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Would a nerf kill Hag?
Nurse and Billy was played by many but after nerfs they became pretty rare. Hag is a strong killer but is already played by few. What would happen if Hag was nerfed? Would she more or less die or just become super rare?
Comments
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Well, depends on what kind of nerf lol. If the nerf is anything like what they did to Nurse and Billy however, she would still be very strong
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It would make her an endangered species
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Just one thing I want changed for Hag is her traps. You can only destroy them with a flashlight light which you almost never bring it unless your doing saves or archives.
Make it so like trapper you can disarm her trap by kneeling down and wiping the Trap. Give her a notification that it happened .
I'm tired of me crouch walking to a Hooked Survivor only for them to run and active the Trap
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Some wants Hag to not be able to put a trap close to a hooked survivor for example, but all Hags do this even Michi because it's a good strategy. That kind of change might be detrimental, even if survivors would be happy about it.
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If the nerf is simple (for example, making it so that she can't place traps next to a hooked survivor similar to how Charlotte can't unbind/control victor until she's a few meters away from the survivor she hooked) then definitely not.
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perhaps a trap limit near hooks, so say max 2-3. therefore she can't just place a million and secure a kill because it would take over 30 seconds to crawl past all the traps she could potentially throw down.
Nothing feels worse than crouching so slow the Hag just runs back by the time you left the aoe of the outermost trap
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I think Michi put a proposed change forward for this
Essentially if you manage to unhook a survivor and there's some traps nearby (let's say, a couple of meters) then those traps wouild just vanish. That way survivors who just run at hooks and trigger traps will be punished, however survivors who recognise that they need to crouch are rewarded
Right now survivors are screwed if they do either, because if a hag runs back to the hook that has traps around it, they will be set off
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I played Hag back when she had teleport stuns. Nerfing her so that she can't trap near hooks would be good for the health of the game. Good Hags won't need to trap hooks in like 95% of matches. That's like playing Easy mode for her.
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Make it so you can't trap the basement.
Basement Hag is the lamest thing in the game.
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It would be interesting to change her so that she can't put down traps close to hook. The only problem with that is depending on the range of the restriction it might create powerful trap deadzones or remove traps the hag set up before hooking the survivor, even though she's not really trying to trap the hook. So in exchange, she can put down traps instantly but they won't be active until whatever time it took for her to place traps down b4. That way it'll help her with set up.
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Hopefully
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Hag is intentionally a very territorial killer with low snowball potential in her kit but high snowball potential strategically.
If the survivors refuse to play into hag, she really struggles. Hag used to be worse, she actually got buffed to where she is now and still depends pretty heavily on survivor misplays.
I think the discussion around Hag warps into a greater problem in DBD: Survivors frame every situation as them having fun or not, them being in control or not.
Now, in a meta sense, the survivor should have control, but situation to situation they ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT. If the survivor was allowed to have control, to always be able to outplay regardless of the situation, that just means the game is ridiculously survivor sided and the survivor never has to care about misplays because they can always play out of any misplay they get into.
Different gamestates are meant to be different levels of good or bad. Looping at a god pallet or shack is meant to be a stronger position than being chased to an unsafe pallet, which is still better than a deadzone, which is still better than being cornered somewhere.
But different gamestates should be better or worse matchup wise as well: again, hag is TERRITORIAL. Ergo, part of your decision making process needs to be territory based. The killer in general is meant to win defensive engagements if they are smart but have some outplay potential. Defensive killers like hag or trapper are meant to be able to lock down an area.
"But being trapped in the basement isn't fun!" Duh it ain't. That is because you entered a loss condition you dumb dumb. Those aren't meant to be fun. It also isn't fun for all 4 people to have traps on their head vs pig so they can endlessly slug and camp the boxes, or to be in the absolute open vs a Nurse, Deathslinger, or Huntress. It is not the job of the designers to give you fun 24/7. It is their job to make the game overall fun, and part of that is sometimes creating loss states where the fun stops, so you can have fun avoiding those loss states.
