jesterkind
jesterkind
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@VomitMommy said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3672780#Comment_3672780
Plague applies a permanent Broken and that's okay
Plague is not stealth killer.
Removing broken would not be big deal. You usually get there only in chase anyway unless survivors screwed it.
If survivors could remove lock on with disarm, that's why bigger nerf than just removing broken. You can never drop chase with survivor having lock on, because it's gone. It would be impossible to get claw trap outside of chase. Why would you care about missing broken, when you will get it only in chase anyway?
I mean... should it be possible to get claw traps outside of chase?
It already isn't, functionally, with the only exceptions being survivors massively messing up and the crazy drone placements that hide the ring so survivors can't see it. One is a skill issue that would be absent against decent/aware players, and the other is kind of questionable considering it removes intentional counterplay.
I like those crazy drone placements, so I'd rather see them be counterable rather than remove them. They are the only time the killer can engineer claw traps outside of chase, after all, you should have to exercise some skill in getting there and in capitalising on it.
As to only getting Broken in chase - that at least makes dropping chase after the claw trap worth it, especially with hacking removing Lock On stacks. Dropping chase before getting the trap, even on live, is kind of a waste of your time. If all you got was an injure and Deep Wound, there'd be almost no benefit to ever dropping chase, she'd be a hyper-committal killer. I do want her to have to commit a little bit more than she currently does, but not that much.
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@VomitMommy said:
Hacking a drone should remove a stack of Lock On
So Skully gets punished for using her drones in advance and her drones are completely useless outside of chase....
Remove Deep Wound from her kit
It would be better to remove broken and just make it always deep wound, so new players are not so punished and forced to play injured.
Not really? If she places them in advance, that means she's going to chase survivors towards them. If this punishes her for anything, it's starting a chase, getting a stack or two, and then dropping that chase. Setting them in advance has basically nothing to do with that.
As for the Deep Wound, removing the Broken is a way bigger nerf and not one I'm personally a fan of. Plague applies a permanent Broken and that's okay, Skull Merchant only applies it for 45 seconds by default. Sure, SM gets other effects too, but that's why hers is on a timer.
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@Devil_hit11 said:
don't bother trying appease d/c survivors. there was very little feedback on her until BVHR showcases kill-statistics. only than was there a natural barrage of posts to change her.
1: Hacking a drone should remove a stack of Lock On.
This is bad idea because it actively punishes skull merchant for using the ability outside of chase. Every drone becomes a lock-on removal station. You are no longer punished for misplaying and encouraged to 3 gen with drones because leaving your drones out becomes a drawback. Defending your drones becomes only way to remove the drawback. Examining the 50 minute skull merchant match should explain why this is not a good idea. The killer needs to be able to progressively win in a 3 gen. Not have an endless stalemate.
There is real no reason any survivor get any lock-on stacks outside of chase because you can see drones turning even when drone is in stealth mode. Stealth mode is almost pointless to anyone that is half alert. The only drones that have any merit to gaining lock-on stacks are drones where you turn a corner and your recklessly running. This is also easy to counter because you can use your third person camera around corners and even micro crouch for 1-2 seconds to avoid beams when turning corners.
2: Either add a cooldown to changing rotation direction, or more ideally, add a tell.
This removes one of skill-caps for applying lock-on stacks quickly in a chase. The change does absolutely nothing for bad skull merchants and only affects skull merchants that 100% optimize her kit with time efficiency. This character already has low skill-floor, so removing this mechanic makes skill floor = skill-ceiling in 1vs1 micro chase. Most survivors play play poorly in the chase that they often go down before getting 3 stacks of lock-on.
4: Remove Deep Wound from her kit.
Only affects dead hard users and technically buffs Made for this users. You can use this to camp hooks with overlapping drones and deep wound ignoring BT to tunnel, At the same time, Off the record does exist and with 90 second window, you can micro crouch her drones which forces killer to hit you.
7: Finally, give her a training wheels addon.
She already has one. They nerfed her Low power mode cooldown for this useless effect where your drones stand still. Makes your drones worse and they become auto-pilot.
So, in order--
1: You're right in what you're saying, but the reason for this change lays in what you're not acknowledging, which is the cracked Skull Merchant drone positions where the survivors don't have a tell due to the stealth-mode ring being hidden and sometimes have a hard time getting to the drone to disarm it without getting scanned. I don't want to remove those because I think they're very cool, but I do want the Skull Merchant not to be able to just cheese out a war of attrition with them either.
If getting scanned outside of chase was always 100% avoidable and the survivor's fault, sure, but there is currently skill expression in her kit that allows for that not being the case. I don't want that taken away, so I want it to be something you have to actively capitalise on instead.
Though, I don't think this change would encourage 3-genning at all, especially since SM can't really do that all that well anymore. What it'd encourage is committing to getting three scans in a chase, which isn't the worst thing in the world. Maybe add some kind of grace period where if they get a scan in chase they can't remove it for a while, or maybe they can't remove it while they're shown on SM's scanner, but that part feels like it might be over-complicated.
2: That's why I prefer a tell over a cooldown. I'd like both sides to be able to express their skill, and while you can keep track of a drone's rotation by looking at it constantly, I'd like to make that slightly easier to do. Most survivors don't bother even looking behind them in chase, so this won't affect too many players, and the players it does affect get a more dynamic back-and-forth.
