Don't nerf SM, wait for her rework instead

You don't need to sorry - you are right. I've never touched this killer, and I have no clue.

But what I'm sure of - PTB is there for testing. And what was initially been posted - can be completely changed after PTB.

They are 100% not ignoring the feedback - they are communicating and listening. It's just… Depends on the audience they are listening to.

What's the point of PTB if they are going to ignore the feedback, right?

I don't understand these changes either, they're massively nerfing the most interesting part of her kit while leaving the uninteractive (and thematically unfitting) stealth mechanic untouched.

Nah, they just prerpare for the Freddy buff. SM is just the human sacrifice that's needed for the entity to grant him unlimited power.

Seriously though, this is pretty awful. I mean, she's not fun to play against and not all that interesting to play as either but this doesn't fix that. So these problems remain and on top of that she's also horribly weak now.

SM was unfair in the same way a killer that would always get exactly 1 kill would be unfair. Not because the killer is too strong but because the results are guaranteed and that makes them very tedious to play against. These nerfs don't help with that at all and only make her even less appealing to play.

Skull Merchant could be the weakest killer in the game and still deserve these changes. Power level has nothing to do with it, it's a game health thing. She's incredibly uninteractive, painfully boring, and only beats survivors by drowning them in a sea of unavoidable AOEs. This killer was a mistake, and shouldn't exist for the overall health of DBD.

I don't feel bad for anyone who invested 100 prestige levels in a character so prone to constant changes and reworks due to how unhealthy she is for the game, just to immediately complain that she's getting gutted out like everyone saw coming over a year ago.

You don't need to test anything to see how garbage she is going to be nuking basically everything she has. None of these changes address anything, they just dumpster her for no reason. Her map control will be in the ground, her power is almost worthless being half as effective before you even factor in the survivor themselves, she has no chase potential anymore either. The hinder barely comes into play, the haste is what makes her chase even remotely viable, and she wasnt even that good of a killer to begin with.

The problem was never her in her current state, the problem is lack of information and knowledge of her power and people refusing to adapt and learn like it always is. It's like they took a survivor biased nerf wishlist off reddit and pushed it to the PTB. Malicious nerfing to pander to certain type of players is the worst thing a dev team can do.

One thing that didnt help skull merchant's reputation was the playerbase using her were usualy the ones who couldnt care less about the survivors opinions about them playing skull merchant and theirfore also didnt care about their reactions to hard tunneling / camping with drones / slugging the whole team every round they ever played. To a point where people didnt just hate skull merchant for her power but for the people playing her as well. So now u got 85% of the community yelling "burn the witch! Delete skull merchant!" And the rest that actualy enjoy her and try to play fairly are just a tiny voice in the crowd. So im expecting they will keep her gutted till the rework which who knows might gut her even further with everyones attitude to her lasting over a year and a half so far

I think the entire game is doomed, and will never recover from this developer update (not PTB or actual update, just the blogpost)

We'd better start packing up. It was a pretty good run so far.

Trapper's traps aren't 8m wide, they're disarmed faster, can't be remote reset, he doesn't have a +15% speed differential, his traps don't give him stealth, he can't look at a radar to find the most recent player to escape his traps.

Hag is 110%, Hag's traps have on-going exploits to always be out of lunge range, she can't remote reset her traps, Hag doesn't have a +15% speed differential, her traps don't hinder, (only at the cost of losing the TP entirely) she can't look at a radar to find the most recent player to trip her traps…

Are we even playing the same game? Is the game you're playing Dead by Daylight?

Those are all reasons why she's awful. No one enjoys any of those things.

You also compared that abomination to things that are drastically different and less abominable, hence the response. How could I possibly ignore a statement so void of reason or understanding?

No one enjoys feeling like they're losing, or being handicapped without actually interacting with the opposing side. No one would be up in arms if her main source of lethality was being an 115% MS M1 killer, but it's a bunch of drones that not only aid her in chases vs. people who aren't even triggering her drones (super fun btw) but it also takes all of the skill out of tracking and chasing if someone is moving nearly 20% slower than they should be, and stuck on a radar. The killer just robs people of their skillset. Same reason why people hated quickscope Slinger on release, it was a skill-robbing character.