The one thing that annoys me when people talk about boons

Shadowstep has situations where it's still pretty strong, particularly with map offerings.

Part of the thing boons need is... well, better audio cues and something to deal with multi-floor maps. Which is universal to all of them, Exponential's just not a big deal.

Yeah, I think most players use BBQ for the BP. I remember reading a thread months ago about it, people were saying it was for BP because of the huge grind the game became (with like... almost 200 perks now to unlock when a new character is out?).

I agree entirely. Boons as a concept do have some issues - going through floors is a big one - but they are not fundamentally broken. There are three Boon perks, and of the three, one is OP. The other two are moderately okay (Shadow Step) and honestly kind of garbage (Exponential), so the mechanic itself doesn't need to be nuked from orbit.

Heavy nerf Circle of Healing, and add a few lighter nerfs to boon totems like restricted verticality, more consistent audio cues for the killer, and maybe a slightly shorter range. That's the way to go.

This is nigh on exactly what I was going to say. While most issues with boons can be fixed by nerfing CoH into something more reasonable, having locational teamwide survivor perks that the killer can't permanently negate or even earn a meaningful reprieve from is a design issue that will continue to crop up as future boons are designed, and you can already see it with the non-OP boons, particularly Shadowstep. (While it can happen with a very dedicated SWF using an Exponential setup plus a map offering, Exponential just isn't a very good mechanic to tie to a location, which is why it's not so strong - unlike heals, and also unlike scratch marks.) CoH is the obvious example because it doesn't that much matter where it's placed or what map it's on, and it's always very powerful. But Shadowstep on an indoor map, or a two-story map, or in the upper floor of a main building, can be absolutely nasty and there isn't any way to deal with it other than to stomp it again and again, which can be profoundly out of the way with certain totem spawns and project over a wide area (upper floor Ironworks, upper floor Thompson House, or RCPD library are some examples of this.)

Gutting CoH alone would fix most issues with boons for now, but it's just waiting for the next boon to cause another tsunami, because as they stand, boons are teamwide perks for the price of one that do not have counterplay outside killing the perk holder.

My big issue with boons is that the ability to snuff them implies that their strength level is such that the killer is supposed to be able to stop them... but in practice, this is a huge waste of time and the boon goes back up ASAP when you leave the area anyway. They were given countermeasures to balance out their strength, but the countermeasure isn't feasible when the killer's time and the survivors' time is treated realistically.

COH is the only one that needs a direct nerf.

The other problems arise from there being little reason to snuff a boon because it provides basically no benefit to the killer the moment it gets set up again (often times it’s a net loss in terms of time spent vs. survivor time spent to rebless the totem).

One way that shadow step and exponential differ from COH is that COH encourages survivors to heal in its range which may or may not be near the killer. Shadowstep’s lack of scratchmarks isn’t really a big deal if the killer is across the map, which only leaves the aura reading being blocked, and no killer really cares about exponential that much if their slug is super far away from it/it has no presence anywhere else on the map. Because of this, SS and exponential don’t really become OP by the boon system being flawed, while COH does.

The system of going to a totem and interacting with it to disable its associated perks works with hex perks no matter how far out of the way the actual totem is because there are 4 survivors and once it’s gone, it’s gone. It doesn’t work with boons because there is only 1 killer who also doesn’t really stand to gain anything by snuffing a totem in an area of the map that is otherwise of no interest to them.

Yeah and that’s why it needs a cooldown or something, though it’d almost have to be a global cooldown that applies to everyone to really make it work, otherwise a coordinated swf can just take turns setting up totems, (unless you want to go the route of killers destroying totems entirely, but then you probably have to adjust other stuff too). The other idea I’ve seen thrown around is applying blessing speed debuffs for every rebless (like freddy’s wake up), although that also isn’t as effective against teams with multiple boon users.

Idk, I just get the impression the system wasn’t thoroughly tested.

But the actual mechanics of SS and expo aren’t an issue once boons themselves have counterplay/when it actually means something for the killer to get rid of a boon totem.

I don't like overcome/s design simply because it further encourages the hold W meta and I find that to be boring. But yeah, most people don't want to use 2 exhaustion perks, so they just stick with DH. I don't think overcome itself is overpowered or anything though.

I've yet to get any value out of exponential. Not that I've had many opportunities since I don't use it myself, but when other teammates have brought it, not once yet has it allowed me to pick myself up (though I almost got to once).