Gearhead discussion
Continuing with discussion thread on the apparently least picked perks, let's move on to Deathslinger's perk Gearhead, the second least picked killer perk on the aggregate site with 0.19% usage
Gearhead - After a Survivor loses a health state, Gearhead activates.
While Gearhead is active, each time a Survivor completes a Great Skill Check while repairing, their aura is revealed to you for 6/8/10 seconds.
At least on paper a 10 second aura is pretty good. Think about Lethal Pursuer, for instance, it lasts 10 seconds and that's plenty of time to go chase one of the survivors you see with it. However, Gearhead is weaker than Lethal Pursuer for a couple of reasons:
- You have no control over when Gearhead will trigger, and an aura appearing in the middle of a chase or when you're in the middle of hooking someone might not be actionable info. And since there's no sound cue it can also be easy to miss the aura appearing in the first place. (Compare that to Lethal Pursuer where you know right at the start to look for the auras and you are in a position to head straight to them at the start of the match and you can see the difference.)
- Gearhead only triggers after Great skill checks, but historically Great skill checks don't get hit all that often by most players so the trigger is going to be kind of sporadic. (Most people hit Good checks all the time but Great checks less frequently. Of course with Hyperfocus and Stakeout possibly gaining in popularity as a combo that might change soon, but we'll set that aside for now.)
- Finally even when a survivor's aura is shown from Gearhead, there's still a nagging issue that it can sometimes be hard to see the aura of a survivor who is working on a generator because the generator's aura sort of bleeds over it. This isn't a deal breaker for the perk but it is a bit annoying. 🤷♂️
Now maybe if Hyperfocus plus Stakeout catches on and survivors are constantly doing Great Skill Checks killers may give Gearhead another shot, similar to how Discordance is seeing an uptick to counter Prove Thyself currently? But the nice thing about Discordance is it always works, there's no prior condition of doing damage you need to meet for it to trigger, and it has a nice noise notification and is really easy to spot.
So maybe possible buffs for Gearhead to make it a bit more popular might be
- Get rid of the damage precondition altogether and simply have it show you the aura of survivors who hit Great skill checks period. That would allow it to trigger more often during the match
- Give a noise alert when it triggers to make it easier to spot the aura that's been pinged
- Extend it to trigger on all Great skill checks, not just generator repair ones. That would again allow it to trigger a bit more often and also show auras of survivors who aren't sitting next a generator at that moment.
Comments
I like removing the precondition and sound queue. But I don't think it should work for all skill checks. It would stray too far from the name and original idea. I think it should also provide 5 seconds of aura reading on a person who FAILED a gen skill check. Failed and great skill checks are both less common than good skill checks so I think covering those bases would make it more usable.
I kinda wished that the Gen auras were revealed like they used to... But who am I
It just needs a sound cue when it activates like Alert does.
If it's still too weak after that due to the survivor's aura being hidden behind the gen then maybe make it highlight the aura of the generator the way it used to.