jesterkind
jesterkind
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While I agree that three of these four examples are good examples of genrushing, it's not the perks that enabled it. Leaving Gabriel out since he was the one who just had some gimmick perks that are perfectly manageable (and honestly kind of bad) on their own, let's do a little thought experiment with the remaining three examples.
Are they doing their generators any faster if we take away their item?
Nea and Renato have a small boost to their gen repair because they're running Deja Vu (I think?), but Deja Vu on its own is only a six percent boost specifically to the 3-gen. Not bad by any stretch, but hardly genrushing.
Kate, though, only has one perk that relates to generator repair at all, and that makes generators go slower overall. Clearly, without her item, Kate here has an anti genrush build.
Those builds are genrush builds, but it's because of the toolbox. Stacking together all the possible gen repair perks that don't make gens actually go slower (like Prove Thyself and Friendly Competition) wouldn't equal half of what a toolbox build can give you, not even close. It's Built To Last + Streetwise with the toolbox that makes these genrush builds, and if our Gabriel here had been running a toolbox instead of a medkit, his gen repair speed would've shot up exponentially too. Remove repair speed from toolboxes (replacing it with something else, ofc), and genrush disappears overnight.
EDIT: also, it's really not toxic, it's just a balance problem.
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A lot of those codes were for banner icons, did you look up there?
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@C3Tooth said:
I mean the game is balanced around 2.5 kills per game. Means it can go between 2 - 11 hooks, make it average of 6.5hooks. And Gen time is really enough to make ~6.5 hooks most of the time.
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3738576#Comment_3738576
I dont see a toolbox is problem, but same to slowdown. Stacking them is. And I really dont know what Devs can do so survivor cant stack the same items.
Well, toolboxes are a problem even if there's only one in the match, as long as that one toolbox is a Commodious with the right addons. With that in mind, I think the only reasonable solution at this stage is to just remove the repair speed bonus entirely and replace it with something else.
I've seen a few ideas floated around for what that might look like, but one I like is having it provide a "shield" against generator regression instead of providing extra repair speed. That'd be pretty workable, I think.
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In my opinion, slowdown perks are perfectly fine to exist, but the problem comes from the fact that them existing and being very unrestricted means that a lot of killers fall into the bad habit of stacking their build with four slowdown perks and nothing else, or three slowdown perks and a solitary information perk. Not only is this obnoxious as hell to face on the survivor side, but it's also making the killer's gameplan extremely fragile— all it takes is one kind of long first chase or two, and you're no longer able to make up the deficit, because all your perks rely on getting downs and you don't have anything to actually help you do that.
This is a tricky problem to fix, but I do think the devs should seriously consider making direct-regression perks (so percent regression like Pop/Pain Res, or increases to default regression like Ruin or Overcharge) either hard-coded as impossible to stack, or meaningfully limited in a way similar to Exhaustion perks.
With that baseline established, that only one of those perks is likely to be in play, a few things can improve. Survivors get to no longer be forced into doing the same generator twice because of constant regression, those perks get to be buffed where necessary to function on their own, and killer players get pushed into learning how to play without slowdown as well as being freed up to start experimenting with more diverse builds.
(Not that a lot would, they'd just stack gen-blocking, but that's still better than what we have.)
As an aside, there's a temptation to say that "gen progression" would necessarily need to be nerfed at the same time, but that's not really true. The only problematic gen progression that exists is toolboxes, this isn't an archetype-wide issue. Nerf toolboxes at the same time as doing this and that's more than enough.
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Until such time as stacking slowdown perks is made either impossible or undesirable (like Exhaustion), that's gonna be the meta. I don't see any reason killers would stop stacking strong slowdown perks just because one of them took a noticeable nerf.
I'd like to see more players start branching out into the wealth of solid perks we have that aren't slowdown, but they're clearly going to need a push from BHVR to do that.
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@HexHuntressThighs said:
Soldiers Putee is the worst in the game. Imagine being a 115% M1 Killer with a 50 meter terror radius 💀
I'd argue the Soldier's Putee is actually pretty good… for a yellow addon. If it were a yellow it'd be considered a pretty solid but outclassed addon for a few gimmick uses, it only looks awful because it's an iridescent.
My answer, to the overall thread, is definitely Pyramid Head's Obsidian Goblet (an addon that does nothing of note) or Skull Merchant's Expired Batteries (an addon that is worse than running nothing). Hard to pick between the two, honestly.
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@squbax said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3737667#Comment_3737667
You have done exactly the same when people showed you why the skill ceiling with SM is so low and the argument of her requiring very few skill is true to a lot of people. You just refuse to acknowledge that she requires by many orders of magnitude very low skill in order to get results effectively.
You just repeat your point like its 100% fact when way more people have showed you why its not. Hell I even played some skull merchant after pixelbushs guide to discover her apparent skill ceiling, she is still one if not the easiest killer to master.
Because all the macro she requires all killer need to master too, so its not intrinsic to her, her techs are minimal and incredibly easy to master at that, using drones at an elevation to allow double floor scans just requires you to know its possible and be able to click m2, laser tagging is just as easy too.
And looping with her is just place drone at a loop and either go after them when they leave or continue looping until they get slowed and its a free down or they crouch and stand still and you get m1s.
You did not place a drone at a loop? How you are using m1 gameplay, which is not exclusive to SM and any m1 killer does. You are using her drones in the entrance to main building or inbetween chain tiles for clutch scans? Wow you needed to know where to places are and press m2, how difficult.
You complain people who undermine SM do not listen to your arguments however you yourself are incapable of accepting an argument that does not support your previous views.
Right, so, things have started drifting off course and I'll try to bring them back on track.
There are a few different positions all being smushed together here, which to be fair is pretty easy to do. For the record, I would never claim that Skull Merchant is not a killer with a low skill floor, nor would I pretend that she's up there with the hardest killers to master. She has a low skill floor, and most of her skill ceiling is tactical rather than mechanical. This is a perfectly fine thing to say in isolation, and I agree with it- she's basically in line with killers like Clown and Legion, neither of whom are mechanically difficult to play and mostly revolve around macro strats and specific positioning of power usage (in Clown's case) as you get to higher level play.
The problem is, people warp that position into something else. They warp it into saying that she gets massive value for extremely little effort, which isn't true. The skill floor is low, but the rewards for the low-skill plays are proportionately low. Not exactly where they should be, mind, but the whole "drop something at a loop and force survivors to run away" thing doesn't exactly win games against halfway decent survivors no matter which killer does it, and that's the only thing that gives disproportionate reward. It's a problem, but not because it's OP.
So, yes, I will "refuse" to acknowledge that she gets massive results for little effort, because that isn't true. The second that survivors understand how her power works - and I will acknowledge that isn't as likely to happen as it should be because of her reputation - even dropping stuff at a loop to zone gets less effective. I am more than happy to support that statement with further arguments if there's actually interest in hearing me out, instead of just shutting down the mere idea of discussing this by stubbornly repeating the core claim back at me as though I haven't been trying to argue against it this entire time.
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@Pulsar said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3737667#Comment_3737667
You CAN play Sniper Knight. You could have played non condemned Sadako.
That doesn't mean that the playstyles that 99% of players used are suddenly okay. Sure, if some people don't do that, it's nice. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter if there are other options if nobody uses them.
