SM: Why devs are not honest to us?

As a soloQ suvivor i would have changed only the following things:

• suvivors could destroy the drones but it takes 4 times as long as disable them. so survivors can choose between disable the drone short time and completly destroy them depending on the situation.
• no more overlapping drones aka, spamming the area
• base SM can no more recall drones if the is outside the drone radius. with an add on this feature can be re enabled.

rest could stay untouched.

Making Skull Merchant doing rotating with her drones would make her more skillfull for sure.

I do realize that 3 Gen Update came out w few months ago, but it didn't eliminate 3 Gen Situations and these situations are mostly against Skull Merchant

But if Survivors dont want to destroy her drones they gonna get affected by them. The drones are near the Generators. She can use them very well for 3 Genning. You better start not lying my dear. Have a great day.

removing her speed boost was enough.

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 worst 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 up to more than double it. Revert MfT, or remove the Haste, oh wait, that's a proposed nerf! Fix in progress.

Traps 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 - 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.

There is a MASSIVE difference between 3 Gen Skull Merchant and Blight Hug tech because one Massively Increased the game's Life by an inordinate amount and the other was an exploit that removed the Blight's intended weakness, making games usually much shorter.
Giving such an example does not award brownie points.
It was considerably more appropriate to either DC or give up in a 3 Gen game because it was massively unhealthy.
Blight's was less unhealthy but still very much an unintended feature that removed counterplay to a significant degree.
The current version of skull merchant has PLENTY of counterplay but people lose their minds because as I pointed out multiple times, The Character punishes poor team awareness as a whole similar to many other killers in DBD.
People just like having something to hate.
The changes are overkill. Anyone with a brain and overall ability to comprehend could easily look at them and see that.
They could've removed her ability to recall hacked drones and forced her to manually walk up and grab them.
They could've made Locked On Decay.
They could've massively reduced Claw Trap Timers.
They could've just did numbers reduction.
But instead they removed a feature, Halved her Hindered, and massively nerfed what is described as her "Chase" power to make it into a joke.
The character has to have SOME level of playability, and the concept they had created was "Mounting dangers" in the form of "The more scans the more lethal she gets".
They could just TELL US what they are planning for her rework. But instead they have opted to give Vague quotes like the one on Reddit.

It's just unbelievable.
I would prefer knowing because right now they have just made it known that the character is basically done.
PTB doesn;t mean it will go live, but the fact that it is so severe is reason enough to be worried because it completely neutralizes her.
You might as well be playing Clown, or Mastermind, or literally anyone else because her Chase is massively reduced and her Lack of Haste removes her ability to actually make efficieny out of pursuing someone who activates her Radar.
You could just play Aura reading Huntress for immediate damage. Or Dredge for better map presence. Or literally anyone else because her entire power will be so easy to counter in high MMR she will be clowned on.
And the hate train WANTS that because they're malding over a character that they have to plan accordingly against.

Many Killers use horrid tactics and take advantage of error in design. For example; your profile image has a very notorious and well-known playstyle shared with Trickster and Huntress.
And It doesn't matter that adjusting Rotation will be considered "Skill Expression" because it's ONE scan line that won't sweep nearly fast enough and has a long enough cooldown to see coming. All her incentives and actual lethality are nullified for the reasons listed in repeat above blah blah.
The entire change is quite literally gutting a character.

And thank you.
I genuinely think a lot of problems in this game would get better treatment and proper balancing if people actually allowed the data to be what it is instead of yanking the chair from under their legs mid-match or just letting teammate01_ai replacements take the lead.

"I think they should pull a Freddy at this point and do a completely rework since she is just that poorly designed. I know BHVR said that they would never do something like that again but I genuinely think it would be for the best here."

The problem with this is that you need to be sure there is really no other option. None. At all. Because a full rework should always be the last resort.

There is a reason why such drastic changes rarely happen. Just look at Freddy, look at how many problems he caused after the rework, how boring and uninspired he feels, how his original mains, like myself, lost their character over five years ago and didn't get him back (not yet).

Full reworks are not a good idea, unless there is no other option.

But she got high heels last tome, so seems a fair trade

How would you feel if it was a character you loved? What if they made one of your fav characters who spent bunch of money on a F-tier character

I wouldn't be happy, but I also understand that's the game and just how the world works.

When it first released, I didn't like DbD. I played it in 2019 and still disliked it. I tried it again in 2021 and loved it after the changes they made. At some point they might change the game enough that I won't like it again.

