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So… New Gearhead

Phasmamain
Phasmamain Member Posts: 11,534
edited January 2022 in Feedback and Suggestions

So I was probably one of the 2 people who used Gearhead in my builds. It was fun albeit very weak. So I was excited when I heard they were “ buffing” it. Unfortunately they decided to Rework it and make it arguably worse than before.

So old Gearhead worked after 2 basic hits and lasted 30 seconds. So already killers like Huntress or Bubba are off the table. The effect was that any survivor hitting a good skill check would cause the gen to turn yellow within that 30 second timer. This was a decent effect but I could be kinda hard to activate due to the random nature of skill checks.

New Gearhead on the other hand actives after 1 health state. This is better and leaves it more open to special attack killers and even killers like trapper. It now only activates on great skill checks and shows the aura of that survivor for 10 seconds after they hit one. There are many issues with this change imo

  1. This is hard countered by boon: Shadow step. Not a very common perk but common enough to be worth mentioning.
  2. They have to hit a great skill check. Not uncommon but rarer than hitting a Good one
  3. Gens already block auras to a certain degree so if the survivor is at the right angle the perk will activate but you won’t even know what gen is being worked on.
  4. It can only activate on 1 person. Old Gearhead had potential for 2 or even 3 gens to light up giving amazing info on where all the survivors were.

It almost feels like the perk is having an identity crisis between being and aura or a gen tracking perk. Due to how gen aura’s work you can’t be both. Even if you get a good aura read on someone on a gen how is this any better than getting the yellow gen. 90% of the time you’ll be too far away to even make use of the aura itself.

So what would I do to fix it? I would Revert it back to old Gearhead while changing the activation to 2 damaging hits as well as making it activate on any skill check (oppression/ Overcharge included). These simple changes would make it a decent gen tracking option while not relying on the survivor being in the right spot for it to even work.

Post edited by Rizzo on

Comments

  • RaSavage42
    RaSavage42 Member Posts: 5,566

    It would've been nice to see the Good Skillcheck added to Gearhead

  • Labrac
    Labrac Applicant Posts: 1,285

    Everything they needed to do was revert it to how it was on Slinger's PTB and just remove the basic attack restriction.

  • Sonzaishinai
    Sonzaishinai Member Posts: 7,976

    One small nice thing this version has vs the old one is that the aura is still revealed when a survivor lets go off the gen. I had a couple of times where i saw where the survivor was running to and was able to cut them off.

    pretty situational and probably not worth the other downsides new vs old has but i do think it's worth mentioning

  • Lat0
    Lat0 Member Posts: 92

    They destroyed that perk for no reason

  • Mister_xD
    Mister_xD Member Posts: 7,669

    and per usual i am sitting here, bewildered and confused on BHVRs inability to just revert past changes.

    PTB Gearhead was an okayish Perk. It wasn't amazing or even good, but it could have found its nieche on some Perk builds.

    but when the Perk released to live servers, they completely gutted it. they reduced its run time from 45 seconds to 30 seconds and made it only affect good skillchecks, rather than all skillchecks. the result was the Perk being quite terrible, entirely outclassed by other gen tracking Perks such as Discordance or Tinkerer.

    all they really had to do here was to revert that change. Make it last 45 seconds and trigger on any skillcheck again and it'd have been good enough to find its way to some builds here and there - and if they wanted to make it a bit better than that, remove the normal attack requirement.

    the new change just... doesnt help the Perk in the slightest. like you said, its potentially even worse than it was before.


    i feel like BHVR needs to learn to sometimes acknowledge an mistake for what it was (a mistake) and then revert it instead of continuously doubling down on it and somehow trying to make it work.

    there is nothing wrong with making mistakes, but there is something wrong with ignoring them away.

  • Chilli_man2400
    Chilli_man2400 Member Posts: 2,928

    I think it’s a good buff. It just needs to activate on goodskill checks. I would make it so when a good skillcheck is hit the gen turns yellow. If you hit a great skillcheck the gen turns yellow and your aura is revealed. If someone else hits a skillcheck during the 10 seconds then there revealed

  • Marcavecunc
    Marcavecunc Member Posts: 2,057

    Wait, they changed it from showing the generator's aura to showing the survivors' aura? I thought they had left it to the generator's aura.. Yeah I agree with you, it's a garbage change, for all the reasons you mentionned (honestly, the fact they changed it from generator to survivor aura is the cause of all the reasons)

  • Prex91
    Prex91 Member Posts: 764

    Nice joke change by devs. Really understanding their game. Maybe thay will really buff it next year, or simply it will Be forgetted with other garbage perks they think killers are so insane to play...