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SM somehow never beats the reputation
I have yet to go against a SM that isn't either the most toxic or stuck in the past 3 genning. I know so many people defend her to the point that I always try in a match now because of it. The issue is like today I have gotten this SM 3 times today, each time she hits everyone on hook until they unhook themselves cause of anti camp… then slugs them tunnels until DC or they give up. I didn't give up.. I gave her a chase the last time that maxed boldness early on… therefore I was bled out.
I absolutely do have a problem with her kit being way overtuned in the most boring ways, but it is absolutely not the character that's the issue for me anymore. it's her players.
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Is there any point in 3 genning with SM?
It's not like they can place down drones near gen and it will work, on top of that it is extremely easy to just disable it too, no penalty
What's so "overtuned" about her? genuinely curious
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yeah and the worst part is her player base does this on purpose. They know she’s hated so they use that to their advantage
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Personally, I think this is at least partially a feedback loop.
If you're guaranteed to get hate and animosity (+ ruined games from people giving up) regardless of what you do while playing Skull Merchant, many "normal" players are just not going to play her because they don't want those reactions and they do want to actually play the game. More troll-inclined players, though, are gonna pick her because they do want those reactions and they don't particularly care about actually playing the game. Over time you get fewer "normal" players and more players like this, because those players are reinforced and the "normal" players are discouraged.
Hard problem to fix, honestly. It'll require the wider community changing their attitude as much as any changes to the killer itself.
Also, based map user, hell yeah.
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Good point. The community has no reason to change their attitude though. Her power is already horrible to play against but with toxic people playing her on top of it? Yeah, that's only going to make matters worse.
The only short term solution I can see is a complete and utter rework of everything that makes this killer. A new name, new power, new lore, new visuals, new sound design and new animations. This is not going to happen though, so we're kind of stuck with a killer that so many of us hate.
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I think most of the people who play her are stuck in a cycle of “toxicity” because they’re are constantly having to deal with toxic survivors match after match, survivors have always hated her, they’re going to be toxic time and time again. Deal with it enough she will too. It’s crappy but it’s true.
I play her casually, and I can honestly and genuinely say there isn’t one single match I don’t go into without getting teabagged and pointed at first by survivors. It doesn’t matter if I play nice. They see that I’m playing this killer and automatically get toxic. I don’t get the opportunity of the benefit of the doubt and quite frankly I don’t care.Second note - She’s far from over-tuned….She has to walk all the way to the other side of the map to replace the drone. Lots of time wasted. Plus it’s hard to see from a distance if the drone was hacked or not.
There’s still a cooldown on drones with her undetectable. It also doesn’t last long.
She’s B tier at best.
If you stand still completely don’t get scanned.If you’re crouched you don’t get scanned.
drones can be hacked for 45 seconds. (Like I said before she has to walk across the map to put it back. Big time waster)
they provide far less intel than before.
they don’t expose you anymore
she can’t manually activate them anymore for intel on demand.
she can’t 3 gen well with them anymore by if you’re not moving on a drone nothing happens
It’s easier than ever to counter her. People just choose not to. Not her fault.
Is she perfect by design, no. What killer is?What would you suggest that’s reasonable that she should have? I’m all for bringing back Skull Merchant 1.0. FR.
She’s literally an M1. Claw traps in SM 1.0 were way easier to apply. (Not saying in 2.0 they’re not)
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And honestly. It is mostly the devs fault, not the community. They are the ones who are waiting too long to do anything. And when they do something, its still pretty bad. We already seen it with many other killer reworks. And the most recent wiith a negative feedback being twins if they dont change her from how powerful she is from ptb
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I've heard how so many SM mains are frustrated because many survs just DC instantly when they play against her. So I will always try and stick around in the game. But yeah, most of the time it's an awful experience and it gets more tempting to move on each time. Had a match yesterday or the day before against a TTV SM who was slugging for the 4k between me and 1 other survivor. I ended up bleeding out with no hooks at all. Really felt awful. Definitely doesn't help their reputation, it was a painful match for sure.
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Yeah that’s no fun :/
She might be really hated but no where near how much legion was hated when he came to the game lol1 -
I'd actually say she's significantly more hated. Both in vehemence and totality of population.
I was, uh, "privileged" enough to play extensively against original Legion. He was cheeks to play against, for sure an eptiome of bad marketing and design but SM eclipsed them in pretty much every way.
