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Blight's Adrenaline Vial (and what's wrong with it)
Introduction
If you have played Blight or keep up with his patch notes, you'd know Adrenaline Vial used to be a really strong add-on for Blight with 4 significant benefits. It has since been dramatically nerfed and is widely considered to be an add-on that massively nerfs Blight's power in exchange for insignificant benefits that fail to outweigh the downside.
Comparison Of Adrenaline Vial at its Peak vs Current Adrenaline Vial
The Adrenaline Vial we had for the longest time and its current state are as follows (note that it has had a brief period with no turn rate penalty that was quickly reverted. Additionally the add-on was actually really weak when it released but was changed some time after, I will be ignoring these as they are unimportant)
Increases max rush tokens by 2 > unchanged
Increases max look angle by 20 degrees > unchanged
Decreases rush turn rate by 55% > unchanged
Increases rush speed by 10% > 5% speed
Reduced token recharge time by 1 second > Removed
What Made Adrenaline Vial So Good?
There's a fair chance you're wondering how an add-on went from really strong to directly nerfing the killer with only 2 actual changes to the add-on, so I think it's important that we go over what made it strong to begin with.
The recharge benefit overall allowed you to recharge each token 50% faster (10 seconds down to 5 seconds for 5 tokens to recharge, although with 7 max tokens it could take at most 7 seconds for all 7 to come back). This was game changing when it came to connecting rushes before the survivor could reach anything of importance, especially with a 10% boost to speed. This insanely fast recharge also moves us into the next point.
Pallet fatigue change; During Blight's collision changes (more on this later), Blight lost the ability to recharge tokens during fatigue if he broke a pallet or breakable wall. Keep in mind Blight had and still has a fatigue time of 2.5 seconds, meaning if you were to break a pallet with adrenaline vial whilst spending only 2 tokens to do so, you would be able to instantly initiate a rush after the 2.5 seconds of fatigue, almost guaranteeing a hit every time. This made Blight an absolute monster of creating dead-zones and borderline ignoring pallets. Whilst the other benefits were absolutely very useful, this was the main aspect that made the add-on so potent. This change was necessary to make Blight less oppressive in zoning and offer more counter-play via pallets, but hurt this add-on directly as a result.
Collision Changes And The Removal Of The Hug Tech
I'm sure most of you remember the hug tech. One thing that a Blight player could do was hug tech either during chase or for general traversal to compensate for the lack of turn rate. This meant on top of the insane recharge benefits, you could also reduce the extra token usage otherwise presented by Adrenaline Vial's downside, allowing even more power up-time!
The Extra 2 Rushes Are Deceivingly Unhelpful
You may have wondered by now, isn't having 2 entire extra rushes a good thing? Whilst I would agree having 2 additionally rushes is better than no additional rushes, you have to consider how severe a 55% reduction to your turn rate is. You can only slightly adjust your direction when rushing now and as such have to take most rushes in a straight line. This means you have to use up more rush tokens to accomplish the same thing as before with Blight. This would be fine since the add-on seemingly encourages you to do more straight line bump logic, but there are 2 major faults to this. First you have to consider how much slower it is to bump even a single extra time, and you only have an extra 5% speed to compensate for this extra bump and launching of a rush, meaning overall you're not only using an extra rush to accomplish the same as base-kit Blight, but you're doing it slower. The other major problem is much worse however, which is the lack of any recharge benefit. You are now forced to use more rushes without being able to get them back any faster, meaning your time in cool-down is now increased on average. Unfortunately for Adrenaline Vial; More tokens =/= more power usage.
So If 2 Extra Rushes Aren't Actually Beneficial Here, What Exactly Are We Left With?
Well, we're left with 2 objective benefits; A 5% increased rush speed and a 20 degree look angle increase. The 5% is certainly appreciated but as previously mentioned, isn't enough to compensate for excessive bumping and overall you are still losing distance compared to base-kit Blight. The look angle buff used to be decent but has since become extremely janky and honestly feels really bad to hard flick with. It does definitely increase the angle you can get hits on, but isn't a significant benefit given the lack of turn rate reducing this angle more to begin with.
Concluding Statement Regarding Adrenaline Vial
I have gone over what previously made Adrenaline Vial a very strong add-on, how it has changed, and why none of the benefits are actually more beneficial than the downside due to them directly clashing. There is no individual aspect of Blight that actually improves with Adrenaline Vial compared to standard, base-kit Blight. I hope that someone from BHVR's balance team gets a look at this and considers tweaking the stats around a bit on the add-on quickly. A relatively simple change would be to re-introduce the 10% speed increase and give it enough of a recharge improvement that the extra token or 2 being spent all the time isn't a hindrance.
If anyone else wants to suggest changes for the add-on, I'd be very interested in discussing. Let me know if any of the information here was mistaken, I did some wiki checks but I could be mistaken on some % stats and such.
Sincerely, A Pustula Serum Addict.
Comments
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they removed hug tech which makes 55% turning bad and recharge-rate. Saved you 2 minutes of reading wall of text.
