Skull Merchant deserves to be buffed
She is awfull, worst killer in the game next to Trapper, her pickrate is awfull, her killrate I bet isn't good either compare to other killers. Her power is almost useless. Yes, she is getting her "rework" but lets be honest that's not happening this year and will probably take a another full year (based on two kinda-mixed back to drawing board dev posts and the feedback and how slow this process goes).
So how about you hotfix her and just buff her at least that she is playable by her 4 mains in this game, thank you.
Comments
Where she was before the previous nerfs would've warranted some minor, smarter nerfs. The only one I'm definitely gonna stand by is the slowdown on placing a drone though, it's the SINGLE good idea from that patch.
The only reason Merchant is even in the conversation for "place thing at loop, survivors run away" despite her power being designed to be played around in loops is that she gains more distance than the other killers who can do this. Lowering that won't hurt her for doing anything else, and it'll tackle a notoriously unfun problem that has existed across multiple killers.
For the stealth, eh, I've never had an issue with her stealth but it is quite good and people do complain about it. If making that slightly worse is the price for getting her drones to be functional again, I'm willing to pay it.
Making her slower on placing drone would suggest her to be setup killer. I would be fine with it, but not really with 1 line, which is always visible.
Give her back 2.0 version of drones (2 lines with stealth mode) and then sure make her slower on placing drones, lower hindred, remove broken.
Would be cool to make it so drone is always in scouting mode if you are in chase to nerf it even more for chase…
I am not, stealth is only thing that is kinda saving her now and even in version 2.0. I highly doubt they would buff drones enough to justify her stealth nerfed.
Honestly, my friend, a full revert to 2.0, then this slowdown when placing drones is something I would be fine with, as long as it remained her power and the design previews / reworks are out of the question.
I was always saying version 2.0 was easy to save. There are things to do about it to make her less noob stompy and more setup oriented without gutting her.
But nooo, we drop a nuke on her and yet survivors still hate her, so seems kinda pointless to me.
It's going to end exactly same as Twins rework, especially when they are trying to make it "take control" power like Twins/Houndmaster, so it will be buggy mess beyond saving.
Honestly, they should just run back the last nerf. Her problem was babies going next. Now that that has mostly been resolved, her Kill Rate should stop getting artificially inflated.
Maybe she wasn’t the most fun to play against, but nerfing isn’t the solution to that particular. Hopefully the push back on the recent Clown and Knight nerfs will cause BHVR to reevaluate how they approach the “not fun” problem in the future. I doubt it, but hopefully.
You don't regard the survivor experience at all if you want old Skull Merchant back. It is really unanimous in the community that everyone hates her except people that loves to 3 gen.
I agree. 2.0 accomplished the goal of removing the 3 gen mess and, as I said many times in this very thread, was a good design.
And yes, the design previews, both of them, were awful. They wouldn't have accomplished anything except erasing her identity, which is unacceptable.
Which version of Skull Merchant are you talking about dude? I believe this is just a miscommunication because the General is referring to Skull Merchant 2.0 with the scan lines. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you've misunderstood him to mean original Skull Merchant
Now original Skull Merchant certainly was a 3-gen machine, and she had a whole different set of issues to Skull Merchant 2.0... however the reworked Skull Merchant simply could not do what OG Skull Merchant could, 2.0 was definitely no better at 3 genning than any other killer; I'd argue wasn't even in the top 10 3-gen killers.
Despite this a lot of people kept up that narrative, and I'm not accusing you of doing the same, but this has always been the problem when discussing Skull Merchant, she's the boogeyman of DBD... people say they hate Skull Merchant for this reason or that reason, but they're often talking about something that doesn't actually exist...
This is why SM defenders push back as hard as they do... because even now against 3.0 Skull Merchant, normally respectable players with a lot of clout try to say she is obnoxious to face at loops and her poop a drone playstyle is so oppressive and boring to face... when in reality her power literally does next to nothing... all she is now is a 4.6 Undetectable killer... that is it.
The lies around Skull Merchant make discussions around her so unnecessarily difficult and way too many people are stuck on a narrative that is simply just not true 90% of the time... and in her current state it's more important than ever that people are honest about her... because a killer in this state is NOT OK... no matter who it is.
