8.3.0: SM's New State is Catastrophically Bad
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Dont act like its the first time that this happens, it already happened with Freddy (in the way that survivors doesnt know how to counter the power so the killer is gutted) and happened with Legion (the killer’s power is so bad designed that needs to be gutted) so why Skull Merchant should be the exception when she is the most hated and poor designed killer ever?
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After watching your videos about her it made me wanna play her, and nows she gone before I had a chance :(
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It is place wherever you are when the animation for pulling it out ends
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Yeah, because Freddy's new power went down so well! It's blatantly obvious with hindsight that what happened with Freddy was a mistake: they completely pulled him apart and rebuilt him into a crappy, crappy Killer to when they didn't need to, and the result is, well, current Freddy.
And Legion at least got to keep running and stabbing. They were run and stab Killer before, they are run and stab Killer now. Old Legion had zero depth, there wasn't anything to save. Skull Merchant has plenty of depth, she has a lot going for her that's worth keeping. Like Knight, she just needs the power stripped down and the fat trimmed to give her room to get buffed in ways that aren't obnoxious and allow the Killer to be both viable and tolerable. It's not that hard to do.
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This update was not limited to SM, but it showed that as long as there are players who refuse to play the game because they "don't like it" regardless of the actual strength of the killer, the survivor main argument is valid because of the large number of people and loud voices.
Distortion has regained enough power to fight on the front lines of the meta again, and Quick Gambit, which gives better buff numbers to the entire party than Prove Thyself when used by players who can chase to some degree, was implemented as is.
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Yes, of course, let's listen to the childish mob who can't be bothered to read or discuss anything /articulate an actual point. That's how we look out for the best interests of the game. 😉👍
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So, first thing is that I don't suggest this because of hatred against her, but because I see an opportunity to fix up some issues which can't be solved wuth a classic rework. Plus, these nerfs were intended to destroy her until her eventual rework later on, so why not just go through with it completely?
Also, I'm not suggesting full on replacing the lore and cosmetics, just some small changes, such as:
• Cutting fluff out of her lore and focusing on the main character instead. Why do we have to go through multiple paragaphs just to explain that her dad wrote a manga which defined her and dipped. This whole part could be explained in 5 to 7 sentences. Also, where did her drones come from? Are those actual skulls or just props?
• Decide which tone her character is going to go with. Right now, you have a bond villain esque femme fatale, a cutthroat bussinesswoman, a serial killer inspired by a dark manga, a tactician and a hunter. And all of these ideas are shoved into a single character.
• As for her cosmetics, I mainly just want the base cosmetic mask replaced with something that doesn't look like it was made last minute by spray painting a styrofoam cast with a metalic paint. Most of her cosmetics can stay as they are, it's mostly just the base one that looks weird.
Of course, I get where you're coming from. If my favorite character got destroyed, I'd be outraged too.
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I've had people give up immediately a few times tonight playing her. Also a match where a 3 man told me to die of cancer, told me I was dogshit, said they weren't even trying, and a few other fun things after I got a 4k on them
with meme perks
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"these nerfs were intended to destroy her until her eventual rework later on, so why not just go through with it completely?"
Because whenever BHVR have tried to "Freddy" a Killer, it has literally always gone wrong and given us something as bad or even worse than we started with. Hell, I've never seen an example of that working in any video game ever; it has ALWAYS caused problems.Freddy obviously completely failed,. Almost everyone agrees that an attempt at rebalancing old Freddy would have gone down better than the total mess we have now and it wouldn't surprise me if the Freddy rework we get next year harkens back more to old Freddy. They tried it with Twins too and PTB Twins was… well, PTB Twins. Literally the most absurd Killer BHVR has ever created, would have destroyed the game if it hit live servers.
The best reworks in DBD's history were Leatherface, Knight and Doctor; all targeted at ironing out their pain points and modernising their kits while keeping their identity and what works about their gameplay loop intact. Skull Merchant needs this too: there's a lot about the Killer that works really nicely. She just needs changes that make those interesting elements shine and trim the fat so that the Killer is forced to use the skill expressive elements of her kit to succeed (something her pre-8.3.0 iteration failed to do), while also making using them rewarding (something that live Merchant failed to do). Making Skull Merchant's current iteration work is not an impossible task; BHVR have just never actually tried it.
