The Onryō Rework: Better than I thought [7.1.0 Feedback]

Introduction

As you can probably guess from my name, I'm an Onryō main and have played her consistently since her 2022 release. As a huge lover of the Ring franchise, Sadako Rising was a very special Chapter to me. While her power was underwhelming, I grew to love it and appreciate her niche in the game. I was of the opinion that a few tweaks would maker her feel much better to play (see here). Hence, you can imagine I was thrilled when the news broke that she was going to be adjusted, and eagerly awaited the 7.1.0 PTB to see what was in store.

Unfortunately, I wasn't fond of the direction they took with her power on the PTB, and I wrote a pretty lengthy post dissecting my issues with the rework. She felt slow, clunky, and too at the mercy of survivor actions. After it seemed much of her players agreed that the PTB changes were unfavourable, I was certain they would reassess and pursue other avenues. However, the July 24th Developer Update dropped with the news that the rework was going ahead with, what I thought were, insignificant buffs that would not address her issues. Frustrated, I made a thread expressing my thoughts before actually waiting for the release and testing it on live.

After playing 7.1.0 for a day, I've come to realise that the changes she's received from the PTB are actually very impactful and I jumped the gun with my prior thread. On that note, @Steel_Eyed, you were right -- apologies for being brusque with you yesterday.

I've decided to attempt to more constructively deliver my thoughts in this thread. I'll proceed by laying out what I thought was flawed with her prior to 7.1.0, and whether her changes have resolved the issues.

Problems Solved?

• MASSIVELY improved! Lowering the post-Projection TV cooldown to 45 seconds, and reducing the generic Projection cooldown to 10 seconds (was 15 on the PTB) gives her much better map traversal than previously. Projection is much more frequent in a match now.

• Unfortunately, Demanifestation has not improved at all. Preventing The Onryō from getting stunned while Demanifested is gimmicky and not worthwhile. Survivors have no reason to drop pallets when you're Demanifested because you can't injure them without Manifesting first (which slows you down). It's also much harder to pull off mindgames with Demanifestation in a chase now because of the Reiko's Watch nerf and the fact Demanifesting breaks Bloodlust. Removing chase potential in favour of a pointless stun avoidance is an unwelcome change and has removed opportunities for skill expression.

• Global Condemnation from Projection means that applying your power is much easier and more consistent. Survivors now either have two choices: take a Tape early to avoid global Condemnation, or focus on objectives now and transport Tapes later after gaining stacks. In the latter situation, significant time is wasted and they risk you interrupting them while they're close to 7 stacks. The former situation has more nuance to it that I'll discuss later.
• Raising the Turn-off cooldown and Tape-play cooldown to 70 seconds is a great change that encourages survivors to actually interact with TVs and waste time. Yes, your TVs are going to be disabled, but in doing so they're putting themselves at risk of being caught out and gaining a quick +2 stacks.
• The ability to insert Tapes at any TV means that the actual moving of a Tape from one location to another takes way less time. On the PTB, when she had longer cooldowns, this hurt her too much. But now I actually don't think it's unreasonable. Save for instances of unlucky RNG which means two TVs spawn essentially next to each other, but that's a problem with spawn logic and not the mechanic itself.

• While it's now easier to inflict Condemnation, it's also much easier for survivors to avoid and remove it. So in theory, this change should've been a net neutral. However, I'm finding myself getting way more Condemned kills than ever before. I think there's a little nuance to this so I'll revisit this again below.

• Unfortunately her add-on diversity has not improved whatsoever. Once again, I have more to say than just one bullet point so I'll dedicate a section to this specifically.

Tape Transports and Condemned Kills

The Onryō was revealed to have a surprisingly high kill rate in September 2022, despite the fact her basekit was severely undertuned. I gave my thoughts on why that may be here. One of the main arguments I presented was that her kit is multifaceted and hence confusing for newer players and solo queue teams to grapple with. In other words, she stomped inexperienced and casual teams, and her perceived weakness arose when facing competent survivors (particularly SWF groups).

It's early days still but from my experiences so far, her rework seems to have exacerbated the divide between these groups. Matches as and against The Onryō seem go one of three ways now:

• Against 4 inexperienced survivors: The Onryō stomps them with ease. In a surprising amount of matches, survivors are completely failing to manage their Condemnation. I had 2 games yesterday when ALL of the survivors ended up with 7 stacks of Condemnation simultaneously because they never bothered to retrieve or transport Tapes. Then, they all scramble to try and remove Condemned and the whole game falls apart for them. Why are so many survivors not touching Tapes? I have no idea. Perhaps they're unaware of the rework? Maybe they've never encountered Onryō much before given how rare she was? I've seen suggestions that The Onryō is now overtuned for this reason, but I think it's too soon to assess whether she's really too strong or whether survivors just need some time to learn. Time will tell I suppose.

