We Ask For a Reworked Skull Merchant and Most Are Still Upset
I can understand the hate behind the character as nobody really enjoyed her especially for how she started and what she was capable of. That being said however, she finally gets a rework and personally to me it could be better but, it's something better and I'd much rather take this then a 3 gen merchant.
If you don't like it fair enough but, I've seen some people say they'd much prefer the old Skull Merchant with holding 3 gens and it's like you all asked for a Skull Merchant rework, you got one where she doesn't make the match extended for long periods of time, and is more of a chase killer now but, I guess players want 3 gen Merchant back.
I never understand the majority of this community.
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Yeah anyone who says old SM was better or preferable is being ridiculous.
Is this SM good? No. Is she a good design? Also no, she's still a "leave loop or die" Killer. However, she's LEAGUES more healthy than old SM.
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People who are happy or don't have much issues with something are way less heared and visible than the ones that talk negatively.
You see more people talking bad on her because the people who don't care or are happy don't feel the need to post it on social media.
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That's the exact problem though.
The most vocal of folks just wanted change without consideration of how to make good change.
A lot of us who were actually playing her in ways that weren't focused on extended the game forever didn't even get a look in. For all the things that changed they still made her a weak killer who's got nothing other than being able to bulldoze through chases. Her entire kit just makes it so no matter what you're getting hit. You don't need to be smart or crafty, literally just drop the drone and bloodlust them until they get hindered and you get the hit. Head empty, only chase.
Yet, that's what folks asked for though. A Skull Merchant who is forced to engage in chases no matter what and that is what they got, but it isn't good or fun for either side. Rather than give her options and maybe a new way to interact with the game, they gave her the bare minimum viable product version of her power and got rid of any of the interesting things she had or restructured it to be mostly worthless.
Skull Merchant rework is what you get when rush to make changes without even attempting to collect feedback from people who playing the killer to find out what they even liked about the killer.
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I played like a dozen games with her back to back, to get a feeling of her new power and I still don't fully understand how she works ^^"
No, I read her power description and all and understand that scanning a survivor three times either damages them or sends them into deep wound and gives them a claw trap, but it nearly never happens because I did something skill full, but rather randomly, often at the other end of the map. You can set up a drone during a chase, forcing survivors to the abandon the loop or risk taking a hit, and the hinder and haste can come in handy, but I still havn't gotten into any "Skull Merchant mindset". A lot of survivors though accused me of playing a killer requiring no skill at all, I guess thats those that haven't read the patch notes?
One thing that bothers me is how rare and random you give survivors claw traps. 3/4 times when I look at my radar I see nothing, then at other times suddenly two survivors have claw traps on them. But the claw traps themselves got a rather short timer, you either need to have a survivor nearby right at that moment, to capitalize on the haste effect during the looping or run after the trapped survivors who might be just holding W. I really think that survivors should appear on the scanner more frequently, thats the main schtick of the SM, isn't it? Tagging survivors and tracking them around the map?
BUT the way survivors randomly get injured surely shakes things up a bit. I also never seem to be able to predict when I will get hasted or undetectable and I find the "reverse direction" quite tedious, even though I get the feeling that this is one of the nooks and cranies that make a good Skull Merchant player.
I actually would wish that we had two direction add-ons:
1) Every x seconds the drones change the direction that their scaning beams face.
2) changing the scaning beams direction changes it for all drones on the map, so you could just do this at random and maybe catch a survivor off-guard.
But now that I might play the SM from time to time, the big elephant in the room is this: which weapon is the best looking with the most interesting FX effect and should I buy?
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Tracking was her big thing before the rework, but now most of the time you're not going to have anyone tracked. Her entire power is now centered on whether or not you can get a clawtrap on someone, but they only get them by being locked on after being scanned 3 times. It's relatively easily to completely avoid being scanned when not in a chase and it takes fair amount of time to get someone locked on.
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any chance you think BVHR will improve skull merchant a tiny bit more? one aspect that I find baffling is that I am given opportunity to min-max her drone rays by switching direction to get faster lock-on traps but than there is 3 second immunity to not be able to do that. It is like. here's mechanic to showcase greater mechanic expertise in using the drones rays more effectively but here's another mechanic to prevent you from doing that.
