My thoughts on the upcoming Pyramid Head changes, as a PH main.
This change is going to separate the boys from the men. The virgins from the chads. The society-dwellers from the gamers. The people who make Pyramid Head one of the holy trinity of unfun Killers from the people who make Pyramid Head intensely intimidating and exhilarating to be chased by.
In other words: It’s a ranged attack that goes through walls. Just because it’s hard to use doesn’t mean it’s bad. I’m happy that zone-happy PH players are finally given incentive to stop playing in such a boring, streamlined way and actually learn the intricacies of properly aiming, predicting, and hitting Punishment shots.
This change can’t come soon enough.
Comments
The fact you compared PH,Spirit and Freddy/Deathslinger to the holy trinity makes me die laughing. First good joke In a while
Freddy: Father
Deathslinger: Son
Pyramid Head: The holy
Spirit: Spirit
It's all going to depend on the numbers, in particular the cooldown for punishment for the damned. I have a few ideas on what the changes might cause but until we get the definite numbers it's only theory from my end.
Currently the cooldown for Punishment of the Damned is 2.75 seconds. If the cooldown is left above 2 seconds then the current playstyle for PH won't change all that much. You'd still use Punishment of the Damned at animation locks because the cooldown isn't short enough to justify using it more liberally. However if the cooldown gets changed to under 2 seconds then it could lead into a playstyle change where you can be very aggressive with your Punishment of the Damned and could lead into it being very spammable. The only other downside using it is that it costs 20% of your rites of judgement but it's only really a downside if you wanna put down trails. If you wanna completely forget about using trails you could easily just use punishment of the damned to spam around loops. If you want your gameplay against him to be just him using his Punishment of the Damned around a loop every 2 seconds that's fine but in terms of excitement I don't really see that scenario terribly exciting compared to what we currently have now.
Also I think that the cooldown changes doesn't really address why Pyramid Head uses Rites of Judgement as a zoning tool and it's mostly because Punishment of the Damned kinda sucks? The attack is very telegraphed, PH dragging his knife along the ground with the associated noise it makes as well as him flicking it up from the ground, having the massive red outline appear in front of him and then the attack travelling along a wave. Because of the nature of how attack travels trying to get long range hits with it becomes harder the farther the projectile travels outwards because it gives survivors even more time ontop to dodge it after anticipating the attack. Maybe a good change for his Punishment of the Damned is instead of it going through walls it does the whole attack in the whole area now, no more wave projectiles.
Again depending on the numbers I don't really see how the current changes make PH any more skillful then he currently is. My prediction is that it'll either lead into two scenarios: One scenario that prompts the spamming of Punishment of the Damned around loops until you eventually down the survivor or cooldown on Punishment of the damned isn't worth it and PH just simply has less oppurntunities use his ability. Like I said we'll just have to wait until the numbers come out, I could be wrong, I'll probably be wrong, a lot of people are going to say that I'm wrong but as someone who really, really, really likes Pyramid Head I feel like I got a personal stake in this so I just want to try and drive my point home as much as possible.
EDIT: I completely forgot about the fact that aiming Punishment of the Damned is kinda crummy too given that you can't flick with it, the turn rate on rites of judgement is pretty horrible and when the knife is in the ground you're only locked to moving forwards and strafing is out of the question which reinforced the notion of only using your ability on animation locks.
You not remember the tournament games where everyone missed the POTD attack and the hosts start saying its not worth using just bait into the M1? Yeah I’m sure people that practised PH religiously intending to win $10,000 dont know how to use his power properly.
Also why is it always the killers that need skill? Meanwhile as survivor I just can tap e for distance into a strong window then run around it 3 times wasting a minute of the killers time while he cant do anything about it? Why can they just sprint burst to the nearest mega loop? Why can they burn an ormond offering and just run from safe pallet to safe pallet to safe pallet to safe pallet? Or why can they run to spots like Badham school and waste of minute of time by just holding W and god pallets?
