The Skull Merchant is still problematic
She can still 3-gen well with her power and you can also camp your hex totems (Devour Hope) and make it almost impossible to remove it.
When you want to play her non-camping playstyle, her chase is still pretty bad with avarage 3% Haste on chase since you will rarely get beyond 5%.
She needs more changes or some kind of rework. I like her power on paper, but there needs to be less heavy on gen control and more about area / chase control.
Comments
I really just wish there was a cap on gen regression, where 1/3rd of a gen's progress is permanent and unremovable, which stacks upon itself.
That way you can still 3-gen and run gen slowdown, but if you refuse to actually chase and down people you'll just lose.
They give survivors EXACTLY what they want by obliterating gen kick meta, but it's still not enough for them. Lmao I can't.
Plus we getting the chase based meta survivors always said they wanted, but they don’t want to lose strong healing in the process. You can’t have a chase meta with strong heals. It’s one or the other.
I am talking about her power, not about kicking perks. She doesn't need them to still hold games, at least for SoloQ.
Her chase, if you even read that part, is still bad and I wish they buff it because 3-5% Haste is not good.
I like how you assume that I am some "Survivor main" but I play both sides pretty offten. I don't even know why I react to such comment with "lol these Survivors" attitude.
Not really. Her 3 gen is only good if survivors let it be.
If they actually bother to interact with her power her 3 gen abilities are about as good as a trapless trapper
She is really good at defending totems but she still can only be at one place at a time.
It isn't much stronger then demo's ability to defend totems and that boy can fast travel through his portals
I disagree.
I tested her "find a 3-gen at the start of the match" and then hold it forever. I could literally have held that until the server closed. That's not on the Survivors, that's on poor Killer design.
This is incorrect. Maps that have built in easy 3 gens, can still be locked down for long periods of time if the SM chooses to do so. Dead Dawg, RPD etc. sure you can win if everyone attacks the 3 gen setups from the start but if that doesn’t happen, it’s going to be a long game. And trust and believe it will get worse after the next patch because they will equip sloppy to get the slow down that way.
"Her 3 gen is only good if survivors let it be"
To be fair, the same could have been said of Dead Hard and its tiny 0.5 second Endurance, and yet people disliked it enough that it earned yet another nerf, so I'd say SM could still be on the table for nerfs of the "Player satisfaction" kind and not the "Game balance" kind.
I mean what's the difference between area control and gen/totem control.
If ur in a swf her 3 gen is easy to dismantle but soloqueue it is impossible. I dont understand when ppl day “dont let it happen” when most skull merchants camp gens from the start of the match. Also COB/Overcharge still has significant strength. Even if they dont win.. even if they dont get akill.. the game still lasts30 minutes.
Did the survivors bother to disable the drones? I don't see you holding a 3 gen when your only power is being a 122% killer. You have to commit to chases at that point
Also one match doesn't mean much. People have played with burgerking Myers and managed to 4k. If survivors are bad enough everything is possible.
Yes, they certainly did disable drones.
Unfortunately for them, I only need three Drones and the areas around the gens are dead zones.
Also, these guys literally brought me to Ormond and were kitted up.
...they also may have all DC'd after the 25 minute mark.
Her chase now is just unnecessarily broken, if you try running to another loop she just places a drone and exposes you.
If you had 3 drones that means only one survivor was disabling your drone...
So 75% of the survivors refused to interact with your power. There is zero reason you should ever have more then one drone if you hold a 3 gen and refuse to chase
Sorry but that does sound like it was on the survivors. And especially now that the 3gen perks are being gutted (rightfully so) i really don't see it as a issue anymore
Okay.
Go watch Hens then, I think he did a day of holding 3-gens with nerfed SM.
I'm sure at least one team was good, but hey, if you want to ignore obvious issues that's not really on me, so I'm out.
I seem to remember in the past we had a discussion about Legion where i argued he wasn't the weakest killer in the game.
Brought up that Otz had his 50 win streak with Legion and then if i remember correctly you said it was very much possible to have 50 matches in a row without good players
Regardless it's hard to acknowledge a issue when we haven't seen the potential fix yet. I think the perks were the big culprit here and those are being nerfed.
If she is still able to lock down 3 gens without CoB/Overcharge and survivors interacting with your power after the update i'll gladly eat my words
She will always be problematic until they rework her completely.
It's still way too easy to hold a 3 gen. Her gameplay loop is still ridiculously tedious. Her entire kit is based around forcing the survivors into a repetitive pre-requisite (disabling drones) before they can hold M1 for 90 seconds on a gen. It's about as dull as it sounds on paper. And that assumes the Skull Merchant player hasn't loaded Dead by Daylight with the sole intent of protecting a 3 gen for the entire evening, which, let's be real, they have. You're realistically going through that repetitive pre-requisite to hold M1 for 20 seconds tops before you get chased off and have the drone on the gen replaced. Like...yeah, you can put drones at a loop, but why would you do that when you can put them all on gens? It's like cooking pancakes on a grill. It's an ineffective way to cook pancakes.
And it's possibly the most skill-less interaction in the game in chase. She has haste and pallets break underneath you. No mindgames or skill shots or zoning necessary.
I refuse to believe this killer was tested extensively and they reached an internal consensus of "this makes the video game fun". I refuse.
I've never seen surv mains being particularly vocal against CoB and Overcharge. It only was Eruption that they wanted to see dead.
Then you haven’t been paying much attention as there’s literally been a massive outcry everywhere (not just here) about SM, 3 gens, and the two perks.
Here's a story:
Was in a SoloQ game for over an hour today. Maybe hour and a half? Me (8k hrs) another survivor: 9k hrs. The other 2 survivors, unknown. Killer: 1.5k hrs.
Anyway, she 3 genned with full slow down and even with all our experience, we did not even get CLOSE to breaking the gen. She never hooked anyone, just slugged. Eventually I gave up and stopped survivors from healing me when slugged. It was actually at that point when the killer noticed this, and picked me up and dropped me to stop me dying and went immediately back to 3 genning.
Eventually everyone gave up and she just toyed around with us for ages, picking us up, nodding enthusiastically, lining us up for a nice screenshot I suppose. And although it doesn't usually get this extreme, it's not uncommon when vsing Skull Merchant's.
Until the next patch I will not be playing vs Skull Merchant in SoloQ for longer than a takes me to realize its a Skull Merchant. And even then, we'll have to see.