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How I'd change the Skull Merchant
The Skull Merchant has been a hot topic for discussions lately, and I'd like to share how I'd change her to hopefully make her more interesting for both sides.
Claw Traps
- Increased the Battery life to 60 seconds.
- Claw Trapped Survivors who enter a Drone's detection zone will still instantly activate a drone, but it will not become Unhackable.
- Claw Trapped Survivors who hack a Drone will have their Claw Trap battery recharged, and the hacked Drone will return to the Skull Merchant after 10 seconds.
- Claw Trapped Survivors who hack a Drone will have a small portion of their Lock On progress filled until the Trap dies or they become fully Locked On.
These Claw Trap changes aim to alleviate her 3 gen strategy, while buffing her chase capabilities slightly. Longer Claw Trap battery life means the Skull Merchant will get Haste for longer, but she'll have access to her Drones a lot less often.
As a compensation for the increased Battery life, Survivors with Claw Traps can now hack Drones again. These Drones will return to the Skull Merchant after 10 seconds (which is how they previously functioned). This will stop the current situation of a Claw Trapped Survivor being completely unable to go near a Generator that's watched by a Drone, and will make her overall area control weaker.
You'll want to be careful as to how many Drones you choose to Hack, though, as one Survivor who takes out a large number of Drones will be easier to Lock On, and will become a valuable target.
Drones
- Survivors within a Drone's active area suffer from a small Hindered Status Effect OR The Skull Merchant gains a small amount of Haste while within a Drone's active area.
- This effect lingers for a short time after leaving the Drone's Area of Effect.
This change aims to make the Drones themselves slightly more useful in a chase. This change would hopefully make it more likely for the Skull Merchant to recall a Drone to use when finding a Survivor to Chase, which means less Drones on generators. Combined with her reduced access to Drones, she'd have to make much more of a tactical decision as how to use them.
Stealth
- Reduced the delay for the Undetectable Status Effect to activate to 1 second.
- Increased the linger duration of the Undetectable Status Effect to 3 seconds.
- Reworked Ultrasonic Trap Speaker and Adaptive Lighting.
Skull Merchant's Stealth is actually a pretty interesting part of her kit, but is seldom useful without committing both of your addon slots to it. These changes are essentially making both of the Stealth addons part of her base kit, and should open up alternative playstyles for her Drones.
Radar
- Increased the Movement Speed while Inspecting the Radar to 4.6m/s.
This is just a general QoL change, and is something that should really be done.
I think these changes would end up greatly weakening her 3 gen strategy, while encouraging her to Chase Survivors a lot more. Instead of spamming Drones on generators constantly, hopefully the gameplay loop would move towards placing Drones down on gens to distribute Claw Traps and then Chasing said Survivors.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on these ideas, and any other potential suggestions you'd make (apart from deleting her, that's cheating).
TL;DR: More Chase Merchant, less Chess Merchant.
Comments
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Another thing I forgot to add is that it'd be really cool for the Skull Merchant to get voice lines, especially in Portuguese. It's a massive missed opportunity that she didn't get them when she launched, but it isn't too late to add them.
She has a big ego, so she'd certainly be the type to taunt the Survivors, kind of like Trickster does. I think it'd help convey her character a lot more if she talked during the Trials.
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So from my understanding she will be Clown but better. Honestly i will take this.
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I honestly think survivors should be oblivious inside a drones radius because with the undetectable portion of it, they’ll probably get a warning from the terror radius before she becomes undetectable anyway. Overall though I like this change.
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I have no idea what that killer actually does, but I trust you. If you aimed for a better experience, then I'm sure these changes would accomplish that.
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Small portion of lock on? That sounds like something to never happen.
Make it so if they can disarm multiple drones, but if they disarm drone while having claw trap, they get locked on.
Still better than current situation where they can't even get nearby.
If you are injured, you don't really care anyway.
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She wouldn't have anywhere near the Chase capability of Clown, it's just a little extra something to make her Drones worth more in a Chase.
I think Undetectable would be better. She'd generally have more control over when she was stealthy and I think it could open up some creative plays.
That would entirely defeat the point of the change. You may as well just leave the Drone up if it's going to lock on when disarming it.
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Small portion of lock on is useless.
If you are injured, then it would better if you disarm it than your teammate, so merchant doesn't have multiple claw traps active.
It would be quite big improvement compare to current situation.
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It'd stay until the Claw Trap is dead, but it's not meant to be a massive hinderance. The objective is to make her Area Control weaker, not to buff it.
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How would that buff it?
No one can disarm when you are around
vs
everyone (including you) can disarm.
Seems like big nerf to me.
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I mean, think about it. There's not really much difference between leaving a Drone up and letting it Lock On to you and hacking a Drone if it's going to automatically Lock On. In fact, it's worse for you considering you'd have a Claw Trap on, which would allow her to track you outside of the Drone's Radius.
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Yeah, it's still better result than current situation when you need another survivor to disarm it and you can't even be nearby for that.
If you are injured, then you don't care about lock on at all and just disarm every drone you can.
If you are not, then you have to consider if you can get away with it.
Even if you are healthy, disarming another drone with claw trap on you for lock on is better than another survivor, because Skully gets less speed boost and less information.
How the hell is buff implementing something survivors can't even do currently?
It would make her area control way worse. As SWF we would make single survivor disarm it and just take hits if needed.
If they are injured then good, we will just use person with MFT and resilience to bait merchant to chase him.
This creates completely new counter play survivors can do. It's not a buff at all.
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