Why do killers make it so obvious...

thesuicidefox said:

It's a catch 22. If you check it and a survivor is watching now they know where your totem is. If you don't check it then there is a high chance someone spawned near it and has already found it.

thesuicidefox said:

@Tzeentchling9 said:
thesuicidefox said:

It's a catch 22. If you check it and a survivor is watching now they know where your totem is. If you don't check it then there is a high chance someone spawned near it and has already found it.

This. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. And there really is no alternative to ruin.

I disagree with the last part. Thanatophobia + Sloppy can do as much, if not more, to slow the game as Ruin, the catch is that you need to injure multiple survivors. If you can though the game almost stops in it's tracks. Sloppy punishes survs for healing, and Thana punishes them for not healing, so either way they are losing time. Dying Light can also be quite effective at slowing/stopping the game, with the catch you need to find and kill the obsession quickly. Yes these have drawbacks, but so does Ruin in the fact it can be destroyed quickly and you are basically 1 perk short now. I will agree that Ruin is the easier option here, but I don't think it's the only one nor the most effective. Gen Crusher (Surv/Discord/OC/PGTW) is IMO the most effective anti-gen build, but it has the downsides that 1) you need 4 perks to make it work and 2) you have to prioritize kicking gens over chases, which is something a lot of killer players don't have the discipline to do.

@HavelmomDaS1 said:
I disagree. Sloppy is only useful if you can injure everyone at the beginning. And that's very unlikely unless you are Legion. And since the "No heal genrush meta" is becoming more and more popular, it's just a waterdrop on a hot plate to have the effect of Thana.
Ruin is the best you can have. It all depends on the start. If ruin gets destroyed after 1 minute it already made a pretty good job because u slowed the start down, exactly the time you need to hook the first survivor start pressuring with that momentum.

Sloppy or Thana by itself isn't going to do much, but together they can slow the game down quite a bit. The "no heal gen rush meta" is WAY less effective when you have 4 players injured. At 1, yea Thana does almost nothing. At 2 it starts to show and forces survivors to at least team up on gens (giving you a greater chance to injure multiple survivors) At 3 it forces them to heal (which Sloppy punishes), and at 4 the game just grinds to a halt. You can easily get them all injured if you play it right, which means abandoning a chase if you see a chance to get a hit on someone else. This is where most killers fail with Thana, they don't prioritize hitting survivors over chasing the one that's already injured. Plus Thana makes slugging that much more effective as slowing the game. And unlike Ruin, it can't be take away from you EXCEPT by healing, which again Sloppy punishes and makes them waste time (either by spending ages to SC or grouping up, either way less survivors on gens).

Ruin can potentially be very effective at slowing the game, but if you have survivors that hit great skill checks or know where the totem is, it's not going to help that much. While Ruin can stall the early parts of the game better than Sloppy/Thana combo, it won't help mid-game or late game where the combo can REALLY hurt survivors. I run this combo on both my Spirit and my Trapper, and I just got to rank 1 with Spirit last night using Sloppy/Thana/MYC/BBQ. I did not depip a single game. I had 2 or 3 safety pips where 3 of them got away, BUT because of the combo I was able to stall mid and late game enough to get silver/gold Gatekeeper and prevent a depip. Every other game was a double pip, or near double pip with a 4k (though I give hatch often, I would still catch the last guy then drop them on hatch so it's a technical 4k). Some games I even got to last long enough that I would still pip even if 3 escaped. Most games yea, 1 or 2 gens pop in the first chase. But once I get a hook and hit a second survivor things really slow down. And once MYC procs if I hit that person then the game just stops dead until survivors can save each other and heal. Makes them waste a lot of time, time you can use to hunt them down.

I encourage you to try it a few times. Ignore the first gen or 2 that pops, it will happen don't get flustered, just be sure to injure as many of survivors as you can if the opportunity presents itself. It's harder, which I admitted before Ruin is the easiest option of all the gen slowing strats, but it is IMO more effective because it lasts all game. If survivors end up leaving 3 or 4 gens close enough then you can really punish them with this combo, where you don't have that option with Ruin unless the gens are all near Ruin (and even then good survivors can still just hit great skill checks to negate Ruin).