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I'm sure they'll make adjustments to her, but I don't think it will be to something like scan immunity numbers. You can already adjust that with a addon and increase spin speed with another addon.
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The SM rework was definitely a net gain but there is still nothing special about her right now. She has no skill expression, not much reliable counterplay, and is just a slob for the majority.
What she needed was a whole rework completely scrapping her current design.
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"Leave loop or die". It is as if there were no other killers where you could make the same summary.
How would you rework it then?
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I don't know. I'd probably try to make the Drones into mobile area denial. Like, they slowly move in a straight line. There's just really not a good way to salvage such a bad design.
And yes, there are plenty of Killers who have the same leave loop or die interaction. It's still not good design.
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I've wished her rework were something more focused on getting survivor with clawtraps while getting haste and info, leaving behind the concept of exposed or injure/broken. I really like her "faster on heels" kind of gameplay.
Like, if you were playing in a map with a horrendous main building (Garden of Joy), you could trap those loops effectively, getting most of the survivors a claw trap and make them play against a faster M1 killer (and maybe a slowdown basekit to hinder them on these loops)
Now, i feel she is quite nice to play as, but much worse to face, specially when holding generators. I've been facing 3gen Skull Merchants to this day and they don't feel any better to face.
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She's undeniably better now.
Not a fun killer to play against but she isn't harmful to the game anymore. That's a huge improvement.
Everyone that says otherwise can go and play the hour hostage holding if they feel like it.
I much more like to lose in 10 min rather than 60.
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I feel bad for you. But you have to admit she was problematic. You're a victim who lost a killer you enjoyed. Same with people with old Freddy. I do think they did rush the rework a bit. They should have taken some input from people who play her but not in the 3 gen way not that I've heard of many, the community made sure of that.
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Her biggest problem right now is there is no way to get rid of lock on progress. I've had games where she puts 6 drones on a 3 gen area and keeps replacing them and patrolling. As she pushes people off gens, lock on inevitably builds up until someone gets a claw trap and then she rushes you down at mach 10 hip sway. That and the minimum distance between the drones is so short she can basically overlap them across a huge area, making it impossible to clear them out.
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I've had this same experience, it's fairly miserable.
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I don't care if it's a hot or bad take but they overbuffed her from PTB, she's awful to go against I haven't escaped or lost a game as/against her, it might be easiest killer in the game now relative to her strength
drones have zero cooldown, you get haste/ bloodlust permanently, passive injure and hindered effects, it's impossible to not get hit no tile is safe, smaller maps are gg next you can cover entire map with drones, I want to see her killrate after 1 or 2 months
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I think Haste overall needs some tweaking not on Skull Merchant but, on everything perks and killers cause every bit of haste perk or base kit is stacking on top of everything.
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I’m glad I’m not the only one that thinks she’s unsalvageable. What I would do with her is give her a full on rework. Pretty much make a completely new killer.
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sounds like nemesis with 6 zombies drones. that is way too random.
what kind of interaction are you expecting in chases when vsing killer? greed loop and pallet break? I do not think every loop is an immediate die interaction. she has area denial parts that incentives linking pallets together to delay lock-on stacks and extend chase but the area denial tool is not as clear cut as say walking into a trapper trap or triggering a hag phantasm. there is some room for outplay and chase extension to some degree.
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It's the same as Knight.
You either leave the loop or die. You can't realistically loop her when her power is up.
Like I said immediately after, I don't think her design is salvageable, I just threw something out.
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This
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I can see why people don't really like her... it's a bit of a Knight 2.0
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She is still much too effective at 3-genning, it's only that rather than holding the game hostage, she can now actually win fairly fast by doing so. Which is an improvement in terms of the playing experience insofar you get out of the match more quickly, but it still makes for a rather boring, frustrating gameplay loop that is also much too strong for how mindless and skillless it is to execute.
