Singularity buff/rework
It has now been 1 year since the release of the singularity. While I tried to play and learn him when he first came out I quickly disliked his playstyle and dropped him immediately. I could never quite put my finger on why I didn’t enjoy him and just moved on. With the recent release of chaos shuffle however, I’ve began playing him again since it’s much easier to play a new killer on a mode that isn’t normal matchmaking. I’ve come to finally realize why he has an incredibly low pick rate, isn’t as strong in normal situations and why in other instances he seems almost unbeatable. His skill ceiling is too high for a power that is borderline not rewarding.
The singularity is hit in three major areas that make him too difficult to play.
• His power is underwhelming
• He’s too addon dependent
• EMP’s are downright OP
First his base kit ability to place biopods around the map while great for map coverage and spreading his power to survivors, is ruined by how clunky it can be. The detection range to shoot a survivor is not forgiving and even being slightly off can result in not being able to hit the survivor. Along with how the hitboxes can make it difficult to attach biopods to some surfaces and ruin the momentum you have. Not to mention slipstreaming to a survivor is used by the same button to place biopods, it can sometimes lead to shooting a pod and blocking your line of sight. Then there’s the issue of still having to chase the survivor after slipstreaming and this leads to the next issue, he needs addons/perks to be good.
It is rare to never see a singularity not running soma family photo, it gives a 5% haste for slipstreaming with the downside of losing 20% of your overclock mode. So most people pair it with kids ball glove to gain it back. While some people run the iridescent addon that starts all survivor slipstreamed and makes EMP’s take longer to print. Not to mention that most players have to run perks like bamboozle, rapid brutality and play with your food etc just to be able to catch up to survivors. Even with overclock mode it’s clear that the chase isn’t rewarding enough especially when gens are getting done and every moment counts.
Finally there’s the issue of how much the EMP’s are a detriment to his ability and quite frankly are overpowered. Right from the start the EMP’s are being printed with the ability to speed up the process. Once it’s picked up the printers begin making a new one and can be held onto the entire match. So not only are EMP’s readily available at all times and have an unlimited amount you can obtain, they also then destroy every biopod within its detection range, so in chase you can lose your ability multiple times if the survivors teammates come by to help. Defending gens and map coverage are also hit really hard by EMP’s since once a biopod is hit it’s disabled for 40 seconds, there’s no other option than to either wait for it to recover or go all the way back to the biopod, destroy it and place another. Which in that time you can lose any chase or more importantly not being to stop a gen from being completed.
So how do we fix the singularity? Starting with his basic kit, he needs a lighter version of soma family photo base kit. A 3% or even 4% haste wouldn’t be too strong, to balance it I believe overclock mode should immediately end after any fast action is done during the mode.
The hitboxes on the biopods should be looked at to make placing them easier and a quality of life change would be to have slipstreaming as a different key/button from placing biopods.
Finally EMP’s should be nerfed a bit and change some properties to allow the singularity to recover biopods faster. Printers should no longer automatically begin printing at the start of the match, survivors should have to go up to them and manually start them up to get EMP’s. After retrieving an EMP, the printer cannot be used for let’s say 15-20 seconds. This makes it so survivors have another objective to their match to receive their counter and limits the amount of EMP’s that are spawning around the map. An interesting idea I had was to allow the singularity to recover EMP’d biopods manually, not entirely sure how it could work but it’s an idea I had floating around.
Those are my thoughts on why I think this killer is so low on a lot of stats and what could be done to help improve him to make him a more viable killer without overtuning him. Let me know your ideas or opinions.
Comments
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I don't think the nerf to the EMPs is necessary, the rest seems allright, especially that he is basically required to run family photo is a huge issue.
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I disagree that his skill ceiling is too high. He does have a high skill ceiling, but that isn’t a bad thing and it’s not to a degree where it’s too difficult to learn. You have to put a considerable amount of time and practice into him, but he’s a strong killer if you do. Also, EMPs are fine. If you nerf EMPs, this won’t help him in chase as much as it would primarily make his pods better at holding generators which isn’t a good thing, and EMPs being as powerful as they are is the only thing that prevents this from being too oppressive, even with the anti-3-gen.
His primary issues are:
-Over-reliance on the Soma Photo addon; there is too much power in the addon compared to his basekit, he feels a lot better to play with it compared to without.
-Some QoL issues with pod placement, such as when you are aiming at a surface and a pod placement gets rejected when it seems like it should be a valid location but isn’t, this happens way too often.
-Too difficult to use power on certain indoor maps (something which is unfortunately very difficult to fix and might not be fixable at all).
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Singularity is already a powerful killer that 4ks most of the time in the hands of a good player, including in tournaments. Watch KnightLight's Singularity and you will understand that he is much more oppressive than EMPs are to him.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2160253423?t=0h41m43s
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2149025395?t=0h47m54s
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2149841644?t=1h59m9s
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2142352855?t=2h24m58s
If you don't like tournament DbD, watch some pub player like https://www.twitch.tv/harrybotterr win most of his matches with ease.
