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Possible Distortion Nerf
Since we know it's in the upcoming PTB, I've been thinking about what changes Distortion could get that would make it still useful and strong while making it a little less of a sledgehammer levied at all aura reading builds. I think I've come up with something reasonable.
There are two changes I have in mind. The first is just kind of an obvious one because it's weird the perk currently works the way it does here, but the other is the new one I came to more recently. They are as follows:
- The perk no longer hides scratch marks.
- The perk's duration is shortened from 10 seconds to 6 seconds.
The first one, as mentioned, is self explanatory, but I want to back up the second a little.
A lot of potential nerfs for Distortion that get floated around target its tokens and their regeneration, but I think that part of the perk is okay- I think a better thing to tackle would be something related to the effect itself, and something that makes Distortion kind of annoying to face is that even pairs of aura reading aren't enough to overcome it sometimes. BBQ and Lethal, for instance, is a combined seven seconds of aura reading, and that's two perks being countered at once by a single token on a single perk. Other pairs actually counter Distortion already - Gearhead and Lethal, for example, consumes two tokens per activation - but having that be more accessible seems like a fair change to me.
Changing the duration down to six seconds does two things. It keeps the perk useful because it counters single, shorter-duration aura reading as usual + the survivor still gets notified when a token is consumed, meaning they have six seconds to get in a locker or hide behind a gen if they really don't want to be revealed, and separately, it allows killers to feel less robbed on more dedicated aura builds by a single perk since they're more likely to be punching through tokens and consuming them quicker.
What do we think?
Comments
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No, 10 seconds is fine, lethal pursuer last 8 seconds and distortion is the only counter, plus it adds 2 seconds to every aura perk and addon.
If they’re gonna short distortion duration, then they need to do it with all other aura perks
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But you'd still be able to counter Lethal with Distortion, you'd just need to use the six seconds of block you have to hide. I don't think it's super unfair to suggest that if you want stealth, you should be actively playing in a stealthy way, instead of just equipping perks and having it happen for you.
Player agency still exists, here. A player running Distortion still gets the information that Lethal is in play, and still has the ability to do something about it. They aren't being rendered completely helpless, even if they get caught with the final few seconds of Lethal because there wasn't a locker in range or whatever. The killer's probably going for the person they could see immediately.
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Distortion isn't even in the top ten most used Survivor perks. Aura reading is already ridiculously strong on a lot of killers, we don't need its only major counter being nerfed.
Nerf aura reading on killers so it's not used as such a major crutch by so many people and then we can talk about nerfing Distortion.
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That decision's been made, though. Distortion is being changed and I highly doubt it's a buff.
Since it's being nerfed, I'd prefer it to be a sensible one that reigns the perk in without removing its ability to counter aura perks.
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Distortion does not need a nerf. You already only have 3 tokens.
I could imagine they add the 2v8 effect that it shows when your aura is being revealed.
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It's on the roadmap, my post is a response to it already being decided that Distortion's getting changed.
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I already said what they need to do, the need to make the perk only recharge tokens in a chase, so people have to be chased to recharge tokens instead of hiding all game
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Both are reasonable nerfs, but I would only go with one of them. Just making it‘s duration 6s would already be enough, because then you can just use lethal and it takes two stacks everytime.
I think adding 5-10s to the recharge speed would probably also be enough.
Post edited by Langweilg on0 -
The purpose of the perk is to not get found and chased.
Not everybody wants to be chased - and that is completely fine. Stealth is ok.
Changing a perk doesn´t always mean nerfs. In my opinion the game has way to much aura reading nowadays.
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Distortion should just block all aura reading for the first 80/100/120 seconds of the trial, then deactivate. That would greatly help the survivor avoid the first few chases, which should be good enough. One of the most problematic parts about the perk is that it announces to the survivor which aura perks the killer has, which means the survivor can just manually avoid most of the aura reading if they wanted to. And if the survivor is in a SWF, they can just announce the killer's aura perks and addons to the rest of the team.
