Gearhead is massively underated.
I've been running gearhead on a few killers recently and I've found it to be far far more useful than it's ever been made out to be. The information it gives you basically allows you to tell when and where survivors are working on generators much like thrilling but in some ways better. The fact that it procs after two hits means that you don't need to pick up or hook to activate it like bbq and thrilling but it also has the versatility to be used after downs to see which gens to go to after hooking a survivor, basically a thrilling which you can proc whenever you get hits rather than pick up people, allowing you to use it in far more situations. The gens also turn off yellow if the survivor/s get of the gen, giving you the ability to tell which gens more urgently need pressuring/popping and where the survivors are more likely to be at.
Don't get me wrong, the perk isn't top tier as it is limited by the basic attack condition (much like surge), but I feel it is incredibly underated for it's ability to act as a portable thrilling as such. Let me know if you think as such or if you still believe it is garbage.
Note: (I think someone else mighta done a post like this a while back but it's been a while and I thought I'd reiterate it incase not)
Comments
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It's not underrated, it's trash.
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Yeah but why justify any of that when you can just, you know, run Surveillance?
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Surveillance requires you to actually kick gens which can waste huge amounts of time in some situations. Gearhead just activates as your playing the game and hitting people.
Surveillance also doesn't tell you when they get off the gen.
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Its an Mindbogglingly strict conditional perk:
- It has a get 2 hits
- With a basic attack
- Then while within 20-30 seconds
- A SURVIVOR must get(Condition as it requires the enemy team to complete)
- A skill check which is random.
- The skill check must be a good skill check.(Great skill checks don't trigger it)
- On a generator.
- While that generator is still being actively repaired
This has 3 conditions to allow its other 5 conditions to even be considered and one of which IS RANDOM.
This is one of the single most restrictive perks in the game
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Gearhead doesn't last long at all, is reliant on Survivor luck, can be countered by Survivors who are good with skill checks, and is much less useful on Killers who are special attack-reliant in a chase.
Surveillance works when you want it, where you want it, and synergizes excellently with all gen regression Perks, especially Ruin, Surge, and Oppression.
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None of these conditions require you to go out of your way or play the game differently though unless your not playing an m1 killer, which same can be said for surge.
Even pop requires you to go out of ur way to kick gens.
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It is better then people think but the fact that you can trigger it and not get a single generator revealed cause the one skillcheck within the short time frame was a great really makes it inconsistant.
And with the basic attack requirement it really depends on killers too. Some killers just don't basic attack often enough for it to be worth it.
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I feel that's the tradeoff though for a perk which is far easier to activate and use consistently than others.
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That is true, I wish they got rid of the basic attack requirement along with surge, might be quite a popular perk then.
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Who's wasting a perk slot for gearhead?
Only the wannabe "educational" killers.
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Random perk for random scenarios for random plays
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Its... usable on killers who mostly use basic attacks. But compared to similar information perks its just not good or reliable enough.
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Underrated comment, unlike the perk.
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I don't understand those: "But it's not BBQ, Thrilling, Surveillance..." comments. Gearhead works in it's own way and is easier activated than other Perks. I like GH as well.
Gearhead activates on M1s.
BBQ requires hooking.
Thrilling requires picking up.
Surveillance in my opinion is the worst of those since you have go out of your way and give up a chase to kick a gen. I only use Surveillance combined with Surge or Ruin.
Discordance activates when at least 2 People work on 1 Gen. So it's onto the Survivors if they activate it or not.
The upper 3 Perks have simple requirements and are in my opinion the best Gen Info Perks.
The bottom 2 either sandbag you or are activated by Survivors playing wrong. The best way is to split up on Gens, which makes Discordance useless.
So in conclusion. In my opinion Gearhead is underrated while some other Gen Perks are overrated.
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Gearhead activating on M1s is a bad thing IMO. It means that Killers who rely on their M2 to do damage get even less mileage out of such an inconsistent perk. If it simply activated on any attacks, you would have a bit of a better point (and no, Gearhead absolutely is not one of those perks that somehow becomes OP if it triggers off, say, a hatchet).
Also, Gearhead is hard-countered by simply letting go of a generator for a split second after hitting a good skill check. It's like reverse gen-tapping.
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During a chase, or after a down, with the change of gen aura colour, Surveillance simply tells you that the gen has been touched.
It doesn’t tell you definitively that survivors are still actively on any of those gens. It could simply be that gen was tapped at some point after it was kicked.
That’s the other thing. Surveillance only works on gens that are kicked, something many killers on these forums complain about as being pointless due to base regression. I personally don’t feel this way. Just echoing what’s regularly posted on these forums and other social media.
