Skull Merchant - What's the deal?

The sledgehammer nerfs she got were, I'd argue, misapplied because of the complaints. There were some real problems and to an extent they still exist, they just weren't related to her basic gameplay loop- which is what the nerfs were aimed at dismantling.

Going back to her pre-nerf state, if you want to fix the few problems she has, you'd be looking at these problem areas:

• Skull Merchant's power didn't and still doesn't provide enough information about how it works to survivors
• Her ability to drop a drone at a loop and "force" survivors to run away is, while misunderstood in its intensity, still something she can do and it is hella boring whenever any killer can do that
• This one's subjective on my part but I really don't understand why she has Deep Wound. If we're already in the neighbourhood might as well just get rid of that

When you understand what her power does properly, in my opinion she honestly becomes pretty fun to play against - the positioning battle of dodging drones is really interactive and interesting to me - but you kinda have to go to outside sources to understand what happens, on what triggers, and for how long. There are a bunch of ways to address this though, it's not an unfixable problem- she just lacks the kind of tells the other killers have.
As for dropping a drone at a loop, they are designed to be played around in loops so it's not as universal a tactic as it is on other killers, but the sort of cheap crappy filler loops you'll find are ones she can force you away from which is just kinda boring. They actually gestured towards fixing this by giving her a brief slowdown when placing a drone, but it wasn't particularly noticeable. A better set of nerfs might include a more noticeable slowdown, so if you do have to run away you at least get some good distance.

These are ultimately relatively minor problems compared to some other killers, it must be said, but we may as well talk about them if she's gonna be a hot topic forever.

She is one of the if not THE WORST killer in game.

She does have one thing going for her: she has been changes so much that survivors genuinely have no idea what she can actually do so if you take time to master her you will have quite easy games.

The thing is… at this point you can start mastering someone actually lethal and have much better results more consistently.

You give anti-loop drones as a reason entitled survivors wanted her nerf'd instead of Learning the counter play?

OP, a new player to the game as stated, asks you to clarify the counter play to anti-loop drones

Crouching/standing still. Deactivating drones. Forcing an M1 to… wow.

Op, this is an example why you need to really weigh all the info you get from these forums. You will have survivor mains, even entitled ones. You will have killer mains doing the same thing. See example above.

Just to be clear, all of his 'counter plays' will get the survivor killed. Hence… no real counter play. Not to say there wasn't any, but @skwillexy and I disagree. Like, full stop. Skull merchant of her release was hell, and I (showing another bias) refuse to add her to my roster. She's the only character I don't have in the game. Those games were hellish when trying to get friends into the game.

Someone will likely say things I could have done, and that's cool. They're right. Etc.

To clarify for anyone reading:

Skull Merchant's drones have beams that need to pass over you in order to gain a stack, and don't scan crouching survivors. Immediately this makes the basic counterplay clear: watch the beams and position to block line of sight, then crouch/stand still as a beam passes over you when you can't do that.

Additionally, it's relevant context what the stacks actually do, which is to say: almost nothing.
Unless you're scanned within a few seconds of her deploying the drone or rotating the beam (in which case she gets a small Haste boost), the scans only build towards an injury and put you on her radar for a short duration. This makes some more of her counterplay slightly more clear: sometimes you take a scan and run away, such as if you have Lithe but the beam is about to hit the window. If you've only got zero to one stack, just take the beam and rocket away.

Additionally to that, being injured via the drone is worse for you than being injured via basic attack, since the drone imparts Broken, puts you on her radar for longer, and leaves you susceptible to Hindered. This again reveals some more counterplay: sometimes you take an M1 to avoid the extra penalties, similar to forcing an M1 from Hillbilly.

Finally, her drones are technically traps and sometimes get placed ahead of time, so you can disarm them for the next time a survivor is chased near that area. This, admittedly, isn't that important or impactful, at least in my opinion.

The biggest problem Skull Merchant had and to a degree still has (even though it matters way less) is that it does kinda seem like she doesn't have counterplay if you don't know exactly how she works. Once you do, though, she very much does have counterplay, and good counterplay too- it's effective and, at least in my opinion, it's fun to do.

She has the equivalent reputation of Meg from Family Guy. She's never really done anything wrong and is actually fun if you get to know her. But for some reason it was popular to hate and bully her.

She's been changed nearly 10 times now and her most recent nerfs have finally killed her. But some of her earlier iterations aren't recognizable from the current version. Double beams, multi floor drone fields, battery recharging claw traps, claw traps applying a pallet break, survivors being alerted to her gaze, having to manually wait to disable a claw trap or drone... for awhile she was the gift that kept on giving. Every patch made her feel fresh.

But the issue was never the strength of her kit. Oddly, she was blamed for perks that didn't even release with her. And many basekit changes that currently exist would have shut down whatever imagined strategy players believed was exclusive to her (it wasn't.)

So now we are stuck with a shell of a character. Her drones on make a single beam, easier to dodge than ever, with numerous bugs, and now only gains Undetectable if she destroys her own traps. She really is in a pathetic state right now. I'd give anything to revert her most recent nerfs.

Like many Skull Merchant players, I am incredibly anxiously awaiting her next rework. I hope it preserves her dual identity as a trap setter/stealth killer. But I can already foresee the community lashing out. Never because it was a problematic change, but because Skull Merchant was mentioned.

Look at it this way, if they do a good job you get a pleasant surprise and if they don't you get to say "I was right".

The difference is regardless of how well Skull Merchant uses her power it is without exaggeration impossible to injure a survivor without them explicitly allowing you to do so. The fact that you hold that obtusely incorrect opinion is what got her nerfed.

I just remember that it was Christmas a month or so before she released and it was a miserable period. The Knight had just released and with the gen kick meta of COB, Overcharge and Eruption, games were already lasting forever. Servers in Europe were a complete mess. One of them was broken the whole 2 week plus holiday period, so if you loaded into it, the game was basically unplayable. So most games were either everyone rubber banding around the map or getting down to the last gen and spending forever trying to do it before everyone eventually dying after spending endless time unable to do anything due to Eruption.

The Skull Merchant came in the January and could do what Knight could do but 10 times worse. Games lasted 45 minutes at least against her, and people began to just quit at the sound of her terror radius. This was before bots and the HUD changes so it was impossible. They would literally never leave the area of the best 3 gen. Then there was that video of a match between the worlds best survivor team and someone that had barely ever played Skull Merchant............

They kept changing her and eventually nerfed her into dust because no matter what they did, survivors would just quit making it impossible to have a proper game.