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Why isn’t Vecna’s mage hand being talked about?
Considering the question, it is of no surprise that I’m someone who mains Vecna. I have plenty of hours into him and he is the first (and only) killer I committed to reaching prestige 100. But I have been having less fun with him simply because there is a way to invalidate 1/4 of his power almost 100% and I think one of his spells should be more effective.
Many players would tell you Vecna’s strongest spell is mage hand but if you played him for a long time you would find out that’s actually incorrect when you consider a way to invalidate. Mage hand is the spell a survivor can invalidate which makes his strongest spell Flight of The Damned. Yes, that means the easiest spell to dodge is his strongest. (It’s actually a little funny.)
I will explain some counters to Vecna’s mage hand before going over the “invalidation counter” (I just call it that).
The first is pre dropping from a distance. Vecna will never have enough time to reach you around a pallet if you pre drop from a good distance even when he picks it up with mage hand unless he has a haste or hinder perk to make up for it.
The second is quite literally hold W, sometimes a Vecna will anticipate a pallet drop and use mage hand at the wrong time which will give you time to make it around the loop and drop it if you have the magical item that gives you haste when mage hand is used you can play around pallets more risky because it increases your chances of making it around the loop but if the Vecna knows you have it they will also be more likely to disrespect pallets and anticipate the action.
The third counter is running as if you have the intention of going around a loop, then doubling back to drop it on Vecna. That is the most risky play with the highest payoff because two things could happen as a result, the Vecna tries to move back, using mage hand only to get stunned and waste it, or you simply just stun him but now you’re playing around a loop with an advantage since the pallet is already down and there is distance between the survivor and the killer.
Now, for the fourth counter no one happens to be talking about that i simply named the “invalidation counter”. I gave the counter this name because there is NOTHING (emphasis on nothing), a Vecna can do once a survivor does it and the counter allows them to be safe on every pallet. The counter is, when a survivor drops a pallet no matter the distance between them and the killer, when Vecna uses mage hand all the survivor has to do is step between the pallet, effectively blocking Vecna from passing through. You’d think, “They’d just get hit so that’s pointless.” But that isn’t the case. Vecna has a recovery time where he slows down a bit after using a spell but he also cannot swing during the recovery. That’s why when a survivor blocks the pallet as it’s lifted by mage hand, the hand doesn’t linger enough for Vecna to swing in time and Vecna’s recovery is too long to get a hit.
I will repeat that a survivor can do this on every pallet. That’s why if a survivor or multiple are aware of this they can invalidate a fourth of your abilities and all you have is one other chase spell that is easy to dodge but still has some value if used right such as spawning it on a survivor, correctly zoning with it, or casting it on elevation.
There’s a way to fix this “invalidation counter” which is simply to allow the mage hand pallet lift to linger for a second and to give Vecna the option to swing during his recovery time.
I have not been playing Vecna and instead moved to playing other killers but I been hoping that counter would get fixed with every patch but I finally decided to start talking about it here after putting up with it for so long because the counter punishes you for making the right decision and you suffer a 40 second cooldown and possibly a stun as a result if you try to hope that the survivor somehow messed up blocking the pallet which I should note that the chances of them messing it up is next to zero.
The other only slight problem I have with Vecna is that I feel that his Flight of The Damned spreads out too fast when you cast it and I think the spread should happen later and slower but Flight of The Damned isn’t the main topic so that’s all I have to say.
I really do hope this sparks a discussion or a dev can confirm there is a fix on the way for this “invalidation counter” because I would love to get back into playing Vecna consistently again.
Answers
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I've always felt like Vecna was a bit undertuned and could use some improvements. I don't see him much either.
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I learned to get used to his cooldowns but I do see what you mean as well. Vecna is one of the few killers where you have to play him perfectly against survivors that make minimal mistakes because making just a slight misplay as Vecna leads to 35 or 40 second cooldown with no benefit which is why not many play him.
A killer like Dracula, for example can make a misplay but still get his abilities relatively quickly to make up for it despite being closely similar to Vecna in terms of functionality but more powerful in leathality so more gravitate towards him.
To put Vecna on the same scale of lethality as Dracula or at least almost on the same scale, the devs would have to heavily reduce his spell cooldowns to be close to Dracula’s cooldowns, not too long but not too short.
An example would be, fly is a 15 second cooldown, flight of the damned is a 20 second cooldown, mage hand is a 22 second cooldown, and dispelling sphere is a 15 second cooldown.
I don’t see something like that happening however but one can only dream. And I have been playing Dracula as a replacement for Vecna because of mage hand being able to be completely invalidated but it’s very noticeable how much more lethal Dracula is in comparison to Vecna even though both function similarly.
