To Cleanse or not to cleanse Against Plague
(Edited)



I've seen a trend in both players in game and commenters on the forums/reddit/twitter/twitch and so on, saying that the best way to counter plague is to not cleanse AT ALL. Frankly, this is an absolutely terrible advice and it's not going to work unless you're a 4-man SWF who can gen-rush really easily, then maybe you are not gonna get destroyed. Maybe.
Tho, every team that I've played as plague against - or as a team against her - that used this strategy of "never cleansing" got completely crushed.
Maybe or maybe not I was just "unlucky" with my teams or maps or whatever sometimes, but I doubt that winning or losing a match against Plague was only always because of unfortunate circumstances like a "sh*tty Matchmaking", therefore: no excuses.

So,

The arguments that I see in favor of not cleansing usually go as follows:

• She doesn't get to use corrupt purge. This is true, most likely you get to keep her from using her biggest advantage. At the cost of being 1-hit and very easy to track, however. You are essentially trading one advantage for another.
• Just loop her and you'll be fine. Plague without her power is just an M1 killer, that means you can just loop her easy peasy right? Maybe, but even then only being able to take one hit significantly reduces the amount of time you can loop her. Making chases shorter overall. Aside from the fact, that most of the dbd players are bad to very bad loopers.(Including myself)
• If you can gen-rush her fast enough you'll probably be just fine. This one has some truth to it. If you're a coordinated team then you could potentially pull this off by off-setting the quick chases by hammering through gens. Without coordination though you aren't going to accomplish much and it could easily backfire on you. (Try to coordinate your Solo Queue to just half of what is needed to archieve this gen-rush goal, good luck with that)

If you decide not to cleanse then you are:

1. A 1 hit down, so leaving yourself (and your teammates) vulnerable for the rest of the game
2. Going to be infecting everything you touch . This screw over teammates that aren't following this strategy and gives a clear indication of where you've been (good luck hiding in a locker or sneakily vaulting a window).
3. Very easy to track. In addition to the points I mentioned above, it's damn near impossible to miss someone who is injured AND vomiting. Iron Will at 75% reduced grunts of pain or no mither, Off the record and other perks that eventually affect your voices will not affect the vomiting noises you will be making (same with coughing when infected by Nemesis' T-Virus).
4. If she brings either of her apple (adding cursed fountains) or iridescent (Aura reading when throwing up) add-ons then you are setting yourself up to be snowballed into the ground. For those who don't know the apple add-ons allow the Plague to start the match with one pool already corrupted. If the killer sees that everyone is broken and NOT cleansing then she can use her one pool to effectively instadown and slug the whole team at range. Even a SWF can have trouble with that.
Does that mean that you should blindly cleanse at every chance against her? No. You need to have discretion with when you cleanse instead of never cleansing in the first place. You don't always need to cleanse immediately after getting sick the first time.
It's better to use discretion about WHEN to cleanse instead of NEVER cleansing at all. Not cleansing is a bad strategy and will get your team killed. Coordinated SWFs are the only ones who could potentially pull it off.
But to be honest: how often are you playing in a REALLY coordinated SWF? (Like right now, if you read this by any means you were eventually paired up with me in a dbd-lobby, checking out my profile, skim over this text and since I am a SoloQ-Player that means you can potentially be a Sole Surviver up to a 3-man-SWF at maximum, otherwise I would not possibly be "your random". I guarantee, it only needs a lowkey-skilled Plague to raid us ;))




As for my personal opinion I consider playing against Plague with cleansing AND not cleansing in a healthy mix. That means using your brain and think of when it's good and needed to cleanse, and when it isn't!
Don't cleanse nearby a hook or gen that people work on.
Do Cleanse before you wanna join a teammate on a not infected gen.
If you go for an unhook of an ill teammate, don't cleanse. Your teammate will get you infected only just once again, so cleansing before the unhook doesn't make sense. I see people do it alot but please don't. Same goes other way around. If you wanna unhook but you are infected, the hooked player isn't, cleanse if you can or let someone else unhook if you see that they go for it. Don't potentially throw a match just for a few unhooking Bloodpoints. You will infect the player that you unhook and it will cost you time to cleanse AND give the killer two possible brandnew Blood Fountains.
Also don't cleanse if you have to interact with objects such as gens, lockers, windows, pallets, totems or gates that the Killer puked on and thus infected. They will re-infect you immediatly so cleansing only gives the killer another Blood Purge Fountain PLUS an exact idea of where you actually are or have been within the last seconds.

But as for my final advice: How about you try it out yourself instead of only listening to others and tell them what they want to hear?

Of course, we all know that the public opinion is "never cleanse".
But
public opinion isn't always the best advice just because 99 out of 100 people follow it. It only means that 99 out of 100 people are too lazy to use their brains to figure things out themselves. In fact the "never cleanse at all"-strategy is fatal and bad on so many levels.
And so is "Cleansing at every possible Chance". That's bad, too. If you still don't get why, re-read my text.

Please don't play Dead by Daylight blindfolded, people. Use that sexy brain of yours <3

Thanks!


The END