Skull merchant rework confirmed
Original comment :
The reply:
So this basically confirms the update we are seeing is intended to neutralise skull merchant until they do a rework.
Comments
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"Down the line"?
That could be YEARS before she is even playable again after these nerfs.
"Mitigate some issues"?
Yea, apparently people still wanting to play her despite how weak a killer she is counts as an issue to them. They are correcting that with nerfs so heavy handed they make Freddy wince.
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Problem is remember how often and for how long they delayed the twins rework only to release one of the biggest abominations that were ever in a PTB? I'm afraid of what will happen to Skull Merchant, and the worst thing is that the content creators and their mindless parrots will try to ruin it even if she would be objectively the most balanced and healthiest killer in the game.
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From what I've seen, pretty much all content creators agree that this nerf is way too heavy handed, and the ones that don't like SM admit that the only reason they're fine with these changes is because they dislike the killer, not because the changes are reasonable. I don't think the majority of the community wants her to be totally and utterly useless, people are just fed up with the current version.
If they rework her, they need to do something to freshen people's view on her. New terror radius, new base skin, new trailer, new walk cycle, the more the better. Once they've made an actually decent power to play as and against they need to distance the new version from the old in more ways than just her power. Otherwise, her terrible reputation will remain and people will STILL be inclined to give up against her, even if she was genuinely fun now.
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Okay, lets just get this out of the way: Many content creators and their parrots (bird-brains that repeat words without understanding) do indeed want her useless out of subjective reasons and spite, much of what they say is a front. Hell you even confirmed it yourself when you said they agree the changes are unreasonable but they're fine with it cause they dislike her. Don't get me wrong, i dont like the lore and base appearance of Skull Merchant either, i dont even like her gameplay that much (i merely think the outcry is way out of proportion given that she isn't that strong nor even the most annoying to play against imo, that title belongs to Legion), but i don't let it cloud my judgement or even worse act out of pure pettiness.
Also what about the Trickster rework? That was a bad precedent, he got nerfed to hell and much of his skill and uniqueness taken way, including a lot of undocumented shadow-nerfs, the 4,6 meter buff was something many if not most Trickster mains did not even want. He got put aside, all because Trickster was hated by much of the community for not unsimilar reasons, though the mindless crying was not nearly as bad.
And im not even gonna talk about what they did to the Twins, Freddy or Sadako.
Remember that it can happen to the Killers you like too.
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Guys, this is not the first time they nerf a character to the ground, they already did this with legion and freddy.
Legion, Freddy and Skull merchant shares the same idea, these three characters on realease, or reworked (Freddy) were to boring to go against and it takes no skill to play with them, legion was too strong on realease, nerfed to the ground and barely buffed some years ago, Freddy had slowdown addons and combined with old thanato and sloppy made the match too boring to do gens, freddy has not received a buff yet, the same thing will happen with skull merchant, they will nerf her to the ground until they dicide to change of buff her, nothing new.
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Maybe its time to go against this practice then? I dont want another Freddy to happen to be honest. I personally dont enjoy facing or playing the Skull merchant, but I feel bad for the people that do.
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Well, the same conversation happened when both nerfs for legion and freddy were announced, so this isn’t new.
People that playted with this characters became sad and made several posts to bhvr to not nerf them into the ground, but they did.
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I really don't think she needs another rework, I like her power concept currently, the only issue I felt like she had was the haste and hindered aspect, which has been adjusted
Haste and the hindered is what I despise about going against skull merchant, with that being gone, she's gonna actually felt pretty ok to go against
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Sure to go against but she's going to be absolutely awful to play. That's not ok
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Ok, so might I offer a suggestion?
Just remove her from the game completely (and compensate people who bought her and her skins) and re-release her when you have the new power figured out. That would also be a good chance to fix up her lore and cosmetics.
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I get that, and she really needs a few buffs to compensate those adjustments
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To be fair, there wasn't really a movement to stop Freddy's nerf back in 2021.
Back then he had already lost his unique identity and was already boring to play. Many dedicated Freddy mains were no longer around.
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Which was awful then and is awful now.
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She will still be playable after the nerfs. She'll just be lower tier, which is fine and appropriate.
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She's already C-tier. These changes make her F-tier.
