I think the devs broke The Plague
Other than reviving a downed teammate, Survivors can't perform healing actions when against the Plague, but they have insta-heal fountains available at any time. That said, they also don't like cleansing at those fountains because it gives her ranged damage. Taking this into consideration, I decided to try out this build today:
Dying Light, Pop Goes the Weasel, Thanatophobia, Surge.
And now I feel that the recent update to Dying Light and addition of Surge has "Broken" the Plague, and by that I mean its made her "Unadulterated-Completely-Unequivocally-Pure-Evil!"
With this build I've been dominating games all day long in the Purple-Red ranks. The beginning of the match goes by pretty standard; I might lose a gen or so after, or around the time of the first hook, but by mid game with 4-6 stacks of DL, 3-2 gens left, and everyone suffering from Thanatophobia's de-buff as well, the match comes to a crawl for survivors gen progress. Add in the fact that almost every time you down someone Surge activates on 1 or more gens, and you have Pop available for the gens that are higher in progress... each little loss of progress on them becomes a drastic increase in repair time for survivors. Even better is that the downside of DL, gifting the Obsession with a 33% bonus to healing speed, is rendered completely useless against her. Sure the Obsession is the only one who isn't affected by DL's loss of repair speed, but when gens are popping left and right and the teams progress speed is getting slower per minute, that 1 survivor can't carry the match alone.
I had hooked the Obsession twice in 1 match against SWF, and left them slugged the next time I knocked them down, and guess what their team did? They left him to bleed out because it was the only way they knew they were going to defeat DL! I had another team start cleansing at fountains to get rid of the Thana de-buff, but that only screwed them over even faster! This build really puts survivors between a rock and a hard place.
The devs have blessed us with a build that makes the Plague broken as hell, and throughout the day, I couldn't stop my sadistic (S)Laughter!
Comments
I had to face that earlier and I honestly wanted to give up lol. The only person who could even handle a gen was the Obsession and they ended up being pretty much useless (which didn't help matters). I got out thanks to hatch (and the fact that matchmaking was busted in my favor for once).
I’m personally really digging the new Dying Light, now I don’t need to sweat and Mori the Obsession off the hook when I’m sick of Ruin getting destroyed the 1st 30 seconds of the game. All you gotta do is down everyone as quickly and effectively as possible and try no to take out the Obsession until it is clear things are in your favor.
I've actually had a couple of obsessions DC for the good of the team. In one match it might've saved their team too... if not for the guy with DS. I am thoroughly enjoying this build, and confident that it raises Plagues viability.
This is a fantastic build! I have Thana permanent on her, but I might also be adding on Dying Light. I really like the combo of those two perks!
That being said, I really really feel there's going to be a nerf or some sort of "these perks don't stack" that'll happen. Enjoy this while we can!
I wouldn’t be surprised, the penalty you’ll get for Freddy while doing these and Sloppy with his Rope and Chain add ons…ugh I’m disgusted just thinking about it! >_<
On any other killer survivors can heal, distract the killer, and rush gens before DL builds up enough, but on Plague its just evil. I sincerely hope they don't nerf it with a "perks don't stack" thing because like i said, its still counter-able with all other killers. She just has an built in advantage with it.
ok, ALMOST all other killers (i forgot about Freddy)... Still that's only 2 killers that get a massive advantage from it, out of 17. I hope that's not enough to warrant a nerf.
Maybe they wont, they've let skillcheck doctor build be alive this long
I been warning against how bad the Gen defense perks were getting. Stacking them together is going to result in the same crazy second chance stacking Survivors were doing with MoM, DS, DH and Adrenaline.
But noooooooo everyone insists Surge and Dying Light are crap perks.
Dying Light is only good on Plague because she cancels the healing bonus the obsession gets from this perk. But that's about it.
If you have thana and the survivors aren't healing then they are stupid. The common "wisdom" that you shouldn't heal against plague is wrong. Especially if she's using perks like thanaphobia. Not to mention she has an add on that allows her to see the auras of all sick survivors when they vomit. Yeah try winning against that when you don't heal, especially on a map like lerys.
Winning against plague requires patience and common sense. When you heal always go to the fountain that is furthest from any gens. Make her go out of her way if she wants corrupt. When you hear the "dong" lay low for about 60 seconds. That is how you beat plague.
When I play as her, the survivors who don't heal are always the easiest to win against.
I just love stacking stuff when making builds. That's the entire point of builds after all!
I already played and it‘s nasty as f* 😁😎
thana, sloppy, dying, pop, rop and swings. switch one sloppy for nurses and healing becomes ugly 😈
When I play as solo one of these games and I see a survivor using No Mither I want to kill him with my hands.
