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How do you fix "the skull Merchant"
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Hex affects the whole map
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Well what are you waiting for?
Suggest something even if it's simple ;)
There are people who have written good suggestions here
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So I guess skull merchant drones should cover whole map too. Nice idea.
You have two area effects and try to compare it with global effect.
Her drones are really like boon totems. You can remove them, but they will get back sooner or later :D
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She is nowhere as bad as Freddy.
I play her quite a lot, I enjoy playing m1 killers overall. She is not really weak killer.
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Her drones are her eyes in the sky right?
Her drones will be stationary. When a survivor enters the radius of a drone, two scenarios can unfold.
- The survivor runs away from the drone. The drone will follow the survivor at an x amount of speed. Skull Merchant will see the drone’s aura much like Nemesis sees his zombies around the map. Once an x amount of distance is created between the survivor and the drone it will become stationary again until the next survivor steps into its radius.
- You run at the drone and dismantle it. It will result in a claw trap. She can track you with her radar and it will give her haste (like currently in the game). The claw trap will not disappear until the survivor becomes injured. Her drone will be out of play until the claw trap disappears.
In both cases she will use them to track survivors. The exposed effect will be removed from the game.
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Yay, another change that makes her useless and survivors can ignore her drones.
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How is being tracked for most of the game useless? It’s like having build in Barbecue.
She isn’t viable in her current state because everyone DCs the moment they see her.
Also, would love to hear you solution. Feel free to contribute.
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Information perks are strong on killers who have power to end chase, or have high movement speed to use that information.
She is m1 killer, you think anyone would care that she sees them? M1 killer, I can see all survivors at once and I can do nothing about it.
We already ignore them while we are injured. Your change would just make everyone ignore them all the time.
Go play killer without using your power and just use multiple information perks. If it is that strong to have information, you should have no problem. That's simply not the case.
You will probably want to argue that she gets faster, sure do that experiment with clown using only yellow bottles. That works.
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At least I am offering sollutions. And in no way it is a final draft. You’re just here being sour and not adding any solution.
She currently also has nothing going for her except getting haste from claw traps. Or do you think putting down a drone at a loop is of much help?
So tell me…what antiloop power should she get in your opinion? Dying to hear about your ideas!
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I don't think there is need to change her in any major way. Why would I suggest anything? I will just say why your suggestions are bad or pointless.
She gets information, speed boost and can deny whole area for period of time. That's not really weak.
Her exposed status is big deal, you really really don't want to get that while healthy. She wouldn't work as a killer without it.
So on loops she can drop her drone and survivor have to leave that loop and most likely get injured. They can't stay there, or they get exposed. This wouldn't work with your change, at all. She can already see me, why would I care about her drone?
The hell you mean nothing going on? I can't tell if you want to buff her, but suck at it or nerf her and try to hide it as a buff....
She is one of best killers to use hex totems. Ruin, or Devour are kinda must have to make her effective.
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- Nobody plays her
- Everyone complains about her
- Everyone DCs or kills themselves on hook against her
- All Skull Merchants 3 gen because no other build is viable
And you’re claiming is this killer is fine as she is? Either you’re blind, deaf or seriously in denial. Thanks for making me laugh, you do have a sense of humor after all
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- I do (most killers are not played much anyway) Twins or Hag have way lower pick rate. So doesn't matter.
- Not really, people just have PTSD from her before changes and CoB nerfs.
- That's more of an issue of survivors. They do it against lot of killers.
- I don't, there are alternative builds. Most skull merchants I played against didn't. This is just lasting effect from CoB era.
Decide what is issue, is she too strong or too weak. You keep switching between those two all the time, you can't have both.
Noone plays her and she has nothing going on -> too weak
everybody complains and DC against her -> too strong/oppresive
Btw your points don't really work. If noone plays her, how can anyone DC against her, or how can they hold 3-gen without playing her?
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I think I have been pretty clear really. She is weak, underpowered. But once she 3-gens the game goes on forever which is boring as hell. So no one even wants to go there and just goes next asap. Her whole power needs to change. If my idea was “too weak” she can be buffed accordingly.
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It doesn't goes on forever tho. CoB made it last forever, but that whole build, each perk got huge nerf.
