Is Spirit really the problem?
For the past 3 days I've been playing Spirit to really see how no sounds is really affecting Spirit. As a dedicated Rin Yamaoka main, turning into Hellen Keller when you use your power is a bit problematic since she has to rely on the most unrelyable killer mechanic.
So my expirement mostly ended with survivor's DCing left and right and it really has me wondering.
Even as of Patch 5.1.0 is Spirit really the problem or are we complaining because she doesn't consistant counterplay such as Ring-Around-The-Pallet?
Comments
There's clear counterplay. People just deny it. So I don't think she's the problem.
That's incorrect, her phase animation always snaps to the first frame of her idle animation, it's not random. There's a very distinct snap to animation that she does, you just have to focus and you will see it.
Like I just stated above, you can. Also no it has not just been one game, I have played multiple games and each time I am able to see the "snap" and tell when she's phasing.
I can tell you that it's been debunked by multiple people. You cant tell she's phasing at all, and your making stuff up. Your never truly gonna know either because of add ons also. They change her speed to enter phase, speed in phase. There's no way you can tell she is phasing without bhvr giving her an official animation
So im right? You just dont like her because you don't get to play how you want to?
Be honest though. People weren't complaining that she was given a vault animation. It's that she originally had an awesome looking unique vault animation, then they removed it, and when they gave it back to her they changed it to the standard vault animation for all short killers and it looks dumb for her.
Lord I wish Otz never made a video about her add-ons. Even her add-ons are FINE they're literally so simple just like The Hag's but you don't see everyone screaming about The Hag's add-ons which have the same downsides as Spirit's. There's no way to nerf Spirit where she WONT become absolutely F tier in all honesty. She already has a 15 second power recovery, can't often use her power as a way to travel the map meaning shes stuck patrolling as a 110 killer more often than not, has no tracking tools, limited turning when leaving phase, and a large tell to others when she IS using her power for distance.
No you are not. I have no problem with Spirit right now BUT I can understand why people dislike her. Ever heard of empathy? No? I can see that.
Thing is, at this point, either map design is a problem because there arent many counters to spirit on any maps(unless you're comp) OR spirit is a problem.
Now, lets take the current map design philosophy and make all maps balanced against a Spirit, where even a lack of communication with your teammates allows you to get 2-3 gens done consistently before someone is dead on hook(even with a spirit tunneling). How many other killers would be absolutely destroyed because the maps are more balanced towards a Spirit?
That makes Spirit the problem, because the other solution ######### over everyone else.
Ofcourse, there is a middle ground, one that I hope reaches the game relatively soon: killer seeds. Just create a base map that's fairly empty, then fill in tiles based on the killer seed. You wouldnt need 20 pallets in a map against a Trapper, but you would need 20 pallets against a Spirit.
Survivors did adapt. They adapted so well that now there are posts where killer players complain of the "hold W meta".
I agree. We can’t nerf a killer just because survivors hate playing against her so much that they dc.
Where has it been debunked? I'm not making anything up, I've used it multiple times to see if she's phasing or not...
Scott Jund, and a pro dbd player debunked it in a video.
Ah I see. Thanks for clarifying.
That's because Hag is an entirely different beast from Spirit, and I personally do dislike some of her Add-Ons. (For instance, I personally really hate aura reading add-ons on any Killer. I don't find it enjoyable to verse or play. And I don't think Rusty Shackles (I believe that's the one which doesn’t tell you when traps are activated?) is really great for the overall game's health either.) However...
Hag is weaker then Spirit. Hag, despite having a lot of potential to be great, can be taken out by teamwork and communication outside of 'Just do gens', requires a lot of set up for value, can get destroyed by larger maps where it's harder to set down a perimeter, her traps can be ignored entirely by crouch walking and flashlights... she has a lot more going against her then Spirit or even Nurse.
Besides, as far as I know, Hag doesn't have add-ons that give (what I understand to be) unintended stat changes. Those are the add-ons I'm referring to. Add-ons, no matter if they're broken to be accidentally weaker or stronger then they should be, should have their text at the very least accurately reflect their effect. (I'd also like to point out that Spirit doesn't need her add-ons to be so strong, because she's already a great Killer with a lot going for her. I don't want her add-ons gutted or anything, but some can definitely be tuned down.)