It doesn't, no. This particular reply, in isolation, is completely correct.
What it doesn't do is support the rest of your arguments in this thread. Like I said to you before, the most you can conclude here is that the loop-zoning strategy needs to be fixed. It doesn't support the argument that it's "literally her entire kit", it doesn't support the argument that she should be deleted from the game, it doesn't support the argument that she's a failure, or any of the other things you and others say about her regularly. It just means there's a problem.
Like I said to you before, you're acting like there being one problem means the entire rest of the power no longer exists. It's an irrational starting position that poisons all discourse, and actively obfuscates any chance of meaningful, useful feedback.
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@Rudjohns said:
I stopped at "The Skull Merchant's skill expression comes in a few areas"
Yeah, not wasting my time with this one
So why waste both our time by commenting?
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The "Shroud" offerings are the secret ones for Survivor. They govern survivor spawn position - the Shroud of Union spawns survivors together in pairs of two, the Shroud of Binding spawns the survivors together in a group of four, and Vigo's Shroud spawns the user far away from the killer.
None of them are particularly strong for the survivors, so you don't really need to worry about them.
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@Pulsar said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3737481#Comment_3737481
Literally nothing you wrote is proof. Obviously you see it as 100% fact, but not many other people do.
It comes off as just ignoring criticism by saying, "I already disproved that, because I think what I'm saying is right."
You are the one making a claim here. The burden of proof falls to you and most of us are unsatisfied with the arguments you've presented. Most are opinion, but a couple are just outright wrong.
So, just to be clear: I'm not saying "I already disproved that because I think what I'm saying is right". I'm directing you to the fact that I've already laid out a response to the thing you're saying. It's not that I'm saying it's 100% fact, it's that those are my reasonings and you're not actually responding to them.
You haven't added anything to this discussion. You're just repeating the claims I made this post to counter. You're acting like all there is to her is zoning out survivors with mid-chase drones, and ignoring any attempt I make at pointing out that this isn't true. You even tried to duck out of the conversation entirely when I confronted you on that directly.
I am more than open to debating my points. That just requires acknowledging my points and trying to counter them. You think some of the arguments I laid out are outright wrong? Make that case! I'm more than down for discussing it. You just aren't doing that.
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@OnryosTapeRentals said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3737478#Comment_3737478
that were wrong in some way,
Wrong according to you.
Which I laid out two thousand words worth of reasoning for.
I'm not just saying "it's wrong because I say so". I did actually go to the lengths of explaining my position.
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@Pulsar said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3737478#Comment_3737478
just when i think I'm out, you pull me right back in…
Just because you believe complaints to be wrong doesn't ACTUALLY make them wrong. You haven't proven anything and clearly, people disagree with your ideas.
I might re-evaluate.
Yeah, I mean, that's what the post is for. Laying out the reasons why they're wrong.
Like, that's the proof. The stuff I wrote. In the post you're responding to.
You're welcome to disagree, but outside of doggedly refusing to acknowledge the difference between a killer being able to do a thing and that thing being, quote, "literally her entire kit", you've not exactly supported that disagreement with anything substantial.
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@OnryosTapeRentals said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3737472#Comment_3737472
most people would still be starting with that emotionally-driven comment up at the start of your post, I suppose…
This is what always gets me. If the majority of people are coming to the same conclusion and saying this same thing then maybe they have a point?
Mostly the issue there is that it isn't really a majority, it's just a common sentiment. Also, there are a lot of common sentiments that aren't actually accurate, the appeal to majority is a fallacy for a reason.
Like, this post exists for a reason. I got up to eight common complaints that were wrong in some way, seven if you discount the second one that mostly exists to support the first. Those things that people are saying absolutely do not have a point, hence the post existing. Yet, they're still common.
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@OnryosTapeRentals said:
Skull Merchant is an affront to game design.
There's nothing particularly skillful about following a survivor to a loop, tapping M2, and profiting — which is how 99.9% of SMs play. Her having the ability to do some interesting things like hiding drones or lasertagging is moot, because the majority of players will take the path of least resistance to win and this so-called "skill expression" will never see the light of day.
As long as you acknowledge her kit has skill expression, then you're not falling afoul of that point in this post.
People starting from that more honest and accurate position would definitely elevate the state of discourse to the point where conversations can actually happen, but then again, most people would still be starting with that emotionally-driven comment up at the start of your post, I suppose…
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@Caiman said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3737343#Comment_3737343
there are three killers who can do the "drop stuff at a loop, force survivors to run" thing and she's the least problematic of the three
Your bias is so massive, it's punching through the roof. I can't take this seriously at all.
I can justify that if you want. I'll even also say that it honestly doesn't even matter, it's a problem for all three and should be fixed somehow for all three.
But, if we want to go down that route, I don't think those three killers are on equal footing when it comes to how problematic the strat is.
There's only a fine line between "massive bias" and "having actually thought about the topic and having a more substantial take on it".
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It's decent.
It shines especially on killers who can minimise the time it takes to go kick generators, either by getting between them very quickly or by having a way of making the kick action itself faster through an addon. The gold standard here is Wraith, who with Windstorm and Shadow Dance can both zip between gens quickly and kick them faster while cloaked.
The more gens you hit at once, the more value Eruption gives. That aura reading is no joke, either, it lingers for quite a while and actually soft-counters Distortion since it lasts long enough to chew through two stacks on a single activation.
It's not as good on immobile killers and it can run slightly afoul of the anti-3-gen system if used carelessly, so I don't think it's incredible, but it's definitely a worthwhile pick in some situations.
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@Pulsar said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3736747#Comment_3736747
She takes the barest amount of skill. Really more game experience than anything. Just gotta know to put Drone's in loops and on gens and you'll win 99/100 times.
She does take away Survivor skill. That's literally her entire kit. If she places a drone, which she will, you HAVE to leave the loop or get hit. That's removing the most skillful thing about Survivor, looping. God forbid you actually try to loop her since she can be faster and not have a tell. Couple that with Hindered and random Undetectable without warning and you have a Killer that specializes in making things as unskillful as possible.
She gets plenty of value against all but the best coordinated Survivors.
Hyperbole or not, it's still correct.
Low skill-floor but high-value is a problem. SM has nearly zero skill expression, certainly none related to her power, and the riveting counterplay of, "Delay the hit by 5 seconds by leaving the loop when she puts down a Drone or else you just die"
Even BL3 falters against some pallets and you are forced to break them. SM, and Knight, will keep forcing you to new loops and you'll be forced to play the same counterplay over and over again. At least Knight has his Banner. With SM, even if she places a Drone at Shack and can't get you, you still get Hindered and she gets Haste, so you get zero distance.
Not sure why you just ignore her issues simply because you play her a lot. I play Knight a lot but I fully recognize that he sucks ass to play against and that the game would be better if he were re-designed. Enjoying a character doesn't mean you can't think they are fundamentally flawed.
The problem you keep running into here is that you keep conflating one possible thing she can do with her entire kit. I think you're also overblowing that one thing - there are three killers who can do the "drop stuff at a loop, force survivors to run" thing and she's the least problematic of the three - but even if you aren't, that's not the whole killer.
