I know it's a beaten horse already but are we seriously gonna have to wait 4 years for a SM rework?
Seriously, going up against this Killer is easily the least fun experience in the game, and that's saying something considering the Twins still exist. The fact that this Killer has a 70 percent Kill rate it shows just how badly this Killer needs to be reworked, overshadowing practically everybody else except for Freddy. And before anyone says, I know that the kill rate is inflated due to the mass amount of DCs, but regardless that's still a bad sign. The only other Killer to get such mass DCs was old Legion, and he was literally an uncounterable Killer. DBD has to abandon its roadmap because the community can't just keep having to consistently wait for completely overpowered or useless things to be fixed. Dead Hard took years to nerf, Made for This took 6 months to fix, Trickster took years to become viable, Legion took years to fix, we can't keep waiting years for some of these things to be fixed.
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Unfortunately Devs are adamant on sticking to the roadmap and SM changes arent planned on for this year. Not to mention the unreal engine 5 update this patch basically made the game a lagging rubberbanding buggy mess which will take multiple months to fix so SM changes is even further down now
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This dead horse is becoming tiring to hear about.
False…..The 70% kill rate is due to hook suicides…not actual kills, so no it doesn’t.Also false. DCS are not included in the data report here in the screenshot. So no, it doesn’t.
Id be more than glad for Skull Merchant 1.0 to return since the 3 Gen System is in place, by all means.Skull merchant is b tier at best.
Let Freddy have his rework.
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We both know they could rework her 30 times and some of the community would still be complaining such as the author of this Post unfortunately.
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I'm hoping we don't get a full rework, because she really doesn't need one and it'd be really annoying to see massive unnecessary changes just because of whining.
Ideally, sometime soon-ish SM will get a series of small changes to tighten up the few minor flaws her power currently has, and then she's left alone. Hopefully enough time passing will have the majority realise there's really not much of a reason to complain about her anymore.
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Of course, she isn't the strongest Killer in the game and has counterplay, but that still doesn't change the fact that her power design is extremely flawed. Her power is hastily thrown together and requires BHVR to take a step back and seriously decide what they even want this Killer to be. For example, why is she a better stealth Killer than both Sadako and especially Dredge when she isn't even designed to be a stealth Killer? Why can she shut down loops faster than most Killers with just a single press of a button when Killers like Unknown and Wesker have to work for a down? Why does she have both haste, hindered, and tracking in her power when other Killers have to usually work to just get even one of those?
Sure, you can say that her Kill rate is massively inflated due to people not even bothering to try against her, but I don't entirely blame them for doing so, especially when the Skull Merchant is more often than not running a harsh build consisting of a bunch of gen regression perks that she still synergizes extremely well with. Of course, I don't think any survivor should give up against any Killer because it screws over everyone else and leads to an easy 4k most of the time but if there is such a massive problem with Survivors DCing against a Killer then it's almost always a symptom of something wrong with the Killer. I've already brought up Old Legion for example and how despite him not being an S-tier killer or whatever people still DC'd against him in mass because of how awful his power was to play against, and SM is no different.
Skull Merchant requires the Survivors to do way more than she needs to do in the match and due to that it always feels beyond frustrating whenever she wins because it feels undeserved. On the complete opposite side of the spectrum you have the Singularity who requires so much skill from the Killer player to do well with VS the survivors who just need to hold down a button to completely destroy him that it feels awful for the Killer player to play as him because well, it just doesn't feel like the Survivors deserved the win. It's because of that the Singularity is being scheduled for changes, so why not SM too? She needs to have a completely different power that requires her to put more Skill into the game and likewise be rewarded for doing so too. Also, in her current state, she makes the Knight an absolutely pointless Killer to play considering she just does almost everything he does, but better. And I'd know to considering I main him.
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Your complaints apply equally to trapper. Did you know he pushes a button and shuts down loops? Just mentioning the good parts of a killer without their weaknesses is incredibly disingenuous.
Also singularity's difficulty is pretty overstated. Him and SM are in my wheelhouse of killers and I'll tell you freely that I win much more easily on singu than SM cuz she kinda sucks when people actually choose to play.
