her. But when both choose the same option, it is no Draw. Spirit wins in this case, because the Survivor has no benefit from knowing that he is bumping into Spirit.
In the end, it would give Survivors an option to mindgame her. But without Iron Will, The Spirit would still be able to follow the Survivor, even if he is chaining direction.
But overall, I dont think that she is OP. Prayer Beads are Bullshit, as I already wrote and she is strong, but only needs some Tweaks. She is not fun to verse for me tho.
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she is ok, just like Nurse, what destroy her is addons
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I’d just like to know more counter play than “guess where the invisible lady is” and “just run iron will”.
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I disagree with this because I think it would just open a new can of worms. Sometimes the fact that she has collision means she can't do certain things. Like I main Spirit and I can already imagine a world where she has no collision, so I just start running through survivors to get to the pallet first and then come at them from another direction. Or one where a survivor unhooks another and then has no way to protect that survivor other than trying to trick me into chasing them via scratch marks or something. Like not having collision isn't going to actually make it harder for her to find you believe it or not.
Like yea, removing it would hurt her in these specific instances, but then it would also buff her in these other specific instances. I'd rather collision because then at least you can bait her to follow through say a pallet, then drop the pallet on her while she's phase walking. Since you're waiting for it and she has to react to it, chances are you will win the encounter and hit her with the pallet. But if I could just pass through you then I wouldn't get stuck near the pallet and therefore that tactic is lost.
The trick to not getting found via collision is to 1) not be in the predictable path where she is most likely to be phase walking, and 2) to be moving in some capacity (walk/crouch) so that when you bump into each other you feel it. If you just stand still you'd have no idea that she actually bumped into you and therefore have nothing to react to.
TLDR I don't think removing collision would have the result you would want as it just opens up a new set of tactics for Spirits.
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I think it's unfun that she moves at 110 instead of 115.
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Your first example can be prevented cause you can hear a phasing spirits footsteps if you listen closely allowing survivors to juke a spirit trying it and the other can be punished with DS something high rank survivors often use.
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The first example can be countered since you can hear a phasing spirits footsteps to tell were shes going and the second gets punished by DS a perk most high rank survivors run.
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My issue with this is that an audio cue for her phasing will never play regardless. You have to pray you can see grass moving.
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this is true, but least spirit requires incourse and soundplay
limitation of ability meter when its far from you
but in close range it needs more reduction when canceled ability
yea its 2rd best killer character in this game so its little op
however spirit is never even close to nurse
so i can accept opponent not picked nurse at least
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I want to argue, here, that nailing this with Spirit requires a developed skill -- that is, consistently and correctly intuiting survivor location from environmental cues -- and hence should be powerfully rewarded to a player who has put in the effort. Wraith can see survivors while cloaked, so it's not a fair comparison.
Shouldn't killers with a higher learning curve (Nurse, Hillbilly, Spirit, Huntress, maybe Hag) be harder to deal with in the hands of a player who has learned their really specific idiosyncrasies and can consistently execute?
And, broadly speaking, the survivors as a group have the advantage, because the clock is always against the killer. So, shouldn't it be appropriate for killers to undoubtedly have the upper hand in individual chase scenarios? In other words, big picture favors survivors, but specific encounters favor killer.
I suppose I am arguing this as my position because I sort of "softly" believe what I am describing to be an appropriate balance target. But I'm throwing it out there as an open question, because, I dunno, what does everyone think? Spirit certainly seems to be a fulcrum for this particular philosophical debate.
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Am I able to make additional changes to the wraith in order to account for this?
If so then I could probably make it work so yes.
If not then it still depends on exactly what you mean. The wraith has an addon that makes the bell not ring but still requires a channel. I'm ok with this addon.
Or it could just mean you can swing while invisible with no additional changes. Which I would not be ok with.
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Just a reminder that the main point of this post is theory crafting solutions.
So far I've just heard the collision thing, which is great but I'm sure people can come up with more idea's. Or does everyone think that would be sufficient?
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1) If I phase walk through you and come from the pallet you are running to then you have nothing to use to avoid a hit because you're just out in the open. If there is collision I'm forced to either come from behind you (which you could still run to the pallet likely) or go around and cut you off which means if I guessed wrong I lost you.
