PTB Feedback : Light Interactions should not be removed.

Hello there,

My names Loris, I've played this game for over 6k hours and I'm roughly a 50/50 player. I apologize for the very long post below, but I spent a lot of time and thought on it, so I'd appreciate you taking the time to review everything and why I feel that Light Interaction changes should not go through.

I waited a bit to make this thread, because I felt that Billy & the base healing speed changes were more of a priority, and I didn't want to muddy the water. However, myself and MANY other people agree that removing more mechanics from the game is a negative over all. Now that BHVR has decided to not go through with those changes, I'd like to talk about this, because I do find it important, I just know how to prioritize issues.

Before I go into the issues with these changes, I need to start by explaining where I'm coming from. Over the last year Flashlights have been constantly nerfed / made easier. Beamers were previously one of the weakest, but most satisfying items in the game. If you practiced them, you had the chance to get great value, but often it led to just giving the killer free pressure.

I'm going to give you a little run down memory lane, before getting to the Light Interactions being removed, so I can fully explain why this seemingly "small change" isn't small. This isn't a thread for me to beg that we get locker saves back, etc. I just want to note all changes over the last year or so.

📙Things that have been removed / changed.

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1️⃣ Clicking - useful for communication with a teammate / celebration - understandable, because macros could be rather annoying, even though most agreed simply making it so the flashlight became silent if the "click" sound happened 5 times in rapid succession (probably a macro), then it couldn't be triggered for another 30 seconds or so would have solved the issue.

2️⃣ Spinning & Vault Faking - For those that don't know, it was very effective to use a beamer to position yourself for a smooth spin, or a vault fake with a rapid flick by clicking your beamer. I did this quite often and it felt so satisfying pretending to vault and dodging a hit with a perfectly timed click.

✏️ Implemented Solution: We now have to wait about a second between every click of the beamer and it holds us in place, which led to us not being able to "click correct" flash lights. This was a bit annoying, since sometimes due to ping click correcting was extremely helpful, but also required skill to know when you needed to do that, etc. This also meant we could no long spin or fake vault with flash lights, because they stopped momentum.

🔎 Consensus: Most people could deal with the clicking change or supported it, even though the true issue of beamers was light sensitivity problems and if that was the case we needed something like a "dark mode" that made the screen fade darker if blinded. Since Doctor's screen effects or simply a killer spinning in place showing their red stain triggered light sensitivity much more. There were also perks like Lightborn if flash lights truly were an issue for you when it came to Light Sensitivity, but most people that spammed macros didn't do it with the light facing the killer, so it definitely felt among most that this change was truly for hiding the macro sound, and not actually to solve anything with light sensitivity.

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3️⃣ Locker Saves - Useful for stopping a killer from tunneling that had a Mori or they were Pyramid Head. This was pretty much the only way you could save a death hook survivor if the killer wanted to tunnel them out. They were extremely rare in solo queue and VERY ping dependent. The real issue with locker saves was Double Lockers. After the addition of Dredge more lockers were added to the game making Double lockers VERY common.

📌First, let me address regular locker saves - When the patch notes came out it said it was because it left the killer no options, which wasn't true. You could go after the person waiting for the save and often get a trade for them trying to do it, since the savior had to be relatively close by - with the Iron Will nerf this became a lot harder, because if the killer was paying attention you'd have to make sure you were healed to go for one. At the time I had over 5k hours and I saw two successful locker saves during my killer game play - they were rare and people were pretty terrible at them. Regular locker saves were rarely complained about, except by inexperienced killers. You could be altruistic by making the killer think you might be trying for one just to get the aggro off of a teammate that was being tunneled.

📌Now, let's talk about Double Lockers - BROKEN. The truth is, they were mind numbing for the killer, especially, because it was usually a 4 man group of beamer gremlins that queued up only to do that, so the killer either afk'd, kept grabbing until the beamers ran out, had Franklin's, or the 4 man sucked and died quickly, because they couldn't time them - these needed to go.

