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Skull Merchant tuning ideas: less Exposed, more stealth

Caiman Caiman
in Feedback and Suggestions

The Skull Merchant has a lot of intentions in her design: information-gathering, stealth, stalking, etc. As far as I can tell, she's supposed to be an intelligent killer that survivors can't see coming until it's too late. But she doesn't really feel like that. I'm not sure what she feels like, to be honest with you. Her stealth is weak on most maps, her tracking can often be useless, and even with the Haste buff her chase is still poor because the Claw Traps don't last long enough. All the while survivors and even many killers hate her because her power is best used for camping generators and that's boring.

The ideal, I think, is to give her two styles of play to alternate between as the trial goes on. If she has all her drones up, she plays as a stealth killer, searching for and ambushing survivors. If survivors take down her drones, she switches to a chase killer, using her radar to find and pursue survivors. In my opinion, any changes to her should be for the sake of improving this dynamic, to make it feel fun and rewarding to switch between the two strategies.

  • Undetectable should activate for both Active and Scouting drones.
  • Active drones should have a larger area for better stealth and tracking. Scouting drones' range remains the same. This also means she has to travel farther to cluster drones together since they can't overlap.
  • Lock-On time should be significantly nerfed to be less oppressive, allowing survivors to ignore it in the short-term.
  • Killer Instinct should be removed from Lock-On. Instead, Locked-On survivors should be specially marked on her radar. Give them a red dot and a unique sound effect. Require her to use her tracker to track.
  • Active drone areas should be invisible to survivors until they enter it. Scouting drone triplasers remain as they are now, but remove the outer ring that shows their range.
  • Increase the battery life of Claw Traps. This improves her tracking and chasing while making it harder for her to spam drones repeatedly.

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