Lets talk about Skull Merchant and her status/hate in Dead by Daylight - Possible changes for Skully 

This was a totally new experience making this video and it was a lot of fun making it! I hope you all enjoy the discussion and please, join in. Comment down below what you think about the possible changes, or if there is a change that you have that I didn't say. Or do you think she doesn't need any changes at all and she's fine the way she is and survivors are crying for nothing? I would love to get to know your thoughts on how to make the Skull Merchant better for people going against her and hopefully boost the love for her!

Its funny to me because I feel like SM's issues are seemingly contradictory: she is too simple but also she is too complicated. However, I think both of these things are true. She's too simple in the sense that a lot her power boils down to "at loop = drop drone". There are a lot of anti-loop killers in the game, but one of the things that sets SM apart from them is that it costs her nothing to shut down a loop. Other anti-loop killers like Artist or Knight have some slow-down or others like Nurse or Spirit have a higher degree of technical execution to shutting down loops. Giving Skull Merchant some slowdown when she is placing her drones such that there is more decision making would go a long way to making her feel less bad to play against. Another part of her being too simple is that so much of her kit is just stacking passives (both buffs and debuffs) and feels less active and engaging. Undetectable passive when she drops drone, haste passive when survivors are tracked, hindered passive when they are fully scanned, survivors get broken debuff. I think they can and should pull back on just how many buffs and debuffs are part of her kit. And, she is too complicated because there is just so much that goes into her kit that even for people who have gone up against SM multiple times can still be hard to understand and part of that has to do with all her buffs and debuffs. She gets haste but only in certain circumstances. She gets undetectable but only in certain circumstances. Her drones can be in stealth, scouting, or disabled modes. There are just so many "x when y" with her kit that it can be confusing for people to both play as and against her. There was another content creator that did a SM video where they had polled their community (and a decent sized CC so fairly large sample too) asking them to place killers into different buckets like stealth, anti-loop, zoning, trap, ranged, etc. Killers could be in multiple categories and SM was placed into far more than any others. She is a trap killer, a stealth killer, anti-loop, and several others and more than any others. This, I think, speaks to just how complicated she is. I think the devs need to clean up her kit, make her easier to understand while giving both her and survivors more decision making when going against her. Add some slowdown when she is setting up drones, the same as other trap and anti-loop killers so that there is more decision making that goes into when/how she places drones at loops. Streamline her buffs/debuffs so that instead of so many of them being base kit they become add-ons that let people customize their playstyle and simplify her base power. And offset this by making the core part of her power stronger. Instead of drones stealth drones rotating, make it so they activate when players enter the area unless crouch walking. Make the scouting drones rotate faster. Give her Killer Instinct when a drone is being tampered with. I think at the end of the day, it boils down to players wanting agency and to feel like there is reasonable and rewarding counter play and right now SM feels like she is missing that.

3% haste is actually quite a lot because what actually matters in dbd is that speed difference between survivor and killer which is just 0.6 m/s (for skull merchant). That speed increase turns her from a 4.6 m/s to a 4.74 m/s killer. The change to her overall speed might be just 3%, but the change to the survivor-killer speed difference is actually 23%

I think a small thing that should be done is to help make it more clear what happens when a drone scans you or if you're claw trapped, as I see it there's no obvious sign to a survivor that the killer can see their location when either of those things happen and I think in the eyes of someone who doesn't know a thing about skull merchant it'd be very confusing trying to figure out what's happening to them. My suggestion would be basically 2 things: Bringing back the eye icon that hovered above your head from the PTB version of skull merchant that used to indicate that she was seeing your location on her radar and instead using it as a general cue that she can track you. Making the lock-on stacks on a survivor's HUD stand out more by making them a different colour (I think red could be a good colour) as they kind of blend in with the yellow ring which might result in people not noticing that they gain "stacks" from being scanned or that 3 results in a claw trap. Even though I like to play skull merchant myself I'd like to see her lose her undetectable when she places a drone since even though it is fun to use I think that removing it will make her less confusing and I think she'd be fine without it (it'd be great as an add-on though) , I think her power should only be her drones, radar and clawtrap. In exchange I would consider adding the ability to track the progress bar of generators near claw trapped survivors which would show up as a bar on her radar's screen while having survivors be able to see that by having a similar visual to the PTB eye above the tracked generator.

