Skull Merchant - balance change ideas
Hi! I've been loving this game as of recently, went through a few killers and my favorite has been Skull Merchant, I just love her playstyle and learning more every game. I'm a little scared for her rework, and think she will be in a solid place with just a few changes! I'd love for this to be considered by the team..
Here are my 3 main change suggestions I think are very necessary for her to jump to a good spot:
- Increase basekit hinder to 10% (from 8%) -The hinder is supposed to be a helping hand to end a chase, but its effects in-game are not at all felt, so this change should help with this, not overbuffing keeping her hinder addons in mind-
- Increase haste received from rotated scans to 7% (from 5%) -seemingly small buff but it will be felt a lot in gameplay as the haste is basically her main power-
- Decrease drone deactivated duration to 20s-25s (from 45s) -her current drone deactivated state lasts far too long for such an easy 3s hack, no drawbacks for the survivors too. If you go against a survivor team that know what they're doing you'll see every one of your drones hacked and left powerless, they dont waste much time doing it and you take a huge hit. This is one of her main issues currently and this should help relieve it-
These changes alone should push her into a great spot without feeling too strong! If it feels too strong maybe the haste increase could be looked at, as that is the buff that matters the most to her right now.
Here are some optional QoL changes for her to consider as well:
- Skull Merchant is now able to see how many scans survivors have in the UI around the survivor portrait, exactly how survivors themselves can see. -A nice piece of information that shouldnt really cause any issues. Especially now with the much bigger change of killers being able to see hook stages I feel like this has no reason to not happen!-
- Remove fast vaulting scan immunity. -I dont think this will be a much controversial change as it sort of makes no sense for survivors not to be scanned while fast vaulting as drones detects fast movements, i'm not exactly sure why this exists but if the team decides they want this to stay its fine!-
One more thing i'd suggest is some of her addons being changed. Most of these addons just do not make sense with her gameplay, or just overall useless. What they get changed into is up to you!
Her addons in need of a change:
- Adi Valente Issue 1 -Claw trapped survivors are most likely in chase and you want to get them as quick as possible, nearly never do they actually go away and do a gen or something while clawtrapped. Incredibly niche addon for a measly 20% smaller skill check-
- Low Power Mode -making its scan lines unavoidable by crouching etc and always active by giving Adriana haste each scan so she doesnt have to "rotate" unrotateable drones to get haste would make this addon a lot better. Still wont be top tier, but useable in certain situations.
- Shotgun Speakers -Same reasoning as "Adi Valente Issue 1"-
- Powdered Glass -By the time they are put on a hook, wait a while and unhooked its likely this addon wont come into play and is not at all worth the addon slot. If it activated for 70s AFTER they get unhooked as a mini "Scourge hook: weeping wounds" this could definietly be considered running-
Hope I didn't bore with how much i've written but I wanted to give my reasonings for the buffs! And it is up to the team to decide whether it makes sense to them or not. I love Adriana and hope she can be in a nice enough place without being considered "controversial" again