Gearhead Nerf - What's the design philosophy?
I feel like this nerf (30 second duration down from 45, only good skill checks reveal gens instead of good or great) was pretty bizarre and unasked for.
But what irks me the most is the skill check change- there was a conscious effort by the devs to give a way for players to use their skill to overcome RNG, which is great! But it was ONLY given to survivors. If I triggered PTB Gearhead, two things could happen-
A) Skill checks occured during Gearhead's duration, and the killer benefited in part because of the random nature of skill checks.
B) No skillchecks occured during Gearhead's duration, and the Killer gets no benefit from their perk in part because of the random nature of skill checks.
(A) was seen as a problem that needed fixing, so they gave survivors an extra way to avoid the perk's tracking. (B) was not seen as an issue, apparently a killer's perk giving no value, even when the conditions are met, is fine.
Should survivors be able to avoid Discordance by hitting great skill checks? Should Infectious Fright trigger a skill check, and you only scream if you fail?
I'm just trying to wrap my head around the thought process that a survivor being affected by a Killer's perk needs counterplay that can completely invalidate a modest tracking ability, but that the Killer has no equivalent counterplay to ensure their perk has value. It already had a trigger condition and a limited duration that survivors could pay attention to and play around, why did someone on the Dev team look at this moderately-powered perk and say "no, this needs MORE counterplay. A killer possibly getting info from fulfilling a perk's conditions is too strong."
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Something I hate even more is that so many people called out about the saboteur change being bad, yet they keep that, yet no one claims about gearhead and yet it gets changed.
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There was also cries for Deathslinger being too weak. Ignored.
There were cries that the breakable wall at Shack was too strong. Now the breakable wall is opposite the pallet instead of next to it.
There were cries that new Sabo was too strong. Ignored.
There were cries that Hangman's Trick was too strong. It's been gutted, going from 16 meters to 6 meters.
🤔 There's a pattern here and I don't like it.
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There always has been.
Survivors not enjoying doc. Gets a rework.
Survivors against Ruin and it's high use rate as it was a necessity at high ranks. Gets nerfed.
Decisive strike appearing 47 out of 100 games against red ranks when I tested (which meant two on average per game) and many calling it to strong yet it's still the same.
The last nerf I can think of before the add on nerf was making balanced landing not an infinite perk.
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To be fair, doc's rework actually made him way stronger than before.
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Survivors not enjoying doc. Gets a rework.
'Ey. Killers were complaining that Doc was trash, and now Doc is now substantially better compared to before.
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That is in spite of the reason for it. They did not rework him because killers asked, they reworked him because survivors complained.
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May I suggest playing Rimworld instead? It's working for me at least in not being overly stressed in every game needing to play near 100% perfect or end up losing over the smallest of or just a single mistake as Killer, if you happen to be playing a viable Killer to start with that has such a chance.
DbD is a fun game. I enjoyed the majority of my hours in it and even now I find it somewhat fun. But my god has DbD turned into something I actively avoid. There is a want to play DbD but at the same time there is a want to avoid it as well. Maybe it is depression, maybe I lost interest in the game, maybe Im just getting old. Something though is making me want to NOT play DbD even though I clearly have time to do so and find it fun.
Think it is that playing Killer has became non rewarding and the effort put into playing Killer simply is not worth it anymore. Mostly from the need of near perfect gameplay or feeling my personal skill as Killer meaning little to nothing in how well I do as Killer.
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There's already an easy af counter: Let off the gen and start back after completing a skill check (if that actually doesn't work then the perk description is poorly worded/inaccurate). That's super easy, in fact way easier than hitting a great skill check, I have no idea why they nerfed it even more. The only difference being that the gen might be yellow for like a second before you let go of it, but even then the killer might think you aren't on it anymore or they might've been looking away or busy, and you might not even get another skill check until the perk's timer runs out.
Since it activates on 2 hits that means they either just downed someone and now have to take the time to hook them before they can act on the potential information, or they are still in a chase which means the timer is possibly going to be gone by the time they are able to do anything else. And now with the timer being reduced by 15 seconds you are going to get even less value out of it.