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Freddy obviously deserves a rework more so than anything else in the game, but it doesn't mean SM can't be scrutinized either. I consider DC's and Hook suicide to be the same essentially considering how lobotomized the bots are. Either way, she still needs to be looked at eventually. And yeah, I wouldn't mind if BHVR did something similar to SM and gave her a reworked version of her 1.0 version. So long as she needs to use genuine skill and be rewarded for learning how to do so, then she will be a good Killer.
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We can rework her thousands more times and she will have highest kill rates no matter what, only counter to skull merchant is a removal of self sacrifice
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True, it applies to Trapper, the only difference being that he's the worst Killer in the game by far and still requires a lot of thinking on the Killer side. He needs to carefully consider where his traps go and even then it usually isn't enough. Plus, the loop-canceling power he has is situational. He has two options, either sit down for a second and a half committing to putting the trap down giving survivors ample time to hold W, or cancel it and hopefully catch the survivors in the process. Either way, it's a risky maneuver that could easily get him just stunned with a Pallet during the process if he's not careful. Lets compare that to SM who clicks M2 and completely cancels the loop without losing any distance in the process. She doesn't need to set up for 2 seconds, she just plops down her drone and it forces the survivor to leave unless they want to get rapidly injured or hindered.
And yeah, admittedly I forgot to mention her counterplay, but fine let's get into that. Her counterplay revolves around the Survivors needing to constantly make sure her drones are disabled because otherwise, they won't even be able to approach the loop without being harshly punished. There's a bit more but the point is that the moment SM goes up against a very competent team she gets curb-stomped usually, which is a very bad design flaw. It's similar to Trapper, except at least SM gets to punish uncoordinated teams, unlike Trapper who usually just gets beaten regardless. She still needs a rework because of both her flaws and her strengths.
And I don't really agree with that point about Singularity. Sure, he may not necessarily be the most difficult Killer to play technically but he is by far one of the most stressful and "active" Killers in the game by far. The thing is he has a really strong kit so its natural that you'd win with him more than SM, but no one wants to play a Killer who is so insanely stressful to play when all the Survivors have to do to counter him is hold M2 for a few seconds.
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Aight, where's your proof for that? Or I guess we could just make incorrect assumptions. She was hated then for 3 genning, and she is hated now for the reasons I already stated. If she had a Skillful power that had a lot of depth to it, rewarding the Killer for mastering it whilst also giving the survivors a nice amount of counterplay then she'd be loved by all. Look at Hillbilly, most players love going against him and playing as him because how fun his power is. He gives survivors ample amount of counterplay whilst also giving the Killer a very, very strong kit that can give even the best Survivors in the game a real challenge.
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I can answer some of the questions in that first paragraph, and I think those answers would go some way to countering the idea that her power actually is extremely flawed.
So, first, you ask why she gets to be a better stealth killer than Sadako and Dredge when "she isn't even designed to be a stealth killer". There are two things to say to that;
First, she isn't a better stealth killer than Sadako. While Sadako does have a lullaby in her Demanifested form, her stealth is much more consistent and she's a much better user of Undetectable when she does get it. That's just flat out not a thing, she's not a better stealth killer than Sadako. I'd also point out that Dredge isn't really a stealth killer? Sure, it gets Undetectable in Nightfall, but it's still not especially stealthy even then.
Second, Skull Merchant has been a pseudo-stealth killer since day one. She has always had Undetectable in her kit, it has always been something she's designed to be. You can disagree with it being there, and there'd even be a fair conversation to be had about it, but she is designed to be a stealth killer and always has been.
Next, the question about why she can shut down loops better than other killers when Wesker and Unknown have to "work for a down". I'd like to point out that a down is not the same thing as being able to shut down a loop, but setting that aside, it's more relevant to point out that there are three killers that can do this - Merchant, Knight, Artist - and of the three, Merchant is the weakest at it. It takes the longest to start affecting the survivor, and the effect is the weakest of the three when it does. It's not nothing, and I agree it's annoying to face, but this is hardly an overwhelming problem. There's even some survivor agency and decision making when she does it.
