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Someone break down for me why UW is OverPowered
The only argument I've ever heard for this perk is "You're stupid if you don't know why" or "Because everyones running it" not a single soul has given me an actual explanation as to what makes it too strong.
Completely ignoring the blindness it applies since it's such a useless affliction in most cases (you could remove it and not a single killer would care) all it does is allow you to track people and in most cases you'll either go for the first person who screams or the last one (if you plan to get value on everyone) which is something other perks do.
My personal take on why the perk is so popular is because it's a tracking perk that isn't gated by stupid restrictions/limitations. Most perks that show auras have limitations such as only working near lockers or only on far away targets etc. UW is a perk you choose when you activate and what area it works in making it reliable which is something a lot of tracking perks are missing and need desperately.
Comments
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I don't think Survivors want to admit that the blindness it gives hard counters their favorite perk.
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The cooldown isn't long enough, that's it really.
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Blindness is not at all useless, but I can totally understand that statement coming your post since you are trying very hard to misrepresent this perk. Not sure why, what do you wish to get out of the N+1 "UW is fine because i use it and it is fine for me and that is what game balance is" post?
My issues with UW is, so we can both pretend this is a discussion and not just shouting at each other:
- it has no counterplay, it only has "counter pick", ie you have to opt in with two perks to counter this one if you wished to avoid it on a per-survivor basis, and you cannot tell beforehand if the killer will actually have it on.
- requires negligible effort to use it
- removes stealth play option for survivors simply by making the "right pick" when you assemble your perk build
- the convenient blindness part has no actual counter in the game whatsoever
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A few reasons. The tracking it offers is too powerful for how easy it is to activate the perk and for how often the perk can be activated (the cooldown is too short). There's nothing wrong with the perk being easy to activate, but if that's the case then it shouldn't turn your terror radius into a moving detection zone for an entire 30 seconds. In that time you can basically cover the entire map and once it's over you only have to wait 30 seconds before it can be used again. You mentioned how the perk doesn't have very many limits/restrictions on its use and that's part of why it's too strong. It simply gives too much information for free and has a degree of reliability that no tracking perk should have.
The Blindness component of the perk is not a problem and does not need to be changed.
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People hate UW because it's an incredibly easy to use perk that offers a ton of information for virtually no effort on the player's end which can lead to important plays in the game.
It also counters Windows of Opportunity due to the Blindness effect, WoO being another perk that offers a ton of information for virtually no effort on the player's end which can lead to important plays in the game.
This isn't to say WoO needs adjustment, but rather that I slot UW next to it. They're both really good and give a lot of information, but what you do with that information and how effective it is for you is dependent on your personal skill as a player.
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The cooldown gives you a minute between uses. How is that not long enough?
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The tracking it provides is worse than every other tracking perk, especially nowhere to hide, which is much much better.
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I saw lots of arguments against it in previous threads. Clearly you paid no attention or turned a blind eye to them. To invalidate those opinions to paint an image that it is just survivors crying isn't something new here and it's what you're actively doing.
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I can't speak for OP, but it's that first part that tends to trip me up in these conversations.
The tracking that Ultimate Weapon offers is the weakest form of common information in the game, only second in any information gain to Whisper's binary on/off info. A single scream is not particularly powerful information, compared to other sources. It's pretty much exactly what you'd look for if you needed a type of info for a perk like Ultimate Weapon; low effort, low reward.
I'll agree it could stand to have its duration/cooldown numbers shifted but I just don't see it being straight up overpowered. It offers, at best, a scream every thirty seconds. More realistically, a scream every minute. That's good, but it's nowhere near overpowered.
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The cooldown is 30 seconds, the perk works for 30 seconds.
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I mean honestly, and I play both sides, I don't think over powered is accurate for this perk. It's strong. And I wouldn't hate a longer cooldown, but cool with not having one either. I see this perk talked about like it's an all-you-can-eat aura reading buffet for killers. It's not even an aura reading perk. If you scream, just leave. It only gives snapshot information. It's a perk that may require you to take a chase. It's that simple. Someone has to take chase, what's the difference if a perk makes you that person? Gens are the most boring part of the game anyway XD.
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It's not that a scream is too powerful. Making a survivor scream is fine. It's how often it can be triggered (given its easy activation condition) and how long the perk stays active for that are the main problems, especially given its general lack of reliable counterplay (other than Calm Spirit).
Apologies if that was unclear.
