Hot take: penimento isnt strong. People are just bad at remembering

It's literally insurance for your totems, so I think they should be careful if they chance the perk

Currently this Is the only perk that makes totems viable at all

Pentimento is one of the strongest killer perks, probably deserves to be considered S-tier now that Pain Res and Pop have been nerfed. It adds almost 40 seconds of repair time to any gen, that's crazy. And then there's the other effects. And survivors having to go out of their way to cleanse multiple totems multiple times is still a huge time sink, but it's also not rare that the survivor that cleansed the original totem is in no position to go back and cleanse it, for instance because they are being tunnelled or camped, and other survivors might simply not know where it is, having to spend even more time searching. The killer can also protect their Pentimento totem, with various killer abilities making that downright oppressive (e. g. killers that can force people off of the totem at range such as Doctor, Pyramid Head, Pinhead or Artist, Knight that can both force people off and patrol it using guards, Trapper/Hag that can trap the totem, Singularity that can have pods there, Demo that can have a portal on it, Nurse/Billy/Blight that can easily check on it whenever, …), and if there's a hook or gen cluster within proximity, the killer can protect both simultaneously.

With all of that said, I think Penti is in a perfectly fine spot and just about as good as it has to be given that it requires the killer to use other Hex perks alongside it (and preferably multiple), for them to get cleansed in the first place, for the killer to go out of their way to rekindle them, and is more at risk of getting cleansed swiftly than Hex perks generally are because its location is always known to at least one survivor. There's also something to be said about Boons countering Pentimento, although Boons unfortunately aren't nearly relevant enough for that to be a real argument (although they might become somewhat more commonly used again should Penti become ubiquitous, because that collaterally raises their value). I also agree with the sentiment that Penti being as strong as it is is good as it helps Hexes in general be more relevant, encouraging people to run them (including some of the less common ones such as Plaything, Thrill or Third Seal) and reducing the risk of running them and ending up perkless at some point.

It's a pretty great design and I'm still happy that the original wording (the first rekindled totem causing the healing debuff) wasn't what actually ended up in the game. If there are any changes I have in mind for the perk, it's buffs: Victor should be able to snuff Boons and rekindle cleansed totems, and Dracula's Dominance should apply to rekindled totems.

It is also countered by Counterforce

And there are times when the killer uses Devour Hope and if the totem is not cleansed the match is over. So, what is the argument? Defending the totem is part of the killer's routine, but the killer has to chase someone at some point, that's when you cleanse it.

Bad players are bad players, and they lost because they are bad at the game not because the killer is using some perk that's not useful agaist everyone else. I have seen survivors get destroyed by a walking nurse that used no power during current Chaos Shuffle event, but that proved nothing in terms of balance.

I think current pentimento is fine.

Balancing the game around a minority of 3-6% (SWF) of a playerbase instead of the majoirty is not in the best interest of the game or its players. For the same reasons why the game shouldn't be balanced around Nurse. Both SWF and Nurse can be strong, but both represent a small minority and both do not always mean skillful play.

I don't think 20% for a perk the killer first has to go out of their way to put up and that can be taken out again is massive. Like I said, I'm not even convinced current Pentimento is a pressing problem, personally, so if anything I would consider this nerf to it massive. Of course a constant 20% would be crazy, not least indeed due to its compounding impact alongside other slowdown perks (although the necessity to run at least one and ideally two or even three other Hex perks alongside Penti obviously takes away from the killer's ability to even have Pop, Pain Res, Eruption and whatnot equipped). But it simply isn't active for long stretches of matches most of the time. It has to be kept in mind that the 22.5 seconds are for an entire, 0-100% gen - any gen progress having happened before Penti is put up diminishes its impact greatly. And working through Penti if the killer is effectively protecting it is possible in part because the killer can spend quite a bit of time protecting it, so if nobody or at least only one survivor is even actively contesting it, it's passively taking away from the killer's pressure too. Another factor is that you can leave most Hexes up to begin with and win matches through them as well without even allowing Penti to come into play, particularly again if the killer is also concerned with spending time protecting them. Ruin is not a mandatory cleanse, and depending on how far into a match you are once it gets to 3 tokens (if it does at all), not even Devour necessarily is. Blood Favor is probably the most potent threat from the get-go, I think if anything that perk deserves some sort of nerf, maybe to the duration it blocks pallets for.

I get of course what you mean with it offsetting some of the by-design downsides to running Hex perks, but you are still spending a perk slot on this, as well as the time taken to rekindle the totem. And you're not bringing back the original Hex's effect. You are also spending perk slots on Hexes to begin with, and that is part of why I like Penti: it encourages people to go for Hex builds at all, which are really not very popular without it, since quite a few of them just simply aren't good enough to justify the risk of losing them altogether, and generally people dislike losing their perks indefinitely at some point. And I truly don't think Penti would be at all reliably impactful enough to use if it affected healing and recovery speed first, and repair speed only with 3 rekindled totems standing. I don't even think it would be worth it with the repair debuff second.

