Positively thinking about Skull Merchant's direction...

So I'm very saddened to learn how Skull Merchant is being gutted, especially with the time and effort I've put it to rewrite her lore, and the various suggestions and discussions I've been involved in to try and improve her functionality...

I'm even more saddened with how many people I respect in the DBD community supporting and laughing at it... basicslly confirming they never wanted her to work... however given how BHVR have been churning through updating the game lately, I will trust her rework will be in a reasonable time frame...

So with that in mind, with the assumption that other areas of her kit will be buffed, if I look her current changes and think about what's a reasonable change and what isn't:

Single Scan Line - Good

While I can understand why Skull Merchant's dislike this change, there is the reality that when you play her you never actually have to think about the direction your drone is turning... you can play her perfectly well without ever having to use her change direction mechanic at all...

As such, although it makes her fiddly, this change is reasonable to me, and it makes switching the lazer at the right time, lazer tagging and good drone placement something you have to think about in her kit instead of something you just ignore and still get effectively the same value.

Haste Removed - Mixed (Dependant on other buffs)

The removal of haste severely hinders her chase, she basically has no chase power whatsoever without it....

However in the same breathe what is really the issue is Skull Merchant's anti-loop power has to be strong because she is vulnerable/countered by throw pallet and leave loop with hold W. The haste she got mitigates that, and you'd think this encouraged survivors to play the loop to avoid scans... However in reality her haste makes playing the tile a catch 22 where you are more likely to give her haste stacks to prevent hold W, AND make the loop harder for yourself, as well as give her a free injury after either eating too many scans, or being too slow in dodging them to give her a free m1...

Not having haste in the equation therefore is not inherently flawed as long as you give her something counter hold W. She already has her radar to help see a survivor who does it, and having something to help her punish a survivor leaving a tile would help all aspects of her anti-loop design... I don't think haste needs to be it given the fact her power allows her to build bloodlust.

Hindered Halved - Bad Change (especially with haste removed)

When survivor does get claw trapped they get injured. That is a harsh penalty, but it took 3 scans to acheive, which if we embrace the single scan line change above is much harder. After that point and especially with the haste bonus removed, Skull Merchant still has to catch them to down them.

Without her strong hindered effect, the work of getting a survivor scanned 3 times gives her a similar problem as Legion where she now has to catch them as an M1 killer to down them, with the big difference being Legion can injure 3 of the team in the same time that Skull Merchant injures one...

She also has a problem that if she catches a survivor before all 3 scans, she would probably be better following for a double tap instead of taking the m1...

Having a strong hindered effect should be her reward, and if she catches you early, her hitting you is more valuable if she forces you into a scan line off it for a potential hinder to help her down the road.

Drones always active and Drones Scan Lines Visible within 16m - VERY Bad Change

This is simply killing the trap and setup side of Skull Merchant, and nobody is ever gonna run into a trap unless forced, making her traps purely an anti-loop tool... but prey to all the issues highlighted above...

You can't really have a change that makes a killers power only work in chase, then make it so she has no chase...

Weakening her chase is potentially fine, I tend to like the killers that are more about set up and planning ahead, then using pressure at the right time (Pig and Trapper are my favourites)... and this is in line with her lore...

This change kills any and all methods of setup and payoff you can have, and forces her to all about chase... which is also gutted.

The Direction I see for Skull Merchant

If we keep the Single Scan Lines and the Haste removal here is what I propose for Skull Merchant.

Given Skull Merchant's lore as a highly intelligent and perfection obsessed psychopath, who hunts by ensuring every contingency is planned and accounted for, I would have her focused on a more tactile/trap oriented playstyle. She makes far sense, both lore and power wise to be a trap style killer. This is the direction I would focus on

An example Trap style configuration

Taking where she is with her nerfs as the baseline, I would propose something like this as a trap based killer: (this isn't a proposed rework perce, more an example of where she should go) -

• Keep the removal of her haste bonus.
• Revert her hindered effect back to 10%.
• Keep the Single Scan Line change, but make this scan line 12m (from 10m) to assist with lazer tagging on hold W survivors.
• Revert the drones back to having a stealth mode again.
• Revert the 16m visibility limit as it is not needed.
• Remove the ring on the ground for Stealth drones and have Stealth drones rotation stationary upon deployment (functioning as a trap).
• All drones are unhackable for any survivor currently on Skull Merchants radar (12 seconds/45 seconds).
• After 30s of scanning a survivor the drone reverts back to Stealth mode in its original orientation.
• Drones that are hacked do not come back on automatically.
• Hacked drones must reboot for 20s before they can be countrr-hacked/recalled and appear as red on SMs radar HUD.
• Hacked drones that have rebooted can be counter hacked (use the radar for 4 seconds) and returned to stealth mode, or can be recalled, and appear as white on Skull Merchant's HUD
• Skull Merchant has 8 drones (was 6).
• Remove Undetectable from deploying drones (as she needs to be using her drones for traps now, not for stelath, and this is kinda daft compared to other stealth killers having a movement penalty)
• Reduce Skull Merchant's base terror radius to 24m (she needs something to help her close the distance now she has no chase power/immediate threat of traps)
• Further reduce her TR by 25% (6m) when using her radar.

This setup has 3 main benefits: -

• She can effectively block off a loop for a single scan like Artist, but this drone will now no longer be in an optimal location to shut down the loop, keeping it very much playable, and is vulnerable to hold W. It will usually be more effective to try and lazer tag in these situations, which increases her skill floor.
• Drones placed optimally for anti loop are still possible, but switch back to stealth mode after a short time and can't permanently shut down the loop. With them being hackable on a semipermanent basis, some kind of compromise has to be made between keeping the drone out of sight, and having an effective sweep radius, making drone placement much more engaging and tactile.
• She has a setup time for her drones for them to be effective but has a smaller TR combined with her naturally small profile to make her harder to detect placing her drones, and a pseudo stealth ability via her radar... which will also be being used much more and help her track her drone status.

I am aware she will not be strong at all in this configuration, but for a player who likes to trick players and think out of the box, this would be a fun killer to play and build for... and she has a platform she can be buffed from.