HeavyPress
HeavyPress
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@XombieJoker said:
Before I get into anything, I want to be clear, I am not fond of SM nor have I ever been. I've always found her kit at almost every stage of her existence to be problematic.
I have to say this is the laziest re-design of a killer. This re-design is just a variation of Twins. Both idle Victor and the Drones detect survivor movement with the exception of crouch movement. Both Victor and the Drones can be controlled to move around and attack survivors. The only difference is SM can have 5 Drones, the Drones have a time limit for their use, the Drones can move over dropped pallets and window vaults, and the Drones have a 'dash' attack that if they hit a wall or survivor it's a one use attack that will need to deploy another Drone to perform.
We already have about 1/3 of the killer roster with some form of a 'dash' attack/ability.
Her most recent version before she got gutted was probably her best version BUT still needed some adjustments. Gaining Haste and applying Hindered for scanning was a bit much esp since the haste also added to the lunge attack range. Getting undetectable for deploying a Drone didn't make sense either esp since she almost has no audio while undetectable while most killers do. Wraith snarls, Myers heavy breathing, Ghostface sounds like bedsheets whipping in the wind, Onryo has a lullaby. Her only form of skill expression was changing the rotation direction of the scan lines which doesn't take a lot of brain cells to do. I know many SM defenders will come in and say "she has plenty of counter play, just dance around the Drone or crouch under it". These 'counters' are NOT feasible while she is CHASING you. She plops a Drone in a spot and that tile is dangerous to stick around. Again SM defenders will say "Trapper and Hag do the same thing" except Trapper and Hag are held STATIONARY for up to 3 seconds to plant their trap while SM still has full movement and speed when deploying a Drone. I have played her at every stage of her changes and she was extremely boring in all of them with the small exception of when she could change direction of the scan lines, I finally had a single braincell activate and not just auto-pilot to make use of such a feature.
I had an idea for a change to SM from a long, long time ago. No, I don't think it's the best or even the right change, but it is just and idea to put on the table. Idle Drones that detect a survivor build up a Lock On as well as she can control the Drones to move around and manually build up the Lock On. She can switch between Drones to apply the Lock On to multiple survivors. Once Lock On is fully applied, a Claw Trap is attached to the survivor and not only will they be revealed to the portable radar for as long as the Claw Trap is attached, but the Claw Trap will administer 3 toxins in 3 stages to the afflicted survivor. Each administration of a toxin will last until the Claw Trap battery dies but each toxin will only be applied at certain stages of the Claw Trap battery life. Toxin 1 applies at the attachment of the Claw Trap, toxin 2 applies once the Claw Trap battery is 33% drained and toxin 3 applies when the Claw Trap battery is 66% drained. These toxin affects can vary between things like preventing survivors from repairing gens. Apply a small hindered status. When a survivor drops a pallet or vaults a location, they get a de-buff that prevents them from performing a drop pallet/vault for X seconds. Or any other conceived ideas to help chase down a survivor.
I don't think BHVR's projected change is right for her, but I also haven't given a lot of thought into her myself either. Also I won't listen to the advocates "oh you don't know how she works, she is the most complex thing that has ever been crafted in that last 10 000 years of all humanity, and at my MMR of 3 BILLION she suffers from these issues that she needs buffs for"
Comparing Skull Merchant’s mobility when placing Drones negatively to Bear Traps and Phantasm Traps is a false equivalency. If you run into a Bear Trap, you take an injury and if the Trapper is actively chasing you, you go down. If a Phantasm Trap goes off and the Hag teleports to it, you take an injury or a down; if it’s Scarred Hand and you’re being chased, you get bodyblocked and the same thing happens.
Contrast to the Drone going out and you get one Lock-On stack, out of THREE needed for her to get an injury out of her power, and after that she becomes an M1 killer who, frankly, needs her Undetectable and status effects to be effective. For what it’s worth, I’m not defending the “drop Drone at tile, okay cool now hold them here until you stack up the injury” gameplay. But the implication that it’s more oppressive tile-denial than Trapper or Hag have? Nuh-uh.
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What I like about Skull Merchant, generally, is stealth and information.
So with 1.0, I liked the fact that she had Undetectable while within the range of her drones, and I liked 2.0’s brief burst of Undetectable upon dropping a drone. The former could be problematic in that the braindead counterplay was to just leave loop, and the latter was a bit more strategic—gotten quite a few hits by strategically dropping drones in random places while making approachs on gens.
In either case, I also liked her tracking. Pulling out the radar to check people’s locations mid-chase is cool. There’s no real gameplay reason for the radar to exist; you could’ve just seen auras as long as someone is detected and it probably would’ve been an objectively superior gameplay design. But it feels good, in that nebulous “gives the killer an identity” way.
I am, obviously, not seeing either of these in this preview. The mention of Adriana getting Undetectable while controlling Drones is a little silly; it’s literally just “Victor doesn’t have a Terror Radius”. Stealth Merchant is not a thing in this design.
Her Drone tracking is not relevant, as far as I can tell. Scanlines rotate slower and still have visual cues? When the only benefit she gets from a scan now is the survivor showing up on radar? And the Red Light Green Light idea is cute, but… in practice, people will just sit on gens and then sprint freely if she finds them. It’ll be fun to glance down at her radar during those times, but it’s not exactly the interactivity that the preview is trying to shoot for.
There’s so much else wrong, too. I cannot believe someone actually wrote “Drone Hacking returns with a greater degree of risk and reward” when the punishment is just getting revealed on Killer Instinct, versus gaining a Lock-On stack and potentially losing a Health State.
I wish I could be more charitable, but I can’t. This doesn’t just ruin Skull Merchant’s identity. It’s a bad design.
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Weighing in again after the comments from Discord. Upping the Condemn lock by one instead of removing it is eyerolling.