1:29 um... no that was at the tail end of that era of skull merchant. He did not popularize that playstyle. Sadly at that point "3 gen merchant" was just how she was seen since her power was focused more on the macro than directly in a chase, making the easiest thing to do with her if you werent good at handling your drones... to just camp 3 close gens. Skull merchant just came at a really bad time where the 3 gen issue (witch had been here since the start) had not been addressed while gen regression perks were at its peak. She wasnt even the only killer who could hold gens hostage as singularity was another popular 3 gen killer on top of other killers that could do it to. (but in their cases they didnt have a reputation of only camping 3 gens). I really miss old skull merchant and how versatile her addons were from enabling and strengthening specific builds like hexes, skill checks, or chase oriented builds to her great ability to truly be "the eyes in the sky" finding survivors had always been my most difficult tasks in game and she was the best killer besides doctor when it cams to finding survivors. R.I.P

I miss her OG version of ultrasonic speaker from her on release version :( . It gave her a very interesting chase dynamic as it was Dissolution as an addon for her claw traps; and it was actually very effective compared to the actual perk since it has a short duration to capitalize on. Claw trap batteries lasted a long while and had to be manually removed once dead but you could recharge the battery to full with a drone so you essentially could keep this effect on the survivor permanently for the rest of the chase. Made pallet loops death traps and encouraged survivors to use strong window loops as if you were playing against a bubba/hilbilly or a m2 pallet eating killer which was unique for an m1 killer. This sadly got gutted and removed later on; her second version tried baking it base kit but it was very bad since she could no longer recharge claw traps anymore and were automatically removed after 1 destroyed pallet which made it way too situational like the perk to get value out of. The pallet breaking effect was then removed entirely in SM's current version now; I do like current SM but was sad to see a cool add on fly under the radar and then get removed completely as it was fun and viable on OG merchant but was completely overlooked due to the strength of holding a 3-gen.

At the very least, I’d be okay with survivors losing a lock on stack whenever they disable a drone, and maybe in exchange she can see the lock on stacks in order to still be able to manage them now that survivors can chose to go get rid of them. Something like that would give survivor players more agency and give skull merchant more information about the match.

The reason I don't like playing against skull merchant is because I could be on the opposite side of the map, then a drone reactivates near me or I accidentally walk near it and now I'm broken. It's not fun, you get used to it with plague because that's her whole power and you have to be puked on but with skull merchant she just breaks me cross map cause she hid drones behind each wall and the drones don't warn that they're coming back online. As far as I understood, your detection meter little yellow things don't go down until you're broken, which is sooo annoying. I'll have done an entire gen then I just barely walk into the drone zone and the broken activates cause I got scanned 2 times earlier. No other killer can just make you broken cross map like that and in Plagues case, it's only that, you get broken, not detected, not having to do ddr to help your team and it's just simpler. Plague is also hated, but less, as she is easier to counter. Being broken is the most annoying status effect in the game, it's even worse than exposed cause you bleed and cry in pain. Any killer based on giving that status effect is bound to be hated, even if in SM's case it wasn't always like that.

I really like the powerfantasy of Skully. An electronical "tracker/trapper" is VERY cool. I really do wish she was more enjoyable to play as and against though, she just feels pretty clunky. I play her occasionally, and really enjoy playing versus her! There's a lot of cool stuff you can do with and against her, I think. Just a shame a lot of survivors will give up against her, so playing versus or as her will have pretty poor quality games, most of the time.

