The only change Skull Merchant needed was reload drones from lockers. The rework is horrible

"I honestly think Drones causing damage should be removed from base kit and be a iridescent add-n, other debuff's are fine."

I completely agree here. The emphasis was on the tracking ability and other negative effects. And now this.

Still see potential in her myself.

Her kit is overloaded atm, but the change to the sweeping drones was a great improvement. Avoiding the beams MGS style while going for saves or moving to gens/looking for totems is the fun part of her kit. However getting shut down at loops is not.

I'd personally:

• Remove the Hindered effect from getting scanned while claw trapped.
• Remove the scaling scanned survivors speed.
• Make her a flat 4% faster when a scanned survivor is in her terror radius.
• Make her a flat 4% faster when a claw trapped survivor in in her terror radius. (Claw traps last longer).
• Getting scanned while claw trapped zaps the survivor, preventing them from vaulting or dropping pallets.

With these changes a lot of the things like her drones coming back online instead of being disabled, her fast recall, etc, etc all are in a fair spot.

It also keeps the parts of Skull Merchant that are fun to play in tact, so people who do like her, don't lose their killer.

Skull merchant after the rework sure.

anybody who enjoyed her before the remake only enjoyed it because they could make people miserable

Clown gotta m1 you twice whilst cuck merchant only requires to place a drone that can scan you for free removed health state AND slowdown

Try leaving the loop without giving her something in return. She either gets a hit or a pallet and you might still get a lock on stack.

Also, a killer that has a large range area denial ability will always be good at playing territorial. It doesn't matter that the survivors don't have to worry about lock on stacks while doing gens. As soon as you get near them, they have to leave and considering that you have an inbuilt stealth ability and can deny any loop they get to, it's no surprise that you'll get some easy hits. This forces them to heal and allow you to regress the gens for a bit. Until you eventually gain the haste effect of a claw trap. Then, you'll start snowballing and getting even faster hits and more lock on stacks.

Skull Merchant doesn't require any more thought than: "Press M2 at a slight distance to the loop and adjust the rotation to either cut off the survivor or force them to stand still multiple times per loop." and playing against her always reduces your 'counterplay' to: "Pre drop pallet before anything happens and leave the loop."

I do not see how any of this could be considered fun. I really don't, so if you would be so kind to explain, I'd be grateful. Then I'd at least have an idea why people actually play her. Or is it just because she is easy to play and guarantees results?

You just described killers with anti-loop.

One of the reasons I'm not playing survivor is that I feel it's mind-numbingly simple. You are holding m1 or W during 95% of the match. I don't have to understand what people enjoy in that - I'm just happy that they do, because that means I can chase them! Sure, Skull Merchant is not a Hux or Twins, but she still requires much more focus and thought than what the average survivor puts into the trial.

"Anti loop killers" (describes almost every killer in DBD history) still have to actually play around loops (with few exceptions). Slog Merchant on the other hand puts you in a lose-lose scenario simply by pressing M2. It's mind numbingly simple.

Slog Merchant doesn't require focus to play against because she leaves you with only one option every time she presses M2. To drop the pallet and leave the loop. It's the same every time. There is no thinking involved. You play the same around every loop against every SM and do not vary in any way because it's the only way to delay her even a bit.

She turns both sides into bots and if that isn't bad design, then I don't know what is.

old skull merchant was BS in literally every way, useless chase power, almost useless tracking and useless stealth, the new one at least needs map knowledge and a good macro, but no survivor tries to play against her or at least understand how to counter her (it's super simple, she's basically an improved clown), and she´s still boring to loop against because she´s a basic m1 killer (safe drop is cringe)

While her add-ons aren't "good" in the sense that they turn her from F-tier to A-tier, she has everything in her add-ons. She has add-ons that gives her claw traps pocket Huntress's Lullaby, pocket Sloppy Butcher, inflicts Oblivious, increased Hindered on Survivor and increased Haste on herself etc.

Her add-ons aren't game-breaking like Blight's or Myers's but some of them are downright bootleg versions of perks by themselves and give her an absurd amount of versatility for the low effort it requires.

