Onryo add-ons that need critical adjustments after the rework

Rickety Pinwheel and Sea-Soaked Cloth

Current Add-on Effects:

Note: In the interest of time I will focus on Rickety Pinwheel, but the issues and suggestions here apply to both add-ons.

The issue:

This add-on absolutely needs some changes due to how much the counterplay for survivors when facing Onryo has shifted. This is because now survivors are highly incentivized and rewarded for taking tapes to turn off her TVs; by doing this survivors deny her the ability to spread condemn to them as well as denying her mobility. Simply put, if survivors are not turning off TVs before working gens, they are completely failing her counterplay.

This simple fact has a big detrimental effect on the Rickety Pinwheel and Sea-Soaked Cloth add-ons. These add-ons are only useful when survivors are by a powered TV. However, the counterplay is so strongly to never be next to a powered TV even without these add-ons, but with them even more so.

These add-ons were created in a time where grabbing a VHS tape had risk and reward to it. These add-on's effects made sense back when a survivors was rewarded for turning off a TV to deny mobility, condemn and the add-ons effects, as the survivors would then have the risk of ticking condemn over time. However now there is no risk to grabbing and holding a VHS tape, while it is more important than ever for survivors to turn off a TV nearby.

The result is that survivors will always turn off a powered TV by grabbing a VHS tape by a gen before working it. This is made even easier for them with the addition of TV auras. This has the side-effect of making the Rickety Pinwheel and Sea-Soaked Cloth incredibly useless. This is due to both of these add-ons only working when survivors are within 8 meters of a powered TV. As such, I strongly recommend BHVR reexamine these add-ons.

Proposed Solution:

I suggest making these add-ons activate instead under the following condition (Rickety Pinwheel as example):

• While survivors are within 8 meters of a TV turned off by a survivor, they gain the Oblivious effect.

This would allow these add-ons to still be useful and would serve as a way for Onryo to address the strong counterplay within this version of Sadako, and a means to try and play around it. I think such a change would be very healthy and would allow for more creative and fun play.

Conclusion:

Both of these add-ons need to be changed to address the new realities of Onryo's TVs and counterplay within the new rework. Due to Onryo's counterplay requiring survivors to turn off TVs before they work generators, this add-on will not see much value outside of low MMR games where survivors have no idea how to face her. The add-on is now simply extremely reliant on bad survivors playing poorly and not turning off TVs while they work gens. A change to make these add-ons work when a TV is off due to a survivor taking a tape gives these add-ons a new purpose and provide new avenues of fun and build creativity.

Iridescent Videotape

The issue:

This add-on is a great concept. It allows Onryo to trade away all her condemn pressure in exchange for mobility. It is also balanced by having a longer TV off duration when survivors perform the counterplay to her TVs. However there is one major problem with this add-on.

Since the add-on removes all Onryo's condemn pressure, it allows survivors to freely disable her TVs at no risk. A team with a smart survivor can easily run around from TV to TV using their auras and disable them all. Each TV would be off for 84 seconds due to this add-ons debuff, which is a very long time in DBD.

This is a problem for Onryo even when not using this add-on. However when using this add-on, survivors performing such actions just crushes her and completely negates the entire point of the add-on. A mobility add-on where smart survivors can easily remove all your mobility and little to no risk is pointless. This makes the add-on an actual significant liability against good teams as it can render her virtually powerless.

Proposed Solution:

I suggest both of the following changes to the add-on to address this:

• When survivors are carrying a VHS tape, they cannot see the auras of TVs other than their assigned tape drop off TV.
• When survivors are carrying a VHS tape, they cannot interact with any TV other than their assigned tape drop off TV.

The inability to see TV auras when holding a tape would help stop survivors from completely shutting down her power with this add-on. Likely the TV auras were added to make condemn not oppressive and provide survivors a way to quickly be aware of their condemn risk and how to quickly counter it. Since condemn is not an issue when running this add-on, I feel the new TV auras are not needed here.

Similarly the inability for survivors to be able to interact with TVs other than their assigned tape drop off TV when carrying a tape would ensure one survivor doesn't just run around turning off all the TVs.

These changes would ensure she can still use this add-on for mobility, while also still providing survivors with a decent counterplay of during her TVs off at key locations for a significant 84 seconds (almost an entire gen of progress!). These changes simply make it so survivors cannot abuse this long cool-down duration to rapidly turn off multiple TVs, leaving her with no useful mobility.

Conclusion:

Since she has no condemn threat or slowdown from this add-on and the duration debuff to survivors turning off TVs is significant, I feel these proposed changes are very fair and healthy. They would allow the add-on to be more useful, balanced, and fun, while still providing survivors a means to engage in counterplay to deny her mobility in key areas for a long duration.

VCR

The issue:

This add-on has always been a bit weak since it only sees value when survivors do not have direct sight on a TV. This is because the add-on does not show Sadako crawling out of the TV. When survivors hear the teleport sound, they just need to look at the nearby TV and if they don’t see her character model, they will know that she teleported elsewhere. At most it is a minor inconvenience.

However when survivors don’t have a line of sight on the TV, this is where this add-on would normally start to see value. If a survivors hears Sadako teleport without a line of sight to a TV, they have to play like she teleported to the TV nearby just in case. If a survivor is injured this usually results in them getting off the gen and pre-running just to play it safe. This can waste a bit of their time and leads to uncertainty on the survivor side.

This is however exactly why this add-on had a serious problem on the new rework. Due to the change allowing survivors to see powered TV auras at all times, even without a direct line of sight, survivors will still know if Onryo teleported to the TV next to them or another TV somewhere else. A survivor simply needs to look at the TV aura and if it disappears they immediately know she teleported to that TV. This makes the VCR add-on completely useless.

Proposed Solution:

Reexamine how TV auras work. Ideally by making it so survivors who are holding tapes cannot see the auras of TVs other than their tape drop-off Target TV. This would once again allow for uncertainty in most situations when using this add-on and not having a direct line of sight on a TV. Most survivors will take a tape from a TV before working a gen so this condition should be satisfactory to solve the issue. This change would also help solve the issue with Iridescent Videotape.

Another solution would be to just always have Sadako's character model come out of every TV when using this add-on. This would be beneficial as it would allow this add-on to have value even when a survivor does have line of sight on a TV.

If hiding any TV auras to survivors holding tapes or adding character models is something BHVR does not want to do, then I would propose a solution from another member of this forum (forgive me but I cannot recall your name). That solution being the following: When using Projection, all TV auras aside from Target TVs are hidden from survivors for 10-15 seconds. This change would negate the usage of TV auras by survivors to completely counter this add-on while not requiring any significant changes to the TV auras.

Conclusion: VCR is a weak add-on that has practically no use with the new rework due to TV auras. It was already a weak add-on before due to how easy it was generally for survivors to tell if she was actually teleporting to a TV and how little value it got even if they couldn't tell. With the addition of TV auras, any value gained from this add-on is gone. As a result this add-on needs some serious adjustments to be serviceable within the new reworks framework.