Brutal strength supremacy 😌

9:07 I honestly think It should be more tied to the drones themselves. If you hack a drone, you lose one stack of lock-on. However, you can only remove one stack & the next hack will only grant you immunity to scan for 30 seconds. Making it so suvrs have to interact with the killer power & for SM to think of shifting their drones more so no one can disable them as easily.

I like most of these, except i dont think lock on stacks should be removable. You shouldnt be getting scanned out of chase, and if you are it needs to be punishing, bc the drones provide ample amount of info on how to avoid them with the lights in and bright neon circle on the ground and the fact you could literally just crouch walk through them. Its very very easy to avoid them out of chase, and making stacks removable lessens their punishment factor to much imo

ur channel feels so comfy, ure so nice

As a sm main I always wondered how different she would be if her drones moved, kind of like how her lore uses them. Not to mention I think there's some inspiration for more of her "thrill of the hunt" design, rather than her "I know your every move" which is what her power plays into more. Exhausting the survivor until they go down with tracking and physical hinderance. I wonder if there might be a way to implement something like a buildup to a type of m2 or other thing similar to Trickster. But once again it poses the problem of her drones being too useless, effectively ruining her ability in chase even more than it is already bad and situational. I LOVE these ideas!

This seems like alot of nerfs. To make survivor mains happy. It's alot of gives but nothing in returned in order to be popular. Survivors loves killers that they can beat easily. When Billy was nerfed, survivors loved Billy. Now they hate him..

One of my issues with the character is the difference between how hard it is to play her and to play against her. Playing as her takes little mechanical input and requires very little effort to make her power work. I'm not saying you can't play her in a smart way, nor am I saying that she takes absolutely no skill. What I'm saying is that for your power to do stuff you technically don't have to do much. On the other hand, survivors have to be smart, attentive, and know how the killer works in and out to avoid losing health states and getting hit. Because of this in-balance, it puts her in a weird spot where she doesn't have a balance problem, but can still cause frustrations. I don't know what Behavior could do to fix this though...

Bestie, I had someone dc as soon as they heard my terror radius when I played her the other night 😭 they didn’t even try I’m so mad

her stealth hability feel like bs. Also i hate that she gets haste in random moments and we get heavily 'mangled'

I play like 70% solo queue survivor and 30% killer (artist and plague). I honestly don’t have much of an opinion about skull merchant because I barely see them :( when I do go against one I typically don’t do very well because I’m not that experienced going against them . I haven’t tried her as killer because I’m too afraid of the salty reactions. I really think that a lot of the animosity is because of the old design and what some vocal creators said about it. People are holding onto old stereotypes and that sucks.

I think the lock on stacks being able to be taken off because a surv isn’t in a drone is too harsh on merchant, walking into a drone is supposed to be punishing and in my opinion would encourage survs to be careless around the map, the whole point of her scouting drones is too catch a surv off guard and get the injure, but idk also I prefer the haste status effect to the hinder because hinder is never fun to go against as a surv but haste is fine ngl. The changes about the drone recall cool down are a good idea I agree it’ll encourage merchants to place and pick up her drones more strategically. However with that being said they need to fix the animations of the disabled drones cause sometimes when I disable one I come back to it and the animation of it is like lying down on the floor so u can’t tell what stage it’s at 😭😭

I am one of those people that have a huge crush on her (I also a sm main and obsessed with her). Her drones and tracker are so cool. And I’ve only ever played chase merchant

As a Skull Merchant Main, I will say this, Skull Merchant isn't bad to go up against, She is just an M1 Killer, However, I do see the reasons of her hate but, Survivors who i run to still complain about her Three Gen thing, Which, Really confuses me. If i ask for one vhange in particular, Honestly, I don't know, I think she's fine. I love her, She is the reason why I got back into DBD and some survivors respones are all the same "Uninstalled", "Switch your main", "You're a Sweat", I even got a Transphobic message (I'm actually gonna be Transitioning in the future) I wish the hate for her go aways but it the Dbd community, Some will never let it go. Btw, I love your content, Keep on doing what you love doing 🤍

What I would change about her is remove her haste, remove the ability to crouch walk through her drones (stopping is still fine but being able to move is dumb), make it so if she recalls a hacked drone it goes on cd, but if she recalls a non hacked drone it’s fine. Idk though. No matter what you do people will complain because they are stuck in the past.