Skull Merchant 2.0 isn't the one associated with 3 gen. It is the version we had immediately prior to the nerfs, the one after the changes that got rid of her 3 gen playstyle.
No.
Skull Merchant is receiving her rework this year, and if they buff her in the current state she is, she’ll be like her previous version where no one wants to verse her and people will complain, the current power she has is boring and uninspiring, she needs a total rework where they make her much more interactive and fun to verse, that is what she deserves, not buffs in the slightest.
No she does not. She got thrown in the dumpster for a reason. She's getting reworked, any further dev time spent on her current version is a waste of resources. Her rework was always going to take time to do and leaving her in her previous state for several months or potentially over a year would not have been acceptable. Current Skull Merchant is extremely bad design and should never be made strong ever again until she gets reworked.
Ideally, both of her first two iterations should never have been released the way they were to begin with so we wouldn't be in this situation, but that ship has sailed.
There's no way on Earth this rework drops this year. Nine months since the nerfs hit and we don't even have a current design preview. It took BHVR six months to get to the MS Paint doodle stages of the first design preview: there's no way we're going from a design preview to a dev build to a PTB to a live release in five months when we've also got game health stuff, the Grimoire and the Trickster rework in the pipeline.
There is only one more midchapter in 2025: the late September PTB in about three months, and that's the last window we have for the Merchant rework. Do you seriously think we're going from nothing to a PTB in that time?
You say like that's guaranteed that her original identity will not return, when her preview was shown we the player gave feedback clear as day that her rework does not match skull merchant in the slightest and we're not happy by the direction it was going for, hence why they're going back to the drawing board and give a better design preview down the road
Not to mention why you would think she's an overpowered killer when she was just a low mid tier killer at the time, is she flawed absolutely, but she doesn't warranted her absolute gutting and say she deserves to die in a whole, she needed adjustments, possibly remove status effects and add something new (like her emp darts we were shown)
Look at sadako 3.0, she is a mixture between 1.0 and 2.0, maintaining back her identity that her first iteration had while maintaining what 2.0 had and made it so tvs that are on give condemn instead of worldwide
Whatever you think of her and when her rework will come around at some point, we the skull merchant players deserve to be heard too, not just people who hate playing her and going against her
We want her identity to remain intact whenever the next preview rework will be showed
She is not going to be reworked this year because of Operation Health.
Then at the very least you should agree that people who spent money on this killer and enjoyed playing her before should get a refund?
Either make her good or give people their money back.
I think the removal of 1 scanline was also a great change. Made her much more engaging to play and solved her biggest issue which was that she was way to easy to pick up
I'd have no problem with refunds
Yea i felt like it didnt make a lot of sense that they nerf'd her a 3rd time and did the 8-gen kick nerf at the same time. 2.0 Skull merchant was fine
Yep, she was fine.
The 3 gen thing was over. The perks that enabled it were nerfed, the game no longer allowed it, and her kit was also not good for it anymore. Problem solved.
yea, I say just revert her back to 2.0, no rework is needed
If I've learnt anything from recent patches, is don't knock it until you try it, there may be unique fun setups and plays to be made, if the recent rework and killers are to go by they have proven to be effective if not outright OP at launch (Ghoul)
The fact people are upset someone is excited for more content in here is wild.
I agree completely.
That is the best option.
I think a full revert to 2.0 would be a mistake, but until the rework comes I'm on board with reverting the more knee-jerk nerfs and giving her safe numbers buffs. Like scanline immunity in vaults and the Hinder going to 8% would be welcome. Maybe make the Undetectable activate faster (like Ghostface and Pig), maybe reduce the scanline immunity to 2.25s, base kit Prototype Rotor, maybe an extra drone... But one beam should stay; two beams were the source of her exceptionally low skill floor and as such it should stay at one.
Merchant 2.0 did have some problems and the nerfs did address a couple of them, but only in the most pig-headed ways possible.
This change was what completely made her useless...
Genuinely the dumbest change they made in 8.3.0 and that's with stiff competition. It wasn't even on the PTB; they just shoved it on because they were bored, just in case someone might actually want to play her after the turbo nerf.