Skull Merchant, again
Let's see.
Other killers with Undetectable:
- Myers: loud breathing sounds, loud footsteps
- Ghostface: loud footsteps
- Wraith: loud growling sounds, even when cloaked
- Pig: when you want to hurt someone, you have to ambush them with loud sound or de-crouch
- Skull merchant:
Literally no downside, currently it's the best killer that has Undetectable in basekit.
Other killers that can apply effects to players via M2:
- Plague: need to charge her ability that slows her down while charging, easily clense-able.
- Nightmare: need to wake up, not so hostile effect btw, easy to wake up via missing skillcheck, via clock or by waking up other survivor
- Doctor: need to charge his ability that slows him down drastically, can snap out of it immediately after 3 lvl of madness.
- Clown: short-range killer, not really hostile effect
- Legion: not-so-optimal-power, you just have to mend, that's it, he can't put you down in power unless met certain circumstances.
- Nemesis: fully cure-able via vaccine
- Wesker: same as Nemesis
- Singularity: Power can be mitigated when using EMP.
- Skull merchant:
No slowdown while applying drones, even has undetectable effect:
Can damage survivors just by placing drones basically anywhere:
Survivors eventually receive hindered and are shown to the killer:
The more survivors are affected, the faster she is:
You can disable Drone (one of six that she has) but only for 45 seconds, yet gens take 90 seconds and she has no downside to just placing it again:
And creme de la creme:
Easy killer with strong basekit and absolutely no viable downsides at all.
Comments
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Half of the issues with her isn't just "her power is strong", but also that people don't understand how to counterplay it. People don't understand how lock on works, how inactive drones still have scan lines, how they can be spotted on radar. How many of the injuries SM gets are a result of people across the map managing to get themselves tagged with Lock On, despite the giant radius that shows where drones are? I think stealth mode should be completely removed from drones to prevent this.
I don't even mind that her kit is bloated. The issue is people don't get her. How about making claw trap do a subtle beeping sound to indicate you're being tracked? If people truly understood how to play against her, her killrate wouldn't be as high as it is.
Injuries outside of chase with drones shouldn't happen against players that are aware of her drones, because they should be able to juke the scanlines and disable the drones. "But what's the point if she can just replace them instantly", the point is if SM walks over to your gen or whatever, you won't instantly take a stack of Locked On trying to leave. It's worth it to hack drones and requires little effort.
As for injuries in chase, it's pretty much always better to take an M1 instead of a drone injury in chase, because at least then you get a speedboost and SM gets slowed down. But people don't understand that either. They keep running the loop, get tagged, then die instantly instead of just standing still, getting hit, then trying to use the speedboost to reach somewhere more safe. Yeah, they'll probably still get tagged and Lock On even after the hit, which gives her a speedboost, but at least they'll have some distance to work with.
9 -
Yeah she is busted and not enjoyable to verse at all. Feels awkward playing against her. Not a fan
16 -
BHVR need to fix this killer, it's one of the most boring killers ever.
13 -
Waiting for the SM players to say : "Skill issue"
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Counterpoint: Getting injured by a drone outside of a chase is literally a skill issue. When I play SM, you won't even believe the number of injuries I see even when I'm nowhere close because, for some reason, survivors attempt to rush the drone defuse. If you aren't being chased, you can disable a drone in 5 seconds as long as your monitor isn't turned off.
Also, despite all the things you mention, she's still an M1 killer at her core. Yeah, she can get survivors injured all over the map, but that doesn't mean anything if she can't reach them in the first place. Another similar situation happens with Plague: she can keep survivors broken the entire match, but if they don't cleanse, she's just an M1 killer with no pressure at all.
There are two things causing issues with Skull Merchant at the moment: her complexity and how people perceive her. She's actually quite complex (despite folks calling her gameplay "braindead") because there's a lot to keep track of: Drones and their rotation, state, and deactivation; Claw traps and their tracking, level (1 to 3), and status effect; her Undetectable status, and more.
And she's perceived as way worse than she really is because it's become a trend to label her as uncounterable and OP. So, when survivors hear this, the next time they come across her, they just give up without even trying to understand how to play against her. Then, they hop online and echo how OP she is, which just feeds into the cycle.