I could agree with making Singularity more accessible for players that don't like to learn and challenge themselves too much since he does require a lot of awareness, multi-tasking and decision-making, with an average casual player already often being overwhelmed with the mere mechanics of setting up a pod, switching into it, tagging someone, switching out again, then shooting to teleport to them, and doing all of this swiftly. But it would definitely not be straightforward buffs, and anything they do to him would absolutely have to go in hand with making him less oppressive in 3-gen scenarios in my opinion, which is a major problem of his design.
I don't think he is dependent on Soma Photo in the way some people make it out, it's just that Soma Photo is an incredibly good add-on that that makes it so almost any teleport will result in a hit, or at worst a pallet gone instantly. I do however agree that it would be neat to have a bit of Photo basekit, with a nerf to the add-on itself to compensate.
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I remember watching Knightlights stream when he played him for a tournament and saying that the killer feels terrible without family photo and got really frustrated about some hits he did not get because he did not have the addon in that specific game, because it was banned I guess…
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And he probably still did not lose that match either despite not having Photo, against a highly-coordinated tournament team trying their hardest to win, i. e. something you will never see anything even just close to in pubs. Of course Soma Photo is a great add-on, and there is a very tangible difference between using it and not, and again, I would like for them to mediate that. But people make it out to be something akin to a requirement for the killer to be "playable", which is nonsense. Watch that harrybotterr guy, for just one random example. Survivors are still usually hopeless when he doesn't use Photo either. Just from the last two days:
4k at 2 gens: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2160295599?t=5h20m6s
4k at 2 gens: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2160295599?t=8h6m47s
4k at 2 gens: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2161184323?t=2h45m58s
4k at 3 gens: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2161184323?t=4h1m27s
I'm not saying Singularity is the strongest killer in the game, but KnightLight himself has said that he's basically unbeatable in the hands of a good player in pubs (and in tournaments it depends on the map, it's not like he has never lost, but he still 4ks most of his tournament matches too). He definitely does not need no-strings-attached buffs to his entire kit like OP is suggesting. The EMP change particularly would be horrible, there would be little respite against the constant onslaught of Singularity being able to teleport around and get free hits and downs out of it. It would completely wreck any but the most coordinated of 4-player groups, and even those would not be able to beat a good Singularity.
Like I said, I can entertain the idea of mediating a basekit Overclock Haste with a nerf to Soma Photo, as well as making Singularity more accessible for the average player but at the same time less oppressive around a generator cluster. If there would be a larger rework with the goal to make him less frustrating to play for the average casual player in order to up his pick rate, it could definitely revolve around removing EMPs entirely: they could make it so that whenever Singularity teleports to someone, they lose Slipstream, and any pod Singularity uses to tag and/or teleport from destroys itself.
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That is as per usual most likely a matchmaking issue… Players of a certain skill level just cannot find opponents of equal skill.
Whereas in the comp matches it does not matter so much, because the way singularity is played in comp is just territorial and holding a 3 or 4 gen.
I did not agree with the EMP change either but I think it would be nice to improve his chase power so it can be put to better use instead of relying on the 3 gen, where he is really good. I don't think he is that opressive even with Family Photo, you just need to time it properly when to drop the pallet and don't get scared into dropping it early.
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Matchmaking being what it is is simply the reality of the game though. Everybody discussing things on this forum talks about pub matches, OP certainly isn't competing against tournament teams. Unless they change matchmaking in major ways, it's simply true that Singularity is already strong enough to decisively demolish most of your matches if you get good enough at him. Or to be essentially unbeatable - I guarantee KnightLight could go on an indefinite winstreak with him. So I for one don't think he needs buffs. And buffs like Soma Photo basekit to "improve his chase" won't make his 3-genning any less oppressive, it will in fact make it even more so. If there were to be some such buffs to make him more accessible or attractive to the average player, it would have to go alongside actual nerfs to his 3-genning potency (which there should be anyway).
But the point of my posting wasn't necessarily to say he could not do with the one or other adjustment or even straightforward improvement, even if I do believe that if Singularity needs anything done at this time it's remedying the 3-gen issue (maybe as a trade-off for Soma basekit). It was more so to counter the narrative popular around here that Singularity is a mid or weak killer that EMPs completely rid of an ability ("isn’t as strong in normal situations", "a power that is borderline not rewarding", "EMP’s are downright OP", "low on a lot of stats", "make him a more viable killer", etc.). Couldn't be further from the truth.
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I think most people put him in high B or low A tier, he is decent but it depends on the playstyle, if you don't hold a 3gen he is much weaker. And quite dependant on addons...
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He needs Family Photo basekit and some QOL changes(mainly make biopod placement less strict and clunky and make locking on survivors more consistent) and he's gonna be perfect.
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