Someone break down for me why UW is OverPowered
The only argument I've ever heard for this perk is "You're stupid if you don't know why" or "Because everyones running it" not a single soul has given me an actual explanation as to what makes it too strong.
Completely ignoring the blindness it applies since it's such a useless affliction in most cases (you could remove it and not a single killer would care) all it does is allow you to track people and in most cases you'll either go for the first person who screams or the last one (if you plan to get value on everyone) which is something other perks do.
My personal take on why the perk is so popular is because it's a tracking perk that isn't gated by stupid restrictions/limitations. Most perks that show auras have limitations such as only working near lockers or only on far away targets etc. UW is a perk you choose when you activate and what area it works in making it reliable which is something a lot of tracking perks are missing and need desperately.
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If UW kept causing survivors to scream while they remain in the killer's TR, then it would be a 30 second CD.
But as it stands, UW triggers each survivor to scream once during that 30 second period and since the killer can't use the perk again until both the 30 second duration and 30 second CD occurs, the perk is effectively a 60 second CD for the killer.
It's just basic math of 30 + 30.
So according to Huxy UW has a 45-50 second cooldown and according to Crowman it's a 60 second cooldown and the perk description says 30 second.
Cooldowns are subjective now? Everybody got their own cooldown? Anybody else who would like to share their personal cooldown?
Forums never stop amazing me.😂
Enjoy your personal cooldown.👍
It's a pay-to-win perk. What more is there to say?
True, but he also doesnt complain about bbq, or darkness reveals, or nowhere to hide, does he? Might it be because all of those are at a different problem level than ultimate weapon?
For me i have several problems with ultimate weapon:
Also, a lot of killers dont like things that come for free (look into every made-for-this-thread), so why change the standard here?
If everyone screams as soon as you open the locker, because they're all already within your terror radius, Ultimate Weapon unambiguously has a cooldown of sixty seconds. The minimum time you have to wait before you can use it again includes both the active duration, as it cannot be activated again during that period, and the cooldown afterwards.
Ultimate Weapon has a variable cooldown that is at least thirty seconds, but can be longer, depending on how early the survivors scream. This is kind of immaterial when it comes to how strong the perk is, but it is just how the perk works. I'm not sure why you're contesting this when it's pretty obvious.
Opening a locker doesn't help the killer defend gens and scream notifications are the weakest form of information. Not to mention that survivors know when there location has been revealed and can use that information to sneak away. It's not like the killer sees which direction you are moving in.
UW was far more of a problem when it was released, because it was ignoring Calm Spirit and Lockers. Now that those have been fixed, UW has seen a drop in use because it's no longer simply better than other information perks and opening a locker can often be going a bit out of the way and those seconds can be the difference in stopping a gen from getting done or it getting done.
How does it activate on hook?
Little extra sub-point to the 'no counters' thing: The fact that it specifically circumvents the designated anti-info perk is a kick in the shins for survivors.
And to the blindness thing: This is a kick in the shin to solos specifically. Blindness is much less impactful to people on comms but really strong against solos. This is a kick in the shins for a large number of non-meta perks and theoretically also a great perk for slugging, which means it's bad for the game.
EDIT: Also, forgot to mention that UW making you scream can trip you up in more ways than just triggering DMS. It can make you fail skillchecks or reset progress on interactions like cleansing a hex, solving Pinhead's box, or clearing a Jigsaw trap.
But that variable factor doesn't mean someone can come up with a random number like 45/50/60 and claim that's the cooldown and it doesn't mean they're entitled to call me "wrong" if I don't agree with that random number... I've only said UW's cooldown is 30 seconds which even by definition, is correct.
You're not wrong, but having to sit in a locker for 30s to avoid it, or run Calm Spirit with it's debuff is hardly a good bench mark for "counterplay".
Considering 30s is half the idle timer to the intiial build up of crows (60s), and 2 ticks of crow build up after the first (15s), seems a bit of a stretch to call this a counter. Especially when after leaving said locker, I have 30s before I can be forced to do it again.
Just had a thought though... if Calm Spirit only got its debuff for a set time after it successfully blocks a scream... that would be a great improvement for the perk.
Edit: Apparently I need a Calm Mind swear jar... Pokemon has ruined my brain when referring to Calm Spirit xD
A scream is just a one time ping of your current location. If you move away, the killer has no idea where you could have gone. Not to mention that the scream bubble can even block information from the killer.
I specifically mentioned why the variable cooldown is in line with that definition you posted.
The minimum time you have to wait between uses is somewhere between thirty and sixty seconds, as per that definition in your post.
