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So how are you playing Sadako? (And why can't I win?)
The (admittedly cheesy) build I've been playing with Sadako is Brine/Pop/BBQ and either NOED or Franklin's. My strategy is usually to (attempt to - hard with no actual stealth in what's supposed to be a stealth killer) sneak up on a survivor doing a gen in the early game, M1 them onto a hook, use BBQ to see who's doing gens where so I can go teleport over and stomp one, then teleport back over to the hooked survivor just as they're getting unhooked or healed and tunnel them to death. Rinse and repeat.
Still, I'm not winning most or even half of my games, and NOED seems to be my savior in too many of the ones that I do win, and I'm just... not sure what I'm doing wrong. I'm still getting plenty of 3Ks and 4Ks on Myers, Ghostface, and Clown, and in theory, Sadako is better than them. It's not like I'm not used to M1 gameplay, and the survivors aren't usually doing enough tapes to affect my mobility significantly (despite there being essentially no drawback to doing so).
I'm finding that the key to winning a game with Sadako is to put the pressure on early and play mean. Tunnel that survivor, smash through those pallets, eat the Dead Hards and the Borrowed Times and the Decisive Strikes until that survivor is dead. But if I make the tiniest mistake in the early game or don't follow that strategy to a T, it's over.
How are you playing Sadako? And are you getting better results than me? I realize that she's not exactly an S-tier killer, but I'm still kicking all sorts of ass with Clown and Ghostface (and I don't even use his instadowns), so I feel like I must be missing something important here.
Side question: Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not noticing that the addon that supposedly adds Hindered to survivors after Manifestation is doing anything. I get the Apparition score event, but nothing onscreen indicates that the Hindered status effect was added, and the survivors seem to be able to run at normal speed and vault as usual. Also, the addon that causes survivors to scream within a particular radius doesn't always seem to work, either (do they have to be facing you or something?).
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Use your phasing. When phasing as Sadako, you can tell when you're invisible by looking at your hands. If you cant see them, the survivors cant see you. Use it to time approaches to squeeze distance out of them
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She's just really bad. In my opinion one of - if not the worst killers in the game. There's not much you can do other than teleporting like crazy but even then she's just an M1 killer and you can teleport all day but if you can't get the downs it means nothing. Obviously this is anecdotal but I almost never lose to her and I lose all the time to other killers who are weak too.
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I dunno, man.
I just played a Sadako game against what looked like an SWF from the lobby, and it was easiest 4K of my life. Maybe I've just been having bad luck. I've also been playing a lot drunk or severely sleep deprived, and that could've had something to do with it.
Maybe replacing my NOED/Franklin's slot with a nice Overcharge or Dragon's Grip will give me that edge I need. Might be easier if I don't have to worry about survivors tapping gens and waiting out Brine.
I'll try that. They'll already know I'm coming because of the lullaby, of course, but maybe it'll give me an extra second or two.
Yeah, but people tell me a lot of the killers I play are weak, and I tend to do fine with them. I'm very comfortable with M1 gameplay, and Sadako has mobility that most of the M1 killers don't have.
I've just been feeling like I've been doing worse playing her than I do playing my mains, and it's not like I didn't already know how to play Freddy (she just plays like Freddy without the teleport cooldown).
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Okay, I just tried a game with Brine/Overcharge/Pop/Dragon's Grip, and that was cruel. They four-genned themselves into a corner with one guy dead and every gen smack dab next to a TV... I did have fun.
She does have a hard time against genrush squads. Someone brings a Coldwind offering and you get your first down just as you hear two gens pop in the background, and you just know it's gonna be one of those games.
I just got Executioner, so I could try that once I unlock his perks, but I think I might be happy with this build. I don't even need BBQ since I know where people are just from the failed skill checks and the screams.
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She strong with PWYF hit and run.
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She's very weak. I'm still enjoying playing as her, but she seriously needs some buffs.
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I've been watching some videos on it, and one thing I've picked up that I didn't realize is how good she can be at ignoring bodyblocking. I'm definitely going to get some use out of that.
People say she's a "hit and run" killer, but with CoH still in more games than not, I don't know how that strategy can be viable. I do end up smacking a ton of survivors and coming back to them later (mostly because I want to kick the gen they were on before Pop runs out), but I'm not agreeing with people saying to not commit to a chase. Committing to a chase and making large swaths of the map (yes, do pallets and lots of them) unsafe is the best way, I'm finding. If you're diligent, they'll be gone in no time.
