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I wish Skull Merchant had focused on stealth.
For those who aren’t aware, Skull Merchant has a small stealth gimmick attached to her power: After standing in a drone’s active zone for 2 seconds, she gains Undetectable, which lasts until she leaves the active zone, persisting for 2 additional seconds afterwards. I sorely wish this stealth aspect had been the main focus of her power, rather than surveillance. I think the concept of a stealth killer who, rather than having a stealth MODE that is balanced out by specific drawbacks such as being unable to attack or having reduced movement speed, instead is able to move and attack unrestricted in specific stealth zones that they create, is leagues more interesting than what we have right now.
Imo Merchant’s power is one of the most, if not the most, bland and unimaginative killer powers in the whole game. Its effects are so basic and it’s so restricted with stuff like hindrances on drone placement and revealing its detection zone to survivors that her power boils all the way down to “If you don’t put them on gens and then hardcore defend those gens every time, you’re using your power wrong.” It’s very one-dimensional and even with the haste buffs and 3 gen nerfs, I don’t think this severe deprivation of creavity inherent in her power will change. At the absolute best, it’ll give her the ability to be an annoying and boring antiloop killer at some loops where she pops a drone and gives herself free bloodlust + Exposed. Outside of that, her drones are so non-threatening and easy to avoid that she’ll still be piling them on generators because that’s the only place they’ll do anything of note.
If the concept of stealth zones were the primary appeal of her power, I feel it’d be way more interesting, fun, and viable. Killers who can actively place props that directly benefit themselves rather than hindering survivors is a rare thing in this game; only example I can think of off the top of my head is Demogorgon with his portals that give him much greater map mobility in selective regions and, to a certain extent, Twins. That’s a niche that Skull Merchant could have totally filled, and she just doesn’t. It’s a huge missed opportunity to have stealth be the main focus of her power and have detection be the tacked-on bonus, like “Use these cloak drones to make certain areas advantageous by giving yourself unrestricted stealth, by the way if survivors walk into your stealth zones it sets the drone off for a bit I guess idk”
Apologies for the pointless rant, just wanted to get it out there.
Comments
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Honestly her stealth does work pretty well, and the more I play her the more I realize jsut how versatile this killer is. Her being able to recall her drones with no cooldown is a big contributor to this.
What I like to do is when ever I see 2 Survivors at a gen, or I know some one is going to go to a certain area (such as going for an unhook) I leave a trail of drones while walking away. After getting a notification, I just walk back using the trail
This wont work every time as most people catch on after the first few times, but thats the thing. Her drones provide so much functionality that they arent meant to be used in one specific way. Ive been having so much fun with her, and I wasnt expecting that at all considering at first I just could not grasp how to play her. Knight was the same but I was able to catch on much faster since just a quick look at his wiki page is enough to know that each of his guards should be used differently
Both The Knight and Skull Merchant are such unique killers, its a shame that they have the reputation that they do simply because people want the easy way out
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this is what add-on are for. you can customize the way you play a killer through add-on's. This add-on increases stealthy potency. They're improving this to 50% except for fact that her base duration for undetectable is 2 seconds. so 50% of 2 seocnd is only 1 extra second. this add-on would be better if it increased duration by a flat number. For example, it increases duration of undetectable by +6 seconds for total of 8 seconds. this would allow you to spec into stealth play-style with skull merchant. I imagine it is not too effective in outdoor maps but could be interesting indoor maps like Lery's.
I am not dev or anything but I think the undetectable status effect within drones is not about the stealth but is about hiding red-light at loops to make it more difficult for the survivor to loop tiles in a drone area.
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Even with that addon and the upcoming addon changes, at the absolute best her stealth addons only give her 2 extra seconds of Undetectable. It’s still a tacked-on, unreliable gimmick and, more importantly, it’s incredibly far from the main focus of her power, which is my main point. I think the direction they took her power in—pure surveillance—is wasted potential compared to what her power could have been—self-made stealth zones.
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I couldn’t disagree more. Her stealth is incredibly clunky and restrictive, and her drones are the opposite of versatile. They do one thing and one thing only with an even remote semblance of consistency, and that’s tell you when survivors are near them.
The above scenario you described just proves my point; even if you only use two drones to create a “trail” of drones, you’re still dedicating half of your entire drone web to stealthily approaching a generator or a pair of healing survivors—in other words, 3-genning and camping/tunneling slightly better than normal—that, in your words, stops working after just a few attempts. Additionally, this entire play can easily be countered by just turning off one of the drones in your trail, greatly diminishing the reach and duration of your stealth and making it much less feasible to sneak up on them.
