Distortion Is Fine
I've been seeing a lot of posts about how the nerf to Distortion is problematic, or how Distortion has been "killed" or what have you, so I decided to test it out. I equipped Distortion for a good chunk of games, and tried to get a feel for how accessible tokens were and how much impact Distortion had on the trial.
My conclusion, broadly, is that Distortion is still a good perk. It still does the job well enough, though it has been downgraded to be comparable to its peers instead of clearly superior to them in every aspect— it's still better, but it's not better by as much, and that's still a healthier outcome. The fifteen second requirement is honestly quite easy to hit, even for players that are not the best at chase like myself, so tokens were pretty plentiful.
More specifically, I found there were two legitimately strong use cases for Distortion, and one that's fine but much more toned back.
First, it's protection from Lethal Pursuer. That was a pretty popular use for old Distortion, so while it's only a single perk being countered, it deserves top billing. If you don't like being chased at the very start of the match because the killer beelines for a Lethal aura, Distortion still protects you from this. Bring Distortion if that's your complaint.
Second, it's great at fooling mid-chase auras. If you're the type to want to use perks to break chase with the killer but you're worried about perks like Predator or I'm All Ears, bring Distortion. It still does that, and it still does it best of the three viable aura perks.
The third use, the one that isn't as strong, is that it is pretty good at just generic mid-match aura blocking, you just can't evade auras forever using it this way. I had a specific match that I'll use as an example, where the killer had Friends Til The End and I was the Obsession - I blocked the first one, kept repairing a generator, and then realised I'd be vulnerable to the next use of FTTE.
That's the area that Distortion is weaker in, and that's okay, it was always kind of silly that Distortion 100% blocked basically all auras unless specific conditions (stealth killer with no TR, and/or killer with a full gimmick aura build to punch through tokens faster than they regenerated) were met. The perk still has very good and useful use cases, it still does one of the main things that people brought it for, and it still works in almost all the same builds as it used to.
TL;DR, Distortion is still a very good perk, it just isn't a perfect perk anymore and that's okay.
Comments
Couple things:
1: Why would pickrate go up based on this? The average player is not unbiased, they're heavily biased, and that's okay. It's not that pickrates have diminished relevance, it's that they have none, at all.
What I want to see in general, and what I think we're a lot closer to with Distortion, is for the perks to be considered all viable if someone whose biases don't conflict with them is evaluating. There's absolutely no reason to assume that necessarily should be a high enough percentage of players to change pickrates, especially considering the observable bias against anything that's been nerfed recently nine times out of ten. There were people claiming Adrenaline was useless after it was nerfed, people are not neutral, rational actors only approaching perks based on how good they actually are. The "unbiased player" I invoked is a hypothetical, a way of conceptualising perks and their balance without falling into the traps of downplaying, common misconceptions, whatever. It's subjective but it obviously has to be, all game balance is necessarily partially subjective otherwise you're balancing just based on stats.
That's why I'm not claiming anything surrounding pickrate. I don't care about it, we can't meaningfully sway it with this kind of change unless they're very heavy handed changes. Shadow Step isn't picked for a million different reasons and only one of them will, sometimes, occasionally, be the fact that Distortion outclassed it. Balance necessarily must be considered as a separate thing to common perception.
2: While Distortion may have a chance to not activate, it's still obviously possible for something to be overtuned even with the restriction that it won't automatically activate.
If, say, Unbreakable healed you to full multiple times a match and also gave you a permanent +100% repair speed boost for every time you pick yourself up, it would obviously be way overtuned even considering that there's a very real chance the killer will never slug you and therefore you may never get to use it.
The fact that it isn't guaranteed is why Distortion is allowed to still be good and effective, but it being perfect is still overtuned. As long as it still blocks auras in at least reliable niches, which it does right now, the extra restrictions are not only okay, they're appropriate.
Also worth mentioning that Botany has become completely irrelevant to this conversation all of a sudden.
3: We're circling around the same fundamental disagreement here, but those are strong picks in their respective niches.
