Revert Skull Merchant changes already.
It is clear that all you did was gut her for no reason in utter defiance of logic. The problem was always the survivors who refuse to even try to play against her. Once you have started adequately punishing survivors for trying to go next you should give Skull Merchant her damn power back and leave it the hell alone.
Comments
lol yeah they killed her and for good reason. she needs to go back to the drawing board instead of just giving every single effect to her power.
i actually miss the first iteration. with the right adjustments she could have been bearable. like, area of effect does not scan you for the exposed effect if immobile or crouching BUT skull merchant can see her drones on her radar and can see survivors under them as if they had a claw trap. this way the drones are not useless if deployed and not destroyed and can still be useful in chase cause expose build up and being able to mind game with her radar since now she can see you under the area of a drone. survivors would have to decide how they want to face her: either take the drones down every chance they get but skull merchant can track them anywhere thanks to the clawtrap (and free dissolution effect on first pallet) or leave the drones be and still be tracked while under their area of effect and risk getting exposed and skull merchant getting undetectable under them.
and also it wouldn't be an issue for 3 genning. you no longer get scanned by the drones if doing a gen, skully just knows you are there, so she still has to come and shoo you away. but since you are not getting enough exposed build up by coming and going from the area of effect, you don't risk getting exposed while tapping the gen.
I wouldn't say to leave it alone entirely, there were some issues to tighten up.
For instance, her power doesn't telegraph itself properly, making it hard to know what exactly it's doing without extensive research outside of the game itself. Addressing that would've been much smarter than just dismantling her core gameplan for no good reason, in my opinion.
A couple other small things here and there could be tweaked too. I actually liked the idea of giving her a slowdown effect when she places drones, for punishing the whole "loop zoning" thing, and addressing some other small things like drone overlap and the entirely unnecessary Deep Wound effect being removed would be appropriate.
Unfortunately I suspect that BHVR are planning a second ground-up rework for her instead. I hope it actually works and people stop complaining this time, at least.
She needs a buff, but %100 should not be reverted.
just return her first version until rework, no?
kicking perks are gutted and there is 3-gen feature
Skull Merchant 2.0 was the more interactive and skill-expressive version, so it'd probably be healthier to bring her back… absent the context that a lot of players vehemently hate both versions for arbitrary reasons, anyway.
That's the problem though: SM wasn't nerfed for her strength, she was driven into the ground for the sole purpose of silencing complaints until the full rework (in the process reducing the complaints in the forum from burying feedback on new releases/other ongoing issues) comes out about a year later.
The fact that so many people just didn't want to deal with her (no matter their reasons) and instantly went next (giving her a staggering 70% killrate) made any kind of data completely invalid for balance purposes due to a lot of her kills being people giving up. There is no point in trying to find reason behind her overkill nerf: It's whole purpose was to destroy her pickrate (an "unofficial killswitch" in a way since they can't exactly completely remove her from the game until the rework) until her next version is ready, her strength wasn't the main factor driving this nerf.
Don't misunderstand, I'm not defending the nerf (It sets a frightening precedent: if players refuse to play against something for long enough, it'll get nerfed into uselessness eventually) but I'm fairly certain that until the rework is ready she will stay as she is to keep her mostly irrelevant and absent from feedback.
I cannot think of a worse idea that nerfing something into the ground a YEAR in advance of the actual changes you are planning. BHVR ######### up so bad here that I will never have faith in them again. I was expecting the rework when they announced the changes they were making then only to get slapped in the face.
You can't give the entire kitchen sink to a kit and not expect it to be a nightmare to play against.
Speaking of which, new Freddy…
Oh please. There were and still are killers with more in their kit than she had and you people don't complain.