BHVR thought that with drones not doing anything to stationary survivors, they couldn't be used to defend generators effectively. But survivors have to move to get to and away from gens, which will inevitably build lock-on. Sure you can stand still and crouch to avoid detection, but not only will this be a huge timesink, but it is impossible if Merchant is around. The minimum distance between drones also seems to not be working properly, she can have drone zones overlap with one another. And she still gets Undetectable and info on survivor locations. What this means is that if she drones the hell out of a 3-gen cluster and keeps patrolling it, survivors will inevitably and constantly be injured, deep-wounded, broken, Hindred, while she will be Undetectable and have Haste. She gets free downs galore out of this, and can combine this with a build such as Jolt, Eruption, Weasel and Overcharge, for which she still has Shotgun Speakers and Adi Valente. A non-coordinated (non-voice-comm-SWF) group of survivors will die to this every time if the 3-gen setup is even just halfway decent for the killer.
I will admit that there are still a fair few things I don't understand about Merchant because I simply haven't bothered playing and learning her, there is nothing redeeming about her design to me, gameplay and otherwise. Can she recall deactivated drones? What does "survivors detected by drones are trackable by the radar" mean exactly, and how does this relate to her Haste effect? Can she place a drone next to a deactivated drone, or one that is being hacked? Do drones really deactivate if she "walks underneath them", and if so, how close does she have to be, and for how long do they deactivate? Is the 3-second scan immunity after being scanned actually working properly? How are drone zones overlapping if the minimum distance between drones is supposedly 16m, with their scan radius being 10m?
But regardless, even if all of those things are working properly and as intended, holding a 3-gen still appears much too effective. Even if she can't recall deactivated drones, she has 6 for 3 gens. Patrolling her gens, she will also regularly interrupt survivors attempting to hack drones, which means more free injures, deep wounds, downs. And the 45-second deactivation time may not actually even be all that prohibitive to the idea of constantly having active drones on her gens, when spread between 3 gens and 6 drones, with survivors only intermittently (if at all) being able or safe to hack any.
I guess I will play a scrim sometime to try and figure out if you can actually "out-hack" a 3-genning Merchant. That still wouldn't mean much of anything for non-SWF groups however, and ultimately still wouldn't make me like this killer any better. She just has very little skill expression, little to no interesting interactions with her ability, and still the same propensity to oppressive "area control".
I hope the thing BHVR is allegedly "working on" to alleviate the 3-gen issue globally is coming soon (so in BHVR terms, at least within the next year...).
Edit: I have now learned that she can in fact recall deactivated drones. That serves to make her 3-gen potency all the more oppressive and is actually the first thing I would change about her.
Post edited by zarr on5 -
I have now learned that she can in fact recall deactivated drones. That serves to make her 3-gen potency all the more oppressive and is actually the first thing I would change about her.
she had a cooldown in recalling them in PTB. it was bad because it punished her for actively chasing survivors and playing the killer. the killer camping 3 gens is map issue and game foundation problem. skull merchant is now chasing trap killer so stop blaming 3 gens on skull merchant.
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Exactly this! She is insufferable to play against, especially on small or indoor maps.
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Well, if they would hurry up with that 3-gen change, sure, but it's something that's been an issue for years and years, and I would rather Merchant is unable to recall and instantly reset disabled drones for the time being than deal with 3-genning Merchants for who knows how many more months. She is not a "chasing trap killer", she still excels at controlling an area. Every Merchant I have faced so far has been 3-genning. The very least they have to do immediately is fix the bug that allows her to set up drones closer to one another than the patch notes state. The zones can overlap and that should be physically impossible.
I don't even think not being able to recall disabled drones would take away from her chasing playstyle much. You are using drones in chases, the survivor that is being chased can't hack them, and other survivors would have to go way out of their way to do so precisely because those drones will not regularly be around gens. But I hadn't played on the PTB, so I don't know first-hand. Perhaps they could make it so that you can recall deactivated drones if you are a certain, long distance away from them, making it less of an issue for area control.
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it is 12 meters currently. reason for 22 meters to 12 meters is because one of problems with old skull merchant is that every time you hook someone, all drones would disappear. if survivor loops around hook, you cannot use your drone for chasing purposes. drone distance was just annoying feature. i think drones can slightly overlap because of the drone not being perfect sphere. they are likely an oval shape. I do not see any problems because lasers do not detect you when you stand still and hacking drones is not difficult.
weakening 3 gens significantly weakens camping. perhaps a perk to help survivors that struggle to defeat 3 gens might be decent solution. I don't have that much problem with 3 gens anymore in soloq.