2) I slug you.
My point with these examples was that either way the Spirit is not negatively affected.
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Prayer Beads change places with Mother Daughter Ring in terms of rarity or have their effect altered to play the phasing sound for all survivors whenever she phases, similar to Wraith's boneclapper.
As a Spirit main, I strongly disagree with removing collision when phasing at this time. I say that because survivor audio levels are not remotely consistent from survivor to survivor and map to map. Everyone has tier 1 and 2 Iron Will on Mt Ormond. Jake sounds like he's underwater in corn fields. Bill echoes badly on Autohaven. I could go on. Collision is the final confirmation when the audio is uncertain, but audio uncertainty isn't always a player skill thing.
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Very simple answer, run Spine Chill, is the most underrated perk in the game and also the best that could exist. Just watch some PainReliever videos and u will see how good it is, as it counters every stealth killer and helps u a lot in a chase when u get used to the perk
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I, like PainReliever, also refuse to play survivor without Bond and Spine Chill. Bond is the best survivor perk in the game, full stop. And Spine Chill is to survivor as Whispers is to killer -- that is, once you learn to read it and really understand the powerful radar that it gives you, you'll feel crippled without it.
And yeah, it really helps vs. Spirit mindgames -- husks don't register as being the killer, so you'll know if she's trying to trick you.
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Personally I find Spirit to be one of my favorite killers to go against as I love the challenge she provides and I like the fact that it challenges how I would normally play - however, I also do understand that I have an unpopular opinion when it comes to that and that most people do not enjoy playing against her because it feels like a guessing game to them.
With that being said, I find it very interesting that people are proposing to remove her collision while phasing when in reality it would only harm new spirits, buff experienced ones and do absolutely nothing to address the problem most players have with her.
To go into more detail, removing collision does not fix the bad feeling players get when a Spirit stands still and then hits them. Going further with this point, experienced players would gain the ability to do the following ;
- Cut through players to reach a pallet sooner, causing more unfair cases that would only build up more frustrations.
- Eliminates the point of bodyblocking because now you can't bodyblock for someone you've unhooked which would in return guarantee that person goes down which would promote tunneling.
- Cut through players to reach a window and then unvanish to bodyblock it, guaranteeing the survivor has absolutely no options where they previously could've used a window to cut time away from her power duration.
Essentially, this would be a buff to good spirit players and would only harm new ones who might get mixed up which would still be relying on the Spirit making a mistake.
Rather than remove collision, I believe there is a better solution. Below I will include a nerf to the power and an overhaul to the passive phasing to make up for it with the goal of encouraging more interactive gameplay for more users ;
- When you fully charge Yamaoka's Haunting, you play a sound at the start and end of your phase which gives players a clear indication that they are now being mindgamed.
Now obviously that's a pretty considerable hit to Spirit, so how do we make up for that? Overhauling her passive phasing, and here is how this would be accomplished ;
- Passive phasing can occur anytime you have at least 25% of your power gauge rather than randomly.
- Activating it is simple, you press control and gives the power icon a white tint to indicate it's in use and then return back to normal when it ends which can also be paired with sounds only the killer can hear. The duration should be something at or between 0.4 and 0.75 seconds long and take out 25% of your power charge.
- To prevent spamming it, passive phasing could be given a brief 2-3 second cooldown between multiple uses.
- Her two passive phasing addons "Juniper Bonsai" & "Dried Cherry Blossom" can be changed to either continue to increase the duration of the passive phase, or have it take less of your charge (so 20% or 15% instead of 25%, just as an example).
Now, I don't believe the suggestion I will provide here is perfect by any means, but I believe it would solve the problem people are actually having with Spirit while still keeping the parts of her power that is super fun to use and provide more utility out of passive phasing.
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I have best solution: git gud or play something else, this is only what you need to know, only that and everything
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@Rydog Im all for killers being able to have a higher skill ceiling to do more. Huntress and Billy come to mind as great exanples of when this is done and still feels fair. They both provide clear cues when theyre using their powers, which allows the survivor the ability to counterplay them. Neither of them also requires a particular perk to counterplay. If I get hit with a Huntress hatchet, its because my positioning was off. The character has a high skill ceiling in when you should pull out the hatchet as well as of course...aim.