The hate for SM is unreal. The amount of hate comments I've had on Reddit because ive said I enjoy playing her is crazy

Deadass, my friend on disc changed my view on skully, I hate spirits always more than skully. I hope you feel better and I advise oiling up as it helps greatly :)

I say people really just dont know how to properly play dbd. Like most are mains on each side and so how you a survivor main and complain about all the sm games you get yet havent learned to counter her? The devs made it easier to see when its safe and most still dont understand her its wild. Also sm dc when there are survivors that know how to counter her cuz most dont care to try but yeah just crouch like legit in chase at a loop crouch and no scan sm moves it just crouch it wont pick you up she is a mid to low B teir killer simply because you can out right ignore her power by crouching forcing her to zone you to a drone you may not see but even then theres sound she places them in loops so just crouch. Its not like hag were you need to crouch got to and spend 4sec disarming it not even a long hold down legit see the scan crouch you can still loop that area. Doing that sm legit has no power at all and left as a m1 killer witch is why I love the addon where the drones dont spin so they have to hack it or be a scan regardless and or m1 because you can no longer quick crouch to avoid the scans.

Im convinced this human hasn't played with people that acually know how to counter a sm you can still stay at that loop honestly stall for so long just because you outright stop the drones by crouching you force her to have to m1 both hits and thats 2 gens for real and the recall is stupid you recall from anywhere but tou have to go all the way back to the spot to replace it thats why theres no timer its time waste and if and when you get there and it still disabled you can quickly replace it but even then crouching is her counter. Hag was the 3 gen queen still is hag is another killer you need to crouch for but its so many steps it simply doesnt work. To counter a hag someone need to harass her traps but with that quality a life update and the small traps addon its a hit ether way shes just not played as much. Guy didn't even explain proper counters I stay at all the loops. Sm almost alway get confused then sit there to move it on there own and I get distant no one in that video crouched at her drones they paniced witch is what mess them up. I love dd with a sm shed place 3 drones in main Id never get scaned because you crouch to avoid scans a quick not even a sec button press and no scan shes is a horrible killer like her best kit she is just mid B teir aside from that low B teir just because that counter is really punishing to a sm its just most dont do it but gods ge in to a team that know that youd be worst that a trapper cuz at least then youd have gaff to aid ya but youd just look like a fool.

Nah, she's very fine like this. BHVR please add more skins for this killer c:

I think the perfect rework for her would be that she can place 2 kind of drones(she would still have 6): 1 which works like the drones now and 1 that is more chase like. Something like you place the drone and it starts slowly going in a straigth line, ofcourse in stealth mode, but after it detects a survivor it starts following them and scanning them(they would slowly get the lockdown stacks). I don’t know how would they stop the drone following them, maybe after some seconds survivors could hack these drones, but they would go back to skully after it. I think something like this would be more accuret to her lore: “hunting humans”. I think her current power is kinda accuret to her lore, because she hunts in one area so she would be a little campy, so I think the combination of the hunting and “camping” would be perfect for her + I think the second type of drones that follow survivors would remove the lock on stacks after the survivor hacks them( the survivors can only hack the drone after like 5 seconds which would be seen in game like the drone slows down so survivors would know When to hack it)

I was thinking. What if SM couldn't recall disabled Drones but she needs to go to the drone and manually repair it

Preach❤!