3: These seem like you're agreeing with me? Those are good reasons to remove the Deep Wound.
4: That's not a training wheels addon, it's just a gimmick addon. Like I said, the training wheels addon would show you the beams for a few seconds in white after setting the drone, so that you can better learn aim and timings with the normal effect of her power. It's also a yellow, and I don't like the idea of training wheels addons being higher than a brown, personally.
As an aside, it's not that bad. Static beams you play around is more of a sidegrade than the regular rotation. I don't like it, but I can see why some might.
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@Ohyakno said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3672742#Comment_3672742
I don't think a B tier killer when people actually choose to play vs her needs a suite of nerfs regardless of how much people dislike her. It's not like she's nurse, blight or even Chucky level.
Also being able to tell when drones are disabled is hardly even a buff, it's a quality of life. You can already tell because the rotation option is disabled.
Nerfs aren't always about how strong something is. Sometimes it's about how healthy that thing is.
I, personally, think SM has crazy potential if played right (and if people don't choose to give up). Changes are inevitable because of her reputation, so I'd rather exert the tiny influence I have towards those nerfs being sensible and healthy rather than being an indiscriminate sledgehammer.
There are buffs she could fairly get too, if these end up being too much all at once, but I don't personally think they would be. Most of them won't even be noticeable in the course of regular play-- take the removal of Deep Wound. How often do you actually bank on or play around the Deep Wound specifically when it comes to her drones? Basically never, it's the injure/Broken/Hindered that actually matter.
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@Ohyakno said:
She's fine. The visibility of the scan lines helps way more playing versus her than I thought they would. This is death by a thousand cuts.
Well, not all of these are nerfs, to be fair.
Still, I disagree, while I do love playing her and on the rare occasion I see her I do also like playing against her, I think she needs a few tweaks to be as healthy as she can be.
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@WolfyWood said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3672106#Comment_3672106
Its futile but I'll bite anyways.
Why does the clip matter when the killer is just poorly designed anyways?
Like there's so much scrutiny being applied to what is essentially a drop in an endless sea of moments where SM proves she is not well put together.
Because that's what this thread is about?
Counter arguments to any other point about why this killer is poorly designed would be seen in threads where those points are the ones being made.
This thread is about a specific argument, and that specific argument is wrong.
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@WolfyWood said:
Almost 130 responses for such a simple conclusion that SM has bad design.
We're never making it out of the trenches are we?
130 responses in which some people are trying to point out the evidence provided doesn't support the claim being made.
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@[Deleted User] said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3671977#Comment_3671977
Ok. A passive power that requires little to no input from the player and damages the opponent. It could be a beam, a banana peel, a bowl of ice cream, or anything really. Point being, it requires literally no skilled input from the killer to benefit.
Well, that's not true. You need to know positioning, timing, and even a little bit of aim.
I think people kind of get duped into thinking Skull Merchant's drones require no kind of skill because they keep seeing survivors who stalwartly refuse to counter them, and any power looks kind of skill-less if the opponent is just running into it over and over. If you're going against survivors who put literally any effort into avoiding beams - and please note I'm not invoking the mythical "good survivor" here, this doesn't take much skill on the survivor side either - it becomes a lot harder to benefit from the drones in an actually passive way.
You have to start, y'know, actively using them. Picking the right spots, chasing in the right direction, maybe making use of the active rotation-switch ability.
They only passively injure with no input from the killer if the survivor lets them in 99% of cases. Otherwise, both killer and survivor are exercising their skill in trying to play around the beams.
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@Aven_Fallen said:
Corrective Action is a big one. Because it basically requires your teammates to be bad at the game.
Another one is Technician. The Perk is CLEARLY aimed to be for newer players, especially if we consider that Feng is free on Console. And yet, the Perk has the Downside of giving a higher penalty for missed Skill Checks, which hurts new players maybe even more than the Sound Notification. (because a Killer will not always go to the Sound Notification, but you will always have more lost progress with Technician)
And it is also a tool which, while rarely, can be used for griefing/trolling. Like repairing Gens and missing Skill Checks constantly. (had a Mikaela in a game two days ago who was just doing that. She was sitting on the same Gen all game and missing every Skill Check. I have seen it in the HUD go down from 2/3rd repaired to 0 progress...)
I consider Technician to just barely scrape by without being in the running because at least its other effect is consistently usable.
It's not great, but stealthy gen repairs are a thing you can actually use more consistently than silent missed skill checks.
Of course, it should have its downside removed anyway, I'm just saying.
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A lot of people are saying Corrective Action, I kind of agree with that rundown, it's really not very good at all. Its best case scenario is still kind of underwhelming compared to a lot of other perks.
I think some other strong contenders - and for the record I don't think any of the excluded perks here are actually in the running, even Up The Ante is just exceptionally niche - would be:
Either "Teamwork" perk. The speed one is sliiiiiiightly better, but neither are worth running, they're middling effects with some of the longest cooldowns in the game. Definitely bad perks.
Left Behind. Seeing the aura of the hatch can be kinda clutch, but even when you're in a position to use it, it won't help you if the killer gets to the hatch first. I think if this perk allowed you to open the hatch without a key it wouldn't be in the running, but as it stands, it's definitely one of the worst picks for "last one standing" perks, which are already not very good as a class.
