After Undying change, just run Ruin & Devour instead of 1 + Undying
Many have commented on how the change to Undying to allow retention of tokens after the first cleanse means that token-based hex such as Devour Hope are more appealing.
I'm here to tell you that after the change you should just run Ruin + DH.
Assume someone cleansed DH first. Your Ruin remains and it is obvious to survivors that Ruin is still up. This means DH functioned no differently than Undying except you traded dull token aura reading with the chance to expose survivors or even kill them. That is, if you run Ruin + Undying I argue you're better off running Ruin + DH, as the upside to occasionally exposing survivors beats the dull totem aura reading.
Assume someone cleansed Ruin first. With Ruin down, there is no indication to survivors another hex is active and there is less motivation to totem hunt and you are more likely to collect your tokens with DH. Here you have effectively used Ruin as your Undying totem to save the DH. If you had intended on running DH then clearly Ruin is better than Undying, as Ruin provided much stronger passive benefits while it was up.
So, no matter which hex goes down first, I argue you're better off just running Ruin + Devour Hope, instead of one of them + Undying
Comments
Actually running Ruin and DH isn't a good idea. Before Undying came out you never ran these 2 perks together. The reason being once they touch a gen they know Ruin is on the map. They go looking for it and they often found DH instead. Once they know a Hex is on the field it's going to get cleansed eventually.
Devour Hopes strength is if you have good placement they won't know it's there until it's too late. If you run Undying and DH they won't get a notification until 3 stacks. It's surprising the amount of survivors who ignore totems because they don't think there's a hex in play. By then you can one shot survivors and you can protect it. The only way for them to discover DH early is they have to stumble upon a lit totem. With Undying they have to cleanse it twice. It doubles the chances of the perk lasting. Chances are still pretty slim though.
If a killer values Ruin and DH roughly equally, it works out this way:
1) If they stumble upon the Ruin and cleanse it, the Ruin was basically Undying with gen regression
2) If they stumble upon the DH and cleanse it first, the DH is basically Undying with the upside to expose survivors
If survivors scramble looking for Ruin and find my DH first Instead, this is scenario 2
or just run Pop and Corrupt and open the forums to see all the whining about how oppressive it is
anything that slows gens is oppressive and must be immediately nerfed
you are not listening to @EvilBarney666 argument.. Devour power is being hidden until it's too late. With Ruin, there's a (much) higher chance for it to be cleansed.
Running DH with Undying doesn't take away the "hidden" mechanic, but also adds the benefit of having a second chance of DH doing its job.
Killers after the undying nerf. Back to 2018. Camping the ruin and devour.
My preeeetty...
The counterargument is that DH + Ruin is bad because Ruin will make survivors go totem searching. While true, you are also getting the benefits of Ruin during this time. Nevertheless, if you don't like Ruin +DH because it increases the chances of all your hexes being cleaned, then replace Ruin with any other hex that isn't so immediately apparent it is in play. I still feel 2 strong hex beats 1 strong hex + new Undying because for all of these you can run through the what-if analysis of which one gets cleansed first and it always comes down to the fact that until your first hex goes down, you have two hexes with offensive capabilities vs. just one. Obviously I'm severely discounting the dull totem aura reading's benefit.
If you camp your totems while running Devour, doesn't that increase your chances of hooking someone near the hex, eliminating the ability to camp hear it?