The problem isn’t skull merchant
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It's true that you can hold 3 gens fairly well with current perks. Even something as little as CoB+mangled can stall the game a fair amount if the killer doesn't over commit. Perk stacking obviously makes that even worse.
The problem is compounded by those killers having a territorial, or by those adding a second objective (Pinhead box, for example), or by those that spread injury fast. That's a god chunk of the roster.
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I kinda disagree.
I'm actually not playing those perks on her, in fact the only one I'm using is Jolt and I'm still capable of defending 3-4 gens with quite a lot of success (32 win streak that was broke yesterday).
I think the problem is the lack of adaptability that can be understandable for soloQ players. It is really hard to coordinate between SoloQ players to not do the gens that are far away (they can be 99% though). But I played against decent/good survivors that were able to break this strategy, with a lot of patience.
The point is that most of the survivors have a lack of patience and a fair amount of them want easy wins so...they have to work hard against SM which is my take on why they don't like her.
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Agreed on the overall point. Perks shouldn’t incentivise unhealthy strategies and it’s why old pop and ruin were fine perks
Just giving overcharge and CoB a cooldown might suffice
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Yeah having slowdown perks stack is a huge issue and stifles build variety since 3 slowdown is basically always the best choice
Yeah both plague and pinhead can hold a 3 gen better than merchant ever could tbh
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Then you go into the other extreme of 'Survivor taps gen for 1s, your perks are offline for 60s again'. Sure, overcharge has its skill check, but CoB doesn't.
And it risks turning every gen defence perk into one that's comically useless at the intended goal of buying time to have chases.
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That’s why we make way for more interactive perks like pop or ruin. I don’t think perks like CoB or Over barge should really be meta since they encourage passive and uninteractive gameplay
Killers should never start the game off planning around a 3 gen and the main reason they do this is because the current regression meta plays so well into it. If pop and ruin were meta I’d say this strategy would be much less common
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The problem is mainly the merchant but emphasized by good gen regression perks imo.
In my opinion they need to change her. Nerfing her 3-gen potential and make her better in chase.
For making her better in chase:
- Not making her slower when looking the radar, it remind me the old Doctor at some extent, why did they do something similar with the Merchant?
- Making Prototype Rotor and/or Randomised Strobes basekit.
- Increase the area of the drones.
- Make the drones to be enabled instantly.
- Make the exposed effect quicker.
And for nerfing her 3-gen potential:
- Make the drones dissappear automatically and return to the merchant after some time enabled.
- Make the drones easier and quicker to disable by survivors.
- Reduce the number of drones to 2.
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I agree some changes need to be made to her but this would completely destroy her set up and basically make her clown or Freddy where all you can do is put your thing at the loop which forces survivors to leave
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What we want is to make CoB and Overcharge more useful for their info and 'well, I guess I can't find the Survivor over here, I might as well do something to not waste my time' value rather than setting out a 3gen from the start.
Would probably need to check some other condition than a timer in that case, but at least it wouldn't totally destroy the perks in every situation.
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No, no, no.
- Where did you get the idea that CoB and Overcharge were "designed around" camping a 3-gen? Was there something in the patch notes that I missed? Because, as a huge fan of camping 3-gens from the start of the game, I find that this combo isn't very good for that at all. Contrary to popular belief, camping a 3-gen is risky, and good survivors are going to stay on gens as much as possible and hit those Overcharge skill checks, so it's worse than CoB on its own. This combo great for general regression during normal gameplay, but it's bad for camping a 3-gen.
- You do have to interact with survivors to use perks that are actually good for camping a 3-gen, like Eruption, Pop, and Pain Resonance. If you're just kicking gens with CoB and Overcharge, you're going to lose the match, because it's a bad strategy. If you're losing to such a bad strategy on a regular basis, you might want to try doing gens instead of looting chests and hiding in lockers all game and expecting poor Dwight with his brown toolbox to carry the entire team.
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I say that because the perks have no pre requisite or cooldown so they can be used repeatedly on the same gen without punishment. Pop and PR require you to get hooks which can force you away from the 3 gen if survivors play properly
When using CoB overcharge you have no incentive to leave because you’re perks will work regardless. This creates passive gameplay since you are not encouraged to actually end chases
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Yeah you could buff the info gain from both but reduce their regress component. We seen this with PR where the combination of regression and info in 1 perk was deemed too strong
I don’t think a perk should have both good info and regression really. It can have both but 1 shouldn’t be very strong
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If the killer is playing the game at all, they have to get hooks, which can be used to lure them away from the 3-gen. I just got out of a game with Spirit where survivors were competent at this, and the last gen popped just as I was about to hook someone with PR. 2K.
