On the Subject of: Boon Perks (and a dissection of meta perks)
Hello class, been a while, hasn’t it? Sorry but this isn’t a Bad Perk University post, though I am still working on them in my spare time while I’m busy taking classes irl, so worry not. Instead, this is something that may become a new series, where I talk about more topical subjects in DBD, weighing in by giving my informed opinion on the state of the game, simply called: On the Subject of. Today, I wanted to talk about the contentious topic of Boon Perks, as well as talk about the effect they have on the current meta. The reason for this is that I see some people say that they’re overpowered and need to be nerfed, or others say that they’re perfectly fine and that nerfing them would just reinforce the stale meta perks. This is becoming a more heated topic with the upcoming boon perk, Exponential, a perk that lets you recover insanely fast, but we’ll talk about that perk when we get there. I will naturally provide a TL;DR, but if you’re willing to let me go on at length, strap yourselves in, because I have a lot to say.
TL;DR: Boon Perks are mostly fine, but serve to waste a lot of time that killers don’t have, especially when multiple survivors run them. Meta perks such as Dead Hard and Unbreakable are more to blame, but boons exacerbate the problem by allowing survivors more to work with. Circle of Healing is not overpowered on its own, only because healing speeds don’t have a limit. Limit healing speed to 8 seconds at the fastest, and Circle of Healing would be fine. Shadow Step is probably the most problematic of the boons, but ultimately not the worst thing to worry about compared to meta perks or multiple boon totems. Exponential is not as strong as it seems and is fine the way it is. If Boon Perks are still too strong, a potential change is to have Rekindled Boons, where a totem can only be lit with a boon twice before being broken.