Spirit's Two Biggest Problems
1) She gives no feedback to the survivor, which leaves little reasonable counterplay for the survivor since the survivor basically just has to guess and hope they get it right. There's no skill involved in that. That is not a mind game. There's a mind game when there is TWO-WAY Unknown. Ie. You run at the window on an T wall, the killer doesn't know whether the survivor will vault or fake and the survivor doesn't know whether the killer will commit or double back. When the spirit pretends to phase, it is only a one way unknown (especially if the spirit is using school girl hair so you can't tell if she starts phasing) since the survivor cant tell what she's doing but until she starts phasing, she knows exactly where the survivor is. At that point the survivor can: Walk, but that wont work because walking moves so slow she can just leave phase at your last known and get the hit since you haven't covered much distance. Run, but then you leave scratch marks and she phases on top of you. Slow vault back towards her over the pallet or window at which point she just grabs because she won't start phasing until she shes what you do. This is also assuming that she can't just hear where you are and appear on top of you and hit you.
The solution to this is to make her do a unique animation while charging the power, you can mindgame this by charging but not actually committing to the power. This is a true mindgame since the unknown is two-ways. The survivor does not know whether the spirit will truly use her power and the survivor disappears from the spirits view during the charge so the spirit does not know how the survivor reacted. This can also be mindgamed by using the power when out of line of sight or by just standing still when out of line of sight. This is once again a true mindgame due to the lack of line of sight. The survivor cannot see the killer but the killer cannot see them or their reaction either.
2) Even when she does make a mistake, the punishment is often next to nothing. Because her power doesn't have to fully recharge everytime she uses it and only has to fill from the point it was to full, she often gets her power back in just a few seconds after using it. Even if the spirit manages to lose where you are in phase, rather than trying to figure it out again it's best to just let go of the power and reacquire target before phasing again, since letting go early means less cool down.
The solution to this is to make the power do the full cool down after use. Reducing the base cool down time may be needed if this were implemented, as it is quite long. Additionally, faking the power by charging but not actually committing to the phase may have a reduced cool down, assuming the solution to problem 1 is implemented. EDIT: Instead of reducing the base cool down you could increase the base duration, meaning each use of the power lasts a long time, making it an interesting period of mind gaming, but comes with a long cooldown on failure. However just reducing the cooldown would also work
Edit 2: The midchapter fixes the collission issue and overpowered addons issues which were problems too, that's why I'm not talking about that here.
Comments
Updated the original post
You are saying it as if spirit can't locate suriviors by sound, foot steps, scratch marks and more. So it isn't a guess because the killer has every right to locate the surivior, where as surivior get no feedback of where she is while phasing and if she is phasing.
It doesn't matter if she can't see you while she phases because she can 1) hear survivors and see scratch marks or 2) go to your last known position in the event of a lack of scratch marks (no scratch marks means your walking, walking means you can't have gone very far from your last known position)
Yes, yes I would. Spirit is just terribly designed as she is now. She could be the worst killer in the game and I'd still call for changes, she's made terribly.
Iron will can be countered by strioder. Even without stridor you can simply rely on a suriviour's scratch marks and foot steps, so it doesnt matter.
Just because spine chill is glowing, doesn't give you any accurate detail to where the killer is. You also don't know if she is phasing or not because the spirit can just look at your direction in order for spine chill to not give you an proper response to what she is doing.
Walking instead of running just makes it easier for the killer to catch up to you because why would she phase if she has no idea of where you are? She can still hear you breathing, so it doesnt make a difference.
Moreover you expect a surivior to run two perks to counter one killer? It's like expecting a surivior to run slippery meat so that they can counter the trapper. There is like 18 killers and more than 3 of them is capable of tracking injured people and one of them(Myer)s is capable of ignoring spine chill effect.
The "nerf" they gave to spirit doesn't make any sense or even remotely relates to the main problem of people using spirit. Other then the spirit's add on where she can get her power back instantly and player bread, the rest shouldn't have been change. Her base kit should have also not been change.
