Boon Totems don't have meaningful counterplay and they need it
The only "counterplay" Boons have is that they can be snuffed but snuffing them doesn't do anything, it just disables it and can be re-light whenever. When a Killer snuffs a Totem, it should also break the Totem. To balance this out, there should spawn more Totems in the Trial. Maybe double it to 10 Totems
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Imma be real with ya man. I agree with breaking the totem, maybe even giving an option it break or snuff out.
But I do not agree with 10 totems. That's would probably break the game and many perks would also have to be tweaked/ possibly reworked
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The counterplay to boon totems is that survivors are out of position when they attempt to use it, and so they can be chased or the area surrounding the boon totem can be made into a deadzone. Your problem is thinking that you should be able to "undo" Boons as their counterplay, when they're a lot more like generators; a place where you can expect survivors to be.
I can get into why boons shouldn't be broken if you want but honestly I feel like you've probably already seen the reasoning at this point, this debate never ends.
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Sure, maybe less than 10. Still, it should be increased if Boons could get destroyed
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That's the biggest problem, they're like Generators and Killer already barely have time to check on all gens. Adding another objective for the Killer that can't be countered is not fair and balanced. Boons should be bake to be broken
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I mean we have 5 now so..If we try and mediate it, it would probably end on 7, maybe 6.
But also a killer breaking the totem is fine without an increase in totems. On one hand the killer has no hexes/ has no reason for more than 1-2 hexes (leaving 3 totems). And on the other why would survivors need more totems to bless.
So I think the best balance in this scenario is simply being able to destroy totems that are blessed
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Won't hear any arguments from me that the game should be slowed down a little, but immediately abandoning the attempt at a second objective everyone's been clamouring for for years is not the way to go.
So, condensed version because I and others have already wordwalled about this before: If Boon totems can be broken, that means that they are no longer a second objective, they no longer waste survivor's time, they no longer become a fun new mechanic that has any effect on the game whatsoever. They become a temporary annoyance that the killer has to deal with on top of their regular duties.
They should not be breakable. Survivors should want to be returning to the same spot over and over so the killer has a chance to catch them out of position and not working on a generator.
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But increasing the amount of Totems will also benefit Killers. 4 Survivors can bring a Boon each and break 1 Totem and Hexes don't take priority over Boons. Increasing Totem amount will allow NOED or Plaything to activate even in this situation
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They don't waste Survivors time, it saves them time. One person creates a Boon and boom, you got a free heal for the whole team and near Invisibility aswell if you have both of them equipped
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True, more chances for those perks, but is it worth the extra few totems?. I've played games already and not once have they booned/cleansed all the totems to block my noed.
So imma go with the stance of, a few more totems isn't worth the small change it might give both sides.
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Fair enough, it's a small chance it could happen but I'd still like more Totems even if it's only for the extra BP
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Shadow Step is badly overrated. It's not near invisibility, it's a very slight edge in chase and protection from aura reading. I'm not going to bother talking more about that one because CoH is absolutely the main draw for totems.
So! If survivors play well and use them efficiently, sure, it does end up saving them time- but that's fine, because it's a survivor perk, it should provide them an actual benefit. But if they're sloppy, uncoordinated, if they make the mistake of drawing the killer to their boon totem in chase, if they don't count on being Exposed, Broken, or going up against an instadown from other methods, if there's Thrill of the Hunt and Undying telling the killer where they are, if it's a stealth killer they didn't see... they'll be interrupted, and that is wasted time. Add on to that, even if nothing I said is in play, if the totem is continually snuffed and they're continually relighting it, that is also wasted time.
People act like Boon Totems should have no effect on the match, and if they do have an effect on the match that's "lacking counterplay". Quite wrong, in my opinion! Boon Totems should be played around. They're a factor of the match and something to use as bait, not something to just break and be done with it.
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Survivors aren't poor baby's who never played this game. They know they can be found and killed while blessing, which is why they never bless around the Killer resulting in no time wasted. Sure you can get an insta kill Killer, but that isn't a real counter to Boons. If we're still talking about time, Boons waste more of a Killer's time due to them being able to eb reblessed INDEFINITELY. If you don't want to break them, then make it a do and forget deal that only works once or twice per Trial
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Again, you're missing the point. The entire goal of the totems is to be a draw, if they only work once or twice per trial, even putting aside the fact that obviously nobody would run them in that case, survivors are just going to be stuck on generators for longer.
If you think they're too strong, maybe they can be tuned down a bit, but suggesting they be broken on snuffing, or even suggesting they be limited use, is on the same level as "just delete them" when it comes to not engaging with them as a concept.
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This is not a second objective for survivors. This is 1/4 survivors planting a boon far away from the remaining gens giving the entire team a massive advantage or 1/4 planting a boon in the main building to hide scratch marks.
This IS another objective and massive time waste for killer though.
A second objective for survivor is something they have zero option to do and stops or slows the gens.
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It's only a secondary objective for the Killer. If it was for Survivors, everyone should've brought one in and not only one person
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The problem is that Boons, turn totems into an unlimited ressource for survivors. And right now they cost very little time to the survivors compard to what they get in return.