Inner Focus. As a rule, I don't tend to think that a perk simply being outclassed makes it outright bad in its own right, but Inner Focus really tests that belief. What it does is, technically, strong- knowing where the killer and your teammates are is useful, especially for just one perk slot, but the information is so heavily outclassed by other, much stronger perks on top of being kind of hard to use in its own right that I really think this perk is just kind of bad. Empathy does almost exactly the same thing while being one of the strongest perks in the game, and somehow Inner Focus is bad in its own right too.
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@[Deleted User] said:
I think everyone should take a step back and address the obvious: should a player drop a health state from being scanned by a passive rotating beam in a PVP game? Like, at least Plague has to aim something. SM is such a bad power design. It's auto pilot.
Sure? The beam is a weapon, and weapons typically take health states.
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@xEa said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3671569#Comment_3671569
Its not about the actual hit, but how punishing it is that the killer pressed one button.
The Huntress has to aim, the Doctor has to time his shocks and Freddy... well lets be real, our Man himself does not get anything. His snares are so weak, the survivor would have gotton away, so.. no hit immidiately.
Nobody is saying killer should not have a strong power, and hits come with that power. But what kind of power is that please that it can hit a survivor just by sitting there? The trapper at least has to set those up and those can be disarmed. And no, disarming drones is not the same as disarming Traps since they dont have Iri Stone basekit.
Damn, i just realised DEVS might read this and instead of changing SM, they give Trapper Iri basekit. Good job myself.
The button press isn't what punished this survivor. The survivor not changing their pathing or responses to account for the power being present is what punished them.
The investment from the killer was low: A button press. They didn't even put it in a particularly smart position, in this clip.
The investment from the survivor would be equally low: Watch the drone and hit crouch.
Huntress does have to aim, unless the survivor runs in a straight line, like this one did. At that point the punishment comes from not respecting the power, not from the fact that Huntress only had to hit M2.
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@Xernoton said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3671167#Comment_3671167
As for how precise you can be... very? You know where the beam is because you can see where it's projected, and you know which direction it's going.
The problem is that you only see a very inaccurate display of the beam. You see both of the lights on the drone but it's impossible to tell where exactly the beam is. You can make an educated guess but the the fact of the matter is, that you'd need to make sure not to get hit, which would force you stand still slightly longer than necessary.
So let's say you can time it so well, that you only need to stand still for 0.3 seconds - I already consider this quite unrealistic but for the sake of the argument, I'll use numbers that favor you. That is 1.2 metres of distance that you lose. That's not too bad. But then you still need to accelerate again to get to full speed. This takes another 0.25 seconds with a linear accelation of 10 m*s^(-2). Integrating this twice, tells us how much distance a suvivor would make during that time. So we get: s = 1/2 * a * t^2 = 1/2 * 10 m*s^(-2) * 0.25^2 = 1/32 * 10m ~ 0.31m. Normally however, you'd get 1 metre of distance. So that's another 0.69m lost. Combined, we get 1.89 metres distance less. Let's assume the survivor somehow manages to mitigate this a little and we get 1.8 metres of lost distance.
This equates to 3 seconds less the killer needs to catch up. Sounds reasonable. Until you factor in what happens during those 3 seconds. The survivor still moves at full speed, so that's 12 metres of total ground, that they cannot cover. This is a lot and can easily make the difference between getting to the pallet / window or going down. Keep in mind, I also do not consider any movement modifiers the killer could use such as Haste from Claw Traps.
We, the audience of the clip, might have a hard time figuring out where the right moment to crouch is, but that's because the survivor isn't looking behind them to actually get that information.
This is incorrect. He looks to the drone for a short moment right before it injures him. That is what I looked at and honestly, to me it looked like he still had a bit of time. Obviously, what I think doesn't matter but it goes to show, that it's not quite so easy to figure out where exactly the beam actually is.
As for them getting hit before their next pallet, I just don't believe that. When they briefly turn their camera as they get hit by the claw trap, we can see that Skull Merchant is still behind the desk on the other side of the pallet
The stun takes 2 seconds. Then we have the table, that is about 2 metres long (kind of hard to tell, probably a bit less), which the SM walks around. So she has to catch up 2 * 4m - 1.89 + 4m + 1m, if we assume that SM chooses the worst path to catch up. That's roughly 11.1 metres of distance. 8.3 m of which the killer has to catch up before they can hit a lunge at max range. This takes 15.5 seconds. A little more because SM needs to accelerate again. So let's round it up to 18 seconds. There are exactly 5 possible pallet spawns, that she could have reached in that time. One of which was in the corridor next to the room but she took a path that would allow SM to intercept. So we have 4 pallets left. 2 downstairs and 2 upstairs on the outside.
Typically only 1 of the 2 upstairs will spawn. But yeah, you can get to either of them. However, both of them are quite secluded and only the one closer to the staircase gives you a chance to escape that place, if you manage to stun the killer. So this plays into SM's strength again.
So you do get to 1 out of 4 possible pallets after all. I apologise for my previous assumption. You're in a bad spot as a survivor but not quite as bad as I presumed.
I'd also like to point out that even if the choice really is just "be scanned or get hit", the survivor STILL misplayed, because the M1 hit is vastly preferable to getting claw trapped. There's just no way of reading this clip that isn't the survivor messing up somewhere.
I don't know, if I agree with that. Keep in mind, that you'll be claw trapped in the next loop then, which will give her extra speed but more importantly hinder you by 10% for 3 seconds.
