A Thorough, Comprehensive Set Of Skull Merchant Changes

I won't sugarcoat it: This will involved undoing almost everything from the last set of changes, because they fundamentally cannot address any of the issues this killer has while they also ended up unfairly harming players attempting to engage with her basic gameplan.

So, we'll start with my goals for this rework, overall. Skull Merchant's power currently shines when everyone involved both understands how it functions, and is attempting to engage with the more interactive and skill-based elements of it, on both sides. Therefore, my changes aim to emphasise this gameplay while weakening any of the edge cases and cheese strategies present in the power. We'll go over changes to the drones themselves, changes to the information gain on the survivor side (as I personally think this is her biggest issue, recent changes notwithstanding), and then a few other miscellaneous changes. For each change, I will give a brief explanation of my reasoning and intended effect.

To reiterate: These changes assume pre-nerfed Skull Merchant as a base, so all of those effects and such are still there unless otherwise stated.

The Drones Themselves

• Drones placed during chase begin in Active Mode.

This change is similar to one that BHVR made recently, but with a more focused aim. The Skull Merchant dropping drones at a loop mid-chase often led to the assumption that the survivor had to run away immediately, but this is often not the case. With the drone's beams more obviously present from the start, players can see if they're actually in danger of being scanned immediately and make the decision to run or stay accordingly.

• Placing a drone incurs a slightly larger speed penalty.

This is the one good change that was made in the most recent update, but it should be more of a noticeable speed penalty.

If a Skull Merchant places a drone sloppily mid-chase just to try and zone survivors away from the loop, a stronger speed penalty would allow survivors to make more distance and punish the poor play, incentivising the Skull Merchant to place drones with more of a plan. Placing drones ahead of time would be offset by this change, and successfully either "laser tagging" to snipe a survivor as soon as the drone initialises or simply placing the drone with the aim of playing the loop/structure well should offset the speed penalty.

Not pitching numbers here, they'd need to be tested, but more of a penalty than exists now.

• Hacking a drone places it on cooldown for longer.

Hacking a drone can often feel underwhelming in terms of result gained. While it's not her main counterplay and shouldn't replace her main counterplay either, the drone being offline for longer stands a better chance of pushing the Skull Merchant to recall it and manually set it down again, rather than just waiting out the timer and having the drone available anyway later.

Not pitching numbers here, they'd need to be tested.

• Claw Traps no longer apply Deep Wound on injured survivors.

I've never understood why Skull Merchant has this. It's a completely arbitrary effect that seemingly only exists to annoy survivors, without really helping the killer's basic gameplan in any meaningful way. Complaints about Merchant's kit being bloated are generally off the mark, but this particular effect doesn't need to exist.

• Increased minimum distance between drones.

Currently, the degree to which drones can overlap can be pretty problematic on certain maps. While some degree of overlap is probably sensible to make the power not too restrictive, especially on the tighter indoor maps that serve as the biggest problems here, decreasing it from where it is now would be completely appropriate.

Not pitching numbers here, they'd need to be tested.

• Claw Traps now last for longer.

As avoiding Claw Traps entirely is Skull Merchant's main counterplay and most changes on this list are aimed at making doing that more consistent, I think it's fair to give her a buff or two to compensate. Claw Traps lasting longer would be a nice reward for the extra effort gaining one might take after these changes go live.

My suggestion for increased duration is increasing from 45 seconds to 60, but this would need to be tested.

Information Gain Fixes

• Lock On stacks cause a survivor's portrait overlay to glow red for as long as that survivor is scanned on Skull Merchant's radar.

This change is geared at situations where survivors are blindsided by Haste they didn't expect because a teammate of theirs tripped a drone out of chase. This also allows players to learn exactly how long the Haste lasts after each scan without having to go to an outside source for the number, if they're paying attention.

• Model change: Drones' white lights in Stealth Mode are replaced with thinner, brighter red lights.

If a survivor is pushed into a situation where a Stealth Mode drone is potentially threatening them, in chase or otherwise, avoiding the beam is still the main form of counterplay. However, the ability for a player to discern just where the beam is pointing in this mode is - while present - often somewhat imprecise. This change would make it more intuitive exactly where the drone is pointing, as the effective variance is smaller from a thinner light, but wouldn't affect any cleverly placed drones meant to ambush survivors who didn't see the model at all.

• Drone rotation causes a sound effect to play.

If a Skull Merchant uses the drone rotation ability, there's often no real indication to the survivor that it happened, especially if they don't already understand that the drone always moves clockwise otherwise. Changes have already been pitched that would make it obvious to observant survivors which direction the drone always moves when deployed, so this would be another layer to make it more obvious to players that this CAN happen, without unduly harming the desired effect of the ability for the killer.

• Disabled drones start to flash prior to reactivating.

Drones that are disabled can spring back to life unexpectedly sometimes. While uncommon, probably even moreso with the increased disable timer further up the list, more information to survivors about how this power functions is welcome. I pitch that the drone flashes once a second for the last five seconds of its disable timer, so it can be predictably observed and decisions can be made around it.

Miscellaneous Changes

• Skull Merchant's footsteps are louder.

While the Skull Merchant's stealth is balanced with a different limiting factor than other stealth killers - the timer on the effect - the end result is still quite good, especially when she's using perks to gain the Undetectable effect. Slightly louder footsteps make her slightly easier to track for observant survivors.

• Radar input is a toggle, not a held button, and the radar comes up faster.

As a bunch of these changes lean towards using all of Skull Merchant's kit to get real value, since countering her power when lower-effort strategies are employed becomes a lot more accessible, I think it's fair to make doing that smoother. Being able to tap a button and have the options come up a little quicker would make her a lot smoother to play, without really changing what options she actually has available.

This could be an option if enough players preferred holding the button, of course.

• Addons changed to promote consistency.

Somewhat similar to Nurse, I believe the Skull Merchant shouldn't have addons that directly increase her numbers when it comes to the Haste and the Hindered. If a survivor has gone to the trouble of learning the ins and outs of how her power works, they should have reasonable certainty that her power actually works that way, so they can make decisions accordingly. Keeping track of things can be a little stressful, so the extra uncertainty of these addons existing can be a little too much.

This doesn't have to be a nerf. Good addon effects could still exist; for instance, perhaps a purple addon that reintroduces Claw Traps breaking pallets. Arguably more useful than just increasing the Hindered, but without changing the consistency of her basic power effects.

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As of right now, this is my list. There might be something I've forgotten here and there, but by and large, I think this set of changes would be the most healthy things that could change for the Skull Merchant. There's a lot of them, this wouldn't be a small update by any means if it happened, but they're all relatively minor in isolation and shouldn't really affect skilled players for the most part. A few things are slight nerfs to regular gameplay, to be sure, but the Skull Merchant isn't a weak killer, she's pretty good. She can withstand getting slightly weaker in the pursuit of getting her flaws ironed out, if that even happens because of this.