Thats a feature.
Its pretty similar but not the same though. Notice the “eyebrows” are missing on the non stock one.
The developers are making joke helmets on purpose, like slayers double mohawk or fake nose. This is one of them. They probably have no frame of reference to how hard the players have to work to get just one hat, so as a result these abominations make it into the game.
This one is really a big mystery to me. It’s such a slap in the face to receive the ability to remove your eyebrow guards and have a less-complete looking helmet as a “rare reward”. This hat is just so obnoxiously low-effort. It boggles my mind that this made it in game, especially after the prior complaints of certain earlier cosmetics being lazy. I’ve literally seen multiple bug report threads from people who didn’t notice the singular, tiny change and thought the hat wasn’t doing anything at all.
It seems unreasonable to expect a developer response to this, given how small of a detail it is, but at the same time it’s borderline insulting that this hat was even added to the game. Did someone (or multiple people) seriously look at that and approve it as a prestigious reward that players would look forward to achieving? Instead, it’s going to be a meme for the rest of this game’s lifetime - the stupid dwarf hat that they must have made in 2 minutes and shoved in because they forgot to make enough for him.
Maybe I’m getting a bit too into what’s barely an issue, but I’m less concerned with the hat itself and more concerned with the implications that stem from this hat having made it in the first place.
It’s not the end of the world.
And throughout my admittedly too-long post I alluded to the fact this is ultimately a minor detail several times. And then once again at the end for good measure.
It was with a big /S 
It’s what Hedge said when people complained, just flippantly saying its not the end of the world. It’s becoming a thing on the forums 
Ah, went right over my head. That’s… a pretty poor response to be honest. Sure it’s not the end of the world, but it’s one of the laziest “reward” assets I’ve seen in a game pretty much ever, and it came on the tail of things like the Black Unchained mask or Dual Mohawk that were already being lambasted for their laziness. Seems kind of tone-deaf to not give a bit more insight. For what it’s worth I couldn’t actually find that quote anywhere so maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh.
The quote is always taken out of context (and then people wonder why developers don’t talk to their fans more). It was a conversation after 1.1 dropped when the drop rates of cosmetics were increased (and more cosmetics were added) from commendation chests. If you want the background, Hedge first responds near #159 here and says the line near #174. Not going to argue for either side, but the quote isn’t related to this issue.
But to be on topic. I have this ranger helmet and yeah it’s pretty bad. I struggled at first to tell the difference. I would’ve been happy if it at least had a different hairstyle or color to go along with it. Maybe it’s like the red weapons without runes, a work in progress? A glowing runed helmet would be pretty cool.
Damaging a standard helmet and selling it out as new?!
Now that’s going into the book!
seriously, the model should be replaced, thankfully there’s many assets from V1 still unused, and it wouldn’t take months to do… right?