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Nobody uses hexes anymore...

AhoyWolf
AhoyWolf Member Posts: 4,389

It just so happens that I want to complete my Dead by Daylight achievements, one of which requires you to bless around 20 hex totems, guess what tho, I have been running those ######### boons for around hundred games and only like two of them had hexes, am I cursed or did hexes just got so obsolete that nobody uses them?

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Comments

  • AhoyWolf
    AhoyWolf Member Posts: 4,389

    Good news, right after I posted this I loaded into a Nurse match with 3 hexes, even tho it took around half a Gen to bless one hex (due to Thrill of the Hunt) it was worth it 🙏

  • Unequalmitten86
    Unequalmitten86 Member Posts: 331

    I am in lower MMR and they all bring the Hexes lol, that's all they do, they even babysit those totems.

  • LordGlint
    LordGlint Member Posts: 8,684

    I still use em but yeah... the most ex-popular hex cleanses itself if survivors can't be bothered to do it. Alot of ppl have moved away to perks that are more consistent.

  • LordGlint
    LordGlint Member Posts: 8,684
  • Hex_Ignored
    Hex_Ignored Member Posts: 1,955

    Plagues are constantly running plaything+pentimento (with thanatophobia of course). Consider yourself lucky if you haven't encountered one yet.

  • CountOfTheFog
    CountOfTheFog Member Posts: 2,526

    I see a lot of Huntress Lullaby, Plaything and a couple others here and there.

    I rarely face an Artist that isn't running Pentimento With Huntress Lullaby or Plaything.

  • tyantlmumagjiaonuha
    tyantlmumagjiaonuha Member Posts: 598

    With only four perk slots, there is usually no room to bring in something that could be disabled in the first 30 seconds of a match; it has to be heavily protected with Undying, etc., but even then it is too risky because it could be gone by the middle of the match.

  • 09SHARKBOSS
    09SHARKBOSS Member Posts: 1,368

    i hope ya play against me sometime im running a hex build

  • Rudjohns
    Rudjohns Member Posts: 2,218

    Every other day I have a killer with

    either Ruin, Devour or Blood Favour + Pentimento

    Plaything + Pentimento

  • roundpitt
    roundpitt Member Posts: 578

    More often than not, hex totems are cleansed within 20 seconds of the match starting. So if a killer equips one, it’s like they have an empty perk slot.

    Would you leave a perk slot empty for no reason?

  • pseudechis
    pseudechis Member Posts: 3,904

    Devour Hope is a mainstay on a lot of my builds.

    I run NOED often too depending on killer. A jumpscare Myer's without NOED can be lacking teeth in the endgame, with it he can be really nasty.

  • Steakdabait
    Steakdabait Member Posts: 1,293

    They're just annoying black and white perks for both sides.

    Ether they're oppressively powerful and never get found or they get destroyed in under a minute. Standard hex perks that just are destructible extremely powerful perks aren't that healthy for the game imo.

  • Seraphor
    Seraphor Member Posts: 9,429

    I see Hexes all the time.

    Plaything and Pentimento are relatively meta.

    Devour and NOED can be strong.

    Hell I cleansed a Haunted Grounds a few days ago.

  • Krazzik
    Krazzik Member Posts: 2,475

    Hexes are supposed to be really strong to make up for been cleansable. High risk high reward.

    The issue is that some hexes just aren't that strong anyway, and even the ones that -are- strong can still just be cleansed far too quickly with no real way for most killers to defend them. The risk is basically just too high because many totem locations are highly visable and obvious. Even with Undying you can get unlocky and both totems are found at the start of the trial.

    Hexes that don't act like regular hexes can still be good though. Plaything, Pentimento, NoED and Face the Darkness are harder to lose and guarentee a bit more value.

  • Killing_Time
    Killing_Time Member Posts: 894

    Blame survivors... NOED got so many nerfs that it's ridiculous lol

  • LeFennecFox
    LeFennecFox Member Posts: 1,302

    Plaything pent only works because avg survivor has 0 awareness and cleanse it punishing their own team while wasting time

  • Krazzik
    Krazzik Member Posts: 2,475

    To be fair it takes a really good survivor to deal with perma-oblivious. Most survivors can't deal with it and should cleanse it.

  • LeFennecFox
    LeFennecFox Member Posts: 1,302

    Giving the killer the occasional free hit is always preferable to map wide 30% repair debuff and possibly even the other effects. If it's a totem inside their gen setup or easily checked the game is probably going south extremely fast. You have to search around the map for up to 30+ seconds, spend 14 seconds cleansing, then give the killer a 30% debuff to all survs while you just spent all that time accomplishing very little.