Plus, she does have potential for tracking and amazing patrolling? (Again, her add-ons are insanely powerful.) You do still have times between phases where you can get aura reading from perks like BBQ and Corrupt, you can see Survivor's moving grass and disturbing crows, you can still make good distance on the map and decent chases, even with average Yellow and Grey add-ons. (Afterall, not every map is Mother's Dwelling, and if you have decent information on where to go next, you can do your phases accordingly.)
My point is, I just don't think Spirit's add-ons should be as strong. They should be tuned down for how strong she is as a Killer- especially considering she doesn't have as heavy as requirements to get value out of compared to killers like Nurse or even Blight. Don't get me wrong, I don't want her nerfed to the ground or anything (Because I do really, really enjoy playing Spirit) but that doesn't mean she can't be dialed back a bit at the very least- whether it be adjusting her add-on's numbers slightly, or giving her some other learning curve for Survivors to have something to work with (Like, seeing grass movement or footsteps).
If you have mastered a Killer, a Survivor should never be able to avoid being downed with relative swiftness. Everybody conveniently forgets that DbD is a 4v1, not a 1v1. Just because a Killer is strong in a 1v1 does not make them strong against a full team. Ghostface, Bubba, Nemesis, and Deathslinger are all very strong in a 1v1 scenario, but are reliably placed in mid/high-mid tier. Nurse is a perfect example of it. Once you've mastered Nurse, there is literally nothing a team can do to escape short of finding the hatch. yet nobody ever complains about her lack of counterplay.
Spirit is fine, she literally can not see survivors during phase and she is a 110 speed killer when not phasing. Survivors just need to get good but since they also think wraith is op and also need nerf I don’t think survivors will get good
What tactics have survivors come up with to outplay Spirit? What tactics has spirit had to change from and to in order to outplay survivors? You've asked a question and given me very little information to work with.
You're right, but Nurse also doesn't have add-ons that are as strong as Spirit's anymore (Man, I remember omegablink Nurse and old Prayer Beads- so nasty.), she's constantly bugged, and she has a power that many consider to be one of the hardest (If not the hardest, depending on where you stand in her versus Blight for difficulty- I personally think Blight is harder, but Nurse is definitely up there.)
If Spirit's power was more difficult to use or her add-ons were not so overbaring, I genuinely would not have an issue with her- as I don't mind some Killers excelling in the 1v1. (Deathslinger is a great example of this- amazing in the 1v1, usually struggles in the 1v4, doesn't have great add-ons but takes a lot of skill to get value out of his power. I might not enjoy facing Deathslinger, but I can at least admit he takes skill to learn, and I know some people really enjoy playing him. I really, really don’t think that Spirit takes as much skill to learn compared to many of her 1v1 counterparts. I don't think she's completely braindead, don't get me wrong (Though, she definitely has a lot of potential to be braindead, and many try to capitalize off of this as much as possible) but she definitely doesn't require as much as other strong Killers- be they overall like Nurse or Blight, or 1v1 focused like Deathslinger- and I don't think that's okay with how powerful she is.)
Idk, I can respect a good Nurse or Deathslinger, and while I don't enjoy facing the second one, I can at least appreciate that they're not easy to play. I think Spirit, currently, just has way too much breathing room for her power to be dummy easy between just base kit and add-ons. Afterall, this is the same Killer that for a long time didn't have a window vault animation, and is notorious for standstill mindgames.
Yea but the reason they Dc is because they dont have fun. It is not the peoples fault, you cant change them - they are what they are. If the customer does not enjoy a certain aspect of the game, its up to the devs to fix the problem (or not and suffer the consequences)
Before you start, i am not defending DCs, i never DC and i hate when it happens but pointing out that its the peoples fault is not constructive nore helpful.
It is helpful because you have to identify where the problem is. And here, the problem is with entitled players wanting easy wins and when they can't get their way they have a fit and d/c. That's not a game design problem.
Sorry no offense but this is getting old.
The most DCd killer i have ever experienced was Legion 1.0 ... who lost all the time. It is not always about the strenght why people are unhappy with a killer.
Dude her add-ons give her such miniscule stat bonuses. I don't think a hardly noticeable 5% speed boost is a problem. And whats wrong with killers having good add-ons? Why do add-ons have to always be gimmicky useless tools which don't do much?