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What are they supposed to do? How is this on the devs and not the playerbase that has decided to just fight like a bunch of kids? How do they fix this, in your eyes? Reworking SM doesn't fix anything—her current design isn't the issue! Her current design is fine, it's just that nobody plays around her normally.
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That’s fair! 😁
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There'sa movement right now where console killers are only playing SM until console gets mkb support. They want to get noticed and talked about so maybe some think toxicity is what will accomplish that.
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Yes. There is a point to 3 genning with the current SM its what she still excels at.
They cannot disable your drones safely when you are holding a 3 gen and assuming you take chase from the right directions zoning players into already placed drones they will get tagged at least 2 times from there you can drop chase or down them if the tags push them into being claw trapped as they get hindered and won't gain enough distance to get away from the 3 gen then proc surge on your 3 gen, hook said player in your 3 gen then pop if its worth doing (normally you just hook the player in your 3 gen then proxy camp) Assuming you don't make a mistake you WILL win if the survivers are not an swf or denying a 3 gen at 5 gens.
It could not be played against she is one of the best 3 gen killers in the game still you just put all your drones between gens or just on the outside of where the gens are hears a MS Paint Illustration
Key Red squares are gens
Black Circles are a bad attempt to show drone radius
Black edge of map border attempt
That's kinda how you roughly set yourself up. Do overcommit to chases southward in map for example try to hook it to your 3 gen if they start burning pallets in a good 3 gen location early commit to doing it early.
It's awful to play against but it's what SM is still good at.
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She's an attractive choice for people purposely looking to make sure other people have a miserable time
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So basically worse trapper I guess
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What are they supposed to do? That's not for me to decide. We have too many posts already on here about adjusting her powers. More so than any killer(with the exception of twins of course). Its up to the devs to listen to that feedback otherwise we will continue to see more posts about her like always, ppl giving up more easily, blah blah yada yada. Same thing over again.
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By your own admission, though, this requires her just harassing survivors away while building up Lock On stacks. While she's doing that, she's not actually gaining anything, and the survivors are gaining objective progress that she has limited ability to stall since she's reduced to dry kicks - which she only has eight of, nowadays.
Compare that to other killers, for whom the initial approach - the time where Skull Merchant's only getting a single stack of Lock On before needing to return to the patrol - could actually be an injure or a down, without any need for patiently building up their power at all. A killer like Bubba or Billy could threaten an instadown in scenarios where Merchant has to be content with a single scan, a killer like Knight or Artist could effectively pressure two gens at once while Merchant can only pressure one, a killer like Huntress or even Deathslinger to a degree doesn't even need to approach fully to begin with while Merchant has to physically walk over to the survivor she wants to pressure…
What's being described here isn't excelling at 3-genning, it's just having some interaction with 3-genning, and not even a particularly strong one compared to other killers. Sure, it'll beat the average disorganised team, but what killer wouldn't be able to beat them in this scenario?
If we assume that multiple survivors are alive (because any less than three and it doesn't matter, the killer wins anyway) and that those survivors are actually sticking on generators (because teams that don't do the objective don't win, that's obvious), then Merchant is like… middle of the pack at best when it comes to leveraging 3-gens, and that's only if she's trying to win. She's lost her ability to stall matches out for fifty minutes entirely.
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It is strong. Way better than anything A trapper can do for one…..
you won't spend the whole game just harassing survivors you will get hits (bear in mind you can still proc undetectable whenever you want you as are not using all your drones all the time even in the example there is one spare) when you can down along the way its just when someone does inevitably get claw trapped either trying to disable a drone or running through a drone they will go down or to avoid that they will have to gift you hits with their pathing, and any down that you get from a claw trap into a down is going to be so close to your 3 gen that you will be able to proxy camp them in the middle of your drones and gens so any unhooker will likely be trading if you didnt need to pain res and could choose your hook. Anyone outside of a SWF that cannot communicate with their teammates will just lose.
When I play SM and I want to be as ruthless as possible with this "play style"
Discordance (so they cannot stack a gen in my 3 gen without me knowing)
Pain Res (its faster to proc that POP 9/10 times so if you ever have a scourge hook nearby it will allow you to keep your 3 gen easier than pop)
Surge (because you are downing people generally near gens)
Deadlock (In reality most of the time you get 3-4 gens that can be played as a 3 gen and 2 not being able to pop in quick succession with pain res lets me very rarely not be able to force a 3 gen without needing to just rotate around 3 gens at the start of the map when 5 need to be completed)
I refer to the build as the fun police skull merchant.
This is a DBD warcrime.