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Theyre only fed up because said content creators told them to be. I will never not say that SM hate is purely from memes and content creators overblowing the situation because there was never any reason to hate her more than any other killer when soooo many do what she does but better
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Her kill rates say otherwise. Hook suicides alone likely aren't the reason, but if they are, that is good justification to nerf her pending a rework. Either way it's fine.
Otz had her in B+ tier in his most recent tier list too.
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Weird. They do it with Skull Merchant but Myers and Freddy don't get any buffs at all… What would we be the problem in turning down Freddy's teleport cooldown a little? Or maybe give him 7 snares so he can try to set them up preemptively. Or reduce the time it takes for survivors to fall asleep at least at the start of the match.
Why can't Myers stalk a little faster? Or move faster while stalking without having to use these addons. These are small changes that they could do to make a killer better until they get to the rework.
But instead they do it with Skull Merchant and pretty much kill her in the process.
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ok so according to the kill rates skull merchant is the most overpowered killer this game has ever seen and nurse is one of the worst killers to ever exist. So why aren’t we getting major nurse buffs?
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all that says is they'll revert her in 1 year time. there is nothing rework. the killer works fine. hopefully survivor figure out how to escape vs her. /shrug.
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Nurse has a very high skill floor. Skull Merchant has one of the lowest.
Edit: And in the February update, Nurse's kill rate was 3.5% below average in terms of raw percentage (58.5% average, 55% nurse). Skull Merchant's was 11.5% above average (70%).
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Aka the devs making her F-tier for most likely 2 years. I will never agree with this way of handling a character. They should not make a character that ppl paid money for useless just to make ppl stop playing her as they rework her. How about this…if she is that big of an issue make her rework top on the list to do and don't develop a new killer till the rework is done. Im sorry but DBD devs are the slowest devs to me. They take years to rework killers. This seems like the twins all over again.
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Honestly, I used to be against that idea but I rather have that then have her being the games first f-tier killer for what mostly likely be 2 years. Just refund everyone who owns her and her skins and remove her from the game till her rework is finished.
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If freddy is any indication, that is probably the case.
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I hate that i agree with this. Just give everyone all who own her a full refund in the meantime and deactivate her if we give her a complete overhaul like Revenant got in Apex, especially considering it will probably take years.
Don't believe BHVR when they say 2025, i consider them unreliable and dishonest and i need to only point towards Freddy, Trickster and Twins to prove it.
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I be honest…otz tier lists are bad anyway imo. The man only has his tier lists go from C to S bc he is afraid to piss off the mains of some killers if their fav killer isn't in the rank they want it to be. So he puts - and + for each letter tier to make ppl feel better. It is like if a child gets a D on the test but instead, the teacher just says they got a C- to make the child not feel bad for doing badly on a test.
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Trust me I hate I had to say it. For a while I be against removing her or any character from the game but after seeing what they have planned for her… I think its better to have nothing than something that is going to useless.
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I don't think that's to baby his viewers. I think that's his honest opinion of where the killers fall. There are few D tier killers because there are few that are that terrible. The majority of killers are pretty close to average, which leads to large B+, B-, and C tiers.
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You say that but he openly admitted on the stream one time that he doesn't have a D tier on his list to avoid arguments with his chat.
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Made a thread about the topic, i do believe it to be the best option.
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I don't follow his content closely, so you could be right. But if you look at kill rate stats (which are just one data point, but still) the larger outliers are on the higher kill rate side. Subjectively this is how it feels playing the game too; there are very few killers that feel like they have no shot (I play a lot of Myers and do fine; even the Shapes and Trappers of the world have good snowball potential despite being weak), but there are a handful that feel like they give you a big leg up.
Edit: Misremembered seeing a D tier.
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Her nerfs are absolutely massive, otz even agrees that its the most he's ever seen a killer nerfed and she will be terrible.
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It's really not that simple. In order to remove her from the game with no timeline to her return, multiple other things would have to happen:
- Tools of Torment would need to be removed as DLC due to false advertising risks (she's front and center on the material).
- Renato and Thalita (along with their perks) would either need to be made free for everyone or also be removed. And most likely they would be removed and returned later along with Merchant and the Tools DLC (because business reasons).
So you aren't just refunding Merchant, they would need to refund the survivors as well. I wasn't around when the Stranger Things content was removed, but I imagine it would be something similar to that.