Distortion should be nerfed with the same amount of energy that went into nerfing Ultimate Weapon, which was the only decent killer perk that countered Distortion. Asking for a light nerf for Distortion is super unfair, considering how many complaints Ultimate Weapon got over and over, until it was nerfed over and over, until it became an absolutely useless perk that I haven't seen since its latest nerf.
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Eh, I don't think there's anything wrong with the token system it already has.
What you describe as the most problematic part is also the only unique part. I think that, if nothing else, should be kept- even if that becomes the ONLY thing it does, that should be kept, because otherwise it's not meaningfully distinct from other aura-block perks outside of being passive. It's important to keep unique parts of perks when thinking about changing them.
Not sure what the point of bringing up UW is. They're not actually linked, there's no reason they need the same approach.
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The unique part is problematic, and it's not important to keep unique parts. We learned this with Ultimate Weapon, which was unique because it was the only decent tracking perk that bypassed Distortion. But BHVR nerfed it into the ground anyway. And these are linked, because one of the major selling points of Ultimate Weapon is that it bypassed Distortion.
Distortion deserves a massive nerf. It encourages unhealthy behaviors in solo q games. The biggest gap between solo q and SWF is the fact that solo q is less likely to work together, and perks like Distortion help enable an anti-teamwork playstyle.
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I'm not really interested in arguing about Ultimate Weapon right now.
As for the second part, you're really bouncing around a bunch of different arguments without committing to any of them here, but I don't think this one is as much of a problem as some people make it out to be either. Any stealth perk is going to enable survivors being rats and leaving their teammates to die, that doesn't mean they all warrant massive nerfs just inherently.
What we should be aiming to do is to keep Distortion's main function but make it less automatic. Sure, have it block aura reading and tell you it's activating, but also require survivors to actually have to take action if the killer's got a lot of aura reading punching through their tokens. That's a perfectly appropriate change, in my opinion, it allows Distortion to still be useful without being quite as autopilot as it currently is.
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You actually get more than 3 tokens they added regen for it years ago
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We really shouldn't be aiming to keep Distortion's main function, because the main function is unhealthy for the game. The perk shouldn't allow for survivors to easily avoid most of the killer tracking perks for the entire game. Yes, that is a big deal. If Distortion announces to the survivor that the killer has a meta aura reading perk, then the survivor knows how to easily avoid the perk for the entire game, even if they run out of Distortion tokens.
None of your suggestions fixes this problem. It doesn't matter if Distortion tokens get burnt through faster, if Distortion already told the survivor which specific aura reading perks and addons they need to dodge.
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I mean, how, though?
Sure, if it's something like BBQ or another hook-based perk, they can let go of the gen they're doing and get in a locker to fool it, that's something. If it's Nowhere To Hide, again, there's something you can do, though it's usually pretty inefficient overall to actually try.
What exactly are they gonna do if it's like, Gearhead, though? Never hit good skill checks? What if it's A Nurse's Calling run by a stealth killer, are they never gonna heal? If they know the killer has I'm All Ears, are they never gonna vault in chase? Bitter Murmur, never finish a generator? Floods of Rage, never unhook someone?
Most info perks aren't actually easily avoided. Knowing the killer has them adds a layer to decisionmaking, but it doesn't allow you to actually avoid them activating. This goes quadruple for aura addons, by the way.
Distortion would block those perks + addons when they do activate, though, and that could be considered a problem considering how little effort it takes to do so. That's why I suggest making it weaker at doing that part.
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If I'm playing a game where all my aura reading perks are being hard countered by Distortion, then it isn't helpful to list specific scenarios that are much better against Distortion, because that's not what I'm playing.
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I'm not sure I'm following, could you elaborate?
Do you mean that you only ever run BBQ and NTH as your aura perks?
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No. It literally means that if I'm in a game where all my aura reading perks are being hard countered by Distortion, then it isn't helpful to list specific scenarios that are much better against Distortion.
