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If you know how to find the box as pinhead, he's busted
I recently started to play pinhead, I learned how his box spawn works through multiple dbd youtubers about a year or whatever ago. My first game as pinhead I found the box 10+ times, (this includes finding a survivor that picked it up, however that was a large minority of the amount of times I found it).
This made it impossible for survivors to ever do gens because I would consistently be injuring/downing survivors (splitting my pressure) while hunting down the box having a slight idea as to where it is, also since the chain hunt is active the survivors are consistently harassed off gens (paired with DMS it just makes it worse).
Honestly I cannot see a counter to when the pinhead knows how to find the box with ease other than a SWF sweat match, only on one match out of I believe 6 pinhead matches one survivor escaped through the exit gate. Few matches I was paired with people that had over 2000 hours, which is under my total time but still is impressive
Comments
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The biggest Pinhead's strength is solo Q survivors with mentality "someone else will do it". Mostly you don't even have to find more than 1 cube to shatter their hopes.
And that's really it sadly. I've been a pinhead enjoyer for ages, but once i started getting mostly coordinated swfs, it's not as easy as it used to be. I wish they made games a bit easier for solo Q players, because they suffer on another lvl only from the lack of info
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Yeah, if you can consistently force a Chain Hunt, Pinhead is one of the most oppressive Killers in the game.
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shush....the dev tend to not like when killer gets a lot use out of their ability.
the counter is not picking up the box right away as survivor because if you pick up box as pinhead without a survivor carrying it. it respawns in 10 seconds and survivor can see aura for where box is. when you do pick up the box as survivor, you need to 1vs1 pinhead because pinhead does not want you solving the box and resetting the chain hunt. it defeats his slowdown ability.
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Pinhead is sneaky good. If you can find the box consistently, you can 12 hook at 4 or 5 gens because survivors straight up can't do anything. It's actually crazy. Especially on a map like Lerys where the box has 2 spawn points. You can find it at the start, interrupt the next box taker, rinse repeat.
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The box will ALWAYS spawn closer to the survivors than to Pinhead. All it takes is one single survivor to do it.
"We can't expect survivors to do anything other than gens" does not make a killer strong. It means the game caters to very lazy players.
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The player benefits from having a deep knowledge of the game and of how their killer works. I see that as a positive. A newbie pinhead likely won't be able to figure this out first match. I see this as a reward for getting good and actually understanding the game on a deeper level. You're rewarded for understanding things like spawn logic. I don't see a problem with knowledge being rewarded. Otherwise, why learn any deeper aspect of the game?
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Thats a big IF
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Technically it spawns equal distance from both survivors and killer...that's whyany run Leathal Pursuer and the addon to start all survivors together to pinpoint the location easier
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if your 12 hooking with 4 or 5 gens, your facing trash-tier level survivor teams as killer.
Catering to lazy players... oh man. The reason to play pinhead is that I like getting rewarded for downing the survivor and do not like outplaying the survivor at every loop only to get minimal 1k or 2k rewards. Its also not fun for killer to always need to play defensive, campy and need to tunnel every game. I like actually going for multiple chases, injuring survivors left and right and pressuring the entire team. I like playing him because he gives you opportunity to 12 hook without always needing to remove survivors out of the game asap.
Pinhead chain hunt rewards the killer for downing survivors with the box with 4vs1 gen-defense and understanding 4vs1 map pressure. only problem with pinhead is his 1vs1. His chains break too often on objects and too quickly that you can hit like 75% of your shots with his power but like 40% of them do not reward you with anything. that power design has to be most legendary rage inducing power design ever. Imagine requiring a power that needs complete precision and half of your precision does nothing.
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That's basically equivalent of "if you can consistently and quickly find, chase and down survivor, that killer will be oppressive".
But agreed, with DMS+chain hunt doing gen is literally impossible, at least DMS is now 30 seconds so required consistency is lot higher.
Well without DMS they can still do gens just fine, chain hunt mostly only helps for information and chase in that case.
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how is it unstoppable? Just get good at the chase vs pinhead. you need a lot of game sense to predict the area for where the box spawns as killer so that you can capitalize on it with hoarder. DMS did get nerfed, not as oppressive as before.
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Knowing Box spawns and Franklin's Demise do wonders for Pinhead.
Also, Impaling Wire.
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i think franklin demise is overrated because when pinhead pick up box. the box respawns in 10 seconds. so you activate chain hunt and then 10 second later, someone has the box which cancels chain hunt for 3 other survivors. the chain hunt just doesn't last very long for pinhead if he manually pick up the box via franklin demise/finding the box. you really want survivor to pick up box, attempt solve it and interrupt them from solving it because when you do down survivor with the box, pinhead automatically solves the box and chain hunt lasts for a minimum duration of 30 seconds since respawn time is 30 seconds when he automatically solves it from downing a survivor.
