http://dbd.game/killswitch
So why exactly did Skull Merchant get nerfed?
Making undetectable gained from recalling a drone instead of placing one is a gigantic nerf. Who thought this was a good change? Like just… why?
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I feel like they did it to make disarming drones a bit more of a risk.
Also, the old Undetectable was quite spammable, which people did not like.
Anyways, now that the status effect issue of Skully is solved more or less (Haste is almost a non factor, and Undetectable is now a risk to disabling drones, meaning she has no "free" status effects anymore), can we finally start adding good buffs, like stealth mode for instance?
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They want so see how impactfull those buffs to her were in order to cancel the rework they announced. Yet due to live stream from past I imagine they haven't started it yet apart from concepts.
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Wait, I'm talking rubbish, nevermind, carry on xD
Redo: I think the change makes sense, if done in conjunction with other changes focused on her drone placement.
It never really made sense that you had to throw a drone randomly into the world any time you wanted Undetectable, but you didn't have enough buttons for Undetectable otherwise, so it makes this weird mixed purpose action.
If this was done in conjunction with stealth drones coming back, getting rid of the ring, maybe changing the low power mode add on to stay stationary while in stealth mode, and a bunch of other changes to generally make her drones better... then you've got some mechanisms that are starting to make sense.
Post edited by UndeddJester on1 -
I don't really get what they really want her to do.
You can't play her as trap based as long lines are visible and so you had players playing around undetectable and that's suddenly not allowed either…
Nerfing her won't really help their idea to get her into good enough state to forget the rework.
If they return stealth drones, then I would get behind the idea. Where she is more trap based and when survivors triggered her drones she can recall them for stealth.
But not really in her current state, where you have to deploy drones even more randomly just so you can recall them when needed.0 -
I agree. They should revert it.
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Aye... it does make one wonder...
The optimist side me isbwondering if maybe the plan is to slowly drip feed changes in so that there isn't a resurgence of Skull Merchant hate? Possibly?
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I have lost all optimism I could have for this game at this point.
More realistic side is they just don't know what they are doing.
Someone asked for lower cooldown, but that would overlap with undetectable, so they nerfed undetectable. People complained about nerfed undetectable, so they increased it back and changed the trigger so it doesn't overlap.-1 -
they still hate skull merchant i guess? it fits the trend of nerfing killers when they get buffs for some reason and it even applies when the weakesr killer gets buffs
Post edited by terumisan on1 -
I strongly, Strongly, disagree with the OP's assertion that this is a nerf. If anything, 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, or chase/anti-loop with the "crap-a-drone" at pallet style.
She didn't get nerfed. Folks just need to broaden their perspective.-2 -
Was it strictly nerf? No, but I would say it's a nerf for most situations
Players who were interested in M1 gameplay with undetectable are affected, because this is simply more work to do.
Sure TR is slowly shrinking but she has 24m TR, so I often liked to use Whisper, which just told me when to deploy the drone and survivor didn't hear it. 8 seconds was enough to get next to themYou don't get slowed down on recall, but action of using radar, turning around, recalling drone is definetly going to take you longer than just deploy the drone.
Undetectable in chase was strictly nerfed. Before you just got it for using drones inside loops, you are doing that anyway. I definetly wouldn't recall drones unless I run out of them. It doesn't make sense to do so.
So it got better basically if for some reason you want to have very long undetectable with cost of your whole setup. That's not really good imo.
And if you don't have any drones deployed, but want undetectable you have to deploy the drone, pull up radar, turn around, recall the drone… That seems way worse to me.
As I said before, this change could make sense, if she had stealth drones and creating a web would actually do something for her, but that's just pointless as long survivors can just see laser lines.
Sure, it makes sense to put drones into strong loops in advance even now, because it's expected survivors would chase there. But do I really want to recall those drones?
Only reason why I would do it before, is if suvivors disarmed them, but they usually ignore drones…Now her undetectable has a cost. You have to do something you otherwise wouldn't do at that moment. Why would I recall any drone when I have 2-3 left to deploy before?
So now I have to spam drones on cooldown, just so they exist somewhere and I can get undetectable when I want. While I have to make sure to not recall drones I actually would want to keep there.It's simply more work for same effect, which sounds as a nerf to me.
She didn't get nerfed. Folks just need to broaden their perspective.
I would say you just didn't think it through.
this provides SM with an alternate playstyle of heavy ambushing
I have basically played only that playstyle, because any other was useless after skully got nuked and undetectable on deploy is way better for it. This change force me to do build a web instead, or just mass deploy drones on cooldown...
EDIT: never mind, you can cheese it for infinite undetectable. So another reason why it's bad change.
Post edited by PetTheDoggo on1 -
So fun thing, now I don't like the change even more.
What you can do is put drones around the strong loops as usual and keep 1-2 drones ready. Then you can just keep deploying and recalling drones for infinite undetectable.
So instead of being it on deploy as before with maybe 1 second downtime, you can have it infinite with just more work. But it's mangeable especially with Adaptive lightning.
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