That’s not “good” stealth. That’s not “versatile.” That’s dumping at least half of your resource pool into accomplishing an extremely basic stealth play whose effectiveness yields diminishing returns and whose counterplay is easily attainable. Moreover, that whole maneuver is just doubling down on her one good strat of playing extremely defensively, which is what she’s been boiled entirely down to by all of the playerbase. Buffing a one-dimensional killer by reinforcing that one dimension does not add depth to her.
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removing red glow is not the worst. it can be useful in high-wall loops where survivor loses line of sight however a lot of high-wall loops are loops where the survivor can see killer, so ultimately a very niche effect chase improvement. Makes you wonder why Beast of prey perk is so bad. shrug.
I think if they changed her drone design to not be giant floating drones and more like mini-sc fi chip that you stick on walls that analyze your weak spots and gave her undetectable(0 TR) as base statistic then maybe it would have potencial, but at best, your creating an easier to play Ghostface, so I am not entirely sure. The direction they went is more of trapping based killer with buff/debuff status effects. Trapping based killer are more about 3 gens and hard-zoning and camping hooking. Survivors in general hate all 3 of those concepts. As result, skull merchant will likely be rated as one of the most unfun killers to play against. I wouldn't be surprised if you made a survivor-killer fun to face list and I would imagine that Hag, Trapper and Skull merchant would easily hit bottom 5 fun to play against list in popular voting.
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dedicating half of your entire drone web to stealthily approaching a generator or a pair of healing survivors—in other words, 3-genning and camping/tunneling slightly better than normal
So attacking survivors on generators is camping and attacking injured survivors is tunneling.
Wow.
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The trail is just one of many drone formations Ive found that worked. None of them work if you do them exclusively, they all have to be used together in order for them to work. Youre also not "wasting" 2 drones, theres quite literally nothing stopping you from recalling those drones at any point to use them for something more worth while.
Also her drones are very versatile. Similar to Knight where all 3 of his Guards should be used in different ways, her drones also have different uses. With Knight, people tend to just drop Guards at loops at then zone a Survivor and sure you can do that, but its far from his best option. (Its the easiest, but not the best)
With Skull Merchant you have information, zoning, and stealth. People are just playing her the easy way which is info, and thats nothing special. Do a 3 gen strat with literally any other killer and youll get the same result but just get it faster since the majority of killers have something to aid them in downing a Survivor. Using her drones simply for information is basically like shocking a Survivor as Doc but only to build their madness and not anti loop.
Its a process of getting the information, utilizing the stealth, and then getting the hit. This can be done either by a trail, a buffer zone, or singular placed drones at strong loops to limit their options and zoning them into an unfavorable spot. After basically ANY of these, you can recall your drones and go on to the next set up, there is literally nothing stopping you.
But hey, if you dont like her thats fine! Youre allowed to! I personally have been having a blast learning new things. I just find it a shame the reputation shes gotten
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Knight’s guards actively patrol an area along a path that can take any shape and form according to the person drawing it, with greater bonuses rewarded to both the Knight and the guards for creating a longer path and making it work. The guards automatically chase survivors they detect independent of the Knight’s control and can also be sent out to smash destructible props at a distance—blocking the prop from use in the process which lends itself to its own special utility beyond the simple act of kicking (for example, using Assassin to block a gen with his extended breaking animation, or using him to kick a pallet and block said pallet while he’s interacting with it, which you can use to trap survivors on the same side of a god loop as you). In addition, each individual guard has their own numbers and characteristics, making any given guard better or worse at specific things than the other two, adding a learning curve to knowing when and where to use which guard.
Skull Merchant’s drones, on the other hand, are simple, stationary traps that, when deployed, do the same two identical, lackluster effects: Reveal survivors, and give you a clunky and inefficient stealth power. They don’t patrol. They don’t chase survivors. They don’t block props. They don’t damage gens or destroy pallets and walls. They have no variance among each other. They just sit there and give you basic information whilst occasionally limiting survivors’ basic information.
In terms of versatility, complexity, and depth, Merchant and Knight aren’t even close to comparable. Knight is in a completely different ballpark. He’s on another planet compared to Skull Merchant.
Skull Merchant’s power is extremely basic. The effects it has on the match are also extremely basic. The only mechanic she has that could give her uniqueness and depth—her stealth—is neutered and nerfed into a hideously clunky state and is an obvious tacked-on afterthought to what is very clearly the main focus of her power, which is surveillance. But her surveillance is about as complex and versatile as, well, Surveillance.
