How to make Skull Merchant less annoying to play against WITHOUT ruining the feeling for the killer
Last update the strongest tools for the Skull Merchant tri-gen strategy were nerfed (Call of Brine and Overcharge) and many thought that this would fix the issue, but it didn't.
The biggest problems are still there:
-Dealing with the drones and gens without communication is infinitely harder to the point where a full solo queue lobby will never win against a Skull Merchant doing this strategy properly;
-Survivors with a claw trap simply cannot go inside a drone zone or they will be throwing the game since it makes the drone impossible to be deactivated by other survivors;
-The way it works for you to reactivate drones in a distance means there is no punishment for drones poorly placed, meaning the survivors cannot punish a Skull Merchant who didn't place the drone in a spot that can see all available sides of the generator, so you will always be forced to choose between giving her the haste status effect or taking the Exposed, even if you take time to see if there was a spot that couldn't be caught by the drone to avoid activating it automatically;
-Once a survivor dies, the whole trade of getting a claw trap to take away that drone from her for 30 seconds is completely gone, because they manage to take 2 drones away from her, that means that 2 survivors are incapable of going inside the area of the other 2 drones while the killer simply chases the 3rd one, and if there is one gen without a drone, the killer will have full knowledge of when they need to go do something about it, and with a 3% haste which I guess for most players didn't sound like much at the start but we figured that it can be quite impactful, not to mention that there are add-ons that give survivors hindered and give the killer extra haste.
I do think we can make her tri-gen strategy get to a point that can be a fun interaction (or at least less annoying) between survivors and the killer, without ruining her kit and making her unplayable, and also make it take some more killer-specific knowledge to do this strategy properly.
Here is my update:
Nerfs:
-The Skull Merchant now has to be inside a 40-meter radius of an inactive drone in order to activate it - This means that if the killer poorly places the drone and the survivors can find a spot to work on the gen without activating it, there is some punishment for the killer for not placing the drone properly, and if they commit too hard to a chase there is a more heavy punishment for that;
-Active drones no longer work on separate floors - RPD and Midwich are completely unplayable against the Skull Merchant because of that, one drone can take such a huge part of the map while also giving such hard trouble for survivors who are on the opposite floor that it feels impossible to deal with (and yeah, I know someone is gonna say "but what about boons working on separate floors?" which is a completely different thing and has nothing to do with the Skull Merchant). Also, an important note, nothing should prevent the killer from putting two drones in the same area but on different floors, that's a whole different thing;
-Survivors with an active Claw Trap no longer put drones on unhackable status while inside its area - They still shouldn't be able to hack it while having a Claw Trap, but making it so the drones become unhackable, even for other survivors, means that survivor is simply not allowed inside that area, which makes dealing with the whole tri-gen thing even more impossible;
-After a Claw Trap battery dies, it will take an extra 15 seconds for the Skull Merchant to receive her drone back - some more reward for removing drones, but don't worry in the buff section there will be something to make hacking drones a little bit tenser;
-Reduced the lingering effect of the Brown Noise Generator to 7 seconds (was 15) - Getting oblivious for a whole 15 seconds after removing a drone (or even simply touching the drone zone) is too much. 15 seconds is more than enough for the killer to come from wherever they are to the area where the drone was and get the survivor off-guard. 7 seconds makes this addon still playable but not insane;
-Reduced the Hindered status effect from the Randomized Strobes to 2% (was 5%) - I guess many players have been sleeping on this one, this add-on makes it so the alternative play of "taking the exposed and doing the gen anyway" completely impossible, especially when combined with the oblivious add-on. If you get caught off-guard while having a 7% difference in speed (2% haste for the killer because you are inside the drone and 5% hindered for you because of the add-on) you are absolutely going down;
All of those nerfs give some more space for counterplay but the tri-gen strategy is still possible, and I know how many people want this strategy completely gone but if you take that away from her then she will not have anything going for her.
