Redesigning Skull Merchant
Skull Merchant's kit as it exists currently is problematic in specific ways that can lead to players opting to play her in ways that are extremely unhealthy in regards to universal enjoyment. I'm not interested in rehashing the specifics because if you know you know at this point and if you don't know then there are lots of other resources to get an understanding of the situation. So I'm just gonna skip ahead to what I personally would do to resolve the issues and maintain the positive aspects of her kit while replacing anything that doesn't help her.
Skull Merchant's easy to play, she's not built around micromanagement of resources or disjointed combo powers. She also extremely basic at her core being of average speed and terror radius. This is to her benefit because it means she isn't really locked out of using any perks so you have the freedom afforded to M1 killers. I bring this up because I feel it is important to keep something like this in mind as it I consider it a major part of her appeal that should be preserved.
Power wise her kit gives several things: On demand stealth, contextual movement speed buffs, limited precision tracking, and instadown potential. This isn't everything she gets, but these are the most important things and it is this list that I can already see my first cut.
Skull Merchant's Lock-On: This is something I don't even understand why she has it. Giving a killer who by design holds territory as well as she does has no need for Exposed. The problem with this is twofold with the lock-on being mostly a non issue if she's played in any other way than a area denial strat. Yet, when you do resort to locking down an area she suddenly becomes extremely threatening which creates this very lopsided situation where she's sort of punished for engaging with the game proactively by having a sharp decrease in lethality. My first cut would be the Exposed status version of lock-on.
Replacing Lock-On: Dropping the exposed opens up her power budget which is good because Skull Merchant needs space for a fall back power. Currently, she lives and dies by whether or not you can force survivors to engage with your drones. Every part of her assumes that survivors will be on her radar more often than not and thus she only has a power when someone is being tracked. In theory that seems pretty cool, killer has to manage a tug of war against survivors over a resource. Problem is that is all she can be is powerless M1 killer when no one is tracked. We know that lock-on is sort of dog water in typical chasing scenarios so why not replace it with an innate ability to that she can use with or without drones? She's supposed to be a sort of twisted big game hunter so why does she not have some sort of aggressive feature like an enhanced lunge attack that cause excessive bleeding making survivors even easier to track or the ability to throw a claw trap type tracker on a survivor? Something like this would allow for longer term downtime periods for drones while still letting her be a killer with a power.
Stealth: This is an aspect of Merchant that is already supported in her kit and should be enhanced in a few small ways just to make it more consistent. There is a considerable lag between entering a drone area and getting undetectable, just go ahead an make this instant and fold in the Adaptive Lighting addon to her base kit. This is a lay up that would mean Skull Merchant has more surprise potential and better ability to traverse the map silently. There is also the option of having her be able to use up a drone to activate mode where instead of overwatching an area she gets on the move stealth. For this I would balance by saying using a drone in that manner decommissions it until she grabs more from a locker or some sort of new interactable. This opens her up to having a few very distinct play pattern options.
Contextual Movement Speed Buff: This is something I really like about and which I had a little bit more control over. Technically there is nothing wrong with the way it is now, but if the goal is to get her to be on the move rather than just in a single area this buff needs to contingent of the player being proactive to begin with. I would say that the best way to do this is to make it so rather than just happening when someone is tracked that you need to actively engage with the tracked target specifically. Combined with the proposed changed to lock-on you would have a killer who is incentivized to chase down her tracked target. Keep the speed bonus at a tame level so it isn't just Merchant bumrushing a survivor Legion style, but have the speed increase be for landing successful M2s and if you happen to land M2s on multiple survivors you get more speed.
Tracking: Skull Merchant's standout ability is her info generation. She is the best tracking killer in the game as that her specialty and so it is already in a good spot so lets just focus on polishing it. Currently you have switch between looking at a handheld tracker which slows your movement and moving about normally. It isn't a big deal, but it does feel a bit jank and could use the Doctor treatment. Give Merchant a heads up display that you can flavor as a screen integrated into her mask. Nothing obnoxious and screen filling but just like a little minimap version of her handheld. This would just help to keep players feeling like they can stay moving a decent speed while interacting with her tracking features. If you're absolutely dead set on having the handheld then you could have the handheld be used for long distance tracking and the hud view tracker for limited close range tracking of something like blood.