I respect the time and effort it took to crunch those numbers, sincerely. I won't contest them at all, I've never been great at working out numbers that way to begin with. I'll assume all of that is true! To tackle your points in order:
1: The thing about this is that it's technically true, in a vacuum, but in a real match you can absolutely get away with doing it. From both killer and survivor perspective, I have seen very confident survivors intentionally not make the maximum distance that they could for some purpose- either to taunt, or to clear Exhaustion, or in some cases as part of counterplay for a power.
While the drones can damage you at range if you're not careful, Skull Merchant herself is an M1 killer. In this specific scenario, ducking the drone gives you plenty of room to make distance to the other resources on the map, especially if you're chaining towards something like the window drop down to the first floor out on the balcony.
It is important to think about more broadly-applicable counterplay, but it's equally important to not lose sight of what we're talking about here-- and in this clip, Meg had time to reach more resources and extend the chase if she ducked the drone. That won't be true at every loop, that's where some other counterplay comes in depending on situation, but here it applies.
To briefly tackle the drone's beam from the start of your point here: It might take a few goes, like I said, but you can know exactly where the beam is based on the information available to you. I don't personally think it's a bad thing for a killer's power to take a few tries before you can consistently outperform it, especially when using that same information takes practice on the killer side too.
2: They don't look at the drone at all, and only even look behind them at the last second, that's what I mean. Unless you're very confident in knowing the drone's beam timings, you should be looking at the most directly threatening thing in the room. That's part of why I think this clip is so annoying as any kind of proof- this survivor doesn't seem like they're respecting the killer's power at all, and people are claiming they somehow outplayed the killer anyway.
3: Mostly the same as point one, all these numbers still break out in a usable way in the moment. I would like to briefly mention that Meg is not in a kinda bad spot because of Skull Merchant's power, though- they're in the position they're in because that loop is terrible and doesn't get you much value against any killer.
This is where that thought experiment I proposed to someone else comes in. Everything about the clip is the same, including the survivor's pathing, but the killer is Huntress. What happens? They get hit- and unlike against Merchant, it's not a single scan that might be an injure specifically, it's just a health state. They'd need to dodge the hatchet... which would lose them a bit of distance, but that'd be a fair trade for countering the killer's power.
4: Sure, they'd be claw trapped in the next loop if they took an M1, and that means they'd be Hindered in the loop after that. They're claw trapped here after taking the drone hit, though, so they're being Hindered in the next loop instead. It extends the time before SM is put in her best case scenario, which is the entire point of chases to begin with, you extend them for as long as possible.
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@mikewelk said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3671181#Comment_3671181
Server lag will always exist in some capacity. A ray so thin like that will always be impacted more by it, especially due to it's speed of rotation.
Yes, same as a lot of other powers and hits at windows/pallets.
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@mikewelk said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3671174#Comment_3671174
You're talking about precision being easy regarding avoiding the rays. I'm saying it's not due to server lag. Pretty relevant in my book.
Most killers get harder to counter if there's noticeable lag, including every other ranged and precision killer. It's not unique to her, is what I mean.
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@mikewelk said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3671167#Comment_3671167
Server lag exists and it gets bad sometimes. Precision isn't really as easy as it looks. Had moments where I got scanned because the server was acting up and her counterplay basically got nerfed to the ground.
I mean, sure, but that's hardly a Skull Merchant problem so it feels a little irrelevant to bring up
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@Xernoton said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3671040#Comment_3671040
That survivor standing still wasn't doing it to counter the drone, they were camping the pallet to drop it and get the stun
Does that matter? If he had not camped the pallet, then the drone would have scanned him. So he applied the correct counterplay on that part. It makes no difference, if it was intentional or not. In order to counter the drone the second time, they would have needed to know where the beam was. But that's pretty much impossible because the drone was in stealth mode. I mean, how precise can you calculate the beam when you only see the general direction it is projected?
Had the drone not been in stealth mode, then the only way to counter it would have been standing still because they were already so far away, that crouching couldn't have worked. You play more Skull Merchant than me, so you probably know that. Now, that little moment of them standing still would have cost them a lot of distance. So it's fair to assume that the Skull Merchant would have gotten a M1 before they could have made it to the next pallet.
No matter how you look at it, Meg was screwed the moment she got there. Even if we were to assume that there was a possibility to counter the drone, it's just not realistic. You'll eiter be scanned or get hit. There is simply no way to accurately time the crouch or stand still. I have watched the video multiple times because I wanted to make sure I didn't overlook anything. To me it looked like the drone shouldn't have scanned him yet because it didn't rotate far enough and I doubt anyone could accurately guess where extactly the beam is.
No, them camping a pallet doesn't matter. As I clarified a few messages down, I don't consider them camping a pallet to be a mistake or a bad call. It was a good play! If they'd followed that up with countering the drone, this would've been a perfectly reasonably done chase. My point in bringing it up is that standing still at the pallet is irrelevant because it's not the point in this clip where they actually needed to just counter the drones.
As for how precise you can be... very? You know where the beam is because you can see where it's projected, and you know which direction it's going. We, the audience of the clip, might have a hard time figuring out where the right moment to crouch is, but that's because the survivor isn't looking behind them to actually get that information. Even if it is really difficult to do it on the fly, it's the kind of thing you keep an eye out for and practice so you know the timings.
