http://dbd.game/killswitch
Skull Merchant in Patch 3.9.2,That was a very bad decision.
Skull Merchant 9.3.2 is something absolutely terrible.
Hello I'm JohnVelma. I'm Content Creator and Streamer About Dead by Daylight. I’m new to YouTube, but I’m not new to DBD. I’ve been playing since day one, on both roles, with around 6,000 hours in the game. Today I want to share my feedback on Skull Merchant in Patch 9.3.2. I also have 10 recorded matches of me playing Skull Merchant to show real examples and evidence supporting everything I talk about.
She was already weak, and in 9.3.2 she becomes even weaker. It makes me wonder what BHVR was thinking when they did this.
- First of all, in the current patch (before 9.3.0), Skull Merchant’s drones are already not dangerous. They’re nothing like The Onryo’s TVs, which survivors must shut off because TVs not only spread Condemnation but also allow Sadako to teleport to them — that creates real danger and real impact. Or take The Trapper, for example: his bear traps are dangerous enough that survivors must disarm them, otherwise they can’t juke or loop safely.
- Skull Merchant’s drones are extremely easy to deal with. You can just stand still when the laser rotates to you, crouch under it, or even keep repairing a generator without moving — even if the laser touches you, nothing happens. And because there is only a single laser line, her chances of getting value from LOCK ON or CLAW TRAP are already extremely low.
What am I trying to say with all of this?
Survivors have absolutely no reason to waste time shutting down the drones. You can just calmly repair generators while the drone keeps spinning. Same goes for juking and looping.
So what happened in Patch 9.3.2?
1. The small adjustment “Gain Undetectable when recalling a drone instead” is terrible. Instead of using a drone to patrol or cut off survivors, now you have to choose whether you want Undetectable or not. If you want it, you must recall a drone. If you don’t, then don’t recall. Previously, you gained Undetectable immediately when you used the ability.
2. Let me give a clear scenario:
When I play Skull Merchant and start chasing a survivor if they run to a pallet, a vault, or a long loop — using a drone and immediately gaining Undetectable helps me mindgame them and take advantage of the drone’s effect at the same time. But in 9.3.2, since I don’t get Undetectable instantly anymore, survivors don’t fall for mindgames and can deal with me easily. It becomes: if I want Undetectable during a chase, I have to place a drone and then recall it just to get the status. The question is: why would I ever do that???
3. Another scenario: searching for hidden survivors. Previously, if I suspected survivors were repairing a specific generator, I could simply deploy a drone and walk there. But in 9.3.2, that doesn’t work. If I want Undetectable (like in point #2 : place a drone and then recall it just to get the status.) or I’d have to sacrifice the drones I placed at pallets, vaults, and loops. Why should I lose my plan for drone setting just to get Undetectable?
4. Recalling a drone makes things even easier for survivors. The moment survivors see your drone disappear (recall), they instantly know you’re coming toward them.
5. It’s like the devs want Skull Merchant to waste even more time than she already does. Survivors can already disable your drones manually. Instead of letting us wait for the drone to reboot or recall it whenever we want, now we basically have no choice we must recall it.
My Record : I've already added timestamps to both the video and the comments.
Comments
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To anyone who thinks that Skull Merchant buffs did anything, you just crouch before 3rd scan and negate the entire power of drones. I'm kind of surprised that they just don't push the rework anymore. Not only that skull merchant is still uninteresting to play against but as well she's still super weak, now even weaker with some buffs to pallet density. All her reliable power is to get 5 % haste from rotations, but at this point it won't matter as you are already losing distance. There are just so many options how to rework her and keep her trap playstyle.
