I know it's a beaten horse already but are we seriously gonna have to wait 4 years for a SM rework?

Unfortunately Devs are adamant on sticking to the roadmap and SM changes arent planned on for this year. Not to mention the unreal engine 5 update this patch basically made the game a lagging rubberbanding buggy mess which will take multiple months to fix so SM changes is even further down now

I can answer some of the questions in that first paragraph, and I think those answers would go some way to countering the idea that her power actually is extremely flawed.

So, first, you ask why she gets to be a better stealth killer than Sadako and Dredge when "she isn't even designed to be a stealth killer". There are two things to say to that;

First, she isn't a better stealth killer than Sadako. While Sadako does have a lullaby in her Demanifested form, her stealth is much more consistent and she's a much better user of Undetectable when she does get it. That's just flat out not a thing, she's not a better stealth killer than Sadako. I'd also point out that Dredge isn't really a stealth killer? Sure, it gets Undetectable in Nightfall, but it's still not especially stealthy even then.

Second, Skull Merchant has been a pseudo-stealth killer since day one. She has always had Undetectable in her kit, it has always been something she's designed to be. You can disagree with it being there, and there'd even be a fair conversation to be had about it, but she is designed to be a stealth killer and always has been.

Next, the question about why she can shut down loops better than other killers when Wesker and Unknown have to "work for a down". I'd like to point out that a down is not the same thing as being able to shut down a loop, but setting that aside, it's more relevant to point out that there are three killers that can do this - Merchant, Knight, Artist - and of the three, Merchant is the weakest at it. It takes the longest to start affecting the survivor, and the effect is the weakest of the three when it does. It's not nothing, and I agree it's annoying to face, but this is hardly an overwhelming problem. There's even some survivor agency and decision making when she does it.

Next, the question about Haste, Hindered, and tracking. Honestly, all I can really say to this is that most killers don't really have to try that hard to get their Haste or Haste equivalent? Wraith holds a button, Legion presses a button, Nurse holds a button, Wesker holds a button for a second then presses a button, etc etc. Most killers who can speed themselves up don't really have to work for it. After that, I'd point out that Merchant does have to work for the Hindered, she has to get four scans minimum before someone starts being slowed down, and there's quite a lot to be done to stop her doing that.

I'd also like to contest the idea that a survivor has to do far more than the killer. Dodging killer powers is the expectation some of the time and you don't see that idea applied to them - nobody's out here complaining that all Huntress has to do is hold a button and you have to keep dodging. If the Skull Merchant is playing poorly or passively, you don't have to do much at all to outplay her drones. If she's putting effort in, you have to put effort in. There's not much different about her compared to other killers, and there are killers who absolutely put way less effort in than her.

Finally, as a brief aside, not really the point of the thread or the posts so far, but what on earth does she even have in common with Knight outside of the "shut down loop" thing? They're completely different killers.

Setting aside whether that perception actually is "the vast majority" position (I think many people neglect to consider the probably large number of people who just don't care about discourse at all, I've been guilty of it before too) I do think it's very relevant to point out that she isn't unhealthy and there really isn't anything you can point to that would make her insufferable to go against when compared to other killers.

Any time I prod one of the people who claim this for reasons why she's apparently so bad, they will inevitably say something that flat out isn't true, or they'll cite problems that other killers have/have worse, if SM even has them at all.

I don't envy BHVR here. They have a vocal percentage of their playerbase (however large that percentage is) constantly ranting about a problem that flat out doesn't exist. It's not going to be easy for them to address that, anything they do to tackle SM's actual problems won't be enough for the people who claim she's an insufferable, terrible design right now.

Alright, I'll tackle those points in order.

First up, we'll tackle the stealth argument:

While I'm willing to cede personal disagreements on the Sadako point, I would like to point out that Merchant isn't completely silent and Sadako is completely silent while she's Undetectable as long as the Undetectable doesn't come from being Demanifested. That being said, sure, we have different opinions on what makes a killer specifically a good stealth killer, and that's fine.

To the Dredge point and beyond, the major thing I have to say is: Why don't you consider Skull Merchant to be a stealth killer on the basis of her stealth not being very impactful, but you do consider Dredge to be a stealth killer even though its stealth is not very impactful? Isn't that an arbitrary double standard? The fact that she had Undetectable from the start, and in all iterations it's been part of her core gameplay loop (with it being the least relevant now, but still relevant), should prove that she's been intended to be at least a stealthy killer from the word go. Not like Wraith or Sadako, but more like Pig, who also gets a stealth element to complement her main power.

As a last aside, before we move on to future points, Skull Merchant's kit isn't bloated. The only status effect that isn't obviously cohesive with the rest is Deep Wound, and I don't think one extraneous effect makes a kit bloated. Still, that one should be removed, that's fair.