As for them getting hit before their next pallet, I just don't believe that. When they briefly turn their camera as they get hit by the claw trap, we can see that Skull Merchant is still behind the desk on the other side of the pallet. The killer is fully on the other side of the room, and we know that this survivor has at least some resources close by depending on which variant of RPD it is. Crouching for half a second isn't going to let Merchant cross the entire room and get them before they slip out - you could partially walk off Exhaustion in this scenario if you're confident.
I'd also like to point out that even if the choice really is just "be scanned or get hit", the survivor STILL misplayed, because the M1 hit is vastly preferable to getting claw trapped. There's just no way of reading this clip that isn't the survivor messing up somewhere.
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@mikewelk said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3671113#Comment_3671113
They were forced to camp the pallet by the drone the Skull Merchant set in a second whilst esnuring the survivor was zoned. They could've not camped and got injured but that wouldn't make sense.
Absolutely. At no stage have I said that camping the pallet was a bad call.
The part where they misplayed is in not countering the drone as they left. The part where they misplayed is in letting themself take a completely avoidable scan because they either weren't paying attention to the drone at all, or because they just misjudged how fast the beam moved.
In either scenario, they misplayed. There was counterplay, and it wasn't used. The scan could've been avoided, but it wasn't.
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@mikewelk said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3671106#Comment_3671106
They camped a pallet so the drones didn't scan them - a form of counterplay. They didn't utilize that when they got scanned by the doorway so they didn't use counterplay then. Therefore, counterplay was used but not at the end of the clip. The drones were countered for half of the clip.
Setting aside that the reason they camped the pallet was to get a stun, not to counter the drones...
...You agree, then, that this clip shows a survivor misplaying, and not a killer lacking counterplay?
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@mikewelk said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3671104#Comment_3671104
So standing still whilst in chase and in the drone's range isn't counterplay now?
Are you actually attempting to understand what I'm saying here?
Referring to the clip, the survivor should stand still when the beam is crossing them to avoid the third scan. There are two outcomes here: Either they just avoid the scan and keep the chase going, or they lose distance and take an M1. Both are preferable to being claw trapped, and both are generally how dodging damaging powers works in general.
In this clip, the drones were not countered. The survivor camped an unsafe pallet for a stun, did not account for the killer's power being a source of ranged damage, and were hit by the ranged damage they were ignoring.
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@mikewelk said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3671100#Comment_3671100
Back on my discussion about Skull Merchant's counterplay like two-three months ago? Where you said her counterplay was like Clowns where you camp pallets and pre-drop, also stating that Clown is better than her or something.
Oh, right, I do remember that now.
That's kind of a different argument- I brought that up to say that if you reach the worst case scenario, there's still stuff you can do. It's not her main counterplay, it's just an option you have if you're in the worst case scenario of being claw trapped and getting Hindered. I also did not say Clown is better, I said Clown's numbers are higher, because they are.
The argument was: If you can do it against Clown with higher numbers, you can do it against SM with lower numbers.
Her main counterplay would of course be avoiding that outcome for as long as possible, which is why this clip is silly to use as evidence against her. None of her counterplay was actually used here.
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@mikewelk said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3671092#Comment_3671092
The counterplay to Merchant is camping pallets and pre-dropping, something I believe you stated yourself. If it was a Huntress, you would still have a chance to dodge the hatchet, likewise with the Trickster and his knives.
I don't remember saying that, I'm not sure what you're referring to? In any case, the counterplay to Skull Merchant is varied, but typically involves avoiding her drone's beams.
Speaking of which: Remember, we're changing nothing about this clip for the thought experiment. If the survivor does exactly what they do in this clip, what happens?
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@mikewelk said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3671040#Comment_3671040
They were standing still instead of moving from side to side to get the most reaction time to drop the pallet at the right time. That is her counterplay after all and notice how they didn't get scanned because it is counterplay and not the best thing to do but something you're forced to do?
Again, they were doing that because they were camping a pallet. If they weren't camping a pallet, it would've been a hilariously bad idea and nowhere close to real counterplay.
The part that matters is if they avoided the beam as they left. After all, they're not being scanned while camping a pallet, so that part's irrelevant. The core question is: Did they take the steps to counter the power when that power is actually threatening them?
The answer is no. They just ran in a straight line and didn't look like they were regarding the drone at all.
I'll mention it again, because it's an important comparison. Imagine the following: Everything about this scenario is the same - the same loop, the same stun, the exact same pathing and actions from the survivor after the stun - but the killer is Huntress. What happens?
Now do the same, but instead of replacing Merchant with Huntress, we make two changes: The killer is Trickster, and the survivor is one blade away from a health state. What happens?
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@mikewelk said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3671036#Comment_3671036
She got outplayed at the unsafest loop in the game (arguably) by a survivor standing still (counterplay againsther drone). So there was an attempt and it's glaringly obvious.
Oh, come on, man.
That survivor standing still wasn't doing it to counter the drone, they were camping the pallet to drop it and get the stun. The point where they need to counter it is as they're running away- you can see they only get clipped just before they get out of the radius, so they crouch for a split second there and then keep running. That is what countering the drone in this situation would look like.
This is agonising, the clip being posted shows the most cut-and-dry obvious scenario where crouching the drone is the absolute best call. You already have distance, the killer isn't closing that distance immediately because they just got stunned and they have to navigate around an object, and you're only in danger at the very edge of the radius so you only have to do it once in a position where you've already made distance so it's less damaging to you.
