Let’s talk about aura reading

wow you mean in a game of 1v4 that the side with only 1 person have more opportunities to see the 4 people??? wow what a shocker, thank God you're not a dev.

I don't really mind aura perks at all. I would much rather play against perks that increase the pace of the game instead of multiple slowdowns that turn the game into a slog.

Okay first of all your entire post is talking against yourself because of that piece after that one

@jesterkind literally explains what you can do, even things not directly countering but still working , and it's relatively much. Chances are the killer will never touch the boon at all, otr is solid 3 minutes without aura and distortion is still usable if you ever let the killer chase you.

Besides the fact you talking against yourself, this entire post ignores the fact that this is literally only a problem for people that hide too much and can't loop properly in which case i'm not sorry at all. You're simply boring to play against and even a lot of survivors hate this playstyle from teammates. Even if I ignore that this playstyle is boring and just look at the strength of auras themself I don't see what you're even so worried about: a trapper won't get you even if he sees you, same with pig, same with michael, same with hag, same with freddy really, there are only a few killers that actually benefit so much from them that it's actually problematic and you didn't even talk about the strength-difference in them xD

^ Not about distortion, but aura reading being an issue.

^ continues to mention distortion.

Those tokens don’t last forever, 3k player that can loop.

…Ok? An older post from me with the exact same opinion of what I just stated? What is your point exactly?

That would be gutting a large part of killer's kit. Auras and overall the perks that reveal locations can be countered once you figure them out. Not easy, needs a lot of guessing, but it is counterable by hopping in a locker for instance, or avoiding to do the thing that triggers the aura read.

Can someone please explain why BBQ or Lethal Pursuer are considered problematic? These perks don't injure you. They also don't stop you from progressing the game. The only thing they do is give the killer a direction to go in, so that they can do what they are supposed to do, which is chasing and hooking survivors.

Good killers will mostly not need to look for survivors anyway, since they always have an idea where to go. Lethal Pursuer is a way to deal with the rng of spawns in the early game. You can put 1,000 hours into this game and learn all possible survivor spawns. But when you spawn in the middle of the map or you are sent to a map with inconsistent spawns you have to guess where to go. This can already decide whether or not you will win the game.

BBQ is a way to deal with survivors that play more stealthy. In a way it is like exhaustion perks. It will work very well in some games and only give minimal value in others.

I have a couple issues with this rebuttal, I hope you won't mind me going through them in a sort of rough order here.

First, your list of counters is missing options, which may very well be unintentional but still heavily skews your framing in an inaccurate way. If we're looking at aura blocking perks, there are four, not two; we have Distortion and Shadow Step as strong and worthwhile options, but we also have Off The Record in that camp too. We also have Sole Survivor, but admittedly, that perk is not very good, I didn't mention that one either.

However, the conversation isn't just about blocking auras, it's about responding to aura reading. So we should also add Object Of Obsession and just lockers in general to the conversation, as the person who responded to you already laid out.

Where I'll branch away from them is that I'll say, since we're talking about responding to aura reading as a concept, we should also include perks that tell you when the killer's approaching you, like Dark Sense, Premonition, Scene Partner, and arguably Spine Chill. How good you think any of these perks are is relevant, certainly, but it's still important to acknowledge they exist.

You could also be cheeky here and count stuff like Sprint Burst for letting you easily evade a killer approaching you, but things get a little messy if we get that indirect.

Second, your list of killer aura perks includes quite a few things that aren't aura perks…? There are a couple perks in here that are scream perks, not aura perks, and then also Discordance which isn't either of those. Still, if we're including scream perks on the killer side, we must also include the counter picks to that as well; Calm Spirit and Hardened.

Third, I've always found just dry lists of what aura perks are technically in the game to be really unconvincing as evidence aura reading is problematic, even when those lists are more accurate, because… most of them aren't all that good?

Maybe not most, but certainly I don't see a world where we can fairly complain about the unreasonable aura reading potential of Hangman's Trick, Darkness Revealed, Undying, and Human Greed, to give an example 'build'. Those perks just don't really provide much impact even judging them on the scale of aura reading perks in particular, except for Undying for reasons outside of its aura reading.

I could, perhaps, see a world where aura reading could be considered overbearing even though the individual perks are relatively well balanced just because all the currently available aura reading perks are really good…. but that isn't the world we currently live in. Players aren't actually using a huge chunk of this big list because they're not good, unpopular, or both.

Aura reading just isn't that big of a deal in the game right now. There are ways around it and you don't typically see all that much of it, in my experience.

I don’t like aura reading on both sides. Aura reading perks need to be removed entirely. They are not healthy for the game. As a killer, struggling to catch a survivor with a mind game because of wiretap or Object feels lame. Dark sense allows survivors to get a jump on shift W, Alert pings you all over the damn map letting survivors know it’s safe to stay on gens, and even lame ass Fogwise will occasionally snitch on you letting survivors stay comfortable on a gen. Saboteur shouldn’t allow survivors see hooks, or at the very least not see scourge hooks. No perk should show the aura of totems. Go look for them yourself. Only stealth killers benefit from not having to deal with the aura reading B.S.

As a survivor, hiding near a gen only for the killer to kick a gen and give the killer wall hacks with Alien Instinct feels cheap as hell. Killer add-ons like all-seeing blood on Wraith and even scratched mirror on my boi Mikey are hella cheap. Dont even get me started on Lethal Pursuer. That perk launched at a time when the first solo player to get downed would DC like 35% of the time, and someone saw fit to introduce a perk that creates more of that scenario. LP is a serious problem and I’m surprised more ppl dont complain about it. I still see ppl ragequitting because they got downed within 1 minute due to LP. Lethal pursuer does not bother SWF’s at all- it only hurts solos.

I understand the game has evolved and we need to make adjustments, but with all these aura reading perks in the game- we might as well have everyone see everyone at all times. There is a reason why when people cheat in multi-player videogames, the number 1 defacto cheat is wall hacks. It does not feel fair and takes no skill.

If you feel like you are the weak link in most matches, you can still stack plenty of unhook and aura blocking perks to buy yourself more time and your teammates more time from you, off the record buys you 80s per unhook of no aura reading that doesn't go away when you lose the endurance. Distortion itself still buys you plenty of stealth, it just doesn't let you go fully invisible which just wasn't good design.

Ooh, fun build!

I might suggest Alert instead of Inner Focus, I swear by that perk when I want killer tracking. Deceptively high uptime.

So would you rather go against full slowdown or full aura reading? Because you can do A LOT more against full aura reading than you can slowdown.

They always use the you would rather go against 4 slow down stale argument and you know what is funny? All of the gen perk requires that the kill down/hooks you to even use them cept for ruin and if the killer is bad at catching you =the slow downs has no value. I tried 4 slow downs even when they was good as killer and literally got cracked teams that made me end up not even getting a single value.

Yet when I put on stuff like weave+attunement even though its been nerfed abit, am still getting alot more 3 to 4 ks or least 2 ks, I do not even waste my time kicking gens, keeping up that chase and knocking down that person seem alot more useful. I also LOL at the OOO garbage perk, yeah its okish on some killers but a huntress will love you using that, also worst it does not even work on stealth killers yet they still can see you. Most garbage design ever.

I still say that Distortion should have start the match with 3 tokens instead of 1. If anything, it should start at 2 stack. You still have ot gain it back by being in chase.