• Against 3 decent survivors and 1 weak one: This is the most common scenario. DbD matchmaking is notoriously bad and in most solo queue matches you're going to have one teammate who is significantly weaker than the rest. Ideally, everyone would be on equal footing but with how MMR currently works, that's rare. In this case, the early game plays fairly typically: The Onryō gets some hooks in, a generator or two pop, and the 3 decent survivors manage their Condemnation. However, that one teammate fails to and ends up getting Condemn killed at 3 generators. And now the match is effectively over for the remaining survivors.

• Against 4 experienced survivors: Against a team who knows what they're doing, the experience is quite the opposite and The Onryō can struggle to get a foothold. Because passive Condemnation no longer applies when holding a Tape, you need to hit them if you want to rack up stacks. Survivors, however, can be in 4 places at once -- The Onryō cannot. Therefore, the best way to counter her is to split up at the start of the match and have everyone grap a Tape. That way, four of her TVs are on cooldown from the get go and everyone is immune to global Condemnation. Of course, someone will inevitably be found and hit, but having +2 stacks on one survivor is preferable to having a couple of stacks on everyone. And as soon as the first survivor goes down, the rest can use the safety of The Onryō carrying and hooking them to quickly deposit their Tapes. The match then proceeds in this fashion, where one survivor is pressured at a time while the rest are safe to focus on objectives.

In this way, I think compared to her pre-7.10 rendition she's:

• Much stronger in the vast majority of matches (against solo teams).
• Slightly weaker against coordinated SWF teams (which are very uncommon to be honest).

To me this seems an acceptable trade-off. I get that it sucks as a survivor to have a matches thrown by one solo teammate but that's not a problem with The Onryō's kit specifically and more a problem with well... solo queue. Plague and Pinhead are very similar in this regard -- teams who fail to coordinate fall apart.

Messy Add-ons

One of the biggest problems with pre-7.10 Onryō is that her add-ons were terrible, with the exception of just three: Iridescent Videotape, Ring Drawing, and Reiko's Watch. The first two were problematic as they elevated her strength exponentially and made it impossible to balance her basekit. The third was well balanced, allowing for additional mindgame opportunities and skill expression.

What most of us hoped for with the add-on pass, was that:

• Iridescent Videotape and Ring Drawing would be nerfed. ✔️ achieved
• The strength of the aforementioned combo would be redistributed across her kit. ✔️ achieved
• Her lacklustre add-ons would be improved, providing more interesting options and improving build diversity. ❌ failed

Instead, Reiko's Watch was needlessly gutted -- removing an important tool for skill expression and chases -- and most of her reworked add-ons are still terrible. Why does she have TWO blindness add-ons? Why does she have an add-on that inflicts Oblivious when she has a Lullaby that is not supressed by Oblivious? Why are Distorted Photo and Telephone Very Rare when their effects are so diminutive? etc.

Of her post-7.10 add-ons three stand out as being incredibly strong compared to the rest: Iridescent Videotape, Ring Drawing, and (the newly improved) Mother's Comb. Are these add-ons problematic? No, I don't think so. But they're so, SO much better than the rest of her add-ons that you'd seem foolish for running anything else.

A huge complaint about pre-7.10 Onryō was that she was predictable. And she still is. Every Onryō I've played against so far has been running either Iridescent Videotape and Ring Drawing or Iridescent Videotape and Mother's Comb. Do I think that it's overpowered? No. But variety is the spice of The Fog -- playing as and going against the same builds all of the time gets boring. They need to go back and improve her weaker add-ons so there's not such a massive discrepancy in strength.

Why is it that killers like Blight (who already have a GREAT basekit) are allowed to have almost every add-on be a strong and viable choice but killers like Onryō, Nemesis, and Executioner are left with maybe a couple of good options each?

Anyways, I'm getting sidetracked so I'll leave that there.

Final Thoughts & TL;DR

I realise this is long and I've rambled a lot so thank you for reading this far!

I'm really pleased to say that The Onryō rework seems to be a net positive change, and I can't think of anything else she'd need other than having her add-ons revisited. Her stealth could be improved, but given how much better she is at map traversal and slowdown now, I'm not sure she really needs it.

I'll finish this off with a TL;DR for those of you who (understandably) don't wish to read the above mountain of text. In short, my views on each aspect of her rework are:

• Map traversal: 📈 MUCH better.
• Stealth: 🔄 No net change.
• Chase potential: 📉 A little worse.
• Built-in slowdown: 📈 Better.
• Lethality: 📈 Better.
• Add-ons: ❓️ Need revisiting.