There was a reason why the original Legion was so unpopular to play against. Even though the character didnt have the highest of kill counts, the person he was chasing didnt really have much say in how the chase went. At best, you would just stun him repeatedly with pallets to avoid death by a thousand stabs and hope he didnt have spirit fury. To compare and contrast him to Billy...While he has increased movement speed while using his power like Billy, the total control of his movement made it so activating his power at ANY time really had no downside. The character wasnt particularly powerful, but the survivors IN the chases actually could feel like participants rather than timers and targets when against a Billy as opposed to Legion.
The reason I bring up Legion is because Spirit shares something with him: Increased movement speed and total control. While Legion can no longer use it to get the down, making it abit more interactive during the 2nd half of the chase at least, Spirit doesnt have that restraint. She still gets to mad dash at you and down ya in the next hit. While it may feel skillful to get those hits in, it feels completely random and uninteractive on the receiving end. Unlike a Huntress' hatchet where you can duck behind a tree when you hear the audio cue of her taking out the hatchet, theres not that kind of counterplay to Spirit.
Someone brought up how sounds are kinda rough in some maps, but that has nothing to do with the player playing survivor. An echo throwing you off isnt me being skillful about avoiding your hits. Other ppl argue to just bring iron will, but realistically... It shouldnt REQUIRE a perk to counter any killer. Doc for example gets soft countered by Calm spirit, but running it isnt REQUIRED and the ppl NOT using it still have a good chance of winning their chases against Doc (Side note, I am completely in favor of buffing Doc to make his basekit beam more usable for skillful chases).
Anyways, thats pretty much my rant in a nutshell. If you do reply, make sure to use the @ function instead of just quoting me.
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@LordGlint alright then. How would you go about fixing those problems if you were given the chance to?
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@NuclearBurrito Probably not the answer you wanna hear, but maybe give it the Freddy treatment and rework it from the ground up. I could pitch some idea if you want, but they wouldnt be anything like spirit's current ability.
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@LordGlint go for it.
I wouldn't specifically request that people hate on my favorite Killer if I wasn't prepared to hear things I disagree with.
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Well, if she's not wearing prayer beads, listen for the phasing hum.
If you suspect she's phasing, try not to make loud noises or leave scratch marks.
Although, if your with a group of people and the Spirit is phasing, make as many scratch marks as possible, intertwined with your teammates. It should confuse the Spirit tremendously.
Other than that, she's a 110% Killer with a breathing sequence that's loud as fudge.
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@NuclearBurrito What if Spirit could project out a copy of herself with limited steering to strike at a target. Think of it like if instead of a hatchet, if huntress throw a HillBilly instead. After the strike, your camera would then return to the original origin point (the husk). We could make use of her screams as a sort of battle cry, similar to the sound effects huntress makes while priming a hatchet.
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Personally I would change two things:
- a visual and/or audio cue when she uses her power. Standing still in front of a pallet is fun the first times, but it gets boring soon since there is no interaction and basically everything the survivor can do will lead to a hit.
- remove collision when using Prayer Beads. Gen grabs with this addon are done mainly thanks to collision. If this allows to sick plays as @vampire_toothy said it might be worth to make the addon UR
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I think full-on reworks are a bad, baaaaaaaaaaad idea for this game, given how much players are asked to invest in a single character.
I've already lost Freddy. If they were to make a habit of this, and I felt like I constantly had to fear them hitting the reset button on a character I've spent millions and millions of BP on, I would just stop playing the killer role altogether.
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In my opinion... She needs to work more like the nurse where after you come out of phasing, you have a certain amount of time (possibly a few seconds) to lunge to try and hit survivors. The biggest problem I have with spirit is that the moment you're unsure of where the survivor is, you can just come out of phase and immediately start moving and in most cases the survivor will be out of position due to their attempts at mindgaming her. If she worked more like nurse where she got a stun after phasing, you'd have to use the power more carefully.
