Can we get distortion reverted/reworked?
With killers relying very hard on aura read recently we need a better counter to these builds.
Much as I'm enjoying playing as and against her, judgement has exacerbated this since she can be actively tailing and attacking a survivor without being in chase as far as the game is concerned. But even without her being able to crossmap survs with constant aura with add ons there are a lot of killers who can simply spam aura read for easy hits and wins, clown freddy with paintbrush, demo with leprose lichen, perks like I'm all ears, nowhere to hide etc. That distortion has been rendered kinda useless. Heck running lethal pursuer instantly deactivates it until a user runs chase. And don't even get me started on the franklins/weave attunement combo. Most of these builds totally overwhelm distortion render it next to useless.
The main issue is building tokens. Distortion is at heart a stealth perk, and forcing users into chase to get value out of it is counter intuitive. The old token condition of hiding in terror radius was great, it meant you had to be near the killer which still brought risk to powering the perk up. But there are other options, build it with gen progress, break totems, open chests, make loud noise notifications etc.
I just want to see it be actively useful again, and be useful for newer players. Atm it's pretty bad for new players since they often struggle with chase and can't build tokens with it. It was a hugely helpful perk back when i was newer at the game as it helped me learn how to identify when killers were using aura read perks.
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All they needed to do was change it so it recharges while working on generators. People who complained about people only ratting with it are happy since they are now progressing the game and people who like to be stealthy are happy since they no longer need to be in chase. And like you said new players are able to stay alive a bit better.
This would honestly be so much better. Not even good players get much distortion value simply because you have to be in chase and forcing chase is objectively a bad play.
I said this back then but no they had to connect it to chase so basically making it mostly useless as same time changed Predator so you lost the token if you managed to escape so it was plus minus zero
no distortion was probably the worse designed perk of all time.
Distortion's currently a pretty damn good aura protection perk, so I wouldn't say it needs major changes. All I'd do with it is let it have both tokens at the start of the trial, and even that isn't necessary - it still blocks a good chunk of auras and gives you info on what the killer's running, so it's no slouch at all.
I'd also highlight Self Preservation as a good aura blocker perk - frankly it's a little too good, but for now it's a really good counter to aura builds. We See You is also pretty nice as an info perk, though of course it doesn't cloak your aura.
With Steadfast in the game to help ease the time investment, you could also consider Shadow Step for doing gens without fear of being sniped by a random aura, though of course you need to be wary of spending too much time keeping boons up.
The bottom line is, aura counters and stealth in general are in a pretty good spot at the moment, with only a handful of problematic sources of auras (usually because of the killer using them more than the perks themselves) and a decent stable of counter tools of varying levels of directness.
distortion never should have been nerfed.
I still laugh for the nerf reasoning, key streamers claimed that encourages tunneling because they had to go for survivor without it. If only were nerfed tunneling would decrease . We all know what happened
Raised by a pack of tunnels. 🤣
I mean, regardless - as I am aware this thread occurred due to Judgment, I don't think Distortion is the play for this type of killer. You're barely in chase and even if we go back to being in the killer's terror radius, do you really want to roam around the map trying to collect your tokens against a Judgment?
I think ultimately speaking due to how prevalent aura reading has become and the general overlap that aura reading has, We See You is just objectively better. I'm not against putting it back at 3 tokens, but the perk in my humble opinion, has just been powercreeped by the massive amounts of aura and We See You. I am honestly rethinking my build on Eleven and probably will outright toss Distortion off of my builds, as We See You is just vastly superior but this is coming from someone who isn't afraid of taking chase and can go from tile to tile and chain loops to extend my chase, but I understand why people want Distortion to actively avoid chase, I didn't use it that way - more-so popping a generator and the killer not seeing me with BBQ and Chili but the game has just way too much aura for me to justify it being a good perk anymore.
It's been handicapped so much and just outright binned for me, I just cannot see the value of it after using We See You so much when facing Judgment.