Whenever I have to play Dull Merchant (due to daily challenges or customs) I don't have to mindgame or really do anything in chase since even god loops like the infamous GoJ house, Saloon or RPD main Hall (those stairs are annoying for M1 Killers if the Survivor has a decent head-start but the drones invalidate the whole thing) are easily circumvented. All I have to do is press M2 once or twice and the Survivor will eventually be hindered, broken and deep-wounded (and that's without add-ons, not that they are needed) while I get faster which makes the speed gap even wider if they don't immediately leave the loop.

The hardest Skull Merchant games I had were against SWAT teams that always Sprint-Burst away early to use her only flaw: If she can't start a chase then it's tough to win them. And even then I never got anything less than a 2k (and that's because I'm not going for the 4k if someone DCs/dies on first hook, it's just meaningless and demoralizing for everyone involved, bots will die though for the sake of bp but otherwise nobody's going past 2nd hook).

The Survivor can't even hope that I run out of drones mid-chase because I can recall drones from across the map, even if they are disabled, without losing speed and re-use those drones in the current chase. The only possible move to waste as much time as possible is to pre-drop and leave loops as soon as the drone is dropped, they'll still go down eventually and likely either waste a bunch of pallets or accidentally draw the Killer to their teammates but there is no real counterplay outside of holding W.

Furthermore, the drone can be used to make flashlight saves/Decisive Strike almost meaningless. After downing a Survivor and if a wall isn't nearby, just walk a couple steps away, drop a drone so when you pick up you are in the zone but not under the drone. If the Survivor somehow wiggles off they instantly gets scanned (maybe alongside the potential rescuer if they had to get too close) which makes the Killer faster and the recovery almost meaningless unless a god window or pallet was right there.

The only "good" thing about her right now is that she is one of the few Killers that makes people not want to get chased like the old days when most people didn't know how to loop. Most SM games I play, on either side, are among the slowest since Survivors don't want to take risks and are utterly focused on avoiding a potential 3-gen.

Side-note: the fact that your argument for the video's validity is that the Youtuber is "small" isn't exactly reassuring. Otz's word isn't law and stats speaks for themselves: Skull Merchant has the highest killrate in the game despite some Killers having a far higher maximum potential (Nurse, Blight) because she requires almost zero learning curve to use outside of common sense.

That's precisely the point, setting up a drone at loops isn't free, you lose your speed buff 🙃

The thing that improved is that, despite needing to move a bit more than her previous iteration, she can still do area-denial better than every other trap Killer in the game and at no real cost (every other trap Killer either has to manually replace/move their traps or the Survivors can disable them permanently in some fashion) Skull Merchant has the equivalent of the Trapper's Iri Stone add-on but basekit since her drones will repair themselves after a while even if Survivors take the time to disable them without needing any imput from her. And she can recall and replace disabled drones mid-chase. She got more drones than before and said drones can slightly overlap each other (making guarding exit gates disgustingly easy if close enough, especially on Midwich)

Guarding gens directly is superfluous when you can simply keep every strong loop around the gens impossible to use, every time Survivors leave a gen they will get a stack by going to a strong loop, if they avoid the loop then they will likely be either in a deadzone for an easy hit or will have to quickly use a pallet.

Skull Merchant isn't, and never was, a Killer that gets a 4k at 5 gens. Forcing Survivors to overuse resources early and taking unavoidable damage, especially if the Survivors 3-gen themselves, basically gives free victories if the Survivors aren't equipped with gen-destroying perks and items.

Quite frankly, all she would need to be a tad more bearable (though still annoying due to area-denial in general being annoying to varying extent) is to make it so drones that are disabled cannot be recalled until they repair themselves and to make Hindered/Haste add-on dependant rather than basekit.

Side-note: I'm not sure if it was doable pre-rework but it's sometimes possible to put a drone in the middle of the basement stairs and put another at the top of the stairs. This works especially well on Ironworks of Misery where if a Survivor is put in basement in main it's basically impossible to get them. Happened to me a couple times and it's pretty annoying seeing my teammates just giving up and slamming gens, there's no other choice really since interacting with the drones in any way will bring the Killer right back and running out will net me 2 stacks, speeding her up.

