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Spirit is still very strong... then why is she suddenly a "rare" killer?
This comes from personal experience of course. Maybe you see her offten, but for me she is kinda rare to see. It is strange, because she is still very strong and also she has one OP add-on that tells when you are next to the Survivor while using your power.
Comments
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But it is also killer instict not aura. So its delayed position reveal… i find aura reading and listening for foot steps much more viable. Since IW completly neglects stridor…its kinda useless to run duration + speed for exchange of loosing scratch marks
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Because God forbid you put in effort into learning the killer you're playing when you can just slap on stupidly good add-ons, Ruin Undying Tinkerer Pain Resonance, and go to town on solos and ######### about SWF whenever you lose.
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Because she is not as interesting now as she used to be. And that is arguably more important than strength.
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On the one hand it's a typical overreaction to a minor nerf and that's sad, but on the other hand I'm enjoying the break from Spirit.
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Because as soon as people think she's not the most OP killer in the game, they jump ship to the one they think is. There's a lot of players in every game who don't play something because the playstyle is fun, or because the design speaks to them, or just because they like something underappreciated, they will only pick the thing that is undoubtedly the strongest for the lowest level of investment.
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She was super rare to see even before nerf. On my server at least.
She is still good but not as fun or strong as Blight or Nurse and also much more add on dependant.
So I dont see a reason why play her instead of Blight
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Because people who were just using the "stand still mindgame" can't do that anymore so they dropped her.
Even though she is pretty much just as strong as before, she is more fun now in my opinion and also her more interesting Add-ons.
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My team and me got rolled by a Spirit yesterday on Suffocation Pit, given she was running 2 of her best addons (Furin and Dried Cherry Blossom). Since the rework she "suffers" the same problem as most killers - of being heavily addon dependant to actually do good.
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Its very simply about adaptation and alot of players fail to adapt to the new scenario and say screw this. She requires a bit different mindset now as she is nolonger about jump scares like she used to be. She is still strong in a lot of ways she just cant so easily fool anyone so the majority of players that used to like her feel as tho her gutting / fixing ruined that style of gameplay. You can still pull it off sometimes with a furin addon tho its highly unlikely. I bet she will slowly gain some small tweaks and may at some point return to her status as a top tier killer which she still can be but again you have to adjust your mindset for the new spirit.
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I switched to the artist 😀 for the time being.
But in the right hands she still is deadly.
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The same reason people left Freddy, the skill to effectiveness ratio dropped so they all left.
Some people enjoy difficult killers, some people want the easiest kills, the latter dropped freddy the same way people left Spirit.
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She’s still good. In my opinion, it’s the last thing Anarchy said above: winning with the “lowest level of investment.”
Forever Freddy. Stridor Spirit. Now I’m seeing a lot of Camping Cannibals. There’s just a chunk of the playerbase that enjoys this theme.
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Huntress is still incredibly popular like top 3, and she's not easy, but according to your logic, she would have dropped massively in popularity once they nerfed Iri Head and the exhaustion add-ons, but that didn't happen.
Maybe most people are not playing Spirit because they simply don't find her as fun? No, that couldn't possibly be.
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Good question. Just wish that people can play killers because they enjoy them, not because they’re super busted. I’ve been trying to tell people that if you just put in the effort to learning her, then you’ll see results, and you’ll see she’s still a very fun killer.
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Oh yes she is.
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On top of people abandoning "because it's not easy", I imagine it's also because they did that thing where a lot of the control over what's going on has actually been pushed to the Survivors? Iron Will completely negates hearing an injured Survivor, and there's now no way for you to see bloodstains. Can't catch people out at pallets or loops because they will always hear you, whilst you can only hear a Survivor or see their scratchmarks if they make the wrong move.
It reminds me a little of Pinhead's box, in that the Killer using their power has less information (without DCB pinpointing) than the Survivors trying to counter it.
It can be fun, but if a Survivor's being patient and knows what they're doing (even without Iron Will) it's one of those things that devolves into brute force.
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I’m so glad you agree with me :)
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Because people heard the word "nerf" and immediately dropped her. And she actually requires skill to learn now.
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People still whine about her tough
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She's still very popular to me. Not among the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse (Nurse, Huntress, Blight, Bubba), but she's still fairly common to face.