✏️ Implemented Solution: Killers are now immune to blinds when grabbing survivors from lockers.

🔎 Consensus: The majority of players that play BOTH sides disliked that locker saves were COMPLETELY removed. It deleted a mechanic that took time to practice and master that had been in the game since the beginning. Every locker was different, the timing had to be precise and some killers had to be pixel perfect, so it wasn't guaranteed (especially with ping). This felt particularly bad with Decisive Strike being nerfed into the ground, so you weren't able to help a teammate that was being hard tunneled besides taking hits, and against certain killers, you couldn't even do that. While this made things much easier for inexperienced killer players, it removed a "higher skill ceiling" mechanic for survivors that did have counter play - if we're not discussing Double Lockers. - Now, when discussing Double Lockers, the majority of players agreed, those needed to go. Unless they were an entitled one side gamer, they knew they were broken. This led to a lot of people wondering how could they solve Doubles without just removing locker saves in general? A lot of people said remove double locker spawns, or add lots of clutter/objects around lockers, etc. All of these things requiring a lot of work on BHVR's part to make happen, while also creating more annoying loops for killers AND survivors.

• There were options, though. I came up with a suggestion and still feel it could have solved the issue of Doubles while still allowing locker saves as a fair, but much harder to pull off mechanic. Simply making it so if a killer grabs a survivor from a locker, they grab them at the speed they would if they had Iron Maiden equipped. For anyone that doesn't know, locker save timing changed a lot if the killer was running Iron Maiden. It basically required you be about 2 feet away, or have Sprint Burst (Background Player) ready, or you would not be able to make it in time. If the locker the killer opens is empty, it'd be regular locker check timing, so it didn't mess with perks like Deception, etc. If there is a survivor in it, it's Iron Maiden timing. With such a tight window for a save, this would stop Double Lockers from being possible and also make it EVEN EASIER to find a survivor that might be hiding nearby for a locker save. If they did have SB or BP available, they'd only be able to use it once, then they would have to be very close to get any saves until their exhaustion was up. With this in mind, if the killer knew a survivor was hovering for a locker save, they could easily choose to bait and down the savior or grab the survivor.
• This post isn't about Locker saves, but showing you how much beamers have been changed over time, even though there were options for changing them without removing mechanics from one of the few "higher skill" items a survivor has at their disposal.

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4️⃣ Save Buffer - If you commonly used beamers you would know that since the original patch for Dead Hard and Pallet Validation last year, there has been MASSIVE desync in the game. There were many times on my screen the killer had picked me up and was about to start walking away, but my teammate would start a flash light save and wonder how the killer walked away when it was perfectly timed. They'd show me their perspective, the pickup animation would start and their timing would be perfect, but somehow the killer would just walk away as if nothing happened or the animation would appear to almost fast forwarded. This was truly mald inducing and if you constantly bounced around on different ping (I go from West to East coast a lot), you had two different timings for saves already, but it constantly led to you questioning yourself if you messed up, did the timing change, was it de-sync?

✏️ Implemented Solution: After over half a year of this frustration, BHVR announced that they were making beamers more accessible and added the beamer buffer. A small safety window that you could start blinding before the regular window and it still count as being "on time".

🔎 Consensus: Frustration. Most people that used beamers did it because they enjoyed the challenge and satisfaction of having good timing/positioning to get a beamer save. Med-kits were way stronger, Toolboxes were very boring for people that wanted killer interaction, unless saboing, but usually agreed upon as more annoying to face with how RNG hook placement could be on maps like Midwich. Making beamers easier felt like it took all of those hours of practice and just said, "Sorry you wasted your time, they're easy now". It no longer feels satisfying to get beamer saves and this feeling seems to be shared among most experienced players. Beamer saves were one of the last challenging things left for players with high hours and now they were gone. I tried to stick to the actual timing to see if the feeling stayed there, but I'd get robbed of saves, because the real issue was DE-SYNC. I finally had to tell myself, stop making it harder on yourself, the mechanic is there, because de-sync wasn't fixed, use it. This seemed to be a common sentiment from most experienced players. The satisfaction was gone while the issues were still there.