Oh man that’d be ugly on The Game, especially if you put on M&A or Distressing instead of Pop. 😖
A powerful build that requires perks from 3 separate DLC's.
Ker-ching! I'm surprised they haven't designed more of them...
I would argue, that you don't necessarly need Surge or Pop for this build. The big part for this combo is Dying Light+Thana. Besides that having these perks as a regular player is quite likely.
I cant comment because I have only just started playing with Plague. Will definitely try this combo when I can though. I don't have Surge yet though...
I just ran up against this build last night!
Oh my god
Are you saying that Plague actually has a build that makes her viable and feared in some capacity? I’m gonna have to prestige her again soon.
Also I really hope the devs don’t nerf her because nobody plays her and she’s competing with clown and Leatherface for bottom of the barrel.
Nah... legion is competing there.
Plague is safely not bottom tier.
I forgot about Legion but I still say those 4 are still squarely in the bottom.
i know in most people tier list, they think plague is like bottom tier killer, but ironically, Myers somehow happens to go in some top-tier or mid-tier status when plague who puts everyone into unlimited tier 3 is somehow bottom tier. she's top tier killer for red ranks, even before change, Thanatophobia was always stable in her perk selection. I think people have notion that game-slowdown for killer is like not important. It's why I think people think pig is bad because they're like, these bears traps, they aren't killing people so it must be a bad power. same thing for legion. There's reason why everyone runs hex:ruin on killer, It's not because they like the perk, it's because they value game slowdown. In any case, if you face dying light+Thanatophobia plague, you should cleanse because generators will be very slow. try to get as many generators done before plague poisons everyone. eventually you'll have to face 115% ms huntress with ranged hatchets at loops which is very powerful.
Instant Heal against Plague, DARN.
I consider Plague stronger than Myers and right now she is fighting for a place in my top 5 killers with Demogorgon and Freddy.
Pig keep getting nerfed unfortunately, but she still isn't bottom tier, but Legion is actually trash. His stall won't do anything than just prolong a match where he barely can get a kill.
I have a question, if the obsession DCs/dies and you get decisive striked to get a new obsession
Do all the tokens you had originally come back?
Territorial imperative is redundant on Demogorgon.
You already can get the info from the portal itself. You don't need the perk.
The play is to not activate the portal, so they won't be able to tell you know they are there
the 200IQ play is to setup 2 portals so they are distracted with the first one which is activated while you teleport to the 2nd one which isn't
Yeah. But that uses 2 portals, you only have so many
Ok fine. 3 portals.
Now we are talking
I know the counter to this.
Stay separated.
Hold M1
Or, If you're the obsession, Let yourself Expire on the hook and hope no one else brought in DS. If you're the rest of the team, Don't rescue the obsession... but who can resist those sweet altruism points?
Or allow for yourself to be chased while the others pound gens. No tokens for hooking the obsession.
This! Besides seeing auras there essentially running a one shot down AND loud af. I agree 100%
You don't know the half of it.
If I'm not running No Mither build I tend to run altruistic builds. My current build is Inner Strength, We'll Make It, Botany Knowledge and Fixated. Plague effectively turns me perkless.
i'd say if you run monitor instead of useless surge perk, than she's probably best stealth killer. you'll ask, wait, how is 24 TR is a stealth killer. pretty simple, you don't need 0 TR to sneak up on people. only like first 20 meters of terror radius really matter, if the survivor is injured and there's no loop or pallet, then you're guaranteed to hit them and since plague makes everyone broken, they're always 1 hit down. Freddy, he has good stall, like really good stall with swinging chains and red paint brush. they can't fail skillcheck to wake themselves up, you can use teammates to wake yourself up, but each time you do, it takes longer and longer. your only real option is to go to clocks, but Freddy can intercept and juggle survivors really well. Fake pallets are pretty good but they use up one of your add-on slots. I think to be top-tier killer, you need to be able to hit survivors at all loops and for that to be the case, you need have some sort of anti-loop that makes loops like jungles gyms not 100% safe. At the end of the day, he is very healthy and strong killer, but you can beat him since he is m1 killer for the most part. I think those killers are somewhat underrated because they can upset more skilled teams. Not like other killers where you can literally throw down every pallet and win in like 5 minutes with good teammates.
Complaining about a mid tier killer with mid tier perks, because both synergize too good. Replace "Surge" with "Hex: Ruin" or "Monitor & Abuse" to make the build even stronger. I mean it's very difficult to vs, but so are some other combos too.