@HavelmomDaS1 said:
And again, the most important thing as killer is to have a really good start which means hooking someone fast to start the momentum. Ruin is the only tool you have to help your first pressureless and momentumless minute to slow the game down. 
If your start is good, the match will probably end good. If it's #########, you will end up losing (obviously it's not always like this, but most of the time).
Idk how sloppy and Thana will help you out in a situation when 3 gens got done and you just got your first hook.  It's usually over, u won't win that anymore unless you are nurse/Billy and the survivors messed up (greedy unhooks, 3-genned themselves etc).
Ruin prevents that, you usually get your first hook and 1-2 gens got done at best, sometimes not a single one. But it depends on the survivors, if everyone is like Marth88 depip squad and they hit great skillchecks all time it's going to hardcore. But this happens really really rarely that every single survivors is that good

Momentum can shift at any point in the match though. To say it MUST happen at the start is false. A lot of times if survivors don't feel pressured to do gens, they just naturally slow down and take their time.

IDK if you ever noticed this, but sometimes I will see Ruin go down with 5 gens, then literally 3 gens pop in the next minute and the last 2 pop the next minute. This is because survivors are trying to play catch up to the killer (who has a few hooks by this point) and then overshoot their mark. I've been survivor in those game and it just goes from 0 to 100 like BOOM. In contrast if they do 2 gens before you get a hook, survivors will be more likely to waste time attempting a save because they feel like they have a lead already. I've managed to stop MANY games at 3 or 2 gens left just because survivors gain a false sense of confidence they are doing well. Furthermore, Thana has a bit of a psychological effect on survivors to be more altruistic, so they are even MORE likely to make saves/heals over gens just to get rid of it. But if you play it right, you have them fall into a never ending cycle of saving/healing until it gets to the point they are now behind. So they try to gen rush, but Thana slows them down because they opt to not heal and focus on gens (due to Sloppy).

Like Ruin can help you get that early lead, but then what about when a survivor spawns on it? It's gone almost immediately and you still don't have a hook now your early game asset is gone. It's more of a gamble. Like I said, the Thana/Sloppy combo is a harder tactic than Ruin, but once you get that momentum going you can do some real damage. This is besides the fact that Thana WILL slow them down, even it's just by a little bit, where Ruin only most likely will slow them down if they get a lot of skill checks and can't hit greats.

The games where I got a safety pip using the combo were mostly due to me being unable to find survivors fast enough to maintain pressure. Fog, corn, very large maps, super immersed Clauds. Would Ruin have made a bigger difference? Probably, but there is also a chance it could have not helped too. If I was able to just find them faster I could get hits and apply my pressure and I would have been just fine.

Case and point, I had 1 game with 4 toolboxes. I decided to take my combo off and put on Ruin instead of Thana. Needless to say they basically spawned on Ruin and it was gone in 30 seconds. I did get a hook just after it went down, but the rest of the game was a REAL struggle because I had nothing to slow the game except Sloppy. If I had Thana instead of Ruin I wouldn't have had to focus so hard on protecting gens. Lucky for me they did 2 gens quickly and I saw they left 3 close together, so I protected the crap out of those gens. I managed to actually get a 4k, they got to gates but never got them open, and it was probably one of the hardest games I ever had where I ended up winning. But the whole time I'm playing I'm just thinking to myself "if I took Thana instead of Ruin I would be able to finish this chase right now because everyone is injured and I would have time". Sure they still would have gotten those 2 gens quick, but I would have been able to shift momentum a lot easier mid-game.

thesuicidefox said:

@Cymer said:
There is an entire thread from AlwaysInAGoodShape where he shows how important a good start is.
How crucial the first hook is and how much DS can cost you the momentum, especially on non obsessions.

I'm not denying a good start can win you the game. My point is that you can gain momentum at any point in the game, and that you can hold onto that momentum a lot easier as the game progresses because it's easier to protect 4 gens than it is to protect 7, as long as they are close enough together. Which is why I bring up the point about super gen rush the moment Ruin goes down. If it's 5 gens, and you have a lot of momentum, survivors will go the extra mile to shift momentum back to their side, which is why you see gens pop super fast after Ruin is out. A weaker start gives survivors a feeling of security in that they don't need to play harder to get ahead or stay ahead, giving you an opportunity to pull the rug out from under them. Granted it's harder to get that momentum going, but if you do mid-game or even late-game it can be a lot harder for survivors to recover.