http://dbd.game/killswitch
If You Think Skull Merchant's Design Is Unsalvageable...
...Tell me why! I see this sentiment a lot and would like to better understand the mindset behind it, so I'd like to hear about it. There's just one caveat/rule to explanations: DON'T mention 3-gens. Those exist as a problem outside of Skull Merchant and their fix would require changes outside of just her too, so they can't be used to explain why her design is fundamentally unworkable. They may be a problem she is currently involved in, but they aren't just her problem.
So, if you think her design is completely unworkable in a way that doesn't involve the holding of 3-gens, I'd love to hear your explanation of why. I'll be upfront about my bias: I don't think that she is that badly flawed at all, so I may have some counterarguments.
Let's keep this one civil, please. I'm engaging in good faith, I'd just like to understand the reasoning behind an opinion I disagree with.
Comments
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You said don't mention 3-gens but.... This is only problem about her.
I mean she is best 3-gens camper, the only reason i don't like her is that.
And if she don't camp gens, she have no power.
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I suspected this might be the overwhelming answer, but that's still a worthwhile one insofar as it helps me understand the opinion better.
I absolutely disagree, of course. She absolutely has a power without 3-gens, she has a surprising amount of variety in builds and application.
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Agreed. She can also camp/hold totems like no other.
Jokes aside I have had great success with playing her as a chase killer. I drop drones in the strongest spots of the map and go to work. The haste made all the difference in my games as SM. I have no issues with her. The 2 or 3 SM I played against played her the same why I do.
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Her entire kit revolves around locking down a decent sized area to prevent survivors from using that space, and she gains information about their location if they attempt to counter that or if they simply try to pass through.
At best, this ability forces a survivor to leave a loop mid chase. At worst, it can prevent an area up to 3 drones in diameter, and any area beyond that if used in a corner or in a building, from being a playable space.
No other area denial is nearly as strong, since even trapper or hag have considerably smaller activation areas, and there exists counter play to the traps that don't involve alerting the killer (crouch for hag, avoid for trapper). Skully's power is also the only one that works through floors on multi story maps, and can be activated by the killer at any time even if the survivor is being careful to avoid triggering it.
This kind of large area denial has very, very obvious implications for locking down objectives. You already know that because you don't want to acknowledge a 3 gen situation, but generators and totems are the two most glaringly obvious choices. The only thing that would be more appealing to cover would be a hooked survivor, but hooks in use are literally the only thing prevented from actively being in a drone radius.
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There's a pretty glaring flaw in this argument, though- that isn't her entire kit. It's half of her kit.
The other half is tracking and Haste from when survivors disable the drones, which is what makes her design actually workable if and when 3-gens are fixed. Like I said in another reply, she has a reasonable amount of variance in her kit; you can do trap drones that you chase survivors into, you can put drones in obvious areas to make more use of the Claw Traps, you hypothetically should be able to try and use the drones for stealth, you can defend totems... there's a lot you can do with her power.
I do appreciate your response, though. Even if I disagree, understanding the argument was the goal here.
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3 gens -are- a thing outside of SM sure, but her kit makes her far better than most other killers in camping them, and that's the issue with her.
Also, what else can they do to combat 3-gens in general? They can make gens spawn further away from each other but with 7 gens that need to spawn there just isn't enough space on many maps to make sure they're all far enough from each other. You could make maps larger but that creates a whole host of other problems for low mobility killers.
And even if they DID somehow make gens spawn further apart, SM could still 3-gen really well because her drones are just THAT good at it.
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Admittedly, I have no idea how they'll fix the 3-gen problem. I'm not a game designer so my ability to design solutions is limited, and this is a pretty sticky problem to be sure. All I know is that adjusting SM without adjusting anything else only means the players who want to hold matches hostage move on to a different killer to do it with.
That's a little besides the point, though. The point is that I've seen people say that her design at its core is fundamentally broken and cannot be made to work, and that is what I'm asking for clarification on. The topic of 3-gens aside, Skull Merchant's power design has a fair amount of application, at least in theory- I want to know why people would disagree with me on that.
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Her power is to lock down areas.
She either defends 3-gens or defends totems. Neither of which are engaging gameplay.
She's the only Killer that routinely takes matches hostage and hee power allows her to do so.
However, without her 3-gen, she's completely unplayable. She's exceedingly weak and she has zero redeeming qualities.
The game would legitimately be in a better spot if she was removed.
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That's like saying "don't mention camping!" when discussing ways to improve Bubba.
