I think the best way to buff M1 killers is to....
Just nerf WoO ?!?!?!?
There, I've said it.
I know, I know, everyone will come here and point out that it's just a perk for new survs trying to learn the maps.
But no, you know it's not only that, I know it's not only that, you know everyone is spamming it, no matter if they have 20 hours of game time, or 5k hours.
WoO is the most annoying thing a survivor can have when you're playing an M1 killer, even with Brutal Strength, the amount of time a survivor can waste due to this one single perk is incredible.
They know if a pallet has been wasted or not, so they will just avoid that area and go somewhere else, or just keep running straight to the other side of the map where all the gens are done and try to waste as much time there.
It basically nullifies most of the work a killer is doing in breaking the pallets
Now i know the other argument as well, "it's not the perk, it's the amount of pallets on the map". But now I wonder, what's easier to do? Change all the maps, cause when you remove a pallet you usually have to remove an entire loop, or just add a cooldown to WoO???
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Windows is more than just new surv friendly that's true. However without voice comms solos cannot know what resources have been used up, not just where the vaults are in the tiles.
Imo what the less mobile killers need is some kind of help in chase, be it though their power or in their kit. Something like Trapper being 117% movement without traps on them, or my beloved Piggy moving at that speed while survs have inactive traps on them.
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Sure, as long as it's not nerfed by adding back the awful downside. Maybe nerf it to 20-24m instead of 32, so it gives less info and it's harder to spot strong setups from afar.
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"[E]veryone is spamming it, no matter if they have 20 hours of game time, or 5k hours."
Finally, someone said it!
WOO is the new Dead Hard - the meta obsession that everyone bandwagons onto. What people don't realize is that it's a crutch perk. That is, people who have used it for so long are effectively cursed to have a 3-perk build because the fourth always has to be WOO. If they were to remove WOO from their load-out, they would fall apart, almost as if addicted. They literally cannot play without it.
Run Hex: The Third Seal and blind everybody. They'll drop everything and move heaven and earth to find that totem. They're definitionally addicted.
Players are asking for the Dead Hard and Boon: Circle of Healing treatment - WOO's blatant overuse is begging for it to be changed.
FYI, I'm a solo-queue survivor main.
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I promise you, almost anything a survivor can do with Windows, they can do without it. The only thing it'll do is safeguard them from running blindly into a deadzone because their teammates used the resources nearby.
Take note of the phrasing, by the way. It doesn't prevent them from running into deadzones, it just makes sure they know it's happening when they're forced into one. They won't run into one accidentally with Windows.
Nerfing Windows really, truly, honestly won't do much. That's not to say it won't necessarily warrant a change on the grounds of perk variety, but in terms of strength, it barely does anything. It's just nice to have, and helps a lot in solo queue. From the killer perspective, I'd rather everyone be running Windows instead of a perk that'll actually harm me.
Also, "M1 Killers" is not a group of killers that are all suffering in a unified and shared way. That is a group that contains both Trapper and Freddy, some of the weakest killers, and Pinhead and (arguably) Plague, two of the strongest, with other M1 killers being anywhere in between. It's a pet peeve of mine when people act like "M1 Killers" is synonymous with "Weak Killers" and that they're all also supposedly weak for the same reasons, that's not true.
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The difference being that Dead Hard was the single most broken perk in the game's history, and CoH was very easy to make extremely overpowered with basic synergies, whereas Windows just tells you when teammates have used resources.
Their only point of similarity is pickrate, they're not even close to the same strength.
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Stop using M1 killers as an excuse for nerfing perks you don't like. People act like they don't even have powers, and have no other option but to walk in circles. WoO doesn't show the aura of Trapper's Bear Traps, so WoO won't stop a survivor from running into one.
If a killer is weak then buff the killer. Why suggest changes that hit new survivors and solo queue the hardest? If you care about game balance, then those are the last two groups you would want to nerf.
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The fact that they won't run into a deadzone is a massive thing by itself. Even with comms, it's pretty hard to pinpoint the exact location where you broke a pallet, and when there's even more pallets wasted, it's harder to keep track. WoO simplifies that 100 times
I've seen people shitting on this perk every single time i complain about it yet almost everyone is using it, why are you trying to water it down so much? It definitely makes a big difference, otherwise it wont be this popular
Every killer without any anti-loop has to play pallet break simulator half the game, because survivors with WoO will go to a loop, run around it a couple times, and end up dropping the pallet, wait for you to break it, then run to the next one and repeat, it promotes such boring gameplay.
I'd rather get hit 100 times by Head on, or be blinded by Flashbangs, or be bamboozled by Lucky Star, at least there i'm getting outplayed with things I don't expect. But whenever I see a survivor doing the typical WoO movement, I just sigh, then I try to switch targets and see the same pattern, knowing this other survivor also has WoO
It's just an entirely pathetic perk
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Okay, let' s just say Killers without anti-loop then. Which are basically the worst atm.
