BHVR, an "Eyes in the Sky" Power Rework
The Skull Merchant - Eyes in the Sky
The Skull Merchant starts the trial with 4 Drones. For each Survivor that is tracked with these drones, The Skull Merchant's terror radius shrinks in size:
- 1 Survivor: 4 meters
- 2 Survivors: 8 meters
- 3 Survivors: 12 meters
- 4 Survivors: 16 meters
Special Ability - Deploy Drone
Press the Power button to deploy one of your four Drones. When this Drone is deployed, it will then activate after a short boot-up sequence.
While in Active Mode, any Survivor within the radius of the Drone will gain Lock-On progress until they step outside of the radius of the Drone itself.
- While in Active Mode, Drones have a detection radius of 24 meters.
When a Survivor is currently not within range of an active Drone, it will then switch to Scouting Mode, attempting to search for the nearest Survivor to activate once again.
- While in Scouting Mode, the Drone is susceptible to Survivors hacking it. If the Survivor is successful, the Drone will be destroyed and returned to the Skull Merchant's inventory.
- Failure to hack the Drone will automatically cause it to go into Active Mode and applies a Claw Trap upon the Survivor that failed it.
Drone Ability - Lock-On
While in Active Mode, Drones have the ability to lock onto Survivors over the course of 15 seconds. When a Survivor becomes fully locked on by a Drone, it will send out a Claw Trap to that Survivor.
Drone Ability - Claw Trap
When a Survivor is fully locked on, they will have a Claw Trap that will reveal their location to The Skull Merchant's radar regardless of whether they are near the range of a Drone or not.
- If a Survivor with a Claw Trap is within the radius of an Active Drone, however, that Survivor will be revealed through Killer Instinct and their Claw Trap's timer resets.
Claw Traps have a natural battery life of 60 seconds before becoming dormant.
- When a Claw Trap is dormant, a Survivor can attempt to pull it off by hacking it. Successfully hacking it will remove the Claw Trap.
- Failing to hack the Claw Trap will reset its timer back to 30 seconds.
Drone Ability - Manual Activation
While a Drone is currently in Scouting Mode, look in its direction and press the Power Button to activate the Drone. Manual Activation has a cooldown of 15 seconds.
Special Ability - Rushdown
Press the Active Ability button to enter Rushdown Mode for up to the next 5 seconds. While using Rushdown, the following effects apply to you:
- The Skull Merchant's movement speed is 75% faster.
- The Skull Merchant's vaulting speed is 50% faster.
- The Skull Merchant can automatically vault pallets or windows.
- While underneath an Active Drone, gain the Undetectable status effect.
Upon using a basic attack while using Rushdown, getting stunned or whenever the ability naturally ends, the ability deactivates and goes on cooldown for 30 seconds.
Comments
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75% faster movement speed? Rushdown might as well just read "you get hit every 30 seconds". these bonuses are higher then original feral frenzy legion.
Another aspect to talk about is that average skull merchant match at most has 1 drone hacked so these number of 4/8/12/16 TR. they're kinda meaningless because nobody would go to such length to buff the killer. Haste effect is more universally useful for m1 killer then lower terror radius. If anything you don't want to take claw trap at all when playing vs skull merchant. I am not exactly sure why survivors hack drones in the match that I play but the typical amount of bonus you get is 1 arm trap active at a time.
I do not not have many comments other than these changes would make people hate skull merchant even more.
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The idea for the 75% boost in movement speed is purely because of the low duration of the ability itself and the fact that Skull Merchant would be very visible upon activating it.
Something I will clarify is that it would have a 2.5 second activation time, allowing for Survivors to better prepare themselves for the assault.
And since this is a single-hit only type of attack with a cooldown, the 75% boost in movement speed for that amount of duration is completely justifiable.
Additionally, the Terror Radius aspect is supposed to go hand in hand with the ultimate goal of the changes--to make Skull Merchant feel less like an anti-loop Killer and emphasize her ability of reconnaissance and stealth. Hence why whenever a Survivor is within a drone's range, your Terror Radius shrinks as a result.
And another thing that I might add regarding my design philosophy is that I'm getting rid of what people hate the most about the Skull Merchant in the first place: the Exposed effect. That one little effect there causes the Skull Merchant to become an anti-looping, 3-genning character that feels horrible to play against. So in order to mitigate that, it is just flat removed from this concept entirely and so she can have a more balanced and interesting kit to play around that is both consistent and useful.
