So Skully just gets Freddy'd huh?
I've never actually been this mad about changes before and Ive been PISSED off at some things BHVR has done. But this? Butchering Skull Merchant to a barely playable state with NO compensation? Thats your plan? Just nerf her so harshly that everyone stops playing her so you wont have to deal with the complaints?
This reminds me SO MUCH of Freddy down to the tea.
>Gets Released
>Community despises on launch
>Decide to rework power entirely
>People still complain
>Pump full of nerfs so horrible that they become a detriment to even play
>No more complaints because no one plays killer anymore and the only people who are upset are the mains of said killer
Seriously BHVR, why is it instead of working with what you had, fine tuning things and playing around with actual ways to make the killer fun, is your idea just slaughter her dead and hope that ends the backlash? SM hate was already hugely overhyped and just trickled down from her previous state and the previous meta and instead of addressing anything actual about her you just stack on several extremely hard hitting nerfs and call it a day?
Ive been trying to bite my tongue on some things BHVR has done since they released Maria and shes always been my #1 request but I REALLY cant ignore this in any capacity, this was just an unneeded destruction of a character that has quite literally made her an M1 killer with nothing to compensate for it. OH! Actually there is! When she scans someone THREE times, they get slowed down by 5% if they get scanned a fourth time! Survivors no longer have to worry or play in a team, nope! Skully has all her same counters which worked just as good, but her stats have been obliterated to the point she makes Trapper look S tier and this was the bright idea that took you guys almost a year to come up with?
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Agree. They even shadow nerfed freddy with this patch (dead man's switch)
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If this goes live I am legit never touching this character ever, which is what Survivors and devs want I quess, so good job guys, you did well!
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BHVR refuses to address the fact that survivors can hook suicide and the Skull Merchant nerfs basically show if survivors hook suicide against a killer, BHVR will destroy that killer.
Expect to see more survivors killing themselves on first hook.
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The most ironic thing is that people are still probably gonna hookicide against her for the dumbest reasons even though she’s a worse legion with these changes. Genuinely she’s a bottom 5 killer now, arguably like worst killer in the game cause she doesn’t have insane map pressure cause the drones are ALWAYS active so they’re super visible
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Funny thing about freddy is he was complained about because new players didn’t want to learn that self care countered his entire power
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Needing to run self-care just to counter a single killer wasn't a good design. The addition of the clocks I think were the best idea BHVR had when it came to Freddy.
Honestly his rework wasn't even bad, but they eventually nerfed all the good aspects of his kit, because like SM survivors hated the fact he had a build that could slow down gens effectively.
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the point isn’t that self care was “needed” to counter his power, the point is that missing any skill check countered his power, and self care was everywhere at the time. And nobody wanted to learn that so there was a review bomb complaining about him that got him slammed with nerfs before his rework
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I wouldn't fret. There's no way these changes go live in full.
That being said, y'all really have no one to blame but yourselves for echo chambering and deluding yourselves into thinking her kit isn't problematic. It is and it sucks to play against and heavy nerfs were always on the horizon because it's simply easier for bhvr to execute than another rework.
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">Community despises on launch"
Only by those who refused to learn how his power worked.
"Honestly his rework wasn't even bad,"
It was.
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From a power standpoint, his rework wasn't bad.
I know mains like you have a problem with the rework because it completely changed his playstyle.
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Even if the drones were always in stealth mode these changes just destroy her. Theres nothing scary about her drone unless youre in chase and well…they just cut the lethality of them in chase by like 90% lol she genuinely became the worst killer in the entire game with this patch alone
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"Only by those who refused to learn how his power worked."
This can DEFINITELY be applied to SM especially post rework2 -
The reason why people were claiming he was "overpowered" and review bombed is because he was "given a free hit". It had nothing to do with being in the Dream World for long periods of time.
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Even 1 or 2 of these changes going live has almost the same effect. And please, it was you guys who REFUSED to learn how to counter or play around SM and instead just demanded she be nerfed because she was made in a bad meta. Had plague and SM release dates been swapped Plague would be the most complained about killer easily.
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I never said anything about being in the dream world for long periods of time?
What I said was that he got complained about because people didn’t want to learn the counter to his ability to even hit survivors was a single button (skill check button).
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Yeah, that is going to be worst killer in DBD.
Worse than Freddy.
Right into garbage, why is balancing so difficult for devs sometimes?
No haste and bad hindered? She is useless in chase without haste. You never get to hindered anyway.
Only one line? So she is forced to spam changing direction... That was supposed to be removed, not forced.
