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Is skullmerchant too strong or are we just not aware enough?
Recent statistics from nightlight shows that she has been far over 60 % for the last months.
Current status:
I personally do have issues to play against this killer as her speed boost is unpredictable and makes it hard to greed pallets. So looping is limited. She has basekit undetectable when placing a drone which is also hard to embrace as (in my recent games) she will just recall drones and replace them to have a large time of undetectable.
The drones are down for a short amount of time when you hack them. The stacks from getting scanned never vanish unless you are put into dying state. When you get chased by her and she places a drone you could get scanned twice before being able to break from the loop. This means she is one scan away from another speedboost, tracking you, hurting you, and applying the broken status effect.
My suggestion would be that you can remove a stack by hacking a drone. This would punish the Merchant for placing all her drones randomly greeding undetectable.
Also maybe have some cooldown for the drones like when they are hacked she cannot retrive them immediatly (can manually if she is close by) and cooldown for placing drones. This punishes bad drone placements and enables the survivor to at least get away from the loop before getting scanned twice.
Answers
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Something to remember here is that a fair amount of people still just give up immediately when they see the Skull Merchant, and if the forums are to be believed, more than that number play intentionally badly to be out of the match ASAP. That's going to mess with her kill rate on top of nightlight not being 100% reliable.
Largely she seems fine to me. I don't mind the idea of hacking a drone removing one stack, though, that seems pretty fair- encourages the power interaction a little more without severely harming her ability to get work done.
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Yeah, that's a good idea, would make it feel more worth it to disable the drones.
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She needs a complete, top to bottom rework.
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Nightlight understates the actual kill rates if anything. I remember last time they released official numbers and people were surprised that kill rates were so high.
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i might start playing some skull merchant now just to see if she is fun and op
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She is neither. But you will get to play a bit of PvE.
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I wouldn't say strong as in op, but more like she is annoying/dull and most survivors will just gg next in whichever way they can.
Post edited by BasementDweller on2 -
good to know but hey i love to experiment
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I don't enjoy a killer whose chase against me is affected by the actions of randoms half a map away.
She also just lat out has to much going for her. Tracking, area denial, stealth, haste, injuries without even interacting with the survivors.
Considering how quickly she covers the entire map with drones, hacking them should really break them.
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Worst designed power ever, this killer has zero fun to go against. Hopefully we will get full rework for her or problem will just stay.
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Too strong? That's kind of hard to judge. She is weak in some regards but incredibly strong in others.
Take her chase for example. With minimal effort she forces you into a lose-lose situation. You either drop the pallet and leave immediately or you are pretty much down. Once you get 3 stacks of lock on, you get hindered, while she will have Bloodlust tier 1 and the haste effect from her power. When the drone injures you, you also don't get a speed boost, so really you are trapped in a loop against a M1 killer that moves significantly faster while you are slowed down yourself.
On the other hand though, she has no mobility and not a lot of map pressure (especially now that drones don't detect you when you're not moving) either. Her design is simply terrible.
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Remember that Nightlight isn't 100% reliable.
Because well...
A bit high for a killer that many are considering to be the weakest in the game, isn't it?
Many players still DC or give up immediately against Skull Merchant, and that has an impact on her kill rates. That doesn't make her too strong or overpowered.
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This was basically identical to his official kill rate from Behavior's own stats. Even at top 5% MMR he was at around 60%. I doubt his kill rate is lower than this in reality.
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Its me and the other five Freddy mains on the Forums absolutely carrying this killer, obviously :)
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Freddy has a 55.56% win-rate
Skull Merchant has a 65.82% win-rate
Big difference, about 10%
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Yes, but keep in mind the disconnects and suicides on hook.
Survivors don't do that against Freddy. Certainly not as often as they do it with Skull Merchant.
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I would agree my friend. 💯
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These are the current stats for them as of today. I don’t think Freddy is the weakest killer in the game but definitely way overdue for some love and help for sure.
Skull Merchants stats are only this high from all the DC’s ppl do against her, or give up on hook. 🪝
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no she is not too strong. these numbers are primarily just people giving up to her. not because shes strong but because shes boring. freddy is one of the weakest killers in the game yet he has a 60% killrate on nightlight
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i could say the same with artist, xenomorph, chucky, nemesis, and the knight. goodluck trying to loop them lol i dont know why people act like her being strong in chase is a problem. its the same situation as like hag or trapper. they can shut down loops and areas by putting stuff down but no mobility
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You have more counterplay against each and every one of them (yes, even Knight, although it is technically using exploits) than you have against Skull Merchant. She isn't just strong but she leaves you with absolutely no way to come out on top during a chase. That is a simple fact. She either gets the pallet (immediately btw) or she gets the health state.
