Should killers be able to break boon totems?

Yes.

Considering the factor of old school reasons,...just do Bones.

It wouldn't be a good change, because it doesn't understand and reconcile what boon totems are actually designed for. The point of snuffing a totem isn't to provide a huge downside, it's to pull a survivor away from their objective to relight it, and the more times they do that the better it works out for you- if they could only do it five times max (less for any given survivor if they're all running totems) then you won't get any real slowdown out of the situation, and survivors would be much less incentivised to actually run boon totems at all.

Also, think about it this way: Is this really a problem for Shadow Step and Exponential? Or is it just Circle of Healing that feels too powerful to be limitlessly available?

My point exactly.

So, surely nerfing that perk is a better solution than nuking the other two into oblivion with a mechanic-wide giant nerf?

...It's really, really not. Shadow Step is strong, but not overpowered, since it's relatively easy to play around even if you're chasing someone in its radius. Circle of Healing, by contrast, completely removes whole playstyles and tactics, and is absurdly strong compared to any other healing perk in the game. CoH is way stronger than Shadow Step.

So, you do raise a point where there are niche scenarios that make Shadow Step more of a pain- still nowhere near as powerful as CoH, of course, I'm not sure why "you can't chase anyone" while Shadow Step is up, but it is a lot more annoying and a lot more powerful than that perk is elsewhere. The problem here is twofold, though- it once again bumps up against hard nuking the entire concept just because of outliers (CoH being the strength outlier, RPD being the outlier for making Exponential usable and Shadow Step more annoying), and it's also not actually the solution to that problem.

Instead of effectively completely removing boon totems from use by making them incredibly limited, why not look into whether or not the effect should get to permeate through floors? That'll handle the outlier situation that you're describing here without making Shadow Step and Exponential quite literally useless on any other map in any other scenario.

Breaking boon totems is not only not the only solution, it's not a solution, it's only a brief step above saying "just delete them from the game". There are actual solutions to these problems, like reworking totem spawns, making boons travel far less vertically, and nerfing the absolute ######### out of Circle of Healing, so why not push for that?

Ehh... I would say no. Just delete CoH and turn it into an entirely new boon perk, because it shouldn't have even been a perk to begin with.

Shadow Step and Exponential would be too weak if they were even more limited than they already are.

I say you can't chase anyone because RCPD is the most LOS-limited of the indoor maps. It's nearly impossible to chase without scratch marks because every doorway represents a coin flip on whether the survivor went straight or turned and there's doors all over the place. Healthy chases don't work. Blood helps, but the ground is quite dark and blotchy and it's not an easy map to see it on; the thing you've really got working for you are injured sounds, and Iron Will is a meta perk. While it'd help a lot in RCPD and Midwich, I don't think removing the verticality would really fix the problem of Shadow Step being useless on some maps and incredibly powerful on others. It's not even a Balanced Landing sort of deal where it's strong when accompanying a map offering but can be powered through; the value it gets in foiling chases is nuts when you have a map with loads of LoS breaks and bring Iron Will. It might be one floor, but Lery's is still mega rough without scratch marks.

The situations where unremovable Shadow Step is an issue are mostly synonymous with the situations where Shadow Step is useful, so it's a very tricky perk to balance. I disagree that it's less powerful than CoH in those situations, though. On Midwich or RCPD, I think it's stronger. You can tunnel out past CoH, but the only way to handle SS + IW is to keep snuffing. (The Game is also pretty bad, but I find it has greater LoS and blood is easier to track than Midwich or RCPD.)

Exponential needs a very specific setup to be a torment perk, but verticality will do little to it; it's entirely based on having a few zones where players can run to when they're going down, and teammates that harass the killer so that picking up in time isn't possible. Can work on any map except maybe ones with bad totem spread like Swamp. Dealing with it + CoH pretty much requires the SWF to either ######### up or run out of item charges.

