What You Can Do About Aura Reading

Aura reading has been a bit of a hot topic lately, and as I am wont to do sometimes, I wanted to make a post talking about its counterplay and broadly just what you can do if you find yourself in a position where you consistently see killers running aura perks + want to do something about it.

The first thing to talk about would be, of course, blocking the auras outright. In my view, there are three viable picks for doing this that all excel in different areas, so some level of decisionmaking happens here at the loadout screen. Which perks in particular are giving you trouble? What are you aiming to get out of blocking auras? Answering these questions helps narrow things down, so the way I'll format this section is to lay out each perk's best use cases, which perks it does best against, and what weaknesses it has. Each of these perks could be used in scenarios outside of what I list, but would be weaker- Shadow Step, for example, can work against chase auras, but it's much less consistent there, it doesn't excel.

Distortion

When you'd use Distortion:

• When you just want passive aura blocking and don't want to think too hard about it
• When you want to know what perks the killer's running but don't want the risk inherent to running Object Of Obsession
• When you want to break chase often with tools like Dance With Me or Quick & Quiet, or to take advantage of perks like I'm All Ears to break chase

What perks Distortion excels against:

• I'm All Ears, Predator, Zanshin Tactics, and any other "mid chase" aura
• Human Greed, Undying, Weave Attunement, and any other "counter with a specific action" aura (in the sense that it lets you perform that action stealthily)
• BBQ & Chili, Friends Til The End, Alien Instinct, and any other perk that activates after a hook and thus can be avoided without spending a token if you know to do so

Distortion's weaknesses:

• The token system means you are more at risk of being revealed at an inopportune moment if you aren't taking chases frequently for whatever reason
• While it excels as passive aura blocking against one or two aura perks/addons, a dedicated aura build can punch through tokens easily enough that other tools may be better depending on your preferences and goals (+ if you anticipate actually facing a dedicated aura build, which may or may not be less common depending on your experiences)

Boon: Shadow Step

When you'd use Shadow Step:

• When you want to progress specific generators more stealthily
• When you want a pocket of safety to reset with teammates (especially combined with CoH)
• When you want to lose the killer in specific strong tiles like main buildings
• When you want to trade some strengths away in exchange for team-wide benefits

What perks Shadow Step excels against:

• BBQ & Chili, Friends Til The End, Floods of Rage, and any other perk the killer would use to hunt down a new chase after a hook
• Human Greed, Undying, Weave Attunement, Gearhead, and any other perk that reveals auras from static objects (as long as those objects are in range)
• Awakened Awareness, Nowhere To Hide, A Nurse's Calling, and some other perks that reveal auras within a radius of the killer specifically

Shadow Step's weaknesses:

• The setup time can lead to too much time off generators if you aren't careful about how you go about keeping the boon up
• The limited radius can make it trickier to use against chase perks (to the extent that I did not consider them to be perks it excels against for the above list), and using it against perks like Nowhere To Hide runs a high chance the killer will snuff the boon afterwards
• Your teammates may be annoyed to run to a blue totem and not see Circle of Healing (it happens to us all…)

Off The Record

When you'd use Off The Record:

• When you primarily care about anti-tunnel, and the aura blocking is a nice bonus to conserve perk slots
• When you want to be able to reset + get back into repairing generators after a hook in peace

What perks Off The Record excels against:

• I'm All Ears, Predator, Zanshin Tactics, and any other perk the killer might use to stick on you while chasing you after an unhook
• A Nurse's Calling specifically, for hiding and healing with the killer looking for you
• That's kinda it. This isn't a dedicated aura block perk, after all

Off The Record's weaknesses:

• It's not a dedicated aura-block perk, it just does that on the side. It's inherently less consistent than its peers, but just allows you to get back in the game without worrying about auras or grunts of pain for a spell
• If the killer's already decided to tunnel you, the aura-block part is fairly worthless, leaving just the other two effects as its main points of value

As an addendum, I've seen some people speak positively of Sole Survivor, but I personally couldn't conceive of any particularly strong use cases for it. If you get value from it, more power to you, but I personally think it's pretty bad so I won't include it here.

Now, at the risk of making an already long post absurdly longer, it would be misleading to leave things there. That's just if you want to block the aura, but blocking isn't the only way for you to respond to an abundance of aura reading. We'll be going over these next tools more briefly, but there are three things to shout out when it comes to preparing for/defending against aura reading.

• Object Of Obsession. If you're a skilled (or just very confident, at least) looper, then Object is invaluable for both telling you exactly what the killer has (with a small margin for error) and for turning that aura read back around on them. Immense info, but at a fairly substantial risk. It's not for everyone, but it's a tool that does exist and does do the job.
• Killer location reveal perks. Specifically, you don't necessarily need to know the killer saw your aura if you know when the killer's approaching you either way. Dark Sense, Premonition, Scene Partner, and a handful of other tools are good for knowing when the killer's approaching you. If you don't much care about staying hidden and just want to deny the killer all that much value from their perks by making the chase difficult for them via prerunning at just the right moment, these perks are a good counter.
• It might seem like a cop-out, but, chase perks, especially Exhaustion perks. The killer seeing your aura doesn't matter too much if you rocket away with Sprint Burst, or one Lithe carries you away from the chase area. Like above, this isn't for staying hidden, this is for forcing the killer to actually waste time acting on the aura, not save time. The killer may have seen your aura, but now they're stuck either taking an unfavourable chase or breaking chase to go find someone else without the benefit of an aura directing them where to go. These second two points work especially well when combined together, so you know the killer's coming and make a ton of distance.

Before I end this post, I want to make one thing clear: I don't think you need to run all of these things. If you care about auras, one or two of these tools can absolutely be enough if your choice matches what you're hoping to achieve. Not bringing these tools at all is, also, a valid position- you aren't going to lose the game just because you left yourself open to aura reads, after all.

I'll cap off this post here with my overall position, though I think it should be obvious after this much text: I don't think aura reading is so oppressive that there's nothing you can do about it, even if one or two individual perks here and there may be overtuned. Hopefully, this post is more constructive and helpful than just saying that outright and leaving it at that.