Heavy sigh
True. "Surge"is just bad.
Interesting about the obsession's heal buff not mattering against Plague. Makes me wonder if this would also be effective on Legion too, as survivor avoid healing against him too, and if the obsession has to heal everyone it just means they waste their time. Good find.
32m radius. Gonna hit maximum of two gens on most maps. More likely no gen, because no gen in your range is worked on.
The most important thing: Even when it hits two gens for 18% decay perfectly it's still as efficient as PGTW with 25% regression. "Surge" got likely less impact than PGTW and is way more RNG based.
I tested a few builds with "Surveillance" and "Thrilling Tremors" on maps like The Game and yes, it can work on small maps. But a build that is not useable without a map offering is not that good in my eyes, especially if you got a more efficient build that's not map dependant.
There are reasons I put Surge in the build:
Compared to normal gen kicks which don't apply any damage and take up valuable time, this becomes a serious time saver and helps apply more gen pressure. Yeah, it's not too great early in the match, but by mid-end game, it becomes a devastating time eater for the survivors that gives you a decent advantage to stop them from finishing gens.
I have also tried replacing PGTW with Thrilling Tremors in the build because that adds another 5% loss on the Surged gens due to the regression rate, which would take 17 seconds at 4 stacks of DL to repair, and 19 seconds at 6 stacks, but in the end, nothing quite beats the sudden 25% drop from PGTW, which takes a considerably longer amount of time to repair with this build.
Still, I wish they'd raise the damage it does from 8% back up to 12%, since there's only a 2 second difference there when it comes to repairing the damage. I'd also like them to remove the silly "Down survivor with Basic Attack" requirement... It didn't work for Infectious Fright, and its not working too well for Surge. Once they removed that requirement from IF, it became universally useful to all killers, and like I've said, right now Plague seems to be the only killer who can really take advantage of Surge due to this stupid requirement. It would be great If Billy could come charging in, chainsaw down a survivor, and have Surge damage all gens in the area... Sigh.
Also I'm glad you're liking the build, I've been having a blast with it at ranks 7-3, and with Plagues Black Incense add-on, It just becomes borderline unfair to the poor survivors. 😋
Because Survivors have a no-heal meta against her? That's on them really, and their unwillingness to learn to juke Corrupt Purge.
Corrupt Intervention Makes sense; Why go to them when you can force them to come to you? You probably get more usage out of surge too, and earlier downs, which works in favor for DL. However, I still think that if its going to become something more universally useful to killers, possibly even meta, it will need that 12% damage, and removal of the Basic attack requirement.
The % increase might actually be unnecessary if the Basic attack requirement was not involved, because it's really the biggest problem for Surge that restricts who can use it to Only those who can 1 shot with a basic attack (Plague, Shape, Ghost Face). Let face it, if you use Surge with any other M1 killer like Doctor or Clown, even without that requirement, when you hit a survivor putting them into the injured state: they're going to get more than 32 meters away from the gen by regardless before you down them. In the case of killers with damaging powers like Huntress, Billy, and even Demogorgon however, Why wouldn't you try to down a survivor with their power? Forcing them to have to M1 in order to activate it is impractical, and the precise reason why Infectious Fright removed that requirement. That requirement is just far too restrictive, especially when paired with a 40 second cooldown and limited range of effect.
So many people in the community think the Demogorgons Perks are utter crap, and who can blame them? They gave the Survivors of the DLC decent and useful perks, but the Killers perks are highly situational and under-powered for pretty much every killer, including the killer they came out with. Take Surge as a prime example, if not for this Plague build and 2 other perks backing it up, it would be utter trash. I don't think the changes I've suggested would make it OP in any way, but would make it much more useful and viable to all killers.
That's my problem with "Surge". When "Surge" only activates two times per match, i think it's a wasted perk slot.
With Plague, it activates much more frequently. Otherwise, I'd have never considered it for the build. Albeit, there are some large maps like Rotten Fields, Temple of Purgation, and Disturbed Ward that hinder its effectiveness because of how spread out the gens are. However, it's still useful on those maps because it still buys you more seconds to punish gens with Pop after it activates. Obviously, small maps are where it shines brightest, but even on medium-large maps it can still do it's job. Rarely can a survivor, 1 shot away from down, get more than 32m from the gen they were working on, and that is where Plague + Surge work best together. That's not to say its perfect for the build, just good for it. I'm sure Ruin, M&A, or Corrupt intervention are fine replacements for it: I just feel that it's a decent time saver for the killer and time eater for the survivors in this build at mid-end game.
I tested it on several killers and only saw a good use on The Game. But i respect other opinions.