Why I dislike boons
Notice: While this will say why I dislike boons, I will mainly focus on Circle of Healing as it is the strongest of the three boons currently in the game. Also, this is obviously an opinion and you have full right to disagree.
Time Efficiency
Now, how much time does this perk take?
Blessing a dull is 14 seconds, the same as cleansing. Blessing a hex will take 24 seconds instead.
Healing yourself without the use of any other perks or a medkit will take 16 seconds, the default healing speed.
16 + 14 leaves us with 30 seconds. That’s 2 less than Self-Care.
Power Creep
Now, a common misconception is that Self-Care’s 32-second heal is less efficient than a teammate healing you for 16 seconds. This is incorrect as this would use the time of two survivors, meaning the efficiency is essentially the same. The problem lies in that this is a time you can be interrupted, and people tend to self-care before finishing a gen. This perk is also outclassed by a medkit which heals in 16 seconds (or less) without taking up a perk slot.
As I said before, blessing a totem and healing yourself is technically more efficient than using Self-Care. Also unlike self-care, this perk will benefit your entire team. This is objectively better than self-care. The only “flaw” is needing a totem and totem spawns is something gained by experience, and when you have that, it’s a non-issue.
Let’s take a look at another totem perk, Inner Strength (Now known as Inner Healing). You need to find a totem, cleansing, and then go into a locker and wait a few seconds. How many seconds? 8.
22 vs 30. That’s an 8-second difference, which is pretty nice. So what’s the problem? Why is this perk so much better? There are self-balancing mechanisms that are present. The main one is that Inner Strength can only be used 5 times in a trial period. There are only 5 totems, and those totems can only be cleansed once. You won’t see 4 Inner Strengths as they will begin to cannibalize each other. It also only benefits you, the person who cleansed the totem.
Circle of Healing lacks this. You can have 3-4 CoHs up at once and there’s nothing to balance this out. Several sections of the map become healing hotspots for the entire team. Even if you snuff the totem as killer, they can be relit infinitely, unlike Inner Strength’s fixed 5-times limit per trial.
Shadowstep isn’t entirely innocent either. Why would anyone run Poised? Or Distortion? Or even Off the Record, an already pretty mediocre perk. The only thing stopping this from rivaling Lucky Break is the boon doesn’t hide the blood as well.
Counter?
Let’s discuss the counter to boons.
In theory, the killer can snuff out the totem and the entire process of blessing can be a major time-waster. This isn’t entirely wrong and can happen, but there are problems with this.
- If a boon is next to a gen being repaired, a survivor is likely near. The killer has to choose between snuffing the totem and giving the survivor distance, or leaving the totem for the team to benefit from (possibly even the running survivor themselves if the Boon is Shadowstep)
- The killer will often need to go out of their way to snuff out a totem. A survivor group is a team of 4. If at least 1 is on a generator and 1 is keeping the killer busy, 1 survivor can afford to bless a totem before going back to gens. If the killer wants to snuff the totem, they will essentially be giving time to the survivor especially if…
- You can bless another totem despite your previous boon is still up. This can even happen if the killer is in the middle of snuffing your previous boon, making the entire thing a complete waste of time.
- As I said before, there can be multiple boons at once, each capable of having multiple perks attached. Especially on small and/or centralized maps where the survivors will either always be in the radius of or near totems, it can quickly/easily become overwhelming.
- CoH interacts with perks and items. With Botany or a few stacks of DM, and 1 green medkit, you can get heals in 5-6 seconds. That’s fast enough to heal mid-chase if you’re careful/good enough. That is absolutely disgusting, especially since Botany will also conserve your medkit charges as well.
- These boons also work on maps with multiple floors. I'll tell you from experience that playing on Midwich or Gideon with these perks up is... you'll probably have said some colorful words in frustration.
Cleanse… why?
Boon totems single-handedly made cleansing almost completely pointless. I say almost only because it may be better to cleanse hexes because 24 seconds is a long time. However, since cleansing and blessing are both 14 seconds, meaning both would be 28 seconds. What this means if the survivor is in a position where they have the time, blessing a hex may still be worth it. Especially since snuffing it will return it to a dull totem.
Hexes aside, why would cleanse? Why? Cleansing was already niche, to begin with, but now there’s entirely no point. If anything, it’s harmful since you’ll potentially be denying a teammate of their perk(s).
To prevent NOED? You’re going to go out of your way just to stop 1 perk that might be there? Considering how hated that perk is to this day, it’s safe to say no one does that. And for good reason. Even still, if you keep track of the totem placements, you can use boons to triangulate where the potential NOED spawns are since it will never appear on a boon totem.
Cleanse to get value out of Inner Strength? Lmao, right. Sure. The perk that only benefits 1 person and that I argue is outclassed by CoH.
The Arguement/Defense
The most common defense I've seen in regards to totems is their intended status as a secondary objective to survivors. This is a sentiment shared by former developer McLean, who states that this is the secondary objective players have been asking for, so adjustments such as making it one-use per totem is out of the question.
