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Skull Merchant
I am a skull merchant main, I never did the 3 gen “strategy” I was always a chase merchant never a gen merchant, I understand peoples hate or “PTSD” towards her, but she’s so different now and I love her, yes I miss old skull merchants power, but I understand why the change was necessary, can we start showing her some love instead of all this hate when it’s not even the killers fault, we should blame the people that decided to abuse a mechanic that was never intended when the devs created her.
Comments
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I think she's still problematic and has way too much going on in what she can do and the effects she applies. She's also not intuitive in how you deal with her mechanics. Having said that on a personal level she's not among my top 5 most disliked killers. She's certainly not overpowered or anything but when players don't understand what's going on, they don't like it.
However the biggest reason people dislike her is because it's 'trendy' to do so. This isn't helped by how unintuitive it is how her stuff works now but it's mostly because it's popular. A lot of people still think she can insta down, that she can still three gen with her drones and unaware that standing still or crouching when the search beam comes lets you completely evade it.
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She's definitely receiving the hate she does because it's the "cool" thing to do, but there are a lot of unclear things about her, even that I'm just now finding out about like the other day. I didn't know you could just stand still to evade the beams until watching some JRM video from last week.
Overall I agree that she's wayyyyy better and more fun to play as/against, but the community is gonna generally hate her until a killer that's just as 3-gen potent as original SM comes out, even if it's undeserved now.
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First and foremost: The Skull Merchant is still unfun to play against.
However, the amount of hate she recieves is also not ok. Most of it is bias at this point.
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Yeah the amount of hate, dcs and insutls is ridiculous, even playing normaly and going out of my way to be fairer, is not enought.
While the rework could have been better, the amount of hate makes no sense.
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I preferred three gen merchant over this debacle. At least I'd get BP and an easy PIP.
She's just new old Legion now.
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She's much better now. The version she was has stained her rep badly, although she was really badly designed back then.
She is much better to face now, although it's still funny seeing some Skull Merchants trying to play old-school, when the tools are not as effective now.
I like her more now. Sure, she's not up in my favourites and for me she feels like BHVR trying to create a Killer for "fan service", but the hate she still has is nowhere as warranted now.
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I literally faced her minutes ago. I was the only fighter, kept doing gens, kept running when she chased. She gave me Hatch 🤗
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People don't hate her of players who abused a mechanic in the past. They hate her because, even after her changes, she's still miserable to play against. You may love her, especially in the killer role, but most survivor players do not feel the same way.
You play whatever killer you like, but just keep in mind that most people hate playing against her and a lot of your matches will likely have multiple survivors giving up immediately.
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It does make sense when you realize that most people, including myself, still consider her to be one of the most miserable and unfun killers to play against. You may disagree, but I think you're in the minority.
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She can start repairing her rep when they re-design her.
It would also probably help if some of the worse elements in our community didn't flock to her.
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I haven't seen people doing that in a very long time but I will say I don't enjoy facing her and not because she's strong it's just an annoying killer, when I get in the match with one I make sure to take all the heat right from the start just to ensure I have a fun game
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Today I was using her to get the claw trap achievement. Since no 3-genning was involved I received moderate hate only. Also barely had any DCs but the rudest remarks come from SWF groups, naturally. Mindgaming is pretty exciting given the undetectable feature of your drone usage.
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I don’t agree that she’s like legion, legion is constant deep wound, with skull merchant if you are careless enough to get scanned 3 times then that was your own fault just like with knight if you don’t loop correctly against his guards they will hit you and they also apply deep wound, so I’m not sure why skull merchant gets so much hate but I never see any hate towards knight 🤔
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This, pretty much.
But right or wrong, Skull Merchant's perception is sealed. She has been shunned, and no matter what changes are made, she's going to remain so.
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This, for eternity. You hear me Entity?! No!
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Not all SM are the same, if I get survivors that D/C I take out the bots and the ones that decided to stay and play the game get rewarded, we farm and they escape, a lot of the times I let all survivors go when I play her anyways, I like showing that not all SM are mean and sore winners we have personality and feelings too.
Post edited by EQWashu on1 -
Then u are that lucky 10% of SM that I've yet to encounter. Cause the ones I get, will do the opposite and hunt down the players 1st then go for the bot last. Even slug for the 4k. If I could give you a gift, I would honestly.
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You're both right.
Despite some time and multiple changes, most of the community has simply rejected SM.
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They're not all different now though. I had a SM the other day who had the perfect corridor almost of a 3 gen. The way a tile, shack, wood pile, and the hill were situated, she just holed up there from the start. She could defend the one gen that we could reach indefinitely, because the other two were in the corridor that required taking down numerous drones before we could reach it or get away, and the one she stayed next to was next to shack, which had the hill right next to it, so we had one small path to it but no protection. It's hard to explain. Or we could run through and just get immediately exposed of course. No one DCd or let go on hook but when it had dragged on long enough everyone just slowly went afk, myself included. I went and did the dishes. 3 gen mechanic didn't matter because we couldn't even get to the gens.
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That sounds awful 😞
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Anyone mind sharing their best counter play to her? I still struggle even when my team doesn't throw :(
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It was one of the top 5 least enjoyable games I've played so far. I will acknowledge a lot of that was the perfect RNG of the map we got, but she was all too quick and ready to drag the game for as long as necessary. I returned to the room when I heard my survivor scream from being hooked, so I could just let go, and she was standing there hitting me like I was the one who frustrated her. Dude, some self awareness please...
