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Why are Skull Merchant's still hated?
She's no where near as strong as she used to be, and if your playing as survivor, it's just Skill-Check simulator, why hate on a killer who's not even "OP".
Comments
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There is a difference between "not fun" and "too strong". Skull Merchant is strong, but not too strong. Yet she is really unfun to go against.
Part of it is most likely due to her reputation, she will never lose this. But even reworked Skull Merchant is really not enjoyable to play against, regardless of her strength.
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This question has been asked millions of times by the elders of DBD on par with Plato and Socrates. Let me summarize the philosophy they graced us eons ago:
“Some things in life require greater pleasures. But I will never forget when the Skull Merchant held my game hostage for one hour. I still hate her and the pain she caused me will never let me stop hating her.”
Also, she’s boring and sucks in solo queue.
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I mean, I'll be in the very small minority that likes the back and forth with the drones and deciding which ones need to be disabled and which need to stay up just to do gens.
I do think some things can be tuned here and there, not a fan of haste and hindered both being in her kit as well as survivors having no real way to remove lock-on stacks, but otherwise I've had decent wins and losses against them when nobody else DC's.
Her lore is still my least favorite though. I don't know how you'd fix that.
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^ tbh i don't focus a whole lot on lore lol, but i guess i could see why people don't like manga dad girl turns into evil mr Krabs
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I took roughly a year break shortly after singularity and really only started playing more and I find her unfun almost exclusively because my team still gives up or stops trying what feels like 90% of the time. But also, and this is entirely on me, I still have it nailed in my head how she used to work, and I kind of don’t really understand her power or counterplay anymore, and I feel like I haven’t been given a good opportunity to figure it out myself (which is entirely how I learn thins, and I can’t just read to understand) because of my team giving up, which also probably is a part of why too. 🤷♂️
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because she’s super boring and the people that play this killer play her in such a nasty way. I have videos of me getting tunneled off the hook by two skull merchants back to back. F this killer
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I would personally prefer playing against a killer where skill matters, and skull merchant just doesn’t provide that. Cant speak for everyone else though.
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Because so much of her kit is free value, and she represents the pinnacle of the recent run of killers that require almost zero skill for disproportionate value. It's a shift in design philosophy that hasn't been popular. It's active value (i.e. health states) for a completely passive interaction. While other killers are actively having to aim and use a power, a Skull Merchant drone is rotating on its own and generating value. Imagine if a Freddy puddle took a health state.
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how is it free value?
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she's just personally entertaining for me, but im also insane so eh, but for survivors i could generally understand why she'd be considered boring, but to completely hating her feels a bit much, and i don't see how she could hold matches hostage when her drones and claw traps are easily hackable, even going against me (probably the last person playing her)
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i feel like survivors choosing to DC shouldn't be a reason to hate on a killer, whether you dislike her or not, in that aspect, its you whos making the decision to leave, not the Skull Merchant
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Skull merchant is boring they all try to play the same in my matches anyway. The drones are more annoying than a hindrance and the way they changed her still didn't fix that issue, for me anyway I like a more interactive killer with a exciting power, I think console players probably hate her for the same reason they dislike Pinhead and its because the button is the same for disarming a drone and dropping a pallet, like breaking the chains for Pinhead , so if you know you're against console survivors with skull merchant you can place the drones on the edges of pallets forcing them to loop the opposite way to avoid that edge side or they get stuck disarming a drone instead of throwing a pallet or at least that's what some friends I have on console have complained about with her.
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most don’t know how to play against her she’s literally an M1 killer with undetectable that’s it the little 2% haste is what makes them cry and moan just learn how to play a killer different from most .
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You press M2 and the drone is set. You don't control the drone, aim the drone, or do anything with it beyond setting it. You get undetectable when you set it, trackinf when it scans someone, health states+hindered from it, and haste. And you manage nothing after it's set unless you need to recall it.
It's free for the same reasons that Scamper is currently free. It's disproportionately valuable relative to the skill it takes to use it (none).
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Because she’s still absolutely miserable to face, just not for the same reasons as before. Imo she has way too much in her kit for how easy she is to play and constant passively gained speedboosts are never fun to play against.
I don't dislike her because of her previous power, her previous power isn't relevant anymore. I dislike her because of what her power is right now.
