Spies from the shadows is slowly becoming meta, mark my words.
First of all, I want to be completely honest: I think spies is the best info perk by a mile. It's image is mostly tainted by older bad map releases that used to lack crows in the first place, but that mas LONG ago. Now every map has crows one way or another, and with distortion essentially removing aura reading from the table, spies is top tier at giving you info that no other info perk can give you.
The thing that makes spies so good is the crows spawnpoints. The crows ALWAYS spawn on common hidding spots, making spies a stealth killer altogether. The only reason it isn't ran often is because of people believing RNG affects the perk, which used to, but not anymore.
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spies used to be one of my favs - but at some point (ages ago now… almost two years?) I started to notice that it wouldn't do its thing. For a while crows were bugged; they didn't fly away and less of them spawned. And even after that was supposedly fixed I got the impression it was more wonky and unreliable than it used to be.
Let's see, maybe I give it a try sometime again.
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It's one of the more used off-meta perks, and I am genuinely telling you will never not find a survivor ever again. It's probably the most versatile perk in the game, literally works in all situations, it just has a horrible reputation because of devs randomly ruining the perk over the course of the initial years.
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Since calm spirit is about to get buffed... that could boost it's usage which is kinda lethal for Spies.
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Surveillance and Discordance for the counterpick of the counterpick, and the cycle of life repeats…
Also I don't remember calm spirit getting buffed, did I miss some dev diary? If so, could you link it to me, please?
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Calm Spirit isn’t getting buffed, Iron Will is.
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Yeah, I agree, Spies is very underrated perk. It's my #1 info perk in last 2 months. It's not too consistent and not always here when you need it, but I love it anyway. Some matches you can have insane info due this perk, some matches it will be useless, but on average it's definately not bad.
I wish could have some slight buff, where it will be spawn more crows on the map to make it more consistent on some of them.2 -
Horrible reputation because the amount of aura perks.
Why people should use indirect infos like crows, scratchmark, blood….while aura just directly shows where survivors are without the need of tracking them?
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Spies may get a comeback because of languid touch.
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Lol. These stopid kilahs don't want to use Predator and Bloodhound over perks which do at least something. Another example of kilahs only want easy mode, I win all my game with Wispher only.
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I see it every now and then on Nurses primarily. They usually steam roll everyone lol
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You may sometimes see killers' comment around here about they're completly unable to find survivor without aura perk. Aura perks really dull the skill to predict survivors' habit and movement.
I was too addicted to NoWhereToHide and NurseCalling, but I had to leave those perks.
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I love Spies.
I just wish it had a quality of life adjustment. Please please make it have a unique/distinctive crow sound, because I can't stand to run it at the same time as anything else (perks, certain addons) that can also trigger/encourage loud noise notification events. 😖
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Aura perks exist exactly to be directional. Whole point of info is being directional. I know survivors somewhere on the map, in some situations I can guess where exactly, but people bring aura to not check half of the map just to start next chase.
Spies is also directional perk, which requires 0 input from killer (when all aura perks require from you at least some action). And there are no perks based on scratchmarks or blood, which actually helps you to find survivor, unless you are already on his tail. And Whispers be like "Someone exist on this side of the map. Maybe all of them. Maybe it's dude on hook. Go check lockers idk." I wonder why no one bring this good perk in their matches. Ah yeah, these kilahs once again want only no skill perks with directional info instead of "they are on the map".
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It's really good and under utilized by a lot of killers for sure. To say it's the 'best' info perk when Discordance exists though is wrong at least imo
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Make it apply 10 seconds of exposed for disturbing crows then you might see it as "Meta".
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Nah, Spies From The Shadows is better than Discordance.
Discordance only procs if 2 Survivors (or more) get on the same Generator, good Survivors do not stack Generators since you lose a lot of pressure and efficiency from doing so. And with perks like Prove Thyself getting nerfed over the years, this perk has progressively gotten worse and worse.
Spies From The Shadows is in a good spot at the moment since Ultimate Weapon got nerfed, Survivors do not bring Calm Spirit anymore, and Calm Spirit is likely to drop more in usage rate with the new Lara Croft perk(s). Spies From The Shadows provides solid information constantly and passively with little input requires from the Survivors' or Killer's end.
