Spies from the Shadows underrated?
In the title:
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No, it's a bad perk. I can only see this perk being useful on maps like Hawkins and lery's.
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Why is it bad?
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Most of the maps are large and open, which makes this perk useless because you can see a survivor alerting a crow if you look up and there are some maps that don't have crows at all, like midwich and RPD.
There are better information perks too.
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RPD 100% has crows (you just may not be able to look up and see them). Unsure about Midwich, however. I haven't used the perk on that map.
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It's a decent perk, unlike other 'bad perks' you're pretty much guarenteed to get use out of it every game. The few times I see people forced to use it for an archive or random build, they usually end up being surprised at how much use they get out of it.
Also, newer players don't have much access to info perks and so Spies can be one of the better ones they have.
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It's a pretty decent perk for beginners. It just doesn't work very well on some killers and you have better alternatives but it is useful and it works in pretty much every game. Bonus points, if you're using it on Wraith because then you don't disturb any crows yourself while cloaked.
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I think it's pretty bad on most killers the information is not precise enough. It solid on knight since he can send a guard immediately to check it out but for most killers it meh. Might consider using it on pig after the box aura reading nerf.
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Its basically my most used info perk at this point. No one expects it, survivors often have no idea how I got wind of them and you often get notifications of survivors that you had no inkling of that they were there. The perk often works as eyes in the back of your head, like you suspect a survivor is somewhere, but they evade your gaze and leave no scratch marks, you want to leave, but a crow notification goes off behind your back: boom! There you are.
I honestly can't fathom why so many forum users consider this perk outright bad, I guess they only theory-craft and never used the perk anytime after they "graduated" from being a newby. A lot of criticism stems from the fact, that the perk offers inaccurate info and is not an aura reading perk, and thats true, but its also basically free and has unlimited uses. It helps in finding sneaky survivors, during the exit gates phase and a myriad other situations.
Its only countered by Calm Spirit, and since the short lived mini-hype around Ultimate Weapon died down and survivors decided that Calm Spirit isn't worth the perk slot to counter UW, I have seen it being used maybe trice. But I am totally fine with Spies being an underrated niche perk, thats just suiting me and my playstyle, you guys can all play Nowhere to Hide or Ultimate Weapon, why my Crow spies rat out hundreds of survivors each week.
EDIT: anyone of you played Alien Isolation? In that game the alien has two AIs. One normal everyday AI that reacts to sounds and sights as you would expect, but also an instinctive director AI that always knows where the player character is and that occasionally gives the other AI tips, like "hmm ... maybe go look in the kitchen" or "why not go check out the vents?". Spies in the Shadows is basically this instinctive AI for killers, if feeds you constant hunches of where to look, without stating the survivors position outright, like aura reading, but this hunches are pretty solid, because this birds where agitated by a survivor who was definitely there.
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There seems to be this trend on the come up where these Hillbilly players are running spies from the shadow with deer stalker and just literally slug the whole match until all 4 survivors are down then hook. It’s quite strong especially if the billy player is very good.
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It's decent perk in comp where Ultimate Weapon is banned but even there it's only run on killers that can act on the information quickly like nurse and blight or stealth killers like Ghost Face although I'm unsure if that's because it's good on Ghost Face or because Ghost Face is given Lery's most of the time and it's good on the map.
Either way I do think it's a tad underrated and is a fair bit more decent than people give it credit for given it's real time information in your general vicinity that gets around distortion.
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The perk used to be useless because in the past there were patches and maps where crows just weren't there, I remember trying to do tome challenges that required scaring crows and I got 0 progress in some matches even as deathslinger whos gun triggers crows in an aoe.
While it works its not really that great for what it does, other sources of info are active longer (whispers) or are just more refined (any other aura read perk)
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Your FOV is not 360 degrees
The perk activates constantly and will reveal hiders in places you never would've thought to look. People immediately dismiss this perk because of the above mentioned condition, but you will find many situations where you wouldn't have been able to spot the crow.
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Yeah, I've found it to be very useful on billy.
Your, "eyes on the back of the head" is what I gained from it.
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No, its rated correctly. Notifications are more of a distraction then simply seeing the crow take off.
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I agree, a lot of people keep saying you can see the crows manually, but the radius is so long that it's really useful on indoor maps, it calls out players behind you, and the cool down is extremely short. A ton of players don't expect it.
That said, there are still better info perks obvs like Ultimate Weapon, and Spies doesn't really have any synergy with other perks.
Very easy to recommend to beginners though, and the hate it gets is unwarranted I feel. Maybe to buff it, it could spawn more crows around the map? Just a thought.
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It's pretty much unusable on Lery's as surprisingly there are far more crows than you would think for an indoor map and you just get endless noise making it close to impossible to hear anything else.
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Although it loses its usefulness due to Calm Spirit, it is still a good perk to have on occasion. For the killer to know that the crow is taking flight from behind killer is more valuable than any imagined. This is effective not when attacking, but when defending a specific position. camping, gen patrol, etc.
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I used to run it constantly and for a little while it was the only perk I ran alongside Shadowborn as Ghostface. I thought it was decent for awhile but I noticed all the flaws with it.
- It’s very inconsistent and RNG dependent. Some maps have an insane amount of crowd (e.g., Lery) and you basically know where someone is at all times. Other maps have next to no crows and the perk trigger only once or twice the entire match
- Open maps the perk is useless because you can pretty much already see the survivor or the crow without the perk. And you can’t sneak up on them because they can also see you.
- Calm Spirit is becoming more common and just nullifies the perk
- Good survivors don’t even bother hiding so the higher you climb the less value you get because you can find survivors easily without it
- After awhile you start to learn crow placement and can notice crows being disturbed without the perk so you don’t need it anymore.
It’s a decent perk and really good to help you learn how to use crows more effectively, however there are much better tracking perks to use now.
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