To be absolutely crystal clear, I am not implying that Surveillance is a bad perk. It’s a great perk.
Gearhead however provides dramatically distinct advantages over other gen info perks. It’s clearly implied to be a slugging perk with its 2 basic hits requirement. Also when Gearhead procs, there’s absolutely no ambiguity. There are survivors on that gen, and the aura stays yellow for the entirety a survivor is touching a gen (or the timer expires). Also the very nature of the perk requires very little extra effort on the killers part in order to frequently gain so much gen info: Hunt, chase, and hit survivors, something they’re doing anyway. Ok, survivors can avoid giving away their location by hitting greats. Let’s not delude ourselves though that a majority of survivors, even those in red ranks, can consistently hit greats 100% of the time.
I’m not saying Gearhead is better. I’m not saying it’s worse either. It’s just that it’s utility is as different and distinct from Surveillance and Discordance just as Surveillance and Discordance are distinct from each other.
Gearhead just offers a dramatically different utility in providing info, and it’s equally as useful as those other perks.
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I'd say something like Coup De Grace is underrated (it's not good due to the absurd requirement, but the effect is good enough for it to be atleast a C tier perk), but Gearhead is just trash.
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It was probably me praising it. 🤣
I did a pretty massive write up on it once.
It’s been given an unfairly bad rap. It behaves so differently than Surveillance and Discordance that it’s foolish to actually compare Gearhead to those other 2 perks.
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Are you implying that there’s a reliable way for survivors to tell if a killer is running Gearhead in order to put into practice such a strategy?
That’s a pretty big call to make, because of all the info perks that a killer can equip, Gearhead is probably the most “invisible” (for lack of a better word).
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It does its work fine from what i've experienced, i just have no need for it.
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M1 killers don't need gearhead c mon.
M1 killers against looping simulator genrush survivors does ABSOLUTELY nothing.
Just you get rekt while you have equipped......GEARHEAD. RIP.
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I will always run Surveillance over it.
Skill checks are RNG based, and we all know that RNG based perks are the worst, since it's like flipping a coin, sometimes will be head, sometimes it will be tails. Don't missunderstand me, if it works for you, then good for you. As I said, surveillance is underrated as well and personally I find it to be one of the best gen tracking perks, since it doesn't only tell you that a gen have been or is being worked on but also it makes the generators noisier. Also if you have a low mobility killer and you see the farest gen being white that means it's being regressed so you don't need to go out there and waste time.
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I'm implying that the trade-off for counterplaying Gearehead is so negligible that the only reason people don't do it is that Gearhead isn't run in the first place on account of being crap.
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The problem with a perk like Gearhead is that it's conditional on a very crappy bit of RNG. While I was doing those "great skill checks" challenges, I noticed that a lot of times I'd repair an entire generator, get one or two skill checks, and then for the rest of the generator... nothing. The skill checks just stopped coming. Two skill checks for repairing an entire generator.
Have I mentioned lately how much the RNG in this game can freaking suck sometimes?
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The thing is, Gearhead is not only conditional as all hell, but also RNG based, because it relies on skillchecks. Not JUST skillchecks, but also hitting specifically good skill checks. Furthermore, it's hard know what exactly it's telling you, which makes the info itself very inconsistent.
It's not underrated. Just really, really, bad
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I agree the rng part about it is a but frustrating. Although more often than not you will get a few skill checks in the span of 30 seconds and chances are you aren't going to hit all of them as greats. It would be nice if the perk included great skillchecks though, I don't see why it doesn't.
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Who's getting "rekt" everygame playing m1 killers? I'm certainly not.
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Actually now that i think about it I think it was you yea LOL.
Agree, it does it's job far differently to that of other gen info perks and it seems alot of ppl go: is this better than thrilling or bbq? If not it's garbage.
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Agreed, if you look at tournament level of gameplay you will notice that discordance is one of the worst gen perks you can run, because survivors just won't stack on gens.
Surveillance also just isn't worth it unless ur willing to go out of ur way to activate it or you've stacked it with other perks like surge.
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Gearhead suffers from the Behavior's great fear of power creep.
If we ignore the actual mechanics of Gearhead, and focus on concept, this perk makes sense.
But the restrictions combined with how the perk is reliant on rng makes the perk low tier. I won't call it bad, just not as good as the other options.
You could make a good build with this perk and make good use out of it, but when compared to its peer's it will always come up lacking.
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It might've been an okay perk if it was kept at it's original time of 45 seconds but it only lasts for 30 seconds which is really nothing. You can smack someone down twice and it'll take you half that time to bring them to a hook. Gearhead is not at all worth the perk slot when stuff like Tinkerer exists since it gives you far better value and information on which generators to prioritize and doesn't have stupid conditions for it to activate meaning you can run it on just about anyone.
