Unpopular opinion: Spies from the Shadows is an underrated perk
It's not a phenomenal perk or anything, but I feel like it's not given enough credit. It has a 36 meter effective radius, which is pretty big and can be great on 24 meter terror radius or undetectable killers. Plus it gives exact locations of where survivors are at, which can act as a replacement or even alongside whispers. It's also an amazing perk on indoor maps because of how condensed they are. The only way to counter it is by using calm spirit which is already a very niche and underused perk, so it works in basically every game. Those are just my two cents, many people could think I'm dumb but I'm keen to hear what other people think.
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but why would you bring sfts when you can bring whispers also all you have to do to counter it, is crouch also the killer can scare crows and it still activates
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There is a major issue and it's that some levels are completely devoid of crows.
Other than that, yeah they just set off crows by existing. Leri's is just one big line of notifications.
Had someone accuse me of hacking for using it.
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Really depends on the map. Ive ran spies a few times on indoor maps cause they have lots of crows.
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this kinda speaks for itself does it not? unpopulair opinion, something is underrated?
Obviously its unpopulair because otherwise it would be rated as it should be...
idk just say you think something is underrated...though these topics are rather pointless, if you like it then use it, who cares what others do and if they are missing out because their life is determined by some streamer or whatever you then...well sucks to be them I guess.
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I like SFTS in theory but having tried to use it and given up on it, it just isn’t consistent enough. Some maps have very few crows, some maps only have crows in certain areas, and then on top of that a lot of the notifications you get are while you’re already in chase and know where the survivor is anyway.
It’s a nice perk and not terrible by any means, but there are just so many better ones so it rarely finds a place in any of my builds. If I had a fifth perk slot I may run it here or there.
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Spies from the Shadows is more of a Beginner-Perk IMO. Basically, if you are new to the game you wont have many Perks, and Spies is the easiest to use Detection Perk.
If you get more experienced, you pay attention to Crows on your own. Also it gets outclassed by Whispers (which is the best Tracking Perk in the game), so once you get used to Whispers, you wont use Spies from the Shadows ever again.
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Whispers has one major achilles heel. If you found one survivor, it only indicates a survivor is nearby. Not how many survivors are nearby.
If I had Spies on after hooking someone and a notification goes off, I know someone is definitely nearby.
And in response to just looking for birds on your own, you can miss the animation for them flying away very easily. Spies flat out tells you "Look over here" and works through walls.
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I like shadows, just because I've used Whispers before, and I'm not a fan of constantly hearing it. But, we all have our own likes on perks. For me, Shadows is insanely helpful when I play GF because they never realise why I seem to intersect them when they try to sneak off.
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- Because while Whispers is great in the extreme early and late game, it's mediocre as hell in the mid-game, since slugs and hooked survivors count. Spies can always trigger as long as the crows have reasonable spreadd.
- No, the killer can't trigger Spies. That's one benefit of it; you can distinguish between survivors spooking crows and you doing the same.
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Usually, when I play with SFTS it is inactive.
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Eh, the reason most people don't use it is that within range of the perk, if a crow is disturbed, you'll probably see or hear it anyway if you're experienced at tracking in this game.
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With enough experience Spies will more or less be built in to your kit. Obviously it won't be quite as precise, but learning to track when crows fly away, as well as when they spawn back is something that people pick up over time, meaning that while Spies isn't an awful perk, you could be using that slot for something else. You could argue this about many tracking perks, that game sense will in time take away quite as much need for them (Thrilling Tremors specifically).
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They've actually added a decent amount of crows to the maps now, but the issue with Spies is that when it triggers the survivors were already so close you would have heard or seen the crows anyway defeating its entire purpose.
If they changed it to aura reading for like 2 seconds and the range was map wide then it might be worth considering.
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the killer can activate it example: deathslinger when he fires his gun it activates it
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So before we start this, I used to love this perk before they "fixed" it.
When this perk had no cooldown it was an outstanding perk. Not only did it tell you where a survivor was, but it allowed you to use the crows to track which direction the survivor was running.
However, this perk is kinda handicapped now that it has a cooldown for 2 major reasons. One its no longer a tracking perk, its a general information perk. It simply tells me (hey there is a survivor in this corner of the map, but with no tracking of where they are going). Which means, nurse's is a much better call than spies in this case. Yes nurses also doesn't provide tracking and does require them to be injured, however, it provides more feedback with no cooldown. 1. It tells you if there are multiple people and their exact location. 2. It doesn't require the present of crows, which can feel very limited on some maps. 3. Perks can't really counter nurses, like calm spirit can spies.
Basically, Yes, I think spies use to be an underrated perk, but with a cool down its essentially a knowledge perk with no other bonus, it can be countered by a easy to obtain perk, and requires the map to actually have a decent amount of crows. Am I saying the perk is useless, No, I am just saying there are many other perks, with less drawbacks that make this perk hard to choose anymore.
Hopefully the devs will remove the cooldown, not even sure why it was their. Its not like the perk is OP with or without the cooldown. It still requires the survivors to actually trigger crows, which is hard on some maps.
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When I started playing as killer, I tried it, because one of my favorite streamers said it was awesome. But it hurt me more than it helped, specially with the cooldown. Now that I have other perks, I don't really care so much for it.
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It's satisfying phasing as Spirit, seeing the crow notification, and slashing them instantly. They never expect SFTS, though a good survivor will worry about triggering crows when hiding anyway, but they can't always avoid it. Old Yamaoka endlessly irritated me with it's crow collection.
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No its a bad perk. Its not underrated, its simply bad.
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I mean it depends entirely on the map your on. I wouldn't recommend running it without a map offering personally
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It's not that it is underrated, it's just extremely inconsistent. There are maps where it is extremely good, and others (farm maps, I'm looking at you) where you're lucky if you get it to proc once. If it wasn't for that big disparity between maps it would be a good perk.
Also this. Since now they glow in yellow before disappearing in the air they are even easier to see than once.
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Nope. I've run Spies on Slinger before.
It spooks the crows, but if spies triggers it's because there was a survivor.
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