Now to the buffs:
-Drones now become active immediately after being placed - I know it is boring when the killer simply puts their power on a loop and you have to hold W, but she has absolutely nothing going for her in chase other than the passive haste effect. It takes so long for the drone to become active after you place it that it is impossible to get value from it inside a chase. Making drones become active immediately after being placed means zoning with her is more impactful, and there are more uses to her other than putting them in front of a gen to slow down the game. Just a reminder, this would mean the drone would become active after you finish the placing animation, it's not M2 into instant drone active;
-Survivors now only have 5 seconds to complete the hacking action once they start hacking a drone - some more pressure on this action, this number could vary since I obviously cannot directly test it, but the idea here is to have some more challenge to hacking drones.
There isn't much else to buff on her kit without going against the idea of making her less annoying.
This is what I came up with. I know there are some players out there that have been testing her tri-genning potential and I would really like some opinions from those players if possible.
Comments
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So basically nerf her into oblivion.... Balanced
First buff is quite small, it takes time to get them exposed, they just leave and don't care about first hit, while injured, this is useless.
5 seconds isn't really pressure, you can't really got more than 1 input per second for this? There is not many options. It would be super easy to do anyway.
So basically buffs irrelevant, while massive nerfs to her ability.
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I'm sorry but I don't see how that's nerfing her into oblivion.
I've been playing with the Skull Merchant ever since her release and came back to testing her both times that an update made an impact on her tri-gen strategy. I can tell you with 100% certainty that this does not kill her, this just gives more space for counterplay. You can still place drones in front of gens and keep activating them over and over to slowdown the game a whole bunch.
If you take a look at NightLight you will see that Skull Merchant has the highest killrate in the game - which does not mean that she is OP since you will see other weak killers with big killrates, but it shows that the average DBD survivor cannot deal with her kit. We had players even testing this in the competitive scenario and it took a long time for comp survivors to learn how to deal with her tri-gen.
She needs a major nerf, but this update I'm suggesting does not ruin the feeling for her, just makes it so you need to use your brain to play as her.
And making drones activate immediately is not useless, it gives you more room to force them to build lock on in a chase. It takes time to build the lock on, but also takes time for survivors to lose the amount they accumulated.
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The Skull Merchant now has to be inside a 40-meter radius of an inactive drone in order to activate it
So basically she had to stay in her 3-gen with this. Playstyle everyone is complaining about. With this, she can't leave, because she then can't use her power.
Active drones no longer work on separate floors
It's safe to say this can't be done anyway with their current code. All radius powers work this way, I don't remember any that wouldn't. It was complained a lot with boons on this too.
Survivors with an active Claw Trap no longer put drones on unhackable status while inside its area - They still shouldn't be able to hack it while having a Claw Trap
I am fine with this one.
After a Claw Trap battery dies, it will take an extra 15 seconds for the Skull Merchant to receive her drone back - some more reward for removing drones, but don't worry in the buff section there will be something to make hacking drones a little bit tenser;
They already are rewarded. And it's not tenser at all.
Reduced the lingering effect of the Brown Noise Generator to 7 seconds (was 15) -
So now 15 seconds is too much, but denying power is fine. Oblivious is nowhere near strong enough status for such massive nerf.
Reduced the Hindered status effect from the Randomized Strobes to 2% (was 5%)
This addon rewords offensive use of her drone. That's something we want.
Buffs are irrelevant with little impact.
Claw Trap power deny and range nerfs would be massive.
I would be fine with only claw trap survivor being unable to deactivate drones, but that's about it.
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40-meter radius thing simply means that a bad killer is not rewarded for free. A Skull Merchant doing the tri-gen strategy properly already does not leave the tri-gen. This change is there simply to punish those who are playing poorly.
It's not because some radius powers/perks work on separate floors that every single one needs to. These are separate topics, every power and perk needs to be treated separately. Your argument does not focus on balance.
"They are already rewarded", you say. Yes, they are, but as soon as your Claw Trap is off, which is the moment where you can go back to doing the important stuff, she can already place it back. These changes are here to give more space for counterplay and to deal with her tri-gen, I never said that survivors were not rewarded for removing drones, just said that this should be a good extra reward because, in the current state, she definitely needs more counterplay.
"Oblivious is nowhere near strong enough status for such massive nerf."
In most cases, yes absolutely I'd agree with you, but not on this one. Earlier I mentioned comp players were testing with her, Hens333 made multiple videos on the Skull Merchant and played a lot on stream showing how oppressive her tri-gen potential is, and that's the add-on that saw the most success. Wanna know why? Because it makes it much easier to get hits or even downs right next to the tri-gen, giving a massive advantage to the killer. If players with communication had trouble dealing with this, imagine solo queue players.