The most you could conclude from this argument - YOUR argument, not mine - is that the one thing you're describing desperately needs to be fixed. It's NOT grounds to conclude that the whole killer needs to be redesigned, or tossed out, or that she has no skill expression, etcetera etcetera, because what you're describing is not her whole kit, it's one specific tactic she can do.
To say that she has "nearly zero skill expression, certainly none related to her power" because of one thing she CAN do but does not NEED to do is massively reductive for no benefit.
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@bjorksnas said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3737220#Comment_3737220
Personally I would probably add footsteps discernable within ~12m and that buzzing sound she gets when undetectable should be audible either in a big area or global and see where it goes from there but that might be all it needs or even a bit less
I'm less interested in really exploring the nuances of that discussion now, and more interested in pointing out that the common version of that complaint is missing an extremely key element of the discussion.
After all, this is a post of responses to common complaints.
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@bjorksnas said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3737078#Comment_3737078
I don't want to make another list so lets double down on the stealth
If you want a simple argument since you can't read a big one here you go
Her stealth needs a tell or downsides because all other stealth killers have a tell or downsides even the one with a similar "timer based stealth" has tells for his stealth so its a bad argument to make that be her balancing factor to her stealth since her timer is long enough to score hits and it being only 1 direct comparison is silly in a game with 3 months between characters and aren't all stealth characters, if her stealth lasted ~4s or ~5s the argument for timer based stealth would be fine but it lasts 8s to 9.6s its too much time to go without a tell
Fully agreed! It would be fantastic if that were the argument people were making.
Of course, it isn't the argument people make. Hence it not being on this list.
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@bjorksnas said:
Theres a lot to unpack here
- The skill expression might exist but its not really that much compared to other killers and the gap between an ok skill merchant play and a great one isn't visible enough to appreciate, most skull merchants can just slap down a drone at every loop and call it a day specific min max placement and rotation is a neat idea but I go entire matches without seeing anything special against most of them, ive probably not even seen a single drone rotate the opposite direction since they have added it or even felt the need to use it myself.
- The drop drone playstyle is easy and frequent and because the stacks can only go up and not down until you either get hooked or get broken its not that fun to skip out of a loop after being tagged
- Her counterplay is niche at best and just gets countered by the strategy from point 2, if you hack a drone and go to that loop you likely get ~1 loop out of it which is the same that you would get out of a loop without a drone in it yet so its a waste of time and 2 less than any other m1 killer which is just always going to feel bad hacked drone or not go to a loop if its too hard to loop place a drone. Stacks have no counterplay other than lul just injure yourself they are near permanent, replacing a drone isn't much of a downside she doesn't get slowed while recalling, she doesn't get slowed while placing, the 10s cooldown is only important if all the drones happen to be hacked in one area where you can chain them together and only then that just buys you 10s for every drone that was hacked after the first, and each of those 10s the "counterplay" bought likely cost close to the same amount of time to find and hack all of them in the first place, and you only benefit IF you chase there or they might recall anyway when they see them hacked across the map and then its fruitless
- The problem with comparing the number of effects is the limitations between them, weskers speed comes at the cost of a cooldown while skull merchants can technically be constant, his power comes at the cost of a turn rate limiting what loops he can use it around while base movement speed its universal for any loop, ect its not really a fair comparison but basically souping up basekit numbers on an m1 killer is more universal than an m2 killer with a hit or miss power that may or may not be usable at a loop.
- She gets her best one for the start of the match at the push of a button, and while the other ones are not exactly at the push of a button they aren't much harder than that since it basically is up to the survivor to decide if she gets them or they leave the loop vsing the most common playstyle, niche out of chase speed and tracking is an ok thing but most of the time when she ends up getting the status effects it was close to the push of a button and not a complicated setup of carefully managed traps
- This one is actually fine, this is something survivors can pay attention to and take note of and is a silly complaint that is a punishment for lack of due diligence
- As the play area decreases skull merchants power is comparatively better than most other killers compared to something like clown having half the map for the same amount of drones means she gets a lot more powerful if drones cover ~10% of the maps play area halving the size of the play area means drones cover ~20% of the remaining space her power just becomes stronger in small tight nit areas with no real setup penalty against most teams she can easily pick one from the start of the match and make it a hassle which is usually too much for my poor solo queue teammates it doesn't create the most fun or fair matches
Ah the stealth with no tell, yes this is one of my favorites many a time I have made this argument and maybe a discussion or two about it so lets start by going down the comparison list, this one breaks away from the normal list for better formatting
Again almost all killers with any stealth mechanic in their basekit niche or not has a couple tells or drawbacks to it to balance it out
Wraith - Has to uncloak and has loud uncloaking sounds and gnashing sounds while cloaked
Myers - Has to stay slow to be stealthy has some breathing sounds still even with the drawback of being 105% speed for more of a tell
Freddy - Lullaby on oblivious survivors removing TR depth but still letting survivors know when you are within 32m, not always active and takes a decent amount of time to earn passively or has to be actively earned
Pig - Has to either ambush or uncrouch giving a bit of reaction time and moves slower while stealthed
Ghostface - Cooldown based and decently loud whooshing sounds
Demo - Global sound and big stomps so that undetectable is mostly just for show after portal travel
Onion - Lullaby while cloaked, and has to uncloak to hit
Dredge - whooooooooooooooooooooooooshing, and has to earn it a bit
Chucky - (This one is the closest to skull merchant so pay attension) Timer based stealth, global footstep effect, laughing, cooldown that isn't active while in stealth, oh yeah and a 110 killer
Compared to skull merchant, timer based stealth, easily reachable 80% uptime without addons due to cooling down while active her uptime isn't able to reach 100% anymore which is good but 96% with addons is still pretty strong I don't even know how fast a TR fades back out or back in but it might not even reach back to her full 32m at that speed
Her only "downside" to her stealth being "timer based" its a marginal point at best since even the other killer with a timer based cooldown has 4 countermeasures to make his stealth weaker and more spread out that skull merchants and have to actively rely on it, 8s or 9.6s is enough to get most things done, it takes 7s to reach a gen that is 32m away you can very easily gauge the distance and have perfect stealth all the way over to it with any amount of los blocking
she isn't slowed, she doesn't have footsteps, she doesn't have a passive area sound (including breathing), she doesn't have a lullaby, she doesn't have to exit her stealth before interacting with survivors, she doesn't have an activation time to enter stealth, her cooldown is active while she is in stealth, and she doesn't have to build it up as a passive / global power. Its not even a comparison at that point her stealth is just silly and should get a counter balance or two
Alright, let's crack into these!
1: So, this one is both not true and kind of irrelevant to the point being made. This post is a series of responses to common complaints, and the common complaint is that she doesn't have any skill expression. Not even that she doesn't need skill to win, that her kit doesn't have skill expression in it to even use if you wanted to.
I'd maybe buy that as hyperbole if so many people didn't double and triple down on it when pressed, so responding to the actual thing said is fairly important.
As for her having drastically less skill expression, or the whole "an okay skull merchant play and a great one has too small a difference to appreciate" thing, that's a little subjective, but I'd argue it's definitely not true. An okay Merchant play would be a basic trap or just trying to zone, and a skilled one would be hidden traps, perfect rotations, lasertagging, sniping through tiny gaps in the terrain… you'd immediately be able to tell the difference if you were paying attention and engaging in good faith. She's a killer with a low skill floor, but that isn't inherently a problem as long as her kit has skill expression and counterplay, which hers does.