  • Krazzik
    Krazzik Member Posts: 2,475

    I'd still say for most survivors they should cleanse it, then just keep an eye out for Penti and if it shows up they can head back and cleanse it again if they have time. Giving the killer constant easy hits and even the occasional gen-grab can be much worse, especially if it's a killer like Legion or Plague where giving them one easy-hit can be a down.

  • LeFennecFox
    LeFennecFox Member Posts: 1,302
    edited January 5
    1. Work on gens that have good sightlines
    2. Listen for killer audio queues
    3. Use icons which can generally tell you if the killer is an active threat
    4. SWF and completely ignore the effect

    I would gladly trade a hook stage if it means the killer spent 2 perk slots to inconvenience me if I'm not paying attention. The quicker you do gens the less you need to worry about him getting value from obliviousness. It's a net benefit for the killer if you cleanse plaything.

  • Krazzik
    Krazzik Member Posts: 2,475
    edited January 5

    I guess we'll just agree to disagree. I think most players aren't good enough to deal with being Oblivious all game, myself included, and that it's just way better to deal with it. I'm glad you're skilled enough that it isn't a problem though, I get grabbed pretty often when I can't hear the killer coming.

  • LeFennecFox
    LeFennecFox Member Posts: 1,302

    Yea stealth is very strong against avg solo queue player why "weak" killers have such high winrates. If cleansing it at 5 gens is the difference between you dying super early then go for it.

  • Krazzik
    Krazzik Member Posts: 2,475

    I totally understand that at high MMR you're not gonna have enough time for everyone to spend time looking for and cleansing their Plaything and THEN going back to cleanse the Penti on top of that, and players at that level are gonna be better equipped to handle the oblivious.

    I just know that I'd rather waste some time doing a couple hexes and then focus on gens, rather than getting grabbed or going down in chase in 2 seconds and dying.

  • meowzilla69
    meowzilla69 Member Posts: 408

    My favorite is pentimento. It can be very strong vs 2 survivors. My favorite with pentimento is when they think I have NOED. lol

  • FFirebrandd
    FFirebrandd Member Posts: 2,446

    Of course nobody uses Hexes. The vast majority of them are inherently unreliable and not strong enough to justify it. Plaything is pretty much the only exception because it can create 4 lit totems instead of only one, so even if you get zero easy hits from the oblivious effect, it still gave some decent slowdown. Then Pentimento rides Plaything's coattails.

  • HerInfernalMajesty
    HerInfernalMajesty Member Posts: 1,946

    Honestly, seeing ruin nerfed all this way into what it is now is kind of crazy

  • Malkhrim
    Malkhrim Member Posts: 995

    Hexes were never really good, but they started to disappear when killers actually started gaining multiple strong perks that wouldn't disappear in the first minute of every match until you got lucky once.

    The map reworks didn't help either, though. Back in 2018, the devs aimed to make totems at least a little harder to see... but when they started reworking maps around 2020, totems were put in more and more visible spots. Once a dev had joked about "lighthouse totems" when referring to totems that were way too visible on hills, which were being changed. Well, they started coming back when Autohaven Wreckers got reworked.

    And then there were the Boons. When CoH was Meta, survivors would look for totems all the time and learn totem locations more efficiently, making Hexes last even less. Additionally, Thrill of the Hunt got a huge nerf when Boons were added, so now builds that help you to protect your totems are even weaker. The final nail in the coffin was the Ruin nerf, because that was the only hex perk that was meta (but honestly, it was unhealthy as hell. Killers would never gain good regression perks and gen speed would never be slowed down simply because of how powerful Ruin could already be, but it was inconsistent and unreliable as hell).


    The only Hex perks we still se once in a while are the ones that don't spawn at the start of game, like Plaything and Face the Darkness. This should make clear that the problem with hexes is how flawed the original hex totem mechanic is to begin with.

  • Malkhrim
    Malkhrim Member Posts: 995

    Either way, I think hexes should be targeted in the next big perk overhaul... assuming we will get another one. The mechanic should change and hex totems shouldn't spawn at the start a match. Totem locations should be changed in most maps to make them more hidden and either THRILL OF THE HUNT or UNDYING should get their information features restored: Thrill used to give you a warning when someone started cleansing a totem. Undying used to show the aura of survivors near ANY totem, but that got changed because it was "redundant with TOTH" (which sounds funny now, since some of the recent perks are way more redundant with older ones, just look at Power of Two and Blood Pact). Well, now that Thrill doesn't have its sound and visual warning anymore, they can't be called redundant in any way, so one of the two should be buffed back to help you to actually protect hex totems.

