Skull Merchant feels weak
Skull Merchants drones feel underwhelming and way too easy to avoid, now that stealth drones and double scanlines are gone. Is there any news on an update/rework?
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Skull Merchants drones feel underwhelming and way too easy to avoid, now that stealth drones and double scanlines are gone. Is there any news on an update/rework?
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Last we heard about Skull Merchant was when they gave her a small round of buffs and floated the idea of scrapping her proposed larger rework.
I dont think those buffs were strong enough to be an excuse of a scrapped rework. The only relavant is that fast vault immunity was removed. If a the rework happens to be cancelled, she should as well be reverted to her 2.0 state
Yeah, they gave little bit of buffs and nerfed stealth for it.
Just rework her…
Just revert her back to how she was pre-gutting until they can do a decent rework.
And for the love of god, don't listen to Pixel Bush's terrible ideas. I respect his dedication to Merchant and wanting her to be what she should be, but my god his ideas for how to get there are bad.
Agreed. I also really dislike the drone buddy thing. We dont need ANOTHER projectile killer. I can play Huntress or Trickster for that. I just really hope they dont listen to Pixelbush because thats how they got the idea with the recall undetectable as well…
Recall undetectable is actually so much fun. So many cool plays you can do with it. She's super effective at sneaking up to people now
That may be true, but her overall kit is weak. Her trap playstyle is gone and with single scanline the antiloop also became unreliable. Outside of rotating drones you dont get scans. Plus the general fact that you have to do much more than other killers for little effort (take Nightmare as an example, who can instantly hinder survivors while the Skull Merchant has to scan them 4 times with 1 scanline for a weaker hindered). I say either bring double scanlines or stealth mode drones back and do an Addon overhaul and shes fine. Not even need for a rework.
I definitely agree that SM is weak rn, though I do think the single scanline is a very good idea. Good players are very deliberate on which rotation they place their drones in depending on the survivor's position in the loop, and use carefully counterrotating switches at the right moment to accelerate triggering the drone effect, which I think is really cool, and adds a lot of mastery and Depth to SM, but yes, she is still too weak imo
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I used to be an advocate for the stealth on recall. Then I tried it and found it to be obnoxious and clunky.
I fundamentally disagree with everything you have said.
The single scanline and missing stealth mode makes drones extremely easy to hack becaue the beam is so easy to avoid. This is a huge bottleneck in her power, no matter how she gets buffed. Rotating drones also existed when she had 2 scanlines as well. I say bring it back but keep the haste the same so people rotating drones also get rewarded.
Because now it requires skill and being deliberate. I've tried it myself as an avoid Skull Merchant advocate and it has been amazing. Getting stealth is extremely strategic right now, though of course her controls require getting used to
In truth, disabling her drones has always been easy, 1 scan line or 2. However, the 1 scan line makes her a deliberate and skillful killer when applying her drones in chase. Though their effect in chase right now is evidently too weak, the gameplay and strategy around it is somewhat solid
That is why I can see that pixel bush was right. He as a strong skull merchant main also understand how to make her power something you have to learn to use, rather than just being able to drop down drones without thought and get value.
Though I agree, if for the intel, there'd be better ways to make far away drones being able to contribute to her intel, than adding 2 scan lines. New mechanics around it potentially
I fear adding new mechanics would change her identity though. I dont want her to be a projectile or dash killer, we have 30 others of those.
I didn't mean those type of mechanics, but just mechanics that make her a proper information killer. Like having drones scan lines always scan, and reveal aura, even if they disable a drone, making disabling a drone only affect the damage the scan lines can do, just to name something out of the top of my head
I just wouldn't want them to ruin her skillful drone gameplay she has right now (even if that gameplay is currently to weak rn)
Disabling drones should be harder or have a penalty, idk, maybe a non injuring clawtrap? (Like her iridescent addon, her power is a tracking ability anyways, right?)
Actually your ideas sound rly good, I might even open up a thread on brainstorming buffs for SM, lol
I agree. They definitely have provided too many ways to completely counter her information aspect, which is supposed to be one of her main aspects. And with the gen regression limit, it's now safer to provide information. They could even just make disabling drones take a significant amount of time, like 15 seconds, so it can still serve as game slowdown. There's so many possibilities
1.5 years later and still no SM fixes…. SM needs a COMPLETE rework but I have a feeling BHVR does not care. Proof? What's all this grimoire business and angel themed killer and survivor? It's okay though, I get it….BHVR is a "super small" indie company and needs to prioritize on making money /S
Guess what BHVR, letting killers to rot is a bad look. You sell skins for stuff you abandon. Really bad look. Releasing half baked overly imbalanced stuff. Skull Merchant should never been released in hindsight if you are unwilling to fix her.
All we can do is be loud.
I get your point, but SM already doesnt get enough value out of drones. They dont down you like Artist crows for example. And the single beam along with missing stealth mode makes drone hacking way too easy because the beam is so easy to avoid. This is a huge bottleneck in her power, no matter the buffs. Not to mention that rotating drones was also possible back when she had 2 scanlines. I would say keep the haste the same so players actively rotating them also get value out of it
I believe the drone injuring mechanic should be changed entirely, and she should be able to take both healthstate with the drones, but the injuring should be tied to changing the drone rotation not to the basic rotation in general, with more details to make it healthy in chases
Until you find out you can just recycle one drone for infinite undetectable…
For normal gameplay it's simply worse, less stealth early game and less stealth during chases. Otherwise you get same result for more effort, where she really wasn't in spot for such nerfs imo.
Less stealth in chases? You just confessed she can have permanent stealth. If you don't have permanent stealth, it means you aren't utilizing her to her fullest. A lot of Skull Merchants today don't even utilize half of her strategies. Recall undetectable has added so much more depth and potential to her, but yes, she's nowhere close to finished. How she injures/could down people with drones should also be looked at
"For normal gameplay it's simply worse" This is important part….
She has permanent stealth, if you are willing to do quite an annoying thing, which I am not.
If you want her stealth to be in short duration just to ambush survivors like before, it's basically more work for same thing. In early game you get basically no stealth unless you decide to not create any drones in advance…
Right now, she is still very weak, because survivors can deny a lot of things from her kit. But her kit was/is very easy to use, devs can't really make her good killer right now, so I would rather see a rework.
Either this or a revert to he pre nerf version with stealth drones which made her less trash to play