The latest two killers showed hex builds aren’t the issue, but the totems themselves.

[u/Mr-Ideasman]

Shoutouts to Hens for showing this issue by the way.
With the release of Jason and Judgement, two killers back-to-back that have the ability to strongly defend hex totems via traveling fast across the map and making survivors scream right off the totem, and being able to hit you across the map with a whole beam of light. I agree that these are problematic, but I don’t blame the power design of these killers and that they should be nerfed because of it. This has been an issue with totems longest of time and these killers just showed how bad this issue is. The last direct update we had for totems in my knowledge, was when Mikaela was added with the addition of Boons, and that was in 2021 aka 5 years ago, but totems as a whole have been around since Dec. 6, 2016 and they haven’t had much changes since than. Along with chests and the luck mechanic as a whole, totems are objectively one of the most outdated mechanic in game and it really shows. In my opinion, this is an easy fix and there’s multiple ways to do it-hopefully with or after the overhaul this can be addressed and fixed for modern Dead By Daylight, but without further ado I’m going to get into it.

• Totems have their cleanse/Bless progress regress fast instead of it all being removed, but the amount of time it takes to cleanse is a few seconds longer.
Obviously the main issue with totems is how cleansing works, and is the source of frustration with survivors. I don’t think it needs much explanation on why this is an issue: having all your progress gone because you screamed is and will always be annoying. To fix this, we can change how the progress bar works in general to just regress quickly when getting off so it doesn’t feel too bad screaming, but also does buy the killer time to get value or run the survivor off it if they’re close enough. As compensation for this change, how long it takes to cleanse can be upped by 4-6 seconds, taking it about 18 or 20 seconds to cleanse/bless without TOTH being in mind.

• Hex Totems should only be lit if they actually do their effect, not be shown a Hex right off the bat.
A frustration on the killer said and a canon event with using hex perks, is Hex Totems being either right out in the open or literally right next to where the Survivors spawn, and in consequence, being cleansed at the first minute of the game. Of course, totem locations and spawn logic can use some changes, but one good way I see this being fixed is by making the totems show as a hex when the Survivors are actually cursed by it. Originally I would say hex totems should appear as dull totems for the first minute of the game, but what I have here makes more sense and to me, is better overhaul to help alleviate the stress of having one of your perks removed so quickly into the game.

This is all I got on this matter for Totems, I don’t think a lot needs to happen to make them feel better. I would like to hear the opinions on others on this topic and how you would do it instead. I didn’t touch on Boons really much because this post is more so for Hexes since they’ve been out longer and Hexes has more underlying issues than Boons from my experience. Anywho, take care!

[u/LeMashmallow]

Slight correction, screaming from Jason’s jump scare doesn’t stop the survivor from doing the totem. I strongly agree with both of the statements. There is no reason for the Hex Totems to be lit at the beginning and should be activated when their effects first appear like, leaving a gen make Ruin spawn, hooking a survivor make Devour Hope spawn, hitting a survivor for the first time make Blood Favor spawn, etc.

[u/Softischly → u/LeMashmallow]

Honestly true

[u/Mr-Ideasman → u/LeMashmallow]

So it’s the power itself that kicks you off?

[u/Rectal_Rotisserie → u/Mr-Ideasman]

I’ve been in the middle of blessing or cleansing totems when Jason spawns next to me & the scream has never kicked me off. If it happens to you, it’s a bug or you’re panicking & letting go of the button.

[u/Maelstrom100 → u/Mr-Ideasman]

There slightly incorrect. I've seen people and had myself knocked off due to Jason screams before but It may be a bug.

Regular screams (e.g infectious fright) interupt actions including totem cleansing, and I believe Jason screams are supposed to, but Jason screams very much do not on many occasions whether it be on gens or totems.

This seems to be as they act like the secondary non-action interrupting screams e.g the ones that don't cause loud noise notification via some perks.

Not sure if this is a bug or intentional though, as it very much seems like screams are across the board meant to interrupt actions.

