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Why reduce Skull Merchant's movespeed while inspecting her radar?
Undoing a perfectly fiine QOL change seemingly for the hell of it? It's like you want her to be deliberately clunky or something.
Also what does it mean when Fast Vaults will no longer be detected by Drones? Will they just flat out be unable to scan a Survivor performing a Fast Vault? That'll remove a big part of laser-tagging if so.
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good , SM is unhealthy for the game
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she gets haste from scans, although it’s only 5 seconds, and to get the haste it has to be from recently rotated or placed drones
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Honestly, who cares about this garbage killer anymore, she's gonna get a full rework (hopefully a good one this time) in 2025 and these changes have been made with the sole purpose of discouraging people from playing her cause survs have been dealing with this abortion for 1.5 years now.
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Tbh... I'll take it. I was expecting to get nothing but a "stuff you, wait for rework".
At least Skull Merchant kinda functions with these changes. As a temporary stop gap it's still pretty weak, but its not a god awful place for her to be... but at least she actually can do things if she's played well.
- 4.4m/s when using radar and setting drones means placing a drone/switching rotations isn't free, there's actually timing and mechanical execution required to do it well.
- 5% haste if I use the above ability well means I get rewarded for playing well, especially for potential 1-2 punches.
- 8% hindered is a tangible and decent threat.
- Rotation at 95 seems a little low, but at least its an improvement.
- Fast vault change, don't get this tbh, seems a little random and goes against conventional logic of what is happening in thia situation… but I guess if you time a scan right you might be able to mitigate it...
Not pleased overall... but I'll take a bone over nothing.
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Can anyone explain me what the fast vault mechanic being removed means? I didn't know skullie interacted with fast vaults
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No idea. I'd love if a dev could clarify.
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Why not? any nerfs tor her is well deserved
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I care about her!!!!!
I just wanna play my silly little irredeemably evil woman and her silly little drones.
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It doesn't really do anything in terms of making her better to go against, it just makes her feel worse for zero reason.
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Yeah, I would be sad if this zero sense nerfs were to a good killer, but, skull merchant? Nobody cares
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I'm mostly good with this honestly but the thing I have a problem with is she should not be slowed down when deploying a drone because the way the haste works now rewards players for learning how to laser tag except no it doesn't because the haste just cancels the debuff instead of properly rewarding the killer. I think if they changed that SM would honestly be in a pretty okay place for now but I think with these changes she's just Low C High D tier instead of literally F tier.
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Believe it or not there's people that care about general character balance and don't want a character massacred for up to a year. Don't find her that engaging either. But I was not gonna look forward to bhvr setting a precedent of "let's omega nerf then wait a year" they already did it with Freddy. I'm just glad they didn't go through with nerfing her as far as people wanted. Because some people woulda kept pushing until she was the same speed as nurse and her drones only blinded survivors.
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They already did this with legion too with you are unaware.
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Not to this level. Legion actually does have fairly good playability compared to freddy and what they were making SM into.
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It means “While fast vaulting you will not be scanned” slow and medium vaults you will be scanned.
Separately they want to encourage scans manually to require more skill on her part I guess.1 -
So instead of being worse than Freddy, she will be just as bad as Freddy. That's…certainly one of the choices of all time.
At least he'll have a friend now, I guess.
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You're not getting rewarded for hitting scan, you lose 5% speed (4.4) to maybe hit a survivor with a scan line that gives you 5% speed (which means literally nothing)
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okay I’ve been defending skull merchant a lot but these changes seem good???
The 4.4 sounds bad on theory but the point is to GET the haste then put down the radar, with this change you shouldn’t hold the radar 24/7
The hindered also isn’t complete useless, and they made rotation faster as well
it’s an overall nerf but it is honestly a Mid to high B tier to C tier, these changes are fine7 -
When you compare them to the PTB, sure, they look good.
She will still be garbage tier though. The amount of effort it will take to getting 5% haste for 5 seconds (which the survivor will easily outrun to the next loop), all the while being slowed during the drone placement and rotations, and having bloodlust being canceled each time, is terrible.
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Imo undo the movement speed nerf while checking the radar but slow her down more when deploying a drone
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I think the problem isn't who got the changes, it is what those changes are.
It is good that they made some adjustments from the PTB, but severely nerfing a character and then waiting a long time to fix them isn't a good solution. Freddy's reworked power was unhealthy for the game, we all know that, but the situation should have been solved right then and there in 2019. Not nerf him in 2021 and then wait until 2025 for a proper rework.
SM players are lucky they'll only have to wait one year, at least. But, as @supersonic853 said, this reinforces a precedent that we should move away from.
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4.4m/s while I hold the radar. I change the direction of the scan line and distant decelerating to 4.4, I let go as I change the direction and start accelerating to 4.6m/s, survivor gets scanned, I start accelerating to 4.8m/s.