What PR and Pop do is make it safer to take chases; they don't by themselves necessitate taking chases. That's already necessary.
If you gave Overchange/CoB a cooldown, they'd be useless. Overcharge is already useless on its own and can even make CoB worse in certain situations. CoB would become completely and entirely useless if it had a cooldown and survivors could just tap it to get rid of it. You'd see it about as much as you see Ruin now.
Which might be where you're headed with this? Trade you for Dead Hard getting nerfed into the ground the way Ruin was.
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I just don’t like it anymore since ruin auto-disappears when you get a single kill, which should be fine in theory, I just don’t like a perk in general having that much extra counterplay, and I stopped running it before it’s second major nerf because it was already bad enough after the first one,
it felt like if I didn’t have a build specifically made around protecting or replacing totems, it was a wasted slot most games. Too RNG, still spawns at survivors feet sometimes, it is anti-synergy with all other slowdown besides pentimento so you severely handicap your build if you want a good chance for the perk to have an impact longer than the 20 seconds it takes for a survivor to walk over and cleanse it.
pop, idk I haven’t touched it since it was based on percentage of progress.. Such a bad change. Hopefully they revert it so it can be competitive with eruption in its nerfed state, because it’s basically the single worst regression in game now. It has a prerequisite of chasing, downing, and hooking a survivor, then abandoning anything that isn’t immediately Running over to the most progressed/3 gen generator and kicking it, because you have no time to engage in another chase or do anything else with its borked time requirement (which should have been removed the second they made it progress based, imo. Least they could do was make it a pocket regression)
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So long as the regression meta becomes more healthy i’m fine with Cob and overcharge getting nerfed. And yes DH needs a nerf but that’s an entirely seperate discussion
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No, in this case I do think the issue is at the very least, partly on the Killer design. Others have outlined some of that already, so I won't repeat, but wanted to add a couple more
- The range on the drones. This makes SM different from other territorial Killers by a wide margin when it comes to 3gen-ing. SM is always aware the moment a surv enters that radius.
- Because this radius can easily protect 2 gens at time in a lot of 3-gen cases, SM can now create a much wider 'locked down area' where SM will always know when someone enters it, granting even more advanced warning on what gen is about to be worked on. This allows SM to potentially lock down more than 3 gens in a single match, or potentially have other 'back up' 3 gen scenarios.
I kinda like the idea of SM overall, but yeah, her 3 gen game is really strong even just at base.
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Probably. Then Eruption was nerfed and I'm still sitting here in 20-30 minute slogs. So I guess I was wrong about that one.
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not sure if I agree. Pop goes weasel is a kick perk just like eruption is kick perk. kick perks in general are designed for 3 gens. Ruin is hex perk. Hex perk have weakness that they are fragile and can be easily broken. A solution to mitigate their weaknesses is to guard hex totems and one of the best ways to do that is to hold 3 gen with hex totem in the middle. Ruin in particular is powerful in 3 gens for exact same reasons why OC and COB are. Passive regression.
The meta for killer has not changed. its same perk with different names. Eruption replaces pop, now both eruption got nerfed and pop is just as bad. Ruin became unrewarding and OC+COB replaced ruin/undying.
Survivor is in same boat. The old meta was DH. New meta is DH. The popular healing perk was self-care. this was replaced by circle of healing. Old meta had spine chill for vaulting, new meta is resilience for vaulting. Old meta had iron will and BT. New meta has off the record which grants self-BT and Iron will. The rest is soloq info problems which revolve on you seeing Window of Opportunity, Kindred and Bond.
in my opinion, OC+COB is plaster to weak killer powers. 3 gen is not healthy game design however it is neccassary because a good 75% of the cast is not very good at chasing and has pretty rubbish powers/game problems. Until majority of killer cast improves to be more effective, a lot of killer are stuck at playing 3 gen strategies. Window of opportunity, Bond and Kindred are plaster fix information perks for soloq. Until they add these perks directly/indirectly to survivor base-kit, soloq is going to be worse off then SWF. Until then, soloq perk variety will be pretty poor.
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"Every slowdown is a worse version of what it was except for Jolt" is not a healthier regression meta, in my opinion. It edges close to 'nothing is actually any good to run' even being conservative with expectations.
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That’s why I want perks like pop to be buffed since they encourage interactive gameplay and reward hooking multip,e survivors
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That'd make killers way weaker overall, while not really helping with that particular issue. I think it'd be best to change these perk to reward a killer for chasing.