For example, if at 9:03AM on 9/2/2024, I played a Trickster game with BBQ and NTH as my only aura perks, then all my aura perks are being hard countered by Distortion in that specific game. And listing specific scenarios that are much better against Distortion, doesn't help my Trickster game at 9:03AM on 9/2/2024, that was using BBQ and NTH as the only aura perks.
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Gotcha.
So, three things to say to that.
One, the goal with weakening Distortion should obviously be to make sure it isn't a hard counter to aura reading as a class. Downgrading it from being very impactful against almost every aura perk in the game to being very impactful against just two of those perks is a huge improvement, obviously, that's why I listed the others. I'm obviously not concerned with only protecting BBQ and NTH, for some reason, I'm concerned with aura reading overall.
Two, your decision to run those two perks specifically should already factor in that survivors can, if they choose to and if they realise you're running those perks, counter them. They're the two aura perks that actually have a counter, Distortion just takes the guesswork out- if Distortion were removed from the game, those would still be the two aura perks that can meaningfully and reliably be countered. If you want uncounterable aura reading (at least insofar as being able to avoid the activation), bring different perks.
Three, and this is a more minor point, my suggested change would still allow you to make sure your proc of either perk eats two tokens if a survivor isn't able to avoid it in time, as long as it's paired with Lethal Pursuer, so. It's not as though my change doesn't help those two perks too, albeit slightly indirectly.
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No. The goal is to nerf the anti-teamwork players that are a burden to their teammates, AND to stop the scenarios where killers are having all their aura reading hard countered for the entire game by one perk.
And if we had to pick only one goal, it should be to nerf the anti-teamwork players that are a burden to their teammates. BHVR shouldn't be enabling anti-teamwork players with perks like Distortion, because it's unhealthy for the rest of the solo-q survivors.
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So like, is that your position?
You've been swapping really wildly between that position and the argument we'd been having in the previous message about its effectiveness in countering killer perks. I'd just like to know which one you're going to commit to.
For the record, I think this argument is kind of overblown. I really don't think Distortion is the culprit for dumb solo queue teammates, I think they'd play like that either way. I didn't craft my suggestion around weakening anti-teamwork players because I truly don't believe Distortion has that big of an effect on their approach to the game.
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Distortion simply needs to have it's recharges restock only when in chase. That way, it's enough to save you 3 times, but otherwise, you're going to need to do your job and get some chases in if you want to re-use it in any form.
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I saw an interesting Distortion rework idea recently.
The change was, that now instead of shielding the player from having their aura read, it would convert every aura read into a scream. To compensate, it would work without the need to gain tokens.
So, to sum it up: You scream instead of having your aura read.
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Well both are workable (the shorten time one seems silly to us but that personal bias) but if anything we feel the tokens just need to be abit harder/more risky to get. We're part of the "in chase to recharge tokens" group as that seems like a good way for survivors to get more tokens (granted we haven't thought very hard on it) as currently competent stealth survivors can shadow the killer and be immune to aura reading with little risk forever (yes map dependent, yes impractical to actually do so). There's also multi floor maps where tokens recharge with even less risk. Short version: earn back tokens a harder way.
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The problem I have with distortion isn't the unhealthy play style it creates for soloQ, I couldn't care less about that. I'm not loading into a match as say Pig and thinking after my Lethal and BBQ get hard-countered "Oh dear, these 2 players who pretty much are going to be able to indefinitely counter half my build the entire match are totally going to throw the game for there teammates so they can be stealthy and therefore I might win because of there selfishness so its not all bad". I'm wondering how a single perk can make 2 of my perks completely useless throughout the entire trial wiith no activation requirement or cool down.
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I don't think any of the perk's properties are the problem. The REAL problem is that it incentivises the killer to "tunnel" or better: focus on only 2 people. I have been playing with 2 friends who both use Distortion. In many of our games we end up me and the random being on death hook while my friends weren't hooked once. I also noticed that as killer myself if I play with aura perks. If I can't see you I will go for people I CAN see.
