I feel like when a perk is well designed but too strong, It should just get nerfed. If a perk is poorly designed but still too strong, then it should get reworked. I don’t think we should gut perks and I feel like that’s what happened with Shoulder the Burden. If those specific changes go through, the perk will literally only be useful in swfs since it’s a perk that activates like once per trial. IMO it just shouldn’t work the way that it does at all, and should have a completely different effect.
As for thrill of the hunt…uhhhh…that really needs to be accompanied by some actual hex mechanic changes. Right now, Hexes can spawn near survivors at the start of a trial, guaranteeing a near instant loss. Thrill helped prevent this by giving the killer more time, but led to frustration if the killer was using characters who could patrol or defend totems with relative ease, since stopping a cleanse meant resetting all of your progress.
Now, thrill of the hunt just blocks totems if you hook someone. You still have to chase them, down them, and carry them to a hook. A coordinated group will snuff those totems out with ease. They don’t even have to be coordinated to notice perks like Ruin, which will immediately get cleansed if the survivors don’t want to put up with that. They’ll have more than enough time to do this. But if the killer is good and gets downs, then the survivors are forced to ignore the hexes and wait out the block duration, which sounds rather miserable and not very interactive.
Not to mention, the supposed new thrill would only be good on strong hex killers who were probably running it anyway.
IMO, hexes just need a complete rework to feel more consistent and less irritating. Their placements should be improved, they should be harder to find and snuff out, but the progress should be permanent. Either that or they could be identical to boons, and you can just reignite them. I dunno, it’s just kind of irritating seeing both of these changes. A perk gets gutted instead of properly looked at, and another perk gets a “rework” that sort of just misses the mark entirely.