Skull Merchant's Stacking Haste Post-Rework Is Excessive and Unnecessary
The Skull Merchant, with her new changes, feels much better both to play as and against.
However, one outdated aspect of her reworked kit is not necessary anymore now that her drones can be used to slow down survivors:
The stacking haste effect no longer has a part in her kit. She can remotely injure survivors, and there is nothing skillful about the way she can rush down survivors for simply getting scanned. Messing with movement speed messes with the balancing of the maps in the game; this is different from a charged attack like Hillbilly or Blight, as the speed that comes with their abilities is restricted: they have limited movement and turning. Skull Merchant retains complete control over her movement during the haste, and with it, there is hardly anything a survivor can do to outplay her.
Survivors are already slowed thanks to her strategic placement of drones.
Unlike Knight or Trapper, the haste doesn't help her after she stands still for a while to set something up; it passively helps her take down survivors for playing the game normally.
It also feels very bad to be on the receiving end of the haste as survivor when your teammates are the ones who are tracked; it feels like you are being punished for your teammates' mistakes.
The haste no longer has a good place in The Skull Merchant's kit, and in my opinion, should go to just be left with the Hindered effect.
Comments
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It's a joke right?
The survivors cried for the previous merchant (almost no one used her) and now the new merchant continues to generate tears (she is used less than before).
You should learn to play better, it's much easier to beat a shopkeeper nowadays.
Finally, they are very few and if someone wins games it is simply because the player made correct decisions.
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You have no idea what are you talking about
just because no one use the character means we can’t complain?
And no, everyone is playing her, she is more common than wraith now
And you probably couldn’t explain how to counter her, since she just press m2, do not lose any distance, and still get hit
Her speed variety was supposed to help her in chases when her power wasn’t chase based, now she has a chase power, this speeds variety doesn’t belong into her
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Exactly, if I get her one more time on Hawkins I'm going to have to take a break. Such a snoozefest.
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I agree. It has no place in her power anymore. Having an entirely passive speed boost just as part of a killer's power is bad design. It was tolerable before because it encouraged her to use her power for chases and not 3-genning, but now it's just completely unnecessary.
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Agree people need to stop being biased survivor mains that think that everything should be remove from killer Skull Merchant is fine the way she is now she can be annoying to play agaisnt but shes definitly not one of the killer i hate the most shes actully fine now and way healtier than before i think its fair for her to have additional haste because it fits well into claw traps that are suppose to take time to put on but will have a big impact just like trapper it take 3 times to get a claw trap shes balance now no needs to nerf her if they should change something it would be some of her addons that doesnt work with her power now.
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Oh right, you are mad they didn't kill her, so want to fix it? That's how you do it for sure.
This would make her super boring to play as and she would be way weaker. Just no...
She can remotely injure survivors
survivor has to be really bad to get injured outside of chase or do it on purpose
Survivors are already slowed thanks to her strategic placement of drones.
It takes quite a long time to get that hindered status effect. That's just minor part of her power.
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This is precisely my issue with it:
It was introduced to encourage players to use her power in chase rather than as an objective defense.
Now that it is exclusively a chase power, it should not be in the kit anymore.
There's nothing you can do to "play better" against sheer speed - maps are balanced the way they are and pallets/loops are spaced the way they are for a reason. Once you start changing the speeds of characters, this is all messed up and there is physically nothing a survivor can do to reach a new tile before the killer catches up (or if you're increasing Survivor speed like MFT does, nothing a killer can do to get close enough to a survivor before they reach a new tile.)
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How is her speed boost different from a Clown for example? That you think it is bigger issue with her?
Now that it is exclusively a chase power, it should not be in the kit anymore.
Her power works for chase only because of that speed boost. It doesn't make any sense to nerf it, so it stops being a chase power.
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The difference with Clown is that his speedboost requires more thought and more action on his part, unlike Skull Merchant's which is much more passive. Clown's speedboost requires him to use a bottle which then also has a short activation delay before it actually works, so it has to be planned and used strategically (and you can even give the buff to survivors if you misuse it). Bottles are also a limited resource he has to manage and reload often + every yellow bottle you use is one less slowdown bottle you have before you have to reload. And Invigoration only lasts 5 seconds by default which is not a super long time. Whereas Merchant can have constant 3% or 5% speed much more often with little to no effort.
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Things you said about Clown can be used for merchant.
so it has to be planned and used strategically
Skull merchant needs to plan and use her drones on specific locations for them to be effective.
Bottles are also a limited resource
Since when skull merchant has infinite drones? From what I know you can't have more than 6 on the map.
Main difference is, you can't deny Clown his slow/speed boost, but you can definetly do it against Skull merchant. Skull merchant should almost never has more than 3% speed boost, which is way less compare to old Skull merchant btw, it was normal to be around 5/6%, because survivors really wanted to disarm them.
