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Let's talk about Skull Merchant.
Since her release she has been the most hated character in DBD history, let's talk about why she's hated, and how to she went from extremely painful to verse, to very then boring to verse.
When her teaser came out, many people overreacted in my opinion, they believed that she was going to be some type of futuristic robot killer, and when her teaser dropped people were immediately disappointed because it's not what people expected in the slightest, her base cosmetic is very odd, and makes no sense in my opinion, though her cosmetics I find to be quite nice.
For a while after her release most popular tend to play her in a 3-gen playstyle, which can hold matches for up to an hour, many people despised versing her, teammates would DC or kill themselves on hook because the match was miserable. The Skull Merchant player would also stack slowdowns so it is basically almost impossible to escape.
There was a comp team that almost died to the one hour timer because the Skull Merchant had such a good 3-gen set up, it took a ton of communication just to beat her, now imagine how solo queue was, it was completely miserable, and this is how the "Chess Merchant" meme was born.
When she got reworked, she is still hated for multiple reasons, one because people are probably still having PTSD from her prior rework, survivors tend to still refuse to verse her, so solo players like myself hate having to deal with that, and most people find her power to be easy to use for so much advantages, as she can have Undetectable, Haste, Tracking, Slowdown (Survivor Movement Speed), and free injures with her drones.
All that together is very boring to verse, it's not overpowered, but overly such a snooze fest to verse. Skull Merchant in my opinion deserves a second chance, she has the opportunity to be one of the coolest characters if they made her power more interactive to verse, she needs another rework, because any buffs or nerfs will make her even more boring.
She's the main reason why so many things were changed, but the main one I'm talking about is the 3-gen nerf specifically, if it weren't for Skull Merchant, I think 3-genning would still be a strong way to win matches.
I'd love to see a 360 for Skull Merchant happen, I really want to like her, but in her current state she's overly boring, and my teammates continue to move on without a second thought.
Comments
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The issue I have with this kind of outlook on Skull Merchant is that, objectively, her power got way more interactive with her rework.
There's a lot of interaction, between dodging the drone beams + learning the intricacies of how they work while you're in chase and hacking drones to keep them out of commission for later, not to mention the tension that comes with unpredictable stealth that the killer might actually bother to use because it isn't awful like the previous version was.
Dodging beams really is the main part, though. There's mechanical back-and-forth to add another layer to the chase, there, with clear and defined rules that you and the killer are both trying to leverage. I can absolutely buy not liking versing her, everyone's entitled to their own dislikes there (and I even have a few myself that I know others find fun), but this idea that her power isn't interactive is just… not true.
Also as an aside, she doesn't get free injuries. If an outcome relies on survivors making massive mistakes, and therefore can't be relied on, it's not free.
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Skull Merchant post-rework is 100% fine and people still complaining about her were never going to change their opinion about her no matter how BHVR changed her.
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I kinda feel the same. I wish Skull Merchant was a Killer I could like, but I just can't. Playing against her is by far one of the most frustrating things in the game even after learning her "counterplay" and playing as her feels relatively unsatisfying for me personally. Her lore, her design, everything really has combined to make a Killer that might just be forever cursed to be hated which is unfortunate but maybe it was for the best. I feel its thanks to the failure of her chapter that BHVR moving forward will definitely learn from their mistakes with this character.
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Your not wrong, but she can be way too interactive to the point it becomes unbearable if that makes sense, you gotta dodge her beams so you don't become injured or slowed during chase, crouching back and fourth can result in a M1 instead, which is a lose-lose situation to me. You got to keep an eye out due to her undetectable which is fine for me, but her haste can be annoying depending on the situation.
I play solo queue a lot, my teammates tend to not know how to counter her which makes the match even worse, even when I do everything correctly, they tend to drop like flies, it's not any form of disrespect to them, but if they refuse to learn how to play against her, it's a lot worse then it should be, even if you know her counters it can be quite tricky if the Skull Merchant knows what she's doing.
But your comment is well made, and I do agree on some things.