→ Bring back clawtrap basekit pallet break
→ Bring back the stackable haste whenever someone is scanned
→ Bring back the drone being removed when hacked
→ Bring back claw traps being attached to disarming drones
→ Bring back the option to remotely activate drone, any survivor within drone is revealed by killer instinct
It's not something that would make her A tier killer, but at least she would feel like she has some power rather than nothing, the only thing about SM was her being silent when undetectable and being able to spamm the undetectable, now when she can't do it, she's practically M1 killer with traps that do nothing. My suggestion wouldn't be even hard to implement as most of those are her previous versions.
-2 -
I agree with u.
-6 -
I'd honestly have to agree. Unless they buff the Undetectable duration significantly I'd rather they just revert this change and have the smaller Undetectable duration on Drone Placement.
+2 seconds is absolutely not worth the Undetectable needing you to remove parts of your power to activate it.
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Vote down on my post and other comment. But can't comment or explain why they disagree with me or other comment. It's fitting that they're the average survivor main. They will never understand because they are biased against killers. No matter how much evidence they are shown.
-4 -
I don't agree with many of these points (pls no dissolution basekit) but I'll take this chance to chime in. I played a lot of SM 2.0 (777 games overall). I've only played a few games since her gutting, mostly since the most recent buff and she still does not feel great.
Two very big SM bugs still exist and frequently occur:
- Ghost Drone - try to place drone, hand goes up but drone doesn't actually place. As I understand, it happens when you try to place a drone after hooking removes a drone automatically.
- Floor drone - hacked drones sit in the floor. Makes it impossible to see how long before drones rearm.
Re undetectable drones:
I would prefer no undetectable, it's why her 3 genning and later slugging (combined with exposed and free injures) was so powerful, and caused a lot of complaints about her. If keeping it, undetectable on drone recall is more interesting as she is trading map presence for undetectable, but she needs buffs elsewhere.
Stealth Drones
Bring them back. I really love losing a part of a killer I enjoyed using /s. Some adjustments:
- To make them more interesting in a horror way but slightly easier to track, make them quietly beep infrequently - my thought is of a horror movie where the character can hear the monster rustling and the tension/fear is in knowing it's there but not exactly where. A similar experience is hearing the probe beeping in ARC Raiders sounds amazing. It's nearby but you aren't quite sure where.
- Increase the rotate cooldown on Stealth Drones so you can still set the rotation but not spam it on somewhere who might struggle to track it.
General
Many complaints were caused by her being hard to understand, both in general and tracking what's happening in chase. There were a lot of moving parts with visual clutter and there was almost no audio feedback to help track what was happening. Some of these changes would let you meaningfully buff her, imo:
- Hacked drone about to rearm should be more obvious with a noise warning like an activation sequence (not just fizz ending as it happens). Especially important while Floor Drone bug exists.
- Adriana should not be silent. If I can hear Michael's asthma and Ghostface rustling, I should be able to hear the clickity clack of her heels.
- Stealth drones should beep as explained above.
- Getting claw trapped should have more aud
io feedback, especially when injured, so it doesn't feel as unsatisfying. People would often be surprised by them being injured, usually many seconds before. - Drone rotation should also have more audio feedback, either from the drone or Adriana. This will help survivors track what's happening to the drone without being forced to rely on 100% visual information.
1 -
I don't agree with many of these points (pls no dissolution basekit) but I'll take this chance to chime in. I played a lot of SM 2.0 (777 games overall). I've only played a few games since her gutting, mostly since the most recent buff and she still does not feel great.
Two very big SM bugs still exist and frequently occur:
- Ghost Drone - try to place drone, hand goes up but drone doesn't actually place. As I understand, it happens when you try to place a drone after hooking removes a drone automatically.
- Floor drone - hacked drones sit in the floor. Makes it impossible to see how long before drones rearm.
Re undetectable drones:
I would prefer no undetectable, it's why her 3 genning and later slugging (combined with exposed and free injures) was so powerful, and caused a lot of complaints about her. If keeping it, undetectable on drone recall is more interesting as she is trading map presence for undetectable, but she needs buffs elsewhere.