Next, the question about Haste, Hindered, and tracking. Honestly, all I can really say to this is that most killers don't really have to try that hard to get their Haste or Haste equivalent? Wraith holds a button, Legion presses a button, Nurse holds a button, Wesker holds a button for a second then presses a button, etc etc. Most killers who can speed themselves up don't really have to work for it. After that, I'd point out that Merchant does have to work for the Hindered, she has to get four scans minimum before someone starts being slowed down, and there's quite a lot to be done to stop her doing that.
I'd also like to contest the idea that a survivor has to do far more than the killer. Dodging killer powers is the expectation some of the time and you don't see that idea applied to them - nobody's out here complaining that all Huntress has to do is hold a button and you have to keep dodging. If the Skull Merchant is playing poorly or passively, you don't have to do much at all to outplay her drones. If she's putting effort in, you have to put effort in. There's not much different about her compared to other killers, and there are killers who absolutely put way less effort in than her.
Finally, as a brief aside, not really the point of the thread or the posts so far, but what on earth does she even have in common with Knight outside of the "shut down loop" thing? They're completely different killers.
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I really want to play her more but her kit is just too broken with how much it does atm compared to how much effort it takes.
I'd love it if they removed the injury aspect of her drones and just had them focus more on tracking and long duration claw traps that break pallets instead. Get rid of the hindrance effect as well because it is silly that she can get haste from all survivors getting tagged and then slow them down mid-chase on top of that.
If she was more fair and fun to play against and more complex to play as, I'd enjoy her a lot more. For now I basically play her by severely limiting the amount of drone interactions I can do in a given match which forces me to be very careful and particular in how I use them.
At the very least there needs to be a way to remove Lock On stacks, removing 1 stack per drone disabled would be a good way to fix her kit in the short term and maybe even save it.
I don't believe survivors DC and hate her because of her lore and character design, they DC because her kit just isn't fun to play against now nor before her rework and there is little counterplay most of the time. If BHVR addressed this, then I feel like her reputation would improve.
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She destroys uncoordinated Survivors extremely easily while also simultaneously getting destroyed by good teams. That alone makes her a prime target for needing a rework.
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That's a lot of killers, though. Like, any killer with anything you need to interact with does that.
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so what would the rework do? Make her destroyed by uncoordinate teams and get destroyed by good teams?
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The proof is in the pudding with how people have been behaving towards her, there’s no getting the bad taste out of their mouth with her. 🤷🏼♂️
Not to mention, I already disproved your originally post with facts you completely bypassed because well….there facts…so I don’t have much more to say on this topic of your thread other than what I did say, some of the community needs to stop beating a dead horse especially when they know they keep doing it. It’s pointless. Skull merchant isn’t the monster she use to be. It gets old…5 -
The difference is that SM does so in one of the most unhealthy ways possible. Most Killers suffer from this, but a lot of them are at least at a somewhat "healthy-ish" state, but SM is still considered by a vast majority of the community to be completely insufferable to go up against. Of course, BHVR could just do the most boring thing and nerf her but I feel as though it just wouldn't be fair and it'd be missing the point entirely. Thats why most of the community wants her reworked.
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Just make her a more skillful Killer to play as and rewarding players who master her while also making her counterplay something more enjoyable. Look at the Hillbilly rework, they turned him from a pretty mediocre Killer to now a Killer who is arguably sitting at the very top of A tier.
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Setting aside whether that perception actually is "the vast majority" position (I think many people neglect to consider the probably large number of people who just don't care about discourse at all, I've been guilty of it before too) I do think it's very relevant to point out that she isn't unhealthy and there really isn't anything you can point to that would make her insufferable to go against when compared to other killers.
Any time I prod one of the people who claim this for reasons why she's apparently so bad, they will inevitably say something that flat out isn't true, or they'll cite problems that other killers have/have worse, if SM even has them at all.