No scout drones, so basically impossible get claw trap outside of chase.
That's worst rework I have seen in my life.
Post edited by EQWashu on5 -
These updates to skull mommy are awful. Too many nerfs nothing to compensate.
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Because the goal is not balance here. It's solely to please survivors who'll find something else to complain about and rage quit against that.
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that is exactly what bvhr wants you to do. they don't want you to touch this character because survivor DON'T LIKE playing vs this character. this is also expected. i knew it would happen and that is all there is to it.
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You're right about the problem of completely changing playstyles, my friend, but from a power standpoint the rework wasn't good either.
The powerhouse he became after the rework wasn't healthy for the game. Spamming Dream Snares and getting your Dream World slowdown for free with Jump Rope and Swing Chains wasn't a good design. Not to mention it created the problem of Freddy feeling boring and uninspired, which cannot be fixed without reworking him again.
Post edited by GeneralV on3 -
So my anger should be put on survivors? Good thing I got back to Blight, should be easy to do.
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Again, that wasnt the reason. People were well aware that failing a skill check brought them out of the dream, (which sort of implies theyve been in it for a longer period of time) the complaint was the free hit he was given, which just wasnt true and its only after the nerfs that people realized that.
I was there during those times and I was a newer player at the time. That was my main complaint and the smaller communities I was apart of at the time shared the same sentiment.
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Why even nerf hindered?
Claw trap will be near impossible outside of chase and way more difficult during the chase. You can make it 100% and it's pointless.
Without haste, if undetectable didn't work (LoS), you are M1 killer without a power. Nothing in chase.
How more useless could killer be at this point?
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Yikes... I admit she needed something doing to her...
However Art using the chainsaw in the Terrifier was less brutal than this... guess survivors finally got what they wanted huh? 💀💀💀💀
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Had to make sure that she had absolutely no redeeming qualities or anything that could make up for the fact shes trapper if you had to step in his traps 3 times to get injured
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I didn't think it was possible to nerf a character to be worse than Freddy, yet BHVR continues to surprise me. Congratulations Freddy mains. He is no longer the worst killer in the game and has moved up to bottom D tier.
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There's nothing to learn that wouldn't make her less of a slog to play against. She's not strong, I win most of the time against her.
Again, you guys continued to ignore the evidence and reasoning that she was unhealthy and due for nerfs with 'git gud' and now there's an outrage over the delusions being broken.
BHVR hasn't been dishonest at all, you guys lied to yourselves.
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skull merchant is just worse clown. no haste anymore, 66% worse hindered. Now she is just poor stealth killer with very short stealth duration and broken. it will likely just make skull merchants 3 gen more because her chase isn't very good anymore so you play defensively and camp gens with drones to inflict broken. it will likely work vs soloq but not work vs SWF because SWF can communicate to pre-run. the haste bonuses and hindered were much needed for SWF because haste countered pre-running and hindered also helped keep survivor away from gens or risk being hindered by drones.
honestly, i expected a lot worse changes however I am still not going play her as any changes will make not viable vs SWF. that is why i just played a lot of her now knowing that the killer is gone. the only thing we need look at is what they did with her iri add-on related claw traps. they may reverted it to old geographic readout when you gain 2%(5%) haste. so she might reverted to still some chase.
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I think I could have lived with the removal of haste, for sure.
However, the scan line change makes no sense. And we still have no way to remove lock on stacks.0 -
If you add the ability to remove lock on stacks that just makes the worst way to play against her the ONLY viable way to play against her. Removing lock on stacks means shes just gonna spam drop drone at every loop and try to force a scan line in chase which is only even a viable strategy if the survivor has 2 scans already. They needed to make her trap setup more lethal not make it useless
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There is also not really way of gaining stacks, so why worry about removing...
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Problem is when the traps are more lethal than they are currently, it becomes unfun on survivor side to deal with. Especially since you can't remove lock-on stacks. And it didn't have to be disabling drones, they could have had them decay over a reasonable amount of time or something.
Whatever they're planning with this change, however, doesn't make this point matter now. As well put by this next response:The scan line changes pretty much kill her drones as is. Less useful in loops, and far more useless as traps considering how they literally tell you where they are without stealth mode. And even with stealth, I could see the pattern they leave on the floor with the current SM. That's what really upsets me the most.
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The playstyle I saw people complaining about the most and the most valid imo complaint about her was the 'follow to loop, press M2, and leave' style. Making lock on stacks decay or go away basically makes it so that would be the only playstyle for her as keeping them around as traps would be a detriment more than anything at that point especially without haste.