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I disagree, if something have people in my matches consistently give up when playing against a killer, perk, add on, whatever, I think it’s completely fair to dread going against that killer, peek, addon, whatever. It’s precisely the reason why I really hate playing with say, and never run, iri hatchet, because regardless of the addons strength post nerf people still dc against it my matches constantly. A 3v1 or 2v1 or 1v1 at 5 gens at the start of the match is a match not worth my time, nor is it very fun for anyone involved. So, I find it unfun to play against the killer if my team gives up trying immediately learning it’s a SM.
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Lol that's why she's boring to me, she's not strong at all but it's just a basic m1 killer with no real power to outplay, the tile you're already at is literally her weakness because she can't negate any safety
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My question is why? What makes her unfun to play against currently? She drops a drone at a loop and you can either leave it or not. So she's a "leave the loop" kind of killer.
How is that any different than.
- Trapper
- Hag
- Clown
- Artist
- Dredge
- Knight
- Singularity (when you don't have emp)
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Clown requires reload, Haste given to both side, and not hide TR when coming.
Artist is hated by many
Dredge anti loops drop his speed to 92%, not 117%.
Knight is hated by many
I dont buy and play or play against Singu so cant really tell.
Trapper and Hag require time to go to the exact place, require time to crouch and set. Trapper & Hag can spawn a trap under them without those time is another story. And Trapper's traps do not have a 'hitbox' equal to a tile.
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Eh idk about never losing that reputation. Legion used to be THE most hated killer ever but after all this time they seem to be pretty popular. But then again, Legion is way funner to play against.
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- If clown is reloading in a chase he is doing it wrong
- Dredge sure, but he's still anti-loop that is countered by leaving the loop.
- Trapper and hag make you leave the loop.
Right, but if its about the terror radius as well then we throw in:
- Pig
- Myers
- Ghostface
- Wraith
etc.
The point is people seem to not like her for reasons that exist on other killers. So i'm confused as to why people actually hate her NOW, not from before, but NOW.
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It has nothing to do with her being OP, as she isn't. Old Legion also wasnt OP but still very much disliked. Downing you with only frenzy hits after a few stabs.
Skullmerchant has many problems in her kit when playing against her.
- As a Survivor you can't get rid of stacks, once you're on that 2nd stack you can just get injured and receive that pile of debuffs by getting forced into a drone ("just crouch" argument doesnt work when in chase).
- She gets Haste with no obvious tell.
- Free injure, undetectable, deep wound, hindered, broken and location reveal + being tracked for just pressing M2.
- She can stack drones in the same area, very problematic in indoor maps especially. When in chase you just get Hindered to death.
- She can apply (base and with add-ons): Undetectable, haste, deep wound, hindered, broken, oblivious, mangled, haemmorhage, blindness and exhaustion.
- She can put drones at weird elevations (harvester on Coldwind maps or on the saloon table on Dead Dawg for example) which look like wont hit you but they still do.
- Her getting faster, you getting hindered on top of getting injured with her not having to hit you is too much.
A few things I could think of. Her 'fix' just feels rushed and with the forever 3-gen problem gone she wouldnt have been a problem anyways. This feels like old Legion or Franks Mixtape Legion all over again, boring to play against
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It’s different because:
Trapper, Hag, and Knight all have to stop moving in order to do it, giving you time to reach another loop.
Artist and Dredge slow themselves down, giving you an opportunity to reach another loop, or if you can’t, you usually still have a chance to win a mindgame, even if you are at a disadvantage. If you have to, you can usually still try to juke Artist’s crow if you have no other option (or run into it without it hitting you to take a swarm and not get hit by it). It’s not an ideal situation for the survivor, but it’s not a guaranteed hit either.
Singularity doesn’t slow down to place a pod but has to stop moving to actually look through it. And even if you get slipstreamed that does not automatically translate to an injure, there is still more counterplay beyond that.
Whereas Skull Merchant can quickly place a drone while maintaining full movement speed. If you leave the loop to avoid a drone, you’re likely just giving her an m1, especially if she’s 3% faster which she often will be. If you instead try to use loops where drones have been disabled, this doesn’t help you because it can just be recalled and replaced.