And you say Randomized Strobes rewards the offensive use of her drone, but it rewards more the defensive than the offensive. For the same reason why the Oblivious add-on is good for her, this add-on is also great. It makes it much easier to get downs inside of the tri-gen.
"Buffs are irrelevant". You just said that we need rewards for the offensive use of her drone, right? If they activate immediately after you place it on a loop:
-The survivor will get more lock on before leaving the loop;
-You will immediately gain the Haste from having that survivor on the radar, not to mention that there are add-ons that can either give you extra Haste OR the Randomized Strobes, which should still be good in this situation adding to a total ~4% difference on speed.
Having the timer on the hacking mini-game means it will take more focus on the survivor part to finish it, and as I said, the number could vary. If you need to pay attention to the mini-game in order to finish on time, means that if the killer is close and possibly going in their direction, it might be too much for the survivor to pay attention to, which means they could either miss or time out, getting exposed. Either way, this is better than the current version of the hacking mini-game and there is no reason for you to complain about it.
I'm sorry but your opinion seems biased. Have you ever played against a tri-genning Skull Merchant? Like, one that was doing it properly? Because it looks to me that you have no idea how difficult it is to deal with something like that on the survivor's part, especially without communication.
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I agree on the claw trap bit. It was a bad change. Just make it so claw trapped survivors who hack drones get instantly exposed. They can still do it but with a punishment for doing so
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I do not agree with this. If they made it like that then an injured survivor would go on a spree hacking every drone without having to worry about any of the downsides.
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I personally do not like how I'm punished in a chase if my fellow survivors get rid of her drones, it's like when T3 myers gets all stalk from the others and you are dealt with a horrible hand. Considering how fast she can go with addons + claw traps + Bloodlust + Play with your food + Devour Hope + NOED. The killer has a car.
Idk she just isn't very readable animation wise, and she has awful sound tells... I just dont think she is very interactive.
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40-meter radius thing simply means that a bad killer is not rewarded for free. A Skull Merchant doing the tri-gen strategy properly already does not leave the tri-gen. This change is there simply to punish those who are playing poorly
Playing poorly? With other change you want her to use drones in loops while in chase.
If she want to leave gens to chase survivors, she can't use her power.
How is that playing poorly? You would be forcing her to play 3-gen? How is that good change?
Hens tested it before her changes, before her power for this was nerfed and they used CoB. How is that valid again?
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Any changes would be better than what Skull Merchant is now. I totally agree that a full solo lobby basically stands no chance against a competent SM
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Hens also tested it after her updates.
You say I'm forcing her to tri-gen, right? Bro, right now she IS forced to tri-gen, this killer does nothing other than that. If you try any other playstyle you will be completely destroyed. Still. the 40-meter change does not impact AT ALL the hard tri-gen playstyle, the thing is that we have some people playing as the Skull Merchant, trying to force tri-gens but sometimes commit too much to a chase, and they get punished by this change.
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Exactly my point. You can only break a competent's SM tri-gen with a SWF and that's not okay.
S-tier killers are a common problem and good people playing as them will almost never lose, but even then sometimes they can lose to a lobby where not everyone is on coms because the survivors were decent enough and the killer made a few mistakes. SM is very far from being S-tier, and still, if you know the basics and don't get out of your tri-gen there is no way you are losing to a lobby with solo queue players.
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Still. the 40-meter change does not impact AT ALL the hard tri-gen playstyle
That's the issue. 3-gen still work exactly same, but leaving for chase is useless.
This change would basically remove what you want to her to do.
I am weird and I enjoy playing her. 3-gen is not only way how to play her.
Totem builds are great at her. I also have build full of chase perks, where I go for any chase and just try to annoy survivors with drones meanwhile. That playstyle would be impossible with this change.
It prevents chasing, force 3-gen. It's really bad change.
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It does not prevent chasing.
Look, the drone has that "spinning radar" while inactive. If you place your drone correctly, then survivors cannot work on that gen without activating the drone, which means they have to remove it first, which means the drone is doing the same thing it would do if it was active: survivors cannot immediately go for the gen and they have to deal with the drone first.