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Well, they still kinda did this regardless now that scan lines got nerfed and stealth mode basically got removed. So no worries about lock-on stack removal ruining them.
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Except she does what other killers do…and several other killers do it much better lol. Clown has always been a superior pick over SM and hes no where near complained about, Plague was always better at holding 3 gens than SM, SM's lethality was basically betting on survivor mistakes with room for good plays on her end, overall there was no reason for her to be anywhere near hated to the level she was.
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True. How does BHVR has such a bad track record with things like this? This is FAR from the first time that a killer is hated for a specific playstyle and BHVRs idea to address it is remove ALL other playstyles and force the most unfun horrible one by nerfing the killer overall, requiring them to only do one horrid playstyle to be effective (See Hag for a good example)
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He never was, though.
Freddy can be deadly in the right hands. The problem is that, even if you win, you won't have fun.
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Plague is getting changed. Not in this update but in next update with Weave attunement. So you'll just have to wait for her major changes.
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yeah he wasn’t the WORST killer, just the worst if you want to have any fun
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+1
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I'm going to play her after she's gutted. I think it will be funny to see how people react when they realize how weak she is.
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Copied from (my post in) another nearly similar thread (with fixed spelling):
SM is better at 4 (legitimate) categories than the original/comparable Killers are.
Stealth - She has no audio cues with ~90% stealth uptime. Myers/Ghosty/Freddy/Onryo/Dredge all have sound cues, so why doesn't she? Add sound cues and she is fine in this department.
Hindered - Clown and Freddy slow 15% for ~3s, or 45% total hindered. She slows 10% for 6s, or 60% total hindered. Her hindered should be worse than theirs. Either halve the % or halve the duration and she is fine here, oh wait, that's a proposed nerf! Fix in progress.
Haste - MfT apparently was too powerful at 3%, and she gets it as well as up to more than double it. Revert MfT, or remove the Haste, oh wait, that's a proposed nerf! Fix in progress.
Traps (with the potential for damage) Auto-reset - Hag doesn't get this, and Trapper needs an Iridescent add-on to do this. Make the drones require an add-on, or physical reset, and she is fine in this department.
Bugs (the 5th illegitimate category)- Bugtech got fixed, but she still gets triple scans on a single scan. Fix this bug so that the 3s scan delay actually applies, and she is fine in this department.
The proposed nerfs only end up fixing half of her design flaws. Ideally she gets a stealth sound cue, and traps stop auto-resetting in the next update to actually make her fair.
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Legitimate question - what exactly do you think her power is supposed to do?
If she shouldn't have meaningful Hindered and she shouldn't have Haste at all, what's her chase power? As a secondary question, because it's inherently tied to the first and must be answered at the same time, why would survivors ever bother to dodge drone beams - the interactive gameplay part of her design - if they don't actually do anything meaningful in general or anything period if they're already injured?
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yall lost me at “survivors got what they want” i know this place is usually a cesspool but stop with the us vs them arguments it’s so annoying, direct that blame to the devs and the fact they dont play their own game
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This is an entire sheet of skill issue cause oh my god who complains about STEALTH on skull merchant
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I view her as a hybrid multi-power Killer (in effect).
Its fine for her to be a hybrid multi-power Killer like Vecna and Dracula, but each of their powers should be weaker than the full Killer counterpart.
Stealth is a form of chase power, by reducing the chase timer from (lets say) 20s to 0s when used correctly. Hindered at 5% for 6s would still yield the 30% total slowdown, and that is still reapplied if they stick at the loop.
I don't consider flowchart gameplay interactive, and her drones would mostly be described as such. Pyramid Head is really fun to go against when they go for risky M2s (because you know they are the actual skilled Pyramid Head players), but when they simply hold power to bodyblock a window into a free M1, it isn't fun.
Also drones can still injure people, so chasing someone into a trap ala Hag/Trapper is still an effective way to shorten chases.
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I am a Ghosty main. Using your ears is a prime form of counterplay against getting downed by him. You can't just pretend that design flaws are skill issues. Are you saying Clown should 'skilledly' hack his purple gas to Hinder 45% instead of 15%? Are you saying Ghosty's should abuse the silent pay-to-win skins? Are you saying Hag should 'skilledly' hack traps to spawn 5 more each time 1 gets tripped. Are you saying MfT should return, and it's just a skill issue for Baby Killers? That's what it sounds like you're saying when you don't actual provide a counter for each of those points.