I'll even add that We See You gives a map wide benefit to your team, meanwhile what does Distortion do? Just hide your aura to prevent chase. I am honestly of the opinion again, it's a dated perk since Behavior has doubled down on aura reading.
At very least it should be basekit to shown when your aura red by killer.
Yeah, I said that when they announced Distortion being nerfed and then we get Eleven with We See You.
Behavior essentially said, "Hey, you want to know when the killer aura reads you? Buy Eleven and equip We See You."
People forget that Behavior is a company at the end of the day, they release perks to make you buy the character for more money in their pocket. They will never implement a tracker to let you know when your aura is read and any killer main will respond to just equip We See You.
Behavior dug the grave they did when they nerfed Distortion and release Predator and Zanshin Tactics to become aura reading, they know what they're doing.
I played with Distortion a lot back in the day. It was a very helpful perk, but my games always seemed to end with my team dying. I think it could be better if it worked somewhat like Blood Pact or Better than New, where we could give another teammate a token or Elusive under certain conditions. That could help prevent the game from going downhill.
If this perk stays as a solo perk and only affects the player using it, I don't think it's a good idea.
Make it so it affects everyone. Multiple copies increase the number of tokens.
I'm mixed on this. I think with some of the more egregious, constant aura reads cough weave attunement cough a warning is needed. But certain perks would be next to useless if survivors always had a warning, like nowhere to hide or awakened awareness. They rely on catching survivors trying to hide and a warning would be a straight self counter.
Tbh this is why I want to see distortion buffed. Rather than relying on directly countering the aura reads I used to use it to identify what aura reads the killer was using. It really informed my gameplay a lot and I still run it a fair bit nowdays. But all it really does now is let me figure out if the killer is using lethal pursuer and therefore probably at least a partially aura based build.
I honestly just miss the 3 tokes, I am fine with the chase part, but please make it 3 tokens again
Yeah, that can work too.
Idk that seems a bit too much. One surv bringing it would hard counter lethal pursuer, and you'd probably never get value out of bbq or floods of rage.
They also need to add more limits and cooldowns to Aura perks. Back-to-back aura grants are excessive and sometimes overly oppressive against certain killers and builds. We See You is working overtime in my Trials lately, but why impose a 10s cooldown on tokens? If a Killer can get three consecutive aura reads, give me three tokens. Aura reading needs a major rework; it simply comes up way too often.
Distortion was nerfed purely becouse people using it were ratting and barely interacting with both their teammates and killer players.
And it shouldn't be buffed, the activation that it has now is perfectly acceptable. I don't need this playstyle to come back just to for my SoloQ teammates to be even more scared of doing something productive.
If you are really concerned about aura reading perks you can run other perks. I favour We see you from Eleven, but you still have Boon Shadowstep and OoO to help you out.
A few problems with that theory.
This is just going to be a tunneling issue, as it was before, and I mean this in more of a mathematical sense. What we're discussing here isn't a distortion nerf, it's a meta shift. That is to say if a great deal of killers run aura read, the meta shift would be survs running distortion or other aura blocking perks, right?
Well this creates a scenario in which the killers stop playing aura necessary killers and run different builds to butcher anyone using perk slots on aura blocking. This creates a new stable meme in the pool, which is answered by the same meta as before, exhaustion perks and anti-tunnel perks. Which goes right back to aura perks.
This is just an argument of counters and adaptions, no?
The problem as I see if, if I were to take the survivor side on the matter, isn't that distortion isn't good enough. The problem is that there are a variety of killer perk and power load outs and as more killers are released it's becoming increasingly more difficult to run a build that comfortably denies or counters the bulk. If you run anti regression perks (Gen rush), you end up gutted if you face an aura build. If you run anti Aura, then the regression build guts you. And so on.
I think this is more of a problem of at match lock-in, feeling comfortable that the build you enter with is going to see value. This scenario is becoming increasingly more difficult as more killers are introduced that run different power perk combinations popularly.