I think boons would be fine if snuffing them was a little bit more impactfull, trough a cooldown on the perk or preventing the totem from being blessed immediatly. Also activated Hexes should be able to override a Boon.
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Cooldown seems fine too
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i think it should only break if snuffed out, a boon totem is pretty much a totem that has been cleansed by survivors
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Reblessing a boon takes time.
14 seconds+ whatever travel time.
Let's say it takes 6 seconds to find a totem, go to said totem and go back to your gen. Which is really unrealistically low but for example sake.
Then the survivor spend 20 seconds or 25% of a gen to activate their perks that the killer can negate in 2 seconds.
That's bassically a free pop goes the weasel the survivor gave to you just to use their perks. And again that's assuming a real low amount of travel time. In reality it's a lot more.
Sorry but if survivors are able to waste their time relighting boon totems over and over again and still escape then you were outmatched and would have lost without the boon totems too, only faster.
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I agree with both of these assessments. A brief cooldown on the perk, maybe only up as far as thirty seconds, and snuffing boons has a little more impact without completely undoing what they're supposed to be for.
Activated Hexes should definitely override a Boon, too. That's not even that strong, since survivors will know where the perk activated.
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I've seen this argument every time. Guess what, there's 4 Survivors in a Trial. If one blesses a Totem, everyone gets the benefit. Sure, 1 person isn't on a gen but they're using their time to save their team later on
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If you add a cooldown or once per trial useage, in a week you'll be back to complaining that survivors only run 4 perks.
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I don't think a brief cooldown would nuke the perk, I think just something to prevent you from being back on it literally immediately would mean you're still more than capable of going and relighting it once the killer's left the area.
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Unless you are able to snuff it before they can get vallue of it. Then that survivor wasted time for nothing.
You are only seeing the absolute best case scenario and ignoring all the downsides of boons
From my experience playing against them and watching streamers they are strong when used right but straight up detrimental if the killer gets on top of it soon enough
The fact that there actually is a time cost with boons already makes them so much more healthy then all the other meta perks survivors get to activate for free.
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except dull totems aren't shown to you so no, they aren't like generators and don't need to be
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Not sure what your point is, would you mind elaborating?
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gens' auras are shown to the killer, dull totems' aren't, and last time i checked, killers don't have detective's hunch, so how are they supposed to additionally patrol those?
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They're not like generators in that you're supposed to patrol/defend them, they're like generators in that they're static objects you can predict survivors to be around after they've shown interest in one.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see some dull totem tracking perks in the future, though. Just to really cement that.
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Techinically they do. Hex: Undying reveals auras of survivors near dull totems.
But it is a totem. Sooooo yeah.
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Are you honestly saying infinitely respawning med kits and an amalgamation of lucky break and distortion are not fair and balanced? Preposterous.
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I know right?
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There are so many impactful totem locations. The centralized ones are the best, and combined with indoor maps becomes insane.
Imagine having the killer to go up there, losing around 30 seconds of his time (going up and going down + finding survivor after + survivor healed states), just to disable a totem that will be light up again 1 minute later. It's such an insane damage that the best thing you can do is just accept and leave them there. If that's what BHVR call meaningful counterplay, then I'm ROFL.
Played 3 hours today and haven't been killed once. Once I change back to playing killer I will absolutely change one of my perks to Hex: Plaything.
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I love when you people "try" to justify the boons are only survivors time wasters but never talk about the other side the killers.
Using your example your suvivor has used about 20 seconds of its time to find and bless the totem, good.
Lets play two scenarios here:
Killer its unaware of the position of the survivor and the totem, after a failled chase it imediatly notices the survivor healing at an abnormal speed wich makes it tink theres a healing totem nearby, lets say this is a quick chase and takes about 20 seconds. Then killer decides its a bad idea to leave the totem around and goes to search for it, for the sake of the argument it takes him about 15 seconds to find and snuff it out. Killer has spent 35 seconds on all this, and im being generous, those are 35 seconds the other 3 survivors have had free reing to do watever they want. Generators without perfect skill checks and tool takes about 80 seconds to be done from new fully repaired, so basically those are 3 generators that are half repaired. But wait, now lets add items and perks, in an optimal scenario those 3 very same generators most likely will be at 75% repair if not almost fully repaired...so mind telling me how the time wasted by 1 survivor its equally as valuable as the time wasted by a killer?, the anwer it isnt.
The same can be applied to scenario were the killer its imediatly aware of the totem, the only diference is that on this scenario lets cut those 35 seconds to say 15, altought those 20 seconds do make a diference on the other 3 survivors its still a situation where the killer its loosing valuable time snuffing out something that will easily be reapplied at another place with little problem.
Now heres the fun thing, in team compositions this boons are far, far FAR from useless.
