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The Skull Merchant's Core Design Is Not A Failure (And Here's Why)
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and trapper is my favorite killer. he could have 30 traps at the start and he still wouldn't do much.
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Some of these you seem a little confused on.
There really isn't much I can say that hasn't already been explained regarding herding survivors into active drones. It works, I'd recommend you try it if you don't believe me, just be sure not to activate the drone too early.
If your stealth lingered for long enough that you don't have to be inside the drone's radius to be stealthy, why would the drones need to be so close to the generator that survivors are also inside the radius? On top of that, what about survivors that aren't on generators, because they're healing or taking care of something else?
For hard to reach places, the drones have a radius. Just because the survivors don't go down into the basement or up to the second floor means they never would walk into the shack or into the main building. Take a map like Ormond, for example. Survivors have plenty of reason to run into the main building because of how central it is, which means a trap in one of those two spots would give you information and would probably take longer to be disarmed. Without the threat of Exposed, more survivors would feel inclined to let the drone stay up, too, since it'd be a pretty noticeable time investment for not much immediate reward.
As for how to bait it, that's what makes it an RNG luck playstyle, as exist for other killers too. Heck, Haunted Grounds is pretty exclusively used in builds where you're banking on the right thing happening, as an example. But for how you'd actually do it, you'd put them in obvious locations, most likely. Survivors do hack drones, and I'm sure some teams would want to try and deny the SM her Haste and tracking when it's a low time investment.
Playstyles would be defined as the way you play the match. Your perks and your addons feed in to your playstyle, which is why totem defence is a playstyle; it's a way you're approaching the trial and something that affects your behaviour within it. It's how you approach the game, and how you use the tools you brought into it.
Now, I need to mention this, because it can't go without being acknowledged any longer: We're drifting away from the point here. The point is that Skull Merchant can do these things, not how useful you personally find them or whether you'd personally consider them a full playstyle. The point is that she has these tools available, and they prove that she doesn't need her power redone from the ground up to fix her current issues. That is the argument that is currently being discussed here, we shouldn't lose sight of it.
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Just because the main building is centralized does not mean they would go there, why would they?? What is there for them to do besides the generator or maybe looping the kiler there, and even if they went there the whole thing has like 5 entrances, I don't understand you at this point, to be at a specific location in the map you always have a reason, an objective like a generator, maybe a totem, maybe a chest whatever, but why would you go there when there is nothing to do? And if there is a generator, then you are camping a generator.
If survivors are healing or doing something else, they will sure as hell not do that right next to or in close proximity to a drone, unless they don't know what they are doing, because why would they take such an unnecessary risk?
You say they have plenty of reasons to run into the shack, give me reasons to go there outside of chase that do not involve the generator there? Because like I already said, there is no reason to be in an area when there is nothing to do.
Sure, but would you seriously go as far as to call haunted ground a playstyle?
"Deny her her tracking and speed" dude... if they see it, in an obvious position where it is easily avoidable to not go inside, why on earth would you remove it? That's my entire point, you have no benefit, and to remove her bonus 5% ms seriously, why ???? Those are terrible reasons and no semi decent player would remove a drone for those two.
It seems to me that some of those "playstyles" just require players to have no clue what they are doing:
- being in areas where there is nothing to do, outside of chase
- deactivating drones that serve no purpose since they are in the middle of nowhere or obviously placed not providing anything
- healing in terrible positions close to zones that provide undetectable and easy to sneak up on
- running into an area with a drone despite drones being easy to spot
For me those just seem like things more experienced players would not do, because they only provide unnecessary risks and give no benefit, and that's one of the many problems I have with this.
How would this prove anything? It once again just comes down to her being an area defense killer, nothing more. She creates risky zones around the map, just like trapper and hag ok, but how is this versatile? All the things that are not about constantly hovering around a specific part of the map just require players to have not clue what they are doing.
