Skull Merchant balance suggestions
It's no secret that Skull Merchant is very strong in chase. Below are some suggestions to make her power a bit more skill-based and not so oppressive like it is now.
- When reaching 3 lock on stacks, the survivor receives a claw trap. When a claw trapped survivor is subsequently scanned they are injured > deep wound > hindered. This change would be a bit more forgiving by not immediately injuring a survivor when they receive a claw trap, but SM still gets the benefit of seeing the survivor's location at all times.
- When SM recalls a drone, it must physically return to her location in order for her to get it back in her inventory. Only one drone can be recalled at a time. This would make it so that the player has to be a bit more strategic when placing drones. Right now, it's too easy to instantly recall a drone so the player never really has to think about how many drones they have in their inventory. Add ons could potentially increase the speed at which drones travel.
- Recall mode: when SM recalls a drone, it goes into recall mode. During recall mode:
- The drone autonomously travels to SM's location
- The drone's scanning radius is cut by half
- If a survivor is scanned, they do not receive a lock on stack but SM still sees their location briefly on her radar
- The drone generates a beeping sound alerting the survivors that a recalled drone is nearby. The drone would also generate a lullaby on the visual terror radius.
- More of a delay when deploying a drone. This could possibly be achieved in one of the following ways:
- The player must press and hold the power button to generate a loading bar animation of SM raising her radar and entering some inputs before deploying a drone. Basically the same type of delay animation with a loading bar that Trapper and Hag have when setting their traps. Add ons could decrease the time it takes to deploy a drone. This could also allow for some mindgames to push survivors off of loops with a fake out, just like what can be achieved with Hag and Trapper by canceling their trap setting.
- OR the same type of mini-game that survivors must complete to disable a drone. To make this not so difficult, it could only require a baseline of 4 inputs, and add ons could decrease the number of inputs to 3. This can also be canceled by the player to achieve a similar mindgame effect as above. If after failing 3 attempts at the mini-game, the drone is automatically deployed. Add ons could also decrease the number of failed attempts to 2.
Comments
For the record, making her drones placement take longer takes away a large portion of the skill expression that she currently has.
If you want her to be more skill-based, you're achieving the opposite effect here. You're making it almost impossible for her to get quick scans with precise aim and correct positioning, and making drones only function as traps, which - while not unhealthy - is unavoidably much, much less skill-based.
As for the others, I don't think SM's instant recall is actually a problem considering getting her to recall the drone and thus removing it from whatever important structure it was in is kind of the thing you're trying to achieve. There are ways to make this more impactful, but what you want is for SM to recall it, so you don't want to discourage her from doing it by making it take forever.
Slower deployment actually limits her skill expression. Most players don't even know, or use laser tags. It's something you can do basically deploy drone in a way you predict survivor next location for them to get tagged by laser instantly. This would be impossible with your change.
Limit recalling drones only push her back to 3-gen, which I really don't think is good idea.
2 small changes would go a long way towards making her more balanced and fun to play against.
1.When a survivor disables a drone, they lose 1 stack of Lock On.
2. When a survivor disables a drone, the drone cannot be recalled until its disable duration is over.
These 2 suggested changes would at least allow the survivors some degree of counterplay and limit how oppressive her drones can be on some maps.
Personally though I feel like these suggestions are just the bare minimum. The main issue with Skull Merchant atm is how much her kit does for such a little amount of effort. For example. there is no reason stacks of Lock On should give Skull Merchant haste when she can also already give survivors hindered in chase by forcing 3 stacks.
BHVR needs to do something to address this issue because right now her power is just horribly unfun to go against. It also makes playing her not fun for me personally because I feel like using my power properly is just too easy and powerful so I am forced to severely limit myself in how I play her in order to make matches at least somewhat fun for the survivors.
It doesn't fix any of Skull merchant issues players have. It just makes her worse and even easier for survivors.
I wouldn't mind your second point, it would make it kinda fun to try disarm mid chase, which is kinda pointless now.
I already had discussion why losing stacks on disarm would be terrible change and I am too lazy to do it again. That would cripple any other playstyle other than commit to every chase and make it literally brainless for survivors. Guess what, every time you get tagged outside of chase, you have drone it remove that lock on.
You want to make it less punishing for survivors? Just remove broken and make it always mending. You still get punished for not paying attention, just not so much.
Regardless of whether or not people like her, calling for a suite of nerfs for a mid tier killer is pretty silly.
this would make her a low tier killer.
this is pretty much summary of every change that anyone suggests for skull merchant.
The goal of disables drones is that killer has to walk to the same location and place the drone. I believe the OP is trying to make killer be rooted into place when placing a drone allowing the survivor to run forward to next loop. This is basically a Trapper/Hag problem where you can't use your ability inside the chase beyond cornering the survivor.
It is almost like hag and trapper should be getting buffed in this department so that they can use their abilities in the chase…. You know…. like throwing a trapper trap instead bending down to place one.
Issue is skull merchant drones are simply trash when you compare them 1 to 1 with Trapper/Hag traps. It's definetly not worth any time investment.