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Skull Merchant needs a complete rework

MarthaMEG03
MarthaMEG03 Member Posts: 14
edited April 2023 in Feedback and Suggestions

Since the release of The Tools of Torment chapter, playing against the Skull Merchant was bad and annoying, with the new patch to her power it has become unbearable and incredibly boring, I was stuck for 45 minutes (please, let that sink in: FORTY FIVE MINUTES) against a Skull Merchant that, since the beginning of the match, kept defending the 3 gen by replacing her drones and just hitting survivors (with Sloppy Butcher, of course) to chase them away so she could regressed the gen to 0 (Overcharge and Call of Brine might have been nerf, but when you can't touch the gen to keep it from regressing, you go back to square one).

This killer was design very badly and the constant changes BHVR has done to her are simply not working or making her incredibly powerful at just staying still inside her drones zone so she can insidious camp, guard a side of the map and create endless, frustrating matches. Some changes that I think might work into balancing the Skull Merchant might be:

  • Eliminate the speed boost she receives when a survivor hacks a drone, since hacking drones is NEEDED in order to do gens if they are within the drones range, so it doesn't make sense she receives a speed boost for free and the survivors are punished for it in chase or if they are trying to rescue a teammate. Her drones already have add-ons that help her gain a speed boosts, so why make her have speed as base kit?
  • Increase the distance at which the Skull Merchant can place drones apart from each other (maybe they need to be 32 meters to work), so there can't be a thigh net that survivors cannot surpass even if they want to and the Skull Merchant can replace as soon as she regains her drones.
  • Increase the time it takes for the Skull Merchant to get her drones back when the survivors loose their Claw Traps so she can't just spam new drones where a survivor just took one down (maybe a base kit of 15 seconds), in this way the Skull Merchant will have to think more strategically when and where to put these drones.
  • Give the Skull Merchant her Terror Radius back if she stays still for more than 10/15 seconds inside her drones active zone, this to prevent some sort of Insidious camping (without using the perk).
  • Make the hacking mini-game harder for survivors to complete, maybe add a time frame (which can be altered with some add-ons) in which a survivor can hack and, if the fail or don't finish it, they get exposed or hindered for a while and have their position reveal by Killer Instinct.
  • Change the drone's active zone so it can't reach basement, it can still encompass both floors in closed maps (like The Game or Midwich), but never the basement and make sure drones can't be placed close to the basement as well.
  • If a survivor with a Claw Trap or Exposed from being inside a drone's zone rescues a teammate from the hook or picks a teammate up from the ground, they loose the Exposed status effect and the Claw Trap deactivates instantly.
  • Make it that one of the four drones can become a trick drone, so that no matter if the survivor completes or not the mini game, they still get exposed.