Despite that I have still enjoyed playing Vecna until I went through a continuous amount of games where survivors knew about the “invalidation counter” I mentioned and I haven’t played him since.
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Vecna is Dracula 0.5. Less mobility, less lethality, less chase power than him. They are both the same type of killer (mix bag of abilities that have everything from something).
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Except Vecna has more creative abilities (gimmicky, but creative nontheless)
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Yea Vecna has that magical theme going on and extra chests (that make him weaker a bit but fine). Dracula is just pure power.
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Both of these are very true statements. Vecna is more is gimmicky and weaker while Dracula is a little more straightforward and powerful. I wouldn’t mind if the devs made Vecna’s lethality on par with Dracula but if there’s one thing I really hope they do is fix the problem where survivors can make one of your chase spells almost completely useless
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The first two you list come with downsides. Hold W Vecna can fly towards and pre dropping weakens the value of the loop. You aren't using Mage Hand, but you are still getting plenty of value out of it.
The third is an issue of counterplay. Survivors should have counterplay of some sort and this guessing game/risk is fine.
The fourth I haven't seen but I don't see Vecna frequently, I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned by a streamer, but if true should be fixed.
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Not only is it definitely not an intended counterplay, it doesn't make any sense. How do I know? Because it's not even consistent. I am not sure what the cause is (ping or something completely different), but sometimes Vecna has enough time to swing before the stun.
Predicting the pallet drop should almost always result in a hit considering other killers with similar chase powers and the immense cooldown on mage hand.3 -
Vecna suffers a big cooldown after using fly which is a combination of the cooldown for when his spell ends and the cooldown for when he is recovering after the spell ends which is also when he can’t cast spells or swing. If a Vecna uses fly before or after a pre drop he won’t have enough time to cast mage hand to get value from it because of the cooldown it has.
I wouldn’t say the third is an issue of counterplay because it’s good back and forth gameplay between the killer and the survivor, the survivor either continues to greed, thinking the Vecna will prematurely use mage hand or abruptly stop looping at random and go for a stun which leads to a massive reward, but if the Vecna makes the right read and calls the action, they get rewarded as a result. I like the back and forth in gameplay when making the correct decisions at the right time.
Which is how Vecna’s kit functions. It’s entirely based on using certain spells at the right times and getting rewarded for doing so.
I can’t say why the fourth isn’t talked about either however, there aren’t many who play Vecna and that might be why but there’s not much I can say on that which is why I finally made a post about it.
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I noticed that too actually. It’s very weird. On rare cases, you actually are able to get the hit but on most you’re not. We can only hope the issue gets addressed by a dev at some point. Hope is all I got.
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You know I never thought of it like that but it's so true lol. Both have a flexible tool kit for multiple things but all of draculas are just better.
Not sure why I got downvoted for saying Vecna needed improvements, I feel like most people think that. He's pretty low on tier lists and i don't think people typically feel threatened by him. You could give him multiple buffs and he still wouldn't be as good as Dracula.
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Are you sure this invalidation counter is always possible?
I played Vecna for quite some time after he released, and what I found is that you can prevent this counter by using Mage Hand early enough. You have to use Mage Hand right before the survivor starts dropping the pallet. That way, your cooldown starts earlier, while the survivor is still in the process of dropping the pallet, and this allows you to hit the survivor after Mage Hand picks up the pallet, and before the survivor can drop the pallet again.
Pretty sure that's how I was able to get hits against the few survivors that did know about this counterplay. Simply using Mage Hand early enough does the trick. This of course forces you to use Mage Hand on prediction instead of reaction, which means if you predict wrong and the survivor doesn't drop the pallet you might have wasted Mage Hand, but that's how Mage Hand should be in my opinion. If you could just react to pallet drops Mage Hand wouldn't have enough counterplay.
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All of his abilities are garbage. I feel completely powerless playing as him. His mage hand especially. You lift/hold the pallet to get them, but the delay especially in lifting the pallet is so much, they just get around anyway. Even without the magic boots. Even with the Haste add-on for mage hand. I legitimately don't understand how people get survivors at loops thanks to mage hand. It feels similar to Wesker or Kaneki vaulting over stuff, where it doesn't actually advance your position in relation to the survivors. It's kind of just breaking even on distance.
His skeletons I think are his best. But unless the survivors let you point-blank skeleton hit them, that ability doesn't do anything either.
Fly is cool for mobility, but I feel it's not actually as much distance as the sound/visual effect would have you believe. Feels kind of deceptive. And we could have had it to where he could fly through survivors to block them, like Ghoul can do now, but no. The devs changed that so that you can't even get around body blocking survivors. And you can vault windows with it, but it then insta-cancels, and the survivors can vault through you most of the time. The cooldown of coming out of his fly, in any event, just lets the survivors get away. It's why people call Ghoul's cooldowns OP, because they're used to killers being basically immobile for multiple seconds after using their mobility move.
