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Survivor Perk Idea - Blessed Icon
Wanted to share an idea I had for a boon-related perk for survivors. The concept of this perk is to bring more utility to the boon perks via both ease of use and utility. The idea is basically that a survivor would be using a skill slot to carry around a small portable totem which would allow them to apply a portable boon.
Blessed Icon - During gameplay the survivor can press the active ability button to utter a prayer into the held icon. Survivor gains the effect of ONE equipped boon and is the center point for that boons area of effect. Effects of the boon are lost upon being hooked and must be reapplied after being rescued from hook. Players with Blessed Icon can not bless map totems during the trial.
Players carrying an active blessed icon will emit a small light from their hand and produce a sound similar to a boon totem although slightly quieter.
I feel like this would create some very interesting possible builds for survivors while still allowing some degree of balance for killers while potentially shaking up some aspects of the game (such as heavy reliance of aura builds). There is however still a sense of balance as the player loses the ability to bless totems which makes it less likely a Boon player will clear a killer Hex to apply a Boon. The survivor using the perk also makes themselves more of a target of the killer, who can determine that player has the ability equipped, which may require the use of teamwork or anti-tunneling perks to also be included in the build.
This would be extremely powerful when combined with Boon: Shadowstep, a strong counter to aura perks, but would require survivors to stay in groups to maximize this benefit. Boon: Exponential becomes an ultimate anti-slug combination. Boon: Dark Theory could be equipped by a player confident in their ability to give chase to the killer. Boon: Circle of Healing would help anyone who has dedicated their build to becoming a field medic.
This perk could also give additional value to perks like Shoulder the Burden. If you know you have a player with the ability to becoming a walking hospital, you might take one of their hook states in order to allow that buff to be in play longer.
Adjustment ideas. Just a couple of tweaks I thought of as well should the base idea for the perk be too strong or too weak.
Too Weak? - Increase the number of boons that can be active to 1/2/3 - In my opinion I would avoid 3. I think this would too easily encourage players who use the perk to just become walking boons and would be boring and not encourage any form of build variation. Encourage players to use the 4th perk slot to experiment instead and keep it limited to 2.
Too Strong? - Increase the sound/visual queues for killers to tell which survivor has active blessings. Limit the effective range of the boon being used by the perk, it is after all a smaller version of a totem.
Evolution of the Game - Perhaps in the future this could lead to a similar variation of the perk for killers, imagine a Huntress who actually has her singing be indicative of the effective range of Huntress Lullaby! Or perhaps a killer who is introduced to be so cursed that their perk includes the ability to negate the effects of boons while inside their terror radius?