If you want a reason for why she might not be as popular as before, it's because nerfs make people salty. It happens on the survivor sided as well: when DS was nerfed it was very rare to see it for a while, but then people realized how strong it still is and came back to it. Give it maybe a year and she will be very common again.
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Players whine when they dont get fed their weekly candy there is always something to b!tch about. Any game forum has this mindset especially right now when alot of people are stuck at home still because of covid vacation and they are looking at ways to feed the misery.
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I don't play her because Iron Will hard counters her bad and that perk is on 3+ survivors in every lobby I face. It's annoying and I don't want to deal with it. Leatherface, Freddy, Nemesis, Clown, and Pig are all way more fun to play
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Players tend to go for strongest+easiest. She no longer fits that distinction. You could win chases without ever using her power in the past. Can't do that now.
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Funny, survivors never adjusted their mindset when facing her before. Typical lack of understanding in this thread. These nerfs weren’t minor- she is now a glorified wraith lunge in chase, which isn’t a good power.
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I only played her because of the jump scares, which I thought were thematic to the horror genre, but the jump scares don’t work well anymore because of the directional audio.
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Because the main a lot of people played her is gone (her lack of skill required)
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Lol, what? She's not rare, at least not on my server. I see as many Spirits as I see Wraiths, Blights and Pyramid Heads.
The only reason why we saw a decrease in her overall play count isn't because of the nerf itself, but more so has to do with being fun. Pre-nerf, her strength overshadowed her rather lackluster power and now that things are pretty much balanced (she's still pretty good still), people don't find her powers fun anymore I guess.
If you don't believe what I'm saying, I can verify that people play a whole lot of Leatherface even though he's weaker than Spirit atm. So there's that.
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Uhm, they did, it just sucked. Comp players adapted really hard to her and even then it was hardly engaging gameplay. There's a reason why she competed closely to the killer that literally ignores all the rules in the game. Aspects of her were busted and made for an inordinate amount of information asymmetry, even compared to Nurse who at least telegraphed her busted power. Don't make this a 'but survivors' thing, it's about why Spirit isn't as chosen. And the inability to adapt to change is one of them. But most of it is because the Freddy Mains of old moved onto her for EZ wins. Now it's Bubba, probably. Maybe Blight too.
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because Blight owpee
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Her directional audio makes her very easy to counter at long loops and any structure with a window.
She's not very hard to play against in a lot of scenarios...and I don't even run IW.
Most of the successful Spirits I have played since her nerf (less than 10), used her power primarily for mobility or to win short loops.
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Because she can't stand still and win.
This game has the worst community of people wanting easier matches in a pvp setting. Oh i can't literally stand still and win? she must be awful. Even though she is still just as strong, maybe even stronger, she can't do cheesy things and win easy so she must be bad.
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Because she is actually trash now, she can't see anything, can't hear anything and you know exactly where she is.
Pretty much the only spirit I ever see always uses mother daugher ring + dried blossom or at least one of those which probably makes her playable, but I still escape.
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The people playing Huntress before weren't the people who migrated from easiest killer to easiest killer but the people that enjoyed Huntress and continue to enjoy Huntress.
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And now the information asymmetry is backwards.
Spirit and her actions are always audibly telegraphed, she has to rely on Survivors moving the wrong way to get information, and IW doing its thing of completely and irrevocably shutting down what should make it easier to find people.
A lot of people still just hold W and run away (for some reason), but that doesn't mean the information asymmetry is any better now.
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Her strengh did not change if you forget about the addon but survivor have it easy against her now because they have more info then her because of that survivor have the upper hand against her.
The fact that stridor cant help her if survivor run iron will dont help
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and she can be genrushed now very ez because her addons are destroyed. they used to give her good map control.
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You are forgetting the color blind/deaf people that would use father's glasses to track blood. Since they removed that accessibility they probably dropped her.
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Its a bit of that sky is falling knee jerk reaction. There was a nerf and people just quit her, kind of like DS it still does its job, just it no longer gives you one minute of complete task immunity, so it went from every build to hardly used.
The legit reason though is she had an unpredictable mindgame that involved a lot of guesswork and was really in her favour. I didn't mind this because it was different and made her dangerous and fun to face.