Stealth Drones
Bring them back. I really love losing a part of a killer I enjoyed using /s. Some adjustments:
- To make them more interesting in a horror way but slightly easier to track, make them quietly beep infrequently - my thought is of a horror movie where the character can hear the monster rustling and the tension/fear is in knowing it's there but not exactly where. A similar experience is hearing the probe beeping in ARC Raiders sounds amazing. It's nearby but you aren't quite sure where.
- Increase the rotate cooldown on Stealth Drones so you can still set the rotation but not spam it on somewhere who might struggle to track it.
General
Many complaints were caused by her being hard to understand, both in general and tracking what's happening in chase. There were a lot of moving parts with visual clutter and there was almost no audio feedback to help track what was happening. Some of these changes would let you meaningfully buff her, imo:
- Hacked drone about to rearm should be more obvious with a noise warning like an activation sequence (not just fizz ending as it happens). Especially important while Floor Drone bug exists.
- Adriana should not be silent. If I can hear Michael's asthma and Ghostface rustling, I should be able to hear the clickity clack of her heels.
- Stealth drones should beep as explained above.
- Getting claw trapped should have more aud
io feedback, especially when injured, so it doesn't feel as unsatisfying. People would often be surprised by them being injured, usually many seconds before. - Drone rotation should also have more audio feedback, either from the drone or Adriana. This will help survivors track what's happening to the drone without being forced to rely on 100% visual information.
1 -
She will be bad as long drone lines are visible. That simply removes any value drones can have outside of chase.
During the chase, she is kinda just bad Clown.
So only thing she has left is undetectable, which was nerfed in last update…
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I absolutely disagree with the OP on their points, especially regarding the change to how Skull Merchant gets her Undetectable since 9.3.2, and question their opinion's value since it seems to be coming from a place of misinformation or misunderstanding of how her power worked previously.
The below is my thoughts from another thread, but they are equally relevant here, so I'm sharing them again.
Undetectable-on-Recall (UoR) is a flat out buff so long as you can adapt to a new playstyle. That said, I'm absolutely happy to see it and have been utilizing it to great extent in my Skull Merchant games since the update.I suspect the criticism of UoR stems from players who are either unwilling to adapt or those that fundamentally did not understand how ineffectual the Undetectable-On-Deployment (UoD) actually was, even when using the Adaptive Lighting add-on.
The tl:dr problem with UoD was that you never benefited from the entire duration of Undetectable. A common misconception is that the moment you activate any ability that grants Undetectable is that you are instantly left with 0 terror radius and no red stain. Although it is true you immediately lose the red stain, your terror radius actually gradually shrinks until it's no longer present. This is important to understand when you consider that Skull Merchant only gets 8 seconds of Undetectable and the timer for that begins the moment you press the M2 button. Factor in the 1.5 seconds in which you are animation-locked deploying a drone, your move speed reducing to 4.4m/s while deploying a drone, and the previously mentioned time it takes for your terror radius to fully dissipate, your actual effective time being undetectable is closer to only 3 seconds.
Even worse, specifically in regards to UoD, because the aura of drones is clearly visible to all survivors within 16 meters, they are more likely to see the drone's aura suddenly appear even if you manage to get up on them during that brief window where you have no terror radius. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to realize they need to be vigilant when a drone suddenly appears, terror radius or not since they were also getting a massive visual cue of Skully's presence. Worse still, trying to benefit from using the drones for Undetectable ambushes often left you with leaving drones in awkward locations.
With UoR, though you're still subject to the shrinking terror radius mechanic of Undetectable eating up your effective time in that state, you;
A) Do not lose any speed since using the Radar keeps you at 4.6m/s
B) Have a shorter animation lock of 1 second, and most importantly
C) No longer provide a visual cue of your presence by a Drone aura suddenly appearing nearby.Moreover, and this is probably where everyone is missing how powerful UoR is, you can chain the Undetectable more effectively than you could with UoD at the cost of weakening or completely wiping your drone web. Let me explain.