Based purely on their movements - and again, I'm not psychic, they could have mistimed the rotation - it doesn't look like that survivor is paying any respect to the drone at all. If someone runs in a direct straight line against Huntress and gets downed, even after getting a stun on that killer, they're misplaying. It's the same here.
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@mikewelk said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3671022#Comment_3671022
Well this was one of those situations and it seemed laughably easy and took very little skill. I don't see the skill aspect at all. Her counterplay is interactive for sure, doesn't make it good though.
It seemed that way because it looks like no attempt was made to counter the drone.
Now, I'm not sure if this person does actually know how drones work and just mistimed it, which is easily possible, so I don't want to say for sure they were just ignoring the drone. I'm just saying that whatever the reason, the thing Skull Merchant was rewarded for here is a misplay on the survivor's side.
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@mikewelk said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3671010#Comment_3671010
She's being rewarded for survivors not being able to remove lock on in any way and yet getting tokens being super easy. She is indeed. Such a reward for such little risk shouldn't be a thing. Yes you can tell but it's more difficult than just being able to see the line which is what I meant. Taking an M1 just doesn't sound like the best thing to do, especially when you're under the pressure Skull Merchants can put on you whilst they could be jamming out to music without a care in the world if they get stunned because they'll make that distance back with the survivor being forced to crouch or stand still (most people don't know that you can crouch against her drone).
Considering how predictable and counterable the drones are in general, actually pushing survivors into situations where they can't reasonably avoid stacks is pretty difficult and does involve some kind of skill.
The fact of the matter is, she has counterplay and that counterplay is pretty interactive. There is, whether you want to hear it or not, skill expression on both sides here.
You can just not like her. You don't have to overstate your case by posting videos like these, where someone just doesn't counter her power and also gets a little unlucky.
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@mikewelk said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3670997#Comment_3670997
The scans lock on permanently until you get M1'd. For all we know, the Meg could've been on the gen where the stairs lead up to and ran to that loop with two lock ons from previous encounters. They can't do anything to get rid of those. Let's say she crouched at the doorway, she would still lose a ton of distance from the fact she has to guess if the beam has passed her (as it is not visible in the line form) and taking into account server lag just adds to it. Skull Merchant is a 4.6m/s killer unlike Huntress who is 4.4m/s.
First part is correct! She was scanned twice before this clip started, so when the Skull Merchant gets a claw trap out of this situation, she's being rewarded for that as well as the single scan shown in the clip.
Second part is incorrect, you absolutely can tell if the beam has passed you. It's a little harder, and it involves keeping an eye on the drone, but with a combination of checking as you're approaching the door and timing it in your head, it's easily possible to know the beam's passed you. While you can't see the big glowy orange beams, you can see the lights on the drone itself. The beams start in a predictable position, they move at a predictable speed, and they move in a predictable direction. It might take a few tries before you get it down consistently, but you can know this kind of thing.
Third part is irrelevant, Huntress wouldn't have to move in this situation so her speed doesn't matter.
Finally, I want to highlight an implication you made in that second part: Let's say Meg does lose a ton of distance even though there's no guesswork involved. Then what? Does she... take an M1? Because that's preferable to getting hit by a claw trap, and actually the smart play in some scenarios against a few different killers.
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So the person that you've linked has done a good job protecting themselves from people pointing out that this is kind of a silly video to post as proof of anything. After all, if I explain why it's wrong, I'm just over-analysing or whatever.
Still, I'll do it anyway.
There's a couple things to keep in mind here. The biggest one is that this was strictly avoidable, this is maybe the most avoidable a scan could've been. All this Meg had to do was keep an eye on the drone's beams (or time it in their head, if they're good at that) and just stop in the the doorway for a split second. At this point Merchant's still walking around the loop, so there's plenty of time to start making distance again.
The second is that this is only an injure because Meg had already been scanned twice. If this had been a single scan I'm willing to bet it wouldn't be posted as a big gotcha, because... y'know, it's just kind of getting unlucky with your timing and getting scanned, it happens.
The third is that if Meg had been forced to take an M1 by crouching (which in this clip I don't think is likely), that still works out in her favour. A Skull Merchant who has you at two scans is going to try and get a claw trap on you, and if you force her to M1 you, that means you've wasted all the time she spent building stacks on you instead of going for an M1. Forcing the M1 hit against other killers is seen as perfectly reasonable and in your favour, it's the same for Merchant.
The fourth and final one is maybe the biggest outside of the first point listed: This loop sucks and most killers who have some kind of ranged damage would hit you anyway. This isn't Skull Merchant having no counterplay and being super unfair, even disregarding that the hit was avoidable to begin with, because this clip is really just showing that this particular pallet kind of sucks against any killer with range.
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A little aside the point from Hawkins specifically, but indoor maps really aren't that big of a problem for that many killers.
To the degree that you can string the maps together in any way here (by which I mean, Midwich and The Game are not exactly comparable in terms of strength for killer), there aren't that many killers who are that affected. It's, what... six or seven? Billy, Bubba, Wesker, Huntress, Slinger, Trickster, Singularity? Even then, they're not equally affected.
Anyway, to the wider point, I don't think Hawkins is that bad. It favours the killers I usually prefer to play, so I'm usually pretty pleased to see it, but it does have a few issues. Mostly, I get kinda annoyed at walking all the way around some of those rooms to get to the doorway, that's the biggest problem I have.