Skull Merchant's power is perfectly suited for defending 3 gens. You can't place drones over hooks, so gens are they only viable use for them. This means that optimising her playstyle means optimising your gen defence, which means targeting and establishing 3 gen set ups.
To not 3 gen as Skull Merchant would be to not look for cover as Ghostface, or to avoid open areas as Huntress.
Now 3-genning is an entirely valid killer tactic, it's a way to outplay your opponent, but Skull Merchant is simply so good at it as to become oppressive, just like Bubba is with camping. What makes her 'unsalvageable' is that the only way to nerf this aspect of her, would mean a general nerf to her power overall. Bubba at least could be salvaged by having a 'proximity to the hook' debuff or disabling of his power, but you can't simply nerf her drones when they're 'close to a gen' because that's the entire purpose of her power, she becomes useless if you can't place drones over gens.
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What about her chase builds, or using her drones for information gathering more than the Exposed effect? What about the fact that her power's design means that she could use her drones for stealth purposes, with a few number tweaks?
That's kind of my issue here. I've seen people say that she's only good for 3-genning but that's literally not accurate? Don't get me wrong, she's not the strongest killer around at any of those things, but the conversation is about her core design rather than her literal balance numbers. I don't think that's pedantic, either, your conclusion here - that she should be removed - rests on this idea that she cannot and could not do anything else, but since she can and could, the better conclusion would be that the 3-gen problem in general should be addressed and her other elements should be buffed.
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Her design is basically to be really strong at holding a location down and requiring the survivors to spend time to counter it, while also making themselves more vulnerable while doing so. This strength is counterbalanced by the fact that's she is pretty weak in chase since her drones don't really do much for her besides forcing healthy survivors out of really strong loops. Her Haste from losing drones helps slightly but not enough against strong loopers.
The issue is that holding a single area down and requiring a time investment to get rid of that basically makes 3-genning a no-brainer. Even if you don't want to play around a 3-gen as SM, you should still put drones next to gens because the slowdown from forcing a survivor get rid of it is just so much more value than putting it anywhere else. It doesn't take a massive time investment to dismantle one, true, but you can only dismantle a single one and then have to wait out a timer before doing another, forcing other survivors to also be active in disarming them, which automatically makes this less likely to happen in solo queue.
Also if multiple survivors ARE dismantling them, that's when her Haste starts to stack up, and paired with all the info from her traps, then makes her actually serviceable in chase... buuuut it's still easier to just patrol a 3-gen. You wont be able to drone every single one but you can use what drones you -do- have, if any, and use gen-kicking perks and your trap-locator info to last you until your drones come back.
It's tricky for sure, you need to weaken her drones next to gens but also strengthen them for use in chase.
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It literally is, yes. When talking about the core design of Leatherface, and what problems his core design has, it is absolutely appropriate to take facecamping off the table because it's a problem that exists outside of him and is not inherent to his core design. It doesn't mean his facecamping issue doesn't exist, it obviously does, but you wouldn't say that Bubba is a lost cause and the game would be better off if he were deleted because of it - and if you did see multiple people saying that, it'd be appropriate to try and start a dialogue with that taken out of the equation to better understand if those people had a point.
I appreciate your runwdown. I've mentioned a few things I disagree with there already, but I am legitimately happy to hear the arguments in more depth, even if I think they're wrong.
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She would require a fundamental power change, on the level of Freddy, which is basically removing her from the game.
sure, you COULD play her in a non-optimal way. That's like never using Ghostface's NightShroud or only using Bubba's saw to break pallets. It's clearly not the intended way to play and it's not how most people play them.
If you buff ANY aspect of her kit, it'll buff her 3-gen.
Make Exposed last longer? More time off gens, better 3-gen. Make it take less time to become Exposed? Less time on gens, better 3-gen. Make stealth last longer? Better 3-gen and easier chases.
At BEST right now, she can be played as a worse Knight, who himself is a worse Artist. Place Drone at loop, Survivor must leave loop, repeat.
She should be reworked completely so we can forget about this pathetic excuse for a Killer design.
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I can't speak for the developers, of course, but I do kind of feel like she wouldn't have all those elements to her kit if you were only supposed to use the Exposed and the stall from people disabling the drones. Right? Like, she wouldn't have stealth, she wouldn't have information, she wouldn't have haste or pallet breaking... so I really think it's deeply misguided to say that playing Skull Merchant for chase, information, or stealth is equivalent to purposefully not using elements of another killer's power. They are part of her power, and they must therefore be intended. How strong they are is a separate issue.