It baffles me how people don't notice that WoO does basically nothing against the stronger killers, yet can completely dismember weaker killers that don't have solutions against loops
How is this a healthy perk? A perk that is incredibly powerful against weak killers yet does nothing against strong ones?
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They do run into deadzones. They just don't do it accidentally.
Consider this scenario: A survivor is being chased, and they can run either left or right. To the left, a deadzone. To the right, a loop with a pallet still up or a decent window. The survivor cannot see these resources (or lack thereof) but must make a choice.
WoO just stops them from running left. Next time you're in that area, and there's a deadzone on BOTH sides, WoO won't help them at all and they will run into a deadzone.
For the record, I don't run Windows, because I'm okay risking an accidental deadzone so I can run perks that'll actually do something for me. This isn't hypocrisy, my position is completely consistent. To speak to everyone else running it, though, Windows is a perfect example of why you shouldn't conflate pickrate with strength. Windows barely does anything… but it's nice. You can get 90% of Windows' value by just keeping an eye out between chases, but it's nice and it's convenient to not have to do that. Nothing changes for your efficiency or effectiveness, you just get a little bit of mental stack eased. It's a nice, convenient, middle-of-the-pack perk that people enjoy running even though it doesn't do much.
The boring gameplay you're describing is just… looping. What else are you expecting survivors to do? They're not going to not do that if they're running different perks or if Windows gets nerfed. They're still going to be running to the resources on the map, they're still going to be running around those resources, and they're still going to be dropping the pallet and moving on at the end of it. That's how survivor gameplay works.
If there's some alternative I'm missing that you're suggesting here, by all means let me know, I like to try and understand people's positions as best I can.
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"Next time you're in that area, and there's a deadzone on BOTH sides, WoO won't help them at all and they
willrun into a deadzone."No they won't, cause they'll just activate their exhaust perk or take a hit and jet off into a different area that has pallets, survivors aren't that dumb as you wanna make them seem to be
"The boring gameplay you're describing is just… looping. What else are you expecting survivors to do?"
I'm expected to be rewarded for the time spent breaking pallets, and that reward usually comes in survivors going to the areas not knowing that the pallets are gone, that happens a lot with survivors that are not running WoO, even the good ones. WoO just promotes mindless gameplay, such mindless and annoying gameplay with the only counter being to play anti-loop killers which are arguably the strongest.
The blindness perks all mostly suck, the xeno perk got nerfed into oblivion, and 30 seconds of blindness isn't enough, as you need to find that survivor first, even when you find him, he already has an idea about where the pallet is, cause he had the WoO before you blinded him and untill you break that first pallet, the 30 seconds of blindness are gone
Third seal is a hex that can get easily cleansed, Septic Touch is laughable, and Mindbreaker has the same problem, the survivor alredy has an idea about what to do next if you come, cause he had WoO before the blindness effect, and it will expire until you break that first pallet
There's basically no good counter to it, except for some killer addons
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If we're accepting that there are still pallets up and that survivors have the ability to get to them, WoO literally does not do anything.
You have to choose the scenario. Is there a deadzone for them to run to, or isn't there? Without WoO, if they see there's a deadzone because they ran into it, why wouldn't they do what you're describing and activate an Exhaustion perk, or take a hit and jet off? Survivors aren't dumb but they don't have unlimited freedom, either. They are not going to be able to just freely position themselves wherever they want if they're already in a deadzone, and if they are, the deadzone already doesn't matter whether they're running WoO or not.
You go on to describe that Blindness isn't good enough because survivors saw the pallets before the chase started. In that case, what exactly is stopping them from keeping track of those pallets without Windows? Competent and skilled survivors have a plan for where to run when the killer approaches them regardless of what perks they're running.
The gameplay may be mindless. I think that's a little bit dismissive, but I'd understand where that descriptor could apply. What it isn't is different. Survivors don't need Windows to make use of the resources they actually have available, and Windows doesn't save them if there are no resources. All it does is prevent the occasional mistake.
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You clearly never played when old dead hard was a thing if you think windows is close to that level.
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Yeah I play soloQ survivor without this perk and I do just fine. Anyone with this perk locked into their builds 99% of the time has quite the skill issue when it comes to map awareness. the whole thing about not being able to know if your teammates dropped a pallet thing is true but has minimal effect on gameplay for any competent survivor. Windows is only a good pick for bad survivors. That said its not op or anything I just think its bad game design that teaches the player they can autopilot pathing and do fine.
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I did, but the DH meta also had it's ups, a lot of survivors would get very cheeky knowing they have DH, and put themselves in bad situations when you would bait it, it was a fun little mindgame to have.