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I'm gonna try and condense my responses here a little bit:
Survivors go into places like the main building on Ormond because it's central and it's safe. You'd cut through it to get to other parts of the map, and there's a generator there. Again, I've already asked why it's a problem for drones to have generators in their radius if it's not a 3-gen area defence thing, and if there's no answer to that then using drones for information on top of generators too is perfectly fine. It's an option. You can also use this information/haste in chase, just because that isn't the sole intention doesn't mean it's mutually exclusive.
If the stealth is actually buffed, survivors don't need to be in super close proximity to the drone for you to take advantage of it. I feel like you're applying her current stealth to these hypotheticals.
Good survivors are going to know how powerful something like SM's Haste is, so wanting to turn it off is entirely reasonable. It'll come up to their judgement whether they think it's a good idea in the circumstance and if they can figure out what it is she's trying to use most. Using her Haste, using her stealth, or trying to lure you into traps? Disable it. Leaning on her claw traps? Leave it up.
It proves that she's not just a 3-gen machine and she can do things that aren't area defence, as I've been explaining.
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If they want to be in a safe spot, why would they be next to a drone? When they know that the drone can track them if they go in there or a killer might approach without heartbeat from the area the drone is placed in, when you just want to go through you can just run around it. It kind of contradicts itself to want to be somewhere safe when the location is riskier because of the drone.
Ormond is a huge map, so you would probably need to put your drones in somewhat close proximity to each other if you don't want to run across the entire map all the time when you spot something on your radar, ok let's say you use it to track people doing the main generator and then what? Maybe they just won't do the generator at all? Either you protect a generator at a crucial location, because it is needed for a 3 gen or to avoide a perfect 2 2 split on the opposite sides of the map. Either this generator is so important that you want to prevent them from doing it or they can just ignore the generator and go for others in different locations. This is the whole point of why her 3 gen power is an issue, either the survivors ignore the gen or they reeeeeally need to do it. Either you 3 gen or you have not much of a reason to put it there, because survivor might do the drone and just run off when you come because the map is huge like ormond and they can just run to the edges of the map.
Ok let's say she gets like the stealth lingers for 5 seconds, you see a drone like 20 m away, you're healing. The skull merchant could theoretically reach you with no terror radius, only this drone is in a radius of 35 m around you... So you just look into that direction bc if she wants to be stealthy she needs to come from there, or otherwise she will have a heartbeat. Now what? Her stealth is still way too predictable. Also she has only 4 drones, giving her more might make it possible to cover smaller maps too much, so there is a pretty high chance that you will get to a place on a medium sized map with no drone in a 40 m radius around you, if you are somewhat in the corner of the map.
Yeah sure 5% haste is good, and they might want to get rid of it, but only if it is in some crucial position, but then again, when you get rid of it, she almost instantly gets it back, so where is the benefit? My point is let's say you reach a certain tile that used to have a drone, she puts a new one up again, you either try to loop her despite her movementspeed or you try to leave the tile and find another one or you get hit. Disabling the drone only gives you so much time until she puts it up in the same place again. Yeah sure they need to decide to disarm it or not. But how is it a playstyle if all that happens is the survivor making an informed decision on what the best play for the current situation is. You as the killer are still not doing anything. The question for me would rather be how pallet heavy the map is and if it is ever worth it to take a claw trap since you instantly destroy dropped pallets by vaulting them.
You can state that this proves anything as long as you want, it just doesn't a dog does not become a cat just because you call it a cat. I just don't think any other playstyle even remotely works on her, her chase power is basically non existent.
Without changing the movementspeed bonus to something else she will probably always be something like knight/artist or worthless. Because either the movementspeed bonus is so significant that you will actually be able to reliably get a hit, or it will be so neglectable, that her chase power sucks.