His orb/sphere is alright, but all it's there to do is counter the stupid magic items, which in turn has its own counter as one of the items. Magic items give survivors a completely unnecessary advantage vs this killer. I get that it was put in to keep his power in check, but after his nerfs, they basically serve no purpose but to make him more bullyable. I hate this concept of items given to the survivors that are free counterplay to the killer's power, like Singularity and Xenomorph.
So what you've got is a killer who can do all these flashy things, but is absolutely toothless. The fact that he has multiple abilities doesn't make him stronger than the average killer, and that should be shocking. Imagine Doctor with like 2-3 other abilities. He'd probably be a threat. But this guy, Vecna? He's a chump. A survivors' plaything.
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He has no map presence whatsoever. Despite all the stuff he can do, survivors will be spinning/moonwalking just out of range waiting to be chased. He's one of those killers, bullyable.
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You still have to primitively charge mage hand before only then casting it on reaction because if you predict wrong then you are still slowed down and allow them to loop more. Having to pre cast and guess way more/before any killer with a chase power in order to get to get value would feel horrible, (and this won’t work unless you’re really close to the survivor) you’d then suffer a 40 second cooldown after potentially guessing wrong each time which would feel horrible to play on when you can play Dracula and get value out of your abilities consistently within matches even when making a mistake because his short cooldowns make up for misplays.
I can see how casting mage hand very early could stop the “invalidation counter” however then you have to guess correctly every time someone goes under a pallet which it’s realistically impossible to guess that even 30% of the time during a match and that counter only works if the distance between you and the survivor is very short so you can only then go through the pallet while their pallet animation has not completely finished yet. If you guess wrong, (more often then not you will) you would have to wait for a cooldown that lasts over half a minute and the pallet you used mage hand on is still an obstacle in your way. If that is your most common result to a part of a killer’s power then it is best to gravitate to another killer by that point.
So if they pre drop from a distance then mage hand still has no value and the only counter to the “invalidation counter” is being at a short distance from the survivor and casting it very early but every Vecna knows casting mage hand early will almost always lead to them making another loop and that would definitely happen if they don’t throw the pallet.
The only way to avoid the “invalidation counter” (pre casting) will lead to you guessing wrong most of the time or not getting value at all because of pre dropping from a distance, holding W, and the backpedaling counter. The rate of you making a mistake or not getting value out of mage hand is increased to 80% or more if the survivor knows those 3 counters and the “invalidation counter”. Thus, making it a useless ability. I should also note once more that in order to stop the invalidation trick, the pre cast has to be a close range otherwise you won’t make it through in time, so even the pre cast option is situational, and not always reliable.
So if that counter remains in the game, a Vecna would be playing a killer where they’re constantly mind gaming themselves to get value out of one of their chase abilities that has a 40 second cooldown they will suffer after every mistake, at that point it would be best to play a killer that doesn’t put you at a constant disadvantage like that and that’s more fun, like Dracula.
Post edited by Aeiga on-1 -
To get value out of his mage hand you have to lift your hand up when the survivor is just between the pallet so they have little time to react to you having mage hand ready to be casted as they’re running through. If they throw the pallet down, you then quickly react which will lift the pallet fast enough to get a hit, I have even had times where I managed to reach survivors even with magical boots because of lifting the pallet with fast reaction. It’s an ability you have to be quick on your feet with and slightly quicker if they have the mage hand magical item (unless it’s disabled by dispelling sphere).
I actually do agree that his duration on the fly spell should be extended because you are correct that the distance you gain is very mediocre at best and distance you make with fly while rabid brutality is active is far better and is an example of how it should feel when using fly. I’m grateful the devs made Vecna’s fly cooldown 20 seconds though considering the distance you travel isn’t that great.
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I suggest you start using Vorpal Sword, some don't rate it but i think it's one of his best.
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His fly is around the speed of an add-onless Spirit phase but with even less duration and more cooldown … And add-onless Spirit already doesn't have great mobility so Idk what the devs thought they were cooking with this as his "mobility tool".
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I never saw mage hand as his strongest tool. Maybe before first nerfs but then, 40 second cooldown for what. if survivor knows counterplay as you said or does have boots (if wiki is right 7% speed for 3 seconds) if survivor dont screw up or loop isnt super unsave you can hug it and make it back to pallete which will be free to drop , so yeah strong power indeed. Only time mage hand has use ist when you use dipel sphere on survivors to disable their items.
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