It wasn't fun when it basically gave them a free pallet or window, but the rest of the time, I enjoyed the baiting aspect of it, there was a lil bit of counterplay, there's no lil bit of counterplay for WoO
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You either play killer once in a while, or you never encounter decent survivors. You'd be lucky if you could use Dissolution 1 time per game against decent survivors, but most of the time you won't even get that
"WoO is quite literally useless if you use braincells as a killer"
Yeah, so most survivors are so silly that they use a useless perk, even the ones with 5k hours game time, they must be ohhhhhh so silly, using this useless perk that lets you use your exhaust perks optimally, and not waste them running into a deadzone.
Oh so useless making the killer break pallets to no avail
It's so so useless, "OMG RUN TO YELLO HEHE".
Post edited by BoxGhost on0 -
I was with you until you claimed to enjoy hugging a survivors ass for a minute on the off chance they were about to push E. That was the most tedious thing in the world.
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The way DH was back then, was making a lot of survivors overconfident, prone to mistakes, like "oh i'll just risk doing this cause I have DH"
The way WoO is, it basically prevents mistakes, it allows some of the more experienced survivors to loop near perfection
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Oh, but I did. And it was awful.
Dead Hard was disgustingly overused so it - at long last - got demolished.
So people said, oh well, lets find the next big thing: Circle of Healing. Overused. Nerfed.
Tough luck, lets move on to Made For This… overused, and nerfed.
It's like we're in an eternal cycle where the community doesn't learn from its past mistakes and jumps around to the newest "it thing" before they cause it to be destroyed by doing so.
Like I said at the top, if you don't believe me, inflict Blindness and watch the whole survivor team scurry to fix it.
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If they weren't the same strength, they wouldn't have a similar pick rate. Players exchanged the loss of one meta perk for the spamming of another.
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I mean, setting aside that pickrate and strength aren't inherently tied to one another, it is worth pointing out that they don't actually have similar pickrates.
Official stats from February showed Windows of Opportunity with a 32% pickrate. NightLight, while not entirely reliable, currently shows it with a 36% pickrate.
The June 2022 Developer Update, the one that preceded patch 6.1.0, showcased Dead Hard with a pickrate of 70%. Granted, that percentage was for high MMR games specifically, but still, that's a huge discrepancy.
Windows just flat out does not have a similar pickrate to old Dead Hard, and it definitely doesn't have anything close to a similar strength.
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WoO is not nearly anywhere close to old DH, MFT, or any of these meta perks. It's objectively an OK balanced perk with no real issues whatsoever.
However…
It does breed very bad Survivor habits. People who run it truly do fall apart when it fails. We saw this effect most prominently in Chaos Shuffle and Lights Out to some degree. I have seen WoO-pilled Survivors DC because I used braincells to counter it. I have seen WoO-pilled Survivors DC because I used PERKS to counter it. It is 100% overused, and 100% probably needs looking at for the sole reason that it can boost bad Survs to a place they cannot handle AND it gives good Survs a bit too much info.
Give it a time limit. That's all it needs. Reveal auras of all available pallets and vaults for 10 seconds, then it goes on cooldown for 30 seconds. Or, Reveal Auras of all available pallets and vaults ONLY within about 16-20 meters of that Survivor. It shouldn't be so brainless braindead easy to use, but it also needs to be there to help teach newer Survivors how to loop. Why not have it work ONLY on vaults and have another perk do it for pallets?
Or why not make it a perk that shows everyone else the auras of vaults and pallets when you're near them instead of just you for a bit, then give it a time limit - 10 second reveal, 30 second cooldown? or make it a perk that recharges but you need to be in chase. There has to be something more interesting that we can do with WoO, Killers don't get permanent free easy aura reveal on everything so why should Survivors? it's clear "but it costs a perkslot" isn't enough of a drawback if the perk is this overused, and in fact I believe WoO overuse is part of why maps keep becoming smaller and losing more and more vaults and pallets. Because WoO is too strong in pallet and vault dense maps.
No perk should ever be a perk that you absolutely MUST RUN to do well as Survivor or Killer, and in light of how it gives more info for old hands than new Survs as intended? I think it needs looking at. Just something very light. Because it really does promote repetitive, boring, braindead gameplay that feels bad to play against. You just aren't intended to ALWAYS know where EVERY SINGLE vault and pallet are all the time forever, that defeats the point of resource management and defeats the thrill of trying to run a Killer. You're not supposed to know when and where the baby Meg threw a pallet, if God pallet is gone already, etc. Plus we have a few other perks that show pallet and vault auras, and changing WoO in this way would allow for a lot more team aura of vault and pallet related perks, opening up more playstyles around these tiles like say… Any Means or Chem Trap do.
We have visual cues besides WoO to tell us where pallets and vaults are just as Killers have crows and scratch marks to tell us where Survivors are. Do we really need WoO to be THIS useful? Do we really, truly need a perk intended for new Survivors to learn loops to be so useful that SWFs can slap it on a chase build and instantly tell everyone in comms where stuff is?
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