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I can see where you're coming from, but I would push back against one thing- forcing an M2 killer to instead hit you with an M1 may strictly be a lose/lose, but it's considered totally valid counterplay for a lot of other killers.
Forcing Billy to hit you with an M1 while you're healthy is a desirable outcome if the alternative is getting instadowned, and Skull Merchant is a similar way. She wants to injure you with her power because she gets more out of it, so forcing her to accept just an M1 delays her ability to set up her power's pressure, and extends the chase by more than if she'd injured you with a drone.
I'll fully agree that solo queue teammates refusing to play against her is a nightmare, though I'd gently suggest that's a solo queue problem, not a Skull Merchant problem. I get similar teammates against other killers - the types who heal against Plague incessantly, for instance, or refuse to pick up tapes against Sadako, or step in traps constantly against Trapper…
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Being a Poorly disguised SM main aside I just don't agree with much you said at all in this post. Deactivating drones is boring as you need to crouch walk all the way to a drone and press some prompts that isn't engaging and just wastes time. Even more so when they over lap a gen you need to complete as every SM plays for three gen since it's still a very strong playstyle.
Running to a tile just to get a drone dropped on it and you need to hold W and hope a team mate doesn't give her haste mid chase isn't exactly the back and forth I want from a killer holding W is the worse way to run from a killer from both perspectives and SM basically is built on forcing that.
The hindered haste tracking undectable it's so unfocused and just feels all over the place honestly I'd be happy if they just removed her from the game.. give people who have her 9k iridescent shards and call it a day refund any cosmetics. Because all your gonna get is people rushing to hooks to get out as fast as possible that's the 1# strategy in my opinion to completing a SM match my time is just to valuable to not be having fun in a video game
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So, you've sort of shifted the goalposts here a little.
My point isn't that her interaction is super fun and engaging for all players. You'll notice I even acknowledge that it's perfectly fair to find her interaction unfun, and say that I have my own examples of killers who are perfectly fine overall but that I just don't like very much.
The claim I was responding to is that her power doesn't have that interaction, which is why I point to it existing. It doesn't actually matter how engaging or fun any given player finds that interaction because that isn't the thing being disputed, its existence is being disputed.
But, to also tackle the rest of what you're saying briefly, you're also focusing hard on the worst element of her and ignoring the rest. Yes, it's annoying to have a drone dropped at a loop and for you to only have the option to hold W, but is that everything that Skull Merchant does? No, of course not, she has a ton more to her than just that. It'd be like saying Artist is designed solely to do that same thing and there's no skill expression or survivor interaction to playing against her because of it; the fact that the "drop thing, force someone to run away" strat is annoying doesn't change that it isn't the only thing either of these killers do.
You don't even always have to run away against SM, either. There are a fair few loops that are too high for her drones to actually shut them down, so you can stay in the loop if you gauge it worth the risk. Similarly, if a drone is overlapping a gen because SM is trying to 3-gen… just ignore it? It can't do anything in that scenario, the worst outcome is you get scanned once as you run away, and that isn't guaranteed.
Also, "poorly disguised SM main", lol. I don't hide that I play SM, there's no disguising going on here. She may not be my main, but I make no secret about enjoying her.
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If they would just get rid Undetectable and Hinder features, that would make it MUCH, MUCH more bearable to tolerate her as an actual killer, she's not even boring; she's just MISERABLE to face and MISERABLY OP.
I can't tell you HOW MANY TIMES I've seen the game end and not a SINGLE GEN was completed; even in the cases where survivors don't DC or immediately exit the game by committing on hook. Her ability to snowball and steamroll survivors is beyond insane and her drones shuts down so many things in a single sitting that it's insane.
It's hard to loop or WANT to play against a killer that gets undetectable just for placing a drone, often and easily earning her an easy hit that follows into getting a hindered status that is there for 95% of the game.
But, god forbid that I said that and I get 90 skull merchant defenders saying "She's perfectly fine as she is, survivors just need to learn her counterplay."
Counter-argument: Knowing how to counter a killer doesn't automatically mean their survival rate goes up by 50% percent, especially referring to her.5 -
SM Is fine.