In addition tokens will refill when being stealthy. This means that they will get more stealth when being stealthy, which is imo an unhealthy design.
Therefore I proposed the following nerf some time ago:
Distortion starts at 1 Token. For each 20s in chase, you get a Token up to 3.
The rest stays as it is.
This way players have to engage a bit with the Killer to gain stealth in return. All other stealth perks require you to do something actively like getting hooked or being injured. 20s should be doable even for players who play more stealthy. But I will tell you something: you are hiding because you are bad at looping. How about you get a bit out of your comfort zone so you don't need to hide as much anymore?
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That's worse, because the killer still gets your location. Unless you combine it with Calm Spirit.
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i like your idea but the problem with the perk itself is that it hard counters from the get go. I think it needs to require an activation to actually be able to start getting some value, sort of like coup.
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That is why I gave it one token at the start. One aura block is free. Lethal Pursuer or whatever comes first. This way the killer has the chance to notice that the perk exists. And it keeps the stealth aspect many users like. Many users tell me that they don't like Lethal because they don't know it'a active at the start. Or that NTH is difficult to evade (where do 32m around a gen end?). The information the perk provides is also insane.
But after one use, they need to engage with the killer to gain more stealth. You can chase and hook them and use your aura perks on other survivors after.
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I mean you don't need direct knowledge that the killer used Lethal do you? you can assume they have it by the fact that the killer is coming towards you or a teammate at the start plus it shouldn't completely negate Lethal. I'm glad you brought up NTH, its a perk that gives potentially really valuable info aslong as I approach a gen being worked on, kick it and hopefully the survivor is within range. The difference between your aura being revealed and it not is HUGE.
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Even without Lethal the killer might find you quickly. I don't remember how many times I found survivors by looking at Crows.
I just don't want to get perks completely destroyed (which happened so many times). There needs to be a perk that works against auras as more and more aura perks exist. The difficult part is to balance Distortion so that it does not completely destroys a single aura perk but still works to a degree when multiple perks are used. Gen regression and 2nd chance perks have the same problem.
As an Object player I know exactly what having your aura constantly revealed is like. There is a reason I don't use the perk without OTR. You NEED a breather at one point.
I completely understand your position, but the problem is not NTH or Lethal by themselves. It's BBQ+Lethal+NTH+Gearhead or similar which make it hard. Maybe reducing the tokens to 1 at a time would do.
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OTR works against auras, but it has a specific timeframe it can be active, and it doesn’t announce to the survivor which aura perks the killer has. Which is why it is balanced.
OTR is the perfect example of an aura blocking perk that is balanced. Object is another good example of a balanced anti-aura perk, because it’s alerting the survivor when their aura is read, but it’s not actually blocking the aura reading.
Meanwhile, I ran an experiment with Distortion earlier this year, and found that in the vast majority of my survivor games, I made it through the entire game without having my aura read. It’s just really rare for my survivor to be in games where the killer is stacking enough aura reading to force an aura reveal. And by the way, perks like floods of rage (which I can’t reliably dodge) have a super low pick rate, and I can’t even remember the last time I played against it. I see Lethal, BBQ, and NTH way more often than anything else.
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I just want them to make it so the tokens are given in chase or with doing x amount of gen or healing someone or something else than…staying in a bush in terror radius. I just want people to not be able to hide without earning the tokens.
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This is exactly what I mean. Either the perk needs 1 token at max or earning them has to be more active like getting chased.
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Excellent post. Im glad its become a discussion still and not bickering, yet. :)
My thoughts have been a take to my friends, but I tie Distortion's power to Lightborne. Lightborne kills entire builds passively. Distortion kills entire builds passively, with a token caveat.
Every time something is nerfed/buffed on one side, cries follow to compensate the other side. For me, if Distortion goes, Lightbrone should follow suit.
They both fill the same role for both sides, except Lightborne is constant, 100% of the match. Distortion needs to keep tokens going to run it.