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But you're making her chase more flowchart with these changes. The interaction currently is in dodging drone beams, something that was very carefully designed to be very doable and viable because people didn't like her not having any chase interaction (beyond basic M1 interaction, anyway). If being scanned isn't harmful to you until you hit three, and even then it's just an injury, why bother interacting with her power? More to the point, why would the killer player bother using their power if it takes four times as much effort to get something Legion gets just for pressing M2, or that Ghostface gets with a possible instadown on top just for pressing M2? You'd boil Merchant down to basically just doing M1 gameplay with mediocre stealth and maybe hoping that they can get an injure- which itself also becomes significantly harder with BHVR's changes and yours combined.
What you're missing in your rundown up above is that the comparisons you're drawing are stronger, at least in the context they're being compared, because Skull Merchant's power can be completely avoided through interaction and theirs can't.
Take Clown, for example. You say Merchant's Hindered should be weaker than Clown's, and I agree- it should be, and it is. It's a lower number, for only very slightly longer duration, that takes four total mistakes/outplays to achieve. Clown gets the higher number, for a comparable amount of time, with no mistake or outplay required, he just points and clicks. The same is true of his Haste, for that matter- while it's easier to achieve for Merchant than her Hindered, it's also considerably weaker in effect and iirc even in duration.
Another good example would be Trapper and Hag. While, obviously, both Hag and Merchant are significantly better than the worst killer in the game, the reason that Merchant gets auto-reset traps is because they're not guaranteed. If you run into a Bear Trap's effective radius, you are injured and immobilised. If you run into a Phantasm Trap's effective radius, it triggers. If you run into a Drone's active radius… you then have to also be scanned by the beams in order to get a single scan, which doesn't affect you until you reach three. The reason that single scan affects her is so that there's a reason to engage with the actual interactive part of her power.
The thing that works about Skull Merchant's power is the fact that it both has clear points of interaction and skill expression for both sides, and that those points of interaction are emphasised because the results of her power working are something the survivor actually wants to avoid. If the result is actively weaker than good M1 play… why would either side care about the interaction, or put any skill into the expression?
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The current dodging beams isn't an interaction, its a forced slowdown. I mean heck, if you crouch for half a second to not get scanned, that's effectively 35% hindered, and they lose ~1.5m of distance. It's a flowchart of crouch or not. Is this 3rd scan? Crouch. No interaction, simple flowchart. Now theoretically you can say tanking the 2 scans could be where there is interaction, do I leave loop or take the scan. The problem there is it still is basically a free injury at all normal loops.
The other facet is the horrendous slowdown her power incurs. Crouching or playing red-light green-light slows navigation by a ton, and disarming the trap takes longer (as well as telling the Killer someone is there).
Clown's gas is 2s+ gas duration, SM's is 6s. The only time gas duration is over 1s, is if both Killer and Survivor are back-forth-back-forthing at a loop. SM's is essentially double duration, so in the best case scenario, her hindered should be half Clown's. Also SM's scans aren't outplays, they are 'did you hold W and get M1'd in the open, or play the loop and get scanned minimum 1 time per rotation'.
Again with the 'scans are so hard' claim. Scans are much too easy, which is likely why they are nerfing the lines from 2 to 1. This is actually the only nerf I'm not fully on board with, although I think as a temporary nerf until sound cues and auto-reset are fixed it is fine.
There is no skill interaction for Survivor with SM. It is stay at loop and get freely scanned, or hold W and get M1'd in the open. I could maybe grant macro skill interaction like Ghosty/Trapper if the drones didn't auto-reset. That way 1 dedicated 'Killer Bully' can prevent the Killer's power from making the Survivors lose the match. That is the true counter to both Ghosty and Trapper, a Macro bully that always reveals/disarms traps. If SM was adjusted to work like them, without auto-resetting traps, then I could grant skill interaction here (on a macro level, she still lacks it on a micro level).
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I mean, if dodging beams is forced slowdown, so is dodging literally anything else in the game, especially since most of them generally require you to go further out of your way than Merchant's beams do.
It's also still very much interaction and therefore still completely avoidable, to refer to the next point. It's not that it's "so hard", it's that it's part of a back and forth that just flat out doesn't exist for powers like Clown's Afterpiece Tonic. It's still mistake/outplay even if it isn't the hardest thing in the game, especially in comparison to killers like Clown. That's why it's okay for her numbers to be close, because Clown is point-and-click and Merchant requires more interaction/has more points of potential avoidance for survivor. Merchant has to build to her Hindered in a way survivors can avoid, Clown doesn't, there's no getting around that.
The rest of your post mostly rests on those points, so I think it'd be repetitive to go any further.
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