And, more critically, the entire point of having a roster is that the loss states are diverse, to help keep the game fresh. If you were able to play basement the same as vs any killer then... what is the point of having a bunch of characters? If the survivors can just endlessly run tiles the same way they always do without even having to think about it? Far more interesting to be aware its Hag or Trapper and thus looping near basement is now EXTRA DANGEROUS.
So vs Hag? Find the basement and avoid FINISHING your loops near it (Its so trivial to do this, honestly W meta is so strong and is a hard counter to hag). Constantly ping traps on purpose when you know she is busy. Push gens vs her if she refuses to leave the basement area. Get basement gens done as a priority over finishing your current gen if you know she is in a chase. Actually outplay the killer.
Changes to hag would be possible to make basemenet hag not as much of a thing, but because Hag's ENTIRE KIT revolves around defensive play, removing this would kill her without very serious changes to her base kit. For example, being unable to trap near hooks but if she teleports to a trap her movement speed becomes ridiculously high until she drops chase, so she actually is a threat on the map in general, or making her a normal movespeed killer, both of which still threaten to make basement builds really strong and just make her way more powerful.
That is the tricky bit here, you can't so trivially remove the reason a power is good without having to brute force a new reason in. The entire point of being able to teleport to traps as opposed to being able to win chases conventionally is to defend areas. If you really go out of your way to do it you probably break the killer (traps vanishing in a like 20 meter area around an active hook, for example, would still not 100% stop basement camping, but would absolutely DESTROY hag's viability).
Far better to, if you want to do something like this, first try to buff hag so she is less dependent on this, and if you see emergent hag gameplay that isn't basement/defense focused, slowly remove those elements. One mistake casual designers do is try to do 'legitimate' sidegrades, rather than thinking of them as 'mixed buff' or 'mixed nerf.' Your always going to go up or down, and you need to be realistic about what direction you need to go. Hag, if anything, needs a buff, so if you were to do a basement removal sidegrade you would need to be comfortable giving her SERIOUSLY STRONG tools, rather than a nerf sidegrade which is more akin to 'throwing a bone to try to encourage a different playstyle.' Like 'Can't hook near basement but gets more lunge distance on appearing for 5 seconds :3" is a cruddy sidegrade nerf pretending to be evenhanded because its so obvious the capability mismatch. Because defensive snowballing is a game winning condition for Hag, anything you give her needs to be 'win condition' tier. Like, again, Hag is just at a decaying 5.2 movespeed after coming out of trap is the 'tier' of utility pushed into the kit to make up for no hook traps we are talking about: You just GET HIT if you trigger a trap, no ifs, ands, or buts.
Which, you know, also would not be fun because no slow movespeed killer power should be 'fun' to be affected by, as they are LOSS CONDITIONS, but its a different kind of not fun. Ultimately trying to imagine a fun way to lose is hard and usually creates a meme build. The only way this was done well was IMO DH, which is fun for both sides and if you cry about losing to DH your a twat). Otherwise you need to accept any way the Hag wins isn't going to be fun for the survivors anymore than hitting a trap isn't fun or just losing two chases quickly isn't fun. We can recognize basement hag isn't really fun in the general sense, but you design the power to be fun in a GENERAL sense, not in the specific 'oww it hit me!' sense.
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I'm not the one getting downed near basement. Doesn't mean i don't have to save people in the basement at some point. When one of my teammate try to be a super hero and save one guy in the basement. It really sucks because if you crouch you are too slow and she come back by the time you are on the top floor. If you just run you activate her 7 consecutive traps.
This type of gameplay just create very boring m1 stay on the gen games with fast exit, that is if your teammate are smart otherwise its just free win for the hag. It would seriously make the game better.
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We can go for a while like this but you know yourself it's not a fun mechanics. And dev don't seems to like unfun mechanics as well. It's clear from how they changed pyramid head mechanics once they discovered how it was used. Guess what your same argument applied there too. Body block take a hit. It was possible but still it wasn't fun so they nerfed it so Pyramid head could no longer know where his cage was.
