"Due to the recent negative backlash adressing the Skull Merchant being compared to The Nightmare in terms of performance, we decided to remove Nightmare's ability to M1 so he can re-gain his worst killer status and not compete with Skull Merchants" -Dev Team.
"Due to a recent issue in balancing, we are shutting down the live services for the foreseeable future. But when good things come to an end, new things come to take their place, and with that we are excited to reveal our new hockey game"
@@BotWhisperer People complain about her all the time so they made her basically dogshit so that people would stop complaining, they're going to rework her in a year or so, so while they're working on reworking her they don't want anyone to complain anymore
@@ardaoguzhan8181 its still so stupid they went down the lazy route and essentially made her to where nobody wants to play her instead of taking a bit more time to rework her properly instead of nerfing her to the ground. I understand she is very frustrating to play against and she broke the game for a bit but they didnt need to do her like that. now she probably will forever have a bad reputation because of everything that is happening.
@@fattlebieldproductions3198 Math is the director of DbD and once said that if u dont feel like playing dbd play smth else for a bit which became a meme
She is 100% worse than Trapper. Trapper's traps don't broadcast their location, they can cut off some loops in meaningful ways, they injure on first trigger, and you can put them near hooked survivors for sneaky catches. She is a worse trapper with the amount of stealth Demo gets coming out of a portal.
The difference is she doesn't need to find drones around and pick them up. She can recall from anywhere. Also they cover a much bigger area and you don't need to stop entirely for a while with no vision to drop one.
She's absolutely tanked now but I think she still has some ability to actively control areas and deny unhooks for survivors that already have a scan or two
@@papercat5829the reasoning for LOL is different, it’s because of pro play which is still unfortunate, but at least it’s not cause their incompetent when it comes to designing characyers
Fun fact that Pixel Bush pointed out: due to the Hindered changes, it’s legit worse than Bloodust. You’re honestly better off just not using her drones and getting bloodlust. This isn’t a rework, this is a murder
cry more noob. She's a brain dead killer that all her mains have the same ham sandwich iq shared amongst all of them. no one cares about you and those troglodytes crying.
Imagine a power that's worse than general gameplay mechanics lol So basically her entire power now are the random undetectable when setting drones and the passive that makes people DC. Awesome...
@@flemlius3507 maybe her playerbase should've learned how to actually play killer instead of skull merchant LOL. WAAAAAAAAAAAAA i can't just play with my eyes closed and let my drones do 99% of the work. You actually have to play the game now.
@@memorydancerNot to mention how a competent (note I say competent not good) Nurse or Blight or even Spirit can clear a match in minutes against the average survivor yet nobody rallies to have them looked at. Only the occasional TH-camr or forum poster during perk review topics. The ONLY reason SM has been curb stomped is because people are still on the bandwagon from a year and two reworks ago where she was a low mid tier killer that was boring. NOBODY is looking at her as she was since then. Just memes, DC jokes, and never trying to learn her many counters.
Myers imo is worse than Freddy. He's just an M1 killer with a temporary insta down and smaller terror radius. Freddy at least can teleport and has semi-functionable anti-loop.
@@Keithixix Don't think so. If the developers actually thought this killer was good to release they should keep her as a major headache (or at least a tiny one). This character needs a fundamental overhaul on every regard and until that is not there people will kms on sight
It's sad that people think "difficult to balance" means that it should never have existed or should just be gutted. It's better for the game to have more unique powers like Skully and Doctor, than the umpteenth dash mobility killer
Chess merchant attracts the worst of the community for some reason. It's like they know how obnoxious and boring the killer is and go out of their way to make it worse. Most of the chess merchant I've played against (when I didn't immediately give up on hook) just camped, tunneled, slugged everyone for no reason I thought it was just me but reading comments on TH-cam it would appear it's the same for a lot of players
@@MightandLight skull merchant mains are overly sensitive too. granted, part of me understands because if they continuously get bombarded with questions and have to explain why shes their favorite killer every single day, they will lose it eventually. but sometimes it feels like theyre not yet at that point and theyre just reactive out of anticipation than whats actually happening.