I don't envy BHVR here. They have a vocal percentage of their playerbase (however large that percentage is) constantly ranting about a problem that flat out doesn't exist. It's not going to be easy for them to address that, anything they do to tackle SM's actual problems won't be enough for the people who claim she's an insufferable, terrible design right now.
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Ehh, I kinda disagree with the Sadako point. Her having a lullaby destroys any stealth potential she has, and sure, in-game she's undetectable far more making it more consistent, but that doesn't mean it's more effective. Against good Survivors Sadako might as well only be a Killer who can teleport and maybe get the rare jump on them with undetectable.
Dredge is supposed to be a stealthy Killer, that's why nightfall has undetectable in it. It's supposed to be his main event, overdrive, whatever you want to call it, but he gets curb-stomped because he has the loudest sounds in the game by far making it beyond easy to hear him coming from a mile away. It just feels as though BHVR did what they usually do and overestimated a killer's strength hard so they added a hard counter to him just turning him into a Killer who had stealth potential into someone who can't stealth at all. I'm sure they'll eventually fix it in a future balance patch, and I'm willing to bet on it.
But anyway, compared to those two Killers what makes SM's undetectable way better than theirs is the fact that she is a completely silent Killer. Unlike those two she doesn't have a single audible sound that can be heard when she's undetectable making it so much more easier to surprise or sneak up on survivors. You say she's always been a pseudo-stealth Killer, and I can half agree with that but not completely. In her old form, I'd argue her undetectable was a pretty forgettable part of her and was only really good whenever you managed to coral a survivor into a loop that had one of your drones in so it'd make mind gaming easier. I rarely ever got any decent stealth value from it in her old form, and that's why I never considered her to really be a stealthy Killer, just a Killer who had stealth shoved into her kit. Now in her new form being undetectable for ten seconds whenever you just place a drone down gives her so much more potential in the stealth department, and I just feel as though considering how bloated her kit is she really doesn't deserve to be a completely silent Killer when it's not entirely the point of her character.
I should've worded it better, but the main point I was getting at is how SM can get potential injuries much, much more easier than a lot of other Killers can for little to no skill involved. I shouldn't have used the word down, because you're right, it's not the same. Arguably though I wouldn't consider SM out of the two other Killers you mentioned the weakest at shutting down loops. Considering Knight is one of my mains I can provide a bit more input and say that by far he is the weakest between those three. As Knight when compared to SM when you place down a guard, there are a lot of other variables that can screw you over. First, you can't be standing too close to any wall making it much more awkward at times to place a guard down quickly, secondly, you have to enter the animation, drop the guard down, and then wake up which takes about 2.5ish seconds giving the survivors a lot of time to leave the loop leaving you powerless for a long time, especially if it's the Jailer. Then if everything does go well and your guard starts a chase (you NEED map of the realm to even do this, otherwise survivors will always outrun the detection radius) you can still easily get screwed over by how pathetic the AI is, and despite everything you've just done you could just end up not getting a hit at all because the AI suddenly decided that it's going to take a really bad detour. At worst too, the Survivor could grab the banner and end up getting a free sprint burst and endurance combo, although admittedly this doesn't happen much. SM suffers in the beginning of the game much more than Knight, but she makes up for this by being so much more time efficient, consistent, and less RNG-based than him too. The artist is undisputed, but at the same time when she does put crows on a loop there's still potential for faking her out or her messing up the placement of the birds making it still a pretty easy strat to do, but one that takes at least a decent more planning.
When I mention haste, hindered, and undetectable I should've been more specific, so let me do so. When I say those I mean the actual status effects, not things like Wraiths power or Weskers rush. Those aren't haste, I consider those to be their powers. SM gets those status effects for very little on her end making it feel terrible to play against. When she puts her drone down she completely cancels a loop and gets ten seconds of undetectable. In addition to that once you do get scanned by her power you are now giving her free tracking, constant haste until the trap falls off, and potentially hindered if you are already injured. If the other Survivors slip up then she'll be even faster, and from there holding W becomes essentially a nonviable option meaning your only play is to pre-drop or hope your in a strong part of the map. From the Survivors perspective, all she's been doing is just plopping a drone down in most loops they enter making it feel like she's doing very little and being rewarded very greatly for it, which then leads to the feeling that when compared to the Killer you as the Survivor are doing way more on your part than she is.