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The MAIN issue with skull merchant stems from both her original design, and her rework, however they all share a massive problem, which is bloat, Skull Merchant was designed to be a trap killer but she was too good at area denial that it allowed people to just place the drone on generators, the first rework was supposed to solve this, but it didn't help at all. the second rework was supposed to push her trap, and area lockdown playstyle into a pure chase power, and sadly she was just too unfun to chase
With everything BHVR learned from the first 2 reworks they need to take parts of both and, clean up the clutter and bloat skull merchant hasWhat should be removed
- Haste
- Undetectable
- Radar speed decrease
- The notion that she is a chase killer, and not a trap killer
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The first time she came out i kinda like it even though it sounded like an over loaded washing machine. Her first rework it change from washing machine to annoying sounds of people hitting drums or barrels. I rather honestly they return it to washing machine so I can provide more quarters.
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We actually can agree together on this one. Even my friends who hate trickster(I love him though) said ill take him over her while me I rather take spirit over sm as badly as I despise spirit. I
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because you never know when your favourite aspects of the game will be gutted and changed.
Welcome to my world.
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I've been trying to get her Adept achievement today, I never expected her to be this bad. Also learned that almost all Survivors will teabag at the exit gates.
Post edited by WalterBlack on3 -
SM nerf was too much. At this point shes not even fun or a challenge to play. I play all the killers but main Spirit, Myers, SM, Oni, and Plague.
SM right now feels like myers but worse. When you down someone, you don't even feel good. 1/2 the times I get a down its cause I caught them off guard in stealth mode. This isn't fun and doesn't reward the player for skill.
When I down a survivor as spirit in 10 seconds or less, it does feel good cause I out played them so hard. Especially if its a mind game M2 hit or I phase out and slash instantly.
SM? its like….pop out useless drones and run around like a tier1/tier2 myers now. Its pretty sad. I was going to buy her skins but whats the point now. Shes not fun to play.
I'm okay if she was underpowered and FUN. But she is underpowered and BORING
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as long as survivors complain about a killer, no matter that the killer says, it will get destroyed
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Base killer must always be stronger than base survivor and if you have a 4 man swf of survivors that know what they're doing, it's very survivor sided. But sure, let's gut the killer that wasn't really a problem (Yes, it was merely the survivors complaining and refusing to learn a counter that was the problem)
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It doesn't prove anything except BHVR has a competency crisis.
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What are the basic mechanical elements you like about the previous Skull merchant?
To someone that hasn't played her, what is a synopsis of how you approach her Power?
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I think 3-Gen Mommy DEFINITELY needed a nerf. She made games soooooooo long. I know, I played her. And she's excellent if your strategy is to force the 3-Gen. However, it makes for very long and boring games.
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There's three elements that really make Skull Merchant who she is.
1: Precise beam management to stack up Survivors quickly and at the right moment. This can be done through lasertagging (aiming a drone beam at a Survivor as you're deploying it to give them an instant stack as soon as the drone turns on), rotation switching at the right time to double-back a beam onto a Survivor, and Skull Merchant's techs like look tech. This has a pretty significant skill ceiling, including sniping with beams through holes in walls and stairs and getting the scanline immunity window down so you can double-stack Survivors (scan them once and then rotate your beam at the right time so they get scanned again as soon as the immunity window ends). This gives you the tools to precisely time your Hinder or remote injuries to do some really silly stuff like firing a Survivor into a deadzone with the post-hit speed boost.
2: Clever setups using drones as traps. You can hide the alert ring that Stealth Mode Drones leave on the floor by hiding them in special sneaky spots to make them hard to spot and disarm, meaning she can set up traps in the environment to catch people out. That gives you Lock On stacks and map information, making your chases quicker when you track the Survivor down later.
