"We like the way NOED encourages Survivors to pre-emptively cleanse Totems"
It doesn't. You may want to pre-emptively cleanse a godspawn totem if you come across it, but you definitely don't want to pre-emptively cleanse anything else unless you have strong indicators that NOED is in play.
Let me just lay the situations out...
Situation A: 5 totems cleansed, killer has NOED = NOED disabled, killer loses one perk. Does also mean a loss of 70 seconds of work, so it still worked as a slowdown.
Situation B: 5 totems cleansed, killer does not have NOED = Survivors wasted 70 seconds for no gain, making it work as slowdown without taking up a perk slot.
Situation C: 1-4 totems cleansed, killer does have NOED = NOED activates in full force, survivors wasted 14-56 seconds for no gain. Survivors still have to hunt down NOED totem in post-game.
Situation D: 1-4 totems cleansed, killer does not have NOED = Survivors wasted 14-56 seconds for no gain.
Situation E: 0 totems cleansed, killer has NOED = NOED activates full force, survivors have to hunt down NOED totem in post-game, same as situation C. however this time they did not waste 14-56 seconds.
Situation F: 0 totems cleansed, killer has NOED = No time wasted, no NOED in play.
Legitimately, pre-emptively cleansing totems is the wrong move in 90% of cases. I've broken more NOEDs by leaving totems up than I have by taking them down. The way NOED is currently constructed, it just makes it a mistake to try and cleanse totems, unless the killer is practically guaranteed to have NOED.
It is a risky gamble with a 14 seconds time investment to cleanse a non-hex totem. You are more likely to lose out than to gain.
This is not a comment on NOED balance-wise, but an explanation of something the devs seem to misunderstand.
Comments
Not the response I was expecting or even consider relevant but sure. You do you.
I'll be honest, Ive rarely ever use noed, maybe the odd time I prestige and I have nothing better. This change doesnt really bother me. Although I would make a suggestion to all hex perks in general this isnt the place for it.
It would be interesting to know how many kills are due to NOED.
I think it increases average kill rates by an entire kill.
I think totems are meant to be a slowdown, aka second objective.
I personally would have rather they gut/change what the perk does. Even making it not a Hex but 4% Haste similar to Hope now for survivors would be solid for endgame builds. You could give it other effects that aren't exposed if 4% haste wasn't sufficient. It also would not notify them that they have it on a hit because killers aren't notified of hope you simply have to 'know' they have it.
Still it's a significant improvement in it's counterplay. Often the best counter to NoED as it stands is to simply leave someone to die because you can't interact with a killer who can down with basic attacks. Now finding the totem is far more realistic. If someone gets hooked near the totem though, well... that's unfortunate :D. As I said I'd rather they gut the exposed part altogether but this at least sounds better then the change Dead Hard got, another perk I really wanted nuked from orbit.
Yes. This was also the sentence I probably disliked the most in the entire Update. It just shows that the Devs have no idea about NOED. But then again, one of their Lead Designers enjoy running it, so it was probably hard to get even this small Nerf.
Cleansing useless Dull Totems was always a bad counter to NOED. Now with 90 seconds on a Gen, more base regression (with kicking away 2,5% of the Gen immediatly), in theory shorter chases and STILL with a Slowdown-Meta (just different Perks now), you will have even less time to look and cleanse Totems. And because of this, if you decide to hunt Totems instead of doing Gens, you might not even make it to Endgame in the first place.
OhTofu once made a good example - lets say there is a Survivor Perk which let Survivors move at 110% Speed once all Gens are done. It can be countered by going to the Basement and opening each locker 2 times. So you can prevent it from activating by wasting a bit of time. And yet, nobody would want something like that, because it is a stupid counter to a way too strong Perk. And cleansing Dulls for NOED is the same.
I am still a big fan of the idea to make it Token-based. Remove the Hex-Status. For each Hook the Killer gets 0,5% Movement Speed once Gates are powered, for 8 Hooks before 5 Gens are done they get the Insta-Down on top. This would make it that a Killer who did well will receive a big Buff in Endgame. And a Killer who did poorly will not get their 1K or 2K just because a Totem was standing around somewhere.
The thing is, while in a lot of matches it may be much easier to find and cleanse the totem, being able to see where it is isn't going to matter if I can't cleanse it because it's next to the hook the killer is camping. In the dev post they said they wanted to encourage survivors to find the totem and attempt the last second save, but in this fairly common scenario that will still be completely impossible regardless of whether or not I can see it.
NOED should just be reworked entirely or should have minimum requirements to activate.
Forgot one - Survivors cleanse totems, killer does not have NOED but does have Pentimento. Survivors now have to recleanse totems.
One word for all of you: Counterforce. Pop one totem, and you can chain all of them within two minutes. Best part is you nearly max out boldness without even encountering the Killer
That would depend on the map, wouldn't it? Heck, even on the most generous maps, I doubt you'd be able to pop them all within 2 minutes, and that's even assuming the killer is never encountering you once after your quadruple cross-country trek. And that's a perk slot and a bunch of time investment to counter a perk the killer might not even have.
It doesn't seem noed makes survivors "pre-emptively cleanse totems" enough, at least not in my experience. Noed was showing up for me so often that I actually ran totem cleansing builds for awhile just to prevent noed. I stopped running the builds after a few weeks because even with a full build for totems I was either not finding and cleansing them in time or my team was being taken out while I was on totem duty and those generators don't do themselves. In the time I've played this game I have noticed that survivors more often than not ignore totems unless its a hex totem. I saw more interaction with totems when boons were introduced but even still dull totems were left alone. I think most survivors see them as a distraction from the main goal and hope that the killer doesn't have noed. I can see why they feel noed encourages survivors to cleanse totems during the match, but that doesn't mean that encouragement is going to be fruitful. I see every dull totem as a noed totem. I don't always get to cleanse them because it all depends on the situation of the match. The encouragement factor of noed only really works out if all survivors are encouraged to cleanse them. If only 1 survivor is focused on totems then the chance that all totems will be cleansed by the time noed would activate is much smaller. Maybe if there was more incentive to cleanse dull totems than just BPs or certain perk powers. You would think there is already enough incentive to do them, but in my experience I see them mostly ignored.
2 minutes is one gen worth of progress, in SWF is not that bad because they dont have the sheer loss of eficiency during unhooks but in Solo is still not worth it for a perk that may or may not appear and even if it appears you can dodge it by playing extremely defensive when there is one generator left, then Exit Gates and then goodbye, whoever gets caught will have to take one hit for the team, thats the way of Solo Queue around NOED.
The only advantage Solo has over SWF with NOED is if it activates and you are not the one who gets downed you can summarize your actions in 3 seconds
https://youtu.be/pJTGAtLH7HwIt's weird these heavy nerfs for perks like self care but NOED is fine lol, and also let's buff knockout just to slug in solo Q, I don't understand what they're doing
They are sending Solo to the grinder to appease the Killers who cant beat SWF in an attempt of having them happy, its the only reason I can think.
Lol yeah I guess but if they want higher kill rates atleast do it in a fun way, NOED is disgusting.
They only nerf a perk if it's popular and "meta" even if it's fun to use and don't need a nerf, but the most toxic perks it's cool if not too many players use it... it's even worse because this perk mostly stomp noobs and solo Q players
the way you're wording it seems like a 1v1 situation
It does not.
With the new design for NOED, there will now be no incentive to preemptively cleanse totems because survivors will be able to find it almost immediately once it activates. “We like the way NOED encourages preemptively cleansing totems, so now we’re going to remove that incentive which was already weak to begin with”. Another example of puzzling logic by BHVR here