Drones: The major problem point. Drones as they currently exist need to be extremely permissive in their use as they constitute every unique feature of Skull Merchant. Yet, they also need to be easily dealt with so survivors can actually do their objective. Getting rid of the exposed and decentralizing some of her power from the drones and into her as a person helps, but these still need changes. Drones need a time limit of some sort for how long they can just be up at all. Now, I would handle this by changing how deployment works first. Drones should deploy in their passive search mode state first. In that initial passive mode they can sit as long as you want them to and you can even recall them and activate them as normal. The moment a drone goes from passive to active though it is officially on the clock. It's going to provide the usual tracking and apply the usual addon effects as normal, but that drone is only going to be up for 20 seconds. After 20 seconds that drone auto recalls back to you on a short cooldown. That means the player needs to make the most of this time or lose the provide pressure. My next change has to do with survivor interaction with the drones. If a survivor hacks a drone that drone is disabled by they get a clawtrap for their trouble. Disabled drones no longer recall, but instead need to be restocked after decent length cooldown. This means that survivors will be rewarded with breathing room for interacting the drone and slow down Merchant's ability to just throw drones. It's a tiny bit of passive resource management.
Clawtraps work fine as they are and should be more common to see with the above changes. Everything so far is to get Merchant to hunt as much as possible, but not totally taking away her ability to deny survivors comfortable access to areas. The idea is to make it so she doesn't have to rely on doing that to get her full power value, but if she needs to slow the game down she is still able to, but not permanently.
To tackle addons is a huge task, but I have some general ideas of what I'd want to see. First, get rid of any addon that affects how survivors interact with gens whether it is silent skill checks or more frequent skill checks. Just drop those entirely and leave that to the realm of perks. If a player wants to go that deep on holding gens it needs to be at a substantial cost of build space and balance wise perks are better suited to those sorts of effect. I feel that we should treat effects like this the same way Eruption's incapacitation was handled. That needs to be limited to only one area due to how game affecting it can be. Incapacitation is only for killer powers and skill check modifications should only be on perks in regards to killer tools. Addons to supplement her tracking, stealth, or altering drone behavior in interesting ways to open up new playstyles should be the focus.
Some nice to have things, but not mission critical changes would be giving her a 24m TR, changing her chase music to be a bit more engaging overall, adding voice lines to help sell her personality. Nothing serious here just things that would just be nice to have. I like her current chase music as a lapsed percussionist, but as a drum loop it does get very stale very fast. At least it isn't pain inducing like Doctor's theme.
This is my not so quick, but still dirty Merchant thoughts.
Comments
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You know that most of those changes are pointless with removing lock on, right?
It doesn't make any sense, she simply is not going to work without it.
You have drone in area, if you stay there it gives her movement speed bonus and information.
If you have claw trap, it gives her information and movement speed bonus.
Without exposed status, there is not point in caring about her drones.
Getting claw trap would actually be a bad play, because you will destroy a pallet in chase because of it.
Who cares about her stealth on most maps? You see where drones are, so that's only direction she can come from.
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The exposed needs to go and my proposed changes makes it so you have more ways to approach people rather than relying on waiting for 10 seconds to get an instadown and staying in a single area rather than moving about the map.
My redesign is based on the way I play her and while it preserves a little bit of area denial it de-emphasizes that playstyle greatly in favor of giving her smoother stealth transitions, better hunting capability, and an actual non drone reliant secondary ability that gives the killer more control over their power that would be useful in chase. The reason for survivors to care about her drones shouldn't be because she has functionally useless instadown unless denying an area. This is also a rough outline I wrote before going to bed last night and we already have so many killers with instadowns we need to start making different avenues to increased lethality outside of just giving exposed.
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I see wall of nerfs.
Only thing you are trying to buff is stealth, which we already now won't make killer nowhere near viable.
Best stealth killer is Ghostface, guess what he can instadown...
Except few specific indoor maps, stealth is not that good.
What reason except denying stealth, which I don't care about it is to disarm drone?
So far getting claw trap is way better for merchant. You have speed, you have information, you have antiloop (destroy pallet).
There would be absolutely no reason to disarm them.