Hag is already a top tier killer it wouldn't kill her. It would only stop the cheap hag players from making this game boring.
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Funny thing is, Nurse and Billy are still strong asf. Can still snowball. People just dont like that they have cool downs. Stops their fun. Hag could do with toning down as certain maps like Hawkins and she automatically wins. She can camp without actually camping, how funny is that. Honestly, needs tuning, not nerfing. Much like Spirit, needs more work done as pro killers just shred too easily with them.
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I might make it so you can't put a trap near a hook, like how you can't use Twins power near one. Albeit the area of denial should be smaller than twins of course.
That is about the only change I would make to Hag, and even then if I did that I would probably buff her a tiny bit in another area to compensate.
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Remove the camera YANK from her traps and make it so you can disarm her traps by wiping as an action. That's about it. She'd be fun to go against and she couldn't just get a free hit when she teleports.
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Hag huh?
What if, she could still put traps down at hook, they could still be triggered, and we didn’t add a new way to erase traps...buuuuuuut....
Hag traps start to glow red, and become more visible, whenever the Entity enters the Realm/Game.
So...whenever a perk summons the Entity (even a survivor perk can do that), or a survivor is in second stage, which has the survivors struggling against the Entity...then all her traps become more visible.
At the very least, survivors will be more mindful not to trigger traps, especially when someone really can’t afford the mistake, and also adds more flavor to the Hag.
Just a thought.
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Not everything is about survivor fun. Devs have to think about killer fun. If they neuter every killer just to appease all the bad survivors, the game will die. Both sides have things that are un-fun. Many killers don't like being looped around the same rock 3 times, get pallet stunned, and then get led to another loop 10 meters away to rinse and repeat. Yet it remains in the game because survivors have fun doing it, even though it is boring for most killers. It's why you see Nurse, Spirit, Pyramid Head and Freddy so much, killer players don't want to be looped over and over. Heck, Trapper is one of the most popular killers, despite being weak, just because his ability to break loops is fun.
Not every hag or killer camps, but hag trapping the basement alleviates some pressure since it forces the survivor to slow down. Survivors should be punished for misplays just as killers are. If you or a teammate get downed near the basement, the punishment should be high since everyone should be aware of where it is and avoid it at all costs.
It seems like a lot of survivors don't want anything in this game to challenge them, thus calling anything difficult "boring".
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As long as Hag can still trap loops, I think she would survive a nerf.
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Nerf Rusty Shackles and I’d be happy with that.
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why do u want a nerf to a killer that barely ever gets played? she might be the less played killer in the game. at the very least top 5. also what nerf? she is one of those few killers wich survivors can delete his ability (wich shouldnt be possible). flashlights urban evasion, hag is strong but most people doesnt know how to play her so its not a problem.
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Cause the few who do play her know how broken she can be. Also Mint Rag is beyond broken. Doesn't matter if you crouch walk to save someone when she teleports on command and now one shots both of you with MYC and the distance preventing the BT.
She is just unpopular in terms of playstyle as more strategy and less pew pew. And she is less popular in looks than the naked blue asian lady running around moaning with a optional school girl outfit for reasons.
The viewpoint of "securing" kills boils down to tunneling and camping. These playstyles aren't fun. I don't like being camped and tunneled, so I don't inflict it on others unless severely tilted or struggling. The Hag doesn't really need to camp/tunnel the hooks cause her traps can ensnare people on the move and cause mass injuries to multiple players while shutting down loops and ending chases remarkably fast.
One can play efficient and use Prayer Beads, IH Hatchets, Mint Rag Hag, and other OP stuff to get easy wins and be the most efficient. But there's a certain degree of responsibility to the players to not be jerks to each other with the goal of playing the most efficient way cause it boils down to the least fun playstyles in the game.