Now granted, the old Skull Merchant could also do this, but there were 2 key differences: Lock On wasn’t permanent (it regressed over time), AND it wasn’t an automatic injure, it just made you exposed. So in that sense, it was more tolerable because she still needed to actually hit you in order to do any damage, she couldn’t get any injure passively. If you got locked on but then didn’t get hit, then you were still healthy and she didn’t gain anything.
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Everyone else has already listed everything I could say, other than she seems to attract some awful elements of the community.
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The simple answer is:
- Overtuned in every way
- Every single match against her becomes tunneling at 5 gens. Even if your teammates left.
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But you are forgetting the big difference here. She doesn't lose movement speed because she ultimately is still an m1 killer.
Also, her drone is not that much of a threat. You leave the loop with her, and she hits you, now you get yourself to killer shack. What happens. She drops a drone? Ok, just keep looping. The hindered isn't enough for you to not be able to get away.
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Skullmerchant is the complete opposite of Singularity while SM gets alot of free Value Singularity has to juggle multiple tasks Pod setup, pod patroling, Infecting, teleporting, chase starting, just to get extremely low Value and get hard countered by the skullmerchant equivalent to a drone the EMP no skill required
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Artist i really hate shes just the rarer version of SM
Dredge im sad they can never buff his antiloop cause it would just be a scamper situation needs a rework
Knight i dont got much a problem with hes just not good especially his guards Ai
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i will say you need to be marked 3 times to get injured maybe we can balance point if the marks go away over time?
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Her being an m1 killer does not mean that her power is good design.
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well i personally don't ever play "nasty" with her, or any other killer for that matter, i try and typically always do avoid tunneling, proxy camping, slugging, feathering, etc. I promise you not every skull merchant is nasty
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thats what i've been trying to figure out lmao, and thats particularly how i play her, along with gen watch, not tunneling or anything dumb like that
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SM takes 0 skill. plop M2 in a loop, loop no longer safe to play, run off to another loop but HEY SM is not slowed or disabled when she plops down a drone, not like other killers like Knight or Singularity. Her drones AoE barely show in the environment to the survivor causing players to be tagged by the drones at max range from a window at the loop because coincidence the detection beam was just in the right spot at the right time. She applies the most status effects BASE KIT. She gets stealth for dropping a drone, haste for every detected survivor, survivors who get a claw trap are injured/deep wound and broken and if detected by a drone with a claw trap get hindered by 10% all because at a single tap of M2 she shits out results. Whereas other killers have to aim or properly position their power SM takes 0 thought process. She's not strong but with how little it takes to play her, she sees too much results.
Crouching to avoid the detection lasers is not optimal when being chased by her but if all SM mains thinks she has plenty of counters, then do get together for some scrims and prove it. No perks to help counter her (this is to be like a random encounter so no Urban Evasion etc) and no going easy for the SM killer to try and push a false 'she can be countered' narrative. If she is as counter-able as claimed then 20 matches should have 20 3-4 player escapes right
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I go against SM very rarely but had one today and I really enjoyed it, the drones are actually interactive in a fun way if you're not in chase and if you are you just stay away from droned areas taking scans if you need to as long as you're not already at 2 unless you're injured then you can.
Playing against SM with my gf though I realized why people might not like her. She's one big knowledge check with so many mechanics the game doesn't teach you or really tell you about and I feel like the level fo enjoyment playing against her is directly correlated to how interested you are in learning those mechanics in the first place and how well you can actually play against them. She even said to me "I wouldn't have minded going against her if I actually understood what was happening" which tells me if a person isn't going in knowing the stigma of old merchant the new one has flaws but they're greatly embellished by the community.
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This reads like a SM main with a survivor mask.
Perhaps in very low MMR SM is fine. And obviously you can win against them but it's a hollow victory you didn't win against the skill of the other player you won vs a killer that takes almost zero practical skill.
School merchant can ignore mind games in tiles just by dropping a drone which is free value for no skill. Forcing you to leave the tile, potentially going into a dead zone or eating a scan reduces chase as she now gains haste... This isn't a knowledge check for No amount of information can remove a stack off of you. There's no counter to her ability. Crouching everywhere is not engaging. And while my girlfriend who likes playing dead by day like does play skull merchant, it's because the only thing she needs to do is hold W click M2 whenever the person starts. Looping her since she doesn't know how to deal with that and then go back to holding W until she can hit M1. And to top it off games are normally 3v1 right off the bat for reasons posted here which makes her games normally a 4k but she is incredibly bad and does not play video games
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I mostly play Xeno and Plague when I play killer but I guess your brain can't comprehend someone not agreeing with you so you have to imagine things like this.
