Exile needs to count as a hook
I haven't seen anyone talking about this since @Rokku_Rorru I believe made a post about it during the PTB (although maybe I missed the discussion), so I'll start it. Exile needs to count as a hook, because it causes problems for both sides.
As of now, killers are heavily restricted in what builds they can put on the Judgment, as not only does Exile not count as a hook stage for a lot of perks, but the killer is also not an m1 killer for basic-attack centered perks, and windows and pallets don't matter to them much either for perks that are centered around those. It ends up leaving them with mostly just aura reading and gen regression / slowdown (besides perks like Pop and Pain Res).
The problem is even worse for survivors though, as even if the killer is restricted, at least they can go into the game knowing all their perks will work. For survivors, they have no idea that they are going up against the Judgment, and a load of their perks become useless. Copying this from a different post I made, here is a list of things Exile entirely makes useless:
- Babysitter, Bloodrush, Boil Over, BT, Breakdown, Camaraderie, Come And Get Me!, Dead Hard, DS, Deli, Fast Track, Kindred, OTR, Reassurance, Resurgence, Saboteur, Second Wind, Self-Preservation, Shoulder the Burden, Slippery Meat, Up the Ante, We'll Make It, Wicked, Flip Flop, Power Struggle, and Breakout. That's 26 survivor perks and I'm probably missing some.
Things that are at least partially countered or made almost useless:
- Flashlights, Alex's toolbox, Background Player, Flow State, No One Left Behind, Desperate Measures, Unbreakable, Exponential, Tenacity, WGLF, Buckle Up (the anti-slug perks because there is no way for a teammate to pressure for a save to buy time, and there are very few times a Judgement will take such a long time committing to another chase when they could "hook" you in 3 seconds)
To recap, that is essentially 35 perks, an entire category of popular items, and many playstyles/build archetypes that are all at least partially countered or completely made useless by just this one mechanic, and many of these are incredibly popular / strong perks and builds, so it is more than likely that when the Judgement becomes less popular and people stop running builds expecting to run into them, more than half the playerbase's builds will be effected, some might become entirely moot.
In addition, because this killer completely counters all anti-tunneling perks, it makes it incredibly easy to tunnel on this killer. Camping is still very possible (please increase the shrines to save survivors from 2 to 3), and if you know for a fact that the "unhooked" survivor doesn't have DS, Babysitter, or anything else, what exactly is there to stop you from tunneling? This might have been fine if there was a decent anti-tunnel system in place, but there isn't.
Some things being countered is fine. Even if Exile counts as a hook, select perks like Reassurance will still be unusable, and things like flashlights, sabo toolboxes, and anti-slug builds will all still be weaker against Judgment due to the Exile animation losing the killer so little time and granting flashlight immunity (although it may still be useful against a sniper killer that doesn't bother to pick you up). The Plague does similar things with countering healing perks and medkits. However, a killer that counters so many perks, most alarmingly a way to counter all anti-tunnel perks for practically every hook stage because Heresy is so easy to apply, is just asking for trouble.
Comments
The whole point of killers having a power alternative to hooks is that they are not hooks.
The only other killer in the game that has an alternative to hooks is Pyramid Head, who has counterplay. If a survivor thinks it's worth it, even if it makes it more difficult to last in chase they can avoid the trail. Often times, the Pyramid Head will have to hook normally, he won't always cage. With Judgment, you can Exile for pretty much every down because Heresy is applied automatically just by hitting a survivor with your power. The only counterplay available is if the Judgment completely drops you so you're able to repent at a statue, but most likely you'll just be hit by another beam the next time you're injured/downed and you get Exiled anyway. It also pretty much guarantees her mini mori. Even with being counted as a hook, Exiling / mini moriing survivors is still infinitely faster than picking up, carrying, and hooking them, and still grants you complete immunity from saves.
Being inflammatory and insulting other people isn't contributing anything to the conversation. I never argued the killer was OP, I argued that Exile not being counted as a hook is problematic. The Judgment certainly will m1 given the chance, but in 90% of chases at least one of the hits you take will probably be a light hit. I am well aware of how to play against this killer, but a halfway decent killer will hit a shot eventually. If if that is not the case for you, then I think you need to keep learning the killer. Being within 10m of the killer doesn't make the light useless, it just makes it harder to hit.
I do not personally run DS or any second chance perks myself, whenever I play solo I don't run any at all. However, I play with people far less experienced than me that will get tunneled if I don't do anything, so I often bring anti-tunnel perks that might keep them alive. I am thinking of not only survivors as a whole, but of inexperienced survivors that are more likely to get tunneled out when seen as a weak link, the game is already difficult to get into as it is. In addition, even though I don't run second chance perks for myself, it still affects more than half my builds because of the amount of other perks that are affected. In addition, like I said, this is not something a survivor can really account for. They will never know when they will face a Judgment, so they're expected to never run any of these 25-35 perks? And if they do they're punished? The idea of that is ridiculous.