5 -
Stealth drones exist. You're acting as if survivors can see drones behind corners with no rays being emitted. You can't talk about skill issues when playing a skill-lacking killer - it contradicts basically everything.
6 -
Stealth drones still show their AoE on the ground, lol. You can't miss them. And even on the off chance a stealth drone catches you off guard, its first scan won't hurt you, it'll just activate, giving you plenty of time to either 1) move away or 2) disable it. Heck, if it's too much for you, you can literally stand still while you figure out what to do, and the drone won't scan you because it doesn't work against idle survivors.
Again, getting injured by a drone outside of a chase is just a skill issue.
4 -
It’s not a skill issue it’s a knowledge gap. Her powers not intuitive and unless you’ve read patch notes or watched gameplay against her I don’t get how the average survivor would know the 20 different unique things that only happen against her.
She benefits immensely from a power that requires no set-up and very little thought.
6 -
Yes, we got it, Survivors dislike SM. We don't need every day post about her being the most evil killer on entire planet.
This hate train is so overdone at this point.
14 -
Nah, we need posts every day about her.
So BHVR can't ignore this problem and work on it. SM is not accepted by survivor community and she needs full rework. Until this happen, hopefully there will be more and more posts about her.
11 -
This won't boost the process. You think they allready don't know people have problems with her?
Why people don't spam daily how Freddy is the most forgotten killer and top weakest at the same time and devs ignore him for years to come?
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If people spent as much time disabling drones and avoiding free across the map injuries as they spend making intricately edited posts like this, SM would stop being a problem.
9 -
So she has a power what is your point? A 70% kill rate where so many survivors hook suicide compare to Pigs 63% where very few give up..I mean most would say Skullie is not op or even strong probably around mid tier. So why complain about her stealth and such if she is not op? The problem is survivors not wanting to play against her, refusing to learn counterplay etc. BHVR could make her the weakest killer in the game and people would still refuse to play against her. So strength is not the problem.
3 -
My favorite part of the post is when Plague who can back rev against people and basically insta down people with the green vom with a follow up m1 "gets slowed down using their power" and Clown who chloroforms you and turns you into a snail is "not hostile".
When you have to lie to make a point it just screams insincere agenda.
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My favorite part of this reply is when you lie about Plague's effectiveness!
2 -
We do if we want change, you think one post about Buckle Up + For The People would sort that issue out? There's been numerous and nothing has been done.
0 -
I'm a Plague main I know how effective she is,do you?
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I play as Plague from time to time. She's nothing against a SWF.
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Setting aside some of the issues I'd have with the comparisons to other killers for the rest of the power stuff-- it's worth mentioning Skull Merchant is the only killer listed whose Undetectable is on a timer.
Myers, Wraith, and Pig have infinite Undetectable until they want to leave it, Ghostface has infinite Undetectable until he's broken out of it. To use the others as well, Sadako has infinite Undetectable until she wants to leave it, and Freddy's is... well, not Undetectable, to be fair, but it's still not on a timer.
The only other killer with timed Undetectable is Chucky, and while he has a tell, I would personally argue that's because he'd far, far outstrip killers like SM/Sadako/Legion that just don't have loud footsteps otherwise.
9 -
Actually it will.
People are forgetting but hot topics are always getting attention by devs because they can't ignore what playerbase are complaining about.
Freddy however, thankfully he is gonna get rework. If it was small changes, we would get it with any update. But taking that long time just means Freddy and Myers will get major updates which is good. Both killers deserves good love.
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Because you definitely know both my MMR and yours while telling me people cleanse against me when I solely talked about green vom.
Very logical and normal argument being put forth.
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Yes and you definitely know that I'm not a very good Plague. I'm simply playing your own game so there you go.
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I main Plague, you play Plague "from time to time", this doesn't work the way you think it does lol.
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Yeah, a lot of these comparisons seem pretty disingenuous. Super overplaying how good her kit actually is and underplaying how good every other killer is. Like the Pig comparison doesn't make sense, uncrouching is fast and she's super quiet as well lmao.
OP said there's no way to disable her ability and then proceeded to list the way to disable her ability and complain about it being too demanding (when it's literally just 5 keypresses twice when doing a gen).