If you mean it's worse than other tracking because it's only a scream while other perks generally show auras, then, yes, that is true. I just don't think that outweighs the other mechanics of the perk that make it good considering how the perk works as a whole.
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It's a little overtuned and the cooldown after the effect is fully used or expires should be longer. Too much uptime for how easy and effective it is to use. Personally the way I'd change it is shifting the duration from 30 seconds to 20 and the cooldown from 30 seconds to 40. It technically has the same cooldown but the main thing is if you use it and enter a chase you won't have that duration just passively reveal everyone even while finding / chasing people. You either commit to the chase or you look until you find everyone you want to.
So 30 / 30 to 20 / 40
Personally I like how easy it is to use but I just feel the perk has too much going for it compared to literally every other information perk in the game. But again - Not overpowered but could probably use adjustments.
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It's free value, using it braindeadly easy. It busted on top tier killers. It has busted synergy with DMS.
All other information perks requires something killer to do. But not this one. Open locker and find all survivors easily.
This perk needs big nerf. Cooldown should be like a minute if perk stays like that.
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As others said it's free information that is on a low cooldown. That said one major reason killers are running it is because aura reading is in a weak place. You don't know how many times I run into distortions in my lobbies. Ppl talk about how easy UW is active well let's talk about distortion and how easy it is to get your stacks back. For one thing you start the match off with max stacks of it and it kinda easy to get them back before you run completely out of them. I run it alot myself and I don't think I ever ran out of stacks of it. In my opinion if UW needs a nerf because of how free it is then distortion needs one also. Nothing huge maybe make it where you don't start with 3 stacks of it at the beginning. You get one free stack and you recharge it up to 3 stacks by being in the killers TR. Overall I'm fine with them nerfing UW as long they make aura reading lil better. That just my opinion tho. I probably get a lot of heat for this but I honestly don't care. Just how I feel about the subject.
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At the time of this post these are the arguments against it and my counter arguments
Cooldown - 30 (technically 60) seconds and in most cases you're only going to use it after a chase/hook a survivor to find another survivor to start chasing in which case the CD is as long as the chase last. It's impractical to drop chase to use the perk and continue chasing the same person and if you move to someone else then it puts you back at square 1
No real counterplay - Get in a locker if you notice someone scream. Run to a dead area of the map and scream then sneak away so the killer waste time looking for you. As I said in the OP you are going to be chased if you are the first or last survivor who screams in 9/10 uses of the perk UNLESS you're at/near an important objective (totem or pig box) that the killer wants to hard defend.
Too little effort - WOO exist. You put it on and you get map wide info for existing. If this required something to activate for X seconds then went on cd there'd be riots. Nowhere to hide exist as well you kick a gen and get info around you.
Removes stealth - Nowhere to hide exist, it may not last as long as UW but it gives far more accurate information and travels with you. Also if you are a "stealth" player you can run calm spirit something that helps immensely with stealth and makes the perk do nothing against you.
Blindness - You can go 30 seconds without map info hax on every loop. Most of you that run this perk are probably metalords that have over 1k hours in the game. 30 seconds without WOO will not hurt you run vigil if it's such an issue. Otherwise blindness only hurts people who pay absolutely 0 attention to the game.
Too good on top tier killers - So Nurse and Blight are too good with another perk? Almost like the killers themselves are a problem not the perks. Srsly this argument is dumb, Nurse is poorly designed and Blights addons removing any weaknesses he has is dumb.
Another thing people need to take into account this is a 4 v 1 so 16 perks vs 4. Killer perks NEED to be stronger than survivor perks on average in order to be able to compete. The killer knowing a general area of all the survivors locations for a brief moment is fine given there's only 1 killer who can only chase 1 survivor at a time. (Lol knight) The survivors job is to use 16 of perks to form a team to help each other escape the killer who uses 4 of them to stop you. If all 16 perks were on par with the killers then killer would be unplayable
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I won't do another UW rant, but in short, people vastly underplay how strong being able to find survivors on demand, and how strong keeping survivors blinded for half the game actually is vs. SoloQ.
Killer's aren't stupid, it may be just a scream, but a smart Killer doesn't need any more than a rough idea where you are to guess what you're doing and decide to interrupt key actions.
It's strong at tunneling, 3-genning, proxy camping hooks/slugs, defending hexes, slugging for the 4k, and as previously stated, whatever of these the killer decides to do, you can't really counter it without and sometime even with a very coordinated team.