The 3 gen strat is basically removed at this point She is still, however, cheap asf. The haste/hindered ability with a free damage state is awful to play against and is mind numbingly easy to do when playing as her. Lack of skill expression and overall frustration is just how it's always going to be with her. I can compare it to facing a clown except Skully doesn't need to throw bottles. She just exists and the bottle effects are permanent.

first off, love your channel. Secondly think they should bring back to old claw trap where you have to do the mini game to get it off, and i think that when a survivor is scanned maybe you can get undetectable?

over time i don't think she's as bad! i can understand people like and dislike what they will but it feels like there is just lots of bias against her

My only nitpick is that claw stacks should only go down if you got them outside of chase. If you got them in chase then they should never go away. Overall fair changes that could slightly lessen the hate SM gets.

SM can still 3 gen so it didint change much lol. I do agree that i wish SM wasnt so hated alongside legion. I love both of these killers and i have chat disabled on dbd for good becuase of the hate against these killers.

Best Skully Ever 💕💕

Wait shes reveiving another rework or is this just a talk about her cause im a bit unaware as a skullmerchant main

she's hell to face on solo q, but tbh so are most killers lol. average mmr you lose most games anyways.

People are still salty over her old ability to 3 gen.Which Built up a reputation of a three gen.She isn’t that bad or annoying to deal with😭

Amazing video as always! I I do think a few changes to her hit could be interesting, but I don’t know if I’m a huge fan of just nerfing her for the sake of keeping survivors happy. As you touched upon, at the end of the day skully is a trap based killer. Survivors *should* be punished for triggering her traps. I personally like her speed but I’m okay with switching her hindered effect into something else. Also, maybe claw trapped survivors only give her the haste boost when in a certain proximity to her? A common complaint I see is that you could be getting chased by her but a teammate across the map could trigger a trap and give her haste, so maybe she’ll only get haste within a certain (but generous) range?

Dbd might make Skull Merchant better to play and play against until they nerf pig 20 times 💀

In my opinion her number one issue is her one dimensional chase. Perhaps something that could be experimented with is disabling stealth drones when the skull merchant is within their radius, and then adding a new drone state a drone is put in upon being placed that lasts 0.5 seconds which can be used to laser tag the survivor and turn the drone active, denying the loop. This would retain skull merchants ability to deny loops by placing drones but it would require them to actually aim the ability or else they would need to sit through a cool down before attempting again. As for lock on being removable, i don't think its great idea. Skull merchant was always supposed to be a trap based stalk killer, lock on decay was a thing back when OG skull merchant existed and the result was getting almost no value out of it as survivor had ample time to exit the radius unless they were being held at a loop. In my opinion if it was to be added, it should be added in a similar way to how ghost faces stalk works, in that if skull merchant injures or downs a survivor, all lock on stacks should be removed. This change would combine well with an additional change to the previously mentioned "windup" state of placed drones, perhaps their range could be increased and they could be allowed to scan stationary survivors. That way her stalk aspect of her kit could be utilized more reliable via laser tagging, without it getting hard countered by standing still and taking the m1.

No! We don’t talk about her!

Every time i play SM i have to put on a hazard suit☣️

I wondered if she could have an ability sorta like Singularity, where if a drone finds you it latches onto you and she has only 2 or 3 drones, but idk, might too similar to Singularity. I also think it'd be interesting if being undetectable when throwing up a drone wasn't base kit but an add on instead, but that might be too heavy of a nerf? I do think the biggest change I want though is how she handles loops. Right now when I play her I know to throw up a drone on a loop, which is fine, but there isn't punishment or risk or challenge really, and that's the one aspect I don't enjoy. I wanna feel rewarded for a strong anti loop play and I want the survivors I play against to have more interesting ways to handle my drones during loops compared to just holding W, yknow? Overall I don't think she's that bad, but I kinda wish she played more like the badass thrill chasing huntress she is than the defensive playstyle she's seemed to have post and prior rework. (Edit cuz forgot to add this, tired caretaker brain, lord) It's ridiculous the hate we SM mains get though. I always play fair, I try to be silly when I can, I make sure to have a personality during matches, I hit all the checkboxes of being a fun killer to go against, but it never matters cuz I'm playing SM. I've gotten more salt in the end game chat than I've ever gotten in any game ever (outside of Overwatch but that's Overwatch for ya) and it's so weird and disheartening to go up against. I can't imagine opening up my socials to see that kinda stuff there every day.