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Next up, we'll look at the "shutting down loops" element, and the specific comparison to Knight in that tactic:

The first thing to say on this point is a quick correction: you say that Skull Merchant can potentially rack up injuries faster than other killers "with little to no skill involved", and that's only true if the survivors are playing terribly and running into her power over and over. If they're trying, then it takes skill. Playing Skull Merchant well against teams that aren't just giving up immediately does take skill, that's not something that gets to be ignored or denied for the sake of argument.

Moving on from that, I think you're conflating two things unnecessarily here. Yes, Knight is weaker overall than Skull Merchant, but when it comes specifically to forcing survivors away from loops, Knight is the best at it, and Skull Merchant is the weakest, with Artist in the middle. The reason for this revolves around how potent the threat is, and how much agency survivors have when reacting to it. When Knight drops a guard at a loop, the threat is extremely potent because that guard can down you if you're injured and will also activate very quickly, on top of Knight himself still being a threat separate from the guard. You have to leave immediately, you don't have any time to reposition to a more favourable side of the loop first, and this is true of basically all loops in the game barring very specific outliers.

When Artist puts a bird at a loop, it's not quite as bad because you do have the leeway to reposition a little, but the same still applies: The bird can down you so you have to leave, you only have a small window to reposition, and that's true of basically all loops- at the very least, for Artist it applies to all resources, you're only exempt here if you're able to use a different resource in the same tile like a jungle gym.

For Skull Merchant, there's a lot more grey areas. First of all, her drones don't actually shut down every loop in the game, there are plenty with high enough walls or objects that they block the beams. Second, because the beams have counterplay guards and birds don't, you can play the loop a little before leaving if you need/want to. Third, even if you do get hit with the beam once… that's just a single scan, you're only giving Merchant a little Haste and that's it unless you'd already been scanned twice. I'm not saying it isn't still annoying to go against, but it's not as potent as Artist or Knight, nor does it take away as much agency, even if leaving is still generally the right call. To cap it all off, unlike the other two, her power can't down directly, so the threat is less potent just by default even before factoring all of that in.

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Next, we have the argument about "Haste, Hindered, and Undetectable" when compared to other killers:

This, I'll be blunt, is completely arbitrary. It's the same effect - moving faster - for the same or lesser investment from the killer. There is absolutely no difference that comes from it being the Haste status effect versus just a built-in part of the power that moves them faster; the only difference you could point to is that a lot of them (but not all) restrict movement in some way or require slowing down briefly, but that's where we necessarily need to acknowledge that they're also all much faster than Skull Merchant is with a single scan.

Again, to be blunt, it's just her power too. It's not "extra" in ways that Wraith or Wesker or Legion or whoever's movement speed isn't, they're all the same. They all have powers that speed themselves up, and some have powers that also slow survivors down, and in most cases all they really need to do is press a button and sometimes aim something, just like Skull Merchant. In most cases, it's more on the survivor to dodge than it is the killer to aim, just like Skull Merchant. The killer sets the pace of a chase, there's nothing wrong with that and it's how most killers function.

On top of that we've got some of what I alluded to in another post- things that just aren't true. Merchant's drones don't just completely shut down loops, and you don't give her constant haste and tracking for being scanned, not until you get scanned three times. Those aren't pedantic differences, they matter. She doesn't get these things for free because the survivor does have a lot of agency in avoiding the beams; it's her main counterplay and part of the mechanical deviance that would, theoretically, make her fun to play against for some players. Plenty of people like dodging hatchets and chainsaws, it's not unfathomable to think that people would equally enjoy dodging drone beams, especially when failing to dodge the beam carries a lower penalty than failing to dodge those other two.

If the survivor's perspective truly is "she's just placing drones and getting free status effects", that's their fault. At some point, there should be an expectation that you learn how to play against a killer and you stop playing into their power to make it easy for them. Nobody would say Huntress is OP because "hitting hatchets on a survivor running in a straight line is easy", or at least you'd expect that anyone who does wouldn't be taken too seriously, and a similar thing is happening with Skull Merchant. The only reasonable explanation I can come to for someone truly thinking that Skull Merchant takes no skill and her power rewards her massively for just pressing M2 is that they aren't bothering to figure out the very simple actions they should be taking to force her into putting in more effort.

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Finally, we'll look at the last few paragraphs of your post about skill and such:

Skull Merchant has more skill expression than macro game. Actually using her drones takes skill too, and the amount of skill it takes goes up proportional to how much the survivors in your game are actually bothering to try. Knowing how beams work, knowing when to reverse the beam in a chase, tagging survivors with instant scans via good aim, knowing where drones are supposed to go, and then on top of that needing good M1 fundamentals and needing to overcome survivors employing counterplay, those things take skill too. Again, not a pedantic difference and not something that can be overlooked for the sake of argument.

As to Knight: For neither of those killers is "drop something at loop, force survivors to run away" their core gameplay loop. It's always gonna be relevant but it's not the core of their kit, and it's also the only thing they have in common. They're completely different other than one specific problem they both share, and I don't think it's particularly constructive to reduce both to only that problem and nothing else.