You know, I would appreciate it if you didn't attempt to put words in my mouth, as I never said there's anything inherently wrong with a Killer having good add-ons. (If anything, I'm actually of the opinion that too many Killers have bad add-on combos, like Ghostface.)
The issue with Spirit's add-ons isn't the fact that she has strong add-ons. I love Myers and he has some really strong add-ons.
The issue is that she has many add-ons that flat out do more then intended, and boost an already amazing Killer to insanse levels of power. It's pretty much like Nurse before the add-on rework, where all of her add-ons where insane.
If you have a Killer who is already really strong, they probably don't need insanely strong add-ons to boot. She doesn't have really any fun, weird add-ons- just really, really strong add-ons that only get better and better.
Again though, I would suggest if you haven't watched it, even if you'll ostracise me for it, to take a look at Otz's Spirit Add-On video to see what I mean for her add-ons doing more then intended. He explains it much better then I can.
Yes I've seen it its just bandwagoning because NO ONE cared abt her add-ons UNTIL that video came out. Once again I fail to see how a FIVE percent speed boost to her phase is broken. Nerfing her add-ons won't even 'fix' whatever problem people scream about her because her add-ons weren't ever a problem until a popular youtuber said they were. You're way over hyping her add-ons none of which are insanely strong.
Here is my opinion. She is the only killer that has an issue that favors the killer. This issue is strictly with her addons. Because of the variety of changes they apply to her power that change its speed, survivors have very little counter play against the power itself.
If Spirit had no way to change her power, and it was always the same activation, speed, and duration, survivors could build reliable counterplay. As it stands, her vast array of speed combinations make it nearly impossible to predict, and you have to guess.
The addons need to be dealt with, not the killer.
How so? flashlights cancel her power you can back track over your scratch marks to confuse plus the addition of flashbangs you can throw right infront of her husk and cancel the phase. The problem is when survivors DC every match they get no practice therfore never learn how to play against spirit.
This counterplay some of you keep mentioning… How come I’ve never, ever seen it spelled out? It’s always a referral to some video. If it’s that clear, you should be able to explain it without much trouble.
Also, it’s been 2 years. Surely, surely if there truly was consistent counterplay against Spirit specifically , far more survivors would at the very least attempt such counterplay.
When Spirit got her "rework" or whatever you want to call it, they nerfed evwry single add-on that people asked them too. Some of them were actually busted back then. The Prayer Beads were a huge problem and the one most people complained about. They also neefed the Wakazashi Blade and the Yakuyoke Amulet. Everyone was happy with that. They were happy with it right up until a couple of streamers came out and said "Spirits add-ons are still busted." and since people love to jump on every hate Spirit bandwagon, they went back to crying about them being broken. Her add-ons are fine. They're the only add-ons on the game that do what add-one should do. They enhance her powers without some gimmicky BS or without a major drawback to using them.
Spirit is not the problem. Sprit's addons are the problem.
I am not even talking about the "Mother-daughter Ring", "Prayer Beads" or "Yakuyoke Amulet". Even her green addons are , namely "Dirty Uwabaki" and "Katsumori Talisman", can boost her power to an insane level. With those two, she can travel at 8.0 m/s for 6.5s(+0.5s) allowing her to cover 56 meters - retaining the speed/lunge boost for an extra 0.5s after phasing - while inside of the same timeframe survivors can only cover 28 meters. Even Wraiths with Windstorm cannot match that.
"Mother-daughter ring" can make the Sprit move at 9.8m/s, which is faster than the movement speed of a chainsaw-sprinting Billy at 9.2m/s.
IMO, all Spirit needs is 2 things. Some kind of notification that she is using her power and a brief stun after using her power and NOT getting a hit.
Every killer in the game has an easy tell that lets you know when their power is being used, except spirit. She needs some kind of animation that shows survivors she is using her power. Giving her a Nurse like stun after not getting a hit with her power will be more than enough to punish the misuse of her power. This is all she really needs. She can stay strong and have counter play. Perhaps making it a bit more obvious when she is phasing and passes through grass or something of the like.
Maybe using a flashlight and "blinding" on the apparition she leaves makes her visible to the survivors? Would this one be too much?
If you re-read my post you will see that I said "Even as of Patch 5.1.0" Spirit can't track while phasing and survivor's are still DCing.