As I said, it really only punishes bad players. The only situation where this change could affect someone who knows what they are doing is if one of the gens had all 4 sides available for survivors to work on, and that almost never is the case.
Either way, this absolutely doesn't force the killer to only tri-gen and not chase.
And funny that you mention the totem builds for SM, because those are even less impacted by this change. You just put the drone right in front of the totem and they are forced to deal with it before cleansing. If they are taking the exposed, then at max the drone being inactive before would delay the drone notification by one second. Still, the totem builds for SM are nothing compared to the tri-gen strategy, and if you play against competent survivors with a totem build, even without coms, they can deal with your totems.
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So what?
Pinhead is same for this. Hag to some extent too.
Does your changes help merchant with SWF, not at all.
You said she is possible to beat with SWF. So what do you think will happen if you nerf her this much.
SWF will have an easy time with this.
SoloQ will have chance, cute. She will be screwed.
I can agree about claw trap, but that's about it.
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If you think is only correct way to place drone, then something is wrong.
You want spots which are hard to access without triggering drone, but they often doesn't see on gens. You need to activate them for this to work.
It's fun to be little inventive with your dron placement...
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So... let me get this straight.
Your title says fix without ruin...
Then you proceed to throw a kitchen sink worth of nerfs at her. With only 2 buffs.
One of said buffs is nearly irrelevant. The other will probably turn her into the equivalent of 120% movespeed Ghostface who can't get broken out of shroud and basically doesn't slow down to stalk. Which will be incredibly obnoxious to play against for an entirely different reason.
Well. Done.
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Honestly, I'm sorry, but you are being extremely biased. Ain't no way SWF would have an "easy time" with those changes. Right now the situation is that soloq stands no chance, and SWF has A chance. The ideal spot, while we don't have more solo queue direct general buffs, is to make soloq have A chance, and SWF have the same chance as a normal average game.
SWF does not equal extremely easy games, this is an extremely absurd idea that many players insist is real, but if a fully stacked SWF has a single bad survivor on it, even an okay killer can find a way to beat the team. That was not true a few years ago, for sure, but a lot of balancing changes were made over the years, SWF is not an easy win anymore, this stopped being true ever since the update that added Conspicuous actions to deactivate DS.
All of your answers look only at the killer's point of view and ignore the problem that survivors are dealing with. I'm trying to find a solution for the issue without ruining the killer's experience. As someone who has played a fair bit of SM ever since release, I don't see how any of those changes would ruin her gameplay.
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So all you do is say my update is bad because more nerfs than buffs then don't say anything about why these changes are bad in your opinion. Not only that but you put a hostile tone in your text.
We are trying to find solutions here, not fight. DaddyMyers_Mori is having a really healthy discussion with me, pointing at what they think are the issues with my update, presenting arguments, etc.
Please if you are going to say my ideas are bad at least add something to the discussion.
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Yeah I can see that. Your change sounds fine
I just don’t like how annoying she is for solo currently
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You are doing opposite... So much better
You said she is not S tier killer, she is far from that. Then nerf her anyway where buffs are nowhere near enough. Forcing boring playstyle instead.
You take into account only soloQ experience. Ignore killer and gameplay of SWF.
It's not like I turn down all your ideas, one is decent.
Your time limit disarm is funny, because it will either be useless, or noob stomp feature.
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I did contribute.
If you allow SM's drones to instantly activate, somebody will 100% use her to just drop them on a survivor's head over and over and over again, which she'll be able to do because 1 stack of haste + geographical readout gives +5% haste. Eventually the survivor will get exposed and get insta downed and there's next to nothing the survivor can do about it.
That'll probably be more unhealthy than her 3 genning.
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A killer not being S-tier does not mean they can escape from buffs or nerfs. She is not low-tier either.
Remember old Freddy? With slowdown addons, etc? He was not strong, but the "forever" builds were so boring to play against that he needed a nerf. BHVR, unfortunately, over-nerfed him to the point that he is the 2nd weakest killer in the game, and I don't want to do that.