3: Info management and macroplay through the radar, stack tracking and monitoring your drones (which is helped by the other two). You can keep track of how many Lock On stacks each Survivor has (since you're not told yourself) so you can work out WHICH survivor just got scanned by keeping track of who has how many stacks, you can take or drop chases based on how many stacks you need to get your injury, you can set up 2 taps where you chase someone at 2 stacks and instantly shred both health states. Plus, since you can tell when a drone is disabled if you peep the radar and check, you can work out where Survivors are going by the trail of destroyed drones they leave in their wake.
Fast vault immunity, 4.4 and the drone deployment bug kills the first element, the removal of stealth mode drones and one beam kills the second, and 4.4 and the removal of stealth mode kills the third. She has NOTHING now.
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So, to generalize her chase:
- Place down a Drone, possibly to get a "snipe" upon placement depending on if the survivor is in an animation lock or not (which they nerfed with the Fast Vault Immunity and inconsistent initial beam projection)
- The Drone is placed at your feet, or was placed in a loop prior if you were preplanning a chase in an area/already chased someone there and they didn't remove the drone (perhaps because you hid it's placement via the stealth mode).
- If the Survivor continues to run the same loop, utilize the beam rotation swap and your own movement to cut them off/zone them into the beam/force them to slow down and take a hit from you/leave the loop.
- If the Survivor leaves the loop, cut them off if they positioned themselves badly, or repeat the previous points until the survivor is in a position that they cannot avoid the beams.
- After scanning survivors three time, the Skull merchant successfully "hits" the survivor with a claw trap.
To me this is a bunch of stale anti-loop, outside of the pre-placement of drones for surprise activations (that is now no longer a thing as stealth mode is no longer a thing). But at the very least it's something that needs to be done three times in a row unless you just get a hit.
Do Locked-On stacks ever fall off?
Regarding her information:
- Hold your radar up the entire time as it's free information (though with the 4.4m/s nerf it's now a penalty to peek at the radar)
- This radar is only useful on Survivors with a Claw trap on them, and not for any other survivor that may have started to gain stacks of Locked On.
- Somehow you're able to keep track of the number of stacks of Locked On each Survivor has, even if you're not visually tracking them (does the radar give a ping if a Survivor gains a stack of Locked On?)
- Placing traps in obvious places that survivors want to disable them allows you to get some knowledge of where survivors are based on deactivations.
I don't like how Locked-On stacks don't have any use unless the Survivor suffers from all three stacks. Nor do I like the idea of just holding the radar up all the time.
Fast Vault Immunity IMO does need to go. 4.4 should stay (but the radar improved to the point that reading it is valuable compared to that slowdown). Beam bug should be fixed, stealth mode should be re-introduced (Can you explain to me how stealth mode worked? Why was there a ring anyway to indicate the stealth mode drone was there instead of being pure stealth?) and possibly tweaked.
And then the macro map knowledge of Drone auras/deactivations should be revamped into a more active-use ability by the drones that the Killer can activate somehow to get cross-map information pings.
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A few direct responses to your talking points:
- "a "snipe" upon placement depending on if the survivor is in an animation lock or not
The arming time is 1.8s, which means the arming time is too long to hit them in animation lock like Huntress or PHead. You have to actually predict where they'll go and aim it there, or they have to run into it.
- "Do Locked-On stacks ever fall off?"
They only get removed when a Survivor is downed or when a Clawtrap is applied. This means Survivors who are already injured with 1-2 Lock On stacks can and often do grab a clawtrap from the nearest drone to reset their stacks once it falls off. This means they can get a heal and be healthy at 0 Lock On without losing a health state.
- "Somehow you're able to keep track of the number of stacks of Locked On each Survivor has, even if you're not visually tracking them (does the radar give a ping if a Survivor gains a stack of Locked On?)"
You get a score event "Stealth Detection" if a Stealth Mode Drone light someone up, and "Target Detected" if a Scouting Mode Drone spots someone. The radar also beeps sometimes, but not all the time.
