Skull Merchant has a weaker chase than pre-rework
The gutting of Geographical Readout alone was enough to make her weaker in chase, but her drones are just.... bad. They're useless, I don't understand how this rework went through... Maybe if they could scan through walls when in scouting mode they would be semi-useful, but as they are now they just downright suck. I have a lot of hours on SM and I'm P60. I played Chase Merchant, and I can say with 100% accuracy that her chase is weaker than it was before. At the very least please revert Geographical Readout to also give 2% Haste and reduce the action speed back down to 15% for 10 seconds upon placing a Drone. That alone would make her useful but it still wouldn't solve the issue of Drones being borderline useless. Or better yet just make that effect baseline and change Geographical readout to "Drone area increased by 10%" since Geographical Readout is required for her to be able to chase, especially now since Claw Trap haste isn't as common as before.
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they did give you base-kit geographical readout and strobes. when a survivor get scanned by a drone, they are marked on radar for 12 seconds. so for example, if 1 survivor is scanned, you get 3% haste and if you hit 4 lock-on stacks, you get the -10% hindered effect for 6 seconds on that survivor
in order to get old readout which is 5%, you need have 2 survivors that are marked on radar. in other words, you need have 1 person that purposely gets a claw on them and 1 person that your chasing that gets scanned/has claw trap to be equal to what you were before change. the long story short is that skull merchant is kinda gains similar chase benefits but has extra steps to get there. her effectiveness hedges on survivor misplaying where as before, it was more based around killer using drone at correct time and claw traps were an extra benefit in the end game.
She does have geographic read out in her add-on. it is her new iri add-on called expired batteries. Expired batteries gives you 25% more haste but the negative is so unbelievably bad that it is hard to consider running it because it neuters a claw traps duration by whooping -50%. if they adjust this add-on a little bit less severe on negatives, she would be a similar in strength with said add-on.
I still find her fun to play as m1 killer and PTB changes did really help a lot. a lot more then I expected.
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Uhhh no? Geographical Readout gave 2% Movespeed, and 15% action speed for 15 seconds when entering a Drone's active zone. And Strobe was a 5% Hinder for 3 seconds when a survivor entered a Drone's Active Zone. She always had the extra movespeed depending on how many people were trackable, which is also now worse than before since Claw Traps are much less common. The Hinder is stronger, but rarely ever occurs since you need them to be scanned while they have a claw trap which happens maybe once or twice a game at most.
Strangely almost everything you said is wrong.
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you get 2% extra from tracking two survivors. you need find first survivor, scan them 3 times. leave survivor, find another survivor, scan them 3 times and than you get same benefits as old skull merchant of 2% + 3% haste. you need to do more work to get same benefit as previous chase skull merchant. the 15% pallet break is now 20% purple pallet break add-on for 8 seconds and extra speed add-on is that terrible iri add-on with -50% claw trap duration. the add-on got split into two add-on and strobes was made base-kit on 4th scan.
I agree she is worse at chasing but PTB -> live changes did improve her. she is not as bad but she is not better if that makes any sense.
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I disagree. I think she has better zoning capabilities, and has more incentive to chase instead of protect gens. If you play her like a trap killer, you can shut off a good portion of the map, and keep your chases at 10% hindered.
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that's not my experience, I'm playing her a lot since patch, most survivors still give up just like old SM.. personally I think she's strong and very easy to play, 4.6 ms with perma haste, hindered effect, passive injure/broken with drones, no loop is really safe against her, decent stealth...
I just played easiest RPD game of my life few hours ago, my drones basically covered the whole map they all died at 5 gens, the worst part I think she's still one of the best at holding 3 gen, knight is better but she's still good at it
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