Both sides should require more skill but its always killers that expected to put in all the skill while survivors are asked to use little to none.
Honestly yeah I agree 100%, but at the same time we'll have to wait and see. If they make it very spammable now it'll just change it from being zoned at every loop to having to dodge POTD spam every 2 seconds which doesn't exactly sound thrilling.
I’m gonna try to break down your argument into a couple of primary points.
•Using Punishment of the Damned isn’t worth the risk.
I disagree immensely there. Punishment of the Damn will allow you to get all kinds of hits that any other Killer couldn’t even dream of. This is the first Killer since Nurse to have any kind of wall-penetrating damage ability, and the the value to be reaped from that is extreme. If you miss, yeah that sucks, but if you don’t, you get a hit at range through walls. It ignores pallets, it ignores debris, it ignores loops—it ignores everything as long as it’s in range. The value there is huge.
•People zone because Punishment of the Damned itself is just bad and easy to avoid.
Regarding the zoning part, this is false. The reason people zone is because when that sword is in the ground, Pyramid Head has incredibly easy access to both POTD and his melee. It takes very little time to “un-rev” the shot, and you move at 110 speed while channeling the ability. This means it is very easy to put the Survivor in a situation where no matter what they do, they get hit: They either run the loop normally and get shot by running under a pallet/choke point with limited strafing or animation-locking themselves, or they try to juke and get melee’d.
That’s why I also disagree with your belief that these changes won’t have an impact on Pyramid Head’s skill requirement: This zoning method of chasing is extremely easy to do, and takes much less skill than learning to effectively use POTD itself as an anti-loop tool, and the returns you get out of it are immense—against a Pyramid Head who knows how to zone, there are a lot of loops that have absolutely no counterplay; no matter what the Survivor does, they’ll get hit. Forcing PH players to rely less on these minimum-counterplay situations and actually practice using Punishment of the Damned for what it was obviously meant to be used for: a damaging shockwave to cancel loops using its own range and wall hacks.
Look, I don’t even think zoning needs to be removed entirely. I just think if you’re going to put your sword in the ground without actually intending to shoot it, it should be an actual mindgame. You should need to trick the Survivor into thinking you’re going for it when in reality you’re faking. Right now I just think it’s way too easy to hold M2 and then put the Survivor in a situation where you can just easily and effectively react to what they’re going to do without much thought.
As for the difficulty of POTD making it bad: I can understand where you’re coming from with this. The telegraphing is huge, and the aiming is clunky. I can understand why that might make someone feel like it’s too easy to dodge POTD. And to an extent, I agree. But try this: The Survivor may be able to react to a PH winding up the attack and made predictions accordingly, but they cannot react to the attack itself until you finally use it.
This may sound odd, but use the telegraphing to your advantage: The Survivor will try to move in a certain way to make your attack miss. Watch how they react to your telegraph, and try to figure out how they move. The attack is easy to avoid if you shoot at where they are. But even with all that telegraphing, it’s still entirely possible to shoot not where they are, but where they’re going to be. Even with that attack indicator, the actual shockwave appears almost immediately after the indicator appears, and in the majority of scenarios, the Survivors won’t have the time to react to the AoE highlighter.
That’s how Nurse and Huntress operate, is it not? Their telegraphing is insanely obvious, and Huntress has a huge rev. But despite these obvious tells, people who are experienced with these Killers can still land their shots accurately and consistently. Why? Because they predicted how the Survivor would react to their telegraph and reacted to that prediction accordingly. It’s the same thing with Pyramid Head, only harder. But as I said in my original post, just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s bad.
I know I’ve said it a million times already, but I feel the need to reiterate. Pyramid Head is a 115 Killer with a ranged attack that can go through walls. I feel like something that powerful should be difficult to use.
•A PH who constantly tries to use POTD isn’t going to be any more fun than a zoner.
