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

The thing with Clown is he has limited bottles, his clouds last a limited time, and he has to be careful with placements to ensure he gets the 10% boost vs. the Survivors 15% Hindered. If he misthrows either he doesn't benefit, and can even help the survivor out by boosting them.

Skull Merchant doesn't have to worry about uptime or reloading, she doesn't have to be accurate with her placement, she gets her speed passively while still just zoning the survivor at the loop, while also getting the benefit able to see exactly where they are at all times. She even gets to build bloodlust while zoning, which Clown does not. Either the survivor doesn't leave, where they will eventually get the Hindered effect vs. her haste, which is pretty much a guaranteed down unless Skully horribly misplays, or they leave, which she has perfect knowledge on and either intercepts, or simply repeat at the next loop.

Clown can make mistakes at loops and be outplayed, it's tough, but it can happen. It is REALLY hard to mess up completely as Skull Merchant.

You may have noticed I'm not especially trying to nerf Skull Merchant. I'm trying to remove her more annoying effects that makes everyone just shut down vs. her. This 5% boost when a Survivor is trapped is a buff, but importantly, it's consistent.

You're right, there won't be more than 2 scans most of the time, but the point here is to make the survivor being chased the decider for how much speed she gets. If someone gets scanned cross map, for the most part it shouldn't apply additonal pressure to the person she is currently chasing, because the person she is chasing is likely to pick up a scan too. If someone gets claw trapped cross map... they really screwed up, but they obviously become a juicier target for SM vs. A healthy survivor at a loop.

My point here is that trying to watch where Skull Merchant is and what she is doing for mind games, trying to watch where the drone is facing (especially in stealth mode), and trying to watch the HUD, and then trying to adjust for her speed at loops is a lot to ask of a survivor to process at any moment. A claw trapped survivor is something that is not hard to notice on the HUD, even in your periphery, and making it consistent, means survivors can adjust their timings and get a feel for playing vs. her.

Again, I'm not high elo, but in my experience against Doctor, you can anticipate a shock and throw a pallet early, or fake towards/take vaulting pallet/windows for mind games as the shock hits you. If you succeed at that mind game, you can make distance, but if you misplay it you get boned.

Vs. Hindered, just like Clown, even if you succed at the mind game, you still get Hindered, and they catch up, you're still in a dire situation because you can't make any distance, and again, unlike Clown, Skully doesn't ever have to slow and reload, she just bolts after you.

Do tell how a shock is so much stronger than Hindered? Cause I see the opposite in my games. A good Clown is harder to face at loops than a good Doctor, that's why Doctor has additonal slowdown and detection screams in his kit via madness and static blast, while Clown literally holds loops and that is it.

Thing is though, its not weaker. Most Clowns don't stack up yellow bottle and purples at majority of loops. 15% Hindered is enough most of the time.

10% Hindered and a 3% speed boost for all intents and purposes is effectively the same thing. You have the point that SM can't apply her speed swing as easily as Clown, but again, she can keep getting her speed boost, her Hindered, her killer instinct and everything, without needing to aim anything, all while building bloodlust, with no downtime and no reload, which Clown can not.

I still don't get you here, because in all scenarios the same problems exist for Hinder but are almost always worse. We don't need a Doctor level 2.5s action block shock, that number can be fiddled with to meet something reasonable, but a Hindered effect will always be an issue unless you want to make it really short too?

For the shock, against a weak loop, yes the shock has this problem she can just keep running after you until you get shocked, but unless she accounts for when the shock hits you and/or changes drone rotation accordingly, you can still threaten vaults before your scan. You can even bait a less optimal vault just before the shock to get a swing, you juke the hit and and leave. The problem is much less against a strong loop, cause when you get to the pallet from out of sight of the scan, you can throw/vault before your shock scan, and when she breaks the pallet, she loses bloodlust, and you get the distance while she breaks. The point is, a shock only hurts you when you want to throw a pallet or vault...

However with the Hinder, both strong and weak loops are worse, cause on a weak loop she does the same thing as before... but now whether you vault or not she just doesn't break and catches you regardless, the hinder makes it so any attempt to leave is completely pointless, so you must leave before hand. At a strong loop, you can throw like before, only this time you don't care about when you get scanned, cause the Hinder is gonna hit you anyway. Even if she breaks and loses bloodlust, you still don't make distance while she breaks cause you have the Hinder vs. Her speed boost. Hinder hurts you no matter what you're doing.

I genuinely can't think of a scenario where I'd prefer having my ankles broken, vs. say a 1.5 action block from a shock.

Edit: What's also nice about the shock is it behooves Skull Merchant to use her radar to change the beam direction at the right time for the shock to allow her to convert to a hit. This means she isn't building bloodlust cause she is using her power... as opposed to Hinder where she doesn't really need to care when it hits the survivor, as long as it hits.

As an aside... does anyone know why Skull Merchant gets Killer instinct when a claw trapped survivor is scanned? I never understood that... she literally has a radar for this exact purpose... why even use the radar when Killer Instinct does the same thing better?

Have a harsher alert beep and colour the blip orange or something would be my choice.

Fair enough, I am sure you enjoy her but there are many people who do not.

I actually tried her for the first time about a month ago with an open mind and I was just so bored. It just felt like the play was always to drop a drone at a loop and slowly build up lock on until they get hit or leave the loop and it was just a rinse repeat of boring gameplay for both sides without any skill expression. Like what can I do as a killer to impose my skill in anyway when I am just putting up drones? I do wanna try a perma stealth build with her, I feel like that might actually make her fun.