It's kind of wild how bad faith this post is. If you want to offer constructive feedback about SM then go ahead but exaggerating how good she is and making every other killer seem terrible in comparison is not constructive. It's a lie.
5 -
Doesn't mean I don't see her weaknesses, nor does it mean I don't play against her and win most of the time. You maining her only makes you more biased if you want to go down that route.
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You're talking about a killer that is one of the most played in tournaments a setting where they mostly restrict the thing she's good against (healing) and how she's bad against SWFs, I'm very sure you have no idea what you're talking about.
1 -
Nah we need to spam daily until she get another full rework, killers have been doing this for months against MFT / CoH and other broken or annoying stuff.
6 -
She is not fixed, so what do you expect?
They could technically bump already existing threads, but it would just be the same more or less.
5 -
A killer that sits on 70% killrate because they are so strong is a problem. A killer that sits on 70% because people kill themselve on the hook is a disaster.
4 -
Problem is a lot of survivors do this because they think she's the same as her old version, don't care either way, or follow the hivemind mentality instead of learning how to counter a killer.
Me personally, I'm horrible against Wraiths and can never do the counters right because they're always one step ahead with their haste. I don't blame Wraith players for this though, I recognize it's a skill issue. On the other end of the spectrum, I escape Skull Merchants more than I do Wraith because I learned when to disable drones, when not to and just do the generator it's on, and how to either greed a loop depending on stacks I have or when to drag it out as long as possible for my team to do what they need to do.
Does SM need adjustments? Probably. I personally think having both haste/hindered in a kit is a bit much but I don't think her power is all that bad to go against anymore, as someone who plays a lot of M1 killers myself.
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That's not true at all.
I know she is changed. But that did not make me like her new power. I still hate her, i still want to go next match as fast as possible. It's still zero fun against her. Her power is still big problem. She is still strong 3-gen holder.
So nah, stop blaming survivors for going next game. There is many killers who is stronger than SM but survivors are usually not giving up that much.
This killer is design failure and you guys need to stop blaming survivors for not want to go against her. That's the game and people want to enjoy when they play it. And nobody wants to waste their free time against this garbage failure. BHVR need to fix this because their customers are not happy with this design.
5 -
That's you though, I know from personal experience that a LOT of other survivors don't know about the changes because I play her as well. I also read around different posts and some people think she has built in aura reading somehow.
2 -
If that was only me, sure. I'd take it and move on. But that's not only me. That's a lot survivors. That's probably majority of survivors who hates this killers and going to next match instead of play.
And no, survivors just knows she changed. Old drones was exposing you, new one is just adding stack. Anyone can see different here but yet, survivors don't love this killer and they are moving to next.
1 -
Last time I played SM I got 2 DCs and they stayed to yell at me for using her "instant-down" drones... iirc they were Epic or Windows Store players as well.
I'm not saying EVERY survivor is wrong or they can't hate this killer, but I am saying from my experience far too many survivors haven't been catching up with patch notes which I find to be a huge problem as a Sadako main who still sees survivors ignore tapes.
2 -
I am not saying you are wrong, i am sure there is some people who don't know she changed. But even people who knows she changed hates her.
So this killer is just overall problem and this won't stop until BHVR fully rework her.
It's obvious, survivor don't love area blocker killers. Hag and Trapper also does that but they are using a lot time for this and survivors can remove their powers. But SM is really not like that.
It's pretty easy to put drones to loops and survivors can't remove her power. Because drones will turn to on after 45 seconds ( this was a cooldown if i am not mistaken ) or she will just replace it easily. We don't love this killer and if she won't change, that hate will not go anywhere.
2 -
I do think those are valid points, what I have a problem with mainly though is giving up on hook or dismissing her entirely.
I'm not really a massive fan of SM herself, and I do think parts of her kit should be tweaked better, but I also recognize I don't see them very often and when I do, I have better matches against them than I do other killers considered weak by many I've seen talked about like Wraith and... Dang now that I think about it it's just Wraith I have problems with.
Anyway, point is I actually think her power as of right now is in the right direction, but it needs to be tweaked to be more fair at time management (your example of how easy it is to place them fits well) and in my opinion having both haste and hindered needing to be addressed. What worries me is players inflating her killrate with hook throws specifically to inflate the numbers, because even I see it so frequently when I play as fair as possible with her, even more than 2.0 Sadako, that I can't help but think we won't get her in a decent spot for both sides.