Current merchant is most likely to get movement speed only from chased survivor, if you get any more, then someone screwed it and didn't watch where they run / didn't know they can crouch.
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The issue is the speed boost she gets AND the hindrance on survivor.
Idc what anybody says. She’s an absolute miserable killer and should be nuked into oblivion.
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Behavior's recent obsession with haste needs to stop in general. They just slap haste on everything and it makes the game way too confusing for everyone. Sometimes you will get hit simply because you had no idea that the killer had haste and it caused you to misjudge a situation. That doesn't make the game fresh or exciting. It's just frustrating more than anything else. It goes against all of the muscle memory you've built up over time. It's even worse for newer players who don't react as well to what the killer is doing. There's a reason why she has a 70% kill rate.
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There's a reason why she has a 70% kill rate.
It might matter when survivors stop giving up every other game. I think survivors are still hanging on old 3-gen merchant PTSD, so just don't want to play against it anymore, doesn't matter how you change her.
She is definetly better for survivors compare to old skull merchant, while still decent. She won't survive any nerfs, especially not major nerfs like removing movement speed bonus.
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There is nothing strategic about just throwing a drone down at a loop when a survivor takes you there. You can technically deny her from getting a speed boost but you often can’t without just giving her a free hit instead. Unlike other killers that force you to leave the loop when they use their power (eg. Artist and Knight) she doesn’t have to stop or slow down at all. So you can’t use that to gain any distance on her.
Drones aren’t unlimited but if you need another drone you just recall one somewhere which has no cooldown and doesn’t slow you down. If Clown needs more bottles he has to stop and reload which often gives survivors a chance to get away if they’re not trapped in a corner with no connecting tile. Gas clouds also dissipate after 10 seconds and can’t be left at a loop to use later, unlike drones, every new chase needs new bottles.
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The end goal for survivor complaints is to make every killer a M1 killer who can looped for 5 gens. It does not matter how many bones BHVR gives survivors, it's very clear they will never be content.
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Side point while we’re at it:
Your point to her recalling and instantly placing a drone is why I think drone recalls need to trigger a cooldown on her power. Even if shorter, like 5 seconds.
She can instantly replace a disabled drone (which is very easy for her to tell when they’re disabled, as the aura disappears while it’s being taken down and then it rises high in the air)
If you take her to a loop where someone has taken down a drone, she can recall it and put it back up instantly and you’ll take damage/Lock On progress despite the fact you went through the effort to take the drone down.
It makes countering her traps entirely futile. Recalls NEED a cooldown for her counterplay to feel meaningful.
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thank you thank you
i am glad someone else talked about that part of her kit, it's simply uninteractive and boring to go against.
her getting random speed boosts all the time without any ounce of thought (just drop a drone at a loop) is a terrible design and I don't understand what's with bhvr's obsession with haste is lately.
she has an injure, a stealth on demand and hindered is more than enough chase power she doesn't need haste on top of all that
and if bhvr insists on giving her something they could bring back claw traps giving dissolution effect back but please delete the haste from her kit.
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So there is nothing strategic using her power in a way so survivors can't easily ignore her drones, but throwing bottle on position of survivor, or position of clown is so strategic... How does that make any sense?
Clown is not able to think ahead of current chase (when we talk about his power), you can think how to play next loop, but that's about it.
Skully actually can do it and setup drones in advance, but you can't really just spam it and expect it to work, because guess what? Survivors can disarm your drones without any real drawback and it's quite hard to tell just from aura of that drone.
Clown gets slowdown while realoading, so what? You don't do it while in chase, if so you screwed it. You throw yellow bottle before it, so you get speed boost when you are done realoading anyway.
She felt really bad to play as when she had cooldown on recall, that was simply terrible. You want to get her cooldawn on recall? Sure, but create drawback for disarm. Stack of lock on would work, but I don't think you would enjoy that.
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That’s something I’ve thought about too. I definitely agree disarming a drone isn’t impactful enough especially since she can just recall it and replace it.
I think them removing the cooldown on recalling after the PTB was meant to be more of a quality of life buff to make her feel better to play and not as much intended to make her significantly stronger. But it actually made her a lot stronger.
Honestly though I’m not really sure how to salvage her power or if it’s even possible. I liked using her old power for chases with the purple addons but even still it wasn’t actually that healthy with all the free speedboosts, it just felt more fair because it wasn’t as strong compared to now (and I refused to play 3-gen Merchant). But that version of SM had its own set of problems too. Now I just don’t play her anymore at all because of how obnoxious she is.
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I do agree the recall cooldown didn’t feel good to use which is part of why I don’t really know how to fix her power to be fair for survivors while still keeping her power good. I think she may just be unsalvageable tbh
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I think a reduced cooldown on the recall would be ok, like if it was half the cooldown of a placement (5s).
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