- This radar is only useful on Survivors with a Claw trap on them, and not for any other survivor that may have started to gain stacks of Locked On.
That's not quite true: any Survivor who gets picked up by a drone can be seen on radar for 12 seconds. Stack tracking is useful because it can help you find Survivors who are at 2 stacks, and therefore about to get a clawtrap, and inform you about WHO just got scanned; you know someone set the drone off, but a lot of the time you don't know who set it off unless you can keep track of everyone's Lock On progress.
For pre-nerf Skull Merchant, she got Haste for every Survivor visible on the radar, whether clawtrapped or not.
- Can you explain to me how stealth mode worked? Why was there a ring anyway to indicate the stealth mode drone was there instead of being pure stealth?
Stealth Mode drones rotated slower (65 degrees per second) but the Survivors could not see the beams directly. They can see the ring on the ground and see the position of the lights on the drone's housing to tell them where the invisible beams are looking though. The ring exists because Survivors are ass at looking around, that's why.
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So the arming time makes it more or less useful in a loop where the survivor will likely be circling back around like a rock loop/car loop, or you doubling back at certain loops that most other Killers wouldn't. Needing to aim it across the pathways they'll likely traverse upon you completing your go around. ("aiming" it much earlier than a PH or Huntress). Gotcha.
Not sure how I feel about meta-gaming the stack falloff through brute force activation instead of it being more passive and intuitive in that "you've been out of sight long enough that that Lock-On is less effective". Initially I'm of the opinion that it doesn't sit right with me. Maybe if they disable a drone it removes lock-on stacks, if it needs to be kept permanent.
Okay, so the score events themselves give survivors away, Lock-On stacks being applied should definitely be more fleshed out in terms of radar information with a Ping (you say the radar beeps, but not all the time, is that a bug?). Good to know that any Lock-On instance functions as a form of information, if the Skull merchant takes the time to open the radar. (though the haste is unnecessary).
I don't like that Stealth mode. It hides the beams, sure, but it doesn't really provide more functionality for the Killer outside of just making it easier for Survivors to accidentally hit a beam. I'd have expected something like making that Stealth mode cause the Drone to save the Beam position, run silently, and allow it to be activated to restart the beams rotation after a delay. Ideally being able to setup a drone in it's active or stealth mode during placement for the purposes of preplanning activations.
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Forcing the stack falloff is the counterplay, and it is a choice. Do you risk being trackable/injured for a bit so you can remove the ability for her to 2 tap you, or do you hold onto your stacks and stay healthy. And stealth mode making it easier to scan survivors was the point. Its a trap. You prepared the area with a trap and you want people to run into the trap, giving you info and lockon stacks. If you are paying attention to your surroundings you wont fall into the trap and can easily disable it (crouch walking, standing still when the beams are facing you that you can see from the lights on the drone, etc). Of course, that is dead now, because anything that requires thought to counter has been removed, and all her counterplay is just stuff that survivors would be doing anyway. (locking them into animations with vaults not allowing scans, drones now being SUPER obvious instead of subtle).
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Thinking about it, if they just removed the Vault scan immunity and fixed the scan spawning so it was always foreward when the drone started up, and readded scout mode, she would be in a pretty good place and be perfectly playable.
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I don't disagree that it is counterplay, or a choice, but it is initially counter-intuitive: The survivor is conditioned to avoid the beams, is punished for acquiring three stacks, but then part of learned counterplay is brute-forcing the stacks if you gain some since they don't dissipate over time, and while there is a disable prompt for the Drone that might have scanned you, it doesn't impact the stacks in any manner.
Survivors aren't playing against the same Killer every match (while the Killer can play around their power every match), and face more than 35+ Killers, so trying to make counterplay intuitive at a glance is important. This very likely being a reason that stealth mode was removed too: It's not obviously intuitive that you need to watch the rotation of the drones lights in stealth mode to avoid the beam, and the outward appearance of the circle having the same coloring as the active mode beams indicates that just being in the circle itself is dangerous (when in reality it isn't if you just act like it's in active mode while staying focused on the lights on the drone).
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