Part of the issue here is a general unwillingness, from everyone and not just you, to consider what auras you want to block. None of them are 100% effective against all forms of aura reading and that's completely okay, it's appropriate even. When you think about wanting to play stealthy, you now actually have to think about which perks you think are most damaging to your gameplan and then pick your counterpick respective to that. You don't even need to be going for active stealth to be thinking about that, frankly.
I don't expect that to change, obviously. Most players don't want to think about things at all, and that's okay. It just also doesn't translate to the changes actually being bad because the old thing doesn't work exactly the same anymore.
It's one thing to claim they have diminished relevance, it's another entirely to dismiss them outright. The rest of your point basically confirms that… You don't really have a point. It's just wild conjecture apropos of nothing.
Having to argue that the entire community is one big sheep collective is a rough position to have to take, but you still have to contend with the fact that Shadow Step, again, was judged poorly before any of the comparison you're worried about came in. Even when Distortion was considered bottom-of-the-barrel, Shadow Step wasn't considered to be worth a perk slot. Its current state IS the product of unbiased observation. It was judged fresh, on its own merits, upon its release, and hasn't moved the needle since.
And at this point, it sounds like the nerf to Distortion did nothing to create this 'design space' you were talking about.
If your theory requires you to presuppose that the entire community is incapable of independent thought, and then you have to backtrack and diminish the impact you're describing to 'well, the thought might cross a player's mind once in a million times', I think it's time to let go of the theory.
But this isn't so much 'separate to common perception' as it is 'divorced from reality', at this point. And 'it's one of a million reasons that -may- have influenced someone to pick Distortion instead of Shadow Step' certainly isn't a worthwhile 'balance' consideration.
Yes, and if it actually was showing any of the issues you have complained about, you'd have a point, but it didn't. It wasn't oppressively overpicked, it wasn't oppressively overperforming, it wasn't oppressing the design space, it was a perfectly okay perk.
It has to have -something- in which it was overperforming to warrant a nerf, but it didn't. The closest you came is saying that it was pushing down Shadow Step and you've already had to walk that back to 'maybe someone, somewhere, sometime'.
This is just gassing up a point of no substance. Outside of Lethal, all aura blocking perks block the same perks, they just have different restrictions in how they do so. One is restricted by space, the other by tokens, the third by time. No one is going to realistically, meticulously flowchart out how likely each perk is to block each aura because there's not sufficiently significant distinction to warrant it. Especially since the biggest offenders in the aura reading category realistically do not care which aura blocker you are picking up.
And honestly, if you're going to bank your dismissal of pickrates on the idea that the community is roughly incapable of independent thought, you can't then turn around and uphold this as a virtue of the Distortion kneecapping. Either the community is carefully researching such minute distinctions, or they don't care about the actual objective value of perks. It's one or the other.
You do understand that if for example I kick a gen with Nowhere to hide and a survivor behind a jungle gym has distortion that I cant see them right?
You mean a perk that's one-time use unless paired with another aura reading perk which in turn only gives you an additional 2 seconds?
Im assuming your of the opinion that at the end of the match where the last 2 survivors are playing hide and seek holding the game hostage is cool because you know I can just look for them forever?
A potential hostage hiding situation at the end of some matches doesn't mean killers are entitled to having unrestricted aura reading in every match. This 'problem' didn't become an issue until killers needed an excuse to get Distortion nerfed.
Killers are supposed to look for survivors. There's perks that help with that. And then survivors get perks that level the playing field again. Perfectly balanced.
Man, I can already see the outcry if the devs ever decide to nerf aura perks to token based perks and as bad as they did with distortion.
Like, lethal persuar only activates 4 times in a match after getting an aura read on someone
Or NTH only has one token and gets a token when 30% of a gen that got kicked got repaired again, with a maximum of 2 tokens.
Predator only activates once with each survivor after losing a chase. So if someone takes a bodyhit and escaped the chase when the killer was carrying someone, your token would be lost forever.
I mean, if we can gut Distortion with how it is now, I feel every aura perk killers have in their arsenal must be met with the same hammer.
On a side not, nothing to do with the discussion in this thread, I also hate the fact they nerfed distortion into oblivion in the 8.3 patch, but yet bring in another aura read perk when a survivor dropped a pallet…
I also don't thing jester realizes Distortion only does 1 thing so it should be better then the others in that aspect that have other aspects to them like hiding scratch marks/anti-tunnel/fast escape.