If this is the case, the problem is more the lack of expected outcome from what the killers are bringing to a match than it is a problem of perks being undervaluable. Though certainly a buff to something like distortion would help for the anti-aura builds.
We need more ways to give the Blindness Status Effect to Killers besides Residual Manifest (Haddie Perk).
Maybe a flashlight add-on, or add it to everything that blinds the killer and rework Residual to make it last longer.
The Problem with Distortion is it just blocks all Auras from all Perks and add-ons. A least A Place for us requires Healing and Self-preservation requires a Hook.
We need more perks that block specific Aura reading. (Example: Dance with me and Poised could give Elusive for vaulting and completing a Gen.
i run shadowstep it does what distortion does
Two things I'll add onto these solid points
1: The distortion nerf happened well before the update to crows. It was extremely easy to reset the Crow the timer, meaning there was next to no need for distortion.
2: Even if a rat was going to use distortion, one token is more than enough for an emergency. In the old system the rat was going to avoid any in progress gen, be in a locker for BBQ, not engage with an any element that could reveal there aura. Even 1 token is enough of an emergency backup if a player's intent was truly just to rat. It's the player who is actually engaged in the game who has reason to need the more tokens.
that is because generalized perks are seen as "Way too strong" hence the fact they are gutting vigil. but ultimately this is STILL a problem of trying to balance an Asymm game around perks rather than around the Asymm elements of the characters. "this perk is too good here so we're nerfing it across the board" is why perks become unviable so fast. people want guaranteed value from their perks mostly, that's why it continues to hit so hard when things like Vigil and SB are super nerfed, because they usually provide some form of value. Perks are all that a survivor is, and as the roster expands and old perks are getting nerfed one by one rarely to return to frontrunner status there's just less generally strong options for your average survivor…
Is it crazy to say that this game is going to run into too many unsolvable problems (Perk Balance, Killer Tier Diff, Copious RNG, Stale Meta, ETC) to where the whole game just needs a reboot?
Distortion doesn't help rats, but it certainly helps against an ever expanding amount of aura reads, i mean lets be honest… Aura Read Judgement would shred through old distortion anyway while on the other hand BBQ on Bubba might not get a single read all game on someone running Distortion, making the perk "too good" and also "not good enough" at the same time where against Lethal and BBQ on someone like Ghoul or Nemesis uses two perk slots for the sake of keeping pressure and knowing where people are but are entirely voided by old Distortion, so why bother bringing them if people are running Distortion a lot? but Judgement, Nurse, even Huntress might Tear Distortion up to the point where its kind of not great, Judgement more than the others. I just don't know how BHVR can even go about balancing situations like this anymore.
Isn't this why exhaustion perks are a mainstay? because regardless of the RNG of killer, map, build, anything… Lithe, SB, DH will always be useful at some level whereas a lot of good Survivor Perks require teammate awareness which all too often they do not have, and there's also the reality that Survivor is kind of encouraged to play for themselves.
Distortion was needlessly nerfed and support reverting it.
More than 'kind of', after that disastrous 'If you ran the killer for five gens but then died, was it really a good play?' remark.
If you play with friends, have everyone run Boon: Shadow Step. Three Judgments, and all three disconnected as soon as they hit zero auras. A fourth just idled. Even two SS can be a game changer. The Judgment players are abusing non-stop aura reading. Deny this and they will rage quit more than likely or at least have to work much harder. So far, none have tried. They DC or idle.
I guess people aren't appreciating your advice so it must be good!
I'm happy to see Shadowstep back on the menu that perk was always second fiddle to CoH but I swore that thing saved just as many health states as CoH recovered.
i never wanted distortion nerfed from a killer perspective. i only wanted it nerfed from a survivor perspective and on that note i hope it stays dead. to this day when i see my teammate has it they do the same thing they did back in the day and that was do nothing. the vast majority of the time these distortion users are still just hiding, never taking chase when they should, being incredibly selfish and an outright detriment to the team, if distortion users are in the match they’re one of the biggest determining factors in a match losing outcome.