That's clearly not what I'm talking about though?! If someone asks me what the cooldown of UW is I'm going to answer "30 seconds". I'm not going to go down a rabbit hole like you.
Played Killer myself with it man, as I've said before... Killers aren't stupid.
Even accounting for the best case scenatio of LoS, I would guesstimate that in most scenarios a 32m TR killer has to move maybe 20m or so before they have LoS on you around walls and alike. Lets highball it at 24m, as 8m is pretty uniformly found in most scenarios.
That takes less than 6 seconds to reach for the killer. Scratch marks last for 10, and thats if the killer guessed completely the wrong way. If you see no scratch marks, you don't have to look far, especially if people are wounded. If you do see scratch marks, you're also as good as found, and this is where the fast Killers really shine.
Let's not pretend that there is some kinda 50/50 here of killers not finding people with UW, any killer with eyes and half a brain will almost always find their target with UW, and at the least, push them off of whatever they were doing.
Survivors not being good at hiding doesn't change that scream notifications are far weaker than auras for tracking.
You were saying the cooldown is 45-50 seconds in your earlier comment and now you're claiming the cooldown is 60 seconds...
I'm guessing we're just going to disagree on this one, thanks for the discussion!
Meta has absolutely nothing to do with it being pay-to-win. Pay-to-win means you are paying real money to have an advantage. UW is a huge advantage, especially with how it combos with perks already mentioned in this thread. Go ahead, and look up any definition of pay-to-win. Lmk when you find one that has anything to do with meta. 🤣😂☠️.
Not being good at hiding!?!? XD
I'm sorry man, but given that if you see no scratch marks after a 5s walk, you KNOW the survivor is near. There's something wrong with the seeker in this case if he can't find the survivor when moving at 3 times their walking speed.
Let's also not forget that you can use UW to hunt down people who are already wounded, which tbh, you should be doing... and your whimpers kill any chance of you hiding point blank...
Come on dude, you're better than that.
Locker is NO counterplay, since the effect lingers, so you will scream as soon as you get out of locker and are in TR.
It's not that UW is just little effort, it's little effort for THREE effects - tracking, interruption & blindness - with the frist two being countered only by calm spirit, and latter totally uncounterable. WoO is also little effort, but you get only one effect (auras), and it can be countered by various perk or addons causing blindness.
Nowhere to hide is at least noticeable, bc you should recognize when the killer kicks a gen and beelines to you. UW triggers the instance you hear a TR without any warning. You cannot prepare for it.
WoO is not the only source of auras, you know. Esp. in soloQ you need auras to know what you random mates are doing. and UW totally shuts that off. Kindred does not work, bond does not work, hook auras do not work. With UW you can practically disable auras for the majority of a game, similar to a well hidden Third Seal Hex. And this is devastating for soloQ!
What UW needs, imo:
Either remove blindness alltogether, then it can keep its 30 lingering effect, or remove the lingering effect to 5 seconds, so you can ACTUALLY counter it by preemptively jumping into a locker. Near unlimited, unconditional blindness is a detriment to solo Q and should not be a thing!
Yes. Hiding in a way that isn't obvious to the killer is in fact a skill not many survivors use. UW is only a single location ping, it's not an aura that follows the survivor for a few seconds.
And at the end of the day, the killer knowing your general location does not immediately put them in chase with you nor does it immediately win them a chase.
That is a different discussion. You think it's problematic, I think it could use one change and would be completely fine (though I think problematic isn't the best word to describe it).
But then, why did you make the argument to nerf it for the existence of Nurse and Blight? Nerfing a perk is one thing, but when you take Nurse and Blight as a standard for what perks are acceptable, then that becomes an issue. Which is what I tried to explain. Nerfing UW doesn't really improve the whole Nurse / Blight situation, does it? They still remain just as broken as before.
So, I am less against nerfing UW for the sake of nerfing an overpowered perk (though, I do not agree with it) but I am against the idea of nerfing perks because they are overpowered on 2 killers. Because that would afford them to nerf half the perks available to killers.
My suggestion for UW would be to either not make it trigger DMS (I don't like that, for the idea of high mobility killers running across the map and randomly blocking gens) or to make it activate when you open the locker and let the cooldown begin immediately (I'd prefer that one). In my opinion that would make UW still a good perk but some of the supposed main issues would be gone.
🤣😂 Which one are you saying is p2w, i'm curious, STBFL? OoO? DS? This is literally one of, if not the strongest info/blind perk released. Even at their strongest, none of those perks got the insane value like UW. I can scratch my butt all game and have it carry me on any killer I play. No need to 🧢, it's over; the secret is out.