I'll acknowledge that SM takes a decent bit more skill than meets the eye as you need a decent grasp of the macro game, but there's no denying that out of every other Killer she ranks amongst the worst to play against because of what I mentioned. When you get flicked by a Blight or Billy or sniped by a Huntress or Unknown it's easy to acknowledge that it took at least a good amount of Skill to get that, and in comparison from the Survivors POV SM just places down a drone and gets 40 status affects from doing so which feels awful. And yeah, she's not the only Killer who can do things relatively easily but all those other Killers still arguably feel better to play against. Clown has limited bottles and can run out quickly if he keeps screwing up, Trickster can be screwed by long distances and running around corners, Legion can be split up against making his power useless, etc.
Finally, I brought up the Knight because both of those Killers have the same gameplay loop of placing things down to force survivors away from certain areas. Sure, they aren't completely the same obviously, and differ in some regards but when you look at their powers you can see a bit of similarity between them. In Chase, she's able to deny areas much easier and smoother than him, and from far away she still has the advantage, albeit not by much.
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In her first form she was just a 3 genning machine and in her second form she stills feels completely awful to go against despite not being able to 3 gen as easily.
That's like saying "People still hate going against Freddy even after he's been changed, hes not the monster he used to be anymore."
Of course, people are still gonna hate on SM as long as she feels terrible to play against. Simple as, if she had all her problems fixed than people wouldn't, it's literally as simple as that.0 -
Of course, the vast majority of the community are a bunch of casual players who don't really care about what or who they go up against, but just going by how her kill rate is nearly 70 percent and how any discourse around her is almost always an entirely negative experience then it can be assumed that a good chunk of the community does not like her. Admittedly, I do sometimes say "mostly" in arguments when in reality it's probably only really at best 20-ish percent of the community I'm talking about but the point still stands that she's still a Killer who's viewed mostly negatively.
I say she is an unhealthy Killer because based on what I've seen, an unhealthy Killer is either considered to be too strong, too weak, or having mechanics that are frustrating to play against. A healthy killer is a Killer like Blight (w/o op add-ons), Billy, Demo, Wesker, Huntress, Oni, etc. These Killers at their core are liked by much of the community because they provide good and fun counterplay whilst also being very strong and able to hold their own against good Survivors. SM can be debated on how strong she is but undeniably she is miserable to go up against. Most survivors enjoy the chase considering that's where the skillful and thrilling part of the game is and when you have a Killer that completely ignores that and forces survivors to do more M1 holding (disabling traps, etc) then you get a Killer that is no surprise, hated by most of the community. Now, being unhealthy isn't always something that requires immediate reworking, but when it's to the degree that SM is then it definitely needs to be considered.
Scott summarizes essentially most of my argument in this video.
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This guy also talks about some of the issues SM has.
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I doubt she'll ever have a rework. Some tweaks here and there sure, but not a rework. I just push through when I see it's her and accept i'll probably be bled out and humped on the ground for no reason.
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Alright, I'll tackle those points in order.
First up, we'll tackle the stealth argument:
While I'm willing to cede personal disagreements on the Sadako point, I would like to point out that Merchant isn't completely silent and Sadako is completely silent while she's Undetectable as long as the Undetectable doesn't come from being Demanifested. That being said, sure, we have different opinions on what makes a killer specifically a good stealth killer, and that's fine.
To the Dredge point and beyond, the major thing I have to say is: Why don't you consider Skull Merchant to be a stealth killer on the basis of her stealth not being very impactful, but you do consider Dredge to be a stealth killer even though its stealth is not very impactful? Isn't that an arbitrary double standard? The fact that she had Undetectable from the start, and in all iterations it's been part of her core gameplay loop (with it being the least relevant now, but still relevant), should prove that she's been intended to be at least a stealthy killer from the word go. Not like Wraith or Sadako, but more like Pig, who also gets a stealth element to complement her main power.