Trapper cannot carry all of his traps with him to achieve the same results (aside from a purple addon that also has a massive downside) and Hag is 4.4 m/s. You make so much distance on her, that it simply doesn't work out, if she ever tries to chase like Skull Merchant. Also, both of them need to stand still to set up their powers, which already allows you to leave the loop. The same cannot be said for Skull Merchant.
You also forgot that Skull Merchant is the only one of these killers that can reliably deny survivors the speed boost after a hit, which also saves her a lot of time.
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the trapper or hag can cancel their set up and catch the survivor off guard running. plus skull merchant does has counterplay in chase. when you see the orange beam close to you just quickly crouch. the knight is countered through exploits meanwhile shes countered by a crouch mechanic. also how does she deny the speedboost? survivors still get a speed boost when going from healthy to injured by her drone
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I’d love to tell you but I don’t play enough against them to have enough experiences to learn or evaluate. Maybe more people should pick SM up and test it. I see so few to give an opinion. Meaning I haven’t faced them enough since the rework to say whether or not it’s a learn skill to counter or genuinely OP.
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Nightlight is of course nothin official. It's just as precise as people are willing to share their statistics. But I think it is somewhat good intel.
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No she has million of drones she is not fine. She is somehow even worser than before.
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In my matches no-one gives up but skull merchant is oppressive that she wins anyway. I don't remember ever escaping agains't her after rework she has whole map covered with drones and she can now camp every gen instead just 3.
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She's definitely not worse than before, that's very obviously more than anyone could claim.
Not holding games hostage until the server closes is just flat out better even if it were still bad.
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View my other comment below she is. Survivors sometimes at least won those long games usually not more than 30 minutes though.
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"Too strong" would still be a much better outcome than where she was before.
I also don't know that she is too strong, honestly. Whenever I play her and survivors don't actively give up, it kinda seems like a lot of people just don't know how her power works.
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I don't think SM is that oppressive, to be honest. She is powerful in chases, but that alone doesn't guarantee her victory.
You can escape from her but it may not be fun.
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Also a problem with her is as survivor you can't lose stacks. You should lose your stacks when deactivating a drone. When you have been scanned you will get randomly injured at some point
Post edited by Nick on1 -
I think she is B-tier not too strong but good. However if you want to 4k as killer just play Skullie since at least one survivor will give up early killing everyone else.
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she doesnt have a million lmao she has 6 wish is perfectly fine judging on how her drones no longer effect a large area regardless of obstacles and floors
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If you allow a survivor to crouch in chase, then that is your mistake alone. It's not hard figure out when to reverse the rotation. If you have a survivor run after the beam, then they can't avoid, if they are somewhat close to the drone. You leave them with absolutely 0 counterplay other than pre dropping the pallet immediately.
Since when do survivors get that speed boost? I have had the 'pleasure' to play against 2 Skull Merchants after her rework. The first time, I did not get the speed boost, which left me trapped in the loop. The second time she hard tunneled 1 survivor out of the game and I got the hatch after that without ever being in chase.
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I just had it today. I was given the speed bost.
It was my first escape ever against skull merachant and I think its because we where playing lights out
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People really got stuck with gen merchant, she's fine, her drones are literally so easy to disable.
That's your own statistic in 400+ games, go take a look at people who get 2k+ winstreaks on Blight and Nurse before complaining about an average killer that has no gen pressure anymore, just a strong chase, Clown h also has a strong chase and he's bottom tier, people are just salty because her stealth can catch you out of position and hit you.
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Good survivors can easily escape against a sm, people who complain about current sm can't be bothered to realize her drones are only which is her only anti loop power useful in chase as you can just disable them.
She doesn't need a nerf at all, let's nerf mid tier killers that are actually pretty balanced so no one will play them anymore and go back to Blight and Nurse.
Good, because the game should not be balanced around soloq, killers are not supposed to be give survivors an easy time just like I never see survivors give killers an easy time but no one talks about that, it's only a problem when survivors don't like something.