  • LeFennecFox
    LeFennecFox Member Posts: 1,302
    edited January 6

    Hexes were actually really good especially nurse builds. Haunted devour undying ruin throw in penti sometimes. Basically no counterplay for survivors they know you have ruin and potential other nasty perks they still have to cleanse many perks with the chance to get haunted twice if it procs first. All under the time constraint of chases with instadowns + passive gen regression before you reach your goal of 3+ stacks if the game lasted that long.

  • GeneralV
    GeneralV Member Posts: 11,700

    Back in 2018, the devs aimed to make totems at least a little harder to see... but when they started reworking maps around 2020, totems were put in more and more visible spots.

    It is from 2017, but Badham used to have some pretty good totem spawns, leagues ahead of what we have today. I was talking about this with @Tsulan a while ago, and we also remembered some totem spawns on Coal Tower and Léry's, all pretty good.

    I like the idea of Hex perks, I believe it is a healthy mechanic that gives survivors an ideal secondary objective. But they have to be better hidden.

  • LeFennecFox
    LeFennecFox Member Posts: 1,302
    edited January 6

    Thrill of the Hunt being changed was such a horrible decision. Before you had a basically guaranteed way to trade your pressure to protect a totem if you had decent mobility. It's sad hex perks are in such a sad state they're just used for bait to get pentimento which is an actual hex.

  • Ariel_Starshine
    Ariel_Starshine Member Posts: 937

    Nope I don't see hexes and certainly no boons. They nuked em on both sides really.

  • roundpitt
    roundpitt Member Posts: 578
    edited January 7

    If hexes didn’t get cleansed within 20-30 seconds after the game started half of the time, I might agree with you.

    But there’s a very good reason why the majority of killers don’t use them. Most killers can agree, without even collaborating, hex perks don’t provide enough value to warrant using. 🤷🏻‍♂️

  • C3Tooth
    C3Tooth Member Posts: 8,266

    For me, a perk is worth for killer if it buys them 1min. The time spent to find Hex + Cleansing already half over half a min, if Lullaby manages to make survivors miss just 3 skill checks, killers already get enough value from it.

    But sometimes survivors spawn right next to Hex, denies both searching time and effect time, it only buys them the cleansing time in the beginning.

  • Batusalen
    Batusalen Member Posts: 1,323

    ... I think you either responded to the wrong post, or someone doesn't know what sarcasm is.

  • roundpitt
    roundpitt Member Posts: 578

    I’m not sure if you are aware, but typically you need an inflection to know sarcasm is being used. With only text, you can’t do that. It’s why typically people add “/s” at the end of sentences which they want to be taken as sarcastic.

  • Batusalen
    Batusalen Member Posts: 1,323
    edited January 7

    I literally posted a video of me cleaning an Hex which spawned next to me at the start of the match titled "Hex are great". Taking in count the context of the whole post, I don't think it need any more signals that it is obviously sarcasm 🤣

  • roundpitt
    roundpitt Member Posts: 578

    I’m not going to watch videos anyone posts, I’m listening to an audio book and it stops it

  • Batusalen
    Batusalen Member Posts: 1,323

    I would take that as a "Sorry, I misunderstood your post" and move on 🤣

  • Malkhrim
    Malkhrim Member Posts: 995

    Hexes COULD be really good... if they lasted. But there was no consistency and hex totems being found within the first 30 seconds of the match was actually quite common.

    On Nurse it was easier to get value from perks like Devour Hope and Retribution because she could down survivors much faster, but there was still a chance a totem would spawn behind a survivor in hearing distance, undying was found before the other totems and had no real value, a hex totem spawned beside a gen (insanely common), two hex totems spawned right beside each other, and other random stuff.

    I don't think a perk can really be called "good" if it only works half of the matches and does nothing on others (to avoid that, you could try picking specific killers with builds made around keeping the totems lit or otherwise getting value out of them, but they didn't work very well on their own). But the thing is, killers had less options in general. Not that many exposed perks, only ONE good gen regression perk that wasn't Ruin (Pop Goes the Weasel, and that was before the massive perk overhaul that created the gen kick meta), less aura reading perks than there is today, things like that. Now there are far more options of really strong perks that don't come with a huge risk of wasting a perk slot.