Yes, if you JUST buff her, it'll buff her 3-gen. However, the 3-gen problem needs to be addressed anyway, even if Skull Merchant were removed from the game, which is why I recommended doing BOTH of those things.
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I do disagree that makes her a 'write off'. I edited my post to expand my argument, and I only used 'unsalvageable' in quotes as that's the term you used. I would say 'difficult to balance' is a perfectly fine description. She's perfectly serviceable IF players don't 3 gen, just as Bubba is perfectly serviceable IF they don't camp. But I do think 'not 3 genning' as SM is much less likely.
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I don't consider the tracking and haste to be 'half' of her kit because they only occur when survivors interact with drones or are in an active drone area.
If SM places the drones at the corner of the map, or never drops them at all, the haste and tracking can never activate. You can only gain those benefits from 'good' drone placement...
Which again, 'good' drone placement requires covering specific objectives like totems or gens. So we're back to the same map coverage problem again.
Now I do think it would be interesting to have her power do something else, like maybe a much shorter drone area, but the drone is only active for a short time, and will follow the survivor that crosses it's vision. That leans into the tracking aspect, and chase assistance, without being a lockdown ability. But even that's a decent sized overhaul/rework to her kit.
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This is like saying Corrupt Purge isn't 'half' of The Plague's kit, because survivors could not cleanse or Plague could not use Vile Purge.
They function in a similar way in that survivors interacting with their power provide a 'compensatory' effect to the killer. If you're playing the killer well, you're using their power, and if you're playing survivor well, you're countering and interacting with that power.
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When I play Skull Merchant, it feels like I'm going through the motions until one side gives up. Killing by numbers for lack of a better term. I think it is due to minimal skill expression in her kit.
I highly doubt number tweaks or even base game changes could address this.
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I use her kit as a weird mind-game. She has two add-ons I completely forgot the names of that +5% hinder the survivors but gives her like +2% movement speed or something. I use her as a form of area denial.
Here is how she can curbstomp Most super annoying tile sets, (I’ll use the house in Haddonfield as my explanation) don’t put her drones over gens, use them in awkward places that can fundamentally force survivors into the open. My strategy is Myers House, Basement House, and far left Corner past the Myers house. Just by putting your drones in those locations you can either force survivors away from those gyms or force them to be exposed. The add-ons help with the chase and the undetectable effect she gets will causes survivors to usually go for the closest vault to you. Always having one to deny pallet loops is also useful, it’s a faster version of how you scare people away as trapper.
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Personally, I don't think Drones should be disabled over hooks. It's not exactly an uncounterable situation, you can either run in and rescue faster than the Drone can expose you, or you can disable the Drone first and then rescue immediately after. The only way it could be 'abused' by the SM is via the 'free Insidious' effect it would give her. Even then, she won't necessarily be able to one-hit down you (so still much better than Bubba) and with the new anti-camping mechanics due to be tested, would be shooting herself in the foot anyway.
This would give her more viable ways to express her power, dividing her attention between gens and hooks, so 3 gens would be a less all-consuming aspect of her playstyle.
Also, disabling the drone before you rescue your team mate would serve as a decent anti-tunnelling mechanic, as she would be directed to the survivor who performed the rescue rather than the one who was rescued.
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That's an interesting analogy. Though I'd equate the SM tracking to the broken status, not corrupt purge in this case.
With both killers, you want to cover objectives to get maximum benefit, ideally totems, gens, maybe even strong loops.
If survivors interact with your power in any way you get information (tracking/sickness) and if they work through your power they become broken for plague and either exposed or tracked by SM.
So you're right, in this case the survivor interaction would be the haste/corrupt purge. I guess I consider the tradeoff to be stronger for SM: the obvious choice is to allow haste rather than be exposed almost always, where with the plague it's always a very situational choice to stay broken or cleanse.
I still hesitate to call it a full 'half' of the power, but you've made a good point that the haste is a separate 'part'.
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Her design is too easy to either make extremely problematic or basically non-existent.
Skull Merchant has amazing tracking in wide areas of effect, but if you don't place your drones in places where survivors absolutely have to go through them or disarm they will path around the field even if it is a slightly longer travel to where they want to go. Her stealth and haste are nice, but the haste requires survivors to disarm the drone and in my games people will not disarm them unless I drop them near something need to do most times. So most of the time I don't have haste buff. The stealth is a bit a lacking due to not kicking in immediately upon entering a drone field. She also sort of lacks the innate tools of a true stealth killer and her very readable design sort of counteracts her stealth value. You have to rely on a lot of perk assistance to really drive your stealth.