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No, just reduce the price of the DLC and change the steam page for it lol, the survivors aren't gonna be removed.
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Her kill rate was 11.5% above average as of February. These changes are not going to swing those by like 15%, which is what she'd need to be terrible. She still gets free
hastehindered and her drones can still force survivors to leave loops or take hits. She still has decent tracking, either from the drones themselves or from seeing where drones get disabled. She can still three gen pretty effectively. She will be plenty playable.Yes, kill rates aren't the end all be all, but she was an outlier in how well she was performing before. She needed big nerfs to rejoin the pack.
Post edited by notstarboard on0 -
They completely removed Haste from her kit and they cut the Hinder in half. In addition, they made it twice as hard to even get scans because of the removal of one of the scan lines. She loses bloodlust when using her Drone or her Radar.
With these changes, she has no chase ability anymore and she hasn't been able to 3-gen in any effective way more than any other killer for over a year.
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Tools of Torment could just become a survivor only chapter for the time being. Changing few images wouldn’t be that difficult. Theoretically, we could just make a separate DLC just for the two. As for her perks, they could be made into general ones until she comes back.
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I meant hindered. You still get free scans in loops, as survivors can't afford to stop, so she can still force survivors to leave strong loops effortlessly. Given that she basically never needs to chase at strong loops, she doesn't really need Bloodlust anyway. And 5% hindered is still not bad when it's entirely free to apply. A somewhat frequent 33% relative speed increase versus survivors with the potential for free damage, especially if they don't continually leave loops, is a very useful chase power.
Removing one scan line just makes it a little faster and easier to disable a drone and it might buy a survivor chasing nearby an extra second before they get scanned, which is not that big of a deal. It's not twice as hard to get a scan.
And as mentioned, she gets some tracking and area denial out of her drones. The area denial bit is just weak if she's not nearby and it's not a map like Midwich, but it can be effective in three-gen situations.
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One, her killer rate is so high bc ppl kill themselves on hook when they see her. Honest that will still continue to happen bc the nerf arent making her any more fun to go against. All the nerfs really will do is lower her pick rate bc she feel so bad to play that even her main wont even want to play her. Two, they completely removed the haste. Three the hinder is still there but to get any use out of it you wont be able to use you drones or pull up you tracker since that disable BL. She going to have to depend on BL even more now meaning you cant ever use your power in chase. Honestly, they might as well killswitch her or delete her from the game.
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No she doesn't get haste at all anymore. Drones only get you a "free" injure if you dont injure the survivor before they get tagged 3 times without going in the dying state, which is far more unlikely to happen due to having only 1 scan line. There will be no outside of chase tracking because the drones have no stealth mode anymore. She sounds extremely weak, trapper sounds much better.
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As I've said a handful of times in this and other threads, if so many people are killing themselves rather than face this killer to the point that her kill rate is 70% compared to an average of 58.5% even when disconnects aren't considered, that's an obvious sign that her power is ill conceived and needs a rework. That would be an incredible amount of dislike.
The nerf is in part meant to reduce the rate, yes. The power does still suck and needs a rework. But until then, they can at least tone down how annoying she is by making her weaker.
I meant hindered, not haste. You do not need bloodlust if you can prevent survivors from chasing at strong loops, which she can still do effortlessly even with her nerfed drones.
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As I said she still going to be disliked bc that her rep now and ppl will still continue to kill themselves against her. Her kit still boring to go against. I also said that I rather them remove her from the game fully till her rework is done than have a useless ass killer. Stop defending the devs. They make bad desions and should be called out for them.
As for the hinder and BL topic I let Pixal someone who know SM alot better than I explained to you way these nerfs are bad.
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I meant hindered, not haste. And that is all but guaranteed to happen if a survivor doesn't leave loops against her. The second she gets to a strong loop, she can drop a drone, and the survivor is either going to leave that loop or they're taking damage in ~15 seconds even if they hadn't been previously scanned.
Survivors who want to pass by drones outside of chase will either need to disable the drone (in which case she'll know, so it gives her information, or they'll have to move more slowly, so it will waste a bit of their time. That's not the main point of her drones anymore, but in three-gen situations, while patrolling exit gates, while trying to defend hooks, etc. it's still a useful effect.