3-gen is not Skull merchant issue, I can get same effect with other killers. They said they are working on fix anyway, so even less skull merchant issue.
Her changes in midseason patch helped a lot for both sides, have you even tried to play her since then? I highly doubt it. I can send you some valid builds if you want.
So simply:
-she is not weak, far from that. There are way weaker killers that need help.
-3-gen is not Skull merchant issue and it's supposed to get fixed anyway.
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Well, I see you in many posts and even mine I see you criticizing
So what do you think of the suggestions of others here?
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Ok, I am going to read whole post just for you.
Just delete her
Yeah, that would help for sure... So original suggestion
Drop the Exposed condition from her power, it's not really adding much value.
they could keep the tracking utility and then you could give her a secondary chase oriented power directly or have her drones give her buffs with no delay or requirement like standing still so they can be more effective tools at a loop.
It's better idea than mca240's, because there is some attempt for valid compensation.
Exposed status as I explained earlier is big deal of power, she wouldn't work without it.
This idea would want to go with drones only tracking + speed boost and instead of exposed status give antiloop secondary power. Sure, that might work overall, but we have a lot of antiloop killers already and main issue is: too much work. BHVR will not do that major change on new killer.
Start end game collapse after 24 minutes and 59 seconds pass. Any remaining survivors will be killed by the entity and not count as kills for the killer.
That would fix hiding survivors too, so I don't see this as skull merchant idea. It might help against cheaters holding game hostage, because you would have exact time where each game had to end, so you could forcefully end it on server.
Great idea imo. Probably would increase it to at least 30, but that's just number change.
-Drones that exposes a Survivor loses it detection radius and will instead solely follow after the first or closest Survivor
-Drones that get hacked causes a cooldown before SM can put another one down.
-Giving SM remote control over her drones where it switch the FOV from SM over the drones
-Drones can no longer detect through multiple floors.
When survivor gets exposed drone follow them. Seems kinda like pointless change. Why not just get claw trap instead as survivor to deny her a drone completely? Seems complicated with little benefit to me. I don't think this is either nerf or buff.
Drones get hacked gives cooldown would be really annoying for skull merchant. It would help SWF, because they could deny her power when some survivor is in chase with her. I really don't like this idea. This wouldn't really prevent 3-gen holding, but it would hurt her while trying to chase other survivors, which is probably not what you want. Movement speed change on clawtrap was mode to help her chase survivors, this is doing opposite.
Remote control would be again too much work, we are going to have Singularity for that too, so kinda copy paste.
Drones can no longer detect through multiple floors. I really don't like that change. This allows you to be kinda inovative with your dron placement. It would get kinda brainless without it. When I play against her I always make calls what gens to get rid of first, because I know it's going to be pain to leave them into end game. If you have gen above basement, you have to get rid of it asap.
So summary -> those nerfs would hurt overall gameplay of skull merchant (feeling of playing her), but not really 3-gen. Those buffs are not realistic changes.
I can't be bothered on AssortedSorting' idea. Most of it is just bad or too complicated.
Genuinely, I think survivors need a way to take away drones more permanently.
Do I really have to explain why is it bad idea to let survivors deny killer's power?
You already can deny her power as long you have claw trap, but it gives her speed boost. I really liked that change. It's kinda trade off. I guess it would be fine to increase battery, if you don't like her drones. It wouldn't really hurt her.
No longer activate drones by distance, so she have to move if she wants to activate it
That's just stupid. You want to complain about 3-gen, but make her unable to leave 3-gen?
Remove the startup period for Undetectable, you just get it as soon as you enter a drone's radius. Given that it takes a few seconds for your terror radius to entirely shrink when you get Undetectable, I don't think that would be too strong.
I mean, sure. I don't really consider her stealth killer from start, her stealth is kinda weak on most maps. If you want to give her buff then sure, but I don't think it would change much. Stealth is not one of her strength. It can give you free hit, but it's not really reliable part of her power.
Well what about her perks?
Sucks.
THWACK! - shouldn't make you scream, it sucks that you get to know your aura was revealed.
Game Afoot - useless, impossible to save. You can create a meme build with it (rancor), but that's it.
Leverage - It's simply too limited and takes too long to get decent effect, there are way better perks for this.