everyone is sick atm haha

i am sorry because i know you like playing as skull merchant but in my opinion they should just nerf this killer into the ground. It is just way too strong in its current state. most of the time skull merchants bring an indoor map which makes it close to impossible for a random team to win. explain to me how can it be that traps, hurt you, put you into mending, slow you, reveal where you are and do multiple other shit depending on your addons. take away your terror radius, exhaust you, break you. it is just absolutely ridiculous. and if survivors disable it you can just replace it in 5 seconds. but even if youre not there it'll repair itself after a while. what were they thinking? they need to rework those traps completely or make it so that you have like 20 traps and thats it.

It doesn't need all this, the survivors just need to use their minds

I personally tolerate the Skull Merchant

The biggest issue with her is the same Onryo has. It doesn't matter how many changes they make, part of the DBD community will always hate her immediately because they don't really learn to go against her and will immediately throw matches/DC. If she was bad once, she'll be bad forever. The other thing is people just don't like trapping enemies. They want to not have to leave a godloop. She is no different from a trapper or a hag setting down a trap in one side of the pallet or a window in that regard.

Excited to play SM (just bought her) I’m just worried I won’t get much if any content made for my channel if people DC a bunch even with me being at a lower MMR 🥴

I hate skull merchant haters. Because I understand how Skull Merchant feels.

my opinion to it: let people cry bro skullmerchant isnt even a strong killer rn shes just a m1 killer with undetectable feature and a bit more vision

I am a survivor main and whenever I do go against SM our entire team gets wiped, I still enjoy going against her but keep getting distracted at how much gay panic she gives me. I'm a girl that likes booty, and she do have the booty lol.

I hope she doesn’t get any changes tbh with ya. I like the way how she is. First they complained about the 3 gen and now this…? Survivors will never be happy. And why should we care….? Who are they….?? At the end of the day, they’re irrelevant! Literally. Skull and knight gets the most hate out of all the killers. And we should not give a f! Why should we…? To please them?? Hell no!! Why should you care pinkyc0rn? Don’t kiss survivors butts! Please lol. Survivors will never be happy with anything. Survivors just want easy wins! And that’s the truth. Every game has toxic people. Not just DBD. She’s gonna be very very… awful if she gets nerf again. She’s not even strong! Survivors are just too lazy to understand how to go against her. I have won games and loose when I go against her. Like I said, survivors just want easy wins. Let them be toxic. Who gives a f. They’re just salty cause they can’t take the L. Anyways, love your content and I hope you don’t ever stop making videos of our Queen of DBD 🖤💀

Is this a man or a women I can't tell.

Its always the survivors that complain. Have they still forgotten Freakin NURSE I guess so. Skully its not very strong because i have been told shes no fun to go against. I told these people why the answer is. The same they can't loop her forever and even if they did everyone will get scanned the survivors team come and help. I just say cry about it cause who is the one supposed to have control of the match, the killers you idiot survivors. Always with the complaints never happy this new skull merchant is better then old and still the hate. In my opinion then leave the match ill play with the bots instead. I played with and against her and i will say with most confidence skull merchant is not strong, is just survivors can't keep going of the same loop for too long simple yet for them most difficult. Except dead dog saloon that main building its torture for skull merchant.

every skull merchant is toxic

As a merchant main since her release i gotta disagree with the changes you list and your main reason for the changes. You say succeed but you just want her to be like by survivors which i find not a good enough reason. She is not op its just some survivors lack skills vs her. Why should she be punished because survivors are bad. When it come to dc i don't really care it be a free win for until i actually run into those survivors who beat me or come real close to.