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Because UW is a perk that outclasses other info perks, has no counterplay except for Calm Spirit (LOL) and it's just another perk that only overpowers already high-tier mobility killers. Nobody cares if Trapper is running UW but Nurse and Blight mains are turning their brains off, zooming across map with it, ending games in a couple of minutes. It does too much for least amount of effort. Just open a locker and that's it, you don't have to accomplish anything like downing or hooking a survivor etc. like most info perks require you to do.
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I'll say it again, assuming the killer is on the mark using it every time as soon as it goes off cooldown it's like what, revealling your position once every minute at most? Most likely less than that since they'll be too preoccupied doing something else like chasing. It honestly isn't that bad and for something that's so busted I almost never see it. I can only account for myself but I've been playing survivor pretty regularly this week and the amount of killers using UW can only be counted on one hand. In a way I hope it gets more popular because holy hell I am so sick of all my teammates running distortion because it just makes me the bigger target since I don't run it. Share the pain I say.
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You're right, but a killer using UW as soon as its off cooldown isn't using UW correctly.
UW is most effective when the killer knows when they will profit most from finding a particular survivor or protecting a vital objective. Using it at the right time can put soloQ survivors in so many lose-lose situations because you just don't know what each other are doing, and anyone making the right decision, the Killer can stop.
A smart Killer with UW and no chill is a truly horrifying foe.
Post edited by UndeddJester on0 -
Several things:
- It is basically a Killer-Power (Doctors Static Blast) available for everyone
- It almost has no counters. Equipping Calm Spirit is the only counter, a Perk which is very mediocre and even applies Debuffs to Survivors. Way less counters than are available for Aura-Reads
- It lingers for 30 seconds. So you can scan a very huge portion of the Map with it
- It is very strong combined with Dead Mans Switch and, unlike the Pain Res + DMS-Combo, not really anything the Survivor can do against it. With Pain Res + DMS the Survivor can stand up, which will already waste a few seconds. But with Ultimate Weapon, they will just scream at a point and the Gen is blocked
- It is stronger on the strong Killers compared to the weak Killers. In theory, every Killer can get really good value out of Ultimate Weapon, but if used on a Nurse or Blight, it becomes oppressive
- And on top of all of that - it adds Blindness. Which is not the strongest Status effect, but since Windows of Opportunity is one of the most picked Perks, it still has impact. And honestly, it is a Bonus which is not really needed for a Perk that strong.
IMO the lingering for 30 seconds is the biggest issue. The Perk would still be strong if it would not linger and just be available when opening a locker or for a smaller amount like 5 seconds.
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Even with a perk that allow killers to sprint at Blight speed. Doctor is still not as broken as Blight.
I would like a perk on survivor that if killer hooks them, killers will get Blind status for 30sec. Then Im sure killers understand how annoying Blindness status is for survivors.
The constant Blindness that deny over 20 survivor' perks is one thing. But the biggest problem is deny the aura from slugged and hooked teammates, those are build-in aura for a reason.
Ps: I dont think 5sec activation is a nerf to the perk. Blight can cross the map and make a use on you within 5sec. Other killers are fine (not the Blindness though), 5sec would make the info part almost useless on them.
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It’s called Residual Manifest. You don’t even need to get hooked to activate it, you just have to blind the Killer. There’s even a guaranteed flashlight from the chest!
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Of course Ultimate Weapon not OP. You need to open a locker to activate it, it only active for 30s within killer terror radius and you only get a bubble notification.
You think finding a locker is easy?
You know not all killer has 32m terror radius, right? Its useless for Freddy
Survivor can hide before killer approach them, how hard is for survivor hiding?
Just like @Reinami say its weaker than Lethal Pursuer, Nowhere To Hide, Barbeque & Chilli & Flood of Rage
Post edited by Rizzo on2 -
That's true but UW is more convenient. It's not overpowered but definitely more convenient to trigger. You don't need to be around a survivor to activate it, after all.
UW is a good perk because it's easy information (essential part of the game), useful on most killers, has no significant downsides (other than seeing the position rather than the aura of survivors), is easy to trigger (unlike Floods of Rage) and it is a counter to the most popular survivor perk. A perk that is used as a crutch rather than a learning tool.
I have tested a few blindess builds over the past couple months and they always worked best in chase. Because many survivors really rely on that one perk and basically run around like headless chicken when it doesn't work. Funnily enough, the unhooking part of blindness wasn't that big of an issue (with small exceptions).
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Blindness is underated, particularly in a Windows of Opportunity meta.
But frankly, I wouldn't say UW is overpowered. It's a strong perk though. It could maybe do with a slight cooldown increase. 45s would still make it a very good perk.