It took me a long time to decide on those changes before making a post, took a lot of playing both as her and against her to understand the issues. If I was being biased towards the survivor side, I'd suggest removing the Exposed from her kit, which is a common suggestion I have been seeing on Twitter but it would make her drones completely useless.
If you have any other suggestions to make her less annoying to verse without ruining her kit, I'd be glad to read them.
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A few things...
-This is already something that she can do;
-She is still an M1 killer at the end of the day and pre-dropping just ruins this playstyle, for the killer to do this and still get the down they would have to lose all gens in the process;
-Simply getting someone exposed with this playstyle, even with this change, would take longer than old Legion would take to down someone with their power.
Making the drone activate immediately doesn't make this strategy any more viable, just makes zoning a little bit more viable. Either way, with or without this change, what's going to happen is probably the survivor will hold W, and the killer will catch up before they get to another loop, this change does not affect this situation at all.
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It's not something she can currently do.
Drones have a radius of 16m and a power on time of 3s. Survivors can cross that amount of distance in 4s. Since SM can't actually put the drone directly over a survivor because of collision, SM will get less than 1s of lock on time every time she does this on live. Having to go through 10+ deployments to make this happen is way too slow.
Instant power on means that instead of survivors getting 12m of distance on the drone before lock on starts, they get zero. So, SM getting 3s or more worth of lock on every deployment is likely. Getting Lock On in that amount of time is probably fast enough to make this work.
Throw in that only a fool would try this without Readout, Brutal, and Bamboozle... that's looking a hell of a lot like an uncounterable situation for the survivor.
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Yeah, forever Freddy was annoying.
And he got overnerfed for it imo. His basekit got nerfed, add-ons gutted. He is really bad now imo.
I wouldn't want to see merchant get same treatment.
My point is your changes are straight nerf and I don't believe she deserves it. It's not really balancing.
Same thing happened to Deathslinger. He got nerfed a lot, and playing him was painful after it. Same for Twins, but that's different topic.
Your buffs would be either useless, or create different issues.
Some of your nerfs are not even for soloQ experience. That range nerf has nothing to do with SoloQ, that's simply overall nerf.
Only change that matters to soloQ is claw trap nerf. Rest would affect her core gameplay against everyone.
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How about make it so she can kick gens all she wants but they don't regress at a ridiculous rate if she's not willing to chase anyone outside of her camped 3 gen.
Literally only way to combat this stupid ######### is for all the survivors to bring brand new parts and save them for the last gen.
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CoB got nerfed hard, so done...
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Uhhh... I don't think it's like that anymore. You don't need BNP to break her tri-gen
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Ok, I'm starting to understand more about what you are trying to say.
Basically, there aren't enough buffs to compensate for what I'm taking away from her, is that correct? And there should be buffs that make other playstyles more viable, is that it?
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Yes,
I don't mind changes to help soloQ, if there are buffs to help killer in other aspects. So we can actually call it balancing.
But if we straight used what you proposed, I think it would end bad for her.
I love chasing playstyle with her, mainly because noone expects it.
So for me that range is main issue and I don't think that nerf is focused for soloQ. That is simply basekit nerf, nothing to do with soloQ experience, not even 3-gen playstyle fix.
Those add-ons can be nerfed, but those numbers are massive nerf, kinda too much imo.
As I said I am fine with claw trap limiting only that survivor. That would help soloQ for sure.
That time limit on disarm is bad change. Wouldn't help merchant, decent survivors can do it easily. I am pretty confident to do it under 3 seconds without an issue. Even if you lower time, it would just be noob stomp feature and noone wants that.
If it was simply that claw trap change, so other survivors can disarm, I don't think there would be need to have immediate buff. That could be simply based on results later.
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Okay, I had an issue understanding your other messages then. I'm sorry for saying that your opinion was biased, it's clear to me now that it isn't.
Still, I don't think the nerfs are going the wrong way, but if you could make some suggestions for other buffs to compensate for what I'm taking away from her, I'd be glad to read it. Remember that BHVR does read those posts and even if they don't take notes on everything it's not completely impossible to see those changes implemented.
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Why don't we make it so that it can't put Drones 16 meters away from generators.
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Because then her power becomes useless. BHVR intended her power to be used for gen defense, that's her whole idea, the drones monitor the areas that the killer cares about.
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