• Killer Specific: Now it feels more mald inducing when someone beamer saves you, because you no longer feel as if there is SKILL behind it. It just feels like a baby Meg got lucky and managed to aim it in your direction at some point during the pickup animation.
• Fun perk synergy got removed, such as Fire Up. It was pretty satisfying to watch people go for beamer saves and miss them, because they'd never expect an off meta perk like Fire Up, but now, the buffer deletes silly synergy like that.
• De-Sync is still a massive issue that has many other problems.
  • Pallets don't drop properly, and you're constantly hit through them, even though they were fixed with the validation patch last year, then broken shortly after, because the validation for Dead Hard was too strong.
  • Dead Hard is unreliable unless you have perfect ping, because the servers cannot handle the 0.5s window to use it. - It's primarily a guessing game and sometimes will require pressing the input 4-5 times before the server will register that YES, IT WAS PRESSED.
  • You're often grabbed when going for unhooks if the killer is face camping, because de-sync says you never let go, but you absolutely did.
  • Sometimes you'll completely wiggle from a killers shoulder, but it still lets them get hook suck, because on their screen they're already within range of the hook suck zone.
  • Pallet saves are very unreliable and almost never work properly, because on the killers screen they're already moving out of it as the survivor is waiting for their animation to finish. This ends up with the killer almost always getting to hit the savior before they can do it, and walk through them.
  • Unable to grab survivors off of generators, yet again, because you freeze in place, or you can't tell, but the survivors has already started walking away.
  • Whiffing hits on a survivor you absolutely should hit, but they're just a few inches further ahead or to the side on their screen.
  • Having good ping and no packet loss, but a hatchet will hit a survivor (make the noise), but nothing happens. Sliding through people on high mobility killers like Wesker, Billy, Oni, because they aren't actually where it shows them at.
  • Skill checks feel very laggy and depending on how bad the de-sync is can lead to never being able to hit Great Skill checks, or absolutely hitting them, but the server says you missed the skill check. Or making skill checks like DS/Overcharge/Merciless storm almost impossible.
• This felt like a massive band-aid fix that deleted many hours of practice and removed something for survivors to keep coming back to practice and get better at.

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5️⃣ Removing Light Interactions - In the example that was given in the patch notes, Light Interactions were compared to saboing Trapper's traps. I feel like I should approach this comparison head on by saying - this isn't the same. Saboing Trappers Traps deleted his power, Light Interactions do not. They can help counter a killers power in certain ways, but often those ways promote altruistic play styles, and those should be encouraged. Light Interaction "counters" are temporary and stop being possible at all once the beamer runs out. To keep with the format of the previous changes, I'll say why this change was made. It seems the devs feel it is an out of date mechanic, since you can no longer sabo Trapper's traps. Again, this isn't the same thing, but I wanted to keep my format consistent.

✏️ Implemented Change: Flashlights no longer interact with killer powers. You can now remove Hag's traps manually by crouching up to a trap and doing an animation.

🔎 Consensus: Flash lights are now the weakest item in the game and are easily countered with perks like Lightborn and Franklin's. They no longer feel satisfying to use. With the removal of Light Interactions, and altering your movement (click spinning/fake vaulting) are now 100% useless if a killer brings Lightborn. You can no longer use them for anything. You can completely waste your time bringing a beamer to a trial, because the killer can just say - No. It seemed overwhelmingly consistent on Reddit and Twitter that the majority of people just did not understand why this was messed with. Learning different light interactions for killers required hours in the game, and another reason to come back to the game, so you could learn more things, and new tricks. On the rare occasion you were able to use a Light Interaction to benefit your team, you were happy you chose to bring a beamer over making the trial faster with a tool box, or healing yourself multiple times in a corner. The only people that seemed to be celebrating this change were those that mained a singular killer and had some sort of interaction with flash lights, so it would make things easier, but never once did this delete their power.

