Congratulations BHVR on the epic fail Skull Merchant rework

She can, but she has to both notice that one's hacked and walk back over there to replace it. She can't be everywhere at once, if everyone's taking care of drones it'll outpace her ability to replace them.

As for how you loop around a drone, the same way you loop while under the effects of Clown's gas, in my experience. Predrop and force the killer to break. It mostly is a tactic for when you're already injured, though.

I'll just leave this here...

Detailed breakdown of why Dull Merchant is still an issue.

It's hilarious how incredibly weak she currently is and yet how effective she can be. After the rework she has lost her oneshot, her wallhack addons, her permanent extra movement speed (because survivors where forced to remove her drones to repair), her free pallet breaker and her undetectable got way weaker... But you can literally mindlessly drop drones around the map and ignore the gens, you will win because most survivors don't know what to do. You keep getting random hits across the map because survivors don't even try to crouch walk before aproaching the drones and they keep trying to loop the main building even when you have it sunrounded by drones.