Please remove skullmerchant, I can't anymore
I cba with this skullmerchant. It's actually worse than the old one and that's saying something. It's literally impossible to beat her if she holds a 3-gen right from the start. And this version can chase as well!!!
If I see a skullmerchant dry kicking a 1% gen and instantly placing a drone on it I know it's over, even if I try my hardest. And even when I'm playing in a full tryhard swf.
- Drone zones overlap now, making you get multiple stacks and randomly injured at times.
- You don't lose stacks, so you're going to get that random injure + deep wound + hindered status at some point.
- You get slower with hindered, while she gets EVEN faster!
- She only has to place drones at loops and follow you to force an injure, no gameplay.
- No slowdown when using her power.
- She's undetectable most of the time, adding to the fact you're injured most of the time because of the random injures it's horrible
- You can't tell when she has haste, she just randomly gets faster when one of your teammates is in the drone range.
Stack 4 gen defence perks on top of this, nightmare.
Really curious what that new 3-gen solution is going to be. Because up until then I will have to give up when I see a skullmerchant. I just want to play a few games a day, not one 1 hour game where I get held hostage and my whole mood ruined.
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i just had a SM pull the “get good” egc comment after doing all this nonsense and getting 1 putted through gates. Let me pick my teammates and be on comms and we’ll see who needs to get good.
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Unlike old SM, the drones next to gens don't pick up everything. They don't scan stationary targets, so you can run up to a gen in-between beams and work on it. If they are using their drones on gens, this also means they don't have those drones for chases and for activating their 8 seconds of stealth.
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Annoying how a killer with a few hundred hours can beat teams with thousands and thousands of hours each. Just by dry kicking gens and placing drones.
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To be fair that was old Skull Merchant. I highly doubt new Skull Merchant could force a pro-team into a 50+ minute match.
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Skull Merchant is fine... She's still just an M1.
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Only a pro team has the mental fortitude to play out a match effectively against a 3 gen skull merchant though. The counterplay is just unexciting and requires you to play the long game widdling down her gens while taking very little risk once she goes towards her gens.
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Played 4 games now and 3 of them were skull merchants.... I'm not even kidding. Did any big content creator make a video about her and her 3-gen strategy? Legit curious
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Her 3-gen capabilities were weakened during her rework. Currently she isn't really much better at 3-genning than other killers, since her drones don't work on people doing gens.
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M1 for the survivors I guess. She's not chasing just kicking gens for 30 minutes until the survivors give up because they get bored.
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I keep seeing people who say this. But did you play against any 3-gen skullmerchants after the rework? It's legit exactly the same. You get injured so easily, so the 'exposed' part is the same, she is fast, you are slow. She can just play the same 3-gen strategy like before
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Do you think avg dbd player actually keeps up with balance changes and such? I wouldn't be surprised if gen merchants are forcing the same old build and survivors who experienced it before the rework just refuse to play into even a weaker version giving up. 3 genning is just the correct move against solo queue players who aren't efficient enough or have enough communication to break it. her kit leans into it still even if weaker and she's a relatively easy killer to pick up.
She's probably performing a lot weaker at the upper ranges meanwhile down below the survivors don't have the experience, perks, or time to play out a skull merchant match and give up.
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I just can't see how she's any better at holding a 3-gen than a Knight or a Doctor.
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she is just legion with 6 seconds of 10% hinder which is ridiculous. see a loop > drop a drone > force a hit > see a loop > drop a drone > force hinder > get the down. interactive. playing her is the equivalent of running ftp buckle up or burning a garden/gideon offering; you know you are a jerk and boring as **** for doing it but you do it anyway.
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Skull Merchant sure is a difficult problem to solve.
I only played against her original version once, I wasn't here for most of the chaos. I was told by people who I trust that she was horrendous to go against, and I have no doubt this is the truth.
But she still is awful to go against, in my honest opinion. Maybe her 3-gen strategies aren't as effective as they used to be, but that doesn't mean she is fun. At all.
Due to countless terrible experiences, I am not one to call for things to get changed or reworked. But in her case, I don't really see another choice.
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After getting scanned, you are immune from further scans for 3 seconds. Getting scanned by multiple drones within 3 seconds does not add extra stacks.
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Yea she is annoying, but I find her easy to deal with, she's like a more gimp clown.
I'd much rather play against another killer but she has counters. In soloq I actually win against her regularly. Still agree with OP though, I wouldn't miss her if she was deleted lol.
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Outside of chase that would help. But when she is following you, and you have to run through a cluster of drones you just get injured instantly. On top of that in deep wound and also hindered. While she gets even faster because you (and maybe also others) are inside of a drone zone. You barely need any killer experience to play her, if you have a few hundred hours you can beat a team with a few thousand hours each. Just use a drone, force a hit, use a drone, force a hit. While walking inbetween 3 gens, not leaving the area, kicking a gen, placing a drone. Hell how is this even fun, I get agitated when I think about it
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Not really. She's m1 with a ton of haste. That's a power in itself.