Honestly it's one of my favourites overall, but maps being the way they are, that isn't saying much.
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You don't even need Desperate Measures, just Botany does the trick.
I don't know what the exact numbers are now, but on the PTB this perk + Botany Knowledge was a 17 second heal. That's damn close to just being as fast as someone else healing you, which is very strong.
When it comes to self-heal perks, I think it genuinely might be the strongest. That's not a field with especially stiff competition, though, and something like Inner Strength would carry less risk so some might still prefer that.
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@C3Tooth said:
I just saw this vid.
https://twitter.com/Fiireside_/status/1765881627232637144
SM fails to mind game even at unsafe pallet. Meg still got injured after her shape reaction. What's the counterplay to not getting injured here?
With respect, the question isn't just "How do you avoid getting injured here", it's also "How do you avoid any killer that injures at range here".
So, let's answer those in order. One thing Meg didn't do here is keep an eye on the drone beams rotating, or maybe they did and just misjudged, happens to the best of us. Hypothetically, one of the things you'd do here is stop at the edge while the killer is still walking around, to avoid the beam. We can see they absolutely have the distance to do that here.
Moving on from that, let's now apply this question to other killers. If you try to play this loop versus other killers that can damage you at range, how does it go? Huntress hits you. Slinger hits you. Trickster can absolutely finish off the last few knife hits here, even assuming he's stunned like Merchant in this clip. Plague can clip you, which can be enough to finish infection.
Those last two are the most illustrative here, I think, because remember that one of the reasons Meg gets injured here is because they already had two scans- this could just as easily have been getting dinged with one scan and moving on, there's an element of just being unlucky here. Merchant is a killer that builds to an injury, like Trickster and Plague, so it's not like this terrible loop is still an easy injure if you're playing against Skull Merchant- Meg almost didn't get scanned at all, and it was only one scan.
With respect again, you posted a clip of someone getting unlucky, not of Skull Merchant lacking counterplay.
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@Devil_hit11 said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3669757#Comment_3669757
15 second heal. it is faster then original med-kits...
6% hindered is still too low. should be around 10%.
Yeah, that's what I meant.
It was 17 seconds on the PTB, so slightly slower than the default 16. Now it's 15, which is slightly faster.
Good perk, for sure.
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@ratcoffee said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3670193#Comment_3670193
And I think the perk is still nigh unplayable, which is why I was explaining why simply using the BNP analogy falls short for me
...But my argument was about it being a buff. Not whether it's stronger than a BNP. The fact that it works like a BNP makes it stronger than its previous version.
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@ratcoffee said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3670169#Comment_3670169
I'm just saying it's still mega bad
I was responding to someone who asked why people keep calling it a buff. So, I was laying out why it's a buff.
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@ratcoffee said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3670141#Comment_3670141
90% of the reason that BNP is so good is because you can apply it instantly.
Imagine if, in order to use a BNP, you first had to find a chest, open it, and then rummage through it again in order to use the BNP - essentially 2 full chest searches in order to use your BNP, and it simply sits as dead weight in your hands until you do that.
That version of BNP would still be more efficient than this perk, even before the fact that the killer can now realize where you are and that you'll be broken for the rest of the game
Sure?
None of that changes that going from regressable charges to a BNP effect is absolutely a buff, idk what this has to do with anything here.
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Strong on the PTB, stronger now, but probably not unfair.
People kinda overhype the travel time and risk of being in the basement, but they are still limiting factors, so I think it'll stay on the fair side for now. Running it with Botany on a map that doesn't completely screw you over basement wise (like Badham, for instance) would be genuinely strong.
Definitely gonna use it myself... but I might wait a bit until killers stop pre-emptively bringing Territorial Imperative, lol.
Definitely not as broken as old CoH, though, not even slightly. It only works for you and you don't choose the spot on the map it works for, on top of not boosting medkits (the actually broken thing about old CoH).
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@CursedPerson said:
I don't understand how people are calling this a buff. It's a rework on the mechanics. With an additional nerf -5% progress. Overall it's a nerf. I don't understand in what universe this is remotely viable or fun. Your spending 2 minutes IN THE BASEMENT to become broken for a smidge of progress. That's the easiest way to get tunnelled out of the game by any killer with movement speed. Your net negative 70 seconds on gens since you can only complete 5 gens anyway. Having another teammate constantly injured increases killer pressure since a lot of the time you need a healthy survivor to go for a hook save.
It's a cool idea for a perk that can still be salvaged but the numbers and downsides are so far out of touch with reality.
Consider how strong a Brand New Part addon is. Apply that to every generator.
That's why this is a buff, permanently reducing the number of charges a gen needs before completion both shortens the repair time and makes regression comparatively weaker. You can think of it as making a generator incapable of being regressed down further than ten charges. Permanent charge reduction is way stronger than those charges being added normally, even when the number is lower.
The permanent Broken is a big tradeoff, and one I'd personally like to see adjusted, but up to two minutes in the basement for BNPs on every gen on the map isn't a joke. It'll be situational and dependent on some factors, as well as being massively more viable with at least one friend on comms versus complete solo queue, but it's definitely a buff from where it was.
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@GentlemanFridge said:
https://youtu.be/JqH4-yUlkhU?si=68-nvd4b_YEuaJy3
PixelBush posted this just now.