Whereas previously, you could only activate the Undetectable every 7 seconds while you waited for the Drone deployment cooldown to cycle, because there is no cool down on recalling drones, you can repeatedly remove drones to keep refreshing your Undetectable status. And if you're already Undetectable while this happens, you don't suffer from the shrinking Terror Radius mechanic that occurs when you first go Undetectable. So, if you know where a survivor is, you can guarantee an ambush from anywhere on the map so long as you're willing to weaken your web.
Ultimately, this provides SM with an alternate playstyle of heavy ambushing to her current methods of area control by building a web, laser-tagging in chase, or anti-loop with the "crap-a-drone" at pallet style.
-1 -
An addendum to my previous points, and another challenge to the OP's 4th point regarding "The moment survivors see your drone disappear (recall), they instantly know you’re coming toward them," you do realize you can recall a drone from anywhere on the map, right? If you utilize UoR correctly, the survivors are given no indication that you've activated your Undetectable provided you are pulling from drones you placed in advance across the map.
UoR promotes actual planning on the killer's part, rather than the mindless "drop a drone at a pallet/generator; expect results" playstyle that resulted in Skull Merchant's second backlash.1 -
“UoR promotes actual planning on the killer's part, rather than the mindless ‘drop a drone at a pallet/generator; expect results’ playstyle that resulted in Skull Merchant’s second backlash.”
Do we really need this? Didn’t BHVR say they “want their game to be casual” ?
Casual for who two both sided ? or for only survivors?I don’t know what country you’re from or what kind of matches you experience. But I play on the SEA (Asian) server, and everything you’ve written is useless for Skull Merchant, because survivors here can deal with it extremely easily.
If you’re going to say “you need to adapt and change your playstyle,” then my next question is:
Why didn’t they put this in the PTB first?Why choose to put it directly into the live version of the game instead?
-2 -
Are you seriously complaining that a killer might actually require planning and thought?
If so, there are 39 other killers on the roster to chose from. For a large portion of the Skull Merchant player base like myself who have actually stuck with her from release to now, we want a killer that requires planning, and adding another layer to that is a massive boon. That was why the proposed rework that turned her into a ranged/dash killer was so vocally panned and railed against and why a great deal of the conversation regarding any rework or buff to her has revolved around her not losing her identity as a trap-stealth killer.
If you want a casual experience, 2v8 is always around the corner, and Bone Chill is currently available. For my own part, I am absolutely loving the 9.3.2 changes because they're allowing me to live out the power fantasy of being a methodical villain that benefits from plans I put into motion finally coming to fruition.0 -
I would like them to for starters:
- Remove the cooldown after dropping a drone.
- Return full stealth mode, with 2 slowly spinning scan lines, that don't cause lock on initially, but only after one is tripped, a 360° scan is done with both of them, which does give Lock On stacks. (Idea from @UndeddJester)
- Further increase the Undetectable duration after recalling a drone.
- Rework Loose Screw so it allows you to cause a drone to blow up, dealing damage.
- Rework Infrared Upgrade to allow the drones to scan through walls, or give it to her basekit.
4 -
interesting.
0 -
I won’t speak on behalf of other players. Speaking just for myself, I support her getting a rework. I really liked the preview design that BHVR showed earlier, and I want her to be reworked into that version.
-1 -
I really don't like undetectable on recall simply because it's just way worse if you want to play normally and supports only drone recycle which gives you infinite undetectable…
-1 -
Undetectable-on-Recall (UoR) is a flat out buff so long as you can adapt to a new playstyle
It's direct nerf for classic setup and ambush playstyles. It's good only if you are willing to recycle drone, which gives infinite undetectable.
Just the fact you think you need to completely wipe you drone web shows you didn't think much about it.
Deploy drone, recall, deploy drone, recall… wow, so much fun-1
