Skull Merchant, the new Freddy.
A killer that people hate playing against gutted and left to rot. These nerfs are unreasonably harsh, she's a B+ killer at most and her high kill rate is exclusively because people give up against her. Holy ######### just delete her at this point guys.
EDIT: As a Skull Merchant enjoyer myself, here's how you make her less annoying to play against. Keep the "Drones are always in active state" because stealth mode is dumb and unneeded, and completely remove Hindered when scanned with a Claw Trap. THAT'S ALL YOU HAD TO DO.
Comments
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Yeah, these nerfs are completely unreasonable and I can't see any other intent behind them than to gut her until a hypothetical future rework that'll likely never see the light of day. This is one of the more clear-cut cases of bhvr balancing primarily by overall kill rate really shafting their balance and leaving a previously alright design high and dry, since all they're really doing is removing both the counterplay to her and the need for that counterplay at all (see: any real utility from her power) for the sake of simplifying her kit and making it accessible to lower skill brackets. There's no way anybody at bhvr is under the impression that this is doing anything but utterly dumpstering her.
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First off, I am one of those players who hates Skull Merchants and by extension their players with a passion. In the matches against her, I usually didn't strain myself to keep her kill rates normal if we put it that way. As far as I'm concerned, Skull Merchant is a mistake that never should have happened.
That being said, I remember Freddy's situation too well and as someone who loved to play as the original Freddy, I don't want that repeated, ever. These changes serve no good purpose. Skull Merchant either needs a complete overhaul (new power, new gameplay design, not just a "rework") or be removed from the game altogether, but not whatever this is.
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it's a quick fix for the meantime until they revisit her, they put it on social media.
I also disagree re the scans, the haste was so dumb, being punished for someone else running through a drone was utterly dumb. I'm so glad she has been changed, she deserved it.
She needs redesigned from the ground up1 -
I've heard many people say redesign her from the ground up often... but what does that even mean? It's such a non-descript and vague statement.
Skull Merchant is a killer who has drones that monitor an atea that survivors need to sneak past or disable, otherwise be revealed to the killer. That is her concept.
The problem is just revealing your location doesn't really do anything on its own... there needs to be some kind of tangible threat from being scanned as well... this is why we had exposed/a free injury, boosts of speed and hindered after so many scans. Survivors need to have a reason to avoid her beams, otherwise she has no power. I acknowledge this point has issues, but they are issues we can try and address...
When we say redesign, does that mean abandon the whole concept? Have no drones at all? Then it isn't Skull Merchant... no point naming the killer Skull Merchant if you're not gonna have skulls mounted on drones, might as well make a whole new killer concept rather than trying to shoe horn Skull Merchant onto it.
I've heard people say have the drones follow survivors... again just revealing location is useless as a power if Skull Mechant herself is just an m1 killer with nothing else going for her. Does the drone attack the survivor? Then we just have the less effective version of Knight.
Skull Merchant was the good trap killer. She perhaps got too much for too little effort, fair statement, the change to remove 1 of the scan lines would resolve a lot of the free power she gets... she now actually needs to work for it... but with the othwr changes makimg the reward she gets from doing basically nom existant, and the fact survivors can easily see her solo scan lines to never get hit by them... she now doesn't do anything....
More than happy to hear and debate on suggestions for this redesign, but to vaguely say "redesign her" is useless. Redesign her into what? What is the concept that Skull Merchant should be occupying that she isn't doing already?
I ask because I honestly believe no matter what you "redesign" her into, if a drone exists in her kit and shes called Skull Merchant, people will hate on her anyway and not even be able to say why, no matter how much you change her.
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She didn't deserve any nerfs. i didn't expect them to straight up remove haste, only to weaken it to insignificant value like 1/2/3/4%. the silver lining is that freddy is supposedly getting reworked so eventually freddy will leave F-tier spot. Skull merchant will take his spot for awhile.
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She really did, literally the entire playerbase hates her bar like a handful of voices in the community like yourself found on these forums, everyone I know despises her, she is not fun to play against, nerfs aren't always for what's overpowered. Her being rewarded for nothing she did is awful, terrible design.
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