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After playing as and against The Skull Merchant on the PTB, I’ve collected my thoughts and would like to talk a bit about her rework.
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Honestly, I wish they would do something with her radar that makes her more interesting. Maybe make it so that when she pulls up her radar it's instead a small menu with 3 or 4 options. Have like the rader be in the top right corner, but one of the menu options is to enlargen it like how it is now. Have another one of the options be to set a drone on scouting mode and make it move around the map. One of the options can also be some sort of way to damage a survivor with the drone. I was thinking something like some sort of sleep dart launcher or electricity launcher that would injure healthy survivors and apply hindered to injured survivors?
I'm just giving a rough idea. I want her to give off a feeling of stealthing through an area with heavy surveilence (like watchdogs-esque). Sort of like you are in HER territory. I personally love micro managing type killers like Artist, Twins, Singularity. I think it would be super fun playing like you are "Big Brother" always knowing where people are, having cameras everywhere, stuff like that.
If I could change it this is what I'd do.
Goals for the changes: give the sm some teeth while also promoting a new playstyle.
Pressure on the ptb is non existent so let's give sm two types of pressure. Light wide spread and heavily focused pressure. Also let's give a snowball potential so if the survivors makes mistakes it can turn the game around.
Stealth drones do not leave a circle
Stealth drones cannot detect standing still or survivors on gens. They can also detect loud noises in their radius.
When a survivor gets detected by stealth it turns into an assult drone
Assault drones spin 30% faster then stealth drones. Addons can turn the 2 beams into 3 or 4 scan lines.
Assult drones can detect survivors regardless of standing or actions. Only avoiding the scan lines avoids detection.
Every time your detected the drone makes a loud noise notification to killer.
It takes two assult detections to get a claw
Claw always makes you deepwounds or broken.
Once claw is deployed the drone leaves and returns to sm after a long duration.
Any time a survivor with a claw is in the radius of a drone it will activate the drone to assult.
If a clawed survivor is detected they get zapped recharging the claw making the survivor scream. Re applying deepwounds if mended.
Sm can recall or set a drone to assult mode.
When a drone is set to assult all other drones regardless of circumstances return to stealth mode and cannot detect for a short duration.
I feel like this killer is almost salvageable if they lean into clawtraps harder. I know they said they don't like to add new mechanics to old killers during reworks, but it would be nice if she powered up or got some kind of stronger power the more people had clawtraps (besides just haste). I think clawtraps should be easier to apply and take longer to remove, but not hinder or injure. She could have a dash attack or some form of antiloop that gets better the more people are trackable (kind of like nemesis tiering up but temporary, plus she has a cool robot arm so they could use that in some way) or have clawtraps provide stronger benefits in chase; but with her current kit its almost impossible to give her a high skill ceiling or thoughtful playstyle.
I am a skull merchant main and I understand people hate the 3 gen meta. I believe BVHR should keep the drone the same but increase the rotation of the drone, make the hacking a bit harder for survivors, allow the SM to see the lock on meter progress for each survivor, scan lines should be invisible only in stealth Mode, increase zone radius, and make the SM green add-on loose screw last until the trap is removed. What do you think?
The worst killer, well thats what SM chess players deserve tbh.
Here's my proposal for fixing the power:
Remove Exposed.
If x drones are available for deployment, x-1 of them can be in proximity of a gen. Meaning if a survivor picks up a claw trap, there's only 3 drones available for deployment hence only 2 gens can be monitored.
With these two changes, the survivors can break the grip on the gens but insuring total anonymity can only be done by giving Skully info on one particular survivor. Not having the Exposed is already enough for 4 survivors to break the stranglehold.
Once that's done, we can start implementing her chase addons into her kit and reworking some of the less inspired addons (Nobody runs Mangled, Hemorrhage, or Blindness addons) to give her even MORE fun chase dynamics. Chase Merchant maintains her unique identity as a hybrid tracker-chaser and Chess Merchant becomes infeasible. Win win!
While I'm glad chess merchant is gone, Skull Merchant is still unappealing to play as/against. I think thats par for the course though. How can you rework a Killer's power, that makes gameplay more fun, that keeps the original power fundamental design thats already flawed?
Well there’s a killer I actually enjoyed because I didn’t need 3 slow down perks so gens don’t fly when just trying to play the game normally
BHVR is massively producing skins for her, they gonna try million times to make her work one way or another, or in worst case revert the changes and say to people deal with it. she is a killer that if you buff her she is unfair, if you nerf her she dies. people already has a "hive mind" of hating something, so they will never like her anyway
Ngl I was full on expecting them to butcher her and making her this unfun/boring killer. So this was just par for the course. Not saying her previous iteration was any better but now it's another "hold W" situation.
While SM herself is… what she is, I do like the direction of her addons: nothing too strong when it comes to numerical buffs, and then some that create a new playstyle
Strong and boring to incredibly weak and boring, it's Freddy all over again
L
They solved what made her annoying but left her in a terrible state. This is quite literally the definition of gutting a killer. There’s no other way of saying it. There’s quite literally no reason to play her. The few people who play will probably still play her in a 3 gen way and figure out pretty fast that it’s still the viable way to play her. And I know when she goes live nothing about her will change and probably nothing will change about her and she’ll be another laughing stock of a killer like Freddy after he got reworked. It’s almost comical how bad this has gotten. It’s clear the devs just wanted to just only get rid of the 3 gen thing but had no clue what to do with her after they dealt with it.
I think recalling drones shouldn‘t have an coodlown or atleast a decreased cooldown but deploying drones having a cooldown should stay.
As in situation with DH, I actually don't mind her to be dead. She was so afwul to play against and so boring to play as, that I would be genuinely happy, if she was completely deleted from the game. Which this rework accomplishes flr some degree
Welcome to the club of killers that get seen once every fifty games
If they just revert her and make it to where the drones don’t expose then it’s fine.
one change is have the drone when they go into inactive mode have them go in a set circle around the map. And would match the whole hunting her prey lore
clown with extra steps
Loving the Trapper buffs
She is not The weakest. If i understood right, survs won't see The detection radius so on stealth mode survs can only see The drone wich is pretty small. So If u place them well u can get free tags on survs outside of chase
I like the skull merchant rework fun rank b+
I had a probably-weak convoluted idea to change Skull Merchant entirely:
One or Two drones are active at the beginning of a match, and they will steer and guide themselves to generators (sort of like pathing a Knight Minion to a task) using the Tablet. Every Minute or so, another Drone auto-paths a patrol route as well, and this will continue until there are 6-8 drones patrolling a map's point of interests.
To counter this, there are Skull Merchant's Terminals placed in random locations (like Jigsaw Boxes), and survivors need to approach these terminals and 'Hack' them and disable one drone of your choice Or at random; this terminal enters a 30 second cooldown before being able to hack another drone.
Just a vague and half-baked idea I thought would be a lot more interactive in some places at least
Great news, now go for knigth 😊
From 3 gen nightmare to useless…as BHVR would say:
PrEtTy goOd Job sO fAr
Shes just an weaker Trapper
I feel like these changes definitely need improvement but the main thing was the hostage games. I didn’t enjoy playing a game for 45 minutes just to escape and want to stop playing after that. So I’m just happy we never gotta go thru that again 🙂
Here is a rework idea, delete her.