If we change Disortion, I'd like to simply remove the 'hide scratch marks' clause. Its not needed. As long as the aura hide duration doesn't drop below Lethal, I'm content.
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100% agree with this one. Hopefully lightborn follows after distortion.
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No, not exactly. Hopefully they both remain basically the same. I was just comparing the power level of both. They are the only perks that totally shut down a playstyle with minimal effort.
Would love to see Distortion just lose the scratch mark thing. Its silly.
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Yeah, 3 infinite tokens. It may as well be permanent aura block vs standard TR killers without stealth. And no, gearhead will not get rid of the tokens on it's own.
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The only killer that consistently chews through my Distortion tokens is Huntress. Like every time lol. While they aren't 'infinite', they aren't depleting against soft aura reading.
If a killer build is hardcore aura reading, then Distortion is not going to help the survivor. This has been shown and I've experienced it plenty. But those same killers probably fall a few tiers if you get them to play without auras. But I digress.
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I just wish lightborn wasn‘t 100% immunity and more like distortion. It‘s quite annoying whenever I bring a flashlight or make a blind build, the killer brings lightborn and it becomes useless. It should make, that it takes 100% longer to blind the killer and make shadowborn part of this perk.
There are more perks that shut down something completly. Calm spirit and the new perk (which I forgot the name) remove scream perks for free.
After seeing how they handled Adre, UW and STBFL, I don‘t think the nerf for distortion will be reasonable. They probably want to get it out of the way.
I agree that the scratch mark part is weird and unnecessary. I personally hope they add 10-15s to the recharge speed or make the aura hidding shorter, so when you equip lethal, it consumes two stacks.
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True, Calm Spirit does cancel screaming. I'd argue Aura's are more prevalent, but you made a good point. 'Hardened' is the other, but requires some work to cancel the screams. I've been running it to see if its good, and it is if you have screaming in play. But some non-desirable conflicts exist: I solo'Q mainly. Other survivors see me open a chest and do a hex totem and suddenly they're angry at me for not doing gens.
Because of this very issue, Calm spirit is better. Otherwise, seeing the killer aura every time I should scream works wonders!
If Distortion gets hit too hard, aura builds will replace gen regression a bit. But then survivors won't have many options left. I refuse to do nothing but gens. Its boring, made boring, and is boring.
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Exactly. I really like Alien instinct, but distortion makes it terribly unreliable. I don't think that's good for the game.
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Do you feel survivors shouldn't have aura denial? Or just Distortion is too much? I struggle to find a balance that seems… balanced.
If Distortion gets gutted, there will not be a reliable aura denial perk. There are some that do it in one way or another, but Distortion is straight forward. Just wish all that extra stuff wasn't tacked on. Hoping thats the part that goes bye bye.
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My reasoning for the aura block timer going down is that it doesn't have to be longer than Lethal's effect to counter Lethal's effect.
When we're talking about Lethal Pursuer specifically, there's definitely no problem. Lethal just chews through two tokens at the start and your aura is still hidden. In general, though, in any scenario when you're on your last token, all that changes is that you've got a six second warning before your aura is revealed, and you can usually use that time to hop in a locker. Bare minimum, you can use it to make a lot of distance.
Worst case scenario is just that staying hidden requires active gameplay, which isn't exactly a bad thing.
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Your reasoning is sound and I understand its implications. However, I do not wish to run into situations where lethal pushes other aura reading perks past Distortion's block time. This would make distortion 100% pointless, as the point is to block information from aura reading.
Not saying your suggestion is bad. Its not at all actually. I just am quite wary on touching that aspect.
Edit: Examples of this happening are BBQ & Chili, Alien Instinct, Darkness Revealed, Gearhead, etc. Actually makes a LOT of aura perks exceed your proposed limit.
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How about making the perk scale in strength, based on hook stages? Something like:
Zero Hooks = No aura blocking.
One Hook = Gain three tokens that cannot be recharged.
Two Hooks = Permanent aura blocking with scratch mark suppresion for a limited time.
