A post to discuss the concerns over the implementation of the Boon Totem mechanics
I've seen a lot of concerns, mainly from killers about Boon Totems, some survivors have also expressed these concerns.
When it comes to Boon Totems, Shadowstep, yeah, it's strong, but I don't really consider OP.
Now the second Boon Totem, Circle Of Healing, has plenty of potential to be OP, especially during late game, when 1 or 2 gens are left. The OP potential from CoH, is how it's played. Putting the Boon far away from the gens, would make it essentially impossible for the killer to win the match, especially in 3 gen situations. The killer would be forced to drop every chase, in order to continue protecting the gens. Giving the survivor a chance to go heal, and then come back to work on gens. At that point, the game is being held hostage, until the killer gives up.
I've seen suggestions, like killers being able destroy totems, or the Boons have a limited number of uses, even some have claimed a 1 time use. I don't really agree that's the best fix for them, as they have a limited range, compared to Hex Totems.
The suggestion, I came up with, wouldn't take away the strength of Boon Totems, but give them a drawback to using them. As I hate that anytime something is strong, potentially OP, everybody wants it nerfed into the ground and become another perk, nobody would run. So my fix would be is they should not disable Hex Totems, if the totem gets blessed with the Boon perk. It doesn't take away from the strength of the Boon perks. It'll make running Hex perks still appealing. And survivors will have to be more smart about using their perks. They can choose to cleanse the Hex and lose the totem, or bless the totem, but deal with the Hex effect that's also applied to that totem.
I like that the devs have added a new mechanic into the game, but a change does need to be made.
What are your thoughts?
Comments
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Simplest solution I can think of is to make it automatically snuff out whenever the survivor who activated it gets hooked.
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That's a reasonable suggestion for a simple fix. I do have an issue with being able to disable a killer's perk. Makes it no risk, high reward.
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I don't see why there's an issue with killers snuffing out a boon totem means that totem can't be reblessed. Survivors would still have the option to bless another dull totem. Boon perks are still totem based and should be high risk/high reward perks. Right now the risk basically doesn't exist.
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I added a risk to the perks, that also benefited the killer. If a survivor doesn't want to deal with Ruin/Undying, they are down 2 totems. If more totems are ran, like Devour Hope, there goes another totem. a complete Hex build, would leave only 1 dull totem standing. I don't run Hex perks much, because I just use Pop. But having Boons being able to disable the perk, and reward the survivor, makes them less appealing to run. Then it also only takes killers 2 seconds to stop a Boon, compared to the 16 seconds to cleanse a Hex. So should the killer have to waste more time to cleanse the Boon? That's a part of what I disagree with.
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Just curious - you say that you don't consider ShadowStep OP. It's effectively giving the other three survivors infinite Lucky Break and Distortion for zero investment in either time or perk slots. So it's not OP to essentially make three out of four survivors have 6 perks? If the Boon Totem character also has Circle of Healing that's 2 free perks plus an infinite SelfCare/medkit and again the other three survivors have to invest zero time or effort, just enter the blue glowing zone.
That's one of my major issues with Boon Totems, they massively reward the other survivors for no cost whatsoever.
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Killers have terrible FOV, scratch marks are very inconsistent, so killers have to rely on sounds a lot of the time. That's something Shadowstep can't prevent. It's a strong perk, but not OP. I addressed that they should have a downside, where the reward does come with a big risk, which would losing totems to use the Boons on, or having to deal with Hex Totems , since plenty of killers use them. Changes to strong perks, don't always have to be nerfs and make the perks useless. People want the meta to change, but when there's potential of it changing, everybody goes crying about nerfs.
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Just an idea pass by
- limited use by 1
- decrease blessing time
- increase range to back to 28
- boon now make less noise (as much as Hex)
Now it should be powerful, hard for killer to find but limited use as draw back.
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The issue with that, is it takes 2 seconds to snuff a totem, compared to 16 seconds to cleanse. Hexes effect the entire map, Boons do not. Even decreasing the audio, it wouldn't be like they would be hard to find. The limited range, would let the killer know the totem is in that area. Anybody that uses whispers, understands how easy it is to find things in a small area. Like I've told multiple people, my solution does limit the usage of the totems, while also benefiting the killer.
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The killer may take 2 seconds to snuff the boon, but in the process they dropped pressure to walk up to the boon, snuff it, and then now need to spend more time finding a survivor to start chasing again. If a killer is dropping chase to snuff a boon, that can be a huge loss to them since now the chased survivor has time to make distance and even heal up and the rest of the survivors are still making process on gens.
Individual Survivor time is worth much less than the killers.
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We know 14sec bless is also benefit killer, but the mechanic is new, we're not so sure the balance.
Something like when Shadow step is up, it may lose Killer a chase and come with a hook. While CoH can almost instant heal if there is a team mate nearby.
Boon can be a real pain in Lery / Midwich / Game
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try rpd, heyo
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As a killer player, I absolutely love boons. Survivors are wasting time looking for totems, blessing them and re blessing them aka not doing generators and not being on the lookout for NOED. As a survivor player, I'm torn because I'm guilty of starting a trial running around looking for a totem to bless and I'm realizing that I should be doing a generator instead but I can't resist blessing lol it's working on me because I'm deviating from doing generators which is really weird.
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Personally I'd continue the chase, and wait to snuff the totem. Giving up pressure like that would be a terrible mistake on the killer's side.
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It is a new mechanic, but it has potential to be troublesome. Is why I suggested a way to keep Boons as strong as they were, but have a drawback. After seeing how something like that goes, we can see if it becomes more balanced during gameplay. Guess I'm just different than a lot of the community, when I don't like nerfs, but rather drawbacks to certain strong perks. Like I never had an issue with old Ruin, nor old Undying. Now neither perk is nearly as good as they used to be, unless you have a crazy fast killer like Twins or Blight.
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The only problem I have is killers cant destroy the totems like survivors can destroy our hexes.
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Boon Totems make the game worse.
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