PWYF seems nice on a lot of killers until you realize how many downs (and subsequent slowdown) you're losing out on by ignoring the Obsession. It has its place in some niche builds (Tombstone Myers and Sonic the Clown), but it's a waste of time for not much benefit in most cases considering how hard it is to fully stack and how little you get out of it before it's gone. With Sadako, you can't really afford to waste time.
I need to experiment more, but I'm thinking that playing with a gen regression build is the best way to go. I think my problem is that I'm still ignoring a lot of gens that I should be kicking. Brine is not the same thing as a dry kick, and I don't have to wait until Pop is active for a kick to be useful when I have Brine equipped.
I would agree. I think her main issues are her lullaby and the fact that Condemnation never really becomes a threat.
A stealth killer with a lullaby? What the hell's even the point?
And I've never had Condemnation come into play as a real threat to anyone, as killer or survivor. It's barely even a gameplay mechanic. You're free to just ignore it all game every game for a hundred matches in a row and it's not going to change the outcome of a single one.
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I've been trying to go for 12 hook games, the usual, and can't really describe it but I'll try anyway. Hit and run at the start until you hear a boon come up, which is when you then just have to commit to someone because COH. Corrupt helps with this a lot.
Get a down, get a hook near a TV, BBQ proc to tp to a gen, pop it. Chase whoever is near and if you can't find them tp back to the hook, contest an unhook if it's gonna happen. Worth noting, I do not tunnel. I don't wanna be DSd and I can get substantially more pressure going for the unhooker instead, who's usually injured by this point. If they try and bodyblock with BT, go into your power and walk through them (you can do that !!). Get the down on the unhooker, rinse and repeat.
Focus on 3 survivors to pressure, maybe bug the 4th one a bit but you cannot bother all 4 at once. The ideal plan is to hook survivor 1 -> 2 -> 1 -> 3 -> 1, and then you can do whatever you want really. That's how I've discovered you can win consistently.
My build is PGTW/Corrupt/Enduring/BBQ, just for the record.
It sort of feels scummy, especially because I really don't like camping or tunneling, but I reason with myself that I'm leaving the hook and then coming back when I see someone returning to contest the unhook and they should've been stealthier about it.
If there isn't a COH for the record, she is mad strong and you'll probably be able to 12 hook dominate through hit and run alone.
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Havent played her enough to be confident on how i would place her against others killers but she's definetly way weaker than all the other M1 killers.
She needs lots of information to make uses of her TV's , which she doesn't have basekit so it's hard to use them unless you use perks for that.
She apparently has two very good Brown addons that make her plays around pallets easier but survivors can just hold W like they do with pig when she tries MiNdGaMeS sooooo....yeah...
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First off you compared her to Clown but she and Clown are extremely different killers. Clown has no map mobility or stealth but is great in a straight up chase. So with him you go and flush out a survivor and just down them quickly, rinse and repeat. He’s even not bad at tunneling down a survivor he just hit because he can use his yellow gas to help close distance from far away. Sadako in contrast is more of a hit and run type. She typically uses Stealth or a teleport to get close, hits a survivor before they reach safety, and then switches targets after they run. Because of her stealth and teleport and her ability to move full speed while stealthed she can switch fairly rapidly between survivors and zones so has less downtime than average between hits and new chases.
Things to keep in mind
- She’s Undetectable and on-and-off invisible but she does have a lullaby so survivors will know when you’re roughly in the area. So make sure you’re using cover on your approaches to block their sight lines toward you. That’s especially useful for her because she is short so it’s easier for her to take advantage of terrain to obscure her presence. Also try not to look directly at generators or survivors when you’re approaching since Spine Chill is somewhat popular.
- Teleport is great for getting to a new zone and also to add stacks to survivors to coerce them into spending extra time running across the map to use a VCR. But obviously when you teleport you are announcing your presence and giving them a bit of a headstart on running away, so you’re not going to get quite as many ambushes off teleports as you would walking up stealthily. So if you hear someone close you’re probably better off walking up to them rather than teleporting since you can often close more distance that way before they react.