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A survivor. A. Single. One. I brought this up in an earlier reply, but the killer should necessarily have the advantage in an individual chase scenario, because the survivors AS A GROUP have the advantage game-wide because time is always against the killer. The survivors can't always have every advantage at all times.
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The problem with spirit is it really doesn't take skill to play her, anyone telling themselves different should try playing a lower tier killer to see how really skilled they are in chase, you don't have to know how to run tiles correctly to play her you can literally just phase and listen, also when you run stridor it makes iron will useless and she basically has no weakness besides a power cool down at that point , throw prayer beads into the mix and it should be at least a 3k everytime if the person playing her isn't boosted, so I guess my issue is that she's too easy to master and there aren't any true counters to her ability the match is literally controlled by the skill of the person using her and if they don't run tiles correctly it will be a easy win but if they even slightly have an idea on how to run tiles there's no reason you should be losing you have every advantage to end chases as fast as possible and high mobility for Gen control along with your physical body phasing in and out when not even using power for skilless mindgames, of course genrush is possible but not likely in the hands of a good spirit who knows how to end chases.
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She mind games by standing still. How fun is that to vs. Vault a pallet and she was just standing still watching. Leave the loop by walking and she phases over to you.
Also running back over your scratch marks doesn't work, you can tell when the scratch makes end, obviously they are still close by and you unphase early. So many survivors get caught by this. Also once you turn the sound up she is OP
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IMO Spirit isn't OP because she has a clear weakness: if she opts to use her power to have map pressure, it cripples her in chases.
I'd be super happy if they shifted her power away from chases and into map pressure. We need more killers who can apply pressure anyway. She should obvs stay good in chases, because that's part of what makes her a good killer. Just shift the power a bit.
Other than that, if she lost collision during phasing, she'd be better to face. I don't think she NEEDS nerfs because she has weaknesses, she's just unfun to play against in chases.
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@OrionsFury4789 I would actually like to point out that without any addons, Spirit's mobility benefit is actually not that significant. In total, Spirit's power takes 6.5 seconds to fully use at a base - 1.5 of those seconds are spent standing completely still (costing you 6.6 meters of distance) while 5 of them are spent moving at 176% (7.04 m/s) resulting in moving 35.2 meters during those 6.5 seconds vs moving at the base 4.4 m/s for 6.5 seconds which would provide you 28.6 meters of distance. Sure, during that time you gained 6.6 meters of distance + the slight boost you gain from the reappearance, but that comes at the cost of not having your power ready when you get into a chase when you could've instead spent the extra 1.5 seconds moving without her power. Her gen pressure is only actually sufficient with addons (although her chase potential is still insanely good even without addons). So it's still entirely possible for a good Spirit player to lose because of gen speeds - it's just in the cases of chases that you generally cannot win unless you have a strong window to work with or specific perks (iron will, dance with me, lithe, quick & quiet) which is where I think my suggestion would help remove the whole standstill issue while promoting healthier gameplay.
Lastly, I don't think people give Spirit enough credit when it comes to how difficult it can be to use her at times. The people who just stand completely still at pallets make a bad image for most Spirit players which is where I'd agree and say that something should be done for that playstyle in particular.
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@vampire_toothy Wouldn't it make more sense to remove the husk instead then?
After all, using LoS breakers to fake a phase is much harder to do and more costly when it fails. So I see no reason why it should be an audio cue instead of a visual one.
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It's a boring and unfun experience even without prayer beads. I hate to play against spirit. Your chasing skill doesn't matter anymore, it's all about beeing lucky enough to have iron will equipped and hoping that DbD sound is screwing her. That's it. Lame and boring.
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I think she just needs 115% move speed on top of her current kit. There need to be killers who just roundly shut down chases and loops, full stop, and force players into altruistic and objective-centric behavior in order to succeed, and not endless loops.
Survivors have a lot of power in the big-picture, us-as-a-group sense, because the clock is always ticking on the killer. Killers who have a lot of advantage in individual, one-on-one chase circumstances need to be the ones that the rest of the game is balanced around.
