Boons are simply too free and too easy for Survivors to use, so their strength isn't justified.
The role of the game is a 1 versus 4.
The lone Killer is stronger on their own versus the 4 Survivors working as a team to accomplish the task of escaping.
When you take a step back and see what DBD is supposed to be, the strength and freedom Survivors have over Boons vs Hexes is not at all justified in any way.
4 Survivors can Boon over Hexes, relight a totem multiple times a game for free, the totem cannot even be DESTROYED by the Killer, and unless I am mistaken can relight a separate totem at their leisure, moving the Boon around as they see fit.
While the single lone Killer has no control over their Hex, no ability to gain it back once it is gone, cannot choose where it goes, and is entirely at the mercy of RNG and 4 Survivors likely being able to find it within the first minute of the match.
It's simply not good design as it is now, and something HAS to change.
Let Killers be able to destroy Boons, why Survivors can break Hexes but Killer can't break Boons makes absolutely no sense.
Killer Hexes that activate mid game should ABSOLUTELY ignite themselves over Boons, the text and mechanics should be changed. NOED and Plaything should be able to snuff out a Boon to be activated.
And stop letting the Survivor relight them infinitely for free and on any totem they choose, give it a cooldown or some form of cost, and they should NEVER have been able to relight the Boon on a separate totem while they have another one currently up.
The fact that such impactful perks spread across 4 Survivors have so much more freedom and ease of use compared to the Killer is not only disheartening, it is OBJECTIVELY not fair.
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People also keep trying to argue that they waste survivor time.
Since it takes 14 seconds to bless, and only occupies 1/4 of the team, it effectively only takes 3.5 seconds of the team's time to bless a totem. If the killer takes even 3.5 second out of their game to look for, walk to, and stomp on a boon totem, the survivor team has had a net gain in time, and that's BEFORE considering any value the actual perk gives, like time saved on healing, time gained in a chase from hidden scratch marks, or time gained in the killer looking for someone because your aura wasn't shown.
There's really no downside to blessing a totem.
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Its why I break every damn totem I see as survivor. Its good BP's and it counters NOED.
Boons tilt this game into the way to easy box.
I really think they are a bad design.
Especially when the reasoning behind the Hex undying NERF was having to cleanse multiple hexes was to powerful and to much work for survivors.
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I'd get used to em. Because if they were nerfing them, doubt they would be making more of em.
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Boons are easy mode, plain and simple.
Get hit, run to the boon area, and either get downed and pick yourself up for free, hide cos your scratchmarks are gone, or heal back to full for free, or any combination of the three. And that's if you're on your own - with others you can heal in as little as 3 seconds. There's no skill required to win using these things.
I'm having a lot more fun running the Blast Mine/Repressed Alliance combo. Wastes a killer's time in a different way, and is funny as hell with some of the stun noises.
Circle of Healing is the most overpowered survivor perk in the game. There has to be a downside to being given such fast heals for free, and 14 seconds of "wasted" time isn't it.
I think healing seriously needs reworking overall, because survivors have around 20 perks that increase healing speed in some way, AND medkits, which can be preserved by using Streetwise and Built to Last. Either base heal speed should take longer, heal speed bonuses should be capped, or there should be a minimum healing time.
You could say "don't bring those perks", but when I don't, my teammates will. No control over that.
Despite several much-needed nerfs (DS, Object, toolboxes, medkits, keys, fast vaults, etc.), survivor has gotten easier to play. I escape significantly more now than I did 6 months ago. People complain about killers camping and tunneling, but can you honestly blame them? It feels ######### to lose! Honestly, I think that kind of playstyle is justified now more than ever due to the poor state of balance in this game. And the more survivors get handed easy wins, the worse it's going to get.
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there shouldnt be any downside,using perk slot is already enough, its like bringing an hex but your killer has more cd on his spell or walks slower. whats the downside of borrowed time? whats the downside of ruin? perks are by definition additions, if you want them to have downsides yuo have to redesign all perks cause the only downside perks have now is "wasting" a slot for a better perk or having a bad sinergy
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The downside of hexes is they can be removed from the game permanently. It's utterly staggering that that needs to be pointed out.
They need a realistic downside because they provide a powerful benefit not only to you, but to the entire team. The fact that they can be stomped out should be a downside, but seeing as they're infinitely reapplyable, have no cooldown, and burn more of the killer's time to stomp than you can ever spend lighting one, they're an overpowered nightmare to deal with.
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It doesnt need to be explained that going to the other side of the map to heal near the totem is a waste of time, and if they play around totem, stomping it would be only fair without any downside. That goes without saying that a good amount of killers have actually oneshot potential or a power that discourages healing thus making it situational.
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It would be fine, if CoH would work only for owner, but it doesn't.
That's why it is nowhere near enough...
You really want to tell me hex doesn't have downside? Like: it's gone in first 30 seconds...
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well yeah they are and swfs at high mmr abuse them like #########
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I'll say this again but using perks is not abusing them.
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the same logic can be used for everything in this game and they were made for swfs.
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If anything, COH BUYS you time on gens if used properly.