1 -
If this was exclusive to SM, I'd stay silent. But players off themselves or DC as soon as they see a bunch of killers. When I play survivor, I always see people DC or throw the game as soon as they hear the terror radius. They recognize it's a killer they don't like, start bawling and ruin the match for everyone. And it's for every killer.
4 -
Non of killers are getting that much DCs, only SM. Sure survivors are giving up against any killer. Even Trapper. But question is that how ofthen this happens? There is no killer even close to SM's level by DC & suicide wise.
3 -
Eh, Nurse, Knight and Cenobite all get a considerable number of DCs too.
SM gets most of the social media hate but she's not the only killer I would say the majority of survivors hate.
3 -
Do you have numbers for other killers as well? If you do, care to share?
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Why do we even need to debate this? It’s not subjective that SM is a terribly designed killer. The game will be better off without her so hopefully BHVR does the right thing eventually.
2 -
this killer is problematic. why? it's not because of her "get to a loop place a drone" gameplay loop, not even because of her stealth. it's that she can cover ALL THE SAFETY a survivor can run to in some maps with her drones. okay i understand trapper can do that too and it's okay that playing against a killer can get tedious; but the counterplay to that issue is practically non existent. what are survivors gonna do, disable the drones? how many times do you have to disable them running around the map since they only stay disabled for 45 seconds?
3 -
Yeah, biggest issue with her for me is how much ######### she has going on.
If it were just a killer that gets faster and slows survivors would be an interesting dynamic alone, but the fact that on top of that there's cross map injuring and THE ENTIRE MAP is covered in drones at all times, it makes her feel like an absolute slog to play against with too much in her favour.
They really need to tone down the size of the drones, because as it is she has most of the gens covered 24/7 AND it locks down most useful areas of the map as well. The absolute lack of downside to removing and replacing a damaged drone make it feel useless to even TRY to counteract her.
Either damaging a drone should just flat out break it instead of temporarily disabling it, or removing a currently disabled drone should give her a cooldown before she can place a new one to prevent the instantaneous "that was broken, now it's not, also I'm undetectable."
1 -
Plague also has one of the highest kill rates in the game what are you talking about her being weak not to mention anyone actually experienced in this game not only puts her A tier but as a top 6-7 killer.
Not to mention the insanity of saying pick rate = strength when Artist has one of the lowest pick rates in the game and is also one of the strongest killers in the game.
You can't just say random things and pass them off as an argument lmao.
1 -
Do i have to?
Her kill-rate proves something wrong with her.
I am playing both roles and people are not giving up against other killers too much.
And if there was another problematic killer as like SM, you would see more posts about them on forum but you don't.
If those are not good enough for you, no i don't have.
2 -
I got 4 of them yesterday.. Are people playing her just to spite people now? Safe to say i didnt stay in any of those games. I tripped and ended up in a hook early and i didn't get lucky with my 4%.
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So you are saying that her 70% killrate is not because of suicides? Thats a new one. Usually her killrate gets "defended" that those stats are inccorect because of inflated killrates due to survivors not interested in playing against her.
Either way, we have a problem that requires to be fixed.
1 -
I’m genuinely confused as to why skull merchant has so much to her kit. She could get an injure put someone into mending hinder them get undetectable and haste and all without having to touch the survivor. Sure it makes sense to benefit a killer for using their power especially if it’s one harder to use but she quite literally doesn’t have to do anything and gets benefited for it.
1 -
It’s because she is a per M1 killer with no range and a very noticeable power. So to make a threat she gets buffs from interactions with her drones.
Placing a drone grants her stealth
Enemies getting detected grant her speed
Enemies getting clipped can either injure or break
Her strength now is discouragement and Chasing, remember standing still as the drone scans will not scan you. Treat her like old Viktor backpack, she needs to be distracted so the others can kill her power.
Post edited by EQWashu on2 -
these post were nowhere to be found until BVHR posts kill-rate stats... which are misleading especially for killer like Onryo[survivors being clueless] and Skull merchant[D/C entitlement].
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