📌 What Light Interactions Exist?

• 👻 Wraith: If you hold a beamer on Wraith long enough you can burn him, which will lead to him being stunned temporarily.
  • How often?: If Wraith knows how to "Dodge" beamers, you can manage ONE burn with a yellow beamer, before the battery is so low it can't manage another burn. If a Wraith is skilled, you won't even manage a burn before he gets a free hit on you - the chance of a free hit increases based on his add-ons. If you don't believe me, I went through and tested all battery consumption for killer interactions recently and had a friend with NO ADD-ONS on wraith just approach me while I tried to burn him and he dodged as a smart Wraith would do. I finally managed the burn at around 80% of the yellow beamer being used.
  • ❓️ Why should it stay?: A while ago Wraith was buffed so that a survivor is unable to see him until he is much closer. With the healing changes next meta, it will be very common to run into Sloppy Butcher and in solo queue there is a good chance you will not be able to get a heal. With this in mind, consider the following scenario. On Azarov maps, sometimes it's very common for a dead zone to spawn on the right side of Gas Heaven main (facing inwards). When this happens, it's not unusual to still have a 3 gen in that corner of the map, 1 behind the cars, 1 completely in the dead zone and 1 at an unsafe filler pallet next to that. While I realize Gas Heaven is getting reworked in this update, I'm using this example, because I'm sure we've all seen it many times, but this is common on many maps.
    • If you are a solo queue survivor and unable to get healed, but you know that one of those gens has to be done, or you will 3 gen, what can you do?
      • Walk around the entire map until you find someone to heal you, which wastes so much time there is a good chance you're letting your teammates die?
      • Let the three gen happen, someone else can deal with it?
      • Just do the gen and risk being caught in the Dead Zone?
    • In this situation, if you're rather sure the killer isn't nearby, it's best to at least start the Dead Zone gen and hope that your teammates understand how important that gen is, unless you are positive you know where someone is that can heal you. If you aren't someone that runs sprint burst, how do you have any way to protect yourself in this situation against Wraith? The only thing you can do is pray you can manage to Lightburn him, so you might make it to a tile while injured. Wraith approaches very fast while cloaked, is hard to see until rather close and if played well will most likely down you anyway, but you still have the CHANCE to protect yourself in the open.
    • Killers have the ability to see survivor items in the lobby. While it shouldn't be required for a killer to dodge a lobby, it is up to the Wraith player if they're okay playing against multiple beamers, and want to put forth the energy required to counter-play beamers or if they enjoy the back and forth of the item. Before someone says, "Survivors can last second switch", that is a separate topic to be addressed and this shouldn't be part of a "band-aid fix" for last second swapping.
    • If a Wraith is running perks like Save The Best For Last, sometimes the only way you can stop them from hard tunneling someone is by burning them, so the tunnel victim at least has a chance to get to a tile for partial safety, since taking hits will only make it easier to tunnel the survivor.
    • Sometimes Wraith players like to hard camp survivors with things like NOED while stealthed. Or even basement camping a survivor while stealthed, so beamers provide helpful counter play to allow survivors a chance to make a save in certain situations.
    • Build Synergy - Taking unique interactions out of the game is often agreed upon as a bad thing. One of the most fun games I've ever had was encountering a Wraith running Hubris, so that if I burned him I was exposed. The absolute shock I had when I experienced it and the Wraith giving me NODDERS the second he was done being stunned was absolutely hilarious.
  • ❗️ Wraith Specific Thoughts: I think most people can agree out of ALL Light Interactions, Wraith is the one that is probably punished a bit more than he should be. Light Interactions should not be removed from Philip, but I think most would be okay with a diminishing returns on burning him, so it can't be repeatedly done, but it could be done on a cool down, or the stun duration could be lessened a little every time it's done if it's done too many times within a certain window of time.
