What I think Skull Merchant really needed instead of this

Azulra

As a Skull Merchant main and someone who isn't bothered with playing against her(except for when my teammates just give up on hook and go next) I can actually give feedback on what changes I think she needs to her current kit until her rework that, in my personal opinion, would be SIGNIFICANTLY better and more fair/reasonable than what was done to her in this PTB.

1. Her Haste wasn't the problem, but rather it was her Hindered causing problems. On average Skull Merchant will only be getting 3% Haste during chase(MAYBE 5% IF one of the other 3 survivors has an active Claw Trap during chase) because if the other 3 survivors aren't being chased then they're likely sitting on gens and if they're sitting on gens then they're not getting scanned. When you do the math a 3% Haste effect on a killer with a 4.6 m/s movement speed only makes a true speed difference of 3.45% and a 5% Haste effect only makes a true speed difference of 5.75%. Then, if you do the math for her Hindered(which is really easy), 10% Hindered on a survivor makes a true speed difference of 10% which is almost double the amount for if she had 5% Haste which isn't always happening all the time. Bottom line is that the Haste isn't a problem compared to the Hindered which is why it should be flipped around with which effect should be removed from her kit.
2. The problem with her counter-play is that there isn't any physical way for survivors to deal with her drones more effectively in chase. What I think should be made as a counter-play change for her drones is that, during chase, survivors don't have to play the hacking mini-game to disable the drones allowing them to almost instantly disable the drone during chase if they can reach it, but, however though, this will result in the survivor receiving 5% Hindered for 0.5 seconds just so that it isn't a free/guaranteed safety drone disable while also being such a minor debuff that it hardly feels punishing at the same time. (This change will come into play with both my 3rd and 4th change suggestions as well.)
3. A problem that Skull Merchant's Claw Traps have that annoy survivors is that even after losing the Claw Trap they are still injured. This would've been a similar issue if curing yourself against a Plague didn't return you back to full health. My suggestion here is to make it to where, upon losing a Claw Trap, the survivor is returned to the last Health State they were in before they received the Claw Trap. This way if the survivor was Healthy when they received a Claw Trap they'll be returned to the Healthy state upon losing the Claw Trap and if they were Injured they'll stay in the Injured state. (My 4th change suggestion will explain this further.)
4. Another problem with Skull Merchant is that there isn't any way to remove Lock-On stacks and no meaningful purpose in hacking her drones which just gives her power effectively no interactivity. To fix this problem it should be made to where if a survivor successfully hacks a drone they lose 1 stack of Lock-On or 33% of their Claw Trap's total battery life(if they already have an active Claw Trap), but, however though, if they have Scan Immunity from just getting scanned as they start interacting with the drone they will not lose a stack of Lock-On to prevent survivors from just blatantly running at her drones and ignoring the risk of getting scanned. This prevention system though will not be applied to survivors who already have an active Claw Trap meaning that having Scan Immunity with an active Claw Trap won't prevent the survivor from losing battery life from hacking. (This is why I had change #3 set up the way it is since survivors can instantly hack drones mid-chase while having the ability to lose 33% of their Claw Trap's total battery meaning that, if survivors weren't returned to their previous Health State, there's a chance that this could be exploited by full-healing mid-chase constantly which is why that safety precaution is needed.)
5. The final problem with Skull Merchant is the duration of the Claw Traps and the fact that they keep resetting every time you are scanned. How I would fix this is just simply reduce the duration of the Claw Traps down to 30 seconds from 45 seconds and just give the survivor Scan Immunity if they have an active Claw Trap. If my change suggestions were to all(or at least most) be made real then there'd, effectively, no longer be a reason for Claw Traps to keep getting reset on additional scans and would then make a little more counter-play since the Skull Merchant would have no more reason to drop a drone at a loop outside of to get the Undetectable status effect to help with mind-games.

These are the 5 only actual changes I, personally, think Skull Merchant needs instead of the ones she received on this PTB. People can either agree or disagree with me if they want, but they can leave their feedback on this suggestion on what they think of these changes and if these are what BHVR should do or not instead. Thank you for your time reading this post.