Also, as for zoning—No. Skull Merchant’s zoning is a meme, and an unfunny one at that. Even when you combine all the total effects of her drone’s meager chase tools—killer instinct, exposed, and a hidden red stain—on an M1 killer with no real lethality, that reeaaally doesn’t amount to much. The three effects combined are sort of alright at jungle gyms, but given how many loops are short, open, too strong to be mindgamed by a simple M1 killer, and/or have little LoS blockage, the KI + hidden stain are situational, and the Exposed is hardly scary against the most M1 killer in the entire game—if you can loop her while you’re exposed, you can loop her, period. Not to mention, it’s useless if the survivor is already injured.
The only zoning she’ll really have is after the buffs where she can pop a drone at a loop to gain a worse bloodlust, and even then, applying a bunch of haphazard chase buffs to an killer without an actual, proper chase tool is hardly a threatening zoning tool, especially when compared to real zoners like Nemesis, Demogorgon, Pyramid Head, Artist, Knight, Deathslinger—killers who can shut down entire loops in an instant with a single tap of the power button.
Everything she does, she does excessively poorly, and she does them in such a straightforwards way. The only inventive part of her power is incredibly clunky and is still very basic in practice as a result. She’s a very rigid, bland, shallow killer. I don’t see how you could even begin to put her in the same realm of versatility as Knight.
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Im putting them together because they're both just thrown into the same category: Boring 3 gen killers.
Most of what you're saying here about Knight is not even considered by the majority of people. He's also been a strong and complex killer yet many just viewed him as weak and boring. Which tbf, most people don't like playing control killers since the game is more fast paced and they're a bit more strategic, which not many people like
Skull Merchant falls into the exact same boat. Heavily misunderstood and carries a bad reputation because people refuse to learn new things. Is she strong? No, but she is far from the worst killer and far from just some basic M1 killer.
She might not be your taste, and I understand that. She's definitely meant to target a smaller demographic in terms of gameplay. But to me, she's just a few changes off from being perfect and those dev update changes are definitely a step in the right direction
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I don’t see how she can be anything other than the worst killer. Her power is stiff, inflexible, and insanely easy to counter, and even if survivors play into it, the effects it yields are extremely underwhelming. Her power gives her some information and a bit of stealth, but because her drones are so pitifully easy to either walk around or just disable outright, the only time the information aspect is going to work at all without survivors hacking drones and then willingly keeping their claw traps on all game is if you constantly keep the drones in areas survivors are guaranteed to go—which, in 95% of situations, means “on generators.” And the stealth is, well, I think I’ve said my piece on the stealth. Her power does very, very little beyond give her information, but it’s very easy to prevent that information from getting to her, and because it does so little beyond just giving her information, the information it gives her is not something she does a good job of capitalizing on at all.
Moreover, the single biggest reason I think she’s the worst killer in the game is because how easily she’s outclassed in every regard. It’s one thing to have everything you do be outclassed by another killer who specializes in it, but still be a good jack of all trades. However, it’s another thing entirely to have every single thing you could possibly do be outclassed by another LOW-TIER killer, which is the horrible pit Skull Merchant falls in.
Camping? Myers. Pig. Trickster.
Snowball? Myers. Trapper. Trickster.
Chase? If you want my honest take, literally any killer in the entire game. Skull Merchant has by far the worst chase. Maybe that’ll change with the buffs but I honestly don’t think so.
Area lockdown, defense, etc.? Trapper. Doctor.
Zoning? Trapper again. Doctor again.
Stealth? Any killer that has any kind of basekit Undetectable or Oblivious.
Tracking? Doctor.
Stall? Pig. Doctor.
Mobility? Freddy.
She just exerts such little agency over the match. I’m going to be entirely honest, I don’t even think Skull Merchant is a good 3-gen killer. She has maybe two tiddlywinks of stealth to occasionally jump someone on a gen, but other than that—no lethality to punish people who attack her 3-gen or even just get Eruption value, no mobility to constantly move between gens, no innate slowdown—no, she’s terrible at 3-genning. The issue I see is that her power is so incredibly easy to counter and so unrewarding even if it’s not countered that relying on 3-genning is the only hope Skull Merchant has to do anything. That doesn’t make her good at it, because she isn’t good at anything.
I can’t think of a single situation where Skull Merchant would be more viable, more interesting, or more fun than any other killer in any given scenario. The only reason I even remotely like playing Skull Merchant is because I’m a horrible masochist who likes being an M1 killer so an M1 killer whose power is dedicated almost entirely to tracking means lots of M1 killer chases, and EVEN THEN Legion has been scratching that itch since he came out in 2018. When he was 110.
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All this rationalization doesn't change the fact Knight is a boring ass killer with boring ass power that no one likes playing against.
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You’re absolutely right on the second part, couldn’t be more wrong on the first. Either way, though, not the point I’m trying to make.
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