• 🐤Artist: With Artist you are able to burn her stationary crows, so they disappear. You are also able to burn crows that are swarming a survivor, so that they disappear, and the next hit on that survivor will no longer take a health state.
  • How often? Honestly? Not too often. When I tested the consumption on a yellow beamer recently, you could burn about 4 crows before the beamer was empty. Now, keep in mind, this is if I am not interrupted and I'm standing still. It also takes quite a bit of time to burn a stationary crow, so you are almost NEVER able to do this in chase unless the Artist player is running off to kick a gen and not paying attention. Personally, I feel leaving chase to kick a gen and not paying attention should be punished, but either way, this was still very rare. You most often saw this happen ALTRUISTICALLY. The most common scenario I saw Carmina's crows burned was at the exit gate. Either an injured/ death hook survivors was running to the gate and you were also injured, so you couldn't take a hit, or the survivor was cornered in a way they couldn't escape the tile to get to the exit without the assistance.
  • ❓️ Why should it stay? Most will agree that Carmina is at least an A tier killer, with S being reserved for Spirit, Nurse and Blight. Carmina has few weaknesses and depending how she's played it can feel like there is literally nothing you can do. While I enjoy going against a GOOD Artist player that goes for snipes, they aren't too common, but they are very strong when it comes to hard tunneling, map control, information and zoning. Carmina already has interesting interactions when it comes to lockers and it takes time and skill to learn the ins and outs of her power, so you know what you can get away with. You can always tell the skill of a survivor you're going against if they hop locker to get rid of crows, the same as you can tell if someone burns crows on a teammate to help protect them. It also creates interesting Synergy for Artist, because she can run things like Iron Maiden to punish people using lockers to get rid of their crows. However, when it comes to killers like Artist there are very few ways you can protect a teammate if they decide to remove them from the game. Playing altruistically can already be hard punished if the killer decides to snowball off of the altruism and trying to protect a teammate by burning their crows gives the killer many chances to do so. Ever since the meta shakeup and MMR being implemented it's already rare to have altruistic teammates in solo queue, this will make them more rare.
  • ❗️ Artist Specific Thoughts: With Wraith in mind, perhaps an add-on for Artist that makes it so you're exposed for a certain amount of time after burning her crows? This makes it even more dangerous to be altruistic, but still possible. It also incentivizes the Artist player to not hard tunnel someone, because she has an easy insta-down.
• 👩‍⚕️Nurse: When you burn Sally, she is unable to blink/loses her charges.
  • How often? Rarely, because it was difficult, but rewarding. In the developer update it was noted that it was a difficult and rarely used mechanic, because it was hard to pull off. Shouldn't that be a healthy / rewarding thing? This is another mechanic that newer players may not know about, but they can learn over time. It's rarely done in chase, because a good Nurse player won't let it. If someone tries to altruistically burn the Nurse, she can choose to leave her current target and go after the survivor that is burning her.
  • ❓️ Why should it stay? Nurse is widely considered the strongest killer in the game, even after her add-on nerfs. Sally also has the absolute strongest ability to tunnel. If she wants a survivor out of the game, there is nothing the other survivors can do about it. They can attempt to body block hooks, but even if they manage to wiggle free, Sally will be briefly stunned and easily catch up with the recently rescued survivor. This is also the reason Decisive Strike is USELESS against killers like her and Blight, because they cover so much distance that the tiny stun is meaningless. I have many clips of someone being tunneled and the only reason they are able to stay in the game is, because I step in and burn Sally. This often leads to her turning her attention on me when I show her I'm not going to allow her to hard tunnel someone out at 5 gens. Isn't that a healthy thing? Shouldn't altruism be encouraged, especially against an S tier killer? Shouldn't there at least be one viable / useful thing to do with a beamer against Sally if they're running Lightborn? It's okay that it's a difficult mechanic that takes time to remember to use and learn to use properly, because that is part of the skill ceiling with survivor and removing tiny things like this will always be negative.