2: Not sure what the point of this one is, I already acknowledged that dropping drones at loops is boring.
3: I laid out some of her counterplay in the post, and you'll notice not all of it revolved around hacking drones.
4: You're making my point back to me here. Remember again that this is a series of responses. If people want to have a conversation about the implementation of Skull Merchant's power effects, and they're starting from the position of acknowledging that the number isn't the problem, that'd be something- but they don't want to have that conversation. That's not the argument being made. People say her kit has too many effects, so I'm pointing out that it doesn't have more than other powers, comparatively. If they have a problem, and they don't also have that problem with a killer like Wesker, the problem can't be how many effects she has.
5: She still doesn't get her effects for the push of a button. Even if we're only looking at her dropping drones at a loop to force survivors into running away, and we're ignoring everything else, she still only gets Undetectable because the survivors are running away and denying the rest of them in most cases. If she wants to reliably get use out of all of her status effects, she has to put in a lot more effort than just pressing a button.
6: We agree on this one, so moving on.
7: This seems to hinge on her drones being AOEs that prevent traversal entirely, which, they're not. They're small rotating hazards that can be easily avoided when the killer isn't there to force you into moving at inopportune times. Skull Merchant gets less from patrolling a 3-gen than other killers when it comes to how her power interacts with it, that's just a fact.
8: Finally, we have the stealth. It seems like you're not quite acknowledging the point, which is that you can't JUST say she doesn't have an audio tell and act like that's proof her stealth is broken. This is one of the points that I wish people would have an honest conversation about, because I think there's a lot of room to discuss how fair her stealth is, overall. People don't do that, though, they just say she doesn't have an audio tell and act like that's all that needs to be said.
There's only one other killer with timed stealth, as you point out - so clearly stealth is typically not timed - and I don't think it's unfair to say he gets those other tells too because he's tiny. You're never gonna see him like you would a full size killer even without LoS blockers in some locations, and he needs LoS blockers to be much smaller than anyone else. Yet more nuance that would go into an actual discussion if anyone were inclined to have one.
Again, it bears repeating: This post is a series of responses. If you think the complaints being responded to are malformed and unhelpful, welcome to the state of Skull Merchant discourse, that's the thing I'm trying to address here.
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@Iron_Cutlass said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3736875#Comment_3736875
My point is that I both agree and disagree; Sorry for my wording, Im just having a hard time trying to explain this.
It's not solely because the Skull Merchant has a large amount of effects, nor is it the fact that players are forced to engage with some effects; it is the the fact that players are forced to engage with a large amount of effects. To put it as bluntly as possible, it's not solely either aspect, it is both aspects put together that people have an issue with.
Think about it like this:
- Take a Killer like Plague for example, you are forced to deal with the Broken status effect and the option between cleansing or not cleansing to provide her power. Being forced to engage with the Broken status effect is not an issue, since it's only a small thing to deal with.
- Likewise, with what you mentioned, Wesker has a lot in his kit, but players are not forced to engage with aspects of his kit constantly. Im not constantly forced to engage in mending from Deep Wounds, and I am given a lot of agency as to rather I want to engage in certain aspects of his power (e.g. the option to cleanse or forego infection; which after the change from 8% to 4% Hindered, is something you can actively consider now).
Skull Merchant has both, a power you are forced to engage with AND a lot of effects, not just solely one thing.
So, it should be acknowledged: This is still a different argument to the one I was responding to initially, which is the point of my putting it in the list to begin with. When that particular complaint is based on anything that isn't thoughtless surface-level irritation, the problem people actually have isn't the thing they say.
But, to address that argument too, I alllmmooost agree? I mostly don't agree because, frankly, most of what she does is necessary for how her power functions, and I mean that from the perspective of playing against her, too. She needs the Haste, the Hindered, and the injury at bare minimum in order for dodging drone beams to be something survivors are pushed into doing.
The only real exception to her power just, being a pretty straightforward "dodge this or you get hit with predictable status effects", would be the Deep Wound, which I think is kind of an annoyance that doesn't need to be there. The stuff you're actually forced to deal with otherwise is just… Undetectable. One status effect you're actually forced to deal with is not a large number. Everything else you're thinking about is the penalty for failing to counter her, not something you're forced to deal with no matter what.
Which, isn't that how powers are generally supposed to work? You take the action to counter it, and avoid the effects that it has? You don't usually have a choice in whether or not to engage with the effects, you just have the opportunity to avoid them to begin with.
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@Iron_Cutlass said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3736869#Comment_3736869
To address the Wesker point- it is a response to the argument that
Merchant's kit is bloated specifically and cannot be taken out of that
context. The point of making that comparison isn't that the two killers
work similarly, it's that they do a similar NUMBER of things, but people
don't call the other kit bloated.To answer this as bluntly as possible, part of the reason is because of how much you interact with an aspect of that Killer's power.
With my "Wesker can apply Deep Wounds" counterpoint, being put in Deep Wounds rarely happens against Wesker, as I mentioned it took me several months to get the Crash Course achievement, and in a public match, I still have yet been put in Deep Wounds against Wesker.
Meanwhile, you compare this to Skull Merchant, and it feels like at least once every match I am forced to engage in mending from Deep Wounds, and for other (less experienced) players, they are forced to engage with that aspect of her power even more.
This is why I said not to try and argue that Wesker is better designed.
The fact that you are making this argument proves that the problem isn't
the NUMBER of effects Skull Merchant gets. That's the point being made.I mean your post also just ignores the fact that Skull Merchant can just do more?
- Wesker has a 40-meter Terror Radius, Skull Merchant as a 32-meter Terror Radius, which is a massive difference between the two, making it harder for the Wesker to sneak up on Survivors.
- Skull Merchant can also apply the Broken status effect, which Wesker cannot do basekit.
- Skull Merchant can also become Undetectable, which Wesker cannot do basekit.
I just wanted to quickly address that real quick.
But this is where I do kind of agree with you, it's not a matter of the amount of effects in total but how often people are forced to engage with those effects. In Skull Merchant's case, she gets some buffs and the Survivor gets a lot of debuffs all at once, so you are not only forced to engage with it but the amount is inherently abundant when you are forced to engage with it.
I'm not sure what the point of your overall reply is here, if you agree that it isn't the number of effects?
Like, I don't mean to be rude, but you're repeating my point back to me. The problem isn't, and can't be, HOW MANY effects she has. The problem must, for the people who say this, be HOW those effects are used. That's the entire argument being made in the section you're responding to, I'm not ignoring anything or removing any nuance. I'm making that argument.
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@Iron_Cutlass said:
I agree with some of this but also disagree with some of this as well.
We'll start off with a pretty easy one. There are generally two things
happening behind this statement, and both of them are things worth
addressing. The first is that most people generally tend to not
acknowledge the skill expression her kit does have, and that's typically because they don't even know it exists, so we'll start with that.Id just like to say, I kind of agree… but at the same time I disagree. Skull Merchant does take at least some skill, the issue is that the skill ceiling is way lower compared to other Killers while also more rewarding.