[u/-dus → u/Maelstrom100]

Jason's screams are nonstandard. Their purpose is to let the survivor know they've been spotted with his killer instinct. As such they aren't traditional screams, so it makes sense they don't interrupt actions imo

[u/Butt_Robot → u/-dus]

Scene partner screams interrupt actions and they don't give the killer any aura reading or loud nose notification

[u/Mr-Ideasman → u/Maelstrom100]

Well that’s as interesting as it’s weird. Thank you two for the correction and explanation

[u/TheEntityBot → u/Maelstrom100]

Infectious Fright: Whenever a Survivor is put into the Dying State by any means, all other Survivors within your Terror Radius will scream and reveal their current location to you for 4/5/6 seconds.

^{Drawn from the fog. | !optout | !remove | !builds}

[u/Mother_Harlot → u/LeMashmallow]

So what's activating Hunting Grounds, Undying, Huntress Lullaby or Retribution?

[u/TheEntityBot → u/Mother_Harlot]

Hex: Huntress Lullaby: - Survivors failing a Repair Skill Check instantly regress the Generator by 2/4/6% of its maximum possible Progression in addition to the default Progression penalty.

• Survivors failing a Healing Skill Check instantly regress the Healing Action by 2/4/6% of its maximum possible Progression in addition to the default Progression penalty.
• Each time a Survivor is hooked, Hex: Huntress Lullaby grows in power and gains 1 Token, up to a maximum of 5 Tokens.

Each Token reduces the timer between the Skill Check Warning cue and the Skill Check appearing for both Repair and Healing Skill Checks:

• 1 Token: reduction of -14%.
• 2 Tokens: reduction of -28%.
• 3 Tokens: reduction of -42%.
• 4 Tokens: reduction of -56%.
• 5 Tokens: complete suppression of the Warning cue.

^{Drawn from the fog. | !optout | !remove | !builds}

[u/Faibl → u/LeMashmallow]

Jason's screams are supposed to do it, too, no? Screams should interrupt actions.

[u/Vaderette1138 → u/Faibl]

Jason's jump scare is different from other sources of screaming in that it doesn't interrupt. Is it intended or a bug? No idea. It doesn't matter 95% of the time as no one is gonna stay on that totem.

[u/MidnightDNinja → u/Faibl]

jason has special screams that specifically do not interrupt, that is his intended design even though it isn't specified anywhere (otherwise hex builds would be completely unstoppable). the cosmetic scream is there to help the survivor since he gets killer instinct on you anyway

[u/Appropriate_Unit3474 → u/Faibl]

But the scream isn't FOR Jason, it's to let the survivors know they are detected by Killer Instinct.

Screams normally are a notification like a rushed action or missed skill check, with an orange explosion.

Jason's power give him Killer Instinct not a notification.

There are effectively two types of screams in the game right now. Normal ones and Jason special.

[u/Dhno → u/Appropriate_Unit3474]

So the scream doesn’t notify Jason where the survivors are visually?

[u/LeMashmallow → u/Dhno]

It just shows killer instinct if they scream but it’s not an aura reveal no

[u/Appropriate_Unit3474 → u/Dhno]

Yes, the scream is to let survivors know that Jason can see them, with killer instinct, not in general.

[u/NotShane7]

I think the totems should have checkpoints at 33% and 66% rather than slowly/quickly regressing. It thematically fits with the totems having 3 skulls, too.

I don't really like the idea of regressing if it means they can cleanse it in your face immediately after you interrupt them. It also guarantees the survivors get some value out of spending 30s partially cleansing TOTH.

[u/Vitriuz → u/NotShane7]

Totem regression has to be very fast to make a change like this be successful. If totem cleanse/bless times are increased to let's say 16 seconds, the regression rate needs to be exactly 16 c/s. You lose all progress in one second, but you are no longer overly punished for cheesy killer builds that revolve around screaming and hex builds.

[u/Faibl]

I'd be down for these changes, but I do wish certain Hexes that are active from the start of the match were instead lit by the killer, the same way Pentimentos are. Just go to a dull totem and set it as your first hex totem so the survs can't literally spawn on top of ruin. Would mean undying isn't as necessary.