I do see a lot of survivors use boons inefficiently and then it is a waste of time (eg. set up a totem right next to a gen when you know the killer is coming anyway and it gets put out instantly), but used correctly and in a position that is annoying enough for the killer (those totems on 2nd floors of main buildings say hello!) COH is the strongest perk in the game right now and I will never understand how it reached live in its current form.
I should probably just adopt a policy for myself that I don't play nice as killer with boons in play, as much as I don't really want to do that even though I know I've already had plenty of miserable COH games trying not to tunnel people when I really should have. Especially with wraith.
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Yeah, any mechanic being used is not abusive. Whether that be a perk, add on, item, offering you name it.
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if it's op then it is.
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The only problematic Boon at the moment is Circle of Healing, the other two aren’t nearly as good or used as often. They don’t need to redo the Boon system, they just probably need to slow the healing speed on Circle of Healing to be more reasonable considering how it works.
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I respectfully disagree
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tested it yesterday with my swf (shadowstep + circle of healing) and it's op especially in indoor maps and it also works for 2 floors.
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Yeah it’s strong in indoor maps but it’s only 24 meters and you can hear it when you’re close.
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you need to find it's sound in the first place or go to the second or the first floor to get rid of it. if 2-4 survivors bless them then 24 meters cover a lot of space.
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it doesnt change the thing that you have to move to the other side of the map. its downside is that it takes 14 seconds to active and its bound to a place.
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revert undying. and ill be ok with boons
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You forget there can be up to 4 Boons and they can be swapped between totems at any time with no cost.
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The downside of BT? Nothing, an insane perk that prevents the oil away the killer can win in this meta. Tunneling. Same with DS. the only disadvantage is you can't do your objective, which is a big disadvantage don't get me wrong.
The downside of Ruin? gets barely any value, as soon as they know they're looking for that totem and setting up a boon there. Or, they will cleanse it. And on top of that, it can never be placed back. This is why ruin undying is used so much. We have to use 2 perk slots just to get what you guys have to a lesser degree with 1 singular perk slot. What else? And, perks have no downside lol. So what if you're wasting a slot for a better perk. It's still a perk and will help you out. And synergy? there is barely any. The only ones I can think of are: For The People & Vigil. DS & Unbreakable. Ruin & Undying
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Boons mechanically need to have a downside, they re stupidly strong in the courent meta, thats a fact. Anything would make them more berable:
- Limited charges per trial, 3 or 4 charges its more than enought, that would make them a valuable resource unlike right now wich are buffs galore all over the place with little to non consequence behind them
- Give them a cooldown after they are used, 80/70/60 seconds based on the level its more than fair, if they make a good play and hide it properly they get a lot of value out of it
- Additionally killers should have the ability to snuff OR destroy the totem, its ridiculous this things CANT be taken out of the game in any shape or form while hexes can be destroyed in the first 30 seconds of the game (wich happens a lot, for some reason the game keeps spawining survivors in front of hexes very often)
Circle of healing on the other hand its stupidly strong right now, it needs to be nerfed. The healing bonus it gives should be reduced to +50% with an aditional cap to healing in general, its just ridiculous that survivors can heal in varely 8 seconds or less, that pretty much destroys most M1 killers damage potential. It also doesnt help that thanks to this, many killers have intensified their tunnelling and face camping in an efort to get some kills, boons need to be brought down a notch on the power creep they created
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14 seconds is way more than worth it for this effect.
Just try to compare it with other healing perks. Those are trash compare to it.
Don't act like 14 seconds is a lot, even if you use it just for yourself it's better than Self-care, or Inner Healing, but it's for your whole team.
It's not really true that they always have to travel, you decide where it will be, there are some broken spawns inside main buildings.
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I fail to see any game at a decent level lasting more than like 5 mins, or enough to get value out of boon totems
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personally i think the bottom one and the top one should be added.
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Boons as a core mechanic aren't where we should be looking to balance them- though they do have some problem areas, mainly the ability to go through floors and the fact that totem spawns weren't updated to account for both sides needing to find them, even those problems would be minor annoyances if it weren't for the actual problem, which is that Circle of Healing is OP. Let's take a look at the others:
Shadow Step is annoying, certainly, but there's nuance to it; you can still track through blood and sound, you can still use non-aura tracking perks, it's certainly something that makes chases harder but it's by no means unwinnable even for that specific chase. The balance of this perk is pretty much fine.
Exponential is garbage. The only time this perk is going to actually let someone get picked up is if the boon itself is on another floor than where they get downed, and if the killer makes the unwise decision to slug to either go find someone else or go find the totem. Otherwise, it's such a situational, niche effect that even if boons couldn't be snuffed at all it'd only be mediocre.
Contrast that to CoH, which with only half a regular healing build can completely obliterate the killer's ability to spread pressure, and lets survivors heal themselves quicker than other people healing them normally. It's way overtuned, and needs pretty dramatic changes to bring it in line- either nerf the absolute hell out of it specifically, or my preferred solution, implement a hard cap on self healing so it can't get too crazy without someone else's help.
Also, to everyone trying to use a false equivalence between hexes being permanently removable and boons being infinitely relightable: Hexes are permanently removable because the player who brought them isn't.