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She's still crap
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The only thing this community will ever agree on is that everyone despises SM you are never gonna change people's minds just because you chase instead of 3 gen
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drop drone leave loop with 20 status effects will never be enjoyable. Plus 9.5/10 sm do end up playing in a way that makes the match miserable (which is their right to play any way they want). Lastly, the time investment to beat a sm is generally not worth the effort.
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I have recently found myself becoming merchants #1 defender in the fact that she's not bad to play against at all. The biggest complaint ive seen is that people just dont understand the power. If people have trouble understanding the power, they have eyes, they can read what it does. Problem solved. They literally made the things GLOW WHITE when they don't effect you. They gave hud elements of lock on stacks. And once again, the killers power is available to read in the endgame screen. it's truly not that hard to understand. I swear some people just aren't willing to learn and then get whiny when they don't know anything.
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i would much rather go against SM than knight, cannot stand playing against the latter. the only killer i ever dc against
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Hello there fellow SM main!
Former Totem Merchant into chase merchant says henlo
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She is a huge mistake and so much boring. I instantly give up when i go agaisnt her. I never will try nothing agaisnt her. She can do to much and not need skill, just drop a drone and sit and wait. She needs a completly rework.
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SM is a very good example of how people can't forget and move on.
She could be a generic M1 Killer and people would still give up on hook.
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I'll play against her when she loses some status effects. I think personally she should lose the stealth she gets. Also her drone radius needs to be smaller.
While in chase you can't be picking and choosing always the best route and most of the times SM who knows where people like to loop puts drone ready and waiting on those places so you get scanned / injured when you run into those places. Shes miserable to go against. Knight is miserable too but at least he only has 3 helpers with cooldown and you can still outrun them. Skull merchant is good killer for everyone who wants easy 3-4k doesnt require much brain power.
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it does require brain power ACTUALLY if you put it in a awkward position where she can walk over it, it will go over her head and it won’t scan you it will be considered an inactive drone, survivors can crouch and even stand still to avoid getting scanned, you can sit on a gen and won’t get scanned u can heal and won’t get scanned, your teammates or even you can go around hacking drones, and she has to physically go all the way back to set it up again, there is a cool down before she can set another drone, the drones can’t scan or detect through walls or floors like they used to, the drones change color to let u know when you are able to get scanned, when you hack a drone it’s disabled for 45 seconds and when you have a claw trap just hold W take her far away from the gens you want to get done, there’s many ways to counter her people just choose not to learn and have their hands held
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I agree 💯 my friend, but I think “unfun” is an opinion of course yes? I personally enjoy going against her. (Wesker and knight. No)
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she’s only undetectable for 8 seconds when she places a drone, and then there’s like a 12-16 second cool down before she can throw another down, and they can’t be too close to each other
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Hello friend 👋
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Stealth was already apart of her kit before. It should remain. If anything survivors need a better way to clear the drone stacks from scans.
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That’s how I feel about legion and knight. To me they are way more annoying.
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I think giving survivors 3 chances in between claw traps is fair, it’s not like knight, once you are detected that’s it’s!
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skill issue
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I was hoping if they did make it like that where they had another option to clear the stack from the scan it would quiet some of the people who complain, but I am convinced people will never like her. At that time they were really hoping Fnaf or terminator was going to be the chapter but we got skull mommy so people are mad about that, if it’s not that it’s the way she could hold a 3 gen. They fix that and change her power and people still aren’t happy.
I firmly believe no matter what they do to her people will always hate her. Not everyone but some. 🤷🏼♂️
and that’s okay1 -
Skullie is not the problem it's the players giving up, and they always look for a reason to throw the game and kill their teammates. These people should not be allowed to play the game they break the "refuse to participate in normal gameplay" rule but never gets banned for it. Perma ban them and problem goes away. Well Skullie will still be boring to go against but there are 10-15 other killers like that so, yeah.
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I just wish that when people want her changed that they would have a balanced give and take to her. Most everyone agrees she’s not over powered, just unhealthy design. That would imply changes, not just nerfs, but all everyone ever gives as ideas are straight up nerfs. It makes me take the propositions less seriously. If we’re taking away unhealthy things or adding more counter play that is at the end of the day a nerf to a not too strong killer so we need to be giving her healthy buffs in exchange for those changes to keep her power level at the very least the same.
Before anyone gets to her kill rates they are ridiculously inaccurate. I’ve been tracking my skull merchant games and tracking the rate people give up artificially inflating her kill rates. In 100 games I’ve had over a 60% suicide or dc rate within the first minute of the game or so. That isn’t by my play style or perks, it’s generally as soon as they see me or on the first down.
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I've actually played her.. got myself easy 3-4ks. Didnt find her that hard to play and i just placed drones into places where i knew survivors would be running to when chased. Many times i caught people off guard with the stealth she gets. Free injuries and slowdown helped in chases a lot. Sure if you have no idea how to play killer she might be harder to play but i have almost 4k hours in this game and i play both sides though lately more survivor since im burned out from killer and to me she felt easy compared to my main spirit or huntress.
I don't think she needs to have the stealth at all. She's not a stealth killer like myers and ghostface yet i feel like sometimes she's still better at it since they made her footsteps lower too.
I personally do not like her or how she looks. No female walks like fortnite character without getting hip injury at some point.
I think the drones should go back to her when hacked. This goes to other killers as well like singularity. I think after you "destroy" the drones or the blobs they should disappear.
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Agree!
To each their own. I dont give up against her by any means, but I can understand why people dislike going against her.
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Absolutely 😊
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But can we all agree her new Rift skin is amazing?
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