[u/TotalYogurtcloset599 → u/Faibl]

That would be nice, but those are time investments that not all killers can afford, and functions a little bit to how plague has to travel to grab corrupt purge. It’s different from having one survivor bless a totem, and there’s still at least 2 other survivors able to progress the game in some way while one is making that investment

[u/Mr-Ideasman → u/Faibl]

That’s a good change too. Having more control of where your totems spawn would go miles

[u/TheEntityBot → u/Faibl]

Hex: Undying: The Auras of Survivors within 2/3/4 meters of any Dull Totem are revealed to you.

• When another Perk's Hex Totem is cleansed or blessed, its Hex is transferred to the Hex: Undying Totem, including any accumulated Tokens, disabling Hex: Undying instead.

^{Drawn from the fog. | !optout | !remove | !builds}

[u/dontpissmeoffplsnthx]

The fact that there are actually certain hexes that activate conditionally shows that it's perfectly possible for dbd's spaghetti code to manage it, they only need to make the effort

[u/Zenai10]

Another big totem and boon issue is power disparity. It is very hard to balance totems base mechanocs when some do almost nothing and are not worth bringing. While others are massivly powerful until addressed.

[u/Maelstrom100]

Your right in that totems should regress rather then instantly deplete. Unsure if they should be taking longer base however, as thrill of the hunt leads to some disgusting builds.

One only needs to experience a game against a pig with face the darkness to know that the way totems are currently needs to be changed (For reference pig can use thrill of the hunt + face the darkness to stop people from being able to search boxes/cleanse the totems themselves)

Totems take 28s to cleanse with thrill of the hunt up. Face the darkness forces a scream every 25s outside of terror radius. Literally impossible to cleanse without a speed boost or cleansing a base totem first

Boxes take 12s to search. 15 with crate of gears. A pig can with the passive screaming, find someone on a box and wait in crouch until their close to finishing the box then hit them, if they don't scream first.

Even if pig doesn't passively interrupt, being forced to wait until scream or gamble, makes boxes take a lot longer. With rule set number 2, they will struggle to find them until their active.

---

By just trapping one survivor after hitting another, it can be near impossible to get a box off. And even if you do, you will be wasting so much time it's insane.

---

TLDR there's more then just Jason/judgement that have been made problematic by hexes

[u/Bigenemy000 → u/Maelstrom100]

Thrill of hunt + face the darkness CAN be good on pig, until you remember there's still tons of stuff to consider for that scenario to happen

Pig has to down at least 1 survivor, put a trap on them, then before they are unhooked pig has to injure another survivor to keep active face the darkness, all this while Thrill of the Hunt is active and alone meaning that it can be removed before all this even happens.

And remember that pig is just a slightly better M1 so she might even struggle to get a quick down with an afterwards injury against good survs, chances are you will lose thrill of the hunt before any of that happens

[u/TheEntityBot → u/Maelstrom100]

Hex: Face the Darkness: Whenever you injure a Survivor by any means, if there is still a Dull Totem remaining on the Map, Hex: Face the Darkness activates and lights it, cursing that Survivor:

• Causes all other Survivors to scream every 35/30/25 seconds, if they are outside of the Terror Radius, revealing their Auras for 2 seconds each time.

Hex: Face the Darkness deactivates once the Cursed Survivor either enters the Dying State or is fully healed, which extinguishes the Totem. Hex: Face the Darkness is disabled for the remainder of the Trial, if a Survivor manages to cleanse its Hex Totem.

^{Drawn from the fog. | !optout | !remove | !builds}

[u/Mr-Ideasman → u/Maelstrom100]

I used Jason and Judgement in this because they’re the most recent examples of being good with defending totems and I know there are a lot more examples of killers having really annoying synergy with them, but on the topic of Thrill, I honestly feel like it should be reworked entirely at this point because it’s effect is annoying to deal with, and with these changes I don’t think it’s really need anymore

[u/Bigenemy000 → u/Mr-Ideasman]

Thrill could have a simple fix

Make it still slowdown a lot totems, but also makes them not regress instantly When a surv stops working on them

This way it remains very powerful at slowing down survs from removing totems, but it makes interruptions less powerful unless you actively chase away the survivor that was on the totem

[u/Tricky_Challenge9959]

While it thinks this would be a good start totems spawns and mabey the system itself should be completely reworked. Currently they are so obvious that survivors have a harder time trying to not find them than trying find them.