Oh and let's not forget the fact that if you take a little while to find someone at the start this perk isn't going to do anything for you at all unlike Discordance or Whispers. And the info isn't as reliable (or immediate when triggering) as Thrilling Tremors or BBQ since it's based on skill checks and doesn't help find anyone who's not on a gen. And it can't necessarily tell you if people aren't on any given gen because you don't know if they actually aren't on it or just aren't getting skill checks (and now they could just hit great skill checks). Although TT and BBQ aren't perfect and don't always give awesome info every time, they are much better options than Gearhead. Overall this perk needed buffs/changes, not nerfs.
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It has too many conditions. You have to hit two survivors. Then for thirty seconds a skill check has to hit for the survivors, and it has to be a good skill check. In that time, there's a decent chance no skill checks show up at all. No reason to pick this perk over say Surveillance or Discordance.
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the part i like most about the change is that they kept the saying below. It only works on good sckill checks now, so what does a 'mans best work' involve with just normal good checks?
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I'm just confused at that point They should either keep all their perks at the same power level and have the balls to nerf old perks or just release stronger perks.
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I'm just confused at that point They should either keep all their perks at the same power level and have the balls to nerf old perks or just release stronger perks.
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there is no pattern. deatslinger is FAR from weak. theres a reason why so many killer complaints are ignored. its because theyre all absurd and a solid case of git gud
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Imo the duration is not the problem, the 2 basic hits are a pain in the *** to active it. You need this perk pretty fast active but thats hard with to basic hits against decent survivors. I would preffer just using BBQ, Discordance or even Surveilance.
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I am aware that he did get stronger with his rework, but the motive behind it was that survivors weren't enjoying him.
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They did nerf sabo, it used to exhaust the perk after use (in ptb), now it exhausts just because you tap the hook, if a killer hits someone saboing, they can't sabo unless they have a good tool box
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You could just as easily argue that they were trying to make the Doc stronger for players who found him too weak.
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They most likely deemed it too powerful in the hands of high mobility killers.
- Billy could slug a survivor (hitting twice) and then go gen hopping for the next 45 seconds.
- Freddy can instantly teleport to the gens being worked on.
- Ect
But I do admit it's kind of funny how people were asking for deathslinger buffs and, ignoring that, they decided to nerf one of his perks. Stay classy devs.
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They mentioned in streams and patch notes that it was due to players finding him annoying to play against, but never mentioned it being due to his strength.
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Deathslinger is extremely map dependant, similar to Huntress. Any indoor map isn't great for him barring Hawkins because of the corridors, he gets destroyed on large maps, so a good 60% of them, and he's subject to looping as a 110% with no counter if a pallet does get dropped. Basically, as long as you drop the pallet you're safe from getting downed by his power unless he Bloodlusts or it's a loop on Autohaven he can shoot over. Deathslinger isn't F tier, but he's far from A tier, arguably B tier as well.
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If it were purely because of him being annoying to play against, though, there would have been no reason to remove his stances and shorten the overall time between using shock therapy and being able to M1. That change doesn't really make sense if you're not actively trying to make him stronger.
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The changes after PTB made him that much stronger. The only reference to killer experience they gave was "stance switching is annoying to killer". So they removed it and did what? Add a cooldown to all your actions for 3 seconds. So much better than stance switching. And especially regarding the fact that the cooldown lasts longer than the shock stun... They reduced the cooldown and that makes him strong on loops. On PTB he was super weak because of that.
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To the perk nerf: I can just agree. I already regarded this one as weak compared to other information perks. The trigger condition is during or after chases, so a moment where you don't really have that much time to look around for gens. As said above (needs to be tested) it is super easy to counter by tapping the gen once after a skillcheck. And now also reducing the time? Coming back on this after testing, but it should not be the repair action but the gen that gets the trigger. So it should become yellow even if some survivor hit a skillcheck, leaves, and another hops on it during the perk's activation time
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Yeah, and for live, they cut that cooldown in half, completely changing the equation. They changed it because it was at odds with changing the stance switching due to it being annoying for Killer.
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