Yes all killer aura read needs pain res treatment and all aura rwading add ons is reworked
Well my friend the thing is that these pity topics are annoying, like the rub it in your face feeling, I am probably being petty or something but I notice iron will(before its buff back to 100) coh, mft adrenaline and now distortion has its still goofrub it in the your face post and yet we know its false unlike nerf killer perks thats actually still good and meta
Ruin,ultimate weapon, eruption, call of brine, and overcharge are all still good just not op.
Last time I saw any of the mention survivor perks cept iron will since its decent now has been months. Distortion since its nerf seen 0 of them on both sides all month.
To clarify: Not only do I understand that, I've been arguing from that perspective this entire time.
Distortion does need to be better than OTR at aura blocking because that's all it does. It also needs to be slightly better, or at least more accessible, than Shadow Step because while Shadow Step is another aura blocking perk primarily (split between that and scratch marks being blocked), it has its secondary effect active no matter what. It should probably be about comparable to Sole Survivor, but it isn't and that's Sole Survivor's fault so that isn't too relevant here.
This is about the fourth time I've acknowledged that, and about the fourth time I've pointed out that it is. It's just got some gaps, which the other perks (except SS, yadda yadda) could now be considered more appealing for if those gaps are all that the player cares about.
The debate always comes back, it seems, to pointing out that aura perks are not universal and you should probably consider what you want to block before you bring a perk. Lethal and BBQ, as you mention, is a perfectly appropriate combo for Distortion to block- you block Lethal at the start, you're probably hit by the first BBQ, but the second is blocked by Distortion and now you know to avoid it without tokens. Distortion at worst is faltering at a single aura read and it's perfectly okay to sometimes be seen by the killer.
Another set of perks that would be appropriate to bring Distortion against would be things like I'm All Ears, Predator, and Zanshin Tactics, especially if you want to break chase. Distortion shines in this niche too.
What Distortion's weaker at is keeping you safe from auras consistently while performing an action, like generator repair or healing. That's a niche that Shadow Step fills, though, so if you find yourself wanting that most, you have an option there too. Distortion is the best overall, the others are specialist perks that can cover some of Distortion's gaps at the cost of being less consistent overall. This is perfectly acceptable as an outcome.
All of those perks are good, on both sides.
Well, except Overcharge. This may be unpopular as an opinion but I feel like Overcharge has never actually been good itself, it just really benefited from specific synergies in the past. It kinda still has those, but… eh. Maybe I'm just biased there.
MFT also deserves an asterisk because now it's way more niche than it used to be, but if you actively pursue that niche, it is still pretty good.
If anyone were to claim the survivor perks you listed are still good but the killer ones aren't, I'd consider that evidence of a bias. At the very least, I'd firmly disagree with them. Those perks are at least decent, on both sides.
The Distortion change wasn’t just good, it should serve as a blueprint for how to nerf perks without completely destroying them, something BHVR has yet to master with gen regression perks. Distortion remains fully usable, but now, instead of hiding, players need to actively engage with the killer. A teammate who wastes 15 seconds of the killer’s time is worth twice as much as one who just crouches and plays passively when they’re out of Distortion stacks.
Not only is Distortion still a strong perk, but the value it provides is incredible. Knowing that the killer isn’t running Lethal Pursuer, BBQ, or Nowhere to Hide is just as valuable as knowing they are using those perks. Acting like Distortion is dead is ridiculous.
So, I've sat with this for a bit to make sure my response is appropriate, and I've come to the conclusion that we've both accidentally started circling around an argument that we didn't start with and neither of us actually hold, which is that the nerf to Distortion was necessary because Shadow Step has a low pickrate. That isn't my position, so I'm going to scale back and clarify from square one.
Distortion was nerfed. This is our starting point; I'm not saying it was necessary or unnecessary, just that it happened, and we now have a different version of Distortion to the one we had before.
My position is, after thinking about it and testing it myself, that Distortion is fine. It fundamentally does its job as an aura blocking tool, but it now has gaps to stop it being completely flawless. I think this is appropriate because Distortion was very passive, making its lack of restrictions or conditions kind of questionable. I initially pitched a way of making it less passive myself, and I still think that'd probably be better, but the version we have is hardly a dead perk. It's totally useable and even still quite strong depending on the use case.