She has the entire lock on exposed gimmick that I've maybe had go off 5 times as intended? Drones force people to leave loops and focus solely on chaining tiles, but that is to the survivors' benefit as she actually doesn't pose anymore of a threat than trapper if you're just chaining tiles rather than trying to hard loop. So it really doesn't do much good for her as often by the time someone is finally locked on they are also already injured so exposed means nothing to them. Her status as an m1 killer gives her maximum perk synergy, but I would say that doesn't really mean as much these ever since the decision to make a lot of basic attack reliant perks just function with health state loss of any means.
Her flat mobility also harms the value of her long distance tracking. Speed is a big factor in this game and she's just average which is better than being 110% or a walking nurse, but average in the current game state isn't as good as it used to be. She's got the info, but not the power to truly capitalize on if she's being proactive about patrols and chases rather than being extremely territorial.
Skull Merchant's design is current lots of little powers that aren't fleshed out enough or complimentary enough to feel truly useful. You can defend totems or gens the best, but if you don't want to be a defensive territorial player like that you have to put out more effort for less overall benefit. It often feels like her power is to give the survivors an extra minigame with the same level of investment as a glyph challenge. It feels like her design is just very confused on what it wants to be? Is she a hunter with superior tracking abilities? Or is she a stealthy assassin who you never quite know their coming? Or maybe she a stalking killer who takes people down instantly?
Any of these are fine, but she can't do all of them well and trying means she does none of these well which means she becomes a defensive mess. She needs to have one main aspect polished and complimented so she can be the best at it.
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I'd pose that her ability to find 3 generators close together at the start and then be able to stand there with a power strong enough to hold a game hostage by simply waiting right at the start is her problem wholly.
I do not believe 3-gens is a problem that is shared by other killers. Some killers are better at protecting generators than others, such as Knight, Hag or Trapper, but they all have counterplay and even the Knight is not as strong as claimed. The Skull Merchant has the ability to create an impossible set up with a power that only excels in this one field. Other than using a drone to remove a tile she has nothing else of value.
Her power is the only power which allows a game to be held hostage without being punishable, because her holding a game hostage is protected under her power. This is why she is fundamentally the most unhealthy killer around.
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Define unsalvageable. Nothing is unsalvageable, if you put in enough work. The question is how much are you willing to invest in something, that is never going to be good unless you change pretty much everything about it.
Starting with her lore, I think they just put everything they could think of into it without really considering how it all would fit together. And the result is a lackluster back story with a million details that feel redundant and just thrown in there. Why couldn't they focus on her as an evil, selfish and highly ambitious business woman, willing to do anything to reach her goals? Or lean more into her psychotic side and focus on her gradually becoming more obessed with hunting and killing her prey.
Her visual and sound design. I think BHVR have a really great team when it comes visual and sound design but in the case of Skull Merchant? Boy, did they drop the ball. She isn't intimidating in the least and her shiny mask doesn't fit here attire, that looks more like what a mercenary would wear. Apart from that, her weapon is a huge metal claw attached to a robotic exoskeleton arm, that looks way too heavy for her to carry. Her mask could be real intimidating, if it didn't look like something, that a snotty rich girl would buy with daddy's credit card (seriously, why so shiny?). Watching her walk is probably the weirdest thing in DBD. It looks awful. This is not how women walk! This is also not helped by her rather reveiling skins. I appreciate reveiling outfit as much as the next person but really you're gonna have a hard time scaring me while running around half naked (without any deformations or body horror).
Her sound design is boring, uninspired and overall miles away from what they usually do. A 3 second loop for a chase music and these annoying beeping sounds for her drones do not help the case. The normal drone sounds are just as bad.
Her power consists of a million little things just like everything else about her. An ability to track survivors, a side objective, area control, an exposed mechanic, a possible speed boost to make her impossible to loop and a stealth that's not really a stealth. It all was just thrown in there and mixed until it would technically work and you really feel it. I tried playing her without the obnoxious 3-gen strat but really it doesn't work. There is simply nothing that ties her abilities together outside of gen camping. Why would a survivor ever deactivate a drone that's next to a gen they need to repair and why would a survivor not leave the moment Skull Merchant puts up a drone in a loop?
And for the love of the entity don't get me started on what's wrong playing against her. I'd rather sit through 5 hours of calculus lectures in a language I don't understand than play 1 match against her.