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The only change she really needs is for any traps she leaves at the hook to automatically be destroyed when a survivor gets the unhook. It’s stupid that you can crawl over them and get the save but she comes running straight back and you either run, trigger the traps and get downed. Or you crawl over the traps and get downed. Literally a lose / lose every single time.
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Maybe not allowing a trap near x radius of the hook, but other than that you can't nerf her much. She had a buff to the range of her traps long ago because she was basically never played whatsoever and the only way people would play her is by straight up camping, as opposed to actually bothering to push out onto the map like now.
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i can't think of a way to better balance her/make her more fun to play against without destroying her. i think she needs a complete overhaul. idk.
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can we please not make killers lose their powers just because?
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I have played this game for ~4 years and have never faced a mint rag hag. I could probably count on one hand the amount of rusty shackles games I was the survivor in.
I see hag maybe once a month, if that.
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Being rare to be used doesn't excuse power level. Keys weren't that common for a long time despite being the same power level as they are now. All it takes is some streamers and youtubers to start playing and talking about stuff and it blows up. It's not that crucial to fix though compared to more used balance issues though. But if Hag ever hits it big, she''ll likely need toned down in a couple spots. Nothing major though.
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Hag feels pretty weak at upper ranks because people will find you and break your traps immediately. Without them, she's just a slower M1 killer. If you deny her the setup time, she never gets any momentum.
She's only as strong as you let her be, and with all of these map reworks giving huge amounts of line of sight, her smaller terror radius means nothing anymore. Like, getting the reworked Azarov's or Ormond is completely one-sided against her because everyone can see you and where you're trapping.
For a game that likes to keep giving her skins, and devs that wished people played her more, they really design things against her in particular.
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I mean plenty of streamers put her at the top on her tier lists and it’s well known she is very strong.
But at the end of the day, she’s probably going to suffer extra hard if you hit an object using 3-4 flashlight SWF or even just a random solo Q with object; which is why I assume she is so rare.
All it takes is one good looper with object and a flashlight following you around to completely ruin your match.
Against solo Q she is a monster but there’s plenty of other killers who terrorize solo Q as well.
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This doesn't stop the problem. Every hag i have faced does the same thing. catch survivor, hook survivor, trap at feet, trap at immediate pallets and then proxy camp. Make sure to make visual contact with the hooked survivor every 10 seconds to check for someone crouching to the hook.
It is the most boring gameplay in the game as a solo survivor (legit boring, not deathslinger, pyramid head Can't loop for days so nerf plz boring) and it is horrible not being able to do anything about the traps beyond a swf organising to pop them constantly.
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This is a problem with the hag (and all killers, especially killers that are more 'modern') being balanced around SWF out of necessity.
Some killers have 'Solo protection' like Ghostface, but most don't. This is because if we balance around your, and let me be frank because coddling this isn't going to help any, bad solo gamelplay, the game becomes utterly unplayable vs a coordianted team.
Hag, and all killers, need to threaten a SWF, or else killers just won't play them and their mains quit. Q times and Matchmaking show this is an existential problem to the game. You think your not having fun now? Wait till you can't get into a match at all.
So what is the problem here? Simple, lack of coordination. Mainly your not doing a good enough job of persuading the killer to leave, or the killer is anticipating your psychology and knows you are going to get upset if they do this and trigger the trap.
That is, in fact, a form of fun. This is how setup characters work across gaming, from fighting games to mobas: Some players like being able to out-think their opponents, and part of out-thinking is conditioning.
So how do you beat this in a fun way? Simple, enjoy being flexible. Enjoy what a diverse roster gives you. Have fun in adaptation. Part of the fun of 'oldschool' DBD before SWF was even added and trapper could trap the god damn unhook spot (yeah, you had to be in a specific spot to unhook and trapper could block it!) was adapting to your team, figuring out who to trust, who was worth risking your neck for, who to save.