At this point (when the movementspeed bonus is significant) it does not really matter if the drone is already at that spot or if she just put it up in no time, you are already in the Knight/Artist Scenario, you are either able to reach another tile or you get hit. The problem is this point does not really change whether you set the drone there earlier to chase someone into it or if you just set it now when you reached the tile. Mindlessly removing the drones doesn't help either because she can basically recall or replace them almost instantly. The worst part of her current kit is by removing the drones you also give her movementspeed. It is just lose lose for the survivors. If you remove a drone to avoid the movementspeed it grants her she just gets 3 % because of the clawtrap. There is just no reason to get rid of it for the movementspeed.
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See, again, we're getting way too far down into whether or not you think this killer is particularly good, or would want to use her. That isn't the bar, the bar is whether or not she is capable of doing these things and if her doing them would be problematic for the game. She is, and they wouldn't be.
You may not think setting up webs of drones and navigating between them would be all that fun or impactful, but there are plenty of people who would enjoy it. Ditto for trying to bait survivors into hacking drones to use claw traps, or for setting them up ahead of time as traps. Separately these would all be enjoyable killer designs for some players, and Skull Merchant has the benefit of (potentially) allowing players to do all three and more depending on what they want for that game.
Some of this also seems to showcase a bit of misunderstanding about how Skull Merchant works currently. Stuff like saying hacking a drone is meaningless because she can put it up again immediately, when hacking a drone actually takes away from her maximum placed drones until that claw trap is dealt with- not that impactful if she's 3-gennning, sure, but if she's trying to use all her drones in different spots to actually play actively, it's a pretty big deal.
At another stage you suggest the stealth only lingering for five seconds, which is only a three second buff from where it currently is - two second buff counting her with the stealth addon. That's hardly a buff that would make her stealth viable, so it's not exactly a surprise that the value you're using results in not thinking that her stealth would be particularly useful. What if it actually lingered for an amount of time that would be noticeable, even if only with addons? What if addons granted you undetectable for other actions, too? What if some imagination were put towards actually buffing the stealth?
As for survivors just choosing the right informed decision at the right time, and that being "you as the killer not doing anything", that's how other killers work too. Whether you like that or not is personal preference, but Plague seems pretty popular and that's how she's designed. Same for Legion, there's a right call for Legion that doesn't really change, but their power is still fun and popular because people just like using it. The same would be true for Skull Merchant's strategic planning and positioning, albeit less popular than Legion. That's not hard, though, Legion are among the most popular in the game.
(Not that popularity matters. Not every killer has to be a good fit for a large number of players.)
So, again, I'll state the most important part of this response: What matters isn't if you think this potential version of SM is strong or useful. What matters is if it's usable, and if it's problematic in the way her current version is.
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That's just so many if's and when's. Sure ok she is generally able of all that things so what? So are many more killers in the game if you change variables. If you just slap status effects on everything ofc almost every killer is able to do almost everything. Give trapper undetectable when someone disarms a trap, make freddys pools of blood far bigger and give aura read when someone steps in. Like that's what I said before, potential to be something is just soooooo far off when we talk about something like that. Let's take Knight: What if he had guards that just spot survivors for you? Or a stealth guard, that stalks similar to ghostface for a potential exposed and so on and so forth. If we are just talking about what could be then everything could be. It is not even something special at this point. That's still far too much that would need to change, she would be almost a completely different killer.
If the survivors all have claw traps on them she gets 7% extra movementspeed, thats more than enough to get a rather quick hit/down and since the claw trap lasts only for 45 seconds you will get them back on the fly unless all survivors just decide to get rid of your drones simultaniously, I still don't think it changes what I said before.
How much stealth do you want to give her and why even at this point? Lingering effects don't last that long for a reason, sure give her 1 minute of lingering stealth, that's just ridiculous 5 seconds is a lot considering how far she will go in that time, take a small map and you can probably traverse the entire map if you have 5 seconds, someone would need to do the math, but i would say even on a bigger map that should be enough to traverse without emitting a heartbeat. You get 23 m every single time you leave the drone radius so without even counting in the drone radius itself you are already at 4x23=92m ... Discordance has a range of 128 m and it basically covers the entire map, maybe a few maps are bigger I don't know exactly. But think about it, you could be in stealth around the entire map, with just 5 seconds, try it on Coaltower for example and you can probably almost reach the edges of the map with that stealth.