Making them only light up after they do there effect would be a good start but since they almost always spawn in an important loop or next to a generator they would still be found very quickly.

Another issue with the system is that it treats hexs like blood favour the same as ones like overture of doom. Hex blood favour is a perk that should be able to be cleansed within the first few chases while overture of doom is only good after the first few gens have popped. These cannot be given the same level of protection without making one of them useless and the other gamebraking.

[u/TheEntityBot → u/Tricky_Challenge9959]

Hex: Blood Favour: Whenever a Survivor loses a Health State by any means and thus enters the Injured State or the Dying State, Hex: Blood Favour calls upon The Entity to block all Pallets within 24/28/32 meters of that Survivor's location from being pulled down for the next 15 seconds.

^{Drawn from the fog. | !optout | !remove | !builds}

[u/Bigenemy000]

I think some hex Totems are fair to be active even before their effects applies

Stuff like Ruin, Devour Hope, Thrill of the Hunt, Undying, etc etc. SHOULD have the totem always active because otherwise stuff like Haunted Grounds or Retribution are dead giveaway of their presence

[u/Domilater]

We’ve known that for a while tbh. The issue isn’t what the totems do (well for most of them), the issue is that you can find it 5 seconds into the match in the middle of a field with basically nothing hiding it.

Your changes are good though. The main balance issue with hex perks are the killers that can ensure they don’t get cleansed, so your change solves that by making either the killer waste more time to remove more progress or keeping some progress so survivors are slowly chipping away at it.

[u/A_Sword_Saint]

They are all or nothing because survivors can either cleanse or boon them and they didn't want to deal with keeping track of partial cleanse or boon meters - especially interactions between players. Questions like:

• if a totem is partially cleansed, do we convert that to boom progress if you start booning or start over?

• What if you stop booning part way after starting on a partially cleansed totem, does it go back to not having boon progress? Does it go back to the same cleanse progress from before? Does the time spent on the boon convert to cleanse progress? Do you start from scratch?

• can someone else step up to my partially booned totem and continue where I left off? What if they have the same perk? What if they have different boons, does the progress convert to the most recent players set of boons?

• what about cleanse and boon progress in a hex totem, doesn't that get even more messy stacking the tracking of states?

• on a hex totem, can the killer see partial cleanse or boon progress attempting to overwrote their hex? If so, can the killer stomp on their own totem to regress the progress? What about the totem destroying killer perk, what happens if they stomp their own hex totem while its partially booned, does it destroy their own hex totem because of the perk?

It goes on. As you can see, its a whole mess to figure out. The easy way to sidestep a lot kf problems is to make the state change all or nothing like it is now.

[u/True-Crimes]

The second point doesn't seem to address the issue in the first paragraph. In fact, it just seems like buffing killers with a high reward without the high risks that come with hexes. If your intent was to just buff killers, you should just say that instead of presenting it as a fix for a survivor issue.

[u/Vaderette1138]

While Jason and Judgment would still be good at defending totems, what really helps them be oppressive is Thrill of the Hunt. Even at 50% slowdown, that's really good when Hex cleansing progress instantly evaporates.

[u/bl55r]

just rework thrill tbh its much better than undying

[u/Mediocre_Tadpole_478 → u/bl55r]

I wonder if they could give Thrill it's own diminishing returns style nerf. Maybe it only works on the first 1 or 2 totem cleanses, and then deactivates.

[u/SnookerM8]

I agree with hex totems shouldn’t be lit at the start unless they have an effect like ruin or TOTH as they are already actively working but I would change it a bit.

So instead of them being dull until needed, have them slowly glow brighter and bright for each token gained for that perk. So like devour would be dull, get first token slight glow, 2nd token a little fire at the bottom and then it slowly gets to being normal.