You want to make it work? Sure, let's give it a try:
- remove lock on exposed effect
- increase slightly movement speed bonus
- survivors inside drone active area are hindered for 5%
- survivor who get "locked on" gets stronger version of claw trap (everything else + hindered) - drone gets disarmed as normal
- increase number of drones to 5 ( you will be losing them a lot)
- if survivors with claw trap is in active drone area, double all effects (hindered + movement speed)
- survivor with claw trap can't get locked on / disarm another drone, other survivors can
- stealth is instant and lingering for 10 seconds
-show battery on HUD
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While I use the hindered addon when I play I don't feel giving hindered on an AoE power is very balanced when attached to basekit. Drones still apply all the addon affects save for ones that affect gen skill checks which in my rework would be removed which means there is more space to add in different things that change the way she can engage with her power. She's not a steep disadvantage in any regard as the number values are effectively still intact across the board. Doubling the movement buff is an insane request to make if you understand the current values she is already working with. She gets 3% haste just for one tracked survivor so if that survivor is tracked via clawtrap doubling that means Merchant gets 6% haste. 2 tracked survivors provides 5% currently, but if those two survivors had claws in your suggestion that becomes 10% haste. At the extreme edge case of 4 clawtrapped survivors you're saying to give Skull Merchant 14% haste. That while fun is psychotically unbalanced even Machine Learning only gives a 10% for 30 seconds after you kick two gens and let the survivors finish the first gen you kicked. Chases still need to make sense from a survivor perspective so giving them a 10% hindered while in an active drone that lingers a decent bit after leaving the drone is nutty when mixed with doubled movement buff.
I didn't talk about adding a battery indicator because that is non starter, the devs do not want us as killer players to know exact information about killer applied statuses. No point in suggesting it when I already know that they aren't going to consider it unless absolutely necessary. 4 drones is a nice round number and with my rework she'd have more ways to use drones and drones would still be a powerful passive tool, but survivors would also have the ability to impose a bit of counter pressure by making Merchant need to recover drones every now and then which gives them time to do their objective. Again these aren't flat nerfs they are changes to get players to hunt rather than constantly defend to get maximum power value. I'm shifting the power budget of exposed into the fallback ability which if you would read would aid her in tracking and even allow her to directly apply clawtraps.
I already suggested making stealth instant rather than the laggy activation it has currently. I even wrote about how they could add a feature where she can convert drone into giving her a period of on the move stealth so we didn't even need to worry about setting a short lingering time because she'd have a full on stealth mode which could have a longer timer at the cost of burning of drone charge which again she could recover via restocking at a locker or new killer specific restocking station.
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I want you to do simple thing. Make a list of changes you want, one sentence max per point. I don't cate about you reasoning.
Separate nerfs and buffs.
It will be easier for me to explain why are you wrong.
So far I know only about few points, which would make her easily worst killer in the game.
Btw doubling would work only in specific situation where survivor have claw trap and is inside area of another drone. If you don't have this, then drone is basically useless. So he counts as 2 survivors at the moment.
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What I wrote is perfectly readable, you lack the desire to read proper paragraphs or you have something that prevents you from doing so. If it is the latter then I am sorry and if it is the former that's a you problem.
I'm not restating what I wrote when it is perfectly understandable. I didn't present any flat out nerfs to begin with and everything is either change, improvement, or addition. The only things being removed in my rework are Exposed lock-on and addons that affect generator skill checks.
If you're going to argue with me that is great, I'm down to defend my position. You will need to do the leg work of actually reading and comprehending what I have written though. The reasoning is provided and isn't an optional portion of my initial proposal as it forms the context for my changes.
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You want easy prove it's not?
Every skull merchant post is raided by many players. Same as MFT.
Why do you think your post is not?
Because everyone see wall of text and runs away.
Your don't have any summary. You mix reasoning with actual changes all the time.
From what I get it, your changes are bad. It would make her worst killer in the game.
Even with my changes, which are way better than yours, it's worse Wraith.
I tried to give you a chance for normal discussion, even suggested alternative how to fix your issues.
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If you believe your ideas are better than mine, go put them together the way you want in your own thread then.
I've been discussing this normally with you and I defended my position stating why I disagree with your alternatives.
I'm actually fine with my thread not being turbo raided by a populous of people who more than likely won't add anything of substance and just rehash their desire for Merchant to get deleted. This post is more or less speaking to the devs and anyone who wants to take time to read it.
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