Dont get me wrong, I like both perks, I use them a lot… which leads me to speak from experience and generally say that I think Spies From The Shadows is just better at the moment.
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It is underrated. It was a part of my build for months last year after I tried using it as a joke. I stopped using it around when Ultimate Weapon released and every one was running Calm Spirit and so it became useless.
I don't think it will become meta though. On some maps like Lery's the perk can give insane amounts of value, however on more open maps you honestly don't even need it since you can just see the crows fly off yourself. Even when survivors weren't using Calm Spirit there were more games were I got next to no value from it compared to the games it gave me good value. Half the time survivors don't even startle the crow unless they are actually running, and often then you can just follow scratch marks.
I should try it again though now that Calm Spirit is no longer everywhere.
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I rarely see killers with that perk. And I never run that perks as a killer. But it's cool that some more killers uses this perk.
I don't care if it becomes a meta. It just makes survivors better at stealth xD
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Miss remembered, you're right
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Discordance gives you information even when it is not active. You can more easily find survivors on generators to ambush them when they're split up.
If 3 survivor are split up and you are chasing another survivor, you have 3/7 chance to find someone on generators. The number decreases as number of gens decreases. When discordance is active, it can act as pseudo gen defence blocking perk because you can push 2 survivors off generators leading one survivor to not work on gens+chase pressure you get from it.
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Or I can just use Spies From The Shadows to tell if someone is near a Generator since a lot of crow placements are near Generators.
Or if I want a Generator focused information perk, I can use Gearhead since Gearhead eats through Distortion tokens and provides very accurate and consistent information on Generators.
Discordance is niche, it is fine being a niche perk since it does have application, I just think you are overstating what value can be obtained from it since there are just far better perks to use.
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Well!… You’ll never take my Bloodhound away from me.
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Random Fun Fact: The Spirit can see Spies alerts while phase walking.
I definitely have an appreciation for Spies and have always considered it underrated.
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It's low key a very good perk, used to run it on Artist as part of a lore build and was shocked how often it went off.
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People who say that Sprit will be dead next patch, the answer to your problems is here!
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Spies has been part of my go-to builds, that it has basically become a crutch perk for me, during the Chaos Shuffle I often had a hard time adjusting and finding survivors, because I was SO used to playing with Crows and having my little birbs ratting out survivors all the time, that I really had a hard awakening ^_-
Its a real comfort pick for myself and I never understood why people downtalk Spies so much. All that talk about "its imprecise and you never know when it goes off and yadda yadda" all sounds like keyboard theory crafting instead of real experience with the perk. I never equipped Spies and felt that it didn't give me good value that match, quite the contrary, I so often found survivors or started looking for them, when I absolutely had no business suspecting them being around, and some 100% must have believed that I cheated. Spies is just that good.
But on the other hand, the counter to Spies is a really, really bad perk and basically no one runs Calm Spirit for the off-chance that the killer might have Spies or knows how to read crow movement properly, so its in a really good spot.
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I cautiously doubt whether the perk will really be meta. Apart from that, I completely agree with you
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Its an ok perk but it used to have a problem ~2 years ago where sometimes there were just no crows on maps, like ACTUAL 0 crows, I spent an entire match on midwich, the game, several corn maps, and had 0 procs of the perk. The problem is it relies on the devs doing a tedius amount of extra work to make sure 1 niche perk works fine with crow placements and layouts and its just too small of a detail to expect from them to rely on as a staple in builds. And if it were meta I would expect every few months complains that something broke or x map forgot crows ect
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I have tried it few times, I definitely got some value, but most of the times it was kinda useless informations. Simply put I already knew about that survivor anyway.
If it weren't for Distortion, it would be heavily outclassed by aura reading perks.
My currently favorite pick for information is Surveillance.
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Spies From The Shadows has always been good. It's an extremely reliable perk, which is really only countered by Calm Spirit, yet even then a Survivor is never really to know if this perk is equipt.
It was strange that the crows have only been revisited now since this perk appeared at the beginning. There's a lot of potential with this mechanic, and I'd like to think this will be the start of using this more.
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