Look through the DCing. Notice how Spirit has absolutly no way to track while phasing and she's still getting downs and people are still DCing.
As of this day I'm still getting DC's when I play Spirit. Especially survivor's who run Iron Will. Looking through the Dc's is Spirit the problem when she's doing so well and she can't see or hear, or are survivor's the problem because they refuse to change their playstyle?
DBD is the only game I know that is so horribly unbalanced with most scenarios and people are just like "if you dont like it, you're the problem"
Because most of the time it's true. People complain about the most innocuous things.
this is a forum people will literally complain about everything, but that's not what I'm talking about, there has been a large outcry of dissent towards spirit for almost her entire lifespan as a killer and now that people are absolutely done with her now its the people who wont "adapts" fault and not bhvr for not doing anything. You think she is fun to play hell you can even think she is fun to play against but you have to recognize the reason why so many don't
Probably but Dcing is more of one in my opinion
You can't say they haven't done anything about her in "so long." Relatively speaking she hasn't been in the game that long and it's only been about a year since she and her add-ons received some major nerfs. The only nerf she didn't get at that time was having a phase animation added because the devs intend for her power activation to be a secret.
The argument about Spirit having "no counterplay" is probably the best example of survivors refusing to adapt or change their playstyle based on killer that there is. There are so many videos showing how to counter her. People on the forum describe how to counter her. She's barely in the top 5 killers for kill rate. Freddy, Doctor, Bubba, and Pig all have a higher kill rate than she does and Myers is only half a percentage point from surpassing her. There is absolutely no information to prove that the problem is anything other that survivors playing poorly.
You say that yet even at the highest levels of DBD the only "counter" is just dropping pallets as soon as you get to them. Like the problem isn't that she cant be beat, its that she has no reliable counter play in chase. Death slinger has a similar issue but he has no map pressure so its less of a problem. People don't want to face a killer who you have to just flip a coin on a mind game with almost no info and hope she f*cks up
There's far more counterplay than just dropping pallets early. That isn't always a good thing to do either. And mindgames against her really aren't anymore of a coin flip than any mindgame.
What do you consider to be "reliable" counterplay?
What consistent counterplay does she have that doesnt involve the spirit just messing up?
You can flashlight her to determine if she's fake phasing. You can muddy your scratchmarks by doing 360's. You can double back of she's chasing you in phase. You can block her line of sight at any tall structure. You can reverse drop pallets. You can pre-drop pallets. You can slow vault windows. You can fast vault windows for deception. Iron Will helps counter her tracking in phase. Spine Chill will alert you even if she's in phase. You can play more immersive to avoid being caught. You can run early to get a head start. I'm sure there's more I haven't thought of.
Pretty much all of these can be countered by a spirit with a good headset, and the flashlight thing might work once then she can just turn around and again use her ears. Pre dropping pallets work but I already said that works and if you do that the whole match you will very likely leave the whole map a dead zone before your team finishes the gens unless you are a very coordinated team or got extremely lucky with how many pallets or god windows you get. Spine chill can be worked around if they suspect you have it as its not super difficult to deduce and even then you aren't likely to have it every game so I still wouldn't call that consistent, the new IW does work well against her now that stridor doesn't affect it in anyway but still you can hear footsteps, (normally I think there is a bug that you cant hear footsteps while in phase but I'm not gonna take a bug into account unless bhvr comes out and says its now base kit). Immersion is never a guarantee and it doesn't take a whole lot of skill to put on blendette and again if the killer is running BBQ or any other good tracking perk that's unlikely to work anyways, and I'm not even sure what fast vaulting a window for "deception" means.
@Exxodus21
You have just demonstrated why the problem is with survivors. I gave you a list if counters and you flippantly dismissed them. It's not about getting better or learning counters, it's about demanding nerfs so you don't have to try. A counter is not something that is always 100% effective. It should be as close to 50/50 as possible. Which is funny because most complaints about Spirit are people saying "it's a 50/50 chance of working or not". So exactly balanced then. How is that a problem? Unless what you really want is an overwhelming advantage.
Fast vaulting a window for deception = slow vault from one side and immediately fast vault back so the Spirit phases around the structure, or vice versa. It works with pallets too.