Killers should be really threatening in chase and she was good but apparently many found that "unfun" so they wanted it nerfed to be the same as everything else. Because fairness means that the same looping works against every killer without any variety so every game is the same regardless of killer... but I digress.
She's till good but there is more directional information about her phasing making it kinda less useful than beofore and telegraphing when she's using her power making her more predictable. Which kinda sucks.
So her power became really used for mobility and short loops, but at long loops, which are the problem loops its not that great anymore. Its kind of a ######### change.
So people who really enjoy the unpredictability and baiting by using or not using the power felt the change is kinda meh and I don't blame them for trying something else. Is she weak overall no and she is still fun to play, but she is weaker than she was.
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In my opinion its because how ez-modo stomp-a-lot players mindset work, AKA Spike. The Spike mindset cares only about winning no matter what, its the only thing that matters, these kind of players tend to gravitate towards the easiest most efficient way of raking in wins, in fighting games theyll always play S+ tier characters using the easiest cookiecutter combos, in RTS the cheesiest strats, in shooters the safest weapons etc, Spikes come in 2 varieties, the skilled and the nonskilled, the less skilled the cheesiest they become for they need to be carried by higher tier things to compensate their lack of skill.
Now DBD is no exception, there is a big chunk of players that care only about 4K (or 4E but this thread is about Spirit so Ill skip talking about Survivors), this forum is a living example of it, now into the matter at hand, Spirit until the nerf was one of the 3 strongest Killers with Blight and Nurse but it is the easiest of those 3, is mindnumbing easy, almost boring... unless your only source of fun is to 4K every game.
This is where the less skilled Spikes come into play, they want 4K and they go for the most efficient and easiest way of getting them so they gravitated towards Spirit, then Spirit got nerfed and suddenly they perceived it wasnt as easy to get the 4K as before (debatable, Spirit is still strong) so they changed pastures and picked Wraith, who is the new easy and efficient Killer, especially certain addon setups and at certain MMRs where SWAT teams are not prevalent.
This has been happening since 2017, first it was Instasaw Hillbilly, then it got nerfed and Spirit took the throne, then she got nerfed (added vault animation and prayer bead nerf) and people went to Forever Freddie, then he got nerfed so Spirit retook her throne and now she got nerfed again and people went to Wraith, when Wraith gets tweaked these kind of players will switch to something else (my money is on Plague).
P.D. the whole Spike thing is not an invention of mine, its an archetype the guys from Magic The Gathering found among their playerbase, the 3 main archetypes are Timmy, Jonhy and Spike, look it up because its very interesting, it explains in a simple way why this game is increadible frustrating for certain people, especially with the 2K/2E mindset the devs have.
P.D.2 This doesnt mean all Spirit players are Spikes or unskilled, there are people who genuinely like her playstyle and these are the people who didnt switch after her 2 nerfs, same with people who like Hillbilly, Freddie or whoever gets the light now, the difference is these players will stick around with the Killer even if they lose the S+ ranking (unless they nerf way too much where it becomes unplayable, like Legion current status where even the people who like them dont play them anymore because they are way too weak).
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She is difficult to play, mainly when you have no experience with her.
She is heavily penalized if the player can't succeed with her.
Survivors tend to have a cruel mindset when they face a Spirit player.
She is countered by a meta perk (Iron Will).
Players need to invest in a good headphone to be consistently good with her, as the sounds of the game are poor.
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How is it backwards? They still can't see the spirit, the audible feedback, while helpful, is by no means precise nor can they react to the Spirit's speed if she's actually good and on quite the majority of loops. It's good that they're always telegraphed, because then there's actual gameplay beyond guessing. Every other killer telegraphs their abilities, even the most broken one in the game. The Spirit still has an advantage in 1 v 1 situations.
On IW - So you don't have guaranteed easy downs. So what? She's still comp viable for a reason. Spirit Mains like Skillmantha are still stomping through IW before and after her power change. All that's being said here is that because she isn't given everything for easy wins anymore, people player her less.
You have a counter to hold W. It's called mach-speed phasing. You also have a counter to looping. It's called mach-speed phasing. Also you do need to invest time in her. But she's still S tier.