Trapper needs to physically collect traps to use them to force survivors to leave loops, physically reset them if disabled, and he has to stop to place them in chase which gives up distance. The only thing he has that she doesn't is snowball potential, but she's still much better in chase. He's just a basic killer if you're not chasing around his traps.
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People aren't going to kill themselves over a killer's reputation. They are going to kill themselves when they try to play against her and it sucks. Now it won't suck nearly as much.
This is a misunderstanding of what Bloodlust is even for. The whole point is to give killers a chance to catch up to survivors at strong loops and structures. It was a band-aid over poor map design that was essential at times in the earlier years of the game when maps were a mess. Nowadays, loops you really need Bloodlust for are fewer and farther between, and since she can deny them by throwing down a drone, she doesn't need Bloodlust in the first place. Your basic killer would have to chase around that strong structure and at the end they'd probably still need to kick a pallet, which resets their Bloodlust. SM can skip the chase part and just drop a drone to deny the loop, and besides, she can get right back to gaining bloodlust after deploying a drone.
This game has a lot of problems but it is in SUCH a good state compared to where it used to be. The devs get way more right than wrong with regards to balance and the game has steadily improved because of it. So, on the contrary, stop complaining about the devs and consider that maybe they know a little more about their game than the average commenter on their forum. The thing they have been worst at lately, imo, is killer design, but at least they're willing to acknowledge when they messed up and rework as necessary.
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Lol the devs don't even play their game(look at Freddy, soloq and Trickster). Im going next on this discussion. Have a blissful day.
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Right, but we don't make balance decisions based on kill rates in a vacuum. If something is super OP and causes someone to get a 100% win rate, but its really hard to do, is that thing still fair and balanced?
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Exactly, and I never implied otherwise. Nurse's low kill rate is because of her high skill floor, but she is still very potent, so no buffs are needed. If she could actually get a 100% win rate against the best survivors in the world, regardless of the high skill floor, that would be a reason to nerf her. And that has happened many times in the past, for example with her range add-ons.
Meanwhile, SM is easy to play, but not much easier than many of the killers on the roster. And yet she is dominating. Whether the devs feel she is just straight up too strong, or whether they feel this is a manifestation of people just giving up against her, it's clear she needs either a nerf or a nerf now + rework later. Hence why she got nerfs. Unlike Nurse, don't think there's any way to look at that number and rationalize SM staying as is.
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She's dominating because survivors kill themselves on hook. It has nothing to do with her actually being strong.
If someone plays 10 games of skull merchant, and survivors kill themselves on hook in half of them, leading to a 4k, but then in the 5 other games, they only get 1 kill, that will show skull merchant getting 25 out of 40 possible kills which would be a 62% kill rate.
Anecdotally, i'd say i personally experience about 7 of those matches someone immediately kills themself on hook, or just gives up as soon as they skull merchant.
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I address that in my comment. I think her power is a bit too strong, but the design is a much bigger issue than the strength.
I haven't seen nearly the amount of people killing themselves on hook against SM as this forum would lead me to believe, and the stats exclude DCs, which are plan A for rage quitters. I've definitely seen people who don't know how she works unintentionally throw the game, but that's no different than against many of the killers they've released recently; killers are getting pretty darned complicated, especially if you don't want to spend 15 minutes on the wiki every time DLC drops.
At the end of the day, if survivors are killing themselves on the hook in half of all matches against SM, that is a clear and obvious signal that her power sucks and needs a rework. The obvious prelude to that is a nerf to make counterplay easier, reduce pick rate, and not exacerbate the frustrating parts of her power.
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I love the Skull Merchant. When she was released, I was blown away by her cool appearance. I remember reading her lore in the PTB and being incredibly excited by the concept of an ambitious CEO with a twisted personality, a heart that still cared for her father, and a genius mind. At the time of her release, the “game environment” also aligned with her concept, which made her strong, yes, but it worked. Now, the 3-gen strategy is punished, and many other useful killer perks have been nerfed.
Currently, the only thing that still fits her concept is her appearance, which hasn't been altered, but everything else is about to be completely ruined with this PTB. If there's a rework planned, there's no need to finish her off when she's already been weakened and rendered powerless by repeated adjustments. Just leave her alone.
I don't want to see her broken any further.
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