- Unless you’re going for a hit or about to carry someone in the next couple of seconds there’s no reason not to be Demanifested. You move normal speed while Demanifesting and can’t teleport unless you’re Demanifested plus you have your Undetectability and invisibility going. Always be Demanifested until right before you strike, even during chases for the most part.
- And generally speaking she’s a Stealth killer so has the same general strength and weakness they all have, namely that she’s stronger than normal against average players but weaker than normal against survivors with strong awareness. So she’ll probably never be a top regarded killer and high ranks simply because of that.
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I have another quick question for anyone who can answer: Does Overcharge count as a good Skill Check for the purposes of Brine? Meaning, if I run Overcharge in combination with Brine, it'll tell me when someone taps the gen whether they hit the skill check or not?
Also, can survivors still tap an Overcharge gen and do the skillcheck while running away, or will getting off the gen before the skillcheck is complete fail the skillcheck as with normal skillchecks?
Make Your Choice seems like it would work well for that sort of strategy, too.
I do end up wasting some time with tunneling. I'll get hit with DS and BT each once or twice a match, but it usually makes the game if I manage to kill someone and get rid of half the pallets on the map with only a couple of gens done.
I've tried playing without BBQ the past couple of games, and it's not usually hard to find a gen to kick. Overcharge/Brine/Dragon's/Pop has been helping me give survivors a hard time even when I ######### up the early game.
I might try experimenting with going after the unhooker or not tunneling altogether, but I feel like killing someone quickly and defending the last few gens well would still do more than spreading out the pressure. Of course, a lot of that depends on me not ######### up chases and actually getting hits. If I miss half my hits, take a couple pallets to the face, and then get DS, BT, and DH all in a row, there's not going to be enough time to off someone before three or four gens are gone.
As someone who plays M1 killers on Stadia with a controller over an unstable connection, playing scummy helps me a lot. Maybe once DBD's Linux/Steam Deck build is done and I take the time to retrain all my muscle memory to use the mouse, it can be different.
I probably need to pay more attention to her invisibility. I can already mindgame pallets pretty well (as an M1 addict, I absolutely have to know how to do this), but figuring out how to use that to my advantage would make a lot of difference if it means cutting down on chase time.
Thing is, on paper, she's stronger than most of the other M1 killers. I just haven't been winning with her as much for some reason.
I mean, that's fair, but I was only comparing her to Clown because they're both M1 killers. I suppose that Clown might be considered stronger than most other M1s since his buff, but, again, on paper, Sadako can do more than Ghostface can do (especially since I don't use his instadowns unless I have a daily), but I'm destroying games with Ghostface and noticing less success with Onryo. That might just be luck, though. Maybe I'm just getting better rolls of the dice with him.
The lullaby means that she's not really Undetectable, and it only really works on survivors who aren't paying attention. With Ghostface or M&A+DR Michael, your first hit is always free, but that's not always the case with Sadako.
I do see Spine Chill sometimes (and I run it almost every game myself when I play survivor), but the lullaby will tell an especially paranoid survivor when to dip out, anyway. Maybe I could practice approaching gens sideways, because I've seen it done and it might help my game with Myers, but it just seems so tedious.
I have mostly been chasing and even approaching gens when Manifested, so that's something I could work on for sure. I haven't been playing attention to a lot of the nuances of her power, particularly how to use invisibility in mindgames or Manifesting/Demanifesting to counter bodyblockers or ambush people.
Back when we had the old ranking system, there were people who managed to keep Rank 1 with Myers and Clown. It wasn't common, but any killer can be played at high ranks if you put the time in. I do get what you mean, but.
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I"m actually on a bit of a 4k streak with her. She's not great, but you can do some things with her manifest ability.
I think people are getting REALLY hung up on trying to make her a hit and run killer. The tvs are the most overrated part of her. The cooldown is massive. They're good for mobility but there's a huge telegraph on them when survivors are aware of what to listen for.
I'm starting to manage quick downs with demanifest/manifest mindgames. Her hands disappear when she's invisible. Time your double backs or pause and keep going during the passive phasing.
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I'm always running the Brown addon that decreases her cooldown by 12 seconds, plus the Iri one that turns on four TVs at once, and it makes a huge difference. Her mobility is still better than Freddy, IMO, just because the cooldown is on a per-TV basis, and you're free to hook someone by a TV, teleport to a gen you need to kick, and then immediately teleport back. Or else check a bunch of gens before Pop expires, if you guessed wrong the first time.
