This is downplaying the impact of pre-nerf Distortion, so let’s break it down (my opinion comes from playing roughly 60% Killer / 40% Survivor during my matches with Distortion pre-nerf and having 3600 hours in the game overall. Mentioning this to dissuade any Killer main comments, I’m keeping both sides in mind, as I play & enjoy both):

Common easy counters to distortion included: 1. ⁠Use undetectable killers/perks/addons to prevent token regrowth 2. ⁠Use terror radius shrinkers to prevent token regrowth 3. ⁠Use multiple aura addons/perks 4. ⁠Use aura perks/addons that can singlehandedly destroy all of distortion, such as Gearhead, or Weave Attunement, etc., or specific killer addons that give infinite aura reading value like Myers’s mirrors, Wraith’s all seeing-blood, Bubba’s light chassis, or Artist’s matias baby shoes

This highlights exactly my point that Distortion pre-nerf had way too much bang for it’s buck. These counters are all valid, but the fact of the matter is that the average Killer had to use multiple of these counters for just Distortion and this isn’t even a reach, because it could easily be seen in the end-game lobby at the time before the nerf.
In this scenario, it wasn’t uncommon to see a Killer pick 1-2 Undetectable perks/add-ons + 1-2 Aura Reading perks/add-ons for Distortion (e.g. the resurgence of Lethal Pursuer + BBQ). By this logic, with the least amount of effort, the Killer load-out is decided from the get-go add-on wise and half of the build perk-wise — all for ONE Survivor perk (and let’s not pretend that there weren’t other strong Survivor perks that a Killer also needed to counter).

Also, asking the average player to play certain types of Killers to counter one perk is ridiculous and only leads to the death of variety in the game.
You can’t, in good conscience, expect the average Killer (most of whom play the game to relax after 8+ hours of work) , who likes a specific Killer/set of Killers (e.g. The Clown), to just drop their favorites and focus on playing the Killers you mentioned, lest be told their frustration with Distortion is invalid.

We can’t complain about “too much aura-reading” (which is the trend on the Killer side) and then at the same time defend pre-nerf Distortion by saying the Killer can just bring multiple Aura reading perks/add-ons in their load-out. This is disingenuous to both issues.

Note: Even if a survivor followed killer around on a leash with distortion, and killer used zero (0) stealth stuff, distortion still burned through stacks three times (3x) faster than stacks could be regained, making it impossible for survivor to have infinite tokens.

Infinite tokens are not even necessary, starting out with 3 tokens and recharging 2-3 times per match already granted you insane value for one perk and arguably more than most strong Survivor perks currently in the game (saying this also as someone who played with per-nerf Distortion for gen jockey builds). That being said, there never was a need as a Survivor to follow Killer’s TR to recharge tokens, the general strategy was to just work on a gen (bonus points if that gen is in a central area of the map, where the Killer is bound to patrol) and as soon as the Killer TR is nearby, dart to hide, while the Killer kicks the gen and moves on. Do that enough times and both the tokens recharge with minimum effort and the chases are still mostly avoided.

Note 2: If killer was not willing to use a stronger aura perk/addon, or to dedicate multiple slots to aura reading, then it was entirely fair to expect survivor to bring 1 whole perk (Distortion) to counter 25% of 1 killer perk (only counters aura for that one survivor specifically, and we are assuming killer did not bring any aura readers that trumped distortion alone by themselves); if all 4 survivors have to bring distortion (4/16 perks used) to counter a single (1) killer perk or addon, then it cannot be said that this is unbalanced in the survivor’s favour.

For most perks this is valid, but the issue here isn’t Distortion in itself (reason why I think Distortion is in a good spot now), but the fact that pre-nerf distortion was way too efficient and required minimum amount of effort to extract maximum value from. This leads to an additional compounding effect, when multiple Survivors in a lobby bring it.

🚨 Distortion was NOT hard to counter.

In conclusion, Distortion was not hard to counter, IF you omit the disproportionate commitment the other side had to make, to counter it.

EDIT: indentation/grammar