On some level, I understand or can even agree. The devs seem to be gently nudging for survivors to give dull totems some more attention over the years, from Inner Strength healing you for cleansing dull totems to more extreme cases such as OG Undying practically hitting you with the Blighted Granpa's cane saying, "CLEANSE! CLEANSE!"
However, I kinda disagree this does. Survivors choose when they bless a totem; it's not Deep Wound or RBTs that will down/kill you if you don't mend/search. You do it when you have time, and as long as 1 other teammate is on a gen, then you have time. The pitiful 14 seconds you take to bless is inconsequential at that point, especially when CoH can save you so much time later, or Shadowstep can potentially save your/your teammate's life.
Funnily enough, they can feel a bit more like a secondary objective for killers more often than not. If you're a Plague, then you can just laugh. If you're a poor little Wraith that relies on hit-and-run, you can't ignore the boons or they'll recover too fast, especially if they also have a medkit (a very common item with 4 variants) or other perks.
Forgetting one?
No, I'm not. Exponential is the weakest of the 3, imho. It requires the killer to slug (already circumstantial), lacks the surprise of UB since the killer will hear a totem has been blessed, the killer can hear the totem, and is all-around inferior to its Non-boon counterpart. Twins do get hit pretty hard though.
Conclusion
I don't fault the devs for trying this. It's a new mechanic for survivors, and that's something both sides have been begging for, for a long time. But I think this needs tweaks. I don't agree with blessing being objectively better than cleansing in almost every circumstance except maybe a hex totem. Ultimately, I think this is an idea that has kinks that are detrimental to my enjoyment, but I don't view them as a reason for "OMFG, DEVS ARE SO SURVIVOR SIDED! KILLER IS DEAD!"
Maybe in a few months, they'll make a few tweaks as they did with Undying. Until then, Plague Mains rejoice.
Comments
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Concise and accurate post that addressed all of the issues with boons. Well done.
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Really good post. I am impressed.
Good is that I can just save this as a bookmark and copy link whenever someone wants to argue about CoH being "balanced" perk.
I considered it broken from PTB and I still do. Thing is that it's just really good perk by itself, you don't need any other perk to make it better. You don't even want to stack them. I think 2 CoH per team is best, you have two survivors that get free perks and you can have 1 CoH always active.
I don't think CoH is healthy for the game. It basically removed hit&run and made 3-gen way worse. It forces killer to commit on each chase, knowing when to drop chase was important skill for a killer. Problem is that weaker killers just can't get away with commiting to each chase, some loops just waste too much time for them and it's better to switch, which is bad with CoH, because that survivor will heal fast without any help. Best way to deal with CoH is to tunnel someone, which I don't think is good thing.
I don't think Shadowstep is that big issue, it's basically another annoying SWF perk, same for Exponential. They are really annoying when you have SWF that commit each build around those perks, kinda like sabo builds, or head-on builds. Exponential brought back old WGLF+Soulguard version.
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If Killers were given more options about dealing with them, Boons would not be as annoying. Such as, if a Killer does not run Hex perks and thus has no use for totems, he should be offered a second prompt while near a Boon totem to smash the totem, in stead of snuffing it, so that totem will forever be gone, and now only 4 totems can be used by Survivors. Of course, this prompt will not show on dull totems, as to not make Killers quickly smash most in rapid succession.
Another idea is to make all Boon perks a Survivor has equipped inactive for at least 60 seconds once a Killer snuffs out/smashes the totem of the Survivor that blessed it.
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Problem is that this would be balanced only for CoH, it would make any other boon useless.
inactive effect after snuff wouldn't change anything (for CoH) if you have 2 players using it.
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Boons are great addition to the game, i wished they took more time to balanced older perks, especially those that are rarely used.
But yes boons are definitely not balanced, especially in majority of maps where totem spawns are very time wasting to reach for killers. Their effects are way too strong for a simple 14 sec bless (aside from the newest one which i find balanced).
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I do say Exponential is the weakest of the 3 but that doesn't make it bad. Just the threat of exponential being up makes the killer either pick in a slug situation where there's 2 injured survivors so if you down and chase the first one picks themself up or you can go look for the boon (which got a decreased noise radius when they fully launched) giving the survivor distance and the rest working on gens to get even more progress.
Now that doesn't really affect mobile killers that much if they see the boon in their los so they down, snuff, snowball but I do think that it can definitely impact Oni slightly cause of the threat of it possibly being Exponential. Overall Exponential ######### over twins because you can be at 1 end of the map, m1 a survivor, send victor after them and they can just hold W to the boon and by the time your 8 second fatigue is over and you slowly walk to them, they already picked themselves up on victor and crushed him before you could switch back in time.
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Oh, no. Exponential has insane potential and has saved my life. It's the weakest of the 3, but by no means bad. I just think Unbreakable, which isn't limited by being a boon, is better.
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It's SWF perk, I mean if you can get time for it with flashlights around and you have multiple boons active, it's quite annoying to deal with.
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