My Idea for what Skull Merchant's power could have been
Now that the PTB has come and gone and the announced "buffs" for Skull Merchant fixing exactly ######### all of her myriad of problems, I felt the need to come up with my own version of Skull Merchant's power. As I have said on about 5 different occasions now, SM's power feels less like a power and more like the foundation of something better, so I decided to fill in the blanks that BHVR are pretty evidently leaving in it.
So I decided to change Skull Merchant's Power to "Mechanized Huntress", which consists of 3 parts, Skull Drones, Valente, and Poison Darts
SM's Skull Drones remain mostly the same, with a few differences, first there is zero cooldown for actually placing drones, this cooldown is just redundant considering that her drones already have a range limit so that you can't place two of them close to one another, second, the Undetectable for being in a Active drone's radius kicks in immediately and fades after 5 seconds, this makes her stealth capabilities actually semi-useable, third, survivors no longer see when a drone is active or not unless they are within it's radius, Her drones are meant to be sneaky and stealthy cameras, why survivors are able to see the zone they're active in I do not know, fourth, Drones inflict survivors with a 5% hindered effect when Locked On, Exposed does nothing to injured survivors and I feel like having at least some penalty to being injured is warranted
Next there are some buffs to Claw Traps and her Radar, first, claw traps show where a survivor is in real time through a secondary screen that pops when a trap is activated, the radar we have right now is really stupid and not all that helpful, plus I think having a IRL feed SM views through her mask's eye lens will make her mask have a nice bit of function, second, pressing CTRL will let you view the feed at any time, and will show directly where a survivor with a Claw Trap attached to them is, third, zero slowdown when actually viewing her feed, this mechanic is dumb, she should not be slowed down while viewing a camera feed, everyone I've seen online thinks so. The effects of a Claw Trap on a survivor remain the same, that's pretty much the only part of SM's kit that I think is cool, a mechanical "Mark For Death" is awesome, even if the Live version is absolute booty cheeks.
Next there are the wholly original parts of her power that I added, Valente and Poison Darts, Pressing ALT (or an equivalent key on controller) will let you swap from deploying Skull Drones to using Valente and Poison Darts, and you can swap back at any time.
First, Valente, Valente is a Secretary Bird (shown above) that SM lobotomised, partially cyberized, and outfitted with a mask that lets her directly interface with the bird, Pressing CTRL will allow you to send out Valente to patrol a radius of 32m with a movement speed of 105%, while she has no terror radius she can be heard close by due to her various caws and the whirring of her mechanical components, when she makes direct eye contact with a Survivor, she will utter a cross-map shriek and start chasing them at 105% with similar AI to Knight's Guards, however, pressing CTRL within 5 seconds of Valente starting a chase will allow SM to directly control her, Which lets her move at 110% and do things that Killers can normally do, with the exception of breaking pallets and picking up survivors, Survivors can temporarily shut Valente down by sneaking up behind her and holding M2, letting them kick her (Ala Victor) and send her back to SM. Valente takes 20 seconds to fully recover after being kicked, and will lose interest in chasing a survivor if they manage to get far enough away from her.
Finally, there is Poison Darts, holding M2 will swap SM's m1 attack for a dart launcher built into her mechanical arm, Pressing M1 when fully charged will launch a poison dart that injures survivors and leaves them with various negative effects, including 5% hindered (which can stack with her drones' hindered) for 15 seconds, aura blindness, and messing with their screen by covering it with a green gas overlay, If they aren't healed 45 seconds after they've been hit by the dart, they'll automatically go down. The dart has the same hitbox and travels like Trickster's knives, you only get one shot before having to reload, which takes 15 seconds and is done passively after you've fired, letting go of M2 cancels .
Not only does adding a bird and poison dart give SM more power depth, it also can give her a new Mori, where she shoots a survivor with a dart and then Valente kicks them to death (Trust me, you do not want to get kicked by a Secretary Bird, they can kill snakes in one shot, imagine what a few kicks from them can do to your stomach).
I will admit, I have not considered how this might affect balance nor have I considered addons, I just wish SM's power was actually unique, her Drones, much like her design, have a lot of potential, and the fact that they just boil down to ineffective stealth, practically useless Exposed (seriously nobody is going to remain inside a radius that they can see and know will Expose them for 10 seconds), and hilariously useless tracking just makes me sad
Give her power more depth or at least buff her existing power even further, our first truly evil female killer deserves better then what she's getting
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