• 🕸️Hag: You can burn Lisa's traps to remove them. The flashlight beam can show nearby traps. If this change goes through, you will be unable to burn them, but you can crouch up to a trap and do an interaction to remove the trap.
  • How often? Very common and easy.
  • ❓️ Why should it stay? It's a necessary evil. If you ask 9/10 players, they will say they don't enjoy going against Hag. Unfortunately, her play style rewards camping hook or basement and she has the ability to secure basement kills with relative ease. A good hag will rarely chase you, create a web on the map and you will barely see her till about 2-3 gens are remaining, then everyone will start dying. On the rare occasion you encountered a Hag it always felt amazing to have a beamer and be able to stop unsavory play styles. Is she running Mint Rag and trapping hooks or basement, so she can instantly teleport back the second an unhook starts? You could quickly dispose of the traps nearby, so you could safely unhook. Perhaps she has massively trapped basement and you're running Flash Bang, you could run in and delete all nearby traps allowing for a save. Hags traps are unlimited and if a Hag is experienced and does happen to chase, they can usually put traps in a very hard to burn spot, so you will take a hit trying to burn them. I played many games of basement Hag on the PTB to show why this change should not go through. My build was, Monstrous Shrine (so basement hooks were Scourge hooks), Gift of Pain, Agitation, Iron Grasp. If a Hag swapped Iron Grasp out for Save The Best For Last, it'd be even more Lethal. In all matches, the survivors were unable to counter me no matter how hard they tried and I am VERY BAD at Hag. I caught many of them attempting to "cleanse" my traps, but it took so long, I could easily stop them and usually get a free hit. With Gift of Pain active they weren't able to heal fast enough with their med-kits to save someone and clear any traps out, so they could save someone. This resulted in about 85% of survivors dying first hook. Now, realistically if this was a regular match, this outcome would be similar, UNLESS a survivor had Flash Bang or a Beamer, because there would be zero they could do. Hag is already pretty miserable to go against, but this will make it much worse when it comes to her painful play styles.
  • ❗️ Hag Specific Thoughts: When it comes to Hag, it's very common they're running Franklin's Demise and usually people understand why. If a Hag sees a beamer in their lobby, they can easily equip the perk to counter play the item if they are worried about it. One smack and if they trap the item, there is a good chance unless the survivor has Built To Last, they aren't going to be able to burn many traps, which then makes their item useless. This change to hag will only punish Hag players that play her in the least painful way. Hag players that make a web with their traps will now have their traps deleted by EVERY survivor even if they didn't bring a beamer. They can no longer run Franklin's to defend their traps, they can just be deleted by survivors base-kit. However, this change BUFFS bad or lazy Hag players that do nothing but proxy or basement camp, because survivors will not be able to remove traps fast enough to possibly counter them. You're encouraging a more mind numbing strat with this change and punishing players for playing her in a more skilled way.
• 🧞‍♀️Spirit: You can burn spirits husk to kick her out of phase.
  • How often? Very rare and most don't know about it.
  • ❓️ Why should it stay? As I said earlier, Spirit even with her nerfs is still an S tier killer. She's among the few that if she chooses to tunnel, there isn't much you can do. However, if you were an experienced survivor and wanted to defend a teammate, it was possible to burn her husk to kick her out of phase and give your teammate a chance to get to safety. This was very rare, but on the few occasions I managed to do it and protect a teammate it felt insanely rewarding for having that kind of knowledge about the game. It's a small mechanic that few do, because they haven't learned they can, yet. It seems to me that encouraging altruistic actions that are rare, and require knowledge in the game is a very healthy and engaging quality of the game.