Again I don't go against Skull Merchant very often only 2-3 times this year that I can remember but none of those games have been very difficult and I owe that to 1. Not falling to the same hysteria most of the community falls into regarding SM so I don't instantly think it's a loss, and 2. Actually studying her entire kit and understanding what she does.
Through this I very rarely get clawtraps on me unless I'm injured and it doesn't matter and I don't mind crouching through drones to get to gens as well as chaining loops together so her setting drones at loops isn't a huge deal.
I know the community will never like playing against the character and I'm not really trying to convince them they should I'm just saying it's entirely possible to learn the match up and have it be not that bad.
I have a feeling a lot of it is about mindset. I'm not seething about SM1.0 ever existing, I'm very patient so the whole crouching near gens thing doesn't bother me and I'm never really thinking about how hard the things my opponent is doing are because to me that's irrelevant all that matters is they are indeed doing things and I have to figure out how to counter them.
Post edited by Yharwick on4 -
huh, that's funny because I never have in any of my games tunneled, and if I see a survivor get unhooked, I get into a chase with the survivor who unhooked said survivor, yet us other SM's get hated because of other peoples actions?
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generally wish there were more players like you. 🥲
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I really feel like people hate her more of because of their toxic experiences with her like tunneling, proxy camping, slugging, etc. but the same could be said with any other killer, and I never even participate those toxic things with ANY of the killers I run, its pretty sad to see just a flood of "I hate you because another SM made me mad 😡"
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People just don't know how to use her. They always put the drones near obvious places, when really you should consider putting them in suprising locations. Also, I do agree with you that she's not as strong, but still, she is just a very complicated killer to play.
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innertia.
people decided to hate her. they never decided to change that
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Upon first release she got a reputation of being a very boring killer to go against and gained a name for herself as a killer that could and would hijack a game for a long time.
She just never lost this reputation.
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Again, please explain how that is different than:
- Trapper
- Hag
- Clown
- Artist
- Dredge
- Knight
- Singularity (when you don't have emp)
They work functionally the same that you said about SM. They drop their power, and you just leave the loop.
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Tribalism and a grudge.
I have fun playing against her though.
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Trapper?
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To make an unnecessary connection, Skull Merchant is the Brigitte(Overwatch) of DbD. A character so brain numbingly easy and broken on release, no matter how many times shes nerfed, buffed, reworked, whatever, she'll always have that negative stigma and be hated till the end of time.
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What is with Skull Merchants begging for validation? Everyone will always hate SM just accept it don't try and corral survivors into liking or putting up with SM they never will you will never please everyone and I can say this as Knight is my second main the sooner you realise that people will hate SM forever the better stop trying to get people to like her.
Oh and it doesn't help that every SM plays in the most scummy way possible i've never met a tolerable SM ever not once
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This Exactly! Most SM players I go against play her in a very nasty way and then wonders why everyone left the game. She attracts some of the worst dbd players. Lol
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not really begging. :) "The second you realize" not every SM main plays dirty or toxic (like myself) the sooner you'll realize that theres no real need to hate her, shes been nerfed, and people such as yourself are stuck in the past, there are plenty of killers that have very similar functions, and are even much better killers to run then herself, the only reason people hate her is because of her release and toxic SM's now, which if those are the only reasons, then theres no way you can justify that "Grr! 😡 Skull Merchant make angy!" People can play toxic with literally any other killer, even trapper can tunnel.
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Yes i would call it begging no other main in this game no twins main no knight main no legion main not any other mains that survivors find boring constantly makes threads asking why their main is so hated besides SM players and its literally the same thing every time "im not like the other ones i play fairly!" well congratulations but sad to say you're in the minority it's not worth it to stick around to see if you're the one nice SM out of a sea of Sewage Merchants
And just because she got nerfed doesn't mean she isn't annoying she is hands down the most annoying killer in the entire game and its quicker just to go next and yes every killer can be toxic trapper can tunnel but if he doesn't set up traps he's not gonna be doing much whereas SM can tunnel anyone freely because of how unskilled and easy her ability is to use
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