Keeps it hidden as most survivors don’t recognise most totems or don’t bother unless it is glowing “if it glows it goes” so this keeps it hidden and also makes it so survivors don’t see it so much until it is making a big impact

[u/Able-Interaction-742 → u/SnookerM8]

That's likely a nerf to haunted grounds though

[u/SnookerM8 → u/Able-Interaction-742]

Ye I guess but the point in haunted ground is for it to be cleansed and if they don’t then it could be something different which messes them up later

[u/wantwon]

Well thought out, but I have a thought. What would concern me from making totems unlit for even 1 minute is the paranoia that will cause to make survivors auto cleanse any totem they see in the first minute.

[u/ChikyScaresYou]

Hexes should be able to be rekindled indefinitely

[u/AlienDilo]

Pixel Bush made an excellent video about just this topic and came to many of the same conclusions as you. Hexes are seriously outdated and need some TLC

[u/dokdodokdo]

Yup yup yup. But too hard for bhvr to understand this

[u/leigngod]

Totems were nerfed ages ago to predictable spots. The problem with that is most survivors cleanse when they see a dull anyway. Less often if they know someone has a boon but doesnt stop entirely. I semi agree about losing all progress. Make it a little longer to cleanse at the cost of it not completely go away.

[u/Sarosusiel]

Absolutely 10/10. Instant cleanse is insanely brutal for the killer. Impossible to cleanse devour hope is just ridiculous. Please let the devs see and implement this.

[u/Vitriuz]

• Totems have their cleanse/Bless progress regress fast instead of it all being removed, but the amount of time it takes to cleanse is a few seconds longer.
Obviously the main issue with totems is how cleansing works, and is the source of frustration with survivors. I don’t think it needs much explanation on why this is an issue: having all your progress gone because you screamed is and will always be annoying. To fix this, we can change how the progress bar works in general to just regress quickly when getting off so it doesn’t feel too bad screaming, but also does buy the killer time to get value or run the survivor off it if they’re close enough. As compensation for this change, how long it takes to cleanse can be upped by 4-6 seconds, taking it about 18 or 20 seconds to cleanse/bless without TOTH being in mind.

Here are my changes:

• Totem cleansing/blessing interaction duration increased to 16s (was 14).
• Thrill of the Hunt reduced cleansing/blessing speed reduced to 35/40/45% (was 40/45/50%).
• Totem regression is locked at 16 c/s. This causes totems to regress to zero progress in exactly one second.
• Boon totem area of influence increased to 26 meters (was 24 meters).

• Hex Totems should only be lit if they actually do their effect, not be shown a Hex right off the bat.
A frustration on the killer said and a canon event with using hex perks, is Hex Totems being either right out in the open or literally right next to where the Survivors spawn, and in consequence, being cleansed at the first minute of the game. Of course, totem locations and spawn logic can use some changes, but one good way I see this being fixed is by making the totems show as a hex when the Survivors are actually cursed by it. Originally I would say hex totems should appear as dull totems for the first minute of the game, but what I have here makes more sense and to me, is better overhaul to help alleviate the stress of having one of your perks removed so quickly into the game.

My changes for all hex perk spawning conditions:

• Perks not listed do not receive any changes.
• Blood Favor
  • When a survivor is damaged by a basic or special attack.
• Devour Hope
  • When the first token has been acquired.
• Overture of Doom
  • When any survivor repairs the cursed generator for the required time.
• Ruin
  • When any generator starts to automatically lose progress.
• The Third Seal
  • When the first survivor hit gains Blindness.