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She held people hostage for entire hours, forcing a game shut down.
All done with literally 0 effort.
This spawned the legendary chess - meme.
I had the pleasure of going against her twice and sat there with my soloq team for one whole hour. When we finally all died by time out, she just wrote "ez".
She created one of the most unhealthy playstyles in the game and gave rise to an impressive amount of trolls much to the dislike of other trolls and troll-groups in the game. You could win 90%+ of your game while doing almost nothing. You just needed patience.
This went so far, that one of these chess - merchant players made fun of one of these comp groups and held them hostage for 50 minutes (because they didn't know how to tackle the problem and tried a ton of strategies mid match on top of having a ton of perk and item restrictions,but I guess the message counts).
Not a fun time to play survivor.
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Shes not even top 10 most annoying to verse killer currently tbh
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Thus far this is my experience. I'm waiting to go up against a 3-gen merchant, but still haven't seen one... or if I did, me and my team weren't good enough to make it to the 3-gen, my escape rate feels about the same as any other killer.
Thing is I like playing Skull Merchant, I don't tunnel or camp, and I try to hold a reasonable set of gens. I may give up on a couple, bit I'm always patrolling looking for gens. My experience on her is a lot of people just don't even really try.
I've let so many players escape because 2 or even 3 of their teammates just decided to go AFK immediately and/or not bother playing. Like when playing Bubba, sometimes it's really annoying getting tarred with the same brush. 😒
I've even left a Dwight slugged for 3 minutes for blatantly throwing his team who were trying under the bus and trying to get me to hook him. When he realised I wasn't being a Chess Merchant and wasn't gonna let him get out for free, he actually started playing again.
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SM is top 5 most annoying killer of all time for sure, hands down. I even think she is more annoying then Mega Blink Nurse and VERY close to original Legion.
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I main killer and i think this new version is out of control. It's overtuned but she is going to be weak otherwise i feel like.
Drones just do so much it's crazy. She is the most hybrid killer ever.
I just don't find her whole character very engaging. Where is the fantasy and immersion.
I really hope one day they scrap her entire ability and make it so she is scouting killer with controllable drone. Like crypto from apex legends. This sounds fun.
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Pretty much. I think a lot of it is 'PTSD' from before her rework. A lot of survivors either don't know she got reworked or can't be bothered to learn how she works after her rework, they're used to giving up against the old Chess Merchant and they continue to do it even though she's worse at holding a 3-gen now.
For the record I'm not saying she's perfect and she does still have some issues with her kit that could be ironed out to make her more engaging to play against, but as far as 3-genning is concerned I really think there are multiple other killers who are just as good at holding a 3-gen who no one complains about.
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It's not. Her entire kit on a fundamental level is corrosive to the gameplay of dbd. She should be a clear example of what not to do with killers in the future for bhvr. Extreme area denial is flatly unhealthy for the game that dbd is and simply shouldn't be directly encouraged in a killer's design
Post edited by Steakdabait on4 -
Yeah I think I escaped 2/20+ games against SM playing solo q, mostly because ppl give up quickly and permanent haste is disgusting
I know "skill issue" blablabla but if it was just me i'd delete either haste or free passive injures from her kit she don't need it anymore, she's not better to verse than old one imo, even playing AS her I feel more in control of the game, I can tell she's stronger than average, probably overtuned
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The kicker is when you sneak into her 3 gen and disarm multiple drones only for them to automatically reactivate before you can do anything to break the 3 gen. It's like basekit iri stone if bear traps were the size of entire tiles.
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It's area denial that's easy to counter when not in chase though.
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Weak DOES NOT mean it's healthy.
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While asking for a perma-killswitch of Dull Merchant would be unfair to those who don't play like that, her very existence with such a design was a detriment to the game. I'm mostly annoyed because Dull Merchant and the players who decided 3-genning for 1 hour was good are almost solely responsible for the upcoming "3-gen solution" which will only hurt normal Killers even more (I think the 3-gen "strat" was truly popularized after Eternal had that accursed Dull Merchant match and dozens of popular content creators covered the whole thing).
Most of the time, the Survivors 3-gen themselves by mistake by doing gens too quickly and safely (leading to gens close to each others being done in a row instead of spread out) and the Killer didn't intend to end the game in a 3-gen.
Weaker Killers can use this mistake to make a possible comeback. It's the same principle as a Killer making the mistake of overcommiting to a chase in an unfavorable location/against a more experienced player and losing 2-5 gens in the process. Mistakes shouldn't be prevented, it adds depth to the game.
According to the AMA, the "solution" will revolve around the Killer's ability to kick gens (likely some limit after a set condition or time is met) which will effectively punish Killers for Survivors's mistakes. It's going to be very easy to genrush on maps that are "divided": just do every gens on one side since the 3-gen at the end will be mitigated anyway.
