Boons should be a one-time only perk

I think that healing speeds in general need to be heavily looked at, CoH on its own isn't a problem. It's only when it's stacked with other healing sources, which all stack aggressively with one another and are all pretty decent alone, that it becomes a pretty huge problem.

That being said, CoH does cause problems for the boon mechanic because it breaks all the rules. I don't know what this would look like, but it should be ground-up reworked to work the same way as the other boons and incentivise the killer being nearby to use it properly. Maybe nothing to do with healing at all, I don't know.

I use "rules" loosely, it's more like the conventions of the mechanic and its associated perks. Shadow Step and Dark Theory are near useless if the killer isn't nearby, and arguably you want the killer nearby for Exponential too since crawling to it might take forever if you're downed too far away from it. CoH is the only one that gets more value the further the killer is from it while it's used, and since it's also far and away the most valuable, that kind of stifles boons as a mechanic.

The whole back-and-forth idea of snuffing and relighting is also skewed if the boon isn't close to the action, so that contributes.

I'd rather look at all sources of healing independent of CoH, since you don't exactly need a boon to get ultra fast healing speeds. Making it not stack with medkits would be a good "intermediate" step while bigger reforms are worked on though, so I'd support that.

I did see someone once suggest CoH should be reworked to a Vigil boon, that's pretty okay as an idea and plays into the established conventions a bit better.

i think boons should fade out overtime regardless of being snuff.

after 2 min of Circle of healing being up the boon should distinguish back into a dull.

Shadow step & exponential can be 4 mins since they not that powerful.

Dark theory 5 mins

Just make Shattered Hope base kit and boons would be fine.

Dark Theory would need a buff after that though and perhaps Shadow Step as well. Other than that, the other two boons would be fine.

According to the killer mains, its balanced perk.

If they would have their way everything would Exponential tier on survivors

While I do agree that CoH is currently the strongest boon, I think people misunderstand why it is so strong, other than unlimited healing.

The biggest weakness to boons at the moment is totem spawn rng. A lot of them are supposed to give you an advantage in the chase, so they depend on being placed somewhere the killer can't easily patrol through and randomly find and snuff it, but still close enough to the action that the killer can't remove it from their patrol path and ignore it.

CoH is the only boon that does not care where you place it. it will still provide value for your team by giving you unlimited self healing, and placing it away from the killer's patrol path is actually preferable. So it usually never gets snuffed like the other 3 boons.

No killer is uniquely rewarded for slugging. It's just a consequence of the playstyle for Twins. And even against them, I wouldn't bet on the perk being of much use due to its range restriction and counterplay.

And even then, the perk only being useful against Twins does not make it a useful perk overall.

Whoa, how would it be fair to permanently disable a perk just because the opponent broke the totem? That would be really imbalanced!

Being a gameplay destroyer perk to a specific killer while also being quite decent against others is quite a deal. Old Iron Will was a stupid counterplay to Spirit while also being okayish against any other killer, hence why it was nerfed. What makes Exponential better is the fact that only one person needs to use it to give the benefit to the entire team, while with Iron Will everyone had to have their own, so there is much less risk with the boon.

Oni, Plague, and Myers have their gameplay centered around slugging, because slugging is the efficient way of playing them. Exponential wouldn't be a problem for them if you could know whether the survivors have it or not. If this was the case, they could decide on the least efficient play and not slug if they know there is an Exponential, but since they don't they have to guess and possibly get surprised by it in the worst case possible.

In Twins case, what makes Exponential their perfect counterplay is that, unlike the other three killers I mentioned before, they are completely reliant on slugging. Since Charlotte is a potato, you will normally spend most of your gameplay as Victor. If you didn't want to slug, you would have to keep going back to Charlotte, walk to the place you downed the survivor, and only then place them on a hook. This takes a ridiculous amount of time, especially on big maps so it is necessary for the Twins go for big slugs. What makes it even worse is that Victor can't snuff totems, so if there is a boon you probably will just ignore it because going back to Charlotte and snuffing it is a momentum breaker.

