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“Distortion” is possibly one of the most heavily debated perks in the current state of DBD. Some see it as an unfun perk, others feel it’s completely fine. I tied to narrow down the more problematic parts of this perk and fix with with a simple suggestion. Feel free to disagree, though!
00:00 Why is Distortion controversial?
01:21 Example of Distortion’s effects
02:59 Issue #1 Unfun Killer builds
03:24 Issue #2 Boring gameplay
3:51 Issue #3 Solo vs SWF
5:07 My proposed fix
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Damnit, Everytime i find a main kit to run. People start bitching about a perk being too good. Been using this perk for 2 years, but now its a issue? Ugh fine take that from me too.
time to nerf distortion i guess
The game always has a phase where killer/surv gravitate towards certain perks, and completely ignore others..This is an example of that. Killers -> grim, pop, pai res, surv->distortion, background player (recently fixed) etc. (Pls add more, I must have missed some). The devs should consider evening out the pick rate of less used perks, leading to fresh and ever changing playstyles. Hence chaos shuffle was such a success.
Distortion absolutely needs a nerf. But I think Otz's idea is a little too complex for the devs maybe. My idea is: it should have 1 token (or no token at all essentially). And after it's spent, next time your aura is revealed you get that back. So that it would always go back and forth and you would still get info on the killer reading your aura even without protection. And maybe do away with secondary effect (hiding scratchmarks) completely but that can be debated.
Survivors will simply switch to Object of Obsession which is even stronger and better than Distortion since it actually improves genrushing. I had the misfortune of playing against a squad of survivors abusing this perk just because Weave Attunement happens to be such a fun and meta perk to use, the downside however is that everyone has 6% more repairspeed as long as their aura is revealed. It's simply disgusting.
0:50 I feel like the devs are not really interested in listening to critism and feedback from the community in general, or do they?
I think one thing that would help the perception of distortion would be if stacks regenerated for time in CHASE rather than just TR, that way it encourages users to still contribute their part of taking the killers attention rather than stealthing all game and indirectly helping their teammates be tunneled
Your suggestion is terrible. 4 tokens could used up immediately if killer is running Lethal Pursuer. Wow we (survivors) know 1 aura perk that doesn’t matter the rest of the game. Yippee
I'm actually not quite a fan of this idea, for these reasons:
– While showing the aura with an icon can help figure out the perk in many situations of solo queue, there's still a lot of cases where it's impossible to tell what triggered distortion. If the Killer kicks a gen near a distortion user, and you're at the other side of the map, you don't know what the Killer is doing, or if he's even close to the distortion user. So these would be "wasted information".
– How do you split the perk charges if there's 3 users? One random person gets 2 charges?
– If all survivors have Distortion and the Killer has Lethal pursuer, that's your team's 4 charges immediately wasted and you will not be able to use Distortion to tell what other aura reading methods the Killer has.
– In the end, I'm never a fan of perks that have a limited of uses in a game, I always prefer something that helps me throughout the whole game.
A better idea I would have for distortion would be that it only blocks one aura reading out of two. When the perk is charged, the killer attempting to read your aura fails and the perk decharges. When the Killer attempts to read your aura again, it succeeds, but the perk charges to block the next aura reading. Both cases shows your aura to others. This would still give you and potentially your teammates the information about what aura reading perks the Killer is running, but the Killer would still be able to find you eventually.
But the reality is that really, aura reading perks of survivors have kinda gone out of hand, and a lot of killers have grown dependant on it, just like a lot of survivors are dependant on windows of opportunity to loop a minimum correctly. I feel certain aura reading perks should be balanced down by telling the survivor that their position is revealed without the use of Distortion.
there are people now abusing distortion and running bush builds and bringing red forest, singus map and just being a general arse
I started running Object more instead of Distortion. You see my aura, I see yours 😚
Obvious downside is getting tunneled/camped/slugged to bleed out because killers still don’t like Object even tho it’s a low tier nerfed perk that literally nobody even runs. I mostly solo q btw :>
Personally I feel like distortion is fine. Its a risk for a survivor to run because of the frequent gen regression meta.