So it's weaker before getting hooked, and stronger when you are closer to being sacrificed. It no longer forces pressure onto other survivors early on, and it's powerful when it's needed most.
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First, let's be honest here. Looking at most nerfs, Distortion is likely getting sent to the Shadow Realm in order to make people shut up about it.
For the sake of optimism let's say it doesn't get absolutely gutted and we're aiming for a healthy change without removing yet another perk that isn't a gen-speed perk from the game from common viable loadouts. I would honestly think Distortion should be tied to gen progress.
The most common complaint I see about Distortion is that it makes people not do gens and play like rats (which is nonsense, almost everyone using it is simply trying to avoid being sniped/chased 5 seconds into the game or being able to actually hide near gens and survive against a half-decent Nurse) so why not make it so that token recharge is tied to gen repair instead of Killer proximity?
Something like needing to repair 15-20% of a gen to recover a token.
So Killers that are slugging for the 4k but just can't seem to find that last Survivor will eventually get their juicy and wanted 4k due to Survivors needing to stop hiding if they want to keep avoiding aura-reading and inevitably getting spotted eventually. Or when two Survivors remain at 2+ gens remaining because someone went next on 1st hook (which basically means an impossible situation) they will need to eventually do gens (and get spotted eventually) to stay hidden.
It will make hiding for long periods of time harder and will force Survivors to contribute if they want to hide.
Honestly I'm likely just being too optimistic with this. It's likely that the goal is simply to make Distortion complaints go away just like Ultimate Weapon complaints (lo and behold, people no longer complain about UW) and it will likely be something like "tokens don't recharge" or it's aura-reading block being so short that most aura perks will chew through 2 tokens or the recharge timer being so long that barring a Wesker using Distressing on Dead Dawg it's going to be hard to recharge tokens before getting found and chased.
Edit after Dev update: Jeezums it's even worse than I thought, welp, back to gen perks/Sprint Burst it is.
Post edited by Skillfulstone on0 -
That would be worse, because excessively hiding survivors could recharge tokens even if they are in the other side of the map from the killer.
That is why the best nerf would be for the perk to just block all aura reading for the first 80/100/120 seconds of the trial, then deactivate for the rest of the trial. Survivors would be have a higher chance to avoid the first few chases, without the perk revealing which aura reading perks the killer has. And if 120 seconds isn’t long enough, then make it 140/160/180 seconds.
Because let’s be honest here, even if Distortion only could have 3 tokens the entire trial, it still would often allow the survivor to manually dodge all the aura reading, since the perk announced which aura reading perks the killer had.
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That would be worse, because excessively hiding survivors could recharge tokens even if they are in the other side of the map from the killer.
Can't get tokens back being close to the killer. Now its a problem to be far from the killer to get tokens. Do you hate this perk? Also, excessively hiding? Please define that, as we are kind of supposed to hide sometimes. 'Excessively' would be very hard to reach.
That is why the best nerf would be for the perk to just block all aura reading for the first 80/100/120 seconds of the trial, then deactivate for the rest of the trial.
So you want Distortion just gone from the game. Your submitted change guts it, and makes it useless for its purpose. Chances are you'll get your wish, but I dont think even BHVR gut perks this hatefully.
Because let’s be honest here, even if Distortion only could have 3 tokens the entire trial, it still would often allow the survivor to manually dodge all the aura reading, since the perk announced which aura reading perks the killer had.
That survivor would really need to be paying attention and using their head. Definitely need to penalize that.
I've also heard the warcry to nerf Distortion resting on this talking piece: Distortion users hide all game and screw their team.
As this was touched on briefly above, that's quite dishonest from my experience. Everyone else's experience might be diff, but survivors do not rampantly use Distortion to hide all match as claimed on these forums. Its just an avenue to attack Distortion since there is little else to say about it. And if you do come across that, I would wager its not common. At all.
In the end, Its there to combat aura builds. It does its job swimmingly. Naturally, it will be gutted.
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