This still shakes out to the same big problem: Why do I care about getting Condemned stacks? Sadako sees no benefits from playing into her own central gimmick except the potential of getting early kills, which I’ve gathered is what the PTB nerfs and this stubborn adherence to the stack lock are designed to restrict.
But she can’t be balanced like that because giving people the deadly stink-eye is the core of her whole design, and when you pile limitations on her capabilities (as opposed to creating good counterplay), this is what causes her to be viewed as a mediocre or underperforming Killer.
Survivors have so many allowances and good tools to deal with her now: Limited range of Condemned infliction. TV auras. The ability to shut down her teleports. The sheer speed of tape insertion. The lack of any penalty for engaging with her counterplay.
Honestly, a limit doesn’t make sense in the slightest. @Skitten56’s suggestion of 4/7 max is at least not bad, but to reasonably get any more than that in a game where other survivors are also interacting with tapes, a Sadako player would have to be viciously tunnelling that specific Survivor to the detriment of her own chances at victory — which is not an issue that has anything to do with Sadako’s power balance, so why bother?
Limiting it to any extent that would have discernable impact on gameplay essentially turns Inexorable Stare into a less useful Final Judgment. At least with Pyramid Head they just have to run through the barbed wire and it’s a fun little thing instead of the crux of his power that he has to dedicate strategy and effort into achieving.
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The meme’s so pervasive that they specifically addressed that the upcoming changes are not a nerf.
Also, they won’t be reworks either — just “number tweaks.” The same thing about number tweaks goes for every other killer grouped with her.
During the livestream they said one of the goals was to ”alleviate pain points,” which suggests improvements to their usability and/or effectiveness.
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Revert to PTB state, at absolute minimum. That's all I can really say here.
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@Bloodartist said:
Ive been casually playing Sadako in the past as my main killer, and at first the changes looked like all buffs. (Ive never really bothered with specifically building condemned, if it happens it happens)
But apparently she now initiates chases while demanifested, which made me go #########? Whats the point of demanifesting then if the survivors are going to get chase music warning that she is near? PReviously I loved to surprise survivors with it, now its like stealth that isn't a stealth? This feels like it completely undermines the whole character?
I guess this is in line with devs always destroying whatever killer I used to love playing. First nurse, then spirit, now onryo..
Chase while demanifested is actually something that was removed during her first rework, and was demanded back by most long-term players of her. It's useful for Sadako because she lacks tools like Wraith's stealthed speed. This way, she can gain bloodlust while demanifested, which means you can use her stealth actively during chases and survivors can't abuse window vaults to avoid her (as they only become blocked by the Entity if you overuse them during chase).
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All I could think after reading the lore and seeing the Encroaching Darkness skin was, “Why isn’t THAT her default!?”
Adriana has two major gimmicks behind her: The Most Dangerous Game but with thirst trap Elon Musk, and cringey edgelord otaku cosplayer. Of the two, they decided to lean into the former. It was 110% the wrong move. Even if her playstyle at launch had been completely unchanged and thus just as hated, if they’d played up her trying to be a cool and edgy anime villain, I think she’d be a lot more popular character-wise.
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I have not played Sadako since her first rework. I was extremely happy with the PTB and said as much here; so excited, in fact, that I decided to wait until this update released so that I’d be fresh and ready to absolutely dig into this game with my favorite killer.
I guess I’ll be looking forward to the midchapter.
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- Same crouch/uncrouch time and reduced move speed.
- Allow vaulting/breaking pallets/damaging gens while crouched.
- Roar when ambush begins, scream on swing; sadly, no more oink for boop.
- Faster recovery if stunned or colliding with environment during ambush.
- RBTs cannot be removed until activated.
- RBTs automatically activate if placed during endgame.
- RBTs deactivate if the survivor is within 12 meters of the gate when the RBT is put on them, or is carried within 12 meters while wearing an RBT.
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@radiantHero23 said:
I have one more important question.
Will passive condemned be making a return?
It wasn't quite clear in the dev notes.
My instinct as a player is that it probably should? Otherwise we're still engaging in brain-unnecessary counterplay territory: Are you working on a gen? Take tape, done, work on gen. Given the sheer potential for impact that locking in could have, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with survivors receiving a full stack just from taking a tape, but taking one needs at least some risk-reward aspect.
Weighing in: I'm 110% behind the Sadako changes, to the limited extent I can be without the full changelog. This is everything I wanted to see from a Sadako rework - tweaks to improve her capabilities and make tapes more relevant, not a wild reimagining.
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To the devs: I regret that I cannot justify continuing to play DBD until Sadako's changes, with the exception of preventing the slug+condemn style, are reverted. Considering the vast amount of feedback received on the forum, including a thread where someone was kind enough to compile nearly every piece of feedback from Sadako players outlining their concerns, seeing a fundamental refusal to address those concerns reflected in the update is indicative of a deep lack of care for the game and a disregard for its players.
Thank you for all the good times and wonderful matches I've had so far; I hope to have them again.
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It might be the case that Matchbox is buffing Nurse's speed by 13.75% (+0.55) to reach 110%, rather than setting her walking movement to 4.4 m/s without affecting anything else.
The game uses 4.0 m/s as the 100% reference point for movement. If I understand correctly, buffs are added together and then calculated against relative percentage, not against the value they're modifying. 13.75% + 18% from Agitation = 31.75%. Carrying speed of 92% + 31.75% is 123.75%. Compared to 4.0 m/s as 100%, that's 4.95 m/s.
- Matchbox-Agitation Nurse travels 124 meters in 25.0505 seconds.
- Agitation Nurse is able to cover the same distance in 28.1818 seconds.
- Unencumbered Trapper manages the task in 26.9565 seconds.
That lines up pretty well with your results.