Í think this perk is too situational, to say if it needs a change or not. I see your point, but I also think that killers have so many aura revealing perks, that some stealth has to be in the game. I have some pretty strong aura revealing builds on Huntress, Spirit and Bing Bong and they often enough let me stomp the survs. And as Surv I also use some stealth builds, that allow me to disappera midchase, or just never been seen by the killer. Killer players often just see things that move or get highlighted, so you can hide in plain sight of them. And if the killer does take closer looks and is aware of his surrounding, distortion and likewise perks are less strong, all of the sudden. So all the stealth perks get less strong, when the killers are experienced, imo.
I dont see anything wrong with distortion, and also your changes apply to SWF, I solo Queue, I need all the help I can get
I'm a distortion player 😀 but I don't bring it with intention to hide for hatch. I bring it with me because I've faced so many aura readings from many sources that I found distortion crucial for survival for the info in the killer strategy it provides.
Besides, it may encourage people to tunneling? but also it protects from tunneling. Case of those killers that decide go to the far isolated end of the map to kill that Dwight because it has two hooks" instead of protecting the last generators.
However, the idea to show your aura to your teammates, I think is a nice idea, is true that in premade I warn my friends of the strategies, while in solo Q I see many of my partners dying for ignoring these aura readings. (Like the Plague red addon, the clown yellow bottle or Sadako teleports).
its like, i think distortion is good and healthy for the game, but keep the stacks that we currently have
I think the issue with distortion runs deeper than just it's effects and it's effect on the gameplay. There's only one perk that truly combats killers running aura reading perks, which is distortion. We have anti chase perks for survivors and chase perks for killers, we have gen rush perks for survivors and gen delay perks for killers, etc
But for aura reading there is only one perk for survivors, and like 50 for killers? What we need isn't necessarily a huge change to distortion, but alternatives for people who want to counter aura reading perks. How exactly that'd look? No idea, every time your aura gets read you see the aura of the killer for twice as long as they saw yours? I'm convinced that less people would ruin distortion and the frustration about it would go down if there were alternatives, but who knows maybe I'm dead wrong.
Having someone not get to use their perk fully because someone else brought the same perk it a horrible idea
Otz, there's also the fact that there are too few counters to Aura reading.
The only thing a Survivor can do to prevent an Aura read without using any perks, is go into a Locker or crouch behind a Generator in the perfect angle.
And there also only a few perks that counters auras.
I'm 100% honest, I don't really like your version of Distortion. I personally use Distortion almost always, but I don't hide with it, I only want the info, so it is easier to know that the Killer doesn't have NOED ir to know that there is no Blood Warden etc.
That is the exact reason why I think the regeneration of Tokens is a good thing.
What i personally don't like about it, is that it counters mainly Perks that allow skill expression. For example a sniping Huntress needs a lot of skill to orbital someone they've seen with Gearhead. To just nullify that is kind of sad, because she might as well just use Pain Res instead which takes no skill and also has value.
I think the no Scratch Marks effect could be removed tho. I most cases this does nothing, and I think the Aura hiding aspect is already pretty strong.
It makes no sense to complain about perks that are literally there to be used. If you can’t counter them that’s on you.
why not make distortion not show up when it activates, aka losing a token. why not make it "your aura cannot be seen by the killer or other allies". it would be equally good and punishing, imagine slugging the guy that you figured has distortion. or probably like "your aura cannot be seen by the killer. after the 3rd time this perk has prevented your aura from being shown to the killer you suffer from the exposed status effect for 60 seconds"
Oh I see what you did with the webcam. What a clever move by you, very subtle. And the best part is that everyone sees it, but a very few can understand why. Brilliant move Otz!!!
I dont really see the problem in the perk honestly maybe nerf the tokens by one i guess but i never saw the problem in it
So, I always thought the perk Distortion being fixed by getting tokens when getting off the hook and starting the match off with 1 token. So you get its base effect off the back but after you use your token, you will get reimbursed with 2 tokens when you are hooked and successfully taken off the hook (aka safety unhook award is given). That will give players a total of 5 tokens if played properly giving survivors more options while also giving the killer the chance to break it down the tokens and start chase with that survivor sooner so tunneling isn’t implicated. It’s just an idea I had in my head for some time and since I am not biased to either side of the gameplay, I thought this would be a neutral starting point for a PTB testing.
