Let's talk a little about Spirit
As we all know, Spirit has very little counterplay in chase which makes her unfun to face. You can compare the lack of counterplay Spirit has with Nurse, but what makes Nurse much more balanced is the fact it takes a long time to master her. Spirit doesn't really have that much of a learning curve even though she is almost as strong as Nurse, which is honestly not fair.
I do think that people that make the statement that Spirit takes no skill whatsoever are false because she does take skill. I do think that she takes more skill than some weaker killers like Legion and Wraith. It may be easier to get kills with Spirit because she's a much stronger killer than those two but if we're talking actually getting good with killers' powers, then, in my opinion, Legion and Wraith are easier than Spirit. When you really think about it though, Legion and Wraith being easy to use are not that big of a deal because they're pretty weak killers (although I'm not sure what tier Wraith will end up now that he's about to receive a buff but he still won't be top tier). I think it's totally fine to have simple killers like Legion and Wraith as long as that killer isn't so strong. You look at Spirit being a killer that's so strong but is fairly easy to get good with, so that's obviously a huge issue that needs to be looked at. Freddy has that same issue though I don't think Spirit is nearly as easy as him.
The reason Spirit isn't that hard to get good with isn't that it's easy to track survivors you can't see, because I do think there are some situations where it can be hard to track, especially if a survivor has Iron Will and/or Ace without Stridor. The thing that makes Spirit easy is because she doesn't have any major penalties for misusing her ability and because survivors don't really have anything to react to. Also, standing still getting hits that way is something my dog, Pluto, can do. Think about other chase oriented killers:
- Nurse: she holds her hand out giving you a queue that she's about to blink; she has a couple of seconds of fatigue for misusing her blink with a fairly short power gauge.
- Blight: you can clearly see him running towards you and does a roar when he begins a lethal rush; he has to inject himself for a few seconds for misusing his ability along with a long power gauge depending on how many lethal rushes were used.
- Billy: you can hear his chainsaw and he clearly holds it out; he's stunned for a little bit for bumping into a wall and has a little cooldown for missing along with that stupid overheat mechanic that made no sense why it was added in.
- Oni: he makes a global noise when he begins blood fury and starts to demon dash; he's stunned for a few seconds for missing an attack on top of having to go back to being an M1 killer if his power runs out having to collect enough blood orbs to get his power back.
There are some other killers I didn't mention but you get the picture. Pretty much all I'm saying is Spirit needs to give cues to survivors on what she's doing and also having some kind of way to get punished for miss-phasing. Not necessarily a nerf because just nerfing her with directional audio and post-phase fatigue without anything to compensate for that could make her unbearable to play if it was implemented in a careless way. There needs to be something done though.
Y'all probably know me from many other threads on these forums, and it's very obvious that my favorite killer is Spirit. I really want her to be a balanced killer with a very high skill cap. She just isn't in her current form though, and it's about time the devs listen to the community after over 2 years of Spirit complaints. Whenever I go in with my Meghead ego playing survivor, I'd 100% rather play against Nurse than Spirit. It honestly hurts me having to say this being someone that loves Spirit, but trust me, I'm trying just as hard as most of y'all are in getting her the balance change she needs. Always seeing "nerf Spirit" threads can be tiresome but let's keep them up if it means the devs will one day decide it's time to change her. I know this is BHVR we're talking about so it's hard to know if they will actually listen.
Comments
no 1 meghead right here ready to admit I got outgamerd by a spirit on coldwind
I’m fine with any change to Spirit, as long as they don’t severely butcher her.
Her power doesn’t have major penalties when you play Spirit correctly which is going for short bursts. If you do that on every loop and miss one time, the power comes back in like 3-4 seconds.
I’ve said this before, but gen speeds do need fix it’s not like I’m saying Spirit is the only thing that is in need of a change.
That is exactly how I feel. It is possible to get verbally abused when playing any killer but my gosh it is off the charts when I play Spirit.
That could work.
I literally just played against a Spirit on Coldwind last night lol.
Same
Spirit is anything but fine lol.
Not everyone wants to always play stealthy against a killer with little to no counterplay.
First sentence you wrote was "sPiRiT hAs nO cOuNtErPlAy". I skipped the rest.
Stop beating a dead horse. Maurice doesn't appreciate it.
I meant to say she has no reliable counterplay. There is counterplay but it’s choosing an action and hoping the Spirit ######### up.
To be fair you can't complain if you refuse to use one of the killer counters.
Is it really a counter though? You can play stealthy against any killer so I wouldn't really call it counterplay but rather a specific playstyle for survivors.
It's not bullet proof counter but it is her weakness. You won't out stealth wraith who has power just for finding survivors easily. It's well known that most strong anti loop killers you need to be stealthy against. Cannot say how easy 4ks i got with the nurse just simply because they refused stealth even if they had good map for it like swamps etc.
I don't want to use paper against rock because I main scissors, nerf rock bruh.
No counter should be bullet proof though.
Regardless, stealth is a pretty solid way to deal with them, especially if you're actually putting some thought into it instead of mindlessly repeating 2-3 patterns you've learnt 3 years ago like a lot of spirit haters do with looping.
I think everyone would agree with the lack of counterplay, I had few Idea and think it would be a good place to share them:
first make that the shadow on the ground cast by surrounding light by spirit is visible while in phasing (don'T ask any physical reasoning for that pls ;)
but she will be able to see survivor's shadow cast by environmental light aswell while in phasing.
Also make that she can be kinda reveal by flash lights, but her form when revealed by flashlight would be pitch darkness with white eyes and mouth (just to make her even more spooky).
therefor she would also be able to see flashlight's light while phased, and could be blinded.
thus a counter would be to use the useless widelens flashlight and sweep to reveal her but doing that would also reveal you to her aswell.
Also the current situation of the meta and counterplay of spirit being:
injured survivor are too loud -> Iron Will become meta;
then spirit got hard time to hear meta players -> Stridoe become meta for her;
all that dynamics is reaking fundamental flaws: Grunt of pain are too loud...
SOLUTIONS...
-thus reduce grunt of pain by 50% across the board.
-Rework Iron will into a preks that prevent your from shouting whenever it's from being injured, falling down or anything you won't shout anymore
-Rework Calm Spirit to prevent crows from being disturbed even when running, unless you pass through them.
-then Rework No Mither to reduce grunt of pain by 100% thus if you wanna be silent while injured you would have to be injured the whole game.
Then you gonna have 2 meta and 1 meme perks removed, and playing against or with Spirit will be less perks based for your success.