This one doesn't pop up as much because I think most people kind of
understand why it isn't true? But for the sake of completionism I might
as well address it here as well.The argument you see in favour of
this complaint typically revolves around arguing that Merchant can set
up her drones near generators, and survivors will get scanned when she
comes to harass them away from that generator, building up towards a
Claw Trap. The problem with this is… well, there are a few problemsSkull Merchant is not as good at holding a 3-gen as before, but she is still undoubtably strong at holding it since the zones she creates forces Survivors to either: A, sneak around the drones and avoid scans, thus wasting time for the Generators to regress, or B, disable the drones wasting more time.
Knight is definitely in a better position for holding 3-gens than Skull Merchant in my opinion, but outright denying it as if it still isnt an issue is definitely not the play to make.
The only things her kit does that aren't related to a status effect
are the tracking on her radar and the fact that she can push survivors
into interacting with a map prop, everything else comes from a
status effect. This is different to other killers (especially ones
closer to her in how recently they were released), who may get a few
status effects, but get some of the value in their kit from more
baked-in mechanics as well. Take Wesker, for example: he and Skull
Merchant do a comparable amount of things, after all. He and SM both
have:~ A way of speeding themselves up
~ A way of slowing the survivors down
~ A way of injuring survivors
~ A way of applying Deep Wound
~ A way of tracking survivors
~ A map prop survivors interact with as part of the counterplay
When you ignore nuance than yes, they are the same, but the two are very much different from one another.
- Wesker's way of "speeding themselves up" does now allow for multi-directional movement, you are given a lot of restrictions for your burst of speed, and a cooldown for using it.
- Wesker's way of "slowing Survivors down" is through infection, which requires more skill to land due to the restrictions of Wesker's power. Also Wesker's Hindered effect is now at 4% Hindered. Skull Merchant's Hindered is at 10% Hindered.
- "A way of injuring Survivors" is just an outright pointless point to make, all Killers have this, and yet again, it is ignoring nuance.
- Wesker's way of "applying Deep Wounds" requires him to slam a Survivor into another Survivor, which is not only difficult but heavily relies on the Survivor messing up horribly.
This entire point you made is a bit dumb in my opinion. Anyone can make a similar set of comparisons by ignoring nuance. Here, let me show you:
"Freddy's power is the same as Trapper's power"
- They both have ways of injuring Survivors.
- They both have ways of downing Survivors.
- They both place a form of trap.
- Their powers create notifications for the Killer when disabled.
- Their powers create an audio cue when ran into or disabled.
Now do you see how dumb it is?
There are a lot of things people like to say about Skull Merchant, and
maddeningly, quite a lot of what's said is factually wrong, and even
some of the stuff that isn't can be kind of misleading or
misrepresented. This post isn't necessarily geared towards convincing
you to like Skull Merchant, or even to stop hating her, but rather to
try and make it so the discourse surrounding her is at least honest.Listen, I understand it can be frustrating. And while I do have aspects of Skull Merchant that I dont like (e.g. the illusion of choice with her power… also dw, I have this issue with a few other Killers as well), I do think she gets over-hated due to people not really understanding how her power works.
This being said, I do think there are better ways of addressing it. A lot of points made just feel like "well if X has this, why cant Y have this?" instead of actually addressing what the counterplay or play would be.
To address the Wesker point- it is a response to the argument that Merchant's kit is bloated specifically and cannot be taken out of that context. The point of making that comparison isn't that the two killers work similarly, it's that they do a similar NUMBER of things, but people don't call the other kit bloated.
I picked Wesker because they happened to share a surprising number of superficial similarities, making the comparison easier. My entire point in bringing it up is that people say Merchant's kit is bloated but typically, if pressed, what they mean is that they don't like how her kit uses its tools.
This is why I said not to try and argue that Wesker is better designed. The fact that you are making this argument proves that the problem isn't the NUMBER of effects Skull Merchant gets. That's the point being made.
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For the record, the past five survivors (not currently counting the newest one because I'd need to play with those perks more to form a solid opinion) have all released with at least one good strong perk, and only one of those perks (Made For This) has since been nerfed to my recollection.
Just to be transparent, the good strong perks are these, going by survivor:
Sable Ward: Wicked (very solid and useful for dodging attempted tunnellers if they return to the hook), Strength in Shadows (very strong self heal with an aura read to boot)
Alan Wake: Champion of Light (powerful chase perk that adds a lot of distance to chases when used correctly, with strong synergies too)
Ellen Ripley: Light-Footed (blocking footstep sounds is an extremely underrated effect, and this is a strong stealth perk because of it)
Nic Cage: Honestly all of his meet the criteria to at least be "decent"
Gabriel Soma: Made For This (I don't need to explain this one), Troubleshooter (very solid solo queue info perk)
The fact of the matter is, new offerings for survivor perks are pretty good overall. People are just very dismissive of good offerings, and separately to that, let actually bad perks like release Scavenger and release Weaving Spiders taint their view of the overall pool.
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@Pulsar said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3736740#Comment_3736740
I believe those statements are called hyperbole. They are trying to make a point, which is that the skill to value ratio is extremely skewed on SM. She takes very little skill, whilst simultaneously taking away most Survivor skill, while generating a lot of value. Hope that clears it up.
Oh, you'll down them eventually. She's got old Legion syndrome in that. She might lose, but there's literally nothing you can do about her getting free downs.
Still worth calling out, because she does in fact take skill, doesn't take away survivor skill, and doesn't really give much value out of her cheaper strategies against semi-competent survivors. It being hyperbole doesn't make it less wrong, either literally in terms of what's said, or in terms of what's meant.
Is it a ton of skill? Eh. It's a low skill floor, but not much lower than the average killer. A low skill floor isn't an inherently bad thing as long as the killer still has skill expression and counterplay, which Merchant does.
You'll down someone eventually with just bloodlust, there needs to be more than that before old Legion can be invoked. Not to necessarily defend the Artist-Knight-Merchant thing of zoning survivors away, it is kind of boring, but it's not that bad.
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@Pulsar said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3736666#Comment_3736666
It definitely is.
You might say there's a big amount of skill expression, but there isn't.
Placing a drone at a loop and getting value either way is not expression. You may say, "But what about my lasertagging"
That's honestly like saying, "What about Billy parkour". Kinda interesting? Sure. Useful? Not really. You'll get the same amount of value from just plopping a drone down in a loop and forcing people to either leave or get hit.
Honestly, it would be better for SM's rep if people just let the hate die down instead of trying to fan the fires. And if it never dies down, maybe there's a problem with the Killer.
Well, for starters, talking about things like lasertagging isn't like talking about Billy parkour. It's much more like responding to people saying Artist doesn't have any skill expression by pointing out things like snipes across the map, or using her power for tracking, or actually aiming through walls without zoning people away from loops.
As in, it's completely true and invalidates the claim that she doesn't have any skill expression, even if the problem of "throw thing down, survivors run away" being boring does still exist.
You don't get the same value from playing her properly and from zoning survivors away with drones. You get substantially more from playing her properly. Dropping drones at every loop is just a lot easier.
Finally, I've said multiple times I'm not trying to improve her rep or change people's minds. I just want the discourse about her to be honest and accurate, which I don't think is unreasonable.