^ Just finished watching this, it's got some good info in it. Very worth watching if you've got the time and patience to internalise all of it.
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@Coffeecrashing said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3669882#Comment_3669882
It’s currently worth running iri pinky, because you can combine it with the +2 bottle addon.
The new addon should have said “reduces the number of bottles by -5 bottles”
Right, and when you do that, it becomes problematic. You even laid it out yourself why: You actually get to slow them down and then slap them with an instadown. It's also kind of overhyped, it's more consistent to run his healthier addons anyway.
It's a dumb, badly designed addon, and it needs to go. I'm saying this as someone who primarily plays Clown, even, this isn't an outside perspective.
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It is, but it also can't be stronger than this without being unhealthy, and this is already kind of pushing it.
So rather than clamouring for the addon to get buffed, we should all focus on trying to get it reworked so it can actually be strong and healthy at the same time.
It's already not really worth it to run this addon, so that hasn't changed. At least he actually gets to benefit from all the other changes in every game, lol.
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The number did go down, but the smaller number is stronger than the bigger number in this case.
What I think is more of a fair downside to criticise is permanent Broken. A trade of "BNP on every gen in exchange for a health state and a timesink" is perfectly reasonable, but I think the health state could fairly be on a timer instead of permanent.
But, to more concretely answer the question in the original post: No, they did not just nerf Weaving Spiders, they buffed it. If they kept the number the same, it would've been stronger than a BNP, on every gen instead of one. Part of the tradeoff is that you don't get to exceed the item you're replacing, but you do get to use it on every gen at once.
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@humanbeing1704 said:
basement self care will genuinely be a good perk
guarantee you it’s the next perk people complain about for some reason
It already was, if you paired it with Botany you could very close to a default-speed heal. I don't know exactly how the numbers break down but I'm pretty sure now that heal will be faster than default speed.
I don't think complaints will be justified, mind you, but I do think this perk was already pretty damn good on the PTB and extra speed just heightens that.
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I don't think it'll be popular, but I do think it's now usable and has a clear niche.
It'll be good in coordinated teams, and honestly, smart use of it even in solo queue should be possible. It's definitely not going to be ultra-strong, but it's a nice little starter for this new mechanic; Scourge Hooks were introduced with a weak perk too, and we can see how good that mechanic ended up being.
I think its main strength is going to be countering very territorial killers. If they aren't roaming around to generate pressure, and especially if they're trying to 3-gen, getting gen progress without needing to sit on gens where you might be more vulnerable is definitely viable.
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Good changes overall.
Kind of amazed only one of the Huntress buffs was scaled back, but that was probably the most problematic one. Somewhat concerned about Machine Gun Huntress with double wind up, but I suppose we'll have to let it settle and see.
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The drone's beam won't scan you if you're crouching or standing still, so if you're approaching to disarm it that's your best tactic. You can still see the drone spinning in stealth mode, the lights on the side indicate where the beam is, it can be avoided in stealth mode too.
In chase, this is obviously harder, it'll come down to the specific loop you're at. There are definitely places you can stand or crouch in chase - people do it all the time to clear Exhaustion - but that's not every loop, you're probably better off just avoiding loops that have drones in them if you want to be more safe.
Hacking drones is a good idea in general, if she has to recall and replace the drone, you have time to leave the loop and avoid having to play around the drones at all. This obviously goes for if you hack a drone but your teammate is chased by her next, too.
Also be aware that anyone being scanned makes her slightly faster for a moderately long duration, so if you do mess up and get scanned, you might want to play it more safe with resources. On the flipside, taking one scan and booking it when you have an opening to make distance can absolutely be a good idea; being scanned is generally something to avoid, but even once you're actually getting Hindered because you got scanned a bunch, it's not an automatic fail state. It's like avoiding Clown gas- try to if you can, but you aren't necessarily instantly dead for running into it sometimes.
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That's not an exploit, it's how she's supposed to function.
I'm actually not against a brief cooldown between recalling and placing a new one, but it is worth mentioning that there is still a point to disabling drones. If she has to replace the drone, it gives you time to leave the loop without even getting scanned. Granted, that's not particularly fun, it's an issue she shares with Knight and Artist, but it is still counterplay.
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@Phantom_ said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3669196#Comment_3669196
None of the others do. They actually play the game and chase.
I don't know, I guess this must be just some kind of region or MMR difference. I rarely see Skull Merchants, and when I do see them, they're just playing her normally.
Maybe there's some other region or MMR bracket where these SM players really are causing problems like this, but it sure as hell isn't mine.
Even then, though, I generally object to one annoying playstyle being used to dismiss an entire killer. It'd be like saying "What's the point of playing against Leatherface/Huntress" because a lot of them facecamp, or "What's the point of playing against Artist/Knight" because a lot of them just drop their power at loops. It's not exactly constructive.
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At that rate, you could ask what the point of playing against any killer is, especially ones who 3-gen.
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@Hexling said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3668604#Comment_3668604
Because they get points for tunneling I'm confused do you know how points work.
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3668603#Comment_3668603
I'm not spiteful I hoe all survivor's die for the chance for me to get a save. The more slow down the better.
They get points no matter how they play. They don't get more points for tunnelling, so how does a flat increase in BP earned become an incentive to tunnel?
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How is that an incentive?
That's just a lack of a deterrent at most, it doesn't have any effect at all.