Vs hag, adapt. Sit on gens. Don't feed her traps. THREATEN her. Menace her. By proximity camping basement Hag is saying "I am giving you control over the game and I think you will all be too stupid and emotional to punish me. Please prove me right." So prove her wrong. Mentally, going into a game vs hag, find the basement, avoid it, utilize the fact she is TERRIBLE vs loops that she didn't setup, ruin her setups, and most critically: DON'T GO FOR EARLY RESCUES.
This is true vs any killer, early rescues are a terrible idea. You got a minute per-hook state and that is a resource. If your unhooking early, your doing the killer a FAVOR by not utilizing the gen pressure you get. So pressure gens. If the hag camps for 30 seconds, and suddenly 3 gens pop, she has two options: Lose or get off that camp. Most (not all, lets be clear people DO 'policy camp,' but most) killers will back down. Accept your very willing to end the game, because you CAN end the game in 2 minutes.
And then, confirm a chase. Wait till someone is injured. THEN go rescue. Don't just wait for her to wander off, wait for her to be busy.
Suddenly, the game is interactive again. In fact, its more interactive than before because your no longer just rescuing to rescue because you feel obligated, because 'its the thing to do.' Your making choices. Your interacting with the killer's mental state. Your being the most dangerous thing in DBD: a survivor with half a brain. Don't expect unhooks as a 'right.' As a 'matter of course.' That is selfish and stupid and the game should not cater to terrible survivors who don't forcibly take the W from the killer.
If your not doing what it takes to win because you don't want too? Fine. Then LOSE! Get wrecked! More fun for me, because while your feeding that hag I am doing a gen to trigger the hatch and finding it, having an actual cat and mouse game with the killer while your whining about how you aren't getting an unhook vs a character who's sole power is 'I am crazy strong defensively.' Because, to me, counterplay is fun. Interactions are fun. You are claiming Hag is uninteractive, but that isn't true. You just are refusing to correctly interact with her. Your demanding to remove interaction, to make it so you can just rescue because you want too.
You do not DESERVE the fun, if you can't do what it takes to seize it.
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exactly. Survivors already have a plenty of ways to counter traps, no need for literally built-in removal
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Depends on the nerf. Tbh almost all nerfs you could give to Hag would kinda destroy her.
The changes I would personally would give her are: each x seconds she is close to a hooked surv a trap in a xm radius around that hooked surv is erased. So basically you draw a trap and then run away. Placing more or proxy camping will erase the previous traps.
Change 2: after a surv is rescued all traps in Xm distance are erased. While I think that it is Hags thing that survs have to crouch to go for the unhook I am 100% on the surv side that survs should not be forced to crouch away again after a rescue. That is too much.
Something that should never ever happen is to allow survivors to remove traps via action other than with a flashlight. This would basically kill her + make her way too similar to trapper. There is already an amazing counter to Hag traps: come close, trigger them at the trigger ,,border" and then run away. If Hag teleports immediately you maybe interrupted a chase she was in and youre wasting her time. Like with gens before you pop a trap plan ahead. Look for a save escape route.
I see some people saying that Hag is not very interactive which is totally wrong. In fact she is heavily interactive but instead of Hag offering interaction the survivors have to force it by (as example) triggering her traps at the border etc. But many people try to play against her the same way they play against the other killers and do not take any opportunity to create interaction.
I guess the main reason that she is not played that much is because she is the only real tactical killer. Even trapper is not that tactical because he can chase fine without traps etc. while Hag has to play in a tactical way only to win.
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That could easily break hag. The amount of bugs we saw with the restriction cant trap x within x meters massively messed up trapper on the twins release. Even tho that wasnt inteneded. I think hag would need a meaningful buff if your gonna nerf her ie making her move at increased speed post teleportation would massively help her out and make her way more approachable.
In exchange simply disarming traps would be the most reasonable change i would introduce but again if you want to disarm traps there needs to be some kind of buff to compensate and it needs to be big. Hag is often overstated in power imo.