What should have been change, is allowing the surivior to have more feedback to where she is and what she is doing. It doesn't have to be obvious. It can be something as simple as the wraith, where you would have to pay attention on your screen in order to notice him.
Wraith is different because when leaving his sleath mode, he makes a loud noise, loud foot steps, has slower movement and give suriviour's time to react. Spirit is more instant and doesnt give feedback when she is entering or leaving her phasing. Obviously she isn't meant to have an appeaeane while phassing because she enters her own dimension (pretty much).
However, they could have done something as simple as adding very loud foot steps noises to where a surivior can use that as an indication to know how far or close she is from the sound of the foot steps. Dont get me wrong, she does have foot steps noises, but it is not loud at all and the killer would have to be close to you for you to hear it. In other words you will be dead before you realise it. They can also have her shards actually light up and have her hair style change instead of a surivior having to be right at her face to notices if she is phasing (because that would just be stupid).
In conclusion, I ain't asking for a nerf, but an indication of what the spirit user is doing.
there is some hard and lot of soft counter perks against spirit and you are free to use them. thats what they there for.
Using 1 or more perks slots just to counter 1 killer is not optimal
you actually counter almost half of the killers with spine chill. and its ######### strong against spirit. how is this not optimal? just stop following the meta like a sheep and use different perks.
Spine chill is an okay perk. Even against a spirit, DH, Adren, UB, DS is more reliable
She has already been nerfed. Stop crying for nerfs and learn to play against her. I know you want to make her garbage to loop her for 5 gens. She already gives feedback (glass shards glow) but you have to pay attention. We don't want another garbage killer
I really hope devs don't listen to rank 20 survivors or people who haven't even played her
You can't see the glow unless you stand right next to her
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOHy-NA2qaY
I don't know if I'm with you on the "unique survivor side animation and cooldown for faking phases" thing. Unless they have Nurse-level strength, a killer should not be that heavily punished for using their powers. Nobody has fun sitting wandering around at 110% movement speed with no power to chase, and no map pressure, for an extended period of time. However. I think the solution here is to make her shards brightly glow (across all of her skins) when she is charging her haunting. Not when she is phasing. Survivors should not have perfect knowledge of when/where a misdirection-type killer is in their power because when her phasing sound was directional in her PTB, she was a completely trash-tier due to survivors being able to pinpoint her location. Did everyone forget about this? The minute survivors can perfectly determine her location is the minute the spirit will be dead as a killer. So no. Adding "loud footsteps" like someone said is a really stupid idea. Ghostface was initially weak as hell due to his tv static noise alerting survivors to his presence, as well as the loud ass leather squeaking when he crouched, when he was supposed to be freaking stealthy. Killer powers should have weaknesses that ENABLE survivors to out-play them, not completely invalidate a killer with minimal effort.
Sometimes, I feel like survivors would prefer for her (and other killers) to be a joke so they feel more safe facing them. Nobody likes to lose, so instead of looking at what they did wrong they're more likely to call something "uncounterable". Both survivor mains and killer mains are extremely guilty of this, which is why I tend to only listen to 50/50 players on subjects of balance. Anyways. Until they give her the glowing shards, you're just going to have to be happy with her nerfed add-ons, removed collision, and shorter post-phase lunge attacks. You're going to face her a lot less now, but the spirits left will be the ones that basically played addon-less anyways. So much like Nurse, this won't affect the people that literally destroyed groups of survivors due to one-tricking the killer. But it will lower her frequency since she will be less noob friendly due to her addons no longer being busted.
Oh, and Wraith is a horrible comparison. He's visible from a mile away if you have two working eyes and at least one brain cell. His power also doesn't have a cooldown like the spirit's, nor is he 110% movement speed without it. Powers with cooldowns should always be stronger than powers without them. Period.
someone didn't read the post.
I said animation when she charges, not when she's in it. You can still fake the power, you just can't fake it without putting the power on cooldown anymore. Also she should be hitting most of her attacks and if she is she will do well anyways, as it is right now she doesn't even have to be right most of the time because of how little cooldown there is on letting go early. There's also currently no cost to faking your power so there is no reason to not always fake your power then hit the survivor when you see their reaction.