Also, Twins. It's never going to be as good as CoH or Shadow Step, and I don't think it needs any adjustments that don't apply to boons as a whole, but there are situations where you'd want to get rid of totems for good.

I'm just not convinced that making them destructible would actually kill the boon mechanic. I rarely play matches where more than 5 lightings occur, and the most popular boon isn't particularly location-dependent anyway.

Boons in their current state don't have counterplay. The killer can snuff them if they happen to be right next to them and not in a chase. That's the only time-sensitive option available when snuffing the boon equates to a grand total of 14 seconds required to put it back up - or 3.5 seconds evenly divided amongst the survivor team. If the killer spends more than 3.5 seconds destroying it, they've lost time. I don't think that's a healthy model that killers essentially have to deal with the boon effect being there when the boon effect is so strong and gives the whole team extra perk slots, and so far have not seen a suggestion that keeps boons in their infinite state and also leaves them as perks worth running. (Range nerfs kill the non-CoH ones as well, so I'm not really convinced that's the way to go.)

If Boon's could be removed or have a lifespam, i.e being able to stomp the bones, it wouldn't matter as much if they covered 2 floors.

It would mean that using the boon/placement was meaningful.

And when you have 2 CoH's you wouldn't just getting bounced around trying to snuff 2.

Would you argue that passionate about Hex totems, though? I know, I know "boons and hexes aren't the same, not even remotely, they just share a single ressource together"; I would argue that they are the most comparable ability between Killers and survivors that we ever got.

I read a lot boon discussions in the last weeks and something that creeps up every now and then is "if they were destroyable, they would become useless to me and I won't play them anymore" and I think that's a good thing! If something is so strong that (nearly) everyone can see its value, or it even becomes a no-brainer/auto-include in most cases (*cough* dead hard *cough *), then its probably mechanical too strong.

If it got its ups and downs, but at least some peeps see its worth or wanna put in the effort to make it work, then its probably right on the power level.

Yes, corner cases and outliers like RPD shouldn't be used as a strong argument, and yes, the CoHs AoE +100% heal speed +self heal is way stronger then practically every other option, but I think that boons in their current state were definitely a poor designed element.

Coming back to Hexes: they were designed around the concept that they should be stronger then normal perks, but could be removed from the game with some effort from the survivors. Over the years the strength outliers have been curbed down (Ruin and Undying), but by now many counter options exist, and many survs have memorized their spawns, that a lone Hex without support will practically always die within the first min of the game.

I don't believe that boons were designed as a time waster for survs, they were designed as a cool new mechanic and to give the something to do besides rushing gens, but if they were destroyable they wouldn't lose their individual power, they would use their mindless spammability and add a strategic and risk element, quite akin to Hexes.

They wouldn't be attractive anymore to everyone, but some dedicated players would most certainly make them work with a dedicated build. You could easily introduce second tier perks that protect them, or allow you to rekindle them once or something, but then you have to give something up, just like killers who run Hunted Grounds/Undying/Retribution on top of their favorite Hex.

Lastly, time for a killer is at a premium. Every second that you aren't chasing or hooking someone, three others will be doing gens. Even taking a wrong turn or falling down a hole can be impactful in high level killer play, while it would most likely just waste a few seconds for a single surv (unless they expose themselves to the killer). Sniffing totems is nearly never a good idea right now, as they can easily be reblessed and you can never truly be rid of them, heck there can also be up to four active ones on the map. The pressure that even one CoH brings to the table can be overwhelming, 3 can be utterly crushing.

Yes they most definitely should.

It’s not necessary to change how the Boon system works in general. They just need to make sure that the individual Boon perks are balanced using the existing system. Currently most people who complain about Boons are very specifically actually only complaining about Circle of Healing, the other two don’t have nearly the same level of consensus about being overpowered or popularity. So if the devs just tone down Circle of Healing’s speed it would pretty much address all the current complaints about “Boons”.

Shadow Step and Exponential are bullshit no matter of change of boon totems mechanics