Sometimes changes are good, sometimes they are bad, but in this case there is an extremely clear and necessary reason for the change. Skull Merchant has been out for a year and a half. This isn't some rug pull where they switched the character a week after she came out.

The changes are overkill. Anyone with a brain and overall ability to comprehend could easily look at them and see that.

And I do think they are overkill. I never said "I agree with the changes made and think they were fine," and I will agree with you that most people can tell that it's a bit much.

My original comment stated that the design of the Killer will never leave players satisfied in my opinion, people will either adore her design or hate her design with a burning passion, but, I personally think there is no way to strike a happy medium with players.

They could've removed her ability to recall hacked drones and forced her to manually walk up and grab them.
They could've made Locked On Decay.
They could've massively reduced Claw Trap Timers.
They could've just did numbers reduction.

There are all interesting ideas. I really just dont know how much that would affect her gameplay or make her more dynamic.

…And finally, BHVR has already gone on to say that the changes they made are just to hold out until a rework in the future. What this rework will do? I really dont know.

Honestly. If she was really this much of an "issue" to nerf her like this leading to a rework, I think BHVR would have been better off just using a Killswitch instead, like what they did with Haddonfield back in the day, it would have accomplished the same thing since they are practically unplayable.

Regardless of my opinion, or your opinion, BHVR ultimately has the fine say. Again, I will implore you (along with other players) to speak out if you disagree with the changes, since BHVR might make adjustments and address concerns!

Free downs with no effort in chase is bad design. No one wants a "guaranteed win". They want the ability to extend a chase by playing well. That doesn't mean indefinitely chasing, just chasing longer and helping their team. The opportunities to do that against SM are fleeting because her power is nearly always overwhelming in the chase, even when the killer is a relatively weak player. The killer should always have the advantage, but it should not be as easy as M2 to get very quick hits, especially when she has other benefits outside of chase.

You cannot reliably "microstop" on a typical connection to a DBD server and crouch walking in a chase is suicidal. You can't just "adapt" to that or "awareness" through it. It is a fundamental characteristic of her power. Once she finds you she will throw a drone and you need to leave the loop if possible. If not it's an easy hit that requires no skill on her part. That is it. Stealth is no longer a viable playstyle in DBD; you can't just avoid chase when he power plus a few dozen perks provide great tracking.

Bringing ideal perks for a given killer is luck, not counterplay.

"Microstop" is not literal. I just use the word to describe stopping effectively and quickly, I have and consistently do it against plenty of Skull Merchants. Her dropping a Drone doesn't instantly make it a dead spot; you can effectively counter her and prolong for a shorter duration than normal depending on WHERE you are. That's why I said have AWARENESS.
It's like any other Killer that has a zoning or ranged ability. You need to be careful and mindful of your placement. Trickster, you need to avoid being out in the open. Huntress, tall walls and trees/obstacles. Dredge, use one lock out of the two and use your ears.
You can't just play every loop exactly the same way. That's how you go down.
Again, here I am explaining something that I am certain you know, you just don't want to accept it.
And you don't need "Ideal Perks", just rational ones since everyone and their mother refuses to do anything but run meta.
She is not "Overwhelming" in a chase if you effectively make use of your surroundings and your team is aware of her drone placements.
I have gone against and played as her countless times. And the majority of games are a 50-50 given that survivors actually play with the caution towards what they're up against.
Every killer has something you have to learn to counter.
It's not gonna be a walk in the park every time.

have you seen how many buffs wraith got over the 8 years of dbd?

I mean by speed differential more than direct damage from the drones. She'll often be ~120% and undetectable while the survivor is 90%. That's 1.2 m/s of straight line distance, which is pretty overwhelming. It's the same delta as Clown's bottles and Freddy's snares, but Clown and Freddy have to do a lot more to gain that distance and have other clear drawbacks, while SM has the potential for passive damage.

Edit: And she maintains that delta for about twice as long! Clown's hindered lasts for 2 seconds after you leave the cloud and Freddy's is 3 seconds. Hers is 6 seconds. It's too much, and I'm glad the devs realized that.

She gets 3-7% haste for trackable survivors, she's 115% base, and the scanning claw-trapped survivors also applies 10% hindered for 6%. That's 90% to ~120% IF you stay in a loop and play it out. It is not feasible to dodge scans in a chase or you are giving up even more distance than just running in circles until you get claw trapped. Your options are to leave the loop or automatically die after a set time even if the killer is playing with a racing wheel. It's just a dumb power.

I am talking specifically about the power in chase. That is the only problematic piece of her power; this would only cause problems out of chase for survivors who don't know how the power works.