They should Focus on reworking Freddy And changing Shape. These two Are seriously in dire need of help.
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Genuinely, what's the point of saying something like this? Just to be…rude?
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To be fair "Lets talk about SM" topics is like everyday for whole year.
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Yes remove her hindred so she can't do anything againts injured Survivors and she is just worse Legion, great idea!
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Yes, but that doesn't mean you should be rude to someone. There are posts because people are unhappy. BHVR notices when people are unhappy and changes are made. If nobody complained then nothing would change. Granted, there are many SM posts, but op simply talked about how cool they believed the killer could be and wanted to discuss it. Griefing should never be excused simply because people are tired of the topic.
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they need to go back to the drawing board and completely redesign her.
Killswitch her like Nurse when she's being fixed and give us a Killer that we can all be happy with.
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I can agree with this in current state she is the most unhealthy killer in the game. As a survivor you can't guarantee your lose was even your fault because the give up rate is so incredibly high that it puts every chase and hook into questions. And as the killer you have the same issue with every win at any point even a group of people who stayed your forced to think how seriously did the other side even try do to the hate and dislike the community has for this killer. I've been in threads here and seen people who are adamant about not giving up or DCing with the "stick it out" mentality but regardless your play style is gonna suffer unless your completely motivated and excited to play
And when it comes to SM almost no one is in that boat let alone 4 in one game
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Bro, im just gonna say that she was first, but not the last killer released, who can make A LOT:
- Her.
- Singularity (teleport, scouting, objective denying, fast vaulting, fast breaking, unstunnable).
- Chucky (very small - barely seen in the grass, undetectable, can run fast and hit, fast vaulting, double jumping)
For example, what can Trapper do? He sets traps. So basically all he can do is to block SOME paths, but it's still easy to counter, especially if you saw where he set his traps and you play via discord.
What can Wesker do? Fast vaulting, fast running via his abbility, slowing, oneshotting with addon by abbility.
What can Onryo do? Teleport, instakill (rare).
What can Xeno do? Controllable teleporting, low ranged hit.
These killers barely do anything compared to how much first three can do. And the thing is that developers don't see any problems with them.
And now this awful anniversary that DOESN'T FIT DBD with Vecna, who can: fly, block pallets, pick up pallets, damage with medium ranged wide abbility, track survivors and mori them if they have items.
All these little things should tell you one thing, which was told before: developers doesn't care unless they begin to lose money on that. Ask yourself, why feng min has the most skins in game.
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Xeno has built in stealth, built in info, built in slowdown with survivors having to place turrets, mobility, anti-loop, etc.
Onryo has mobility, stealth, info, slowdown, and potential lethality
Chucky has stealth, anti-loop, a damn good chase power, and mobility
Unknown has info, anti-loop, a great chase power, mobility…..
She isn't even close to the most unhealthy killer in the game lol.Post edited by EQWashu on0 -
I don't mind current Skull Merchant, there's multiple killers I hate going against FAR more than SM, like Trickster and Bubba, but I don't ask for them to be removed from the game. SM is fine at the moment and the biggest issue is whiny survivors who feel like it's okay to ruin the game for their teammates and give up.
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(casual) Skull Merchant mains rise up
no matter the hate, i will always play my thicc legged drone lady
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I think they should let her go, it doesnt make any difference to me to be honest
My SM games end with me dead anyway
You know, that minigame is too hard, I dont know how people can hit the right button that it shows on screen 😥
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Honestly I realized something about skull merchant recently. She was so hated that nobody takes he matches seriously or learns her new add ons and powers. She is a stealth killer now. The only real stealth killer as she has no growl or lullaby or any tells. She jump scares survivors incredibly. She isn't boring anymore everyone just hates her so much from before they never gave her a chance with the changes.
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How is a stealth killer with no tells fun though?
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Because it is the only real stealth. Most other stealth are a joke. Like dredge. Incredibly loud with no sneak. Or Myers ...sneaky but slow. The game gives her real stealth and that would be fun if everybody didn't still hate her from before
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she is not boring to verse.
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