I mean, on the plus side at least we won't see many Killers being knowingly obnoxious from the start as much? It won't change much for new SM since she can't really scan gens anymore and is mostly just impossible to loop normally. Weaker (slow/M1) Killers are gonna take another hit and become less common outside of low MMR though, especially if Sloppy and STBFL get significantly nerfed.
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Her drones should have a longer cooldown, so she cant abuse to protect gens, and use only on loops
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Skull Merchant is just a big failure over all. Sad, but happens, I guess.
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SM is fine as is. Getting a new rework wouldn't help since survivors are programmed to hate her anyway no metter how you play her.
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Yesterday, I was playing Freddy on Gas Heaven and at the end of the game there was a 3 gen created by the survivors. I didn't plan on it from the start.
I don't think I did anything to deserve a punishment, which I am guessing the "3-gen solution" will be.
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Depending on how they handle it, it might not affect you at all. If they do something like limit how many times you can kick any particular gen, it would only really affect ppl who've been kicking the same gens since the start of the match.
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I enjoy playing as Skull Merchant (the reworked version), but I think she has some glaring design flaws. There's no chase interaction whatsoever for the survivors. Her kit is entirely passive on the survivor end. Outside of disabling drones, you don't interact with it at all. If you're playing as Skull Merchant, you're tracking on radar, deploying/recalling, changing rotation, etc. There's stuff going on for the killer. Not for the survivors.
It's actually a design flaw a lot of killers share to a degree. There's not a skilled interaction with a lot of M2 powers. You pre-drop, hold W, or get hit against many killers on the roster if the killer player is any good.
Hopefully the 3 gen aspect of Skull Merchant's kit goes away with the next mid-chapter. Her playerbase is by far the most guilty of employing that playstyle. We can debate her effectiveness at it relative to killers like Doctor, Twins, Hag, Plague, etc, but Skull Merchant players are 3 gen trolling more than others.
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I hate SM as much as the next person (maybe more) but her drones do not overlap. Or at least they shouldn't (not sure, if there is a bug that allows for this to happen).
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I’d take 10 straight Nurses over 1 Skull Merchant lol, and I hate Nurse.
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Based
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I don't even think I need to state my opinion on this one.
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I still refuse to play against any SM
sorry, but next match ASAP is much better
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No you love her she is your fave
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Depending on how they handle it, it might not affect you at all.
I sure hope so.
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It sounds like you just don't really know what to do. It's really easy to break a three gen against any killer who is protecting three gens from the start.
You sit on a gen and run away when you see her coming. That's it. If she chases you, everyone else is doing a gen and you win. If she doesn't chase you, go back to the gen. If she's been camping the three gen since the beginning, you should have four survivors left and she can't keep up.
You should never get scanned or hindered or anything since you're running away from the gen. Why are you running through a cluster of drones? They can't scan you more than once, they have to detect you to activate, and you can see them. A cluster of drones also means the Skull Merchant doesn't know how to play Skull Merchant. If there's a cluster of drones away from the gens, how is she protecting the gens?
If she puts a gen next to a gen, it also shows they don't know what they're doing. You can easily disable it without a penalty or just sit on the gen since it won't detect you.
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It's really easy to break a three gen against any killer who is protecting three gens from the start.
Yes, if the killer doesn't have a set of gen kick perks and isn't a killer like singularity/knight/doc with a power that can do it well or isn't generally very strong like nurse/blight, AND you have 3 other good teammates...
And even if all of these prerequisites are met, why bother slogging through a match where the killer won't commit to a chase and you're sitting holding M1? It's a boring playstyle and I hope the PTB solution will kill it off for good.
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not saying it's impossible or anything but;
You sit on a gen and run away when you see her coming.
run away to where? to any nearby possible safety that she's already put a drone at? if she is running from gen to gen kicking, never trying to take free hits committing to chases for a bit yes that's a baby player and you shouldn't struggle against that. if you don't want to give her that free hit/scans you need to run very early, and gens never get done like that hence why it's tedious and annoying; essentially a waste of time.
tbf it's not her 3 gen potential that irks me about that killer, it's just the most free and braindead area denial in the game that's her power.
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SM is my personal least favorite thing BHVR has added to the game. Boring playstyle, boring lore, and stained with the masses debating if it was a failed Predator, or even they couldn't think of a decent mori for this lackluster character.
Ill not buy or collect anything SM related from events just to make myself feel better. And now, her area control and denial compliments her original issue of 3 genning. At least from the few games I've actually played against her.
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Yeah the key term there is "get on comms". If you have to use comms to win then you're still the lesser player in this scenario.
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It's not that tricky. Run away from the three gen. She only has a limited number of drones and can't have them everywhere. She's also probably going to be holding on to one or two. She can't have a drone army around all the paths away from three gens.
There are no free hits if you're holding w. If she chases you across the map, your buds will finish a gen. If she doesn't follow you, turn around and get back on the gen as soon as she turns around.
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