Pls for the love of god start doing drones when 3 genned by a skull merchant
Staying injured and/or tanking the exposed is not worth it when 3 genned since skully is naturally good at burning through resources. Especially if she has add ons such as geostrobes, screw, trap speaker, etc.
If 2 of you have trackers, then at least one gen will have no drone on it. If 3 of you have trackers, then at least 2 gens will have no drone. If you have a tracker, move and pressure gens without drones on them, it is your un-claw trapped teammates job to hack the active drones (since you cant).
Trackers last 45 seconds (50s with supercharge), meaning each dot on the UI is 15 seconds. Use this to know when she will get a drone back. For example: chances are if you have a full claw trap, and a teammates trap is just about to run out, and she's coming to your gen, you're gonna want to start running to a different gen since you wont be able to hack the drone.
Split up on the 2 gens furthest away.
Stay in pairs so you can take turns hacking drones, taking hits, and healing.
Drones are unhackable for 10 seconds (11 with remote mic, which thankfully no one runs), it takes 10 seconds to become exposed, run in the zone at the 6ish second mark to save as much time as possible.
Do not rush the hack. Tank the hit on the spot if shes coming over. 60 seconds is a long time, especially since it can be refilled.
It takes a FULL 30 SECONDS (up to 34 with add ons) for the drone to deactivate and start scouting. It is NEVER worth waiting out the active mode. If it's hackable, and next to a gen, hack it.
If you still lose, I give you full permission to link this post to the urban evading Feng who never took a tracker because "spooky orange circle scarwy" (I totally didn't just lose a match because of this)
3 genning skull merchant is undeniably boring asf and I'm praying the coming changes encourage more chases, but please, as an avid skull merchant player, do not make it harder for yourself in these matches. Have 2 trackers on at once at almost all times.
(oh yea and if its a 3v1 then gg)
Comments
i wish more posts were like this on the forum, no complains in sights and just very good and useful tips for people to help them get better instead of the classic "i'm better, y'all trash". gj op
I suspect most people don't make an effort, or will let themselves get exposed rather than do a drone, on purpose. Most probably don't care if they get sacrificed early against a SM.
Most don’t stay in a match long enough with SM for any of this to be relevant.
I try but usually people bail when it's SM. We usually end up farming or I go for the hatch. I try to stay and help out as much as I can.
Whenever people actually stay, I try to do the drones but she just comes right after me again haha.
Why would you bother to try to play against a SM seriously?
Like, the match is a meme as soon as you load in because she's gonna 3-gen even if you start winning.
Nobody wants to waste 45 minutes of attrition (assuming perfect play) in order to beat the worst Killer added to DBD.
i think staying injured not giving an f about the exposed is also a pretty good strat.
Good luck getting this level of coordination or strategy out of the upcoming survivor bots. Most likely they'll just try to avoid her terror radius and feed her the 3 gen for free.
I suspect that most SM games will devolve into the killer playing alone against 4 ai after even one person loses connection. (Not condoning this, just an observation)
The problem is the poor design of Skull Merchant. If I take a drone from the third gen in a 3 gen, she can just place her 4th drone back on that third gen, with no delay or penalty. If a tracker from DDR-ing a drone is on a Surv, that drone should leave a ghost drone preventing another one to replace it. That way if I take the aggro to remove a drone from a gen, that gen CANNOT be droned again for that 45s, and the Skull Merchant is incentivized to hunt me down quickly if she wants to replace it. That would cause her to actually go out on the map and not be able to camp indefinitely. This was fine on the original release, because someone with a Tracker could be the designated drone disarmer, as you could disarm drones even while you have a tracker, but with her post-launch (or PTB?) adjustments it empowered camping.
Rather just outright leave if a player decides to actively waste my time with dull merch
Here's the thing though, when my team is actually decent skull merchant is my favourite killer in the game to verse. I enjoy the teamplay required to win against the killer, similar to other killers like twins, hag, plague, and singularity. Bonus points if she actually know how to use her ability in chase.
Plus I'm biased since she's my 2nd favourite killer in the game overall.
The issue arises though when your teammates don't know how to verse her, so your efforts of constantly hacking drones mean nothing so the match just drags out forever.
Considering geo readout, strobes, and loose screw exist I wouldn't recommend staying injured unless you have some spicy perks like MFT and adrenalines. She catches up VERY quickly which makes staying injured risky as hell.
I've had one great game against a SM, where she had a chase build and used her drones in chase, not on gens. No one DC'd, and she got a 3k (4th got hatch) because she was just on the ball the whole game. If every SM game was like that, I would enjoy playing against her. It was the first and only game in which I got a glimpse of what the devs were probably intending with SM. It's just a shame 99.9% of SM players prefer to just stand in one spot for as long as they can.
I mean in depth guides against killers would be pretty helpful, but no one feels like doing it. Or maybe they just don't want people to know how to counter them? Or they think everyone knows. For Plague I hear so many contradicting things that for the longest time I did not know to cleanse or not cleanse and why.
The only guide we have is otz guide on how to counter killers and even that is not comprehensive enough.
Those are nice tips but unfortunately I don't think that much teamwork is a reasonable ask for solo q, and if SM decides to tunnel someone out before 3 genning it wouldn't even be worth trying. I'll still keep them in mind though
It's just camping, but the gens instead of survivors. Path of least resistance.
I personally think both playstyles should be viable, but something like a 3-gen strategy should be tweaked or solo survivors should gain some sort of communication means (like pings) to deal with all those strategies that require teamwork to break.