People get extremely hyper-focused on the balance as it pertains to individual survivor outcomes and escapes, where everything should realistically hinge on the survivors as a group. One or two people might die, but if it enables the others to escape, it's still a success, and those dead people probably wound up pipping, too.
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There are posts that list out counters without perks
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I've heard a counter-argument which would just make people mad again. So, I think everyone's back at square one...
...or that most people just don't know how to counter spirit. Against spirit, you have to be stealthy, but most survivors don't like being stealthy...
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Well, yeah, it makes sense. But I disagree about Legion. Legion could only down you if they were able to get the hits (multiple). You could also stun them with a pallet more easily... Legion isn't the perfect killer, but he wasn't broken. Not as much as everyone said he was. Sure, nerf Frank's Mixtape. I don't care about that so much. But all legion games just feel the same now. Spirit games don't. Do you use your power to get close to the gen? Do you use it to catch up to them? Do you hit them now, or wait for a better position? So many questions Legion doesn't have the luxury to ask.
And I think having three killers where the Killer's control the chase instead of the survivors was a nice change of pace... but survivors are really used to the power role, so.... I'm not surprised this discussion about spirit exists.
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"I have an unpopular opinion" = "I'm not the entitled version of a survivor player". : D
I'm glad to know good survivor mains exist. : P
I think that your changes would overwhelm newer killer players. I'm sure many could adapt to it though.
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Lets also not forget that from patch to patch there is every chance of survivor breathing/footsteps being silent or otherwise bugged again.
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I don't know exactly how I feel about removing the husk, I think a better idea would be to give it a new animation when you activate your phase if you're looking for a visual indicator rather than an audio indicator.
I say this because the husk has collision which can bodyblock survivors, allowing for more skillful options that people should still be able to utilize. @NuclearBurrito
Actually I'm not a survivor main, I probably play roughly around 70% killer and 30% survivor.
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My problem with the spirit is the lack of mindgames. You heard me right, there are no mindgames on the survivor side playing against spirit.
- You can't know where she's coming from. Hearing footsteps is near impossible if you're working on a gen or you're running or even just injured.
- If you know she's phasing and you try to trick her by double backing, she'll just run into you because she has collision for whatever reason.
- As I said, no mindgames really. It's just a guessing game. Say she's chasing you and you vault a window and she walks up to it. She could be vaulting it, phasing or standing still and there is no way to know which she is doing. Also, she can hear your sounds way too easily and can just phase right on you, so you basically need to use a window or a pallet every time, but because the spirit knows this she will go for those specific things. Going for a pallet is a 50/50 and you can rarely make it to a window. (and she might even cut you off)
- Passive phasing. Even looping turns into a guessing game instead of a mindgame. When you're looping her and her stain suddenly disappears you can't know if she just turned around to double back, or if she just got passive phasing. This is even more dumb because of the fact that she doesn't know when she is passively phasing so she can't use it to her advantage purposefully
- With everything mentioned above, her speed after phasing is pretty insane especially with addons. This makes it so that even if you managed to make her think you went somewhere else she will almost always catch up to you regardless.
- Prayer beads.
Those are my main problems with the spirit. Now I don't want her overly nerfed, but I want the devs to introduce some sort of a way to tell what the spirit is doing, that way surviving is not just rolling the die and hoping that you get lucky, but an actual representation of skill.
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So you want to remove chases from this game and make it a gen rushing sim?
If you can reliably put a full stop to any loops, the skill of the killer and survivor becomes irrelevant, kinda like with the old legion.
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The question should be "hows it feel when you get grudge hit by a killer who cant see you while using their power?" ...... maybe try double G tactic? "wink wink" lol
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On a serious note she is balanced... devs have finally made another top tier killer who can take some shifts from Billy, nurse and huntress.... Rin isnt even a year old yet and the good ones are few and far apart..... you come across one thatll smack you down every phase....no the next one most likely wont be able to phase to save their lives.....
Rather then talking about "what is unbalanced and what should change on spirit?" Why dont we talk about "what could help out Doc or LF?" ...... oh wait that would mean more higher tier killers possibly...
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@vampire_toothy close enough
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