I got on a game yesterday with what clearly was a team of at least 3 people. About 2 minutes from the start of the game i was unable to track down the survivors anymore, guess what boon they where using. By pure luck i found one of them moving aorund, wich in retrospective probably was there to distract me. The boon already made it hard to track and find, it was by pure luck i saw it and managed to snuff it out. The survivor imediatly vaulted away. Guess what they had already set up on a diferent area, yes another one. Tracking them became almost imposible. By this point they already had 2 gens completed and i was guessing they had already a few worked on. That game became a 3 hooks for me and those where by pure absolute luck with a full escape with ALL gens repaired. The game was indeed a bit longer, but the beneffits where obvious.
Boons are a tame waster for killers that just make things frustrating and overcomplicated. Im a pyramid head killer so i have a few tools that make my life easier, but i cant imagine how frustrating this will be for M1 killers agains healing boons when they are back or killers without tracking perks (like me wich i started playing not to long ago so im still using the basic ones).
Boons need a rework, they arent balanced at all
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And that's probably why i don't have issus with boons.
I don't stop and drop everything i'm doing to find it. I have a general idea of where totems spawn so it really doesn't take a lot of time to just go near totem spots and listen for the sound queue.
In my experience boons have not been a problem. Not on the ptb and not now. I have never had a match nor have i seen a match outside of one scratched mirror myers where boons were so oppressive they won the survivors there game.
They are strong when used right. I'm not calling them weak. But there is a big difference between strong and not balanced at all.
I would take boons over the preboon meta every time. Atleast the survivors actually have a cost to pay for them
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How do you counterplay Self-Care and Botany Knowledge which pretty much gives you the exact same healing speed, just off by a couple of seconds. How do you counterplay "We'll Make It" which is an 8 second heal?
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Those don't waste a Killers time like the Boons do
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If you don't go after boons, then boons don't waste Killers times either. Killers have the option to go after boons. They don't have the option to go after Self Care+Botany Knowledge, or We'll Make It.
Would you rather Circle of Healing be an AoE based around the survivor and not be a totem at all?
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Self Care and Botany is 2 perks a single survivor has to run that only works for them.
We'll Make It has a condition and a time limit that only boosts the heal speed of the survivor running the perk.
Boon totems is a single perk that 1 person of a team of 4 survivor has to run to give the benefit to the entire team after spending some time blessing a totem.
If the devs want to have boon totems be such strong team benefit perks that the killer can remove from the game, then the killer snuffing out the boon should actually make a difference. Right now it really doesn't. Any time the survivor wastes setting up the boon perk will waste more of a killer's time if they go out of their way to snuff it and then you can just set it up again.
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Boons are always useable and only 1 person has to sue it to help the entire team. It's also a single perk not like botany+selfcare
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- Very few survivors can find a totem reliably, so the large majority of survivors are going to run Small Game or something else. So most times Boons are taking up 2 spots.
- Next, let's do the math on healing speeds for boons.
- Boons take 14 seconds to bless, 16 seconds to use. So 30 seconds for a heal.
- However, you also have to find the totem, say that takes about 16 seconds. But to err on the side of caution, let's say you're really fast at finding a totem, so 8 seconds. The heal time is now up to 38 seconds
- Since survivors won't be around the totems area of effect, they will have to travel to it. I would say on average, you will have people in it about 1/3 of the time and survivors that have to travel about 8 seconds to it the other 2/3s of the time. So 4 extra seconds for travel. The heal time is up to 42 seconds.
- First Heal - 42 seconds
- The 2nd Heal would add 16 more seconds for healing and 4 seconds travel time. So 2 heals cost survivors a total of 62 seconds, divided by 2 is 31 seconds for each heal.
- The 3rd heal would add another 20 seconds, so 82 seconds. Divided by 3 is 27 seconds for each survivor.
- If the Killer breaks the totem, which the probably will before 3 people gets heals, then you add 14 more second and 8 seconds finding the totem.
Now take Self-Care and Botany Knowledge
- If you heal yourself, you are getting 21 second heals. 21 second heals is much better than 27 second heals.
- However, if you heal someone else, you are getting 10 second heals. Boon totems will never beat Self-Care and Botany Knowledge for the speed of heals and Killers can't "snuff out" Botany Knowledge and Self Care. Botany Knowledge works for the entire team.
We'll Make it
- Single perk that gives you 8 second heals. Again, much more time efficient than Circle of Healing and benefits the entire team except yourself.
Do you see why Circle of Healing isn't a big deal. You can ignore it as Killer until you are going past it and it only hurts survivors, time-wise.
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Now imagine the Survivors are smart and use it while the Killer is using a 3 Gen constantly healing and denying the Killer any pressure. I can make scenarios up too y'know. And mine is also probable
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At the least, snuffing a boon should make it so that totem can never be relit by a survivor.
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I don't understand this argument. Surely it's easiest to deal with at a 3 gen? That's the killer's territory, you're not gonna have time to heal no matter how quick it is if the killer's on you. Unless you're saying it's away from the 3 gen, in which case the killer can probably catch them out on the way towards the boon's area- or just ignore them and focus on the survivors who are still there, eventually one of them is gonna make a mistake and go down.
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