This again? The devs don't believe she's broken, she needs no nerfs. Juke her when she phases and she's a slow m1 killer with no power for 12 seconds
Not really because
Survivors can't detect Spirit
Spirit can detect survivor
Assuming you have Iron Will, walk through her and she doesnt have father's glasses
No one runs FG on Spirit unless you're a noob, plus it's an UR anyways so you can't justify nerfing a character because of 1 addon
There's a loot of noob spirit's then lol. I run into FG more than I do spirits running yellows.
No you don't, fr. I've been playing since it came out on console pretty much and only seen 1. Plus you can't nerf a killer's base kit cause of 1 addon
FG is just one problematic thing in a killer that is made out of a mountain of problems
No it isn't. Nothing is broken about her and even the devs seem to think so because she's fine. Nothing is "problematic" about her. She has the phase sound, the hair snapping up when she phases, slow movement, she can't see blood or even the survivor. She's good and chases and has movement, that's all she has, she's fine
Only noobs run FG? It gives away literally every resource a survivor has to counter her, and while it is "only one addon", since you we are assuming survivors will run Iron Will, we can also assume the Spirit will run good/red addons
Anyone who thinks the hair snapping up is a noticeable tell on the power clearly doesn't play much survivor because it is very inconsistent and most of the time only happens for like 1 or 2 frames making it pretty much unnoticeable.
FG isn't good, good addons most Spirits use are duration increase, charge/movement speed during phase. Maybe they'll combine PB with the MD Ring but that's it
FG is pretty strong, makes the movement speed so high that even if you do walk she moves to where you are so fast that you cant move more than a few meters by the time shes on you.I just realised im ######### and was thinking about the MDR not the glasses. FG is pretty bad, stridor is better
You hit the nail on the head.
This is pretty much what most of the community agrees on or at least those who advocate for Spirit changes.
I think that only just make glow animation when she starts phasing more notable/brillant, and make the sound in phasing directional/grass moving will be ok. More will destroy the killer (my opinions).
saying stealth is the counter to a killer is basically admitting that the killer is so overpowered there's nothing you can do once you get found.
You still haven't refuted anything in the original post where I explained why there is no counterplay.
Nurse's base kit was overpowering when it came to really good Nurse's, the same can't be said for Spirit
Nurse and Spirit do have crazy addons, but the Nurse could destroy without a single addon. The Spirit can't do that, her base kit isn't built like that
Btw I don't think Nurse was op, but she did need a bit of tuning. Nurse was able to overperform in a drastic way, Spirit just isn't. (Nurse is still more powerful than her anyways)
The main difference is the base kit potential between the two. Honestly, I suck badly at Nurse but I was able to juke Nurse as a Purple rank survivor, same with Spirits. You kinda have to play unpredictably against both, and I've seen that survivors kinda don't wanna do it
I didn't leave them out. Stealth isn't counterplay. Saying that stealth is counterplay is the worst possible argument you could have. It would be like if they added a really overpowered gun to a first person shooter and you argued that the counterplay is to just not get shot. Stealth is something you have only a very small amount of control over as a survivor.
Spine chill is slightly effective against spirit but like I said before. DH, UB, DS, Adren is still more reliable. Even if my suggestions were implemented I still think she'd be a very strong killer since she's still able to just phase on top of survivors with 176% move speed.
Also since you're talking about nurse I think before the nerf an optimal nurse, even without addons was lacking counterplay (but not feedback which is one of spirit's problems,) I think the new nurse is fine as she is. Still effective in the hands of a good player and especially so with the right addons, but not quite the 0-2 gen done 4k monster with no addons it used to be. Nurse's are a lot rare now though because good nurse's are a very small percetage of players and most the ones before were only average and being carried by the OP addons.
The problem isn't that the same thing doesn't work against 90% of other killer doesn't work on her. It's that that literally the only things the game gives you to defend yourself against killers doesn't work on her. There might be some merit to the argument that survivors just want the same thing from every killer, but the problem is the game doesn't give anything else to be desired. There are no other mechanics.