Boon cooldown mechanic

Boons themselves don't really need a cooldown as only 1 of them is a problem. COH should just be unlocks the self heal action, without any bonuses to heal speed. And healing itself should be capped at 100% speed

Alongside completely stopping the exploitable aspects of CoH, it would completely ruin Shadow Step and Exponential, which would quickly become laughably terrible perks there'd be no reason to ever run.

It'd also be abandoning the intended counterplay to boons instead of fixing the current flaws with that counterplay, but that's a separate discussion.

Hexes are not boons, and boons are not hexes. They're different designs with different intents that require different balancing.

I also actually agree that hexes are weak! I've posted about it quite a lot, it's just not relevant to the topic of boons. Beyond both involving the totem mechanic, they aren't directly comparable.

Gliding past the false equivalence to hexes again, you are touching on part of the problem, so let's focus on that part.

Things like going through multiple floors actually are a problem, and it's why I'm kinda bummed to hear the devs aren't looking that closely at the mechanic as a whole right now. The way a hex is supposed to work is pretty simple- using Shadow Step as an example...

You spend the fourteen seconds not on a generator (plus however many seconds it takes to find a totem, though that's often not many) setting up your stealth field to help you out next time you're in a chase with the killer. When that does happen, you run towards your totem and loop in a general radius around it- at some point during this, the killer will notice that you have a boon totem up. Two things happen from there- either you go down because lost scratch marks is a detriment but not an unwinnable scenario for the killer, at which point the killer snuffs your boon and then goes to hook you, forcing you to wait out being saved and then go spend another 14 seconds blessing, or you do successfully get the killer to drop chase... at which point the killer can choose to snuff your boon, at least gaining either that same 14 seconds or the knowledge that you're playing with three perks until that 14 seconds is spent.

There are problems with this setup, even setting aside that CoH doesn't require the killer to be nearby (which is part of why it's so broken rn). Elevation is the biggest one- a boon on another floor requires a lot more time from the killer, and there are too many totem spots like that for it to just be considered a prime boon spot instead of a problem. There's also the problem that the audio cue for the killer is pretty close to the boon itself, I'd like to see that expanded a little.

Those problems, however, do not point to boons being broken. That hypothetical up there is a very good idea for the game, and I'd like to see them play out like that more often.

To be clear, yes, CoH needs a lot more changes, but you don't need to nerf its weaker counterparts at all. That seems like a kind of weird thing to say, honestly- in what way is Shadow Step or Exponential affected if you cap self healing speeds, or you lower the numbers on CoH, or you give CoH its own unique cooldown, or any of the other things that would actually affect CoH and not boons as a general concept?

Boons aren't continual slowdown if you could break the totems, which is part of what they're designed for- because again, they're not hexes. They're limited range, they take time to set up, they're all on one totem instead of being spread out, they're not active at the start... the design differences between boons and hexes are greater than the design similarities.

Also, Shadow Step is pretty good, I wouldn't call it a bad perk. It's worth bringing but it's not broken, the problem is more that survivor meta perks are so strong right now there's no reason to bring something that's just pretty good.

Its logical when you're willing to acknowledge parity between the two systems: The Undying nerf was done specifically because people hated ruin-undying on blight, but in turn it nerfed every other hex totem since they could rely on undying to try to extend their usage possibility. Thrill of the hunt got nerfed similarly as well. Regardless of how you feel when comparing them, if you consider them apples and oranges respectively, they're still both fruit. And the way the devs have been handling them in terms of feedback and backlash, it is extremely clear that they are being biased in balancing them.

Right, but the Undying nerf is the perfect example- what they didn't do when they nerfed Undying was reduce the number of dull totem spawns, or make cleansing faster, or show survivors hex auras, or anything that would help with what old Undying was doing but demolish weaker hexes. What they did was change the effects of Undying itself, and that's what they should be doing with CoH- not make sweeping changes to the largely functional but slightly flawed boon system, but change the perk itself.

The second point is where it kind of falls apart- Undying is a support totem and CoH isn't, so nerfing CoH itself won't actually indirectly nerf the other boons because they don't have in-tandem effects in that way.

Also, Thrill was reworked, not nerfed, and it did that to be a more fair and slightly more potent counter to boons. People sleep on Thrill, it's not worse now, it's actually worth running.