I will admit I'm a bit SWF-brained because that's what I the vast majority of the time play; I know that Penti can be downright devastating to solo groups, for one reason or another. That is why I would entertain the nerf to 20% (albeit compensated for with the "rebuild wherever" mechanic, which as we've mentioned even sort of balances itself out in the sense that if the killer chooses not to instantly rebuild the totem where it was cleansed and opts for a potentially more tactically valuable spot instead, they obviously forgo active Penti time for that), as well as the concessions with showing its curse to everyone the moment it is put up and general improvements to solo info sharing. And on a related note, I would also gladly welcome if BHVR were to make Boons much more relevant, which are a mechanical counter to Penti and would rein in its popularity simply by existing.

Either way, if you're really seeing and struggling against Penti frequently, for one thing I guess there's reason to be optimistic that BHVR might at some point look at it because it has definitely been growing in popularity alongside Ruin ever since the Pop/Pain nerfs. And for another there are of course things you can personally do to help at least with the playing experience of yourself and the players in your matches, such as bringing a map (perhaps even with the Crystal Bead add-on to share the auras among everyone), Boons or Inner Strength/Overzealous.

Penti + Plaything is a particular complication of the issue (certainly for solos), as I've admitted. There is still something to be said about Plaything being a particularly slow enabler of Penti, needing to first get hooks, for people to then cleanse the totem that is also blocked for others for some time, and then rekindling that. But I did mention concessions I would consider precisely for this reason, like sharing info on status effects so that survivors can readily deduce things such as Plaything being in play. I would also agree with the change for Plaything to make it so that it can be cleansed by anyone at any time. But yeah, generally I don't think Penti is a huge issue, not big enough to warrant what I understand as its deletion from relevance in moving the repair debuff to second or third totem.

The global stats on Hex usage might be less insightful for this than high MMR stats, where I do these days see Hex perks alongside Penti much more commonly than in the past, which I suspect is both due to nerfs to other slowdown perks and a trickling effect from tournament DbD where Penti has been growing in popularity as well. Either way, I'm not saying Hexes aren't at all worthwhile or only used alongside Penti (or that they shouldn't indeed be buffed themselves instead if that were to be the case (which it is for some of them that I personally do want buffed)), just that Penti makes them more attractive or less "daunting" to use, which I for one welcome because as the stats also more than anything else showcase, Hexes altogether are far from common, even now after their surge in popularity.

But we do have rather different perspectives on the game, and mine definitely is skewed and removed fairly far from the average experience by not only playing in full SWFs most of the time, but doing so alongside good players where some of the issues that can appear insurmountable in solo then not seldom become trivial. One of the reasons for instance why Plaything + Penti barely registers for us is that the first hook tends to happen so late that the build rarely even really gets going early enough to become very impactful, and that's on top of course of our ability to collectively make the decision not to cleanse Plaything, call out killer location and terror radius for each other, and so on. Doesn't mean we never struggle, and against the top-tier killers anyone can, Plaything + Penti on a good Billy or Nurse is crazy scary. But yeah, while that is more so a "top-tier killers" issue, I know for a fact I would hold different or at least more emphatic sentiments regarding Pentimento (and a fair few other things) were I to regularly play solo still. …That said, I still cannot be on board with moving the repair debuff away from the first totem, that for my understanding really just kills the perk, and it's not like I don't have experience in solo against it myself, as well as experience watching others deal with it in non-SWF scenarios and also simply having played killer a lot with the perk myself, and not finding that it makes things too easy too often (with the caveat that I usually play pretty "nice" and don't camp or tunnel much at all).

I could be on board with a rework that simply changes its effects altogether, replacing the repair debuff on first totem with something else entirely instead, that is still impactful but perhaps not as debilitating as that debuff can be. The Hindered effect would actually be interesting for that, while also inherently coming with the awareness of everyone that Penti is in play the moment it activates. Or if that's too boring because Hindered and Haste seem to be all BHVR can come up with these days, something more out-there such as rekindled totems actually copying the effect from the cleansed Hex but only cursing the survivor that cleansed it could be something.

Hexes are always "high risk, high reward" type of perks. Pentimento is on the top of the list of that. You either need huge amount of luck and RNG, or full hex build to make it work

Who hates on Pentimento? It’s definitely not weak, otherwise it wouldn’t be in a lot of builds. I have a couple of anti-hex builds, so whenever I run into Pentimento- getting rid of totems is very satisfying. If I don’t have those builds, then looking for totems is challenging but in a fun way.

Any survivor mains who didn’t mind original undying and ruin? Finding those and escaping was very gratifying.