So only thing that I would do:
Survivor with clawtrap is still unable to hack other drones, but it doesn't make drones active -> this is just little help to soloQ, but wouldn't hurt merchant that bad.
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That's a little unfair to my post, don't you think?
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That I gutted whole comment? Yeah, I know. I was just trying to focus on changes, not arguments.
I can see how it would make her more interesting to play for sure. I am not going to take away that.
As you said, stealth is not one of her strengths. It's just kinda there. Sometimes help, most of times useless.
Your change would help this aspect for sure, but it still wouldn't make her good stealth killer. Well, if you make her to linger stealth for 15 seconds, that would be massive for sure. First part is just QoL change imo.
Issue with focusing on stealth is that it's map dependent.
It wouldn't work at all with those suggestions to remove drones to work on multiple floors too... That's where stealth gets good.
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I didn't expect you to write all this
But I hope this post is useful
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Question for you, why shouldn't Survivors be able to hack drones with a Claw Trap on?
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How about a set number of drones that run out like pig hats? So the killer needs to plan and be more strategic with where they are placed? Maybe save a couple for end game, etc. Might cut down on matches being so tedious and long.
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So you could have one survivor deny all your drones.
SWF would have one player who would just run around the map and hack all drones. Kinda what they are supposed to do against Hag, Trapper, Ghostface.
There wouldn't really be any trade off. You would have only one source for speed boost and could see only one survivor. She would get way worse and basically lose her whole power against decent teams.
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It wouldn't really make sense for survivors to remove them in few seconds. Pig also have secondary power (antiloop + stealth).
And Pig is weak killer.
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Well, you asked for it...
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Nothing can be done with ehr current power without gutting her entirely or reworking her. Her core design is flawed, massive area control with exposure and info at once? nothing uncomplicated can be done to fix her.
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Her drones are her eye in the sky right?
When entering a drone’s radius it will stop being stationary. It will lock onto you. It will follow you at an x amount of your speed (like Nemesis’ zombies but slightly faster). The drone will stop following you, when and x amount of distance is created between the tracked survivor and the drone. It will become stationary again and emit a radius until the next survivor steps into the radius. You can also choose to run at the drone and disarm it resulting in a clawtrap like in the current game. In both instances she uses the drones to track you (when being followed by a drone, she can see the drone’s aura like a zombie or Victor). However, you will not loose the claw trap until you become injured. She retains her current speedboost, when a claw trap is in play. So you can choose to remove a drone from the playing field, but at a cost.
The current exposed status effect will be completely scrapped.
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give up quickly?
Others were able to suggest useful things here, and most of them weren't complicated
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What if by using the radar device, you make the drone move with it while the drone is in "Scouting Mode"
It will be great
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I mean, I have some cool rework Ideas that keep the core gameplay of area control. but by uncomplicated I thought you meant number tweaks/simple changes. Most of which wouldnt be able to solve her issues without either gutting her or reworking her wholly.
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I mean easy changes, even if you change a large part of the power, it is still easy
You are free to change the " power - perks - add-ons"
Anything related to the skull merchant
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That seems more like a flaw in the design of the claw trap, if there is no incentive not to continually have them attached while the skull merchant isn’t around.
Far as I’m concerned the drone becoming unhackable, especially to every survivor, if a claw trap enters the radius is a bandage fix for hacking a drone not really having any long-term consequences given the battery life of claw traps.
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I wouldn't make it that drone is unhackable for everyone, just for the survivor who has claw trap.
It's supposed to be trade off -> get rid of drone (area control), but merchant gets information + speed boost.
But that wouldn't work if one survivor could hack all drones.
Claw trap is kinda big deal for merchant. It can help her even when she is not close to you (info + speed bost) and if you get to chase with claw trap, she can kinda ignore pallets and force you to vault it, so it gets destroyed. You also can't mind game while having claw trap.
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As far as I understand, you see this killer as perfectly fine
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not perfect, as I said. I would let survivors hack drone even when there is survivor with claw trap nearby.
SWF usually don't care about it, but you can get screwed in soloQ by your teammate running in with claw trap.
Skull merchant wouldn't really be affected much by this change, but it would help soloQ.
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Significantly reduce the unhackable state of drones. It's WAY too long. And honestly it's the only problem?
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