What was the reasoning behind making the ability to destroy boon totems a perk instead of being bein

Because it's completely counter to the core design of boon totems, would be my guess.

Granted, there's also no reason for it to be a perk, but I suppose it's nice to have the option.

Because now they can point to it whenever anyone points out the issues certain totem spots and maps create instead of having to examine how the boon mechanic panned out and that its intended counterplay may not be balanced the way they intended.

It's a terrible perk. Bringing Shattered Hope is like bringing Lightborn if you couldn't see if your opponents were using flashlights. Because in that hypothetical scenario, it's worthless if they don't have flashlights, and even if you're going up against one or two flashlights, you still won't need Lightborn - the value only checks out in a game that's absolutely saturated with them. Like, I'd take Shattered Hope in a heartbeat if I knew I was going up against a few boons and an RPD offering, but in your average match, it's either mostly useless or has no ability to ever provide use period. Survivors can still light five boons and that's going to be more than enough in most scenarios; if it isn't, either the match has become a war of attrition, or someone was dumb about booning and kept putting boons in spots the killer was going to patrol. (Or someone was doing bones, but that's looping back to 'Shattered Hope gets no value' territory.)

You cannot compare the 2, they are too different to do so.

Hexes generally have stronger effects, take longer to remove, and are map wide.

Boons (for the most part) offer very situational effects, can be snuffed in a couple of seconds, and have a limited AoE.

Because balance!

Survivors can destroy killers hex and it never comes back without a perk!

So it only makes sense that a killer can snuff out a boon but they can put it back over and over and over. Gonna need a perk if you want to be equal to their basekit

Thats balance!!

The 'nobody would ever run boons again' argument always baffles me. Like, in most situations, relighting a boon in the same spot the killer just snuffed it is a bad idea, because they know where it is and can easily remove your time investment before it pays off. They can even be crafty and drop chase at bad loops because they know exactly where you're going to run to heal up.

The only time you actually want to relight a boon in the same spot it was previously snuffed is when that spot is tough for the killer to reach - either it's far away from the current net of generators and nobody wants to loop there, or it's one of those special spots that's a huge detour for anyone to get to, but the effect radiates upward or downward to more easily accessed parts of the map. Otherwise, you should be moving around to different totems anyway. The Mikaelas that ignore gens to relight the same boon over and over again are hated by their teammates for a reason.

But seriously, any game where a boon went up less than five times would largely play out the same as before - the exceptions are those maps with very secure totem spots.

Also Blood Favor, which is really good on M1 killers after its buff.

The only outright bad hexes are Huntress Lullaby and Third Seal, and even those have their uses.

They basically wanna study the impact of everything even if so its stupid to.

Thats right. But i think it would be hard to find a killer, who wouldn´t want to set their hex totem where they want, when they want.

COH checkmate

I disagree with haunted grounds most times I run it solo the survivors don't break it since they aren't under the effect of a hex. If AI bring lullaby they usually take the risk.

Read it again, I said "more than 1"

You said more than 2, Haunted grounds definitely isn't a bad Hex, if a survivor finds a lit totem, more often than not they're going to cleanse it.

Also you're just proving my point with your boon examples, Shadowstep is awful unless it's an indoor map and Exponential is only useful if the killer slugs, which most don't anymore. As I said before, anything other than CoH is too situational to be considered a good boon perk.

Now, this is true. This is also why I moved away from wanting breaking totems to be basekit (which I championed pretty hard when boons came out) to wanting an increasing cooldown, or a token system for re-blessing, or lessened verticality. Basekit breaking totems when the totems need to be close to the killer to have any value is a dealbreaker. That's already the main reason these perks are so rarely run, because on most maps, the killer is going to find them while you're looping them and the value you get out of each light is inconsistent.

The issue is, those totems don't have to be close to the killer. I think those three perks are currently very badly balanced because they're either hard to get value out of or they're too good. The counter that you say exists for no reason... you ever had a squad bring you to RPD with one or two stacked totems? The Game? Midwich? Shadow Step on a multi-floor indoor map is pain, especially when people are running Iron Will to supplement it. Blood pools are the only way you're going to track anybody, and of the indoor maps, only Lery's and the Game have bright enough floors to see them easily. Exponential supplements sabo squads and bodyblockers, who are already very powerful on indoor maps. Dark Theory certainly isn't great, but you can make it cover half the map with the right totem spot. (I did happen to see it in play against a Scratched Mirror Mikey once and that was cruel, but on the vast majority of killers, 2% isn't make or break and it's the boon that most needs buffs.) And CoH is CoH. You drop chase to remove the boon, everyone resets, and then the boon is back up in the same spot at the next possible opportunity anyway. It's insanely oppressive and the killer's only play is to tunnel out the boon user.

I think Shadow Step is always going to be map-dependent and that part of its design can't really be extracted without changing what it does, but for the others, doing something about their edge cases would open them up to buffing their effects so they can be more useful everywhere.

Don't knock Retribution. I didn't bring it up because it didn't fit your parameters of 'worth running on its own', but on a hex-heavy build, Retribution is excellent info.

And Thrill is mostly a 'stop booning and get off my lawn' perk nowadays, but it used to be an excellent support perk...

Except they currently can do this too well. It just depends on the map and the state of the game. Placing a boon somewhere like Badham basement or Ironworks catwalks is a lose-lose situation from the killer; the amount of time it takes to go and clear the boon and then get back on the road is enough for a team reset or a solid chunk of time across several gens. Similarly, towards the end of the game, one totem far away from the remaining gens reaches that same status, where the killer can't address it without giving up the gens. The problem with that one is that currently there's only one totem that actually wants to be far away from the killer's location; the other three are designed to be close to the action, and this further hammers the disparity between CoH and the other boons.

"used to be an excellent support perk..."

* survivor driving me insane spamming the interact button*

"Bringing Shattered Hope is like bringing Lightborn if you couldn't see if your opponents were using flashlights. Because in that hypothetical scenario, it's worthless if they don't have flashlights, and even if you're going up against one or two flashlights, you still won't need Lightborn"

It's like bringing DS when the killer doesn't tunnel, BT when he doesn't camp, and UB when he doesn't slug.

It's just BHVR's MO at this point.

I find stacking Haunted Grounds, Undying and Ruin to be about the only way I can keep Ruin up for a decent portion of the match. Now we can ask if three perk slots is worth it to have Ruin but that, at least, is a reliable use for Haunted. Pairing Surveillance with this combo, though, does give really good intel.

This is me whenever I play Pinhead, honestly. There's always some joker that has to take the box somewhere and spam it until I answer their calls.

Oh, yeah. You won't hear me disagreeing with that. "Take a perk to patch this basekit vulnerability" is awful design and just leads to inflexibility in loadouts. If there's anything I'm looking forward to in the upcoming meta shakeup, it's that they said they intend on doing some basegame changes to facilitate the switch. Which could easily go wrong, sure, but a basekit mini DS and BT would work wonders.

More then 1 means 2 or above

That would have been incredibly useful.