I agree that the cooldown is rough without addons, but they did give us a Brown that cuts said cooldown by a huge amount, so you're never going to run out of it. A lot of her addons seem useless to me in general, though maybe I'm just not using them correctly.
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Ah yeah if you're on Stadia I can see how that'd be a pain in the ass, especially with validation. If you want I think I have a game from yesterday saved, I can edit that down and send it here? Made a streamer mald in it lol
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I say she’s more of a hit and run as much because of stealth and relative weakness in an extended chase as the teleport. If she sticks in a chase at a loop she’s not much different than a basic killer so she does want to avoid being in that situation. Stealth and the teleport combined means she can keep attacking from different angles and fish for survivors who don’t spot her coming or are otherwise out of position.
That’s not to say she can’t chase down a survivor after a hit, just that if the survivor runs to a dead zone or a safe loop and already knows where she is coming from it’s harder than trying to get a hit on an unsuspecting survivor for her.
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I play her as a mix of hit n run and chasing, depending on the situation. I find I can often end chases pretty quickly by demanifesting and leaving the tile, then coming back from a different angle.
For perks you want ones that combine info with slowdow, so scourge hook pain resonance, dead man’s switch, deadlock, call of brine etc. Also as a wildcard I tried bamboozle and it’s been working very well to offset some of that absurdly OP CoH pressure.
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On Stadia, I notice that I miss 10-20% more of my hits than I do on Steam, but it's not too bad unless I'm playing with a ######### Bluetooth controller. There's a split-second of input lag, and some killers (Nemesis especially, due to his tentacle's tiny hitbox) are much harder to play, probably also due to my using a controller.
However, I'll shill DBD for Stadia until the day I die, even after I can play the game without a pesky Windows partition installed, for one reason: it's the definitive way to play DBD on mobile. If you have a controller for your phone, it's a hundred times more usable than the official DBD mobile game, and it has cross-progression with Steam.
Sorry. Five cups of coffee.
Yeah, please feel free, if it's not too much trouble.
I feel like a lot of these posts are being written by people who don't play M1 killers. That's sort of the point of playing one; you are going to be running around from godpallet to godpallet, mindgaming when you can and kicking wood until there isn't any left. I get that some people don't find that fun (and sometimes it really isn't), but it's viable.
I just played a team where every single survivor had BT, DH, and DS. Didn't stop me from tunneling three of them to death.
Luckily, yeah, one of those three was really, exceptionally bad, and one of others apparently seemed to think he was an awesome looper, but he was not, so he went next. The third one was just okay, and I figured out pretty quickly that the Jill in the group actually knew how to play the game, so I avoided her until the end of the game, and she got out alive.
They were mad in the EGC, too. Their self-righteousness might have felt more justified if they weren't all running the best meta perks in the game and using them nonstop.
I come across teams like that fairly often, but they're rarely all excellent players. I don't know whether that's because I'm not in high enough SBMM yet or just that more SWFs than not are carried by one or two good survivors, but even with 3-5 health states each, I can manage if I'm on my game. The best teams will just have all the gens done within five minutes if the gods don't intervene on your behalf, but those are rare.
Like I said, though, I don't use Ghostie's instadown ability unless I have addons that can knock a couple seconds off of his stalk time (and then only usually when I have a daily), and I was still doing better, but I think I was just having rough luck. Last few games have been leisurely.
I tried to do more hit and running today in one of my games. I felt like I was playing well (got plenty of hooks), but only ended up with 1K.
I like to play for kills, so I don't know. I was satisfied with myself after the game ended even though it was an objective loss, because I felt like I played well even though I didn't win... but I didn't win.
I think I tried Brine/Pop/Dragon's/Eruption for that game, and it works fine. I've since replaced Eruption with Nurse's, and that always seems to get me an extra down or two if I remember to turn my terror radius off. I get a lot more out of Dragon's than I seem to with any other killer.
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I could not imagine playing her without some chase perks. Her chase is just too weak to go into games without them. I need at least enduring or it will be pain simulator if the survivors turn out to be good at looping.
Like I have her at P2 now and don't have bamboozle and I literally refuse to play her until I get it. I don't feel like getitng dumpstered by poor map design and then bagged at the exit gate.
