Facing Skull Merchant is still a miserable experience and her drones need a new rework

Facts!! Exactly. People gotta get the bad taste out of their mouth regarding her and move forward. She’s not nearly what she use to be.

I'll just leave this here, this guy goes into detail of why people still hate her.

I don't know but those pics not fitting to the story.

I never said that everything in the video was pure and unadulterated truth, of course there's some bias.

However the "broad strokes" are pretty accurate about why people still hate her;

Outside of "Hold W" (an effective counter to all M1 Killers) and "hope your teammates don't get scanned while you're getting chased", there's very little meaningful (or unique) counterplay to her. Hacking the drones do nothing since she can recall them and re-place them in a second if a Survivor happens to be chased in a loop containing a deactivated drone and she can do so without slowing down.

Skull Merchant is arguably one of the least difficult Killer to get results with, with one button press a loop, no matter it's strength, is a death trap that even good players can't escape outside of simply leaving and hoping there's a connected tile. She can also do so ahead of time when coming across god-pallets and strong tiles to further reduce the amount of button presses needed during the chase.

Now you can say that as far as "nearly inevitable loss" then a good Blight and/or Nurse can also apply, but that's the thing: Nurse and Blight take practice to use efficiently. There's also the fact that SoloQ (the majority of the playerbase) can't relay drone locations and status to help reduce people getting scanned when turning a corner.

There's also the fact that she can also gains stealth on-demand for some reason and, unlike other stealth Killers who have some kind of audio cue or some kind of drawback (loud breathing and nothing special outside of Tier 3 for Myers, Wraith growling as well as not being able to attack until de-cloaked etc.) she has barely audible footsteps. She has so much in her arsenal for so little effort (not counting her add-ons which can add more status effects or make the base ones better) that it's overwhelming and hard to keep track of her status (especially for inexperienced/casual players and SoloQ).

...And also the fact that her first design gave PTSD to countless players and is almost single-handedly responsible (alongside Knight and Singularity) for the current ill-thought-out "Anti-3-gen system" that's creating all kinds of issues for weaker/M1 Killer while not bothering the powerhouses.

BHVR could do 2 things right now that would make Skull Merchant so much more enjoyable to play against.

1. Deactivating drones removes 1 stack of Lock-On. (Maybe make it so survivors can't remove the last stack if it is considered too strong)
2. Drones can no longer cause Hindered status effect

#1 gives survivors more options and counterplay while still allowing her to apply pressure with drones. A lot of times Skull Merchant will use drones in chases directly to slowdown and apply lock-on. Therefore such a change wouldn't hurt her playstyle much and would still provide slowdown.

#2 Allows survivors to actually have a chance in chase other than holding W until death. This makes her very uninteractive and boring for most survivors. She will just drop a drone and you are forced to leave. There is no skill or counterplay involved like other anti-loop killers.

The biggest issue with Skull Merchant is that her kit simply does too much at such a low cost.

Her kit has undetectable, haste, hindered for survivors, info and tracking, anti-loop, area denial and zoning, slowdown in order to clear out drones, and a way to passively injure with no way to reset it.

Skull Merchant gets most of these effects just quickly dropping drones with the press of a button which doesn't even slow her down. She simply just does way too much right now, even if she is in a better spot than her release form.

TLDR: They should either give her haste or hinder survivors but not both, and there should be a way to remove lock-on drone stacks. This alone would make her feel much better to play against.

In order to make that comparison, the cloud of gas would have to only have a few portions of it that actually inflicts the slow, and the numbers would have to be tweaked down.

I've never understood why people say things like "Clown's bottle doesn't cover the whole loop", it's irrelevant for two reasons. One, Skull Merchant's drone doesn't either, only the beam actually matters and that's much smaller. Two, Clown's gas doesn't need to cover the whole loop because he can just aim it at you directly. You also can't crouch or stand still to avoid being slowed by Clown's gas.

Clown is a good comparison, in my opinion, not just because his power works similarly-but-stronger in chase but also because it's relevant to point out that if you can loop Clown, you can loop Merchant even after you've got a claw trap and you're getting hindered. The counterplay is the same; play around a dropped pallet until they're forced to break it, then make distance.

While SM isn't the only one with powerful anti-loop, the others can be baited and there's some hope of the Killer miscalculating placement or timing (or in Knight's case, without Map of the Realm a Survivor can actually outrun his guards zone if they start to run away soon enough, it's the whole reason everyone wants it basekit).

I honestly wouldn't mind her being a "Jack of all Trades, Master of none" Killer if hacking the drone had an impact and, even in SoloQ, was useful. Something as simple as preventing SM from recalling them (and subsequently replacing them mid-chase without slowing down) for most of the duration after they are hacked. At the cost of being longer (add like 3-4 imputs in the QTE) to turn the counterplay into a strategy as when to hack them would be important.

Or even simply being able to remove a scan stack by hacking a drone.

This would encourage interaction with the drones (arguably providing minimal slowdown due to hacking being more common and longer) and making SM need to think more about drone usage since it would be better to keep drones for strong tiles rather than constantly recalling and spamming them at every loops.

She would always be a SoloQ/newcomer stomper (like every Killers with gimmicks) but at least Survivors could work around her power (at the cost of time and some risk due to being immobile) and like other trap Killers would be a Killer that is dealt with better out of chase than in chase.

I genuinely wonder how many people complaining about SM still find her bad to play against and are not just circlejerking themselves. "SM is the worst killer in the game and feels awful to play against" was repeated consistently for so long that I think a lot of people conditioned themselves to believe it, so in their next match against her, they just instantly give up. And then they wonder why the devs are so careful when looking at the stats. Of course, SM has those stats if most people don't even try playing against her.

Lol

Maybe DBD isn't for you then.