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It is not the same. You dont need Gen/Hook, your Hex, other survivors' aura in chase. You vision is only on the chased survivor.
Why is Boil over hook aura annoying? Because you need it when you hook a survivor. Image the perk if they remove the wiggle buff effect but totally removing hook aura. Does it sound fine on killers? Struggle to find hook everytime they want to?
I would like a perk on survivor that if killer hooks them, killers will get Blind status for 30sec.
Thats why I think of this perk, after a hook, most killers needed aura is Gens, being denied
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I have played against Residual and it is annoying. If it were to activate on a hook, even with a long cooldown implemented, a 4 man squad running the same perk would shut down a Killer running an Aura reading build. Do you actually think that’s a good thing?
So what would the Killer do in response? Bring more Aura reading perks? No, they would bring gen defense or “unfair” perks that assist in tunneling. Because if the Killer can’t even see the gens because of Blindness, they won’t even know where to patrol let alone find other Survivors. That means more proxy camping and tunneling. Then survivors would cry and scratch their head wondering Killers aren’t bringing information perks and leaving the hook.
That’s why Residual Manifest is tagged to blinds. The Killer can bring lightborn to avoid it, look at walls, bring franklins to disable flashlights etc.
Your perk suggestion would give even the Killers who dont tunnel and leave the hook less incentive to leave because they don’t know where to go.
As for Boil Over, it can be worked around by looking around for hooks before picking or dropping the Survivor and leaving them slugged if no hooks are nearby. Once again, if the aura blocking effect of Boil Over was much more easily applied/common, what would Killer players do? Walk till the Survivor wriggles free? They would leave them slugged, and we’ll get more cries of slugging and for BHVR to implement basekit Unbreakable.
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It's a perk that becomes problematic on stronger killers like Nurse or Blight.
What a surprise.
On lower tiers like Trapper or Doctor it's fine and on Freddy it's downright unusable.
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Almost like the problem isn't perks, it's Nurse/Blight.
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The thing is they have to take into account the type of Killers available in the game before designing a perk and make sure there's a fair amount of value they can get from them without huge gaps like Trapper with UW vs. Nurse with UW. Which they obviously failed to do with this perk.
Balancing perks with this in mind is more doable and realistic than rewriting Nurse or Blight from scratch. So these specific Killers being busted doesn't invalidate anything related to perk design and it's a part of it.
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Well Nurse and Blight are not going anywhere. So it's better to nerf perks, when we have killers like them we can't have that strong perks.
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Just compare it with a strong but fair tracking perk like BBQ.
BBQ requires downing and hooking a survivor that it even works. With UW you need to "find" one of the 20+ lockers, which is no effort at all.
With BBQ the killer can track a survivor outside of 40m for a very short period of time. With UW the killer can track all the time wherever he walks.
With BBQ, when the killer tries to reach them, they might have already changed their position. With UW, you find them when you are closer to them.
BBQ has no side effect. UW inflicts the blindness status.
I dont hate UW, since it plays in my playstyle. I want to be chased because thats the most fun of this game for me. But there are many (i bet more then half of the playerbase) who play the game in a more sneaky way. This perk completly ruins that experience, and there is basically nothing you can do as a survivor.
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The perk only triggers once per a survivor while active and the cooldown doesn't start till the active period is over.
It is a 60 second cooldown per a use.
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No, it's a 30 second cooldown just like how the perk description says. Idk where you get 60 seconds from?
You open a locker. UW is ACTIVE for 30 seconds which means it continues to work for that duration and keep applying to survivors as you travel. Once the active 30 seconds is over, it doesn't work anymore and a 30 second cooldown starts until you can open a locker and activate it for 30 seconds again. So the cooldown is 30 seconds and not 60 seconds.
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I totally disagree with what you say but if you really think BBQ is mediocre, thats completly fine then. Since mediocre is what "ballanced" should be.
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That's not a cooldown though? That's "how often can you activate it on each survivor". The definition of a cooldown is really clear and it's not that. So it just looks like a play of words to make UW look worse than it actually is LOL.
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This severely limits the perks we can get though, and when you get 6 perks minimum every update, that's a huge impact.
It wouldn't take nearly as much effort to give Nurse and Blight some more power cooldown nerfs, such as resetting charges upon stuns, a cooldown upon loading into the game lik all the teleporting killers, or a cooldown after a down/hook.
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Perk has a cooldown of 30 seconds once the active window ends. There isn't much to interpret there. Cooldown. 30 seconds.