😂. Okay Huxy, let's get you to bed.
Were you not around for old DS or something? Hell, I wasn't around for old STBFL and I know how busted it was.
At their release DS, OoO and now UW are/were equaly broken. They are all pay to win. Lets agree on that.
I am not saying UW is not pay it win, it definitly is, BUT the original DS was also overpowered. You always had it no matter if you were hooked or not. Not to mention a 5 second stun. And OoO was also overpowered. Survivor hat the control it if they want to get seen or not. At loops it was like wallhacking.
45 seconds would give it a 1 minute 15 second cooldown. People keep forgetting that the cooldown is already 1 minute. Because you use it, then it "lasts" for 30 seconds, but then AFTER the 30 second duration is up THEN the cooldown ticks.
It's nothing to do with survivors being 'bad at hiding'. Once UW triggers, you have a very limited time to find a hiding spot, and the killer will either know where you've gone if you try to run (Scratch marks) or know that you're hiding somewhere nearby. (If there's no scratch marks)
Scratch marks, including their absence, do a ton of heavy lifting here.
At tracking survivors? No, not at all. Its definitly the strongest right now.
I was and at its core on release, it was a strong offensive perk, but at least that led to the wise decision somewhere down to line to tie it to once per trial, there was some risk on when to best use it and immediate skill check means you won't always get value if you miss time/ stutter/ frame drop. STBFL imo was fine, it was strong on certain killers granted, but you still had to work for your tokens and most of the time to get the full value and ime that meant outside just bad survs it was not until mid-game you got to really put your foot on the gas pedal. Competing with such perks at the time of BBQ, Nurses, Ruin, TOTH, NOED, Tinkerer, Bitter murmur, whispers, dying light.
UW has benefited from the power creep since that time. Benefit from different design approaches devs have taken to perks. You can have up all match long with nothing tying it down. I can get so much uptime on a perk with little effort because the CD is done by the time I've hooked a Surv. I say look i'll use this tool you're going to give me, but come let's call a spade a spade here.
Its not more convenient than something like Nowhere to hide.
Think of it this way:
With UW:
Now compare that with something like Nowhere to hide:
The only thing that UW really has on NWTH is the blindness. But i'd trade that any day for the loop that NWTH creates. Where i can, goto a gen, kick it, know if a survivor is nearby, usually with enough time to either see where they sprinted away, or definitely see where they are hiding. If i see noone, then i can be confident i'll get some good regression in, and i can go to another gen and repeat the process till i find someone. NWTH basically makes hiding useless because it centralizes around the objective that survivors want to be doing. And it is great when paired with other gen kick perks.
I dont agree with this at all. If they balance perks around Nurse and Blight then most perks would be almost competely useless on lower-tier killers. I have one example of this happening and it's Awakened Awareness. In the Wesker ptb this perk was mostly fine since it let you see survivors' auras when carrying a survivor within 20 meters and linger for 2 seconds after you hooked or dropped the survivor. It was nerfed when coming to live by removing that lingering effect and the reason for it was because it was too strong on a few killers aka Nurse and Blight. Now Awakened Awareness is rarely used and honestly, a weak aura reading perk because of that nerf, all because it was too strong on two s-tier killers.
UW isn't the only perk ppl say is too strong on these killers also, I have seen ppl complain how Pain Res. Pop and most aura-reading perks are too strong on these two killers. By your logic we need to nerf all these perks also, guess we need to nerf BBQ bc of Blight, nerf Nowhere to Hide, I'm all ears, etc. Balancing perks around the two most broken killers in the game only hurts the lower-tier killers and greatly resists perks as a whole. It is better to nerf those two killers. For blight, it is as simple as nerfing most of his addons since base kit blight is fine. The only one that needs a full rework is nurse since she ignores the basic mechs of the game aka windows and pallets. I rather them do that than have more perks to become the next Awakened Awareness.
It wasn't really AA that was the problem. It was the combination of Starstruck, AA, and Nurse. Nurse has since had her blink attack count as an M2 instead of an M1 so she can no longer instant down survivors with expose. Of course, AA has not gotten reverted since that nurse specific change.
So now do we think that aura reading perk is op now?
Since when aura reading stop people from doing gens?
If killer come to you, wouldnt 3 other people should be doing gens?
Whats the gameplay here, screaming guranteed down? Aura reading guranteed down?
