Coming back after a year; has undetactable/stealth uptime and perks increased and gone up?

Shimmy
Shimmy Member Posts: 1
in Feedback and Suggestions

Hi all, returning after about a year away and trying to get my bearings again.

I’m only a few hundred hours in, so I’m not pretending this is a “balance verdict” post. I’m more trying to understand if the current meta has significantly more Undetectable / stealth uptime (especially paired with speed), or if I’m just rusty and missing the counterplay.

A couple examples from recent matches:

  • The Good Guy (Chucky): It felt like he was silent / Undetectable for most of the match. He was able to chase me for maybe 30 seconds with no red stain or terror radius (this little guy is hard to see on a dark map) I know Hidey-Ho Mode makes him Undetectable and spawns misleading footfalls across the map, but the uptime and how hard it was to get reliable audio reads felt way higher than I remember from most killers.
  • Huntress: I ran into Wooden Fox (Undetectable for 30s after reloading at lockers) and Soldier’s Puttee (moves at 4.6 m/s while out of hatchets). That combo made her feel much closer to a “normal speed killer” and capable of frequent stealth windows.

I get that some of this is “adapt and improve,” and I’m working on that. What I’m trying to figure out:

  1. Is this level of stealth access (and duration) something that’s increased recently across the game?
  2. Are there specific tells/counters I should be relying on now (audio settings, common perk expectations, standard counterbuilds)?
  3. If this is working as intended, is the dev philosophy basically “more stealth/mind game, less reliable terror radius info”?

When I was playing prior to this, some killers were slower and made more noise because they were already pretty OP. I come back and these killers now have undetectable for a long window and can even speed up to normal killer speeds.

Just trying to understand the current direction and what experienced survivor players are doing to not get farmed by repeated undetectable windows.

Comments

  • Philscooper
    Philscooper Member Posts: 677

    At most oblivious perks and aura perks for killers got buffed.

    Distortion got killed, didnt recover since no one would want to chase and then randomly have no aura, no player wants that and you cant control when or how to use it.

    Stealth isnt completely dead, just mostly unviable since alot of killers have basekit tracking in their kick (vecna dnd) or run nowhere to hide, bbq or lethal.

    It makes no sense to run iron will when sb is just a better perk.

    It makes no sense to stealth if your teammates suck.

    Even when i was genrushing with peak distortion, it rarely ever got triggered.

  • Lexilogo
    Lexilogo Member Posts: 796
    edited January 20

    1. I wouldn't say so, Killers' means of triggering Undetectable are mostly the same today as they were a few years ago IIRC. Hex: Overture of Doom is a fairly recent Undetectable Perk, but is not super popular. Unforeseen is a good Trail of Torment alternative, but it's nearly 2 years old now so I wouldn't call it "recent", it was probably around before you took your break, and it is very similar to Trail of Torment.

    2. Not really, even without Perks to counter it stealth is considered among the weakest playstyles for Killers. Many years ago Spine Chill was popular but I'd argue the fact it countered stealth Killers was kinda incidental, the clutch action speed improvement was just as much a reason why it was popular.

    3. Once again I'd say no, just because I don't think Undetectable has really changed since you've been gone, I think it's just a matter of adjustment after coming back to the game.

    Both Killers you vsed sound like they were playing unconventionally- A Chucky who's Undetectable for that long is likely using an Undetectable Perk, so they're combining a stealth Killer with a stealth Perk which is pretty kooky, and that Huntress was using relatively unpopular Addons + Huntress has her Lullaby so she's rather bad at stealthing compared to other Killers, (bear in mind, Wooden Fox and Soldier's Puttee's effects are effectively impossible to overlap) most people wouldn't try it.

    Assuming you were playing in soloQ, when the best counter to stealth (and, to a certain extent, one of the best counters to Killers in general) is SWF callouts over comms, having this experience makes sense, you're rusty & were playing against two people running kooky playstyles who could completely scramble your brains from what you'd normally expect out of matches.