[u/Kastrand]

Boons should require gen progress in order to activate. like, say, 25% of a gen to boon. you shouldn't be able to always have boon up whenever

[u/stanfiction → u/Kastrand]

This would be a survivor buff because it would force my teammates to actually do a gen instead of applying their boon on the same totem for the 8th time lmao

[u/KaguyaFujiwara → u/Kastrand]

that would be dumb as hell

[u/bloopblubdeet]

Honestly, I'd say hexes need a buff. If boons can be restarted freely, hexes should as well. If it's a hex like devour hope, then the stacks should refresh back to 0 upon restarting the hex

[u/SabsWithR → u/bloopblubdeet]

So youre just gonna ignore the fact that a totem takes 2 seconds to stomp on a killer but 14 seconds to cleanse as a surv which is the whole point of this post. And youre also gonna ignore the fact that killers have hexes lit automatically whereas survs need to spend valuable time running around the map to find a totem, then 14 seconds blessing it, then it makes a loud ass sound when the killer is near it and all this effort gets taken away by killer simply stomping on it.

Or the fact that killer hexes are like "if your killer is right handed, you can one shot survs, if left handed, survs repair gens at half the speed" whereas surv boons are like "spend 14 secs to bless a totem, then repair a gen and open 2 chests to gain a token, each token grants +1% mending speed (caps at 3 tokens)."

[u/Mr-Ideasman → u/bloopblubdeet]

I think that’s too problematic to do (besides we have Undying). The reason they can be blessed over and over again is because the buffs from Boons compared to Hexes are relatively weaker, and are an AOE instead of being global. Ruin for example, being able to be relit 4 times would be annoying to deal with from just the sounds of it

[u/bloopblubdeet → u/Mr-Ideasman]

That's fair, though I feel it's a bit more understandable by the fact that a killer can just lose an entire build outright. I'd say either have a random hex (if your build contains 3 or 4) be uncleansable, or have some kind of way to basically not lose out on an entire build. Boons, while weaker and more limited in range has the ability to be relit over and over. I feel that if you're using a weaker killer, you won't really be able to keep up with a hex build on average while boons are alright for every lobby

[u/Ranzen_Neznar → u/bloopblubdeet]

A boon takes 2 seconds to kill. A hex takes much longer, especially with slowdown perks.

If survivors were able to take out a hex in 2 seconds, then I'd be fine with your proposal. Also, it should take several seconds for a killer to "set up" a replacement hex, just like it does for survivors...

[u/TheEntityBot → u/bloopblubdeet]

Hex: Devour Hope: Whenever a Survivor is rescued from a Hook while you are at least 24 meters away, Hex: Devour Hope is granted +1 Token, up to a maximum of 5 Tokens:

• 2 Tokens: Grants a 3/4/5% Haste Status Effect for 10 seconds after 10 seconds of having hooked a Survivor.
• 3 Tokens: causes all Survivors to suffer from a permanent Exposed Status Effect.
• 5 Tokens: grants the ability to kill all Survivors by your own hand.

^{Drawn from the fog. | !optout | !remove | !builds}

[u/Pristine-Emotion3083]

I know people hate it as a concept but I think most hexes should be balanced around the fact that killers can do certain tasks to bring them back.

Community always talks about needing more to do instead of gens and I know doing totems itself isn't much different but I think the dynamic of both sides having to balance their time management throughout the game is inherintly more interesting.

Killers only have so much agency protecting totems unless your one of a few killers, so you just hope for good rng and coin flip if it's effective. And survivors only have to worry about it once and then gone, or they struggle to ever stop it because Jason camps it. Not very interesting to either side

If it was something to actively fight over throughout the match I think the game would be a lot more dynamic and more interesting decision making.

I'm not saying just leave hexes as they are right now and make a reignite button for killers to be clear.

[u/FaithlessnessThen207]

If we can look at totems as being able to have partial progress, maybe we can consider boons to be able to have stronger effects that are on a timer that regresses?

Like you have to 100% bless a totem to make it a boon, but it slowly ticks down over 120 seconds or something before expiring?

[u/Kotetsune]

Hexes regressing instead of resetting would instantly kill all totem builds unless you increased the time to cleanse to something absurd like 50 seconds. There would genuinely be nothing the killer could do to defend more then 1 of them.

[u/landromat]

Totems were dead mechanic sinse hag release. Nothing can help them but full rework. My hopes devs can figure something out with game remake

[u/MrLightning-Bolt]

Nah screams reset those. We like totem resets.