What Tier is Pinhead?

Hes pretty medicore. But hes very fun to play, i think with some decent buffs he'll be one of the more beloved killers. Thats assuming BHVR actually pulls through and properly buffs him, which we all know won't happen for a while.

It might be too early to say. However, I believe he has potential. I'm sure they can buff him to make him more viable, he's a 1v4 killer which is awesome.

I personally don't feel like I've been playing enough of the ptb this time to give a fair assessment, but I think he's low B high C tier from what I played

I'm with Scott Jund when he says that Pinhead is very much not in a good place right now- but the good thing is that he can very easily be improved to quickly be a skillful and solid B tier killer with a few good changes. Mostly to deal with the chains and making them the central focus of his kit but even the Puzzle Box I can see some clear ways with which to make that mechanic better.

1. First off it's either one or the other: The chains need to either slow the survivors more significantly, or the chains themselves need to be more difficult to break. But either way there needs to be a greater reward for using his power and landing a chain because it actually isn't as easy to hit as you would think and missing the chain itself puts you so far behind in a chase as Pinhead. Because the survivor gains running distance during the time that you're throwing out the little portal, the time it takes for you to orient your own camera once you're "inside of it" and then the time it takes for the chain to reach out to it's maximum distance and be a confirmed miss.
   1. Without this greater reward Pinhead is really only subjecting himself to these great delays in mid chase, and you're really putting your own neck on the line for very little incentive. Too often is the slow not enough to stop a survivor from making another revolution around a loop and making it to a window or pallet, literally any environmental interaction breaks any and all chains completely and immediately (as in if you walk around a tree, rock, wall, anything- including if pinhead himself walks through the chain for some reason??) and survivors aren't punished at all after for this unless you're running add-ons that injure healthy survivors or deep wound injured survivors. EDIT: this is actually an extremely important change that should definitely be higher on the list of priorities, Pinhead chains should not immediately break on environmental contact or with Pinhead himself it's part of making the chains more difficult to break but this I believe is just a change that should be made either way. Without this it can be incredibly easy to break the chains immediately just around the corner of a loop or something- and especially when you're on maps that are cluttered with objects all over.
   2. The devs could also opt to create some kind of cancel mechanic mid chain attack, where if you've clearly missed you don't have to suffer the extra 10 or whatever meters the chain has left in it's trajectory, which only serves as precious extra seconds for a survivor to put distance between themselves and pinhead.
   3. To compromise for this, and to make survivor players more happy about the state of pinhead as a more balanced killer, I would be entirely willing to tone down the strength or annoyance level of chain hunt itself if his base power is made more powerful. This is just a standard balancing act, chain hunt shouldn't be what you're relying on for your downs but it is just a nice added effect if you can get it to happen during a trial. I don't think this is necessarily a necessary change, I think survivors have a pretty decent counterplay to his base summons of pain power and have ample opportunity to juke out the chains or hide behind some object to avoid them. I am simply including this in as a clause on the off-chance people are less willing to buff his base summons of pain power if Chain Hunt is kept in it's current state which seems to be the more powerful threatening part of his power since it operates as a passive hindrance in his chases that survivors are forced to be mindful of on top of normal chase strategies. Maybe the chains of chain hunt can be more easily broken than the Summons of Pain chains or something, or they don't slow you down as much who knows. Again I don't think it's necessary but I would put it there on the table just in case so Pinhead's power is at the very least allocated in the right areas. in the fun and interesting areas, and not in a dumb passive ultimate ability.
2. As for the Puzzle Box though it shouldn't be the main reason people want to play Pinhead, I don't believe this part of his power should be neglected either and effort should be put in to make sure it can at least still carry it's own weight. As of right now I think it's far too easy for survivors to find the puzzle box and far too difficult for Pinhead to come across it. All survivors share the same progress bar to the chain hunt and very frequently I've seen matches where survivors will just constantly as soon as they get the opportunity to safely do the puzzle box without much threat of Pinhead teleporting to them they do it, and the progress bar never makes it even to like halfway.