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@Eelanos said:
The skill expression being easier than other killers doesn't disprove that skill expression
existing.
I feel like this is a very weak defense, though?
We could have a killer that goes through walls at light speed and instantly sacrifices survivors on touch and you could still argue there's some semblance of skill expression in its kit by needing to know where survivors are and being able to quickly analyze at a glance what you're seeing at such a high speed so you can distinguish players from props in that quick blur of speed. It doesn't change the fact that there's not enough nuance when you can just ping-pong your character from map edge to map edge in hopes that you get a free kill.
Hardly ever you'd see something with literal 0 skill expression. That doesn't change the fact that Skull Merchant's kit does a lot of the heavy lifting for her.
That's not the argument being made, though. The argument being made quite often is that she has no skill expression.
People do try to walk it back by claiming that TECHNICALLY it exists, but that her kit still plays on autopilot and you don't have to perform or showcase any skill to win, as you're doing here, but that's also not true on top of being a different argument.
What exactly would you do with Skull Merchant, against survivors that are actually trying, to autopilot a free kill? Throw down drones and zone survivors away from loops? That's basically the only thing she has that skips any skill expression, and it's not as though that's a particularly strong strategy on any of the three killers that can do it. It's a problem because it's dull, not because it's too strong or gives free results.
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@Brokenbones said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3736717#Comment_3736717
If you wanna fix SMs reputation, you should probably try convincing people that playing against her is fun and worth their time instead of trying to 'objectively' prove xyz.
Most people who complain about her don't really care what argument they use, they just know they hate her. That's what it seems like to me.
I'm not trying to fix her reputation. I'm trying to answer a lot of common misconceptions about her so that, if people do want to keep talking about her negatively, they're at least referring to things that are accurate.
I know a lot of people who hate her are irrational and won't listen to reason no matter what, but I'd like to have faith that it's not everybody, and I can reach some people at least.
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@Brokenbones said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3736697#Comment_3736697
imo you won't ever save her reputation.
i mean this in good faith, I'm sure you've done your homework and that what you've got to say about her gameplay makes sense but that will never change the fact that I despise this character and would be much happier if she was removed from the game entirely.
To me personally, Skull Merchant represents everything wrong with modern killer design. It's not that she's too strong, it's not that she's OP, overtuned - however you want to put it. The simple gist of it is, she is FRUSTRATING to play against and sucks the enjoyment out of the matches she's apart of for the majority of people. This is why she's the killer people just straight up give up while playing against (I don't endorse this, for the record it's lame behaviour).
She isn't the only killer this applies to but she is one of the most egregious, along with killers like Twins and Knight. Couple that with a lame base design that BHVR has to heavily compensate with new cosmetics, a backstory that feels more like a first draft than a finished product.
This last point is extremely petty but she also ruined shelter woods.
I'm glad some people can get enjoyment from this character, but for me - I'd be much happier without and no amount of "debunking" will really change that.
That's nice?
This post isn't trying to do anything to change your opinion, I said so like five times. As long as you don't use any of the quoted arguments above to justify your hate, and as long as whatever arguments you do use aren't factually wrong, I don't really have an issue. We're going to disagree, but that's fine.
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@UndeddJester said:
Very solid article, and as someone who is similarly invested in squashing the misinformation and the subjective arguments presented as objective fact around Skull Merchant, I see very solid reasoning in every point made here.
I have pondered on SM for a long time, and read many suggestions and discussions from people trying to improve her experience, and I do feel there are improvements that can be made to her kit. At this point it'd be near impossible to save her reputation, but she is objectively not far off a decent place, and her being objectively fine would be good enough for me.
Appreciate the kind words!
There are definitely a few things that could be improved, but I'd argue nothing super transformative. A few small nerfs, some moderate QoL issues, maybe one or two things buffed to offset the nerfs, and she'd be totally fine. The only thing that can save her reputation, if anything, is just time for the fire to die down, but in the meantime a few small adjustments can help those who pay more attention.
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@squbax said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3736679#Comment_3736679
After pixelbush did his guide I played some SM as lasertagging was quite interesting to me, it took me two matches to learn how to do it consistently.
Yes me being a slinger player might have affected that learning curve but if lasertagging is one of her biggest skill plays, you can learn it in about two trials.
It's the big mechanical skill expression, but there are other kinds of skill expression. Everything else, from drone placement to macro play juggling to solid fundamentals to maximising stealth, is still skill expression.
It's not a pedantic difference. Playing Skull Merchant without those elements is going to go poorly for you the second you play against survivors that are actually trying.
I'm aware I'm also putting my thumb on the scales with that specific caveat, but I think it's also fair to discount games where your opponent just gives up or has no clue what they're doing when evaluating how much skill a killer requires, y'know.
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@squbax said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3736666#Comment_3736666
not it cant be dismissed, she does have some skill expression, however if you compare her to any killer that has mechanical skill expression, even only a little bit. She falls off, truth is while skull merchant haters love to sell the fact that she takes no skill, skull merchant defenders incredibly exagerate how much skill expression she has. Just getting one unknown bounce down takes about 1000 times more skill SM will ever take.
And thats why people tend to call her no skill, because the skill she does require its so easy to obtain you don't even take it into account.
TLDR she has skill its just that every killer has that level of skill to them at the very minimum.
You're putting your thumb on the scale there by specifying MECHANICAL skill expression, though. Sure, she and a few other killers have much less of that - although not none, "lasertagging" is legitimately quite hard - but that's not what they're geared around so it doesn't matter as much.
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@SaltyNooty said:
Despite the fact I absolutely DESPISE Skull Merchant, I did give this a read and it does shed light on a little things; but it doesn't change the fact that her kit, or her power in general NEEDS to be reworked.
Comparing her to wesker is unironically unfair because for wesker to know your location, he needs add-ons; which is an unlikely circumstance in comparison to SM who gets it borderline for free.https://us.v-cdn.net/6030815/uploads/HHJZKAKXTX9O/image.png
https://us.v-cdn.net/6030815/uploads/1MS7XNDTO7R5/image.png
Wesker's basekit and SM basekit aren't even remotely similar, and yes, she does get an unpredictable, (Almost) uncounterable haste. It is OBJECTIVELY bad if people have to go out of their way to LOOK UP her kit to figure out why she suddenly sped-up mid-chase.https://us.v-cdn.net/6030815/uploads/YYH9XOTDM9GD/image.png
No one is going to know this unless they play Skull Merchant, and in the survivor's case, literally never. They need to make it VERY transparent that she does get a haste status effect to the community. (Possibly during the game, but some sort of transparency when reading about her power that makes it clear that she can gain the haste effect due to reasoning XYZ.)
Addressing that last statement of her stealth mode having no indicator is true. Unless you're running Premo/Spine Chill, you'll never know she's coming unless you get lucky and her undetectable status runs out before she gets to you.
Speaking in PERSONAL experience, there have been COUNTLESS times when a skullie has snuck up on me. You'd think I'd be able to hear something of her approach (Audio is a big part of DBD, It's often how I identify killers, I switch between the Hud and Audio Cues. Even Stealth killers like Ghostie and Myers can be heard.) But she's COMPLETELY silent, it's unwarranted.