These changes would make people start to like Skull Merchant since she would have interesting counterplay to her kit while making you feel like you don't need to be forced to play in a certain way as either side in order to win.
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i don't really get it. the rushdown is like spirit's phase walk but has more activation time 1.5 vs 2.5. it comes with additional benefits related to legion pallet vaulting and overclock-type action speed boosts. I do not think it fits her character. isn't skull merchant suppose to be like bounty hunter engineer type character? I do not think it it reflects her game design that they were going for.
As for lower terror radius, you might as well delete the arm-trap mechanic and just reduce TR to flat value such as 24 or 16. As I said, I think undetectable is just suppose to be related to blocking red glow and nothing more.
I would say this looks more like rework for legion rather then skull merchant. your ideas are something that I was thinking about for Legion. to summarize, the idea that dev implemented on legion where legion stabs 5 times to get a down is what i thought of. Its just that I had a more expanded idea.
My idea was something along lines that legion becomes lower terror radius the more survivors are injured:
1 -> -3 meter TR(28)
2 - -6 meter TR(25)
3 - -9 meter TR(22)
4 - 12 meter TR(18)
Every time legion stabs someone, he depletes 25% of the deep wound meter that increases as he stabs each survivor. so for example first survivor get 25%, 2nd will be 50%, 3rd is 75%, 4th is 100%(you down a survivor) on initial hit. Survivors at the start of the trial can pick-up an item called running shoes item. what it does is unlock's ability to iframe dash every 10 seconds. The item has no charge or anything, it is just passive active type ability. If legion swings and survivor correctly times the iframe dash, the legion misses and goes on cooldown. If legion hits a survivor that has deep wound on them, he deals 25% of total remaining deep wound timer. When legion vaults a pallet and only when he vaults a pallet, the remaining duration is reduced to 5 seconds. This means that legion only has 5 seconds to hit the survivor so you can try to bait and kinda 360 sort of like how DH works.
In any case, I think skull merchant is suppose to be about 3 gen's. I do not see a reason to change anything about her play-style. As long the play-style is balanced and possible to defeat. there is nothing wrong about 3 gens. I do not think her design reflects a killer that gains huge bursts of speed that flies around the map. She is suppose to be defensive by nature with her drones providing tactical benefits.
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I dont like this. It takes away one of her strongest aspects (speed bonus) for some pseudo stealth. While also giving her a very oppressive chase power with no counterplay. 175% speed is 7m/s. Thats a 3m/s gain for 5s, so 15m of distance gain. While also providing overclock mode. a 30s cooldown isnt enough to warrant this level of power. It seems to have no counterplay beyond just predropping every pallet to wittle down the meter, like a much more broken overclock mode. Unlike spirit this power isnt leveled out by some crazy drawback, just a small wind up and you get a free hit. Its not like blight where theres the period between rushes to gain distance and reposition, you can easily just follow the survivor for an easy hit. I'd imagine this would make SM even more annoying to play against.
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your idea to rework legion, a C-tier character, is to give survivors basekit dead hard against the ONE aspect of his power thats actually good?
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i mean your previous post says talks about a killer that is oppressive and overpowered with no counter-play. the iframe dead hard gives counter-play to the ability at the upside that you can down people in 1vs1 and you punish survivors for staying injured with pseudo stealth. no clue if the killer would be weak or strong. It is just an idea.
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Legion has counter play. Stun him, spread out. He only gets the down if he hits all 4 survivors, something rare if the survivors have a basic understanding of how to counter legion. If everyone (even soloQ) understands to just run to the corners of the map at best he gets 2-3. Even if he gets all 4 you can still stun him. And the dead hard idea would just have no counterplay on legions end. Hes got a limited window to down you to begin with, probably just having like 10s left with the time to reach you. Not to mention you'd also have his pallet vault reduce his duration to 5s on top of dealing with basekit DH. Legion aint even hard to counter, he really doesnt need this.
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you realize that he does not need to hit all 4 survivors to down with his power in this version. he can 1vs1 survivors with his power. It would not be most efficient way to play him as it would take you 4 consecutive hits however if you chain at least 2 hits prior, you can get 1 down in a single feral frenzy. there would need to be some number tweaks like detection would be static 40 meters instead of terror radius based, so undetectable and oblivious would not affect the ability and power recharge would be faster such as 13 seconds instead of 20. Overall I do think he would be stronger but there would be more counter-play toward feral frenzy as it would not be guaranteed hit every time.
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