No what I gave you are legit things a spirit would do to get around all your counters, and Ill admit the 50/50 coin flip analogy is a pretty bad one since its pretty much never 50/50 when the spirit has a significant amount more knowledge about the situation then the survivor does when she phases. The reason people use it because when "looping" a spirit if feels completely random whether or not the spirit will hit you or not and if you are playing her correctly you only use small bursts of phase in chase so you will get hit eventually and usually pretty quickly as the better the spirit the less likely they are to make a mistake.
People have tested almost every one of these counters against the highest level survivors in the game and they almost never work, does it work against meh spirits sure hell it'd probably work on me I'm terrible at directional audio.
And you know what you have just demonstrated? a complete lack of understanding in how spirit plays at higher levels you can list off all the "counters" you want and say "you just want to win all the time" but we both know that's not what I'm saying and if you do think that's what I'm saying then boy howdy do I have a shocker for you, I barely play survivor, its like 10% of my play time maybe a little more or less depending on if I'm doing tome challenges or not. I also don't even play spirit the reason I want her nerfed is because by all accounts that I've seen I feel she needs it, her nerf wouldn't even affect me in anyway.
So you see sprit do her phasing animation you run towards her husk and blind it she gets forced out of the phase looking in the opposite direction, use pallets to cancel her phase and escape instead of trying to run pointless loops. Mind games are a huge possibility you can back track over your scratch marks, use perks like Dwm or deception to hide scratch marks well she phases. We all know about ironwill.
Ya there's no consistently reliable one thing to do,but understanding the spirits power then making use of your environment to out play her is basically the counter. I can think of one situation the spirit was phasing toward one of my team so I just blinded the husk an she poped up in the middle of the map trying while close distance letting buddy get away.
She doesn't have a problem. She's one of the few actual Killers in this game. Unpredictable, has areas where there is no counterplay. Still requires a higher level of skill. How a KILLER should be.
The whole "No counterplay" excuse doesn't make sense for a non-competitive game.
Let's not forget strider doesn't work against Iron will now so you have to rely on the most unreliable form of tracking scratch marks
...Did you read my post?
I will kindly reiterate, but I do not mind Killers having strong add-ons.
However, Spirit literally has add-ons that do more then intended, making them broken. To add to that, she is already a Killer with a strong power, who I do not believe needs add-ons this strong to boot. I've been playing since Legion release- so trust me, I remember old Spirit add-ons. I remember being excited when Spirit got a vaulting animation, since she went way too long without one.
However, in that time DBD has changed a lot. Nurse doesn't have insane add-ons anymore, and is brought to a better level, and there's no reason they can't give another round of add-on adjustments to Spirit to make her similar. A strong Killer doesn't need that insane of an add-on combination, especially when she's so easy to learn compared to her competition. And no Killer should have add-ons that straight up don't function properly- whether they be giving unintended buffs or unintended nerfs, like some of Spirit's add-ons or that one Freddy Iri Add-On that was bugged that I'm not sure if they've fixed yet.
That's because the add-ons video brought on an issue that we can actually see a fix to. People have wanted certain changes to Spirit for years, but hadn't gotten it. (How long again did it take her to get a vaulting animation? Because I remember that one took a hot minute, when it should have been present on release.)
Plus... I wasn’t talking about a 5% speed boost. I'm talking about the fact that her duration add-ons decrease her recovery by default due to a bug, in a similar vain to old Omega Blink Nurse. It decreases her recovery more then her recovery add-ons, and it's not listed in the add-on, and that in itself is a problem.
I will put this simply: I do not believe that any Killer should have add-ons that do things to their numbers that buff or nerf any effect that is not listed in the add-on. It's that simple. It's just an issue that is more prevalent with Spirit due to the fact that it's all of her duration add-ons.
Uh, her add-ons work exactly as intended. That's why the devs kept them during her rework. They enhance her power. That's what add-ons do. And her strongest add-on comes with a massive downside. As said above, everyone was happy with her add-ons post rework until a couple of streamers said they were OP. Now people are parroting that because it's popular to hate on Spirit for some reason. Like I said, she received every add-on nerf that people asked for.
All killers should have add-ons that are the same caliber as Spirit's. She and Doctor are the only 2 killers I can think of that most of their add-ons are usable and effective. They aren't gimmicky, they don't have a negative effect just for the sake of it, they enhance their abilities in a meaningful way, and you can choose from a variety of different effects.