What Does NOED Achieve: An Experiment (Long Post)
As I've been tremendously bored and kind of sick recently, I decided to impose a bit of a challenge on myself while playing DBD, to keep exploring the notoriously and, in my opinion, undeservedly reviled killer perk NOED. We've all heard the arguments for why it's OP and/or unfair, so do they bear out in practice?
For this experiment, I played two killers with the same build following the same general rules. It would've been three, but I played one match of Deathslinger (who I had picked as the third) and was reminded that boy, I've never liked playing Deathslinger.
The two killers I chose were picked because they are relatively weak M1 killers; Clown and Sadako. The build I used for them must follow two rules: No other endgame perks, and only one passive slowdown perk. Those rules were in place for the same reason: a full endgame build or three slowdowns and NOED wouldn't prove anything about NOED, it'd just prove those builds are strong, which... yeah. For both killers, I elected to use NOED/Lethal Pursuer/Deadlock/Franklin's Demise. In one Sadako match, I swapped Franklin's out for Save The Best For Last, because no items were in the lobby (though they would switch to some at the last second, lol).
Similarly, I used brown addons on both; the throw cooldown addon and confetti addon for Clown, and the brown TV cooldown addon and brown intermittent visibility while demanifested addon for Sadako. The logic behind these is the same; picking Pinky Finger or VHS Tape would only prove that those addons are strong, the addons needed to be of minor impact without playing completely addonless because nobody does that and it proves nothing.
Finally, camping and tunnelling were to be approached neutrally; don't go out of my way to, but if a recently unhooked survivor runs in front of me or a teammate tries looping me around a hook, I wouldn't go out of my way to avoid it either. This was largely irrelevant as those opportunities only occurred once or twice, but still, worth mentioning. Under these rules, I played five matches each, the results given below:
Clown:
Match 1: Crotus Prenn, 2k. NOED did activate, but achieved one down and then was cleansed; one kill happened before it activated, the other after it was cleansed. Arguably NOED did nothing, though it did give me one down so technically it provided some value.
Match 2: Garden of Joy, 4k. NOED did not activate. This game was, uh... probably a matchmaking error, the survivors were kind of lemmings.
Match 3: Haddonfield, 3k. NOED technically activated, but only after I closed hatch, and the last survivor got out the gates anyway.
Match 4: MacMillan (I forget which, an offering was played also), 2k. NOED activated but was cleansed before achieving a down-- one kill happened before, the other after.
Match 5: Garden of Joy, 0k. NOED activated, and was cleansed after a single down. This was a textbook bad match with only two hooks before endgame, and NOED unsurprisingly did not swing it around since survivors did not play into it.
Sadako:
Match 1: Fractured Cowshed, 4k. NOED did not activate. This one was also a massacre, though it wasn't quite as extreme as the other match; just some bad decisions from the survivors that snowballed.
Match 2: Yamaoka (I forget which), 2k. NOED did activate, and was more useful than normal; three total downs before it was cleansed, one of which was on the survivor to die after it was activated.
Match 3: Grim Pantry, 3k. NOED activated, and survivors continued to try bodyblocking and sabotaging hooks after it was revealed, for some reason. It would've been a 4k if not for an Unbreakable.
Match 4: Lery's, 3k, NOED activated and achieved three downs, two of which were kills- though the third was on an already injured survivor, so I think that doesn't count. This was, regardless, the most useful that NOED was without survivors being complete lemmings, and even then they made some silly decisions and the two kills were both already on death hook.
Match 5: Coal Tower (offering), 3k. NOED activated but only downed an already injured survivor. This was also the match where I swapped from Franklin's to STBFL, if it's relevant. Cocky survivors gave me an early snowball here; love to see flashlights.
--
My conclusion is twofold. The first arm is that NOED is truly overrated- it consistently only gets one down, and requires survivors to make stupid decisions playing into it for it to do anything more than that. The second is that people really need to acknowledge that the most powerful counter to NOED is just to cleanse it, because almost every match where that was attempted by the survivors ended with the perk providing almost no value; there was only one match where I was able to interrupt someone in their attempt.
After this, I'm probably not gonna use NOED all that much again outside of endgame builds. It's really just not very good, and doesn't warrant the reputation it has for somehow carrying bad killers when they're curbstomped; matches during this experiment where I had my ass handed to me weren't turned around at all, only close matches swung in my favour because of a few impactful downs. I had to do a lot of work getting hook states out of the way before endgame if I wanted NOED to be all that useful for me, and in terms of balance, that's not only fine, it's actively good.
TL;DR, NOED's fine.
Comments
I play mostly survivors, to my POV, NOED is dirty if Killer tunnel 1 out of the game fast with 3 slowdown, I see that NOED is nothing but get every possible kill (hopeless matches)
However, Killers that play fair and use NOED, I see that NOED is like the last challenge to pass, hunt NOED and secure hooked survivor. There were times we all die in the end because of Blood warden. But those are fun match (fail hope matches)
I use NOED, BW, Rancor, RememberMe/No way out as Trapper. Survivors usually attempt to do my final challenge I give for them because they still have many hooks left to dare going back for teammates. The game is super interactive of heal / try to unhook / hunt for Noed with limited time....that no related to Gen.
Remember that NOED also gives haste, so even downs on injured survivors benefit from it.
This is true, but if all NOED did was provide a speed boost, the only people complaining about it would be killers, because it would be awful.
I do want to point out that the noed complaints have drastically decreased after the adding of the aura reading
The most powerfull counter to noed to just cleanse it was made a lot easier with that change
To be fair, when did you actually do these? Because NOED has been nerfed into the ground lately due to its reputation as unfair, so now its like "HERE I AM HEY SURVIVORS I'M OVER HERE" and very easy to cleanse as you noticed. The days of getting 4 downs while the survivors try to find the NOED totem are over, as you saw you're lucky to get 1 down before they cleanse it.
Just over the past few days, though I've used NOED intermittently on and off since I started playing a few years ago. In my experience, it's always been good for one or two downs on average, and then survivors either cleanse or leave. I have to say that the nerf it received didn't really change much in my experience, though I will acknowledge that I hardly used the perk every match before so perhaps that's affecting my opinion.