Also you said "just because some small youtuber made a video about it" which implies that notoriety is a factor in validity of opinion and experience.

Because, Skull Merchant's kit is overstacked. It's got too much in it. Skull Merchant has very punishing Anti-Loop, both at shutting down loops with a drone to force survivors to leave, as well as perfect information for when they do leave after they've been scanned a single time. She also has some degree of global slowdown, between broken and forcing survivors to slowly approach gens, hexes and/or hooks she protects, and even breaking her drones gives her information she can capitalise on. The video posted by @Skillfulstone explains it with very good argumentation.

The speed boost is an issue to my mind. She already has the power to shut down loops, she can get perfect knowledge on mind games, she can force you to stay or take a hit, and then to top it all off she can get a 13% speed swing between her Hindered effect and speed boost that just makes downs trivial.

I'm not claiming my idea is perfect, but I also don't believe "Just delete her" is at all reasonable or helpful. Some people actually like Skull Merchant and want her to be good and fun. The motivation for my suggestion is she needs to lose something from her kit. We could be boring and say "Just remove her speed boost", or we could be a little more creative and tie it to her 'excitement of seeing the terror in her victims' or something, hence attaching it to her TR, with some trade offs imposed accordingly vs. Her very power anti-loop.

It's not the only option. I've suggested elsewhere make her a 4.4 killer and give her a flat 3% boost when there is a scanned survivor, and a flat 5% when there is a claw trapped survivor, making her 4.4, 4.52 and 4.6 respectively. At 4.4m/s at least her near uncounterable anti loop and all her effects are somewhat justified cause she can be pre-run quite effectively.

If you have better suggestions I'm all ears, but I for one really want to break this "Skull Merchant sucks and there is no hope for her" mindset a lot of people have.

Switching the traps to always use scan lines was a great change. Her unavoidable AoE was dumb, but having to sneak past her traps to disarm or work under them was a solid change. She has the potential to be pretty good if people smarter than me would engage their minds in the conversation.

Maybe she is fine as is, if you want to argue that, then sure, I'll happily listen.

I will admit, I do think she is more managable, but I'm low, maybe mid elo tops... I'm not sure how much is players not bothering to play, and how much is her being insane at anti-loop/me being bad.

She in my opinion is not quite hitting the levels of obnoxious that some would have us believe... however the 13%-17% speed swing is just insane in combination with everything else she gets. When I get it as Skull Merchant, it kinda feela bad, like I didn't earn my down. I'm a Pig player usually and rely on mind games for downs, the scans make those mind games pretty easy, as there is no chance of me completely misguessing while I have them on radar, so I wouldn't say she gets nothing without her haste. Especially as she has a 4.6m/s stealth speed, which is great for sneaking up on gens.

With that in mind removing Hindered is one option for chopping something out of her kit. The only issue I have with this is getting scanned while you have a claw trap should do 'something'. The shock suggestion from PixelBush was pretty cool... maybe sn add on for a 3% Hindered effect would be fine?

Another thing that erks me personally about her speed boost is it is never clear how much speed Skull Merchant has. It's something you can possibly learn, but unless youre paying close attention to the HUD in the middle of trying to deal with her at loops, it's really hard to know what speed she has. People getting scanned across the map can suddenly grant her a speed boosts that have nothing to do with the survivor she is actually chasing.

I'd prefer her speed be standardised in some way. Part of the suggestion for the TR option was to make it so the survivor she is actually chasing is the cause for her boost. Alternatively 3% for a scanned survivor and 5% for a clawtrapped survivor, and leave it at that at least let's you know where you stand, rather than it being somewhere between 3% and 7%... and it would help me keep track k as Skull Merchant a lot easier too, as even playing her sometimes I'm not sure.

So between the standardised speed and the shock instead of Hindered, I would think Skull Merchant would be quite reasonable.