Is Plague viable?
I recently heard one streamer say "Plague is not viable, just an m1 killer" and I wanted to know what other players think of her...Do you think she's not viable? I really like her playstyle and if you use her corrupt purge at the right times, she's a beast. What do you think?
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I really like her character, but I wish her power didn’t rely so heavily on survivors giving it to her.
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Her fundamental design flaw is that she is too dependent on what survivors do which hurts her and her builds.
If you have a corrupt purge build but use up your 1-2 corrupt purges(1 base + 1 apple) without winning and the survivors never cleanse afterwards then your build doesn't work anymore.
Or vice versa if your build is focused on keeping survivors injured them cleansing can also cause your build to no longer work.
Survivors dictate too much of her power to ever truly be viable.
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Depends on how you define the term "viable". All killers are viable against average survivors / the vast majority of survivors.
If you solely define the term by a killer's potential to go against the very best SWF teams then I'm gonna say no, she isn't viable.
The very best teams consist of people that feel comfortable pushing gens while injured and they know how to play pallets perfectly so they can get the stun to break you out of your blood vomit when you pick it up OR they're good enough at breaking line of sight not allowing you to even hit the blood vomit.
And without blood vomit she's a basic M1 killer in chases. Sure, everyone is basically "exposed" all game but the very best teams consist of strong loopers and her base ability doesn't help in that regard. Also she's HUGE making it even easier to play pallets against her.
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Plague is viable. In fact, basically every Killer can compete in Red Ranks, sure, some people may claim that only Nurse and Spirit can do so, but the majority of players in Red Ranks are not that good. And nobody goes against optimal 4 man SWFs as much as they claim.
The problem with Plague is that her Add Ons are not the best. If the Survivors dont cleanse, there is nothing in bringing Add Ons for Corrupt Purge. Or to use stuff like Vile Purge effectiveness, which stops being useful once everyone is broken. And if the Survivors dont cleanse, she turns into a M1-Killer with permanent Oneshot, which is not bad by any means, but also quite boring.
IMO (and I have written that really often) they need to give an incentive to cleanse and weaken the Corrupt Purge in return. There is a reason why many Survivors dont cleanse, because you can basically lose the game by giving her Corrupt Purge, especially, if it is only one person who cleansed and everyone else is doomed because they are injured and Plague is using Infectious Fright.
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Plague Main here. I definitly think she is viable. I don´t think that the survivors have to much influence on her ability in general. It´s only a problem against a 4 SWF. Because they won´t clean themselfs for a long time and do it at all at the same time near endgame. That can hurt you. But otherwise: Yes, if they don´t clean themselves you don´t get your range attack more than one or two times and you are a simple m1(R2)-Killer. But the survivors are one hit wonders for the hole round. It´s like playing against Michael in stage 3. And the survivors are also very easy to find even with iron will. So I don´t think that it is smart in generall to not clean yourself. It can snowball very fast, espacially if the plague has kept one of her fountains unused.
I have only two issues with her:
- Her vomit is way to inconsistent. I had it several times, that I vomited on a survivor who was running towards a window, vaulted trough it and ran away, and I hitted him for one second straight. But nothing happend...
- I think it´s a design mistake, that a survivor who got injured in a chase can walk to an infected generator, infect himself and heal his injury by cleaning himself on a fountain. You should just be able to clean the infection and the broken status, not the injury.
But overall I think she is perfectly viable in every rank and also very fun to play. But because of her inconsistancy she als is very frustrating sometimes...
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Plague can be a very strong killer, however she is reliant too much on RNG and very low latency. Not only does she need a decen m1 killer map, she needs her fountain in a decent location, preferably centralised, and in her 1 and only use she needs to snowball as hard as possible, meaning that 1 "missed" hit can, and usually will be the difference between winning and losing. It doesn't help that her corrupt purge is notoriously slow.
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No, her power is very time inefficient and is reliant on survivors giving her power to her. Pair that with the delay on the projectile pellets making it tough to actually land a vomit hit at times since it either phases through survivors or barely misses them around corners. The counter play to Plague is deny her power as much as possible (infection and corrupt purge) then loop her like a normal M1 killer.
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Design wise she's pretty damn neat but her gameplay is extremely frustrating. Questionable puke hitboxes and no map pressure as well as terrible bp/emblem scoring. Then there's also the issue of her being bugged since 3 patches so far with no hotfix in sight. So I'd say no, she's in a pretty bad spot right now.
Also no new skins since over half a year now, the last one was just a recolor on the Rift. That's another disappointing aspect about the killer.
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She is m1 tier. She is about the same as legion, only difference is that she can make what I call "Nuke Build". She has 2 "Nuke" add-ons (yellow and green) that allow to activate her corrupt purge at least ~once~.. Well, survivors can play smart or you can get a bad map with too many full walls and it may not work, so it is NOT a reliable tactic and not good enough to get her out of m1 tier. If you dont really enjoy her design or you are a competitive player, pick someone else.