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Exactly. It’s like directly comparing TT or BBQ. They both provide different outcomes, and a killer is just limiting themselves by comparing them. Neither is better than the other, and both have their shortcomings. There’s also nothing entirely wrong with running both BBQ and TT, just as it’s perfectly fine/viable to run both Surveillance & Gearhead If a killer chooses to.
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It's not garbage because it's not better than BBQ or TT. It's garbage because it is too easy to play around. Again, the only reason no one does it is because Gearhead isn't meaningfully played in the first place.
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If gearhead didn't have so many requirements to use it it would still be decent at best. Theres a reason why so many killers and myself use ruin/undying and depending on some killers tinkerer. It just does the job better.
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If like you said no-one does it, doesn't that negate the fact that it's easy to play around? At the end of the day, you'll actualyl never know if the killer has gearhead or not until you reach endgame chat, and if the killer comes over to ur gen you're not going to instantly assume they have gearhead are you?
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Ruin undying is just, idk i find it incredibly boring to use. Sure it does it's job well but it does it too well that games are just stompfests. Perks like gearhead and that are far more interesting and exciting to use than perks which tell me when gens are going to be completed and perks that do all gen regression and pressure for me.
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The conditions aren't hard to meet though, they are just things you should be doing in every game.
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No because the moment Gearhead starts to see even the slightest bit of meaningful play is the moment people will start playing around it, which will be the moment Gearhead stops seeing play once again. If I started playing around it starting tomorrow for the rest of my time playing Dead By Daylight, exactly how badly am I hurting myself?
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How do you play around it? Try and hit great skillchecks? That's what most people do regardless of gearhead or not. Count everytime the killer gets two hits and then time 30 seconds after the second hit to determine when to count hits again, whilst not touchign gens during that 30 second period? Sounds pretty realistic.
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I've been enjoying the combination of Opression, Dragons Grip and Pop lately. Especially when Survivor's 3-gen themselves...really potent and almost always turns into a hatch game in my experience. Gearhead has always just seemed kinda 'meh' to me and haven't really used it to fairly evaluate is usefulness or lack thereof.
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It's a very mediocre outcome for what you get though, tinkerer is just superior because you aren't restricted by the basic attack requirement all the while it gives you undetectable letting you sneak up on the people repairing generators or getting around elsewhere without being known. Like I said, you can smack somebody twice and down them but by the time you get them to a hook gearhead is already half over and because of how popular bbq is lots of survivors will take their hands off a generator and hide in a closet completely negating any value out of the perk anyway. Gearhead is probably one of the most inconsistent perks in the game, there's no sleeper or underrated status to it. It's just not good, especially compared to it's far superior counterparts.
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That’s why Gearhead is a slugging perk. I.e. don’t waste time carrying to the hook all the time. Go pressure any revealed gens immediately.
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I've been doing this with doc with overcharge
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The problem however is that that even if you do the required 2 hits to activate the Perk there are still multiple factors that are just not in your control.
Also you have a time limit for these conditions to be met.
Survivor must be working on a gen
Survivor must get a skill check
The survivor must hit a good skill check not a great or a failed ( a failed skillcheck would have notified you anyway meaning the park didn't do anything)
Now let's look at Pop Goes the Weasel surveillance and surge
Pop Goes the Weasel requires you to Hook somebody this means it could be useful for Killers who down with their abilities or Killers who down with basic attacks. Once you got that hook within that time limit you are free to kick and regress whatever gen you choose to.
The only thing I survive a good do to stop you from doing this is used repressed Alliance or stay on the gen which is is feeding you another down.
Surge like with gearhead it requires basics however this is only 2 down meaning you could very easily get the initial hit with your ability and then finish off of a basic down later. Unlike gearhead however the only thing you have to worry about is being close enough to generators with progression when getting the down without having to worry about multiple different factors outside of your control.
Surveillance does not just require you to kick the gen anything that will cause that gen to regress will also trigger it this means surge, ruin or oppression can all work in synergy.
Also the effect or remain until the Jen is touched which gives you information or it has stopped regressing which will also give you information.
Gearhead is just a bad perk does it have a used sure but the same could be said for monstrous shrine it can work it has a use does not mean it's good or underrated
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Every two hits, count 30 seconds. and during that time period, if you hit a good skill check, simply let go of the gen and immediately start repairing it again. Gearhead only reveals the gen for as long as you are working on it, and if you immediately let go and immediately get back on it, it counts as you having stopped working on it and stops revealing it.
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