Skull Merchant rework
As the team is well aware, the dbd community vows for a Skull Merchant's rework, as she is currently the least enjoyable killer to face against.
I would like to suggest a couple changes that would make her funnier both to play and to play against, as well as more lore accurate.
First would be to change the way the drones work: Remove the exposed status from remaining in an drone active area and survivors would no longer see the drones active area of effect, then by entering the drone active area they would be inflicted with the oblivious status effect instead, and the Skull Merchant would be able to track then as soon as they enter the active zone.
This would change her focus from a purely gen defender to a more stealthy pursuer type of killer, as survivors wouldn't be able to pin point with precision where the drone is, they would have to risk staying oblivious or go drone hunting. A experience SM would then put drones in hidden areas to force survivors look for it, instead of beside the generators.
Second, instead of given haste status effect to the SM when a survivor disables a drone give the survivor the hindered status effect. This would make the SM have a bigger advantaged against the survivors who interacted with the drones, and I think hindered helps more forcing down pallets than haste. Since the exposed from the drone would been gone, a good addon would be to inflict injured status to healthy survivors that disable drones.
And third change would again be on the drones. Drones would now remain active at all times, and the active drone action would cause the drone to emit a sonic boom attack to hinder survivors, this would make the drones more useful in chases or to give a head start to the chase.
With this changes SM would have a much more balanced and fun interaction with survivors, and her power would fit her lore better.
As someone who been playing this game for years now I truly hope that you guys take the community suggestions to the hearth, for every killers deserves a place in the sun.
Comments
So throw her into trash bin with extra steps...
Movement speed is way better than hindred unless you want to go for some ridiculous number, which I doubt.
Drone without exposed is useless. No one cares about oblivious status effect on most maps. I can see you, SWF can make call outs where are you going. She already has stealth and it's useless most of the time.
Everyone would just ignore drones. So what she can know about our location. M1 only killer is simply not dangerous. You took away movement speed, so it will take longer to get to us anyway.