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I really have no problem with Overcharge, mainly because in the survivor best case scenario, it can potentially be worse than not running it at all, given you start at 75% regression speed and it takes half a minute for regression to climb to 200%. It only becomes dangerous if survivors don't go and fix the generator quickly, once full regression speed is obtained an almost finished gen can regress to almost nothing fast.
Call of Brine is a much more problematic regression perk to me, given that you can spam it at will and get instant 200% regression for every gen you want for a full minute, all while being given info if survivors are back to repairing them. I just feel like this level of power should be restricted a bit or concentrate it into one big blast. I would be okay if you make Call of Brine regress gens even faster, but slam a 60 second cooldown on it so you can't blindly kick every generator for fun.
Oh, and bring Pop back to its former design. 20% current progress is barely noticeable damage unless a gen is near finished. In its current state, there's no reason to run it over Pain Resonance, which almost always will deal more damage. Or spice it up a bit and make the kicking go faster when it's activated.
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I think you don't understand DBD very well.
"no, it's really a problem of Skull Merchant very much as well, because camping a 3 gen is her only option."
This is the reality.
Skull Merchant would be "fine" with 1 small tweak. Change the arm band so that it doesn't make another drone automatically detect you.
In the same way that one person can be the designated "bear trap disarm specialist" this would let someone who wants to be chased become the "drone remover".
SM is punishing because they can put down multiple drones to make any setup of 3 gens into a powerful 3 gen. Combine this with a hex or two + pentimento and it is beyond punishing.
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knight is viable with other playstyles and his overall playstyle allows him to have different options in his gameplay, i/e he can chase survivors very well, apply pressure on multiple survivors, get long range hits, etc which can be applied pretty much in all kinds of playstyles.
skull merchant's power, however, does pretty much nothing well except defending a specific region (and even so, she does it really poorly in comparison) so 3 genning ends up being her only option if she wants to be anywhere successful.
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After much deliberation, it has been made clear to me at this time that the problem is, in fact, Skull Merchant and not the perks. Thanks
-Doomzilla
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She has a lot of other options people just don't want to learn a killer and would rather jump straight to the easiest possible method even if it isn't the most effective.
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what other options, please name them.
spamming drones in loops?
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How about setting up an actual web? She has little to no penalty for all of her actions so pre planning and trapping survs is so easy and it's gotten me so many wins. People complain abt her 3 genning as if EVERY killer who isn't nurse or blight doesn't need to 3 gen against the best of the best.
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I agree that COB and Overcharge need to go, rewarding regression without chases or downs is just unhealthy and just promotes this camping 3-gen strategy. Still, i would say Knight's and SM kit also look to encourage and promote this play style naturally, so i don't think that their design is exactly flawless and not part of the issue.
Also, maps with guaranteed 3 gen spots, Hadonfield, RPD, Dead Dawg or the smaller maps with the right RNG. RNG is RNG, but it's kinda laughable that those 3 other maps have reliable and fixed 3 gen locations
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Just got out of a game where I 2 gen'd on garden of joy with SM. No that is not a typo I really meant to write 2 and not 3, I put one in the house and one on a gen in front of the house and the survivors became completely fixated on both those gens when they had every opportunity to work on the 3rd or even the 4th gen left on the map since there was two gens left and neither were that close to the house.
Like certain maps I will admit play themselves but when survivors can't even get garden of joy right when I wasn't even doing a proper 3 gen I'm tempted to believe this is mostly a skill issue in most scenarios and map issue for the others. I really wanna see a SM try a 3 gen strat in comp and see if the survivors can break it because I think that would be really telling on if it's actually an issue or not
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setting the web aka placing drones on gens, yeah.
if you don't place drones on gens, you're either wasting them or placing them in loops which is also a waste of ability & unfun playstyle.
merchant is not a hag or trapper whose playstyle is actually setting a web in one particular area, turning it into lethal zone. she does not have capabilities (mobility/reach) to make web playstyle work.
if you think you get wins by not playing 3 gen merchant, you're getting bad survivors. this is not because you're playing merchant in some unique or specific way nobody has thought off.
this killer is only "good" aka strong when she holds the match hostage by 3 genning or when she runs one of her overpowered addons given her as pity like claw traps having dissolution or claw traps at the start of the game.
in any conceivable way this killer is a boring M1 garbage with a few cheese things available to her to make people buy "new imba" all of which would most likely be gone in a span of the next year.
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