I think this is objectively false. A PH who constantly tries to hit you with POTD will be constantly requiring you to move unpredictably, figure out where and when he’s going to shoot, how to bait the shot out, how to trick him into faking it—and sometimes this all takes place with an LoS blocker between the two of you. I think that’s infinitely more engaging than “Cool, his sword is in the ground, guess I either dodge the shot and he just M1’s or I don’t dodge and he shoots me.”
•Punishment of the Damned is too hard to aim.
Now I actually agree with this. I think the turning while having your sword in the ground is too slow, and the lack of a flick is cumbersome. But with that said, I don’t think aiming it is impossible. There are things you can do to improve your aiming capabilities.
-One thing that helps me a lot is what I call a “pre-flick.” Since you can’t flick while actually aiming, I tend to aim it one way as I’m getting my sword ready and then flicking back to the Survivor right before the lowered sensitivity kicks in. If you time it right, the Survivor won’t have enough time to react to the way your character turns, and they’ll step into the attack. Even if you struggle to time it right, it’s still incredibly useful when there is LoS blockage between the two of you, since the Survivor is completely incapable of reacting to your character model then.
-Another thing of note is that when the ability is ready to use, it doesn’t just drop from normal sensitivity to tank controls instantly. The sensitivity has this kind of “ramp-down” where it quickly but gradually moves from normal sens to aiming sens. This means you actually can do a kind of halfway-decent flick at the start of the aim, kind of like Billy’s saw. It’s mostly good for turning around tight corners rather than explicit aiming, but it’s still a very useful tool.
Above all else, though, I emphasize prediction over aiming. It’s not a good idea to place the shot while your steering is slow and flickless. Instead, you need to figure out how the Survivor will move when you telegraph your attack, and you need to figure out where to aim then. Put simply, you have to know where to aim your shot before you even aim it.
In summary: I think POTD is a lot deadlier than people give it credit for. The main issue is that a lot of people don’t really get it. I know it sounds like I’m saying “just predict lol” which... well, yes and no. I do think that learning how to predict Survivor movements and lead your shots as PH is incredibly difficult—one of the hardest things you can learn as Killer, in all honesty—and I understand that it can be very slow and frustrating. I feel like most people only think POTD sucks because they haven’t quite gotten it themselves, and the lack of results causes them to reach an early conclusion. And I get that. I had that problem many, many times trying to figure out how to effectively land shots with it. I had that same problem with Nurse and even Oni. But on the other hand, I do feel like people are trying to use POTD like it’s some kind of crack shot ability, like Deathslinger or something. It’s not. POTD is very much a prediction tool, and it should be used like one. It is a very difficult prediction tool, but even in its current state, I 100% think that the sweat and tears are worth it. It’s a misunderstood ability, but when someone understands it, POTD dominates chases.
I actually know a few people who are able to consistently land shots outside of zoning and animation-lock, including myself. But none of us have recorded ourselves demonstrating how powerful POTD can be—the only public footage any of us have is one friend’s match from a few months ago when he was still learning the Killer. But if you ask for proof for my admittedly bold claims, I can see about getting back to you.
I’m gonna have to go out on a limb here and say, yeah, those PH tourney guys weren’t playing him very well. Hell, MOST of the people in those tourneys were playing really poorly. I don’t think they practiced as much as you say they did. You also have to take into account that these are tournaments with bizarre out-of-game rules, and that could have drastically affected the way people play—meaning the PH players probably did intend to zone but became overly ambitious with an ability they didn’t understand very well, or the Survivors looped in a weird way that they weren’t expecting.
(If a random on the Internet like me can hit shots just fine, why can’t they?)
I agree. I have almost 1000 cages and I knew this change was coming and fully embrace it. Since the announcement I played an extremely nerfed PH in matches, shot almost only PoTD shots and waited almost two seconds before using a basic attack if i had to cancel Rites. Depending on the numbers, PH can be a high tier killer if mastered. Just aim and mind game 5heads
I think I played against only 1 good Pyramid Head so far who tried to hit blind ranged Shots and hit them most of the time. He was decent at everything. Every other Pyramid Head plays with the exact same boring "style".