Did ultimate weapon destroy pallets or windows? or make playing survivor become crazy from one scream and struggle to loop now?
I notice a lot of people talking about how blindness hurts Solo Q. A lot of people seem to be ignoring that auras are a luxury not a necessity and not all survivors are going to do anything with said luxury.
I still have games (with people who have over 2k hours in this game) that still hide in a corner from a killer they can see with kindred. This isn't something you should be rewarded for with more tools to help you, the game should encourage you to actually learn something. I personally don't care if UW loses it's blindness or not I find it absolutely worthless in most situations when I use it or am hit by it since I actually pay attention to what's going on in the game.
Using solo Q as an excuse is dumb and I wish people would realize that no amount of buffs will help solo Q because the players are the problem and you can't take away that issue without removing freedom from the players. The devs can make it so survivors get 5 health states but if my teammates decide to do 5 totems for an archive then die on hook I still have a very good chance at losing the game if the killer slugs us all.
Info in the hands of the stupid people is useless. Info in the hands of smart people is dangerous. If BHVR truly cared about bridging the gap they would have a ranked and casual mode so nonserious casual players aren't ruining the games for sweatlords. The game isn't a competitive Esport though so they don't care.
With that long rant my take is that blindness is still incredibly useless because it only hurts the players that were going to do nothing with the info they were given anyway
It was still nerf bc of the nurse and that was the main point in my post. The person I was replying to rather see every killer perk nerf if it to strong on the S-tier killers. Something I dont agree with at all. I know AA was nerf bc of Starstruck Nurse but let's be honest ppl would still think it be too powerful on Nurse even today if it had its 2-second aura reading after you hook/drop a survivor even if she can't use Starstruck anymore. In fact, Otz as of late has been saying all Aura reading perks on Nurse are too strong but his solution to this is to nerf Nurse not nerf the perks themselves.
"The person I was replying to rather see every killer perk nerf if it to strong on the S-tier killers."
Love how you put a bunch of words into my mouth.😍 All I said was there shouldn't be a huge gap between the value Killers can get from a perk. I said devs should consider this when designing a perk. I didn't speak of nerfs or buffs.
You're going to assume all perks should be nerfed now because Nurse/Blight can get more use of them. That's why I'm mentioning a gap. The last problematic perk before UW was Starstruck in my opinion. The gap between that perks usefulness was so big that it triggered BHVR to rework Nurse's attacks. Now since Nurse can just blink and show up in a location I think they recreated that gap with UW which can be problematic.
Besides couple of perks I mentioned like Starstruck or UW, most perks are still in an acceptable state even though they're more powerful on stronger Killers. So what I said doesn't translate to "let's nerf everything because Nurse". Powerful doesn't always equal problematic.
Well, there you have it, right? On release, DS was a strong offensive perk, leagues stronger than UW. Then they changed it to post-unhook, and it was still leagues stronger than UW, and very easy to weaponise. It wasn't until the Conspicuous Actions change that the perk was finally balanced.
As for the last part, I don't know why people keep talking about the uptime on Ultimate Weapon. It doesn't have permanent uptime, and a single scream per survivor every thirty to sixty seconds is... hardly proof it's OP on paper. It's very strong if you're a good killer and you're good in chase, but those two things are completely independent of the perk itself. It's not an aura, it doesn't give an actual advantage to chasing or downing survivors, it just gives you a spot to start looking.
I think we are bad, we just should hide in locker and count 30 seconds. Easy counter, UW is just fine :d if you believe so
Hopefully BHVR will take care this perk very soon
Spoiler alert, but a vast bulk of this game's content is DLC and could be considered "pay to win" lol
But with starstruck they did what I would have done which is change nurse, not the perk. What you and many others are asking for UW is the opposite and that is to change the perk, not the killer. That's my whole point, that is a bad way to balance perks in this game in my opinion. Also, there are other perks that are op on Nurse and Blight not just UW. When UW gets nerf, which it will I 100% believe it will because it is the same as MFT devs love nerfing overused perks. When it does get nerfed ppl will just move to the next powerful perk on these killers ask for it to be nerfed. It's an endless cycle that will never end till Nurse and Blight are dealt with.
I'll also go on record by saying I dont mind if UW gets nerfed, I honestly dont care since used it on only two killers(Wesker and Xeno) and I can easily replace it. I'm just tired of Perks being nerfed just because ppl rather see the Perks nerf than the two problem killers. I like aura reading perks better anyway and I honestly wish aura reading perks were better but in a lot of my games, my aura reading perks get little to no value bc of Distortion. I said it in my first post on this thread if UW is too easy to use then perks like Distortion also need to be looked at. The perk gives you 3 stacks at the beginning and you rarely ever run out of those stacks. It's just as easy to use as WOO or UW.
