Skull Merchant can be fixed pretty easily
I'll just put the changes at the top here, and my explanation below.
- Remove Locked On entirely (Hear me out)
- Add "Brown Noise Generator" (Oblivious when within Active Drone range) to basekit, 5s linger
- Add "Randomized Strobes" (5% hindered to Survivors for 3s after entering active drone range) to basekit
I've played a bit of Skull Merchant recently, and I realize that a lot of her flaws comes down to the fact that Locked On makes it obnoxious to break a 3 gen. Since you're pretty much going to be Locked On forever if she camps a 3 gen, it's best to stay injured, but even then she gets movespeed and can simply down you.
But, Skull Merchant actually works pretty reasonably even without 3-genning. All you have to do is place down a few drones near gens to force survivors to hack them and give you speedboost, and also keep a drone with you to use for a speedboost in chase. 3% extra speed is quite noticeable, and makes several loops unsafe.
To fix her, let her play even more into this! With Strobes, she actually becomes quite scary in chase if she places a drone at the right spot. And Noise Generator makes it very risky to sit inside of a drones active zone and do gens without hacking it, since she will show up with no warning due to oblivious.
With these small changes Skull Merchant would go from being an obnoxious 3-gen killer, to an obnoxious info+stealth+antiloop killer. Which is, admittedly not very great. She'd still be pretty annoying to go against. But it would be a huge step up from what she is now.
In short, instadown bad, chase + info + stealth good.
Comments
This would kinda work, but she would be weaker than she is. You would throw her into Sadako realm, but Merchant doesn't have any broken addon like her.
You don't need to play 3-gen for sure, but lock on is quite important part of her kit, so you can't simply ignore her drones.
info -> m1 killer only is not that big of a deal
chase -> it's not really that much better than already is
stealth -> it's useless on open maps
Lock On isnt a problem, her 3-genning potential is. Info + Stealth arent that much of a threat
That's the beauty of making the obliviousness basekit. If survivors ignore the drone, they will be oblivious while Skull Merchant can get to them faster. Then they can choose to hack it, removing the oblivious, but instead giving her a longer lasting haste that only counts for 1 person.
Sure, her stealth isn't great on open maps, but she'd still get the speedboost of potentially multiple survivors if they just ignore the drones.
And I assure you, her chase would be massively stronger with the Strobes addon. Have you actually seen it in action? I've posted a video. It lets you catch up in a lot of loops.
And the reason why her 3gen is strong is due to speed + Lock On. It forces survivors to work on gens injured, since they'll never be able to avoid becoming instadownable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOGiSRprxNoTake a look at this video. The strobes are significant, and make many loops unsafe if used correctly. Obviously they also use the action speed addon, for faster pallet kicks and pickups and stuff.
I do agree her 3-gen is still a problem, but BHVR actually said they're working on a way to fix 3-gens. I'd personally like to see the ability to bring back another generator for repair, if you go through a lengthy action first, like charge up a station. So you'd have 4 gens to pick from, but only need to finish one of them.
Either way, I think it would be very interesting to experiment with these Skulle Merchant changes in a PTB at least.
oblivious is way weaker than exposed status. Easy as that.
If I want I can play Plaything + Pentimento for oblivious. I don't have anything to make drones as dangerous as insta down.
You already have speed boost, your changes didn't change that aspect at all.
You added something that is from addon and you can get it from perks and removed something you are not able to get easily and is main thing that makes her drones dangerous. Something you can't ignore.
I don't care about oblivious status at all, hindered and speed boost is supposed to be strong? Is Clown strong killer?