I'd like it to be buffed to start with 2 tokens instead of 1 (and maybe raise the cap back to 3 again instead of 2).
It should not be reverted back to the old version though, it was basically infinite with how the old recharge system worked, 95% of the time you just never ran out of tokens
No BHVR wants to force the chase meta. Honestly killing stealth and forcing the chase meta is one of the worst things to happen this game. As a controller player I can't hug loops tight so I doubt I'll ever be a great looper. BHVR is basically giving me the middle finger.
yeah forcing a chase meta by nerfing good chase perks for survivor, nerfing stealth perks for survivor, and also adding more killers with antiloop and zone capabilities that force people to hold W…
Yeah you'd never run out of tokens because aura reading was nowhere near as prolific when we had original distortion. Even 3 tokens won't last long against a judgement or henry vecna with a full aura read build. Plus some perks alone would over load the perk and have you constantly empty on tokens, gear head, weave attunement etc.
May as well, the meta is getting stale again. Time to spice it up
Notice people only want distortion buffed since the judgement came out,maybe distortion and aura perks aren't the problem but the new killer itself… Interesting that everyone seems to be avoiding the elephant in the room
I am fine with judgement getting gutted as well.
A place for us, distortion, shadowstep exist. :) They are amazing to counter her power and let's be honest Judgment withou ara perks is nowhere near powerfull.
Distortion with 1 token?
It never recharges since judgement wont chase but even then chase only counts if you are in hit range to m1.
Shadowstep has pitiful range 24meter and judgement can snuff out in 1 seconds you wasted 14 seconds and more to find it
I'm not sure a single survivor perk should destroy a killer's build if it's fully dedicated to aura. Distortion does it's job. It saves you from aura read at certain times, and it tells you what aura reading the killer has, which can then help you play around it.
If the killer is dedicating their whole build to aura, to the point they exhaust distortion, then I think it's fair that a survivor who finds that to be an issue should dedicate more of their own build to anti aura perks.
Edit: In fact, I don't even think a single survivor perk should counter even a single killer aura perk fully. The killer has 4 perks to the survivors' 16.
I want to see the killer who can M1 attack 12 meter distance.
That's the RNG though, DBD is built around a ton of RNG, and avoiding bad results for one side as a result of RNG is not worth doing unless they want to go ahead and scrap all RNG. Survivors run the risk of bringing bad builds against certain killers all of the time. I think the real issue is whether a killer so strongly depends on perks or not.
Good news: It never did. Sufficient aura reading could always eat through Distortion faster than it could regenerate.
Those 'anti-aura' perks are exceedingly few in number. There's Distortion and Shadowstep and that's about it.
Not to mention that with current Distortion, the amount of aura reading required to exhaust it is one (1) perk, since Distortion doesn't recharge anymore, except in chase, at which point you no longer need aura reading.
Yet more good news: It never did that, either. For some reason, people seem to think that one survivor bringing Distortion protects ALL survivors from aura reading, but I'm not sure where people got that from.
Tbf I've been wanting it reverted since I came back to the game last year and saw how badly it had been gutted. But yh, judgement does highlight the need somewhat.
Yeah the new killer is really bad. Crazy how BHVR overrode people on the boon totem suggestions, but let the new killer have an attack that stretches half way across the map. You can't even work on a gen without having to dodge every 5 seconds. We just got people who refuse to engage in chase and instead snipe at people from the middle of the map. Judgement is the only killer in the game aura reading is this miserable on.
Its funny how people always seem to forget that bit of Math 🤔
Besides, its always better to run a mix of perks imho, Nurses for aura, coulrophobia for anti heal, really liking Lay Waste for Gen defense and at the moment Unforseen (the one that transfers terror to gen).
Had my fun with full aura Judgment, now learning to play her in chase better. Until she gets gutted because people dunno how to press A or D.