   1. Instead the Puzzle Box should spawn as per normal but the aura of the Puzzle box is not highlighted to survivors until they've reached maybe 50% progress so the threat and likelihood of Chain Hunt happening might be slightly more present in your average match. Of course the survivors can equally come across the box by luck as well like Pinhead currently can- but this way it's not so easy for them to run across half the map, pick it up, and do it immediately.
   2. At the same time there should be a greater punishment for holding on to the Box for longer periods of time- literally draw pieces of paper out of the hat of status effects and anything would do. Whether you become exhausted, or incapacitated or something else doesn't matter, but as it stands the Oblivious thing and your average chain doesn't seem to be doing much. Perhaps a survivor physically cannot hold on to the Puzzle box for longer time periods. The Box itself could teleport out of the hands of the survivor after a certain time has elapsed, or Pinhead gets the prompt to teleport to said survivor holding the Box anyway regardless of the fact of whether they opened it or not- just because they held on to it. (Of course I guess they'd have to change the voice line for this interaction "You Opened the Box... I came" since a survivor wouldn't have opened the box).
   3. A very solid example of counterplay to Pinhead's Puzzle Box teleport (which I assume everyone will catch on sooner or later which is why I have no qualms about revealing this "secret" here on the forums) is to simply wait until he is occupied with another interaction, the most obvious: wait until he picks someone up and then solve it while he is carrying them to a hook. This I think is a debilitating counter as far as his Lament Configuration goes and is an overlooked aspect of Pinhead's power on the part of the developers- sort of like how they completely missed Lockers countered the twins during their PTB. With 12 hooks total the survivors can very easily never give pinhead the opportunity to teleport to any of them if they are patient enough to wait until someone is being carried to the hook. If all four survivors are knowledgeable enough, Pinhead will never be able to take advantage of the Puzzle Box teleport which makes this part of his power effectively useless seeing as he would never really have a solid opportunity to use it- it's as if it was never in his kit in the first place. The solution to this is quite simple however: increase the time window for Pinhead's teleport. In doing so you would give Pinhead the time to carry a survivor to a hook and still teleport to whoever opened the Puzzle Box immediately after. Don't increase the time to ridiculous lengths and give Pinhead enough time to make it all the way to the basement kind of time- but enough that he can still on average make it to the closest hook and still use the teleport in time immediately after the hook.
   4. Make the Puzzle box more difficult. This is both a balance thing, and a fun factor thing, it's no secret that the community (especially the long lasting community) are not impressed by interactions that are easily wrapped up by simple skillchecks. At this point in Dead By Daylight's history we're all looking for something of more weight and significance to sink our teeth into. Tru3ta1ent had a pretty decent suggestion and said to make the puzzle box skillchecks identical to the new yellow glyph skillchecks that appeared in the most recent tome. I would say make them a little easier than those skillchecks (you have to hit like 5 for the yellow glyph to be completed and I would reduce it for the puzzle box to maybe 3 instead) for the purposes of the puzzle box but either way it's a solid example of a fresh "challenge" without having to render something absolutely completely new like an actual legitimate puzzle. But this all falls under the same umbrella of just generally the puzzle box currently being too quick, simple, and easy for survivors to solve and finding different ways to make this mechanic have more depth and complexity to it would be welcome changes to this part of the power.

I'm not saying all of these changes should go through but these are some suggestions I've thought about or have heard from other people to make him a much better killer.

He has a very cool concept and foundation to his power and something everybody can appreciate- I think that's something that's actually more important than having a powerful ability straight out of the gate in fact: is to have a solid power with a good foundation. the only thing left is to match the strength to the uniqueness of the concept itself which combines a little bit of Nurse and Deathslinger, and a dash of Clown.

But as it stands without any proper significant changes he's going to be at or worse than the Clown, because the Clown has the same chase tool shtick- to slow down survivors, the only difference it's much more difficult to miss and he isn't penalized as harshly in his chases if he does miss compared to how Pinhead currently appears in the PTB. And being comparable to Clown whether that's just above, just below, or exactly where clown himself is in terms of strength, is just not a good place for any killer to be as far as the roster goes.