Spies vs Whispers
Hey guys,
So I'm getting the hang of playing again after a lengthy break, especially since the Nurse recharge nerf (which is hardly a nerf, stop complaining).
One thing I've found myself doing is dropping whispers and running Spies from the Shadows.
Jesus this perk is underrated! Even at red ranks!
Urban Evasion easily counters it, but I've noticed a lot of people not counting on spies being used and sprinting from gens or even away from the area when I blink in.
Due to the nurse literally being able to just appear in your area, I'm finding the natural reaction is for survivors to try and put distance between you, same for after unhooks.
This, basically tells me what direction they ran in and where they are. One blink to the crow, one for the hit.
I'm yet to try spies on other killers, although I was wondering on what your opinion was? Personally, it's been a perk I've always overlooked and now I find it to be almost unpassable!
Comments
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Spies is an awesome perk for Nurse for lots of reasons you listed. Especially the sudden appearance in an area frightening most survivors and causing them to run trigger a crow and telling me where they are even if I had no idea they were somewhere nearby.
Also the recharge nerf is significant. You blink >50% less than before without both CD addons.
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I have a counter argument for the nurse nerf, but I shall create another thread for that for another discussion haha.
In regards to spies, yeah... I can't believe I never ran it before!
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Yes Nurse discourse is best for another thread.
I used to run no tracking perks and did ok but after dumping Surge a while back and putting on Spies I've never looked back. It's help me find so many survivors I would have never by myself it's insane. Even if it only goes off once in a match (highly unlikely) that's sometimes enough to start a game winning snowball.
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The issue with Spies is it works much better on certain maps and unless you are always using an offering its unreliable.
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You sound like the guy who said that Wraith was Top tier lol
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Can you elaborate on that?
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In what way is it unreliable and which offerings effect its reliability? Out of curiosity? Not sure what you mean by that.
In regards to it working better on some maps than others, I believe that to be dependant upon the killer?
Nurse has no problems with it on any map. Huntress however would struggle on an indoor/multi level map but even then whispers would be just as useless.
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Whispers is Consistent, but vague in survivor detection. Spies is spotty, but gives you direct knowledge of the survivors location. To me, Whispers is a superior of the 2 however, because of its consistency, whereas Spies relies heavily on the survivors disturbing crows, but the crows have a 4 meter activation range, and much fewer spawn points than they should. Whispers works very well on every map, while Spies is either your best friend or completely useless depending on the map you get.
Take Rotten Fields for example: Here's an entire Cornfield without a single scarecrow, and for some reason the crows all hang out on the edges of the map as far away from the corn as possible. In direct contrast to this there's Treatment Theater, an indoor map wherein with Spies you can't help but become overwhelmed with explosions until you start screaming "How'd all these freaking birds get in here?"
When It comes to tracking survivors, I find that consistency is overall much better than accuracy when comparing Whispers to Spies. I also Propose that Spies could use a small but nice overhaul to how it works to make it more appealing, and much less annoying:
Spies from the Shadows: The Crows no longer respond to your presence, you see the auras of all crows within 36 meters of you, and disturbed crows are 100% louder to you within that range.
This proposal gets rid of the confusing/annoying explosion sound notifications, you get no false signals since crows no longer respond to you, and they basically become little signal flares to tell you where survivors are. If this change were to happen, Spies would become a better tracking tool, and really fit the description of the perk which says: "The Crows found in the world can communicate directly with you."
If they also filled more dead zones (corn fields, etc.) with crows, that would also be nice for helping this perk gain a better level of consistency, but until then, Whispers beats Spies every time IMO.
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I am saying you can only control the map with an offering but Spies works much better on smaller maps as the crow density is higher and the survivors are more likely to be in the detection range. I can see your point about it being useful on Nurse but if it requires a variable you usually cannot control it is not the most reliable strategy.
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Most informative. Thank you kind sir.
Yeah I feel that you're right in the terms of relying on the crows, and I didnt actually realise that about the cornfield!
I have my whole load out based around locating the survivors though. Due to blinks I feel logically the nurse only needs to know where people are, if you blink properly chases shouldn't be long so hindrance isn't really needed. For example if they want to pop the gen, let them pop the gen. It's another notifier of your area, where you're probably gonna sprint into a crow as I blink over there.
So I spend much more time flying from point to point rather than actually searching at all. Frantically jumping between gens when I don't have sight of one.
So I feel, in a personal scenario, even with its setbacks spies outweighs whispers.
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