Any hag whos has felt the sting of survivors consistently smashing her web triggering it whilst shes picking up or just deliberatly triggering traps at a semi safe distance will tell you how detremental that is. The core issue i have with hag is something i have with the basement in general.
But tackling the basement issue right now is a whole other issue. Hag right now with one change can easily slide into non-existent popularity and become a straight up terrible killer. Remeber the hag went from unviable to viable with a mere trap setting timer change.
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Why is this so funny to me?
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Regular hooks? probably not.
Basement? Definitely.
Trapper, Hag, Demo and Freddy need to be incapable of trapping the Basement. That way, you can only put your traps right at the top of the basement, where survivors can more easily anticipate them. Reducing their ability to proxy-camp the Basement.
Basement camping is bad enough, without proxy-camping as well.
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The inherent problem with Hag is that she's slower, but traps are also easily countered. Her own addons range from "probably overpowered" to "actually hurt her more than they help". Examples: Bonus range/faster laying are amazing, but Increased activation radius, longer duration, and auras visible after trigger are not. I mean, longer duration is just a far worse version of increased teleport range. Bigger radius makes it easier to grief the traps and lose hits on teleports.
With the ability to hit the edge of the traps and immediately curve away, you can deny her the initial swipe/momentum by never getting close enough to the center, and still maintaining your own speed. Traps in corners don't always work, as Hag likes to spawn into them as deep as possible, and facing where the survivor has gone, and not where they should have initially been--this leaves you stuck against and facing objects while rarely inhibiting survivors how you intend.
With her slower speed, even small loops are guaranteed at least once, so unless you've already got a trap ready to go for a hit at one, she loses a lot of time.
The more they rework maps the more they take away line of sight. Her small size and terror radius once meant something, but as we've seen it's become easier and easier to spot her on these reworked maps. Like, if The Game wasn't two-story, she'd be worthless there, just like she is on Azarov's and Ormond's now. Heck, some of the old maps have so much visibility it's still detrimental to her. She cannot immediately place a trap and get value in a good spot like the Trapper because survivors can literally blow it up in your face as you're finishing the animation.
It only takes a single survivor that knows Hag's inherent design weaknesses to completely shut her down, and once everybody knows one is in a game they can run around hitting all of your known traps while you're preoccupied.
I like playing her, but she's pretty much obsolete once you're climbing through purple ranks. She relied a lot on Ruin to get her momentum, but compared to Plague there has been no core change to really compensate her for its absence. Like all many low mobility killers, she starts with a huge pressure disadvantage, but she doesn't get extra value from catching someone either. Pig always stacks time on each down with a trap, but Hag doesn't. If someone spots you and there's only ~3 traps out, and they start popping them all, you're probably not getting more than a kill unless the rest of the survivors are screwing around.
I honestly can't tell of Monitor & Abuse is mandatory to make her playable, or useless because everyone sees you coming most of the time anyway. Lord help you if there's untrapped vault loops that the survivors found.
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Hag needs a buff if anything but I think she is okay where she is at honestly. Her traps have more counters than most other killers powers (flashlight or crouch walk). If you have a team that isn't careless you can ruin her day.
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I can win a game pretty easy with Hag and then the next game I get a team that have one survivor just triggering traps "at the trigger border" as you say and I will struggle a LOT. Now I follow you on youtube and I see you win all the time but you can also always choose not to upload such games..but do you also have games like this with 3-4 escapes sometimes? If I may ask 😀
Me I worry that they will change Hag in way that will make her much worse to play and that people will just stop playing her. I see so many people complain about Hag and It's mostly survivors that won't bother learning how to counter her, but still when many survivors complains devs sooner or later will do something about it 😐️
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While I agree I hardly see Hag.
These addons are without a doubt overpowered on a competent Hag (mint rag, rustry shackles etc.). Not to mention how incredibly unfun it is to verse I hardly see anyone sadistic enough to record gameplay.
Should be nerfed even though it's not popular.
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