But it's -not- a decent perk against others. It's hard-countered by pressing spacebar. Most killers won't care. And even if they do, the boon is still incredibly conditional, and can still be easily circumvented.

But that's on the assumption that said killers are chasing multiple slugs in the same area which happens to have been booned before, but not so far before that the killer found and snuffed it. If there's only one person in the boon area and the Plague/Myers does not have any other target nearby, why would they slug at all to begin with?

Oni's not going to stick around in the same spot for any amount of time either, since his snowball is specifically also tied to mobility. Plague might stick around, but then she can also easily re-down people if they get up. It might be decent against Myers, but if he gets multiple downs off the same stalk, your team is still in a bad position even if one manages to get up.

And all of this ultimately just turns an immediate win for the killer into merely extremely high pressure for the killer. And that's IF you're up against any of these four and they don't counterplay it. If you're up against anyone else, the perk's a dead slot.

It's only a true problem for the twins. And everything is a problem for the twins, so that's not a good reference point.

Goddamn dude, a third thread to hassle me on?

Anyway, replaceable hexes would obviously be too strong for the majority of them, because the majority of them are much stronger (and stronger in a more direct way) than boons. This is clearly how the mechanic is intended to function, it's obviously a false equivalence.

Instadowns and moris, for instance, are a much more direct threat to survivors than blocked scratch marks in a limited area are for killer. Inability to use pallets or windows after a hit or a single vault respectively, that's a way bigger deal than 2% haste in a limited area. Weak hexes are just weak, they're not the fair standard for the whole mechanic.

This idea will just make the bad boons actually unusable and not effect smartly placed COH that much

I'd wager it'd also delete CoH from viability. Why take a perk that requires 14 seconds to set up and can just be permanently disabled if the killer finds a very loud, very bright totem, when there's other healing perks that allow you to pull similar feats?

You're telling me the ability to re-place Blood Favour or Devour Hope or old, pre-nerf Ruin wouldn't be too strong? We used to have that mechanic, in a way, with old Undying. It was changed for good reason.

Hexes being weak has very little to do with boons. Hexes are weak because they're just too easy to find on a lot of maps. That is, of course, entirely irrelevant to the topic of boons, but there it is anyway.

Just went over that.

If hexes as a perk class need help, and I would say they do, the solution is not to try and force them to work like boons. They're not the same mechanic, what works for one doesn't work for the other.

Well, not quite, you're proposing giving them one element of boons. Unless you're also suggesting the killer must manually place them over the course of fourteen seconds, only gain their effects in a limited radius, and is forced to stack all of them on the same totem?

Then you're not proposing making them actually similar to boons, which means this won't work. It's just giving killers the ability to keep hexes up almost constantly- at best, that's old Undying, which was changed for a reason.

Losing your hexes in ten seconds sucks. This isn't the answer.

This isn't a thread about hexes, which is why I was only directly responding to your arguments. However, I'll answer anyway, because I have actually thought about how to help hexes out.

So, there are two main ideas. Either would somewhat work on their own, but I think both should be implemented together.

The first is that totem placements should be randomised again, and then infrequently but regularly randomised going forward. This would mean experienced survivors would have to actually look for totems again, and incentivise maybe bringing some totem-hunting perks to do so- and it'd also mean that bare minimum your chances of an instant cleanse go down.

The second is more impactful, and if they did only do one, it should be this one. I think hexes should only light up a totem when they've actually done something. Ruin, purely as an example because I know it sucks, should light up only when it actually regresses something. Devour, when it gains a token. Blood Favour, when it blocks a pallet. The only sticking point is Haunted Grounds since it wouldn't have an activation trigger, but I'm pretty sure the devs could think of something there.

Obviously, some hexes are just bad and need their own help, but this would help the actually good hexes not be instantly cleansed and therefore be useless.

Simplest idea is the activation trigger for the "trap" totems like HG, Retribution, and Undying be "any other totem activates".

In your example, Ruin wouldn't light up until something causes its regression to trigger. Once it does, Haunted Ground lights up, as well, so 3 totems light up and once instead of 1.

Maybe make it "this perk activates 60 seconds after the match has begun if its activation is not otherwise triggered"