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Nothing really to add to the discussion other than to say any Skull Merchant's I've seen have tended to be pretty cool when you actually play the game normally against them... there have been a few who have let the 2 of us remaining after DCs complete all the gens and leave, in exchange for killing the bots and farming hooks. That said not played against a sweaty SM much... I'm in EU... maybe its a region thing.
Honestly I had way more fun as Skull Merchant taking a dumb vault and pallet break build like this: -
- Fire Up
- Bamboozle
- Brutal Strength
- Superior Anatomy
I would then throw up my drones only near gens and to stealth. I banned myself from throwing drones up at tiles and always played the tile with normal m1 mind games.
I was still winning most of my games, and I'm basically playing as a worse Trapper... so I don't even know what's happening anymore. That said I think people had a lot more fun... I like to think I'm changing peoples perception 1 match at a time. 😏
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Agreed. The most Skull Merchants I encounter are completely obnoxious and it further confirms my suspicion that people play her to be annoying. This is also accomplished by the fact that most Skull Merchants I see are anon.
Yesterday the Skull Merchant I faced went to Midwich and had Third Seal, Sloppy Butcher and Knockout. Obviously we were bled out. So yeah, such a nice person, must be amazing to be around.
(Funny thing was there was a Cheater in this game, would be Karma if this Skull Merchant got hold hostage…)
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How much of that feedback is even remotely valuable, given it's almost all poisoned well "delete/replace the whole killer" drivel? How can it be largely or entirely on them when there's not even a concrete, definable issue with the power, not even a main point to address? Her power isn't really over-complicated beyond the description reading poorly.
SM is absolutely a community issue—People will forever refuse to do anything to learn the matchup or appreciate SM for what is there because the teaser made them want a cyborg (that they got next chapter anyway!) and there simply isn't any way BHVR could even BEGIN to fix that.
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To be fair her previous design would be fine too today currently. You’re also right though, the community is being a bit immature about her I would agree. It’s a hot mess. I’m not sure personally what the solution is but I am sure it’ll work itself out
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I don't even give them the benefit of the doubt anymore and while I cant advocate DCing or going next, you can certainly play with zero regard for your self preservation to get you to the next match ASAP.
Trouble is the toxic trolling children know that SM triggers an almost allergic reaction, so they use her for maximum troll value and when I have tried to give them the benefit of the doubt that they may be normal, I end up regretting doing so.
Unfortunately without a complete rework I don't see how she can be redeemed at this point.
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I got very used to having to be toxic cause I couldn't just have like…1 chill match with her lol survivors are extremely toxic from the jump just for simply hearing her TR music so idk it becomes a habit to just expect the worst most negative match you can when loading in as SM.
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I remember learning as old legion that it was better to stand still or walk away from survivors to end chase faster then "moonwalking" since the chase mechanic cared more about your distance to the survivor rather than if you could see them.
By the time you caught back up to them they would be low enough you can down them in just one more hit with Frenzy. Yeah it was pretty terrible to face.0 -
You got the same player 3 times and you're complaining about the killer they chose. The way you discribed their game play doesn't play into their kit at all. Its really a bad choice in killer tbh. There are better choices if you're going to stay near the hook like this and tunnel out a player.
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so basically the facecamping bubba players went to skull merchant
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I used to think SM was as bad as the community made her out to be. Then I started playing her, she became one of my favourite killers, and now I understand that most of the complaints are from survivors who can't be arsed to try and learn her. Getting pings and even claw traps across the map because nobody respects the drones, and I even had a survivor says he refuses to hack drones unless absolutely necessary, while simultaneously whining about her getting constant locks. Like, my brother in christ, you're the exact reason why she keeps getting value from her power. Take three seconds to hack her drone and it's no longer a problem.
Someday she'll lose the bad rap, I hope. She's not nearly as bad as people say, they just don't learn. Granted, there are plenty of trolls who feed of the negative rep she has, but that doesn't mean it's wholly the killer's fault.
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To be fair I probably deserve anything I get from a skull merchant because I despise the killer design so much I'm just toxic to all of them I face hoping they start playing a different killer, am i rude in chat? No but if you're playing a killer you know annoys everyone then I'm gonna be annoying too
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Not a SM player but.. Man that’s really rough for those who just like to play that Killer…
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Yes but at least I'm not pretending like I don't deserve it back when it happens, It's not even that she's a strong killer the design is just terrible, on a personal level though im always nice in the chat no matter what it kinda messes with some people c
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