There are already other addons on killers that provide them with undetectable and I always think of them as a terrible choice just because it robs survivors of the chase, which is basically the most if not only fun thing about survivor gameplay, maybe besides goofing around with friends.
I find Legion a weird example, most people hat going against legion because it is nothing but mending simulator. Also the strategy against legion is pretty easy if you re not completely new to the game, don't heal unless you must and spread out. that's basically why some people complain that the killer does not have a power if they play right, same goes for Plague where they had to give her a fountain from the start so the survivors could not keep her power hostage for the entire game, both designs are problematic and not really good examples for your statement.
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I'm genuinely very confused on these points.
Sure, if you slap status effects on everything, etcetera etcetera, but you... don't have to do that. We've already gone over how these are all already parts of her power. This is already how her power works. There's no fundamental change involved, when we discuss these elements we're quite literally talking about number changes and addon tweaks. All those Knight examples would be changing how the guards work, which is not what we are discussing. We are discussing improving what is already there in the Skull Merchant's drones. It's not a change to her power or identity, this is already how she is designed.
To the stealth, sure, five seconds is longer than some would think, but considering it's stealth - IE, you won't be walking in a straight line, you'll be taking off angles and using line of sight blockers - it would need to be higher than five seconds. I'd probably spitball ten seconds as a good number for the basekit, with addons that can bump it up higher and such. The idea wouldn't be for her to be able to cross the map off one drone's stealth, but rather have enough time to both actually reach survivors, and walk between different drones to refresh the timer if she needs to.
As for Legion, whether people like playing against them or how difficult their counterplay is aren't really relevant. What's relevant is that they're very popular to play as, and they have obvious and straightforward counterplay. Some do think they don't have a power if people spread out... and they're very popular to play as all the same. They're not even bad at this point, those complaints are generally overblown, but that's a topic for a different thread, let's not get too far off topic. The point is, their counterplay is obvious, and yet they aren't a problematic design - just sometimes disliked based on personal preference.
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Honestly don't care too much about her 'core design'..but her visual design...........🤮🤮🤮🤮
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Yeah and so do addons on other killers Knight for example has an oblivious and an undetectable addon, this is already the case many killers have such addons and when we talk about what already is in addons, we might as well take those things into account, Skull Merchant also only gets bonus movementspeed via the drones through two purple addons as far as I know? My point is that many killers already have stealth or tracking addons integrated into their kit so skull merchant really is not something special. Freddy already has aura read addons when someone interacts with a dream pallet. Trapper has an aura read and a movementspeed addon, if we talk about potential in that sense then no matter how small the aspect of the kit is and how neglectably its part of the power in total is we can still call it potential right? And that's just how I feel about all those ifs and whens when it comes to skull merchant because all those small things are just so weak and not worth using currently almost comparable to those before mentioned addons. If this all is potential then basically every killer is very versatile in the same way as skull merchant.
I think the stealth should be enough to get closer but not to get so close that she can get a free hit or a gen grab. For that reason 5 seconds should be enough.
I don't know for worse players their counterplay is not obvious enough, which is why they often cleanse a lot or heal.
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No. Skull Merchant gets her stacking Haste for any survivor that is tracked on her little tracker pad, which includes both claw trapped survivors and survivors who are inside her drone's radius. There are two purple addons that give Haste (though afaik one of them, the Prototype Rotor, is still broken and doesn't work), but the idea that being in a drone gives the Merchant movement speed is basekit.
I think you might have gotten some wires crossed somewhere along the line. I did briefly bring up making addons basekit as a way of improving her basekit chase potential, but that has not been an ongoing thread in my arguments. Everything I have talked about aside from that (and aside from explicitly talking about addons being changed or improved) has been about improving what is already present in her basekit.