The killer does not see which two shrines, no, but they know where they downed the survivor, they have eyes to see which shrines other survivors are heading to, and there is no anti-camp meter. I have already experienced this in several games where the killer just stays in an area around the shrines while shooting shots across the map and warding off any survivors coming close. And if the survivors manage to save the exiled survivor, the killer knows for a fact they have no protections besides the basekit endurance, and they either just shoot them twice or wait until they see the elusive run out and hit them once.
As I said in another comment, even with being counted as a hook, Exiling / mini moriing survivors is still infinitely faster than picking up, carrying, and hooking them, still grants you complete immunity from saves, and you will have the ability to do so with almost every down you get. The main reason Pyramid Head cages survivors is the same thing: to save time. If you are simply hooking over and over again instead of Exiling so that you can camp, I think that's a you problem. The killer can be buffed to compensate for the changes, I think most everyone wants to increase the amount of control Judgment has over the light in Zealous for example.
Stop insulting people, it just makes your argument feel weaker.
I like that the judgement has the exile option but my issue with it is how easy it is to get it, on Pyramid head there is a way to avoid it but the judgement is already released and reworking at this stage is not something bhvr should do and nerfing her is unnecessary as well (maybe some small nerfs could be done).
OP, being sent to the shadow realm (I'm now going to start using that because I like Yu-Gi-Oh, but anyways) ~ similar to Pyramid Head, being exiled is literally a fundamental mechanic that is different from the average hook cycle.
If you were to let's say, make exile a hook mechanic - you have essentially net-buffed her. There is a give and take for this, if you were to make the Exile a hook mechanic - how would it interact with perks like Pain Resonance? You have to hook a survivor on a scourge hook, so it doesn't make sense that being banished would send you to a random hook or whatever. I'll go a step further, let's say BBQ or PGTW procs, you have now given her essentially a pocket BBQ or PGTW, which makes absolutely no sense.
Sure, I can say that the little statues she has could be extended to be map wide, but I don't believe it's necessary. I remember playing with a friend who actively sabotaged the team (he likes to troll me at times) by pulling my other friend out of the banished realm literally right on top of the killer (if you cannot manage to wait a bit, grab the survivor out when it's safe to do so, and being mindful that she can snipe you as many do enjoy aura reading then that's just a situation where you have to adapt (I'm not saying skill issue, just adapt).
Sure, she counters my Renato build (Off The Record and Blood Rush) but if I went against a killer that has the same mechanics as Pyramid Head and I get banished, I'm not going to rage and say that this killer is broken because she hard counters my perks. It's the same situation if I was to load up as Felix or anything healing wise and I get paired with Plague, rendering those builds useless. As a survivor, you should adapt to the killer that you are matched with and the games would be much better if people did not give up or think something is broken when the killer isn't even that old to have a meta even fully form against it.
Moreorless, I went against a killer the other day (I can't remember who it was, I have been playing DBD a lot the past few days) but her build hard countered my Claire build (Dramaturgy, Lithe, Iron Will, and Deja Vu) due to Mindbreaker, I think it might have been Nurse but yes, I adapted to that match by essentially being an in-game leader to my team and telling them where she was going and everything causing the game to come back overtime, so if I can adapt in that situation by providing information to my team and preventing IW and help my team by adapting, the same for any survivor in this game as well.
Did I really make a thread on this? I honestly can't remember, I didn't really play on PTB this time. I did take part in a discussion the other day about third seal working with her "Hooks", which is interesting because are they hooks or are they killer posessions? Is it a bug or not?
Once people learn to play around her aura build she will become significantly weaker. Trust.
It's not really about her being weaker or stronger, I'm of the opinion that as people learn to play against her, she'll seem weaker for the most part (maybe around now for the next couple weeks), and then when some players really figure out and master her she'll be considered even stronger than before. But it's not about how strong she is in chase or her map presence or ability to snipe, it's about the player frustration that so many of your perks or even items could become completely useless with no warning encountering this killer, and even if they aren't directly made useless, other builds are already not very useful considering she is a long range sniping m2 killer.
Seeing the killer's aura with an aura build is not that useful unless for some reason she's doing m1 on a tile with high walls (but most of the time I get m1'd against this killer is at a filler), a haste with your duo build isn't going to be useful because haste will not save you from the lasers, in fact the build could just get the killer to hits in one shot, protection hit builds are hopeless because how are you supposed to get protection hits, etc. The only builds that I can think of that are impactful still are boon, genrush, and heal builds. If you run anything else your build / perks are probably either unusable or not very useful.
That's fine on my end. If you stack multiple healing perks or perks that require you being healthy and face plague or legion you won't get much value out of them anyway. If you run Steadfast and there are 3 totems out of range of any gens again, it's up to match uniqueness. You can't run same builds and expect it to give you exact value. My current build is drama, finess, salvation's cry and 4th perk I keep changing. But If I go against killers like Ghoul, Plague or whatever than most of my build is not doing anything, which is just my choice to risk that scenario.