As a last aside, before we move on to future points, Skull Merchant's kit isn't bloated. The only status effect that isn't obviously cohesive with the rest is Deep Wound, and I don't think one extraneous effect makes a kit bloated. Still, that one should be removed, that's fair.
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Next up, we'll look at the "shutting down loops" element, and the specific comparison to Knight in that tactic:
The first thing to say on this point is a quick correction: you say that Skull Merchant can potentially rack up injuries faster than other killers "with little to no skill involved", and that's only true if the survivors are playing terribly and running into her power over and over. If they're trying, then it takes skill. Playing Skull Merchant well against teams that aren't just giving up immediately does take skill, that's not something that gets to be ignored or denied for the sake of argument.
Moving on from that, I think you're conflating two things unnecessarily here. Yes, Knight is weaker overall than Skull Merchant, but when it comes specifically to forcing survivors away from loops, Knight is the best at it, and Skull Merchant is the weakest, with Artist in the middle. The reason for this revolves around how potent the threat is, and how much agency survivors have when reacting to it. When Knight drops a guard at a loop, the threat is extremely potent because that guard can down you if you're injured and will also activate very quickly, on top of Knight himself still being a threat separate from the guard. You have to leave immediately, you don't have any time to reposition to a more favourable side of the loop first, and this is true of basically all loops in the game barring very specific outliers.
When Artist puts a bird at a loop, it's not quite as bad because you do have the leeway to reposition a little, but the same still applies: The bird can down you so you have to leave, you only have a small window to reposition, and that's true of basically all loops- at the very least, for Artist it applies to all resources, you're only exempt here if you're able to use a different resource in the same tile like a jungle gym.
For Skull Merchant, there's a lot more grey areas. First of all, her drones don't actually shut down every loop in the game, there are plenty with high enough walls or objects that they block the beams. Second, because the beams have counterplay guards and birds don't, you can play the loop a little before leaving if you need/want to. Third, even if you do get hit with the beam once… that's just a single scan, you're only giving Merchant a little Haste and that's it unless you'd already been scanned twice. I'm not saying it isn't still annoying to go against, but it's not as potent as Artist or Knight, nor does it take away as much agency, even if leaving is still generally the right call. To cap it all off, unlike the other two, her power can't down directly, so the threat is less potent just by default even before factoring all of that in.
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Next, we have the argument about "Haste, Hindered, and Undetectable" when compared to other killers:
This, I'll be blunt, is completely arbitrary. It's the same effect - moving faster - for the same or lesser investment from the killer. There is absolutely no difference that comes from it being the Haste status effect versus just a built-in part of the power that moves them faster; the only difference you could point to is that a lot of them (but not all) restrict movement in some way or require slowing down briefly, but that's where we necessarily need to acknowledge that they're also all much faster than Skull Merchant is with a single scan.
Again, to be blunt, it's just her power too. It's not "extra" in ways that Wraith or Wesker or Legion or whoever's movement speed isn't, they're all the same. They all have powers that speed themselves up, and some have powers that also slow survivors down, and in most cases all they really need to do is press a button and sometimes aim something, just like Skull Merchant. In most cases, it's more on the survivor to dodge than it is the killer to aim, just like Skull Merchant. The killer sets the pace of a chase, there's nothing wrong with that and it's how most killers function.
On top of that we've got some of what I alluded to in another post- things that just aren't true. Merchant's drones don't just completely shut down loops, and you don't give her constant haste and tracking for being scanned, not until you get scanned three times. Those aren't pedantic differences, they matter. She doesn't get these things for free because the survivor does have a lot of agency in avoiding the beams; it's her main counterplay and part of the mechanical deviance that would, theoretically, make her fun to play against for some players. Plenty of people like dodging hatchets and chainsaws, it's not unfathomable to think that people would equally enjoy dodging drone beams, especially when failing to dodge the beam carries a lower penalty than failing to dodge those other two.