📌Other Light Interactions: these weren't listed, but exist.

• Legion - You can blind Legion while in Frenzy to kick them out of it. This one is decently known and has plenty of counter-play. A well placed Flash Bang can stop a massive amount of Frenzy injuries, which takes 50% of a generator to get and if you don't use it to save someone, it should be rewarded. A smart Legion can also use this to cancel their power with no C/D and get a free down on someone.
• Twins (?) - You can blind Victor. I wasn't sure if I should add this, because Victor is technically the player, but it is also the "Power" for Twins, I just thought I'd mention it. This can often save a teammate from going down and slow a huge snowball if done at the right time.
• Wesker - You can stop Wesker from using his power while blinding him. This takes quite a bit of beamer juice and is rarely very helpful, but it can save someone while running to the exit gate. I feel this is a fair trade off, since Wesker gets base-kit Lightborn on grab downs.
• Nemesis - You can blind the zombies to temporarily stun them and this shouldn't be removed. While I can agree that sometimes the Zombies are insanely stupid and get stuck or don't help Nemesis, that's not always the case. With the right add-ons the zombies can be overwhelming, especially on certain maps. Unless you're running Any Means Necessary, you're forced to waste pallets to get rid of the zombies. On pallet dense maps, this isn't a huge issue, but not all maps accommodate this (and shouldn't). Trying to Head On the zombies is almost impossible unless someone runs them in front of the locker. Otherwise they lose interest too fast to get stunned. There are also plenty of times where a zombie is face camping someone on hook and the only way you can unhook someone is by blinding the zombie, or taking a health state of damage. Sometimes they're at a loop you're at and the only way to save yourself from getting hit by them is blinding the zombie if you manage enough distance from the killer. It makes you feel like such a good teammate if you can protect a teammate by blinding a zombie while they're in chase, please do not remove this mechanic.

I realize that the killers in the "Other Light Interactions" were not listed, but I felt like I should make sure that I state why they shouldn't be included in the future and why those things are good for the game.

📃In conclusion: This seems like a small meaningless change, but it is yet ANOTHER nerf to beamers that used to be the only survivor item that could allow for skill expression. With it being so easy to get beamer saves now, Light Interaction is the only knowledge/skill expression left for beamers. Beamers are EASILY countered with experience and often reward the killer for a survivor trying to be altruistic with them, especially with light interactions. Certain killers have unique perk synergy related to beamers and burns. Killers also have the ability to run Franklin's and almost completely delete all items in the game if they don't want to deal with the possibility of interactions or even saves / heals / fast repairs. Beamers will be the only item in the game that is 100% useless if the killer brings Lightborn. If a killer brings sloppy or Franklin's, med-kits are less efficient, but you can usually get some value from them. The same goes for gen regression or Franklin's for toolboxes. Beamers at least had a secondary possibility of killer interaction, now they can be completely useless if the killer decides to do so. Altruism has already been punished more with the addition of MMR and the meta shakeup last year and removing these sorts of interactions will only make it worse. I consider myself one of the most altruistic players in the game, and even I have a hard time making myself go for end game saves if everyone else doesn't go with me, because I'll continue to be punished by MMR with baby teammates or baby killers if I die doing it. At least let me have the ability to possibly assist my teammate in another way.

I realize that this is rather late, but again, I felt like as much as I care about this change, I knew that Billy and base healing changes needed to be priority. Knowing that a lot of BHVR employees were dealing with weather issues / power outages, I wanted to make sure I waited a bit, so it could get proper attention and not be overshadowed by other pressing matters.

If you did take the time to read through this, I appreciate it. If you'd like to see the clips I reference in this post, I can put together a small video showing the consumption of all flash lights with killer powers and how I used beamers to protect my teammates. Also many times I easily out played beamers as Wraith, etc. I hope that my "trip down memory lane" didn't make this post detract from its purpose, but I feel many people would think this isn't "that big of a deal" unless they realize just how much beamers have been changed in the last year.

Thanks so much for reading and I hope you'll consider not going through with these changes.