How to fix add-on? Change 55% reduced turning-rate to 55% INCREASED turning rate.
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Oh no, not the ptb spinny bleet
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Adrenaline Vail is my favourite example of BHVR's balance decision making:
1. It was obviously stupid addon
2. Then they destroyed it into nothing on PTB, like full nerf addon
3. Then added to it flat 5% speed on live, what is obviously nothing with such huge downside on background
4. Then removed turn penalty from it (keep in mind that some dev said that they want this addon exists to help player who love to bump into everything instead of more precise bump logic or something close to it) and for two weeks it was worthy addon. You have 2 tokens, which in most cases will use only for mobility and eat bigger cooldown for it and flat 5%. Fair enough for rare addon.
5. Community overreacted so much, whole forum was mad that Blight's addon isn't useless crap, so they added turn penalty back. Didn't even try something in between, just fully reverted it.
And it still exists in this state, because they know if, entity forbid, they will touch bad Blight's addon, they will read walls of text on how dare they do this. Or probably because a lot of killers have way worse addon roaster. Or probably because addons design is their weakness, they don't understand which addons will work and which won't.
UPD: Pretty much same history has Iri Tag addon, but with different inputs.3 -
LMAO, I still rewatch my recordings with Blight doing 4 circles around rock on Ormond, it was by far most fun experience in this game. But yeah, such things should be left on PTB.
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Keep in mind the most severe nerf to it was indirect in the form of the collision changes and more importantly the cooldown. If they simply gave it some more speed and gave it an in-between recharge speed I think it'd actually be viable for bump logic with crow.
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Nah, I don't think recharge speed should return in any way, it was most broken thing in this addon. You will use under 5 tokens most of the time and just have your tokens back way quicker is too strong. But this addon definately should see 10% speed back and at least halved turn penalty.
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I tend to just think about this the complete opposite way as you. I think adren vile is the perfect state currently to help get people into blight.
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during that ptb, Blight still had hug tech so when we saw these add-on, it was like what the heck is this BVHR? He doesn't need these buffs. Now that hug tech is erased, he needs these add-on to get hug tech or some semblance loop play as his power is too difficult and too impractical to use at loops without hug tech.
C33+Adrenaline vial could bring back some skill back into blight as the skill tp play blight is quite low at the time. there is not that much you can do with blight atm.
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Hugtech did nothing with me running in circles around one rock with insane turn rate. Yes, without hugtech Blight can't use his power in every loop and require more skill and more precise bump logic, but there are still ZERO reasons to give him addon, which allows him to make a full circle around loop like Spirit without any bumps. It was really stupid and there was no skill at all in turning your mouse around loop into survivor just to land a hit. I don't know why I even need to explain this.
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dunno, i think blight is pretty low skill at loops now. i don't really see blight use his power at loops and when they do, they miss, than break the pallet. often they just break pallet without trying to use his ability. i think blight is very over-simplified and a bit too weak at loops. i still question to this day if billy is a better killer because he has options to use his power at loops over blight even though i feel like blight's more consistent at getting hits between loops.
if it were me, i'd be slightly buffing blight but i know that the popular consensus is that blight is "too strong".
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"pretty low skill at loops" not sure what you mean by that. You think there is not so much he can do with power in loops?
Speed addons are literally his anti-loop. Without speed addons (at least without crow) he will rarely land a hit in most loops against good survivor even with perfect bump logic and instant flicks. You still need to understand in what loops it worth to use your power, instantly analyze RNG to build bump logic for further rushes and feel your mouse pretty good to almost instantly rush after bump, because 0.2-0.4 seconds where you turn camera to realize where you need to bump next can be (and will be in most cases) a difference between landing and not landing hit.
So idk how he is "oversimplified in loops", when bump logic is whole science and what different bad Blight from good Blight. Hugtech was useful and could help you in most loops, but you needed bump logic in first place anyway. You always need to think 5 steps ahead on Blight, especially if you are going for some crazy and unusual things with him, that's why I love and main him.
Blight definately doesn't need any basekit buffs or nerfs, but his speed addons were overnerfed too much and purple addons became completely dogcrap lame addons for 1st rush, Vial went from OP addon to nerf-yourself addon. But honestly they better don't touch him at all, we all know what happening, when devs touch killers. Same with my second main Artist, she has low kill rate and pick rate, but I would prefer she left where she is, because I simply do not trust them.1 -
my experience vs blight in soloq is that most of blight that try anything at loops end up breaking the pallet. i have played vs what i would refer to as snap-bump blights that just spam bumps in like 0.1 seconds but i am not really threatened/enthused at loops. With removal of hug tech, I think blight needs turning-rate buffs especially for indoor maps such as Lery and other tight corridor maps.
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To the both of you discussing, I'd like to remind you Blight's way of playing a tile is taking control of the pallet before it is dropped, which allows you to bump logic rapid 50/50s until you get a hit because you went to the right side. Additionally, since speed now effects his lunge distance, you can play around a lot of things you otherwise needed a hug tech for via double speed or iri tag
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