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Hex: Thrill of the Hunt should have built in counterplay
The new buff to Thrill of the Hunt is all of the rage right now, and while I agree Hexes could do with some help (maybe even make people use maps more), this Hex with Hexes like Devour Hope is very strong to the point of being quite oppressive, particularly on high mobility killers. A decent Spirit determined to hold an Undying/TotH/Devour Hope Hex can easily become nearly impossible to deal with, where even if the survivors manage to break the totems, the lack of gen progress means the game has already snowballed out of the survivors hands.
Hexes are weak though, this makes them viable...
The problem I have with this buff is it is rather inelegant; it's just pure slowdown, nothing clever or interactive.
If cleansing Hexes is too short without it and it requires a perk giving an over a 3 times penalty to the cleanse duration to make them work... then maybe we should look at base cleansing times.
This new buff to TotH is strong because all the time from interrupting survivors is immediately lost, just by you turning up. In this way the longer that window is, the harsher it is on survivors, and TotH basically defends itself, and any other hex with it, making it mandatory for any hex perk.
As such, if its gonna have such a strong effect, I would propose having built in counterplay of some kind to H:TotH.
Some suggestions might be:
Option 1 - Get Down Mr President!
Have TotH's very powerful slowdown only apply to other totems. This means that survivors try to hunt for and identify the TotH specifically, which given the threats of Undying and Pentimento, is still solidly strong.
Option 2 - Divide and Conquer
Have TotH's slowdown only apply to Hex totems and Blessings, and doesn't affect Rekindled Totems or Cleansing Dull totems.. This makes it so that survivors can reasonably go after regular totems to weaken TotH. I like this one because it means that doing any totem on sight is not a bad idea general, just in case TotH is in play, which gives a natural incentive to always do totems and slow down the game.
There is the possibility of making a full totem occupying hex build such as Devour Hope, TotH, Undying, Haunted Ground, but this comes with the contradiction that you don't really want Undying with Haunted Ground, so that's still reasonable.
I sure you can come up with other ideas, but I think TotH in it's current unga bunga state is a rather sad state of affairs. Instead of just nerfing it, let's think how to make TotH more engaging.
Comments
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I really like the first idea!
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I don´t like either of the suggestions. It also got counterplay already, just cleanse the dull totems. The killer won´t protect them.
I only hope they give it something in return when it gets nerfed. 12% per totem would be fine or what I hope for as secondary effect if they return it back to 10%:
- Reduces the healing, repairing and sabataging speed by 3% for each remaining Totem.
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No, this secondary effect is also huge, especially repairing part - it's insta-half pentimento at the start of the match.
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It's not really counterplay when you have to take longer than half a generator to cleanse a dull totem before you can even start attempting to remove the actual threat my guy.
It's been long known that doing totems for points is a throw... and that's at a mere 14s. Making it a mandatory 47s? That's busted. Imagine if you play a game of survivor where you spend 45 seconds doing literally nothing, and that isn't even including search time. I would call that a throw, and expect to lose as survivor in that scenario, wouldn't you?
That is the value of Hex perks, when sufficiently strong they grind the game to a halt as survivors look for them, and forces survivors to take risks removing them while the killer defends them, and that's the key, defend them... TotH makes it so monumentally easy to defend them even Demogorgon was nerfed so he couldn't do it with add-ons… only for it basically be made also doable for any map mobile killer.
All hex perks have been balanced with the idea of having to find and cleanse them in 14s. As I said, if raw slowdown on cleanse time is needed for Hexes to be viable, we should be looking at the base cleanse number, not make 1 perk grant more than triple the time it takes to cleanse a Totem.
12% might be OK, but it's still a boring change, taking it to 35s to cleanse a Totem. Thats better cause at least Counterforce would actually do somethi vs. that, but it's not very interesting.
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It doesn't even need this.
Just slightly lower numbers and slightly buff antihex perks.
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Currently this perk has nothing to offer without other perks. It shouldn’t rely on using other perks.
On the other hand it is a hex, which should have a strong effect, which it didn’t have before the buff.
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I don’t disagree with 47s being too much and boring, but it got counterplay, which is cleansing dull totems.
Before the buff this perk was not really good and it wasn’t worth being a hex at all.
12% might be OK, but it's still a boring change, taking it to 35s to cleanse a Totem. Thats better cause at least Counterforce would actually do somethi vs. that, but it's not very interesting.
I hope they either make it no longer a hex perk with 10% slower cleansing speed by each totem or give it an interesting secondary effect like my idea above.