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Plague is to Huntress what Oni is to Billy. That is, Plague has a Huntress-like ability to injure and down people with a long range attack which is more powerful than Huntress’ ability plus Plague is a 115% speed killer, but she has the disadvantage that her power needs to be charged up. So when she’s able to charge it up she’s potentially really deadly, but it takes some time to do so her early game is a bit weaker than Huntress’. Oni similarly has an ability to get instant downs and cross the map at hyperspeed which is more powerful than Billy’s but it takes Oni time to charge it up.
So basically how good or bad you think Plague and Oni are depends on how much of a hinderance you think it is to have to charge up the ability than their counterparts have a weaker version of. Huntress and Billy are both considered pretty decent killers, so Plague and Oni are probably on par with them more or less.
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I used to think she was the weakest killer because, like a "one-track minded ignoramus", I didn't like the idea that the survivors were "completely in control" of her power. I kept thinking the only thing good about her was when she gets Corrupt purge, which is the strongest ranged damage in the game IMO, but of course she was frequently denied that power if the survivors refused to cleanse, which felt stupid to me at the time.
However, after deciding to bite the bullet and play her for a while I came to realize how wrong I had been. While I was partially correct about Corrupt Purge and its limitations, I had been completely ignoring the power of Vile Purge. People often refer to it as having a game long NOED effect, or perma-EW3 Myers, but I find it to be much better than those things. Not only does it put all the survivors in a 1 hit down state, It also makes them easier to see, and easier to hear while simultaneously defeating Iron Will + all Healing perks and items. This results in chases that take half as long as any other M1 killer does, and gives you great audio and visual tracking! On top of that, If the survivors do choose to cleanse instead of Toughing it out while broken and easier to track, I get the best ranged damage in the game and can make them suffer even more with it.
Overall, I ended up making a favorite build that puts survivors between a "Rock and a Hard Place" and have been dominating with her consistently even at the red ranks. She's become my go-to girl to main because she's actually very powerful if you know how to use her, and constantly underestimated by survivors because of how infrequently they encounter her. I regret that I totally misunderstood her (feel like such an idiot for not noticing these things about her sooner), and have become a ruthless and proud Plague main ever since. 😁🤮
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For those wondering, here's my "Rock and Hard Place" build:
Dying Light, Thanatophobia, Surge + Surveillance/Pop Goes the Weasel/BBQ/Ruin. Don't cleanse = suffer massive gen slowdown, Cleanse = Best ranged damage in the game. The trick to getting it to work well is to only hook the obsession twice, and keep them slugged as frequently as possible for the remainder of the game because The only survivor immune to the DL debuff is the obsession, so keep them slugged and don't kill them until you've already killed at least 1 other survivor. At full thanatophobia debuff + 4 stacks of DL, survivors suffer a whopping 28% slowdown in gen repair speed! On top of slowing repair progress to a crawl, This makes repairing the 8% damage caused by Surge go up from 6 seconds to around 10.5 seconds, and it gets worse with each stack of DL you gain; I think the max slowdown I've achieved has been around 8 stacks which made surge damage take around 16 seconds for a survivor to repair. Typically survivors realize they are getting nowhere fast when there are 3-2 gens left and panic cleanse in order to try and defeat the slowdown, at which point you gain the best ranged damage in the game and mop the floor with them. A nice bonus is that because Vile purge breaks the survivors, the obsession doesn't get to use the 33% healing benefit from DL, which actually makes it a worthwhile perk on the Plague.
Some "Proof" of its viability, survivor in the chat didn't like the build (I took this screenshot yesterday):
Post edited by TWiXT on1 -
Plague Main here.
Of course there is the biased me that will say she is. I will also say all killers have the potential of being ‘viable’. You just have to understand how they work power-wise and apply the general DBD knowledge (map awareness, gen patrolling, when you need to create pressure etc). To your playstyle.
I will tell you that many people on here think she isn’t because of her corrupt purge being available mostly via survivors cleansing. Well one could argue that an infected survivor under broken status is far easier to find/down that a healthy one who is immersing.
She shines when you can use your corrupt purge on broken survivors, but it’s not the only time she is strong.
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Plague is definitely viable if used properly. I've been up against some great plague players who decimated the survivors. I love playing as her too; she is so much fun.
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I wouldn´t say that dark Devotion is essential on her, I only used it to get the trophy. For a long time I thought of changing Infectious Fright against another vision perk (like bbq, if I´d had it) but in the meantime I think it is very important for the snowball effect. But I think her last perk is even more important. Corrupt Intervention gives you so much controll at the beginning of the round. IF you infect the generators you get immidiate information on someone starting to work on a gen, and you have already infected one. If they won´t give you that adavantage you have at least 120 seconds to find the first survivor. So you´re normally able to get your first hook before the frist gen is finnished and you could also be in your secon chase. And thats so important for the rest of the round. Because now you have real pressure on the survivors, now you are very much in controll. These first two minutes are so important, they influence the whole round heavily.
At the moment my build is: Corrupt Intevrention, Infectious Fright, Surveillence, and Make your Choice. But the last one changes over time. I try to have a slow down perk there so I used Tanataphobia for a while, but it´s to inkonsistent for me, because if there are only one or two Guys injured it´s not realy strong. But the first three perks are so very strong on her, that I can´t realy imagine playing plague without them.
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