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I get a lot more trashtalking playing Spirit than any other killer. Survivors tend to tbag, flashlight clicking, those stuffs much more too.
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People gotten used to playing a killer, you didn't need to spend much time learning, and still get good results. Now that you actually need to put time into her, people don't like it.
If a new player started playing the game after Spirits nerf and you told them the same thing you tell new players about Nurse, they'll play her a bunch.
I personally really like killer that you don't need to spend tons of time mastering but I like them to be counter able. Agree with the Spirit nerf but I'm a little disappointed in the Freddy and Wraith nerfs. These were my "do challenges" killers.
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I rarely see Freddy anymore despite him still having the highest kill rate next to only Pinhead, who was a month old when those stats released. The perception the character is weaker is what causes people to just drop it.
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See, it's just talk out of the ass without any real counter argument. As always these types of threads end up being a massive circle jerk.
And let's say someone is truly only interested in playing the easiest/strongest killer, it's funny how it gets painted like it's such a vile thing as if oh my god, survivor is so much harder in comparison!
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People were playing Spirit because she was stronger before her audio nerf. Since you now know when shes nearby it makes everything a lot easier to do against her. She lost her surprise factor and sometimes that can be enough to break a killer for someone.
Just imagine if Myers music played every time he stalked someone... then you would know Myers is stalking someone. That makes Myers more predictable and easier to play against. Same thing.
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People like to pretend that Spirit was a no-talent, super-op killer, but they've never actually played her. Her power requires a skill set that almost completely revolves around directional sound cues in a way that literally no other killer has to deal with. It's a very specialized skill set that is both difficult to learn and does not translate to improving your skill with any other killer (much like judging nurse blinks or Blight bounces). And yes, in the hands of a super good player, she was SUPER GOOD.
But then, EVERY killer should be super good if a super good player is playing them. The fact that so much of the cast literally cannot win against an average team says more about how busted the game is than how busted the 'best killers' are.
But, as is so very, very common; when a survivor encounters somebody who put in the work to get good with her, survivors would automatically begin complaining that she was just free wins. So Iron Will, a perk that was already really good, was buffed to trump striador and completely counter Spirit. But survivors were not satisfied with a meta perk being buffed and directly countering her, so she got the typical wild overreach of nerfs to make her so much worse.
So now she's a killer who requires you to develop this whole unique skill set and all in service of a power that is completely over-telegraphed. Why would people take the time to get good when she's objectively worse and not worth the time you have to put in?
If you have a super high skill floor, you have to have a high skill ceiling. When you lower the ceiling, you either have to lower the floor or people are just going to quit.
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Spirits a lot of fun, and I like facing her now.
That said, I dont think shes fun to main. Her base kit isnt that appealing, shes more fun as a one night stand imo.
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You don't have to be comp to adapt. Again, this is a total double standard. People say you shouldn't be able to pick up and win (which btw isnt true of spirit) but want to be able to easily win as survivor. seem pretty obvious to me.
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I'm going to assume you misunderstood me and didn't just pull some lazy strawman that hardly makes sense. So I'll clarify. Old spirit was adapted to by comp players since she was a popular pick at that level, and even then the counter was extremely unreliable and pretty dull overall. People that weren't comp could also 'adapt', but there's only so much you can do against a killer that telegraphs nothing. It's worse than Nurse, and she downright breaks the game.
Current spirit is easier to adapt to because there's actual feedback from her power when in chase, which EVERY other killer has, and for some reason she got to be the exception until recently. So yeah, people of even casual levels can adapt to her, but it doesn't mean she can't crush most teams. Just because you can sort-of hear her coming doesn't mean you can react.
I don't understand this double-standard argument. Both sides need experience and adapting to get good at facing the opposition. The Artist completely stomped most teams until they realized holding W was the only smart move. Survivors adapt, so do killers. The problem is that most killer players that took on Spirit (with stridor usually) after Freddy's nerf very obviously wanted EZ wins. Like, it wasn't even subtle. They all migrated to Bubba or something.
Survivor escape rate is generally lower than a Killer's 3/4k rate. There's no 'easy win' with survivor unless you're SWF'ing with people of your own skill level.
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