Skull Merchant Rework/Change

skwillexy · February 5

Considering what I myself think and what I hear from other skull merchant players, she desperately needs buffs and/or a rework. Since the killer balancing survey is online, I thought this was the right time to adress this. To my mind, her chase version was wrongfully hard nerfed into the state she is right now. What I would do is keep the haste as it is now (gaining haste after you set a drone or change a drones rotation) and bring back double scanlines and the stealth drones. Since she is thought to be a setup/map control killer to track down survivors, the single beamline which is extremely visible does not give you any macro knowledge within the map, especially against decent survivors. Feel free to drop your thought, just wanted to clear my mind. Just please be someone that also actually plays her and doesnt judge based on how she was on release (chess merchant).

KytLuna · February 5

Yeah, this is unfortunately not the greatest take. Skull merchant just recently received a buff, that is to be her permanent change if received well. This buff gives survivors 10% hindered if they have a claw trap on and are hit with the scan lines. She's already received improvements to her chase potential, and even if she's still pretty rare, she's in a decent place right now. As for stealth drones, I don't think that's a good idea either. She already gets undetectable for 10 secs after placing a drone. Right now, she's honestly a pretty good killer, just quite rare.

skwillexy · February 5

I can honestly not tell whether this is ragebait or not. She is still ranked F tier in every single killer tier list and the vault immunity removal (the so called "buff") is literally the bare minimum to her power. If someone is injured, she needs to scan someone 4 times in order to have a hinder weaker than a clown bottle. The 10 seconds is also not true, just like the undetectable gain at drone placement. She receives undetectable for 8 seconds after recalling a drone, which literally means trading map pressure for a few seconds of weak stealth (she is only really undetectable for 2-3 seconds because the terorr radius slowly fades out instead of instantly vanishing). Have you played her? Serious question

edgarpoop · February 6

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/4053690#Comment_4053690

I play her quite a bit and maintain a ~75% kill rate with her. She's not nearly as bad as she's made out to be. If you try to play her as a basic chase M1 killer, you're going to have a bad time. Don't M1 someone who already has 2 or 3 scans. Laser tag them.

She can still control areas well and she puts a ton of strain on survivors when you have an area droned and someone hooked deep in it. You're not sacrificing a ton of map pressure if you use disabled drones to trigger the stealth.

I play a hybrid area control/stealth hit and run style and do well pretty consistently. Not saying I'd put her in B or A tier, but she's not unplayable by any means. Sloppy/Leverage/Surge/Monitor usually does well.

skwillexy · February 6

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/4053910#Comment_4053910

What annoys me is that she was in a quite good spot before the nerfs and entitled survivor players who refuse to learn counterplay got her nerfed into the state she is in right now, and apparently they want to leave her there. Its just pathetic considering that there are people who actually bought the dlc and cosmetics, too. Im not saying she is unplayable, at least not after the buffs, but the ratio of effort to reward is so extremely bad that its exhausting to play her. Guess Skull Merchant is Freddie 2.0 now

ShanoaLegendaryPlz · February 7

I was pretty decent at using her stealth mechanics to play as mostly an ambush killer with antiloop incase the chase goes on longer. That kinda got ripped to shreds with the latest update as i find myself trying to get stealth while also having to sacrifice my alredy prepared antiloops and in order to get stealth without drones id have to place once turn turn around and remove it while on the way somewhere instead of just place it and jump on people.

But since her release ive been hoping for a rework in such a way that she isnt about placing static drones anymore and actually has an m2 power with her oversized power claw. Those drones wouldve made nice minions but most argue the ai in dbd is horrible for minions so itd be too unreliable.

I just hope they havent dropped her in the pit and left her there for good now.

Elan · February 7

https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/463746/skull-merchant-rework-change

The main issue of SM v 3.65 was that all the gameplay was to drop drone in loop and bloodlust untill they get slowdown and you move at 135 %. It was insanely boring, uninteresting and uninteractive. I think they have to completely rework what the drones do in order to buff her and make her more fun to both play as and against.

jesterkind · February 7

In my opinion, Skull Merchant needs to either be reverted to where she was pre-nerf so her actual issues can be fixed, or she needs to be fully moved to doing something else (again) that still retains her overall identity.

Half-measures aren't going to satisfy anyone that I can see. As someone who used to like playing Skull Merchant, I'll begrudgingly accept a third distinct power for her as long as it retains who she is, and doesn't just shift her to being a bland dash killer or pure ranged killer or something.
As long as she's still a stealth-tracking killer, I can stomach a second full rework.

We just need to know what the devs are doing with her before we can comment, I think. Are they fixing current Merchant, or are they making a new one again? The previous Design Preview being scrapped was of course a good thing, and I'm not even saying the devs are dithering or anything, I just don't know what their goal is yet so it's hard to comment.