She has, basekit, stacking Haste, lingering Undetectable, and tracking. Those are not addon effects, though there are addons that improve them. They are a part of her basekit potential and relatively important to her kit's core design, insofar as those are the effects her AOE drones give her and therefore they're a part of her identity even if they aren't strictly necessary for the fundamental concept.
That is why she is a more versatile killer than most. Those things are all there regardless of what you bring into the trial, which means that with some tweaks and changes, she'd have the ability to utilise any of them more potently in dedicated builds. You don't have to bring a stealth addon to use her stealth, it's just there already, but you could bring addons that improve her stealth elements in a dedicated stealth build if you wanted to use that more than anything else.
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Yes ofc but earlier you were only referring to the purple addons, when you said removing the drone to get rid of her bonus movementspeed, which only makes sense when refering to the addon, bc by removing a drone you gain a clawtrap and therefore she gains bonusmovementspeed because you are now on her radar, so either we take that into account or we don't. But then it cannot be a reason as to why survivors would have a reason to get rid of drones. Which would mean we basically have almost no reason to remove drones again except for getting rid of her stealth areas.
Well in that sense maybe, but just because the idea is versatile does not mean the execution is good. I mean when we take for example Hag or Myers, their addons allow them different playstyles, I would like the idea if skull merchant. The amount of changes you would need for that, complete rework of her addos, changing numbers and interaction with drones and so much more, I still disagree that her core design is good. Maybe just the general idea about her in the widest sense, but that's all.
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It'd be for removing access to more than one person's movement speed. Give her the amount from the claw trap, prevent her from getting any more from multiple people in the radius. It also denies her info on more than one person, and would deny her stealth if that's what she's doing with it, or getting chase buffs if that's what she's doing with them.
Basically, there's already a few reasons to hack drones, and there'd only be more with the kind of changes I'm talking about. Relying on survivors choosing to would be a risk, but that's how some other killers like playing already, so it'd just be a niche strat.
Myers and Hag are good examples of the kind of versatility Skull Merchant almost has and could have if her 3-genning were weakened + everything else were buffed. You don't need that many changes to achieve that all- though I do agree she'd need an extensive addon overhaul either way. Her current crop are... fine, I guess, but they don't do a good job of supporting the versatility her kit has.
Though, it's worth mentioning that the difference between her and the two killers you mentioned is that her versatile builds wouldn't be locked away behind specific addons, they'd be supported by a few different addons, at least ideally. In my opinion, that's even better.
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I agree with you. To be honest I was super excited when I saw SM's kit. A killer who puts down AoE buff/debuff zones that are customizable sounded absolutely fantastic to me.
I don't think they need to remove Lock On entirely to fix things. For example, if it were changed to stack up if the Survivor is running and instantly go off if the Survivor does something that causes a loud noise. That would nerf its interaction with people on gens, but make it stronger in chase.
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Possible, though I'd be wary of it. I think the Lock On might be workable but it's already kind of incongruous with the rest of her kit and it's one of the things that makes it so problematic now, so I think removing it is probably safer.
I don't think it's required, though, the devs could definitely think of some ways to make it work. Yours seems like it's doable, though it'd naturally have to be tested.
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Yeah but you loose that ms once they step out of it whereas the claw trap speed stays for 45 seconds. People should split up anyway, so when more than one person is in a drone radius thats already a mistake on their side.
I guess it would be nice to not have it behind addons, but I don't see that with skull merchant anyway.
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The speed might've been the wrong element to highlight. It'd probably be smarter to remove the drones if she's trying to use their other effects, to be fair.
It's not that hard to see it happening with Skull Merchant, she's already halfway there.
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If they were to remove Lock On, they should replace it with some other sort of lethality and Addons to go with it.
She currently has some info, some lethality, some stealth, and some slowdown. Flat removing nearly all her lethality is a no go for me personally. Though I could see it getting replaced by a new buff like active drones giving her 15s of essentially 2-4 stacks of STBFL.
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