She is weak AF. Probably worse than wraith. You can still pubstomp baby survivors but good ones will kick your teeth in on her.
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Some builds I've tried and had reasonable success with:
- PWYF, Nemesis, Bamboozle, + any gen slowdown of your choosing.
This is a strong chase combo. You will still eat pallets but at least you can force them out with bamboozle, and that will also get you PWYF stack with nemesis if they hit you.
- Corrupt, Call of brine, Dragons grip, Eruption.
Essentially the game plan here is just to force them off gens consistently, and occasionally get the dragons grip insta down. Call of brine, corrupt and eruption will slow the game considerably. The irri teleport addon is pretty much a must to be able to keep teleporting to close TVs to gens, which will slow them down further as that will also make their corruption go up and they have to do the TVs. Might get a lucky mori.
- Scourge Hook: Floods of Rage, Make your choice, + chase perk and/or + gen slowdown
Self explanatory. You hook them on a scourge hook and then you go for the one who did the unhooking. Something like Bamboozle or PWYF will help with the chase. The downside with this build is if they understand to shut off TVs, in which case you won't be able to teleport close enough to go for the one who did the unhooking.
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SImple.
If i get new to normal players i do pretty good with her - some asked me after the match after the mini mori how i could do that on first down and what he has to do with this vhs...
Then you get the usual god squads - bear the trouble - and just open the doors myself when they are ready that it doesn´t take so long and try to ignore that.
Then you will get some normal players again.
This is now pretty regular with my games.
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Okay!! I thought I had more games saved than I actually do, and in this one there's a FNAF Security Breach retrospective playing in the background, so I can understand if you don't want to watch it with sound on or something. Also, these survivors weren't the greatest (please do not send any hate their way, this is not meant as a naming + shaming attempt mod, just a full disclosure that they weren't a full deathsquad before someone accuses me of saying she's better than she is because you don't face good survivors blah blah etc). I had this game saved due to the pretty funny endgame chat which I've cut out.
Anyway, yeah, here's the one game of Sadako I had saved:
(it took me a year to upload this because for some reason my internet gave me a graand total of 7mbps upload speed all day, which was fun)
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They completely ruined her by giving her a "lullaby", which i guess is the new and fancy name for terror radius these days. It killed her stealth potential completely, even wraith is a better stealth killer IMHO, purely based on the fact that you don't hear him approach until you can virtually hear his raspy breathing, at which point he's right on top of you.
I don't understand the decision to make her broadcast her presence in the area when being undetectable. She hops in and out of manifestation enough that there's absolutely no point to it, other than making her easier to play against.
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People are way overreacting, she may need a single buff or two at most. People aren't even trying to hear why she can be decent and annoying even to face, they just played her for less than a week before going back to anti-loop.
Trust, I am very VERY much of the mindset most killers need something extra to their kits. Legion, Trapper, Wraith, etc. Need something substantial added on to help them. But I do not see Sadako in that light at this point. I had a few games of getting M1 outplayed and manipulated by fake Mori scenarios...
Then I started trying out different things with her in games, making TP's that would seem illogical and pulling off moves out of nowhere, realizing why certain things work, what information survivors can and can't use against you consistently, etc. My results with her over the last 5 days have been FAR TOO consistent to consider her weak. If my win rate outpaces my losses and the losses I take had obvious moments where I took the L, I'm not going to make excuses for what I did in the match that led me to a loss, it's pointless (not that I think that's what others are doing, just that they aren't giving her a fair enough observation).
She is officially my favorite stealth killer in game at this point, and I'll probably never play wraith again because of her. It just never gets old cutting off survivors where they least expect it on their way to a hook or gen. Almost every Onyon I see playing survivor isn't doing the same things I'm doing, like Demanifesting at Shack (or pretty much any high loop) or abandoning a bad chase for gens, or using a build that builds up her strengths and allowing for added momentum (I am loving BBQ/Pain Resonance/STBFL/Deadlock, it allows for so much more chase time while also adding extra pressure to hooks, it really seems to stretch the survivors hands, meanwhile I'm passively becoming faster at M1 and almost always get info from any hook on where others are. If I don't see a lot of bodies either way, I just Demanifest and sneak into people approaching hook/around where last gen popped.)
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