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What would you say is the reason for Skull Merchant being a better 3-gen machine than Knight?
From my view, it'd be the other way around. SM may provide some moderate pressure to encourage survivors to take care of something before they start repairing, but the Knight's power - if a guard is set to loop near a generator - actively forces them not to, because otherwise it's guaranteed damage/a guaranteed down. SM can pressure one generator at once, Knight can pressure two. SM may have information about which generators are being worked on, but Knight has far more firepower to actually do something about it.
What am I missing? I'm legitimately curious what you mean here.
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It's the ability to lock down 3 gens. That is the design flaw. Yes, she is better at it than any other killer. No other killer passively exposes survivors through floors with a stealth ability on top of it. That renders multi-floor building gens un-repairable. The only other killers that can turn a 3 gen into a 2 gen are Nurse and Hag, and both have major tells that they're coming and don't instadown.
The TTD (time to ****) has to be considered when a killer is being designed. Yes, there are other ways to play Skull Merchant. She can work as a chase oriented killer. But you have to factor in 20% of killers using that power in the most skill-less way possible that lets them win games. And then you have to decide whether that method belongs in the game. I don't think 20-30 minute 3 gen lockdown games belong in DbD.
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With the Knight, he can't simply set up a patrol then leave with it keeping a constant guard. They finish the patrol after a short period of time, and he cannot have a patrol on every gen at once. The patrol has to cover the distance.
The Skull Merchant pops a drone over the three closest gens and within each radius, she is undetectable, faster and can make you exposed for an excessive amount of time. If a drone is hacked, a couple of seconds and another is up.
She has instant coverage over a large area with significant buffs to her and a quick set up time. The Knight has one patrol that has to cover the ground between gens, he gains no significant buffs to the patrol and takes longer to set up. Plus, the patrols can be better countered with teamwork.
in regards to your argument, she effectively covers all three because of the drones. The speed boost, undetectability and exposed factor makes her a far better defender than the Knight who has to set up the patrol and once it's gone has to repeat the process and choose a time to when not chasing or defending against survivors. The setup is far longer than the Skull Merchant clicking a button.
This also is why she has more firepower. She is instant, fast and has a number of power increases with long-lasting effects. The Knight has an AI patrol which normally needs to be used with the Knight to create a pincer attack to down survivors. Also, that exposed status is too long, meaning survivors cannot safely return for a while. Defeating a patrol is faster and the Knight cannot use another patrol until that one is cancelled.
Honestly, the Knight is tough in defending gens, but he is also beatable. The Skull Merchant played by someone half decent is nigh-on impossible unless you have voice comms and a strong team. No killer should be so strong that voice comms is a must.
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You'd think that, but SM doesn't exactly scream intelligent design. Pretty much everything about her is pretty poor quality, so it seems like they kinda just threw things together. Regardless, none of her other "powers" work unless she puts Drones on areas that Survivors NEED to disable them. She doesn't get value from stealth, she doesn't get value from Haste, she doesn't get Exposed or tracking UNLESS Survivors are in her Drone AoE or disable the Drone, which they'd have no reason to do if you place them at random loops.
Here's the issue. No other Killer wins the time war against Survivors in a 3-gen (without hooking) EXCEPT Dull Merchant. Knight doesn't, not after Eruption and Overbrine got nerfed. Hag and Trapper don't.
Skull Merchant Drone's guarantee her value out of Overcharge and CoB. She even has add-ons to make that skill check even more difficult. Do you have ANY clue how many Skull Merchant's win just by holding 3-gens until people give up? It's probably the same ratio as camping versus non-camping Bubba's.
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I think one change that could remedy the 3-gen issue (which you really cannot get around, it sits at the core of her flawed gameplay design and who knows how many years it will still take for BHVR to do anything about this as a general issue, and what that will look like) would be to make it so that while a survivor is working on a gen, their lock-on meter doesn't fill. This would make it so that drones are not able to defend gens with their mere presence, but the killer would still benefit from droning gens due to the stealth and tracking they provide. As a trade-off, they could make it so that the lock-on meter doesn't regress, until the survivor gets downed or hacks a drone. Survivors would then have to be careful to manage their meters, and still be obligated to hack drones. It would also improve the utility of drones in chases, as you could then build up the meter in chase reliably. The Exposed timer should not reset when entering a drone zone though, that's already a bit ridiculous and would only be even more so then. But it could be paused for the duration of being inside a drone zone.
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