I would note stealth killers that have an obvious indication that they're in their undetectable status, but the only ones that i can think of where you CAN'T do anything to force them out of their power is
SM Myers (Or Myers in general, we can't really do much about forcing Myers to change stalking tiers TBH, that's on the killers end of things; so that's technically NOT in survivors' control.)
Onyro
Chucky ( Sort of Subjective because Chucky tends to giggle a lot, but I haven't ever heard him giggle before he spawns out of the depths of darkness.)
(Wrath and Ghostie are pretty obvious, cause we — as in survivors —can actually do something to get them to be detectable. )
Every other argument you stated seemingly has merit and reason to it, but I doubt it'll change the minds of those who despise Skull Merchant, playing her or facing off against her. (Reasonably so, Mine included but respect for getting this out there.)As a quick correction, Wesker DOES have tracking in his basekit. Survivors who use the First Aid Spray give off Killer Instinct for him to follow. It's obviously not used in the same way, because the actual way the powers play isn't relevant to the comparison, but it is part of his basekit.
The point of comparison is how many separate things their power does, and in that regard, he and Merchant are very similar. There's only one extra thing that Merchant does, basekit, which Wesker doesn't have an analogue for, and I don't think a single effect makes that much of a difference when it comes to a kit being bloated.
Speaking to the Haste, again, it's not unpredictable. It only happens when someone is scanned, and it happens for a predictable amount of time, not counting addons. You ARE shown when someone gets a stack, so knowing that Haste was just triggered is a thing, but I will repeat that I do think the duration should be shown to you mid-match. I'll also agree this game could do with more in-depth power descriptions without needing to go to a wiki, that would be useful in general.
Finally, I think you missed the point of the Undetectable thing, so to clarify: I know she doesn't have a tell. I'm saying that the people who say this is bad, and point out that every other killer with Undetectable has an audio tell, always miss that Merchant's Undetectable is balanced with a DIFFERENT downside. All those killers - minus Chucky, to be fair - have stealth that isn't timed, it lasts for as long as they want it to last or until the survivor breaks them out of it. Merchant, by contrast, has her stealth balanced via it only lasting eight seconds.
I'm not saying there isn't a discussion there, I'm saying the discussion needs to start from the question "is a short timer a potent enough downside to balance her", NOT the statement "she's unbalanced because she doesn't have an audio tell".
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@squbax said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3736642#Comment_3736642
They explained it, it technically requires some skill but its such a minimal amount you should not be proud of.
Its like beating a toddler at chess, you technically have to know how the game is played and have some skill to win, but its so laughable easy.
Oh, they edited it after I responded, I see.
Nope. Skull Merchant's skill expression can't be waved away, it's just there and it's not substantially less than a lot of other killers. If you don't find it compelling, that's perfectly fine, but it can't be dismissed for the sake of convenience in argument.
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@Pulsar said:
SM is just the Killer equivalent of holding W and pre-dropping on old Cowshed.
How so?
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@Coz said:
I own but haven’t used her yet. Reading has inspired me to take the plunge. Thank you :)
Good luck! She may not end up being for you, but there are a fair few fun elements to her, in my opinion.
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@Hannacia said:
I have played her and i will die on this hill when i say.. She's not hard to play. She has very easy skill expression. Comparing her to my mains huntress and spirit she doesnt require much brain power.
Putting up drones to places where they are annoying isn't that hard. Nothing changed for me. I still don't and i never will like her.
The skill expression being easier than other killers doesn't disprove that skill expression existing. It's still very possible to play her badly and lose as a result.
And, again, nothing in this post is supposed to change your mind on whether or not you like her. That's irrelevant.
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@RiC4 said:
i will not read, but, congrats for your text and, i still give up against SM.
So long as you stop using these specific arguments to justify giving up, I'll consider it a win.
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@KidDope25 said:
No one reading all that if it pertains to Skull Merchant 🤣
I felt it was worth putting out there all the same. Who knows, maybe it'll get through to a few people!
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As others have pointed out, Agitation generally offers more than Iron Grasp.
Agitation allows you to chase survivors trying to bait you and surprise them with an unexpected hit, it can shorten the amount of downtime you have while carrying to a hook which can make the difference between interrupting a survivor action and that action being finished, and it increases your terror radius so it's a good pair for perks like Starstruck that activate that way.
Iron Grasp reducing wiggle sway is a nice effect, but Agitation just offers more overall. Personally speaking, Agitation is the one I use if I'm in a position to use either.
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@BbQz said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3735544#Comment_3735544
Being a Poorly disguised SM main aside I just don't agree with much you said at all in this post. Deactivating drones is boring as you need to crouch walk all the way to a drone and press some prompts that isn't engaging and just wastes time. Even more so when they over lap a gen you need to complete as every SM plays for three gen since it's still a very strong playstyle.
Running to a tile just to get a drone dropped on it and you need to hold W and hope a team mate doesn't give her haste mid chase isn't exactly the back and forth I want from a killer holding W is the worse way to run from a killer from both perspectives and SM basically is built on forcing that.
The hindered haste tracking undectable it's so unfocused and just feels all over the place honestly I'd be happy if they just removed her from the game.. give people who have her 9k iridescent shards and call it a day refund any cosmetics. Because all your gonna get is people rushing to hooks to get out as fast as possible that's the 1# strategy in my opinion to completing a SM match my time is just to valuable to not be having fun in a video game
So, you've sort of shifted the goalposts here a little.
My point isn't that her interaction is super fun and engaging for all players. You'll notice I even acknowledge that it's perfectly fair to find her interaction unfun, and say that I have my own examples of killers who are perfectly fine overall but that I just don't like very much.
The claim I was responding to is that her power doesn't have that interaction, which is why I point to it existing. It doesn't actually matter how engaging or fun any given player finds that interaction because that isn't the thing being disputed, its existence is being disputed.
But, to also tackle the rest of what you're saying briefly, you're also focusing hard on the worst element of her and ignoring the rest. Yes, it's annoying to have a drone dropped at a loop and for you to only have the option to hold W, but is that everything that Skull Merchant does? No, of course not, she has a ton more to her than just that. It'd be like saying Artist is designed solely to do that same thing and there's no skill expression or survivor interaction to playing against her because of it; the fact that the "drop thing, force someone to run away" strat is annoying doesn't change that it isn't the only thing either of these killers do.
You don't even always have to run away against SM, either. There are a fair few loops that are too high for her drones to actually shut them down, so you can stay in the loop if you gauge it worth the risk. Similarly, if a drone is overlapping a gen because SM is trying to 3-gen… just ignore it? It can't do anything in that scenario, the worst outcome is you get scanned once as you run away, and that isn't guaranteed.
Also, "poorly disguised SM main", lol. I don't hide that I play SM, there's no disguising going on here. She may not be my main, but I make no secret about enjoying her.
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@Spirit_IsTheBest said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3735544#Comment_3735544
Your not wrong, but she can be way too interactive to the point it becomes unbearable if that makes sense, you gotta dodge her beams so you don't become injured or slowed during chase, crouching back and fourth can result in a M1 instead, which is a lose-lose situation to me. You got to keep an eye out due to her undetectable which is fine for me, but her haste can be annoying depending on the situation.