So here's my experience. I was playing pyramid head with an aura reading build (u know, lethal, nowhere to hide, i'm all ears…) and as the game started I just saw one single survivor. I have no option to tunnel the poor guy…
I think the main issue is the regeneration of the tokens, it is so easy that it makes it so they could essentially remove the token system at all and make it work permanently, and it wouldn't differ from the current state. Your idea of the rework is also not that solo queue friendly, not because of the tokens but because you can't assume all players know all perks and addons. This is the main strength of SWF, not the comms but the knowledge they have
My problem with this change is that it would feel punishing to running distortion in solos and having less tokens because of OTHER people. This would just create a divide among solo survivors. Remember this game was designed to be a free-for-all that CAN work together. I get pushing this game to be more of a 4v1 instead of a free-for-all is positivity inducing. However the fact of the matter is just let people be selfish and hide in a game about being murdered. I hate distortion too but I don't think we should gut stealth gameplay in a game about hiding from the killer. Like others said Distortion is much akin to Lightborn. I want to see hard counters again like iron will buffed to 100% and this is coming from a killer main. If anything, just nerf the token generation, keep the generation, but nerf it and that's all that needs to happen; or even increase the interval in which the auras CAN be blocked, like "Once your aura is blocked, you cannot block your aura again with this perk for 30 seconds or gain tokens in the TR, after 30 seconds this perk activates again"
Actually a great suggestion for changing Distortion! I wonder why Otz didn't mention that it also replenishes stacks while in chase. Is it still a thing?
I've got only around 250 hours in DBD and in my last let's say 10 hours of playing it I started using Lethal pursuer and every few games I noticed survis with distortion but honestly I didn't feel like it's the problem. At the start of the game most of the times it's easy to tell where is survi with distortion spawning based on your own spawn and other survis so you can narrow down are on the map to tell what that person will do most of the time. Later in the game tho distortion is definitely more annoying so I try manipulate survi to do certain actions to get into specific areas of the maps that I'm familiar/good with. So I think that to counter distortion perk you have to make some brain work but I know there are a lot more problematic perks than this one. I think it all comes to skill issue and frustration playing against something you don't like BUT I do like Otzdarva idea of how to change this perk, it actually looks neat!
Now i can blame otz if Distortion change /joke
Its just so demoralizing running two aura reading perks for a fun build and then playing against distortion players. Like two of my perk slots are just wasted unless I tunnel now and I wasn't trying to sweat this game.
Fuck you Otz Start motherfuckering about mistakes for survivors and about the fact that they are in the fucking big hitboxes you are a cheater and not a skilled player because you play on unfair terms, fucking cheater
Lmaoooo the outro I was honestly thinking about suggesting you make a video about Windows of opportunity since it's already being run by everyone but 😂
I'm not sure about the specific changes you suggested but I do like the aspect of any rework emphasising its secondary utility as an info perk! It's a point that people often miss whenever the perk is discussed (or rather, complained about 😅)
LEAVE DISTORTION ALONE
4 ppl run your distortion, lethal would counter all 4 perks
Distortion should just disable the Skull Merchant
Am I crazy or was the Nea on the bottom of the hud cheating?
Your proposed change sounds awful, I’m glad Behavior doesn’t listen to you.
I just think we need a perk overhaul tbh. The reason certain perks are used more than others is bc those other perks are too niche or useless.
Ik the game will never be balanced, but having a perk overhaul on both sides for those useless/niche perks will fix 99% of the problem
Aura revealing perks are too easy for the killer. All they have to do is slot lethal and they find you all to start the snowball and before you know it, no gens are done and you have 2 people on hook. Distortion is nessesary these days especially with all of the new aura reading perks and builds. I would rather play the game of cat and mouse without the cat just magically knowing where to find me. It's too easy. Distortion should be in every survivor loadout no matter what your role in the game is.
Personally, the only issue distortion has is like you said that it has an higher value in a team rather than in SoloQ.
My only 2 requirements for Distortion would be:
– doesn't tell you when it activates
– instead of a token sistem, make it a charge sistem where you need to be 30 seconds inside the killer terror radius BUT NOT in chase