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About future changes for Skull Merchant
I am pretty sure she will get some serious changes (maybe even this next mid chapter) because how problematic most of the community find her. I am sure devs don't like these clips / videos where people hold the game for 40+ min with 3 gen with her. Sadly, that's the only thing she can do atm. If you want to play her in any other way then gen defense, you might as well go play different killer.
I just want to say that I hope devs find some middle ground solution to her problematic desing. I wish she keeps her identity as this observing strategic killer, without turning her into pure chase power (like a weird ghostface or something). Her 3-gen tactic needs to go for health of everyone in the game, but I also still want her to be able to defend some generator(s) and be also viable in the chase somewhat.
Maybe they could make each drone way more impactfull, cover bigger area, maybe apply hindred / oblivious so it effects injured Survivors as well but increase the minimum distance from each drone so you can't 3-gen with her anymore. If they would just add "can't place near gens" that would totaly kill this indentity of this killer and just turn her into bad ghostface / knight where you just place drones on loops and watch Survivors leave.
Maybe she could have 2-3 drones instead of 4 but each is more impactfull as I said.
Comments
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Have you read her addons? You can already have drones apply oblivious or hindered lol
Still don't understand why people think you should just 3 gen from the start. She is a beast in chase and I have won every game so far doing a tunnel out strategy
So if you get a survivor trapped at a loop:
You get almost brutal strength, 2% haste kicking a pallet. Another 5% haste from kicking the pallet. And maybe another 5% from PWYF.
So you kick a pallet with brutal strength and then chase the survivor, who you get wallhacks on, and get 12% movespeed and if the survivor stayed at the pallet too long they are exposed. How is that weak?
It's double purples but this is just a strongest case scenario. Many of her greens with a purple are still very serviceable builds
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I played SM last night and had a blast, no 3 gen and engaged in chases. It was good don't see why you'd wanna to camp 3 gen from start.
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mark my words, bhvr will nerf the killers 3 gen and shell be arguably worse than trapper.
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Not only that, but she is actually great at stealth when combined with her tracking capabilities. I've been playing her a ton with my main build consisting of Brown Noise Generator and Adaptive Lighting add-ons with Hex: Plaything and her tracking abilities (when you place the drones in more strategic points of the map than only just on generators) with the stealth make her pretty formidable imo. The tracking easily allows you to hunt down their movement while moving unpredictably with undetectable or oblivious, and I have gotten so many downs with that. It has been pretty fun for me.
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I'm still not sure exactly how Skull Merchant's kit makes her better than the average killer at holding a 3-gen. Her kit does three things, right, and two of them are almost useless in 3-gen scenarios because you already know where survivors are and they already know where you are in a broad sense because... it's a 3-gen, it's a tight area you can easily control by walking around it, that's the entire definition of what a 3-gen is.
That leaves the third part, her exposed, and that's just straight weaker for 3-gen scenarios than something like an infinite Tier 3 Myers or a Pinky Finger Clown or just a straight up basekit Leatherface. What about her can you nerf to make her not as good at 3-gen scenarios, considering it really seems like it's just normal 3-gen tactics being applied through her?
There may be something I'm missing about this that explains why she is the problem and not just, regular 3-gen builds that any killer can do and most can do better than her, but it doesn't seem that way from where I'm sitting. If the way her games are going is a problem, then the cause - things like CoB, for example - should probably be looked at before she is.
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"I already hate the killer because it's popular to do because a bunch of people jebaited themselves into thinking the killer was going to be something it wasn't and this gives me more of a reason to hate them and blaming the killer means I don't have to put effort into learning how to play against them"
Nobody will admit it but this is the answer.
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Skully excels at 3-gens because her power tells her exactly when survivors return to each gen, so you can't slip in directly behind her, and also forces survivors to do a secondary objective before they can repair it - otherwise she'll show up Undetectable and oneshot them. Normally survivors are comfortable eating a hit and W-ing away in that situation, and she denies that.
So it's like Knight where she can force some additional timewasting that guarantees CoB and Overcharge will regress enough of the gen for her to hold her ground. On her own, she's not a juggernaut because she can't be everywhere at once, but with the perks? Unless you're on comms, you get stalemated real quick.
I think looking at CoB/Overcharge would be a pretty terrible idea, though. That's just playing whack-a-mole with gen regression perks, and we've already axed four of them in the past year. Those two perks have counterplay. The issue is that Knight and Skull Merchant can deny that counterplay, and they don't have much going for them elsewhere, so timewaster strats end up pretty attractive.
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I also hope that positive changes can be done. I wasn't too enthused about SM when she was first revealed, but watching some folks play her (not ones who pitched a tent in the middle of 3 gens and called it day) piqued my interest since I tend to favor 'territory control' style of play, at least the theory of it.
That said, I really don't know if she can be 'fixed' without major changes. I've watched a few matches where SM's base ability alone was enough to control the gens because of how accurate and reliable the information is. (Disabling/not disabling the drone gains survs pretty much nothing with a 3-gen strat.) These matches were faster overall because the survs could at least make SOME progress because of the lack of regression perks, but even with 2 people running gen progress perks - one Prove and one Hyperfocus, I think - it still took around 5-7-ish minutes to break the 3 gen. Since ALL the survs were hitting the 3 gen, SM was able to just drone up another, relatively nearby gen and start the process almost from scratch. IIRC, that game ended in tie and too about 20 minutes. Again, this was with no add ons and no regression perks. The Killer used Enduring, spirit Fury, and I can't remember the other.
Things I noticed in that match were: 1 drone could be used to defend 2 gens either through directly covering both gens or through controlling the area of approach. Without regression perks, survs will still need multiple ways to progress gens in perks and toolboxes and pretty decent coordination.
I don't know if making her drone area wider would address any of that even if her drones can't be placed 'too close'. They already don't need to be placed all that close together to get the job done. Though that point seems to be somewhat, but not horribly, map dependent. It may just make her ability to reliably lock down 3 or more gens with 2 drones that much better.
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I think her green add on that gives survivors oblivious when in an active drone's area should be base kit. Her current stealth mechnic when walking in a drone is pretty butt in comparison.
I'd also give her a five percent movement speed increase for 15 seconds whenever a drone is deactivated by a survivor, but that movement speed increase is removed once those 15 seconds pass OR once she puts up a new drone. It keeps her from spamming drones, while also giving her some strength in chase. Survivors have a tough choice on their hands: be tracked by a drone and get exposed, or deal with a faster M! killer who shuts down loops easier
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