We haven't been told the duration of the haste. Could be 5 seconds, but that's the time within which the haste boost can be triggered, not the duration. If it is 5 seconds thats not great but in conjunction with the 8% hinder, not the worst... if the duration is her old 12s for a scan though, that's actually not bad.
EDIT: Though please don't confuse that for me being happy with things... I think haste is a cheap way to make her viable and would prefer it removed. I still want her to become a genuine trap killer.
Post edited by UndeddJester on0 -
Listen, and ill say this from someone who has been defending skull merchant to an extreme degree.
It's not a bad change, its still an overall power decrease
-Reduced Hindered
-Slowed while deploying Drone, and checking radar
-Stealth mode removed
-Single, easier to dodge beam (Additionally can avoid scan line with fast vault)
-harder to get haste, and lasts significantly shorter (About to touch on that below)
+Drone rotates faster (To offset scan line nerf)
+Haste is back kinda????? (Baffles me, while the nerfs were controversial, haste being gone was universally celebrated by Survivor players, and Skull Merchant players, although it was added to off set the radar slowing you down so I guess its alright)
Again its an overall power decrease that makes counterplay alot easier, any Skull Merchant players who complain at this point (About the strength of skull merchant, not about its design) kinda comes off as disingenuous she isn't gutted, she was just given a strength decrease, and that was the point.
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Couldn't have phrased it better, i hate explaining to the people to think further than "Me no like [INSERT CHARACTER], me like nerfs, me no like buffs, me not want balance", she shouldn't get Freddied and Freddy should not have gotten Freddied, because Freddy was the bad precedent, it should not be reinforced.
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Kinda funny they noticed nerfs were too much, so they give her some "buffs", but also new nerfs on top of it…
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But what is worse:
- Leaving a problematic killer in a problematic state.
- Nerfing a problematic killer with by far the highest kill rate in the game in order to lower pick rate and kill rate before an eventual rework.
I would argue 1 is far worse. The mistake BHVR made was releasing this killer with this power in the first place. That is the precedent they should avoid. 2 is a better way of mitigating the damage than 1.
Ideally they could fast track a rework, but they tried that, and it didn't solve the problem. I have no problem with them taking their time on this, and don't think it's a bad precedent at all to take your time and make an appropriate change.
I would love to see them slow down the DLC release schedule and improve the quality of what they release, but this will never change. One way or another they just need to stop designing terrible killers in the first place.
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Good, Distortion was unhealthy for the game
Honestly Who cares about Distortion anymore, Giving Free anti aura and ruining builds for 2.5 years now its has to be earned
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Exactly.
I don't think this is correct, my friend. This isn't a situation where only those two options were available.
The last changes made to SM which drastically altered her power were in 7.3.0, and we're already close to the release of 8.3.0. If it was clear that her rework had failed then time should have spent altering her power and fixing the issue. 7.3.0 was almost a year ago, after all.
Leaving a character in a terrible state while the players wait for changes is something I'll never support, because my favorite character is going through that process right now, while the entire situation was avoidable. This isn't a solution, it should never be done.
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I love this actitude after making a discussion complaining that distortion got nerfed. Reminder that the same people that you are openly not caring about nerf to their preffered pmaystyle are also not caring about the nerf of things you enjoy in the game.
But alas I think killers and survivors are incapable of grasping this concept.
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no. it is nothing about skill. it is about removing skill from killer.
there used to be skillful tech with skull merchant which was that because her drones activate in 0.3 seconds which is faster than survivor dropping a pallet or vaulting a window/pallet, you could deploy a drone and it would immediately scan the survivor for 1 lock-on stack. They're nerfing that and making you immune so tech doesn't work.
it is nerfing skill-cieling from the killer. it is same with 4.4 m/s radar change where your actively punished for using her rotation mechanic and radar information reducing reward of haste. all that stuff is nerfing killer skill. nothing to do with with increasing skill.
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I understand you feel a personal connection to this because of Freddy, but this really isn't the end of the world. Even the PTB version of Skull Merchant was playable. Low tier, yes, but playable. Not every killer can be above average. Might as well make the below average ones the ones that are horrendous to play against until that can be addressed.
Frankly, I have disliked most of BHVR's killer designs for a few years now; pretty much Deathslinger forward has been 90% terrible. Seeing as they consistently design terrible brand new killers, I am not getting my hopes up for effective reworks on any timeline. The least they can do in the meantime is smooth over any particular pain points, and that is what 8.3.0 is meant to do with Skull Merchant. They should be able to do better, yes, but they clearly can't.
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Yes , Distortion is unhealthy but the rework is not better, we need more something like " when distortion lose a token all ally see it " and 2 token max its a good idea
Because now, its a strong perk in team with voice chanel and bad perk in soloq, if everyone see when distortion is use its a good perk in solo or in team0