Impaling wire is also add-on that i think is overrated. What it does is make chains respawn when a survivor clips the chain on an object. Clipping chain on an object instantly breaks the chain. The issue is that chain that respawn is really slow. Its like circle that spawns and fires out a random direction. The chain is slow-moving. as result, you can easily side-step it even when chained defeating entire purpose of the add-on. I really do not understand the logic behind a killer hitting a survivor with their ability and getting no reward from excessive counter-play. The counter-play is suppose to be dodging initial chain, not tanking chain then breaking out due to terrible designed mechanics.
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Or, even easier and taking practically no effort, run Hoarder and Franklins on Pinhead. For some god awful reason this makes the survivors drop the box, leading to a chain hunt!
It's literally easy mode. Pair it with Engineers fang and count the DC's. Nobody wants to face it because its awful lmao.
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Hoarder+the green add on that increases chain distance. Even if I don't make it to the box in time, I can interrupt the solver with a snipe most of the time. Plus, some maps have super limited box spawn locations. Lerys has 2 (I think). Azarovs has 4, one at each end of the dogbone
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Wait... actually? Only 2 spawn points? That's hilarious, lol, what garbage mechanic is that
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The exit gate area on either end on Lerys. It ping pongs back and forth. People have a great time against my Pinhead
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Wow...not even random places either, that is really sad, lol
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The issue is that Pinhead's also really good at interrupting the box solver. The box likes to interrupt its holder 3 times and waiting for those to be over with often gives Pinhead enough time to show up and chain you. And if you start the box and get chained, RIP, he's on his way to your location before you've even started.
Luckily it's not a very common strat, because he's not a common killer, but versing a box control Pinhead using solve time addons and Hoarder is downright miserable gameplay. It's pretty Legion-tier. I don't really see a fix to this, though - it'd require redesigning Pinhead and BHVR doesn't have a great track record when it comes to making positive changes when they rework killers.
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The box only interrupts survivors if they wait the full 90 seconds for the chain hunt to start on the bearer. If you go get it at 80 seconds, you can solve freely.
And yes, he's not a common killer. His controlled power is AWFUL. It's as hard to hit as Deathslinger, as long to charge up as Huntress, as hard to control Pyramid Head, as easy to juke as Trickster, and as unrewarding to hit with as a long-distance clown. He's the culmination of every bad part of every other range-type killer. The box is the ONLY thing that makes him playable, and they nerfed all the box-type addons that actually made that part of his kit hard for the sake of the lowest possible skill level of survivor.
It's a shame, because his animations and voice lines are great. But the balance team, as always, decided "a bad killer you have to just fight your way through" is far preferable to "a good killer who is a delight to play but might be at all challenging to play against"
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I... don't think that's true? Getting poked with the chains as the box holder seems random. Happens to me all the time when the chain hunt hasn't started yet and the box HUD is only halfway or at 75%. And sometimes it doesn't happen at all.
I do agree about his design being pretty messy, because using the chains in chase is awful. It's pretty much the epitome of high risk and low reward; it's super precise and fiddly with a massive time cost if you miss/cancel, and the reward is frequently negligible even when it lands. The chains breaking on the environment and Pinhead himself is such a mess, especially when the chains spawn from completely randomized angles. It feels like you can only reliably get value if the survivor is stranded far from any structures, but out in the open is one of the least helpful times to chain someone anyway. I pretty much exclusively use his chains at pallets and whenever I have his daily, which is sad.
The box is all he has, but like Legion, that doesn't make it good design. But it's what we're stuck with, so I'll just count my lucky stars I don't have to verse it that often.
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The box holder only gets attacked with chains when the chain hunt is active. And those chains always attack in a group of 3 before going on a brief cooldown. During the cooldown between the chain attacks is when you need to solve the box during the chain hunt.
It's not intuitive at all, but that is how it works.
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Weird. I could swear that I've been attacked with chains when the chain hunt isn't active. Whether that's a bug that's now fixed, or still present, or I'm delusional and desperately attempting to recontextualize history, I've got no idea.
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Yup, as the guy above mentioned: the chain hunt timer stops for everybody except the person with the box. You still have to solve it in that 90 second window. So, if you grab it and go running off somewhere, time is ticking down and by the time you decide to start, you may have taken too long.
As you say: the active part of his kit is a complete mess. And the fact that they decided to nerf his box without fixing his controlled chains tells you all you need to know about the Balance Team priorities. He could be so much fun to play, if only "fun to play" was an actual concern when it comes to balancing killers in this game.