Counterforce is a terrible perk in my opinion, I wouldn’t even use it if Thrill of the hunt became meta.
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I would be fine with first idea bascially if change slowdown per totem. Have it fixed % all the time until Thrill get cleansed.
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Option 1 - Get Down Mr President!
I didn't understand the first part, can you explain?
In my opinion this Hex should not apply the effect to itself + reveal its aura This Hex is within 10 meters of the survivor, because you literally cannot tell which Hex belongs to which perks if there is more than one Hex totem.
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Yeah, option 1 was the slow doesn't apply to itself. It doesn't need an aura, the fact you get no red bar is the giveaway that it's Thrill of the Hunt.
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With the first option - while it might mean that you initially get faced with other totems that take forever to do and then try to find Thrill specifically to eliminate it - it also means that if Thrill of the Hunt gets found first by chance then the perk literally does nothing at all if it gets cleansed at normal speed before even finding or trying to do any of the other totems, and I don't particularly like that.
As for the second option, it kinda falls flat if you do a full hex build with Haunted Grounds and have 5 hex totems, at that point we're right back where we started, so I don't think that accomplishes much. I don't think Haunted + Undying in the build you mentioned is even that bad for the killer either, especially in a Devour Hope build you can essentially use the Haunted totems to distract from Devour Hope and buy time, especially since it can also trigger twice if Undying is still up.
The current 14% slowdown per token is just overtuned and needs to be brought down a bit. I suggested they should see how it is at 12% - while this doesn't sound like a significant nerf at first, it actually is since 60% max penalty is exponentially weaker than 70%, not just linearly weaker. At 60% the cleansing time at 5 tokens would be 35 seconds, which is no longer above the threshold where for example we have totem cleansing that takes longer than a static blast cooldown to knock you off the totem repeatedly. It would be a 7 second buff from the previous version (which I'd say still makes up for the bloodpoint bonus removal), rather than a 19 second buff which was far too much.
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Cleansing is suppose to be risky action. Currently at its 14 second value, it is not risky action. instead it, it is delete your opponent killer perks within 2 minutes of the match action.
If a killer constantly defend totems and is not commit to any chases than you should be doing gens. when a killer commits to a chase, you may choose to opportunistic remove one of their totems. if you are succeed, it is often the case that cleansing 1 totem greatly increases your odds to remove all their totems.
it requires a perk giving an over a 3 times penalty to the cleanse duration to make them work... then maybe we should look at base cleansing times.
They will not look at cleansing time. They will make you commit all your perk slots into using totem defence perk in order to prop up a particular perk. Supposedly, the perk that you choose to prop up has high enough reward to win the match.
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Cleansing is suppose to be risky action. Currently at its 14 second value, it is not risky action. instead it, it is delete your opponent killer perks within 2 minutes of the match action.
Since when did cleanse a totem become a risky action for survivors? These are side goals for survivors and survivors shouldn't be punished for it by making Cleanse a totem take a century.
What about the perks that interact with Totem, Inner strength - Overzealous - Boon perks, do you think it's really a risky action ? No because Totem is a completely risk-free side thing.
Hex totems are a reward with risks for killers only, not survivors , and the reason it's Hex is to give survivors counter-play, not risk.
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Hex totems are a reward with risks for killers only, not survivors , and the reason it's Hex is to give survivors counter-play, not risk.
my thought is that putting risk only on killer side makes perk overly one-sided for survivor.
do you think it's really a risky action ?
yes. The reward of these perk are not really there so i guess it doesn't matter that they're low risk because they're negligent reward. they're trying to make high risk, high rewards perk in form of invocation perks but they're not really successful at creating such perks.
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I'd take the first option, but it would require a fix to totem spawns. Which are absolutely terrible rn.
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Generally consensus was that hex totems were "weak" and "high risk, high reward" because if they were cleansed, then you no longer have a perk. But their biggest weakness is that totems had terrible spawn locations. 90% of totem spawns are very visible, way out in the open. And it feels like most of them are right next to generators in plain view. I have even had a few matches where survivors immediately cleanse at the start of a match, before I can even get over there myself!
As my experience with the game improves, I now know other clever hiding spots to check for totems, and some maps that have guaranteed totem spawn locations. This doesn't help the situation either.
Look bhvr, thrill did not need such a massive buff. What you needed to do was actually use your heads, and some common sense, and just put totems in better spots, and stop putting them in stupid spots. No matter how much you fiddle with numbers, you cannot fix bad game design.
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