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I fully concur.
Shadow Step is honestly fine, and Exponential is basically just a Twins-killer (and that's because Twins buffs need to happen, not because Exponential is a problematic perk) that sucks against basically any other Killer.
Circle of Healing is absolutely gigabusted. No question about it.
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That's true, I neglected to mention Twins- so that's one (sadly super neglected and maligned) killer and a few extraordinarily niche circumstances for Exponential to get any value.
I admit to not really having a concrete idea for how to best nerf CoH, though. I don't want it to just be nuked into nothingness, but it really can't stay as it is- a cap on self healing and a limit on how much it can stack with for altruistic healing, maybe?
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I think it's the kind of perk that will sadly have to be gutted to make it fair: healing yourself is one of the most powerful things a Survivor can do, and being able to do so efficiently without wasting resources out of a perk your teammate brought is obscene. It's why old Self Care was so busted and had to get GUTTED to become fair: if Self Care on its own is ever good, that's terrible for the health of the game.
Circle of Healing is just old Self Care on steroids.
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You may be right, unfortunately. I do think it could have some value as a healing station for altruistic heals without being busted, though, so maybe tweaking the numbers to emphasise that could help it still be useful without being OP.
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I'm in a weird spot when it comes to my opinions on boons, COH in particular since that is the best one of the three
On the one hand, I think that COH can be a bit too oppressive against a lot of the killer roster, to the point where it renders some killers almost completely powerless like Legion or Twins
But at the same time I'm happy to actually see Survivor perks that are good and worth running. I was getting bored of the same stale meta perks and using different but lackluster perks didn't help that much. I've been playing a 'boon-centric' playstyle with the release of Jonah and It's been fun. For me, at least - I can't speak of the killers experience.
I think both sides should have strong perks with good variety.
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I have to disagree with shadow step, its stupidly opresive againts killers if its convined with iron will, that renders all forms of tracking useless againts this survivors, and blood pools arent really reliable, specially on maps that have dark ground or to many stuff on them (like grass as an example) making it ridiculously hard to track survivors.
I have been saying it for a bit, but boons mechanics need to change to make them more engaging for both sides, be giving them a limited amount of uses per trial OR a cooldown after blessing a totem, the fact they can be re blessed indefinitly with a laguable amount of time as 14 seconds its for the most part overpowered.
3 to 4 uses per survivor its more than enought for a full trial, more so if multiple survivors are using them.
As an alternative giving them a 80/70/60 seconds cooldown would make them a tactical desicion from the part of the survivors.
Additionally killers should be a allowed to snuff OR destroy the totems, this makes it a tactical desicion for the killer as it might need said totems for other hexes.
I can se where you are coming from, and im sure that for survivors CoH its an absolute blast to have as trivializes many games and makes them a cake walk, but i can tell you, boons for the killer side arent fun in the slightest.
Shadow step with iron will its a total pain in the rear, specially on big maps as it makes its ridiculously hard to find anyone, specially if theres two or more shadow steps in the game, they are somewhat manageable with some killers and a bit of luck
CoH on the other hand its busted beyond believe and not fun in the slightest to play againts, it trivializes preasure, specially for M1 killers as they are completly forced to comit to chases wich in turn most of the time forces them to tunnel the crap out of anyone they can find, specially if it happens to be the boon user
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As someone who's been using the boon perks frequently, it doesn't really trivialise matches. People forget that Boons aren't completely map wide if there's only one in play (Obviously if everyone is running them, it becomes ridiculous)
It makes things easier, for sure because it allows survivors to be more time efficient and have to take less risks because they can heal themselves at normal speed. It DOES trivialise certain playstyles and powers though - that I can agree with 100%.
Whenever I face a hit/run tactic using killer I feel bad.
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Reason most killers are clamoring (and with reason) for hard nerfs againts them, they are just to strong for what they can do and what they cost. Not to mention they where also meent to be a secondary objective for survivors but they ended being more of a...4th? extra objective for killers
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Oh yeah I'm not against changes to them, as long as they aren't completely made worthless like 70% of the current survivor perks.
From my usage of the perks so far, they're strong but don't always come into play as often as you might think. COH is the most consistant of the boon perks because it doesn't require any particular thing for it to work. You just be in the radius and you can heal/be healed faster. That's it
Shadowstep removes your scratch marks, which is usually only useful if you're playing stealthily or being chased in that area - which can happen but some things need to line up for it to work. The aura reading part is probably the strongest thing and it doesn't always come into play bc not everyone runs aura reading perks. Still, incredibly strong and fun perk
The new one I'm still testing out, from what I've gathered so far - in SoloQ it's strong when the killer decides to be a bit greedy and slug multiple people. Without the usage of comms, I have to point at my boon and hope my teammates who are somewhat close can crawl into it to make use of it but sometimes they don't realise/aren't looking.
The best use I've seen of the perk is when I was playing with a friend, they went down in the totem's range, so I got in the killer's face so they'd not hook right away and chase me, allowing my friend to pick themselves up.
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Even McLean agrees they should have a cooldown and be reduced to 16m, so yeah.
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