If the survivor's perspective truly is "she's just placing drones and getting free status effects", that's their fault. At some point, there should be an expectation that you learn how to play against a killer and you stop playing into their power to make it easy for them. Nobody would say Huntress is OP because "hitting hatchets on a survivor running in a straight line is easy", or at least you'd expect that anyone who does wouldn't be taken too seriously, and a similar thing is happening with Skull Merchant. The only reasonable explanation I can come to for someone truly thinking that Skull Merchant takes no skill and her power rewards her massively for just pressing M2 is that they aren't bothering to figure out the very simple actions they should be taking to force her into putting in more effort.
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Finally, we'll look at the last few paragraphs of your post about skill and such:
Skull Merchant has more skill expression than macro game. Actually using her drones takes skill too, and the amount of skill it takes goes up proportional to how much the survivors in your game are actually bothering to try. Knowing how beams work, knowing when to reverse the beam in a chase, tagging survivors with instant scans via good aim, knowing where drones are supposed to go, and then on top of that needing good M1 fundamentals and needing to overcome survivors employing counterplay, those things take skill too. Again, not a pedantic difference and not something that can be overlooked for the sake of argument.
As to Knight: For neither of those killers is "drop something at loop, force survivors to run away" their core gameplay loop. It's always gonna be relevant but it's not the core of their kit, and it's also the only thing they have in common. They're completely different other than one specific problem they both share, and I don't think it's particularly constructive to reduce both to only that problem and nothing else.
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she is already skillful to play as and rewarding players who master her. Skull merchant prior to her reworked was considered a "Mediocre to play as" and "only good for 3 gens". Post-changes, there is mixed opinions about her. Likely the consensus is still mediocre. She is not popular because she's a trapping killer. Your expecting a killer like Hag to be popular is too high of expectation from the killer compare to hillbilly who is dash killer.
All the killer that move fast and have dash ability are extremely popular in dbd. In my opinion, the reason being is that hold-w and prr-running in dbd is too strong. Dashing killer fix pre-running and hold-w between loops. They also fix map size to some degree. Skull merchant is not one of those and is in fact opposite. a trapping plays slow and methodically. from the popular charts, killer want to play fast & loose.
SM is still considered by a vast majority of the community to be completely insufferable to go up against.
her counterplay something more enjoyable.
these two statements are loaded with how much I could write about it. What I will say is that killers are not necessarily meant to be enjoyable to go against as the other side. They're meant to be fun to play for the killer player. If they happen to be fun for survivor, that is a bonus.
I take great issue in healthy design in the game for many killers. An example is demogorgon. Healthy killer. To me, healthy word in this context tends to talk about the killer being weak swf bully material and low skill-floor requirement to win. Playing as a swf vs killer is free win and there is often nothing to learn about the killer to defeat them. Often it is just regular looping with mild gen efficiency to win. Onryo is great example of a killer that was considered "Insufferable to play against" and is now considered a healthy killer. It is all boils down to SWF being free wins vs the killer and literal no skill requirement to escape. Skull merchant being a healthy killer was not too far off from her PTB. You only need revert some of those changes that went from PTB to Live.
The next aspect to talk about is counter-play being enjoyable. For this, I'll point to clown. Clown tends to throw bottles in which he has a yellow gas and purple gas where you get speed-up and hindered. Do you find clown enjoyable to play against? It is really not that different from the drones and then your other point talks about injury mechanic which Legion & Plague passively injure the entire team. I don't have much interesting to talk about specific of the killer but i think there is distorted understanding of how to play against hindered/haste in the game against the killer at loops.
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What we really need is a better anticheat and antihacking system for PC combined with EasyAntiCheat. The game should not be able to even start with hacks or cheats loaded.
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Doesn't make him right, that video is flawed on so many levels…
He just had a narrative and tried to find everything possible to push it, so he gets some views…0 -
Kinda funny to ask for rework by BHVR when we just saw how Twins went…
Skull merchant is worse as a killer and way more manageable for survivors after her rework. People who hate her now are not going to be happy until she is moved to trash bin, so why bother about their opinion?1