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I wouldnt say he's the weakest, but even then a weak killer nowadays is MUCH better than a weak killer say 2-3 years ago. As time goes on, killer has gotten stronger and stronger
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She's not op but the amount of effects she gets passively just for placing a drone is too much. Her skill floor is non existent and her skill ceiling is extremely low. By simply placing down a drone she can:
get haste
apply hindered
apply broken
become undetectable
get passive tracking
monitor an area
Other killers can also counter looping, but they at least have some sort of skill expression while using their power. Not dull merchant though (and knight, but this isn't about him). She doesn't need to aim, she doesn't slow down, she doesn't need to worry about placement, just press m2 and the loop becomes unusable. That's what people hate about her. There is no skill expression in a merchant chase. If she doesn't like the loop, she places a drone and you have to leave and most likely eat an m1 because there is no slowdown while deploying a drone.
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I agree that he isn't the weakest killer in the game, but he is close. This is the weakest he has ever been.
And yet, his kill rate is higher than Huntress. It is almost the same as Hillbilly's. It is not drastically altered by hook suicides like Skull Merchant's.
I legit have no explanation for that, and I main Freddy.
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To be fair, she only gets one of those things just for placing a drone down. The rest come from survivors being scanned, which should require her to actually be in chase with them and pathing at least somewhat smartly. Whether it's too much still is another argument, but it's only right to be accurate.
It's also worth mentioning, regarding the whole "drop something at loop, force survivors to run away" thing... it's both not the only thing she does, and she's not the only killer that does it. I'm not defending it, I do think it's boring, but it's also not fair to make out like it's the sole domain of the Skull Merchant or that she doesn't do anything else.
(She also very much has to worry about placement, her drones don't work through walls/obstacles anymore)
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Weakest he's ever been is definitely a stretch, as he still has a decent kit but its just lacking a few things. Yes he received a pretty hefty nerf a few years ago, but he was still considered a decent killer even after that.
What really happened is he got power crept. While he stayed the same, stronger and stronger killers were being introduced, as well as other killers being reworked/buffed.
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if youre just sitting there trying to constantly rotate the drone that is a mistake. iv been playing skull merchant since her release and iv been constantly seeing people just press the crouch button for a split second and completely avoid the beam. and i dont know when exactly they did it or if its a bug. what i do know is survivors are getting a speed boost (doesnt seem to be long like the normal one however) when going from healthy to injured. it doesnt apply when theyre already injured. i have clips of it.
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The drones rotates on its own. You only need to adjust the rotation once (and only if necessary). It's really not that hard figure that out. The beam can either cut off the survivor or constantly force them to crouch. In both cases you slow them down drastically, which makes looping close to impossible and certainly less effective.
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then it rotating on its own shouldnt be a problem for survivors that can press a button for less than a second. its not impossible otherwise itll be impossible on killers like clown (who slows way more than her). is looping less effective? yes. but thats because the killer's power is mainly for loops. we see this on alot of other killers, even the new one chucky. not to mention survivors tbag during chase all the time so whys it suddenly a problem to crouch when its towards a killer power?
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The new official statistics are out.
Skull merchant is a the top with over 70 %. Some of this is due to survivors giving up thats definetly a thing. Still I would like to know if your thoughts have changed because of this?
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no. most of that is low mmr or survivors giving up. that doesnt mean shes strong. for example, freddy is up there yet hes one of the weakest killers in the game
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She's a M1 killer with some area of effect gimmicks
Just more of people not knowing or wanting to learn how to play against her before going to social media and calling for a full rework.
Then when said rework happens, the same players will go against her, die and call for another rework again.
Even the best loopers in the world will lose to her if they've already given up mentally the moment they hear her TR or see her drones. Mindgames in dbd exist but SM's existence is a mindgame in itself.
It's like pavlovian conditioning, the moment some survivors know it's SM, keywords like "boring", "snoozefest", "3 genner" will probably pop up in their minds which leads to giving up on hook.
Even some forum users will echo the same few words when chiming in about their take on SM
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Most of survivors don't know they can crouch to dodge the radar.
Survivor can actually do the gen under the radar without any hacking or being injured.
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Correct me if im wrong but whilst playing her I cant see which drones are disabled unless i literally face check them.
But yeah screw around her drones to deny her power counters her hard, crouching under a drone will never scan you. ever
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