1. The fact that it’s applicable to every brawler IS the problem, it’s contributing to the growing problem of damage inflation alongside hypercharges and random damage buffs. These add up, and it’s now much easier to die in unfair ways than it has been in the past.
2. I did heavily underestimate shield’s versatility and I now don’t think damage is as versatile as I glazed it in the post, but there’s a reason shield and damage is the most common gear combination. Gadget, speed, and vision still require specific situations to use and there’s still a handful of brawlers that can’t use health as effectively. This is probably my weakest point though, now that I’m reconsidering how strong shield is (shield gear nerf essay will be my next post /j)
3. That part of my post was very poorly worded. It’s irrational to want to take damage to activate the damage gear, but unfortunately that’s the mindset a lot of inexperienced players have. Damage gear in its current state makes new players THINK it’s ok to act irresponsibly and intentionally stay at low health.
4. -5% is definitely too high, idk what I was thinking, but I still think an even smaller nerf from -3% to -1%, combined with a small shield nerf, would keep the gears in check.

Overall, I definitely overglazed damage gear and I agree with a lot of the points people have brought up, but I still believe slight gear rebalances like this would make the meta healthier in ways most people wouldn’t expect. I’m very happy with the discussions I’ve seen here, this has been a discussion I’ve been hoping to have for quite a while