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Skull Merchant needs a balance change

WinterDraft7 WinterDraft7
in Feedback and Suggestions

I know Skull Merchant is not the most liked killer in Dead by Daylight, but I do believe Skull Merchant needs some attention taken to her, about her drones scanning nearby survivors on multiple floors. Please remove this so it can scan one floor at a time. This is both really broken to play against as survivor, but also extremely overpowered playing as the killer. If this issue does get fixed, she will be more fun and more balanced to play as/against.

Thank you for your time and please fix this as soon as possible.

Comments

  • Merciless_Killer Merciless_Killer

    That isn't really an issue. Pretty much every radius based effect in the game has no vertical limit.


    What they should really do is just get rid of the unhackable state of drones so that survivors can always hack them.

  • ReverseVelocity ReverseVelocity

    She needs changes, but removing multi-floor Drones would make her borderline unplayable on certain maps.

    You can deal with multi-floor scanning Drones fine without getting locked on, it's just a little bit more difficult.

    I made a thread of the changes I'd like to see made to her here:

    @ReverseVelocity said:

    The Skull Merchant has been a hot topic for discussions lately, and I'd like to share how I'd change her to hopefully make her more interesting for both sides.

    Claw Traps

    • Increased the Battery life to 60 seconds.
    • Claw Trapped Survivors who enter a Drone's detection zone will still instantly activate a drone, but it will not become Unhackable.
    • Claw Trapped Survivors who hack a Drone will have their Claw Trap battery recharged, and the hacked Drone will return to the Skull Merchant after 10 seconds.
    • Claw Trapped Survivors who hack a Drone will have a small portion of their Lock On progress filled until the Trap dies or they become fully Locked On.

    These Claw Trap changes aim to alleviate her 3 gen strategy, while buffing her chase capabilities slightly. Longer Claw Trap battery life means the Skull Merchant will get Haste for longer, but she'll have access to her Drones a lot less often.

    As a compensation for the increased Battery life, Survivors with Claw Traps can now hack Drones again. These Drones will return to the Skull Merchant after 10 seconds (which is how they previously functioned). This will stop the current situation of a Claw Trapped Survivor being completely unable to go near a Generator that's watched by a Drone, and will make her overall area control weaker.

    You'll want to be careful as to how many Drones you choose to Hack, though, as one Survivor who takes out a large number of Drones will be easier to Lock On, and will become a valuable target.

    Drones

    • Survivors within a Drone's active area suffer from a small Hindered Status Effect OR The Skull Merchant gains a small amount of Haste while within a Drone's active area.
    • This effect lingers for a short time after leaving the Drone's Area of Effect.

    This change aims to make the Drones themselves slightly more useful in a chase. This change would hopefully make it more likely for the Skull Merchant to recall a Drone to use when finding a Survivor to Chase, which means less Drones on generators. Combined with her reduced access to Drones, she'd have to make much more of a tactical decision as how to use them.

    Stealth

    • Reduced the delay for the Undetectable Status Effect to activate to 1 second.
    • Increased the linger duration of the Undetectable Status Effect to 3 seconds.
    • Reworked Ultrasonic Trap Speaker and Adaptive Lighting.

    Skull Merchant's Stealth is actually a pretty interesting part of her kit, but is seldom useful without committing both of your addon slots to it. These changes are essentially making both of the Stealth addons part of her base kit, and should open up alternative playstyles for her Drones.

    Radar

    • Increased the Movement Speed while Inspecting the Radar to 4.6m/s.

    This is just a general QoL change, and is something that should really be done.

    I think these changes would end up greatly weakening her 3 gen strategy, while encouraging her to Chase Survivors a lot more. Instead of spamming Drones on generators constantly, hopefully the gameplay loop would move towards placing Drones down on gens to distribute Claw Traps and then Chasing said Survivors.

    I'd like to hear your thoughts on these ideas, and any other potential suggestions you'd make (apart from deleting her, that's cheating).

    TL;DR: More Chase Merchant, less Chess Merchant.


  • WinterDraft7 WinterDraft7

    @Merciless_Killer said:

    That isn't really an issue. Pretty much every radius based effect in the game has no vertical limit.

    What they should really do is just get rid of the unhackable state of drones so that survivors can always hack them.

    It's probably not the worst idea I ever heard.

  • WinterDraft7 WinterDraft7

    I think this idea could actually work with Skull Merchant to be honest

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