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And in this 30 seconds you already found your target to chase. You did nothing, only open locker and you already know where is all survivors are. So what's your point? It does not matter if it is in cooldown or not after that. Perk already gave you free value.
If we really wanna make it cooldown, it should be 60 - 90 seconds after this 30 seconds active time ended. This will be real cooldown.
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Are you suggesting we repeat what happened to Awakened Awareness? Because then, we would also need to nerf about 50 other perks and change their best maps. They can perform perfectly fine with no perks at all even on very survivor sided maps. Now, Freddy on the other hand can't even perform that good with the best perks and on his best map. As most killers can't.
Both Nurse and Blight are issues, that should be dealt with individually. Changing the game around them would maybe work, if they made up the largest part of it, but these are only 2 out of 33 killers. I'd rather they find a suitable rework for Nurse and we send some Seal Team Six Squad to the BHVR head quarters to stop whoever Blight main holds them hostage, so they can nerf him too. That is definitely a better option than to break the game.
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Just no. There is no way we will agree in this case, apparently also not on what "mediocre" and what "sub par" means.
Its okay tho. Like i said, i dont hate UW because i like beeing chased but objectily speaking it is overpowered as hell. And i dont think a discussion about UW is interesting, since it will get nerfed sooner or later. Defending it is just pointless and disqualify any further discussions about ballancing. Same with people who think old Noed, Mettle of Men or MFT was completly fine.
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Yes, if Nurse and Blight are not going anywhere we need to nerf perks. Strong perks should never exists when these killers are in game.
I would like to see nuke Blight and rework Nurse but i am highly doubt this will happen. So we have to target next things which makes them even worse to face.
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The thing is you're inserting a value narrative and your own assumption of an imaginary match to the definition of cooldown even though it's so clear what the word cooldown is referring to. If you tell someone that UW has a 60 second cooldown you're misinforming them. It's factually incorrect. Your feelings don't change that, unfortunately.
Also me correcting your misinformation doesn't make me "butthurt". You don't have to get that hectic and personal over a perk debate. Calm down.
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LP is free for very limited time and only one time use.
NTH has free value true but it has limited time and limited range as well. So NTH's limits makes it fair and balanced.
WoO gives info for free true but it does not make you good looper. If you are bad, you will just out of pallets so fast. Good survivors are not even using it. It's training perk for best.
There already countless survivor perks nerfed only because of that. SWFs are already reason for a lot survivor perks nerfed.
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Well, then I am sorry to say that this would kill the game for me. I don't like playing as Nurse and I only play a few Blight games at a time (he is enjoyable for a bit, but I rather play other killers). If it's them, survivor or nothing at all, then I would quit. Because there is quite a lot of content in the game they would break by doing that. Stopping with UW wouldn't do much. We'd go back to how it was before. And that wasn't much better, was it?
Basically, Blight and Nurse would still be overpowered (I mean, look at these streaks, perkless and no map offerings) while every other killer would suffer. You wouldn't actually fix the issue but hope to make it more bearable for one side, while almost deleting the other (31 / 33 killers would feel these nerfs too, when they don't need that). That cannot be a good idea.
Just a few examples of other perks they'd need to nerf: BBQ, Lethal Pursuer, Pain Res, Deadlock (granted, needs changes anyway), Floods of Rage, Forced Hesitation, Gift of Pain, Pop Goes The Weasel, Dying Light, Eruption, Agitation, Corrupt Intervention, DMS, Undying (the aura effect alone is kind of funny stupid on Nurse), Nurse's Calling, Alien Instinct, Bitter Murmur, Blood Echo, Call of Brine, Dark Devotion, Cruel Limits, Darkness Revealed, Infectious Fright and Discordance.
Some of these perks aren't even that strong. But because Blight and Nurse can use them to get even a little stronger, it's still too much. The list is much longer but you get the idea. This is a bottomless pit.
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This is a really nuclear take. I'm sure you're aware that nerfing perks doesn't just weaken Blight and Nurse but all Killers.
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But the problem is UW is problematic perk even without Nurse & Blight. Like it's very free and it has no downside.
I mean as players we are seeing how problematic killers are Nurse and Blight but BHVR is refusing to nerf these two. Would you surprise if they nerf Wesker in next patch but keep Blight as he is? I would not. For whatever reasons, Nurse and Blight are never getting fair nerfs.
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Me: "UW has a 30 second cooldown."🙂
You: "Wrong!"😠🤬😤
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