Skull Merchant changes CANNOT go to live
Her power is so bad now that even Freddy and Trapper get more value than her. This change has, essentially, just turned her into a powerless killer with only her weapon. Y'all might as well just remove her drones and her radar gadget at this point and make the character a free character to play as since she essentially has no power. I'm honestly dumbfounded that y'all didn't even decide to also make her movement speed 4.4 m/s as well on top of the power nuke that essentially turned her into a powerless killer so that she can be even easier to play against.
The ONLY big changes she needed for now to make her more bearable to play against for survivors until her rework was 1) remove her Hindered + keep the Haste since her Hindered was the core problem with speed difference and 2) make a reasonable/fair way to remove Lock-On stacks by hacking drones to give more interactivity with her power.
Also this kind of action is bad for getting licensed chapters since this shows that if a licensed killer is complained about just as much as Skull Merchant then there's a chance that a nuke is also dropped on that killer which is gonna result in people not wanting to buy it. Like, BHVR, do you really think that future license holders are gonna be wanting to trust you with their licensed killers after realizing that you'll potentially just deter players from purchasing the DLCs after seeing this kind of action? I know I wouldn't if I was in that situation.
Comments
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I don't agree on making her a 4.4 killer speed while keeping her haste effect, she does need reverts to some of her nerfs though
We don't want another Freddy situation
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I was being sarcastic
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I agree with the OP, these changes are miserable to play with. Whatever potential there might have been was completely missed.
The live SM is actually fairly fun to play as. More so than her release version. This PTB version, however? It's a worse experience than playing as Freddy or trying to play Trapper on original Eyrie of Crows.
I have spent hundreds of hours prestiging my SM and have put in significant money into cosmetics for her. If this PTB goes live with her changes, I'm seriously considering review bombing since BHVR's bottom line seems to be where they pay actual attention.5 -
the goal wasn't to make it fun for killer. that is live version. the goal was to make it fun for the survivor. that is ptb version. sometime in 2025, there is suppose to be a rework for skull merchant, hopefully by that time, the survivor have all stopped d/c and are now pro's at bullying skull merchant.
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But that wouldn't even work, because it means leaving her in a terrible state while waiting for a rework that has a high chance of failing or making her worse.
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welcome to freddy and many other underwhelming killers.
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I mean, look at Twins and Freddy.
Freddy got dumpstered and people are still waiting on a rework after several years (made it worse).
Twins was supposed to have a rework but it was so unbearable that it got almost entirely reverted (failed).
However Skull Merchant is, for some reason, a good money-maker due to sheer cosmetics. I doubt BHVR will botch her futue rework and I'm pretty sure SM rework 3.0 will show up before Freddy rework.
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Yeah, but I don't think we should have another Freddy situation around. I'd know how terrible it feels.
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Either way, this is horrible. Making a killer so weak that the survivors can have fun bullying them because they have almost no power is not an acceptable strategy. Freddy is bad enough already. Let's not give him competition down there.
They could have went with one of these nerfs and it would already be enough to make her noticeably weaker. But all of these are just excessive. I mean, really, how is anyone supposed to play this killer now? You have almost no way to get value out of her power anymore. If that was a short term thing where they would only keep her in that state for a few weeks, maybe 3 months at most, it might be somewhat understandable. But with Plague and Pinhead up for changes, 2 killers that need it far less, this is really not a good look.
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I should also mention this to everybody, but Skull Merchant's rework has an ETA of Q3-Q4 of 2025 which is an entire year away and that's at best if BHVR can keep true to that which you already know they won't when you have killers in horrible states like Freddy getting their reworks pushed back multiple times now.
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blame people that d/c vs skull merchant.
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Maybe it's just me but the new expired batteries seems pretty bad for an iri. You get half effective claw traps which serve as a lesser lethal at the start of the match and if I'm reading it right, to achieve the full 150% bonus it requires you to place 15 claw traps on survivors which is honestly insane given how bad the drones are themselves now.
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On top of that the add-on no longer gives Haste(or even any bonus effect for survivors being on the Radar) making the extended duration pointless. Plus, on top of that, she already has a green add-on(if I remember correctly with the rarity) that already extends the battery life of the Claw Traps with no draw backs making this add-on(which is an iri rarity) worse than a green rarity add-on.
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I just think it's really funny to get the full use out of it you need to do a grand total of 45 scans on survivors during a match (assuming you get a claw trap every third scan) and that's on top of the fact that the longer duration on claw traps themselves means that there's less time to reapply them on survivors unless you're perfectly spreading them out on each survivor. Assuming that every chase you get into a survivor results in a claw trap + down, you'd only end up with 12 claw traps by the end of the match anyway.
The more I think about it the more it seems like iri batteries just works against you no matter what? You're effectively gimping yourself for no benefit. As bad as the iri tape is for Sadako at least it has the benefit of free teleports right off the bat.
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These changes are horrible
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Bad changes all around
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