I play solo queue a lot, my teammates tend to not know how to counter her which makes the match even worse, even when I do everything correctly, they tend to drop like flies, it's not any form of disrespect to them, but if they refuse to learn how to play against her, it's a lot worse then it should be, even if you know her counters it can be quite tricky if the Skull Merchant knows what she's doing.
But your comment is well made, and I do agree on some things.
I can see where you're coming from, but I would push back against one thing- forcing an M2 killer to instead hit you with an M1 may strictly be a lose/lose, but it's considered totally valid counterplay for a lot of other killers.
Forcing Billy to hit you with an M1 while you're healthy is a desirable outcome if the alternative is getting instadowned, and Skull Merchant is a similar way. She wants to injure you with her power because she gets more out of it, so forcing her to accept just an M1 delays her ability to set up her power's pressure, and extends the chase by more than if she'd injured you with a drone.
I'll fully agree that solo queue teammates refusing to play against her is a nightmare, though I'd gently suggest that's a solo queue problem, not a Skull Merchant problem. I get similar teammates against other killers - the types who heal against Plague incessantly, for instance, or refuse to pick up tapes against Sadako, or step in traps constantly against Trapper…
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The issue I have with this kind of outlook on Skull Merchant is that, objectively, her power got way more interactive with her rework.
There's a lot of interaction, between dodging the drone beams + learning the intricacies of how they work while you're in chase and hacking drones to keep them out of commission for later, not to mention the tension that comes with unpredictable stealth that the killer might actually bother to use because it isn't awful like the previous version was.
Dodging beams really is the main part, though. There's mechanical back-and-forth to add another layer to the chase, there, with clear and defined rules that you and the killer are both trying to leverage. I can absolutely buy not liking versing her, everyone's entitled to their own dislikes there (and I even have a few myself that I know others find fun), but this idea that her power isn't interactive is just… not true.
Also as an aside, she doesn't get free injuries. If an outcome relies on survivors making massive mistakes, and therefore can't be relied on, it's not free.
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@bornagain234 said:
They need to start buffing the ######### perks not nerfing the only viable ones
People will still use the nerfed perks because try running a game without slowdown
It's not actually that hard if you know what you're doing, ftr.
There are a lot of good and viable perks out there that can absolutely bring you comparable value to slowdown perks, you just have to have an understanding of how to use them and how to play DBD's macro game. The state of killer perk variety in terms of what's viable is honestly pretty good right now.
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@Firellius said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3734226#Comment_3734226
Yeah, I suppose Predator could be counted.
On the survivor side: Autodidact, Potential Energy, Weaving Spiders, No Mither, Deadline.
The others I could see even if I disagree, but how on earth is Deadline detrimental?
Surely the downside to that perk is that it's just not reliable?
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@Firellius said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3733882#Comment_3733882
There's a number of perks in the game that are detrimental to the user.
All of them are survivor perks.
There's hardly any killer perks that have 'no effectiveness'. Their average is leagues above the average for survivor perks. It's just that Pain Res/Pop has set an unhealthy standard to the point where people don't consider any other perks anymore.
Basically, if it doesn't auto-win you the game, it 'has no effectiveness'.
Not that I disagree with you about killer perks being good overall, but there are killer perks that are detrimental to you. The biggest example is Predator, which actively makes tracking over any real distance much harder.
There also aren't that many actively detrimental survivor perks. Maybe No Mither if you don't have some kind of plan or build for it? Fact is, either way on that specific example, most survivor perks are perfectly usable. The same notion of the top few perks skewing everyone's perception of useful applies there too.
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People tend to link regression nerfs and potential slowdown nerfs together, which I think isn't appropriate. I don't think those two problems are even really that equivalent, let alone actually linked in that direct a way.
For the sake of transparency, I define genrushing as this: Survivors who bring in the strongest tools for making generators go as quickly as possible, at the cost of not having tools for most other elements of the game. Genrushing is not survivors that just do generators efficiently when they're not in chase at either default speed or default plus one perk speed. That's just playing the game normally.
With that in mind, it's not as though genrushing actually happens that often. Don't get me wrong, it's a problem when it does happen and even separately from genrushing toolboxes are too strong, but we can immediately see that something which affects a majority of games in a very obvious way - stacking regression perks - is a higher priority and doesn't need to be fixed at the exact same time as a problem you rarely see.
At the same time, and as a consequence of that, it's also pretty clear what the answer to the title question is. What will killers do now that slowdown perks are nerfed? They'll just… keep playing like normal. Most games are games where good play alone is enough slowdown, so even if we were to assume there are no viable slowdown perks left, there wouldn't really be a huge problem here.
Which is where it becomes relevant that there are still viable slowdown perks. There aren't even that many unviable slowdown perks, even something like Ruin has its place in certain builds.
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I could see this version honestly not being that bad, though I still need to find someone to test it with sometime.
I strongly suspect that, if this perk is good, it's going to shine when you and a friend both run the perk to cut the time investment down even further. With that in mind, and only one of you getting Broken… I think that's pretty worth it? Probably?
Definitely better than before, no denying that.
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@Firellius said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3732011#Comment_3732011
I cannot begin to fathom how some people believe the game is
moreSurvivor-sided than it was four or more years ago. To be honest, to me, it sounds like a lack of adaptation.It seems to me that certain killer buffs have just produced more dependent killers. I also noticed this with discussions around Distortion, with some killers claiming they can't find anyone because their aura reading gets blocked.
But how would they have found people before the excessive intel power-creep? Nowhere to Hide, Darkness Revealed, Ultimate Weapon, all of them made it so easy to find survivors that it feels like some killers just forgot how to play without them.
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3732068#Comment_3732068
And they are everywhere because they are just about the only viable regression perks left after survivors complaining got all the others nerfed.
Firstly, there's a couple of other regression perks still in the game that are perfectly viable. They're not as overtuned as Pain Res/Pop, but they're still strong picks. Eruption and Surge in particular spring to mind.
But on top of that, those are two perks in one particular category. Where's the other categories? Where's Gift of Pain, or Corrupt Intervention, or Coup de Grace, or Remember Me, or No Way Out, or Devour Hope, or…
There's so much more to killer perks than just stacking a ton of regression. It's not like with survivor perks, where a bunch of them give almost cosmetic-tier effects for huge investments, with the vast majority of perks just being flat neutral, or even negative. Killers have good perks. None of them get used though, because Pop/Pain Res are overtuned and get smacked on everything.
When Survivors had a standard BT/DS/UB/DH, they got smacked upside the head with a meta reset, maybe it's time for killers to get theirs.
While I don't disagree with you overall, I do feel the need to point out that killers DID get their meta shift.
Remember, back when BT/DS/UB/DH was the meta, there was also a single meta build for killers and it wasn't Pop/Pain Res - it was Ruin/Undying/BBQ/Tinkerer, with one of those sometimes swapped out for Pop the same way you'd sometimes see a survivor swap out for Iron Will. You don't see most of those perks as much even individually now, let alone it being the single meta build that dominates everyone's games.
Also, survivors do have good perks they neglect as well. You see the problem slightly less on the survivor side, but it does exist there to a degree.
Again, not saying the over-abundance of Pop/Pain Res isn't an issue, just that there's no double standard in meta prevalence. Both sides had a defined meta for four years, and both sides had that meta changed in 6.1.0.