New Skull Merchant Rework Discussion (pre-PTB)
So it sounds like SM will go with gameplay direction of Hag and Trapper. She will have 6 drones now and putting them on any Generator would be pointless waste of your drones now.
So here is the only way I can see her play with these new changes. Set up killer. You will have to place drones on some few key loops or maybe one into good main building, shack, etc. You have to be picky tho, since you have just 6 = just for 6 spots / loops.
Now here comes what worries me. Drones are big flying skulls in the air. The are NOT something hidden in grass or placed on the bottom floor. So unless the drone is hidden behind good cover (in-door maps idealy), they will be always exposed and you can see them from distance mid-chase.
Any Survivor who will understand new SM will just never ever enter her drone search radius, doesn't metter if it's in stealth mode since the drone is still visible, just does less / no sound with hidden beams (no biggy for decent Survivors).
Now playing her like drop drones on loops will also not be effective, since Survivors will just run away. It's like counterplay to Hag and Trapper but easier since you will see offten the drones themselfs.
So she will be like Area denier that will either force M1 on you or she will be looped on different loops where there are no drones.
Comments
Changes are big just at first read, i need to see it in play before have a decent opinion.
New music tho, thats good.
With such drastic changes we kinda need to wait to see how she actually plays in game to know for sure, but she got some big buffs to her kit as a whole, obviously while losing her 3gen potential.
You do make a good point though, we'll have to see how easy it is to not only spot her stealth drones, but also if it's easy to just run away. It may be something that, depending on the loop, the survivor needs to deal with. You gotta get zapped by a drone three times to get injured/deep wounds which could end up being something that never happens in matches.
It honestly seems insane how they managed to seemingly remove everything that made Skull Merchant fun for those of us who played her outside of gens. Trying to be positive but man there is ZERO redeeming qualities or potential for uses with this iteration of her and honestly seems like it'll just make her a brain dead mind numbingly boring killer both to VS and play as. Theres not even interaction and "No longer slowed when checking scanner" Well duh why would she need to check the scanner you already REMOVED HER ABILITY TO TRACK PEOPLE lol. I knew they'd turn her into some weird trash but I was praying they'd really hold off or at least do her rework properly...at least they added Maria to survivor so now i can switch to mainly survivor side cause they've literally butchered all of my mains in such a short duration it makes me depressive to look at killer side lol.
Still nothing can really be made of this that I enjoy. Its so unbelievably rare that a drone turns on outside of me manually turning one on because the beams are already easy to avoid but now they have some really easy to avoid and crappy little lock on that affects injured survivors even less than before? How'd they even manage to do that?
It looks good so far, but I have a couple of concerns mainly surrounding how often the scanner will come into play:
I put them in a separate thread before I saw this one.
I will miss my haste merchant. RIP stacking passive haste from drones and from perks and my favorite very rare geo radar add-on.
Thats the problem, drones stay active for 15 seconds and she cant turn them back on anymore. This means after a drones inactive itll pretty much stay that way or she will have to walk over there and undeploy then redeploy the drone to lock the area down for 15 more seconds + Survivors have no incentive to hack or disable any drones since they no longer pose a threat of reactivation. At most the biggest threat you have as survivor is a noobie reactivating it on accident but even then who cares? Thats just 15 seconds in that area thats locked down. Current Hag poses a far greater threat when she locks an area down and she's like D tier atm due to the nerf she got
I just hope they will remove the stupid movement speed buff based on the number of active clawtraps. That + those two purple addons just made her the most obnoxious 'I just hold w' killer, and Chase Merchant was equally unhealthy for the game