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There's a fair bit that doesn't make sense to me in here.
- What does the minimum distance between drones have to do with the minimum distance between hooks and drones?
- Even if those could for some strange reason not have separate values, it's not like using drones to camp is a healthy aspect that we have to be cautious to maintain. Not being able to use drones when chasing around a hook is a fair point of course, although I generally have never put much stock into these arguments along the lines of "survivors will abuse this by taking the chase to the hook!", because that's one of the worst things you can do - now the killer can camp and chase at the same time.
- It's curious that the patch notes say the minimum distance between drones is 16m, but it somehow ended up being 12. If anything I feel like they may have accidentally taken the hook distance and applied it to drones. In either case, with the scan radius being 10m (and there being no add-ons to modify this), there is still no possible way drone zones should be overlapping. The minimum distance must simply be bugged. And they are not overlapping by mere centimeters either, as your "oval drone" theory would suggest. They are overlapping by meters.
- I don't know whether you mean you don't see issues with overlapping drones, but the issue is that now you have 4 scan lines to worry about, and multiple drones within close proximity around any gen, such that even if you do manage to hack one before Merchant can chase you off, once she does you are still getting scanned.
- 3-genning has always been a very strong strategy, and it is particularly problematic for uncoordinated (non-SWF) groups. It was fine-ish in the past, but these days the gen clusters that can spawn are ridiculous, new strong perks to complement 3-genning have been released, and certain killers excel at it. BHVR has already said they want to address this issue globally, now they just have to do it. But we know this will take a long time, even if the solution ends up being very simple (such as spawning an 8th gen).
The "strategy" currently against 3-gen Merchant seems to be to just stay injured and leave the gen early if she approaches, because hacking drones is simply a waste of time - she will recall and reset immediately. The issues with not hacking being: without voice comms, leaving early is regularly not possible, not least due to Undetectable; depending on the distance between gens, pre-running may actually result in a stalemate scenario like with old Merchant; Hindered and Haste mean that she can still get you even if you pre-run; you have to mend constantly; she constantly knows people's positions as they keep getting scanned and clawtrapped.
I'm curious to see whether Otz or whoever will conduct another experiment to see how a good, coordinated team fares against an experienced 3-gen Merchant. I wouldn't be surprised if even in that environment she is still very strong, despite being so easy to play. And of course, this spells nightmares for non-SWF groups.
Edit: Actually, silly me. Both drones have a scan radius of 10m, so the minimum distance between them of course would have to be 20m in order to avoid overlapping scan zones. What made BHVR not consider this?
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Skull Merchant and chase killer in one sentence. omegaLUL
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your describing old skull merchant. if you ignore drones in new version of skull merchant near gens, the skull merchant when she comes to kick gen will intercept you with red laser beams with nearby drone. if you get hit by lock-on stack, you will eventually receive claw trap which injures you and eventually hinders you. recalling and reset does not matter because survivor can be in 4 places at once where as killer can only be on 1 place.
the results for otz will be the same as previous one. survivor team will escape. survivor is always suppose to win in gen progression vs gen regression. In terms of chase merchant, I am not sure if she is stronger. when otz did knight vs skull merchant video, skull merchant was able to chase very well. I am not sure how good this version is at chasing. it is too early to tell. I imagine it is similar or slightly worse.
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All I really care about is that I am not getting stuck in 40 minute 3 gen grind fests, and I don't start feeling very unhealthy things the second I realize I'm facing a SM, so it's a net gain for me.
Now she's just kinda there, which is totally fine with me. Better a non factor than a pox on the game.
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Same. New SM is better. Good? Debatable. But not nearly as teeth-grindingly painful. I actually kind of enjoy playing her now, just dropping drones all over the map and chasing survivors around them. I'm open to more tweaks though.
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Not mention of otz again good god. Stop with the otz. There are other better dbd players out there that deserve some love.
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