Something I think is a nice benefit from the way Distortion was nerfed is that its specific gaps now can be covered by other perks, like Shadow Step. I think it's overall good for the game that these perks are now operating in tandem with one another rather than one invalidating the other, because there truly was no reason to ever consider Shadow Step's aura blocking when Distortion was it, but better.
Now, depending on what aura perks you're most concerned with, the three perks (really two, but you might only care about the auras that could be used to tunnel or that would stop you resetting in peace, so OTR is in the discussion) could all be considered the best pick. In most situations it's still Distortion, because it's the most consistent and passive, but Shadow Step covers a gap that Distortion has (being more vulnerable to aura reads that happen while you're just off doing a generator or something, since you've not interacted with the killer to build another token), making it plausible to pick in that context if that's what you want.
That's why pickrate has nothing to do with this, there are so many other factors affecting pickrate that to expect this single one to actually move the needle is unreasonable. It also doesn't mean that, before the nerf, Distortion needed to be changed because of Shadow Step. That's just a nice benefit that we get after the fact because of the specific choices BHVR made.
Interesting question, I think it's hard to answer without more context, though.
Mostly, what instance are we talking about? Distortion and OTR both occupy the same space as aura blocking perks, but they shine in different niches within that space. For example, if all the killer has is Lethal and BBQ, I think it's generally unlikely for OTR to outshine Distortion. OTR just doesn't do anything against Lethal at the start of the match, and Distortion provides enough information that you can avoid procs of BBQ without even spending a token on it.
Conversely, if the killer's inclined to try and hunt down injured survivors who have been unhooked recently (but aren't immediately there at the unhook), OTR is a little more consistent because of its combined Iron Will and aura blocking effects. Similarly, OTR will allow you a window of time after an unhook to avoid incidental aura reading while you're doing gens and such, but is much less reliable overall if all you want is aura blocking- Distortion is a little more reliable in that niche, and Shadow Step is considerably more reliable in that niche.
I don't think it really boils down to ratio at all, because the perks should ideally be shining in different niches. One instance of aura reading should, hypothetically, be more vulnerable to one perk over the other depending on what that instance actually is. Is it round start Lethal? Distortion outshines OTR handily. Is it I'm All Ears mid-chase? The two are closer, but Distortion is still more likely to be active and far more likely to be active earlier in the match on top of having a more beneficial secondary effect to that instance.
It's more effective and realistic to consider the perks as counter-picks to specific killer tools, rather than percentage ratios of generic aura blocking.
Why am I sensing a fear that because no one wanna use the now worthless distortion, its making people fear that the aura rampage perks and adds on may get hit next for gutting. I mean at least now its one less meta that killers complain about survivor meta.
Its as if strangely now people wants survivors to use distortion to not let that fear of my aura perks and add ons gonna be nerfed, but no dont fall for this fellow survivors dont run trashtortion so that we can try get all these aura read perks and add ons trashed. We need to continue threads to nerf them just like the 1 mil nerf distortion threads .
Man, that's some really conspiratorial thinking, I don't think that's healthy.
People aren't out here conniving to stop nerfs to their side by lying about something. I just sincerely think Distortion is still pretty good.
Shh let the conspiracy continue.
Think about it, everything's nerfed to the point of detrimental, then no one runs perks period. It's a perfect hunting ground for us~ not necessarily anyone else but they dug their own graves so who's we to stop them?
I understand and I respect your opinion. Let me ask this for fun, lets say all aura add ons is gone and all aura killer perks only gets 4 uses( the pain res treatment.)
I make a statement your aura reading perks are still good just not 24/7 free anymore how would that make you think or feel?
I'd disagree with that, certainly. That wouldn't be appropriate.
It also wouldn't be appropriate to add a token system to, say, Exhaustion perks, or something like Botany Knowledge. Nerfing perks isn't always appropriate, and the end result wouldn't always be okay. Distortion is fine after the change it received, the other perks you or I mentioned wouldn't be if they received comparable changes.