Instead, they'd rather rake in the money from the release and let the killer die off post-nerf, relying on the NEXT killer to bring more money in. It's a terrible system and it's why you never see more than a handful of the cast actually being played. The game needs a health balance to make ALL killers viable, but it just ain't in the cards.
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Speaking as the guy who is responsible for the information becoming Public Knowledge, I can safely say: No, he's not.
Especially if you have lethal, you can form accurate guesses about where the box is at the start and get a good early game. This is true and is a definite asset.
However, for the rest of the match? No. Nowhere near busted. You need constant map awareness, knowing the locations of every survivor and spawn point on a map, while getting ridiculously hard on larger maps such as Dwelling. If it's a smaller map such as Coal Tower, then the survivors don't have far to go to solve it.
But what if Ceno has perks to give info? Well, the best ones would probably be Lethal and BBQ. Lethal helps with the early game and then extends BBQ, which in of itself is a hook perks... meaning, you need to get a down. You need to get into a chase, hit a survivor twice, and then hook them. That's a big window for a survivor to solve the box during a chain hunt. If it's outside a chain hunt, then the survivor was outplayed.
All is fair.
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If you can consistently achieve a difficult condition, yes, Pinhead can be incredibly oppressive.
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What do you mean by difficult condition ? Also,are you seeing the gif i posted ? because its not showing up here to me
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I am seeing it.
consistently forcing Chain Hunts isn't easy but it is do-able.
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1 - Thanks
2 - You need to play a lot to learn that,i think you should be able to get something of good from your experience,that's how learning works
3 - I Think you edited your post because i saw other thing in the message pop - up here,so i'm gonna say that to find the box,you need to learn the spawn locations,that also takes time
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But doesn't he need to know the location of all survivors AT THE TIME THE BOX SPAWNS to know where it probably is? Information perks like Darkness Revealed and BBQ can help you, but they have their limits.
Sure, Pinhead players can learn and memorize possible spawn locations, but it may take really long to learn that with the huge number of maps in this game and, even then, the presence of a single survivor in an area can prevent the box from spawning there. He doesn't have that information at all times.
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You can literally see that I edited it.
I wasn't arguing whether or not it was a good thing, I was merely remarking that if you can force Chain Hunts on a consistent basis, Pinhead becomes very oppressive
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we will talk again when you'll start to face people that know how to actually loop/know how pinhead's power works... he's decent only against solo q survivors (and even then he's still bad when survivors are actually good)
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What build do you guys normally run on Pinhead? Especially if you are looking for box and trying to take them from Survivor?
lethal pursuer I know.. also Hoarder or not?
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The concept of pinhead is kinda crazy to me. He has a ######### tier power and got tier passive power.
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read OP post. dead man switch and hoarder. the other perks are up to you. He has global version of pain res+DMS in his kit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAR7SAi7SmU otz has guide where he explains how the box spawn logic works. you can watch video between 2:00 and 4:50 to understand how the box works. its not imbalanced. survivors are just stupid vs his ability as usual.
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I run Lethal/Devour/Pain Res/Hoarder. Can probably do without Hoarder and take something for chase like Bamboozle if you have a hard time with his chains. Best way to maximize Pinhead is to get good with the chain in chase. His add ons for portal cast distance and chain length help with interrupting the box solver
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I can't believe some people are implying there should be a pinhead nerf. His chains are useless most of the time (unless you run that one purple chain breaking addon), and the only thing he has going for him is his chain hunt. The idea of using hoarder to stop someone from using the box only works on smaller maps, most maps won't let you stop someone that easily, so people end up just teleporting to you instead.
Just do the box, stop expecting someone else to do it. Holding the box helps 3 other teammates, and solving it can help a teammate if you want to get a pinhead's aggro, making them teleport to you. His iri addon got crapped on already, I don't think he needs anymore nerfs. There's more pressing problems than pinhead lmfao
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Nope. All they have to do is be behind a wall your possessed chain can't reach, and they solve it. All your momentum suddenly gone.
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Yep. All it takes is survivors not being solo, and Pinhead can't really do anything. Even with solos, what's stopping them from getting the box? Just assume that your teammates aren't going for it, so you go for it.
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But how likely is that?
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How likely is what? Controlling the box consistently? Depends on the map. Easier to do on a smaller map. Not worth going out of your way for on a map like Ormond. Pinhead is still good either way.
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oh okay, TYVM for the information ^^
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Depends on the map, because if the survivor is too far when they grab it, you're not stopping. But on any map, a survivor can be behind a wall that you were just out of reach of with your possessed chain, and you can't stop it. His possessed chain just as anti-loop is the definition of inconsistent. Sometimes, perfect chains, making them manually break all 3. Other times, all 3 spawn behind and get instantly broken on an object. Not cool. Not a good killer.
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