I don't have a huge problem with the perk itself. We all know the real issue is how strong it is on overpowered killers. It's Behavior's stubborn refusal to significantly nerf Nurse and Blight that is the real issue.
I wouldn't even go that far. It was strong, but not p2w strong. More like Pay-to-hope-and-pray-I-have-a-chance-at-surviving-1-gen-cause-tunneling-is-even-easier-at-this-point-in-time. Once per match and just equipping it by no means give you this great advantage and higher probability for success to escape (or track and get kills in UW case which it does very well). A little spicy feet and some luck maybe skill to waste time, but also Unnerving Presence and Enduring were both strong shut-it-down perks for DS. Can't DS when you miss 1 skill check? Or just a well-timed 3 dribbles and a hook if you were savvy enough, and you didn't even need a perk for that. Hardly p2w if it's not letting me use it all game long and offers an array of different options to counter it. Even comparing across eras UW is still the better perk.
Also it literally has blindness in the perk? That doesn't give an advantage in chase if you pick one up near by? Information denial? Where it's happening at for comm callouts, killer location, where the down is, what resources are available if there is a pallet immediately there? Hello, WoO???
All I can say is that there's a reason DS was changed so many times, and it wasn't because it was only granting a potential slight chance of escaping.
Also, no, Blindness doesn't give you an advantage in chase. Why would it? Very few of the auras you'd block with Blindness, potentially, are even relevant to chasing. You literally mention WoO, which is the most relevant to chasing but the least impactful. Survivors don't need Windows, they will - or should - loop just as well without it. For everything else you mention... eh? I guess where the down is can be somewhat impactful to block, but the team's gonna see where the hook is either way, so it doesn't really matter outside of slugging (which are both outside of chase anyway).
Still, the Blindness should be removed anyway, even though it doesn't achieve much, so that's a bit of a moot point.
ITs not really that strong lol, going against good survivors it will basically render the perk useless, even solo queues with lack of coordination can handle the perk. Is it annoying? Yeah, but how many survivor things annoy the killer, almost everything.
As a survivor main I find UW to be overrated. It's just very annoying.
However like other perks, it can be really oppressive when tunneling or slugging.
I think it should have a token system that goes up as you're in chase. Kinda like the killer version of Distortion.
But that isn't what a cooldown is and adding a condition of 'if I get all the value a perk can give over 30 seconds in the first .05 second' does not suddenly make UW cooldown universally 60 seconds. The perk has a set 'value' that can be gained over the course of its 30 second activation. Whether or not all the value is gained right at beginning or all at the end does not change its actual cooldown of 30 seconds.
While there might be instances that UW feels like it has a longer cooldown, at the end of the day it doesn't because you could find all 4 survs at the 29.5 second mark and still get the full 'value' that the perk can give right before it goes on its actual cooldown.
A 30 second activation window comes close to guaranteeing that you will find a surv with it and the 30 sec cooldown means that more than likely by the time you've chased, downed, hooked that surv, you are at or very near being able to activate it again. Saying that UW does have a 60 cooldown without adding the huge qualifier of 'in very specific situations where you get all the perk value right at the beginning' is pretty misleading. I am not saying you're doing that, but other people claiming the 60 second cooldown have.
remember how everyone said that blindess is a useless debuff on this forum before Ultimate Weapon was added. There was just no good perks with blindness(except one), now there is finally a reliable way to apply blindness and survivors run in no pallet loops all the time in my games, really shows how they play, don't even care to scout and remember where pallets are down because they're used to free info from windows
before UW the only blindness perk that was usuable is hex 3rd seal and it was hated a lot too, every time I used it survivors were so salty in post game chat, I would have used it much more often if it wasn't an unreliable hex
UW is a good perk but it's not as overpowered as made for this, not even close. It's more annoying than truly overpowered.
also UW right now is the only reason you might not bleed last survivor, I have a feeling devs designed this perk just for that.
Oh, yes, to be clear, saying that Ultimate Weapon has a 30 second flat cooldown and saying it has a 60 second flat cooldown are both equally wrong.
Ultimate Weapon has a variable cooldown of between thirty and sixty seconds, depending on when it actually procs. The activation window has to pass before the cooldown even starts, so it is meaningfully part of the cooldown before it can be used again. You can't give the perk a fixed number that is the definite real cooldown, because it varies.