@@MightandLight At this point, I feel that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. With the many patches she’s received since release, plus also all the changes to gen regression, chess merchant hasn’t been an effective playstyle in a long while. Especially compared to other area control killers like Trapper and Hag, or 3gen killers like Knight and Blight. But, because of all the discourse around SM, killer players who want to “dunk on the survs” to feed their ego are sent by the community towards playing Skull Merchant. Plus, there’s also the prophecy on the flipside of the coin, where survivor players DC as soon as they see Skull Merchant instead of playing the game. Cheaters are more likely to play Doctor, that’s not a reflection on the Doctor. I’m not denying that SM’s kit makes camping and slugging easier. But, she’s hardly the only killer that supports that playstyle, and definitely isn’t the worst offender nowadays.
Cringe merchant is not hard to balance, she is a fundamentally failed design. She is either garbage or SS+ tier monster. It's better if a killler designed to hold lobbies hostage for hour is weak if You ask me.
i mean there has to be a better way to design a zoning killer than what we have with sm. It is just very difficult to have fun against her due to her playstyle, and the nerfs to compensate for that are now going to make it less fun to play AS her. Everything down to even the visual clutter with all the drones just makes it such a pain whenever she's in a match
I love how she's actually worse than expected thanks to the invisible scanline bug and the "drones scanline is not visible over 16 meters" not working, the fact the only ""positive"" change they made to her doesnt even work makes me want to merchandise my own skull
The sad thing is even with nerfing skull merchant to oblivion if she actually is or would ever be, survivors will still dc to her no matter what. the damage to the killer has already been done in my opinion so i dont think anything can save her really
@@danielmaster8776 They're the reason this is even happening. This continues a trend that started with release Freddy: whine, cry and disconnect enough and daddy BVHR will nerf them for you. Meanwhile, here's a nice combo that will let you do gens in 25 seconds.
@@Seoul_Soldier Exactly. Except it's mommy BHVR, not daddy. They're extremely toxically feminine in their entire mentality, and overprotective of even the weakest of survivor players. "You don't want to improve or struggle or use strategy? That's okay, we'll fix it for you so you don't have to do any of those things." Rinse and repeat that for 8 years, and now good survivors can pretty much do anything they want in a match, knowing they'll all get out anyway.
The fact that this is happening to a killer no one likes is geniunely blinding people to how fucking awful of a way to balance a video game this is. A killer who was already by all accounts except specifically killrate statistics, a number heavily inflated by the amount of people who actively refuse to play against her and either DC or kill themselves on hook, getting turbonerfed into oblivion, almost explicitly to make it so that no one will play her until a big rework comes, is actually one of the stupidest things I've ever seen in game balance, and should not be a precedent the community accepts.
Absolutely. The game should absolutely never be balanced purely on feelings. Her numbers were totally fine. It was just the community's refusal to play the game that even made her above dead average. Nobody's going to like playing as or against this either. She needs fundamental changes if she needed anything at all. And given how many people are blindly praising this, I don't see these changes getting rolled back like the proposed Twins changes did.
I wanna see them remove Nurse's ability to attack before blink exhaustion next because I hate playing survivor because of killers like her. Surely this approach would be good for that as well. (sarcasm) On an honest note, yeah, this is nonsense to coddle the playerbase on a game that is clearly outpacing the dev team in content because money from regular crossover licenses and DLCs is more important than making good art or functional software. They should spend more time on content (like skins) that doesn't require much gameplay design and programming manpower while they fix the current state of the game instead of announcing how they're bloating their workload with FNAF DLC or whatever.
@DopeyDaDober They do know, they stated that they looked at her kill rate while also taking into accounts 1 hooks giveups and DCs, her kill rate was still 70%, while they're balancing for the 62%. Tbh don't care, Skull Merchant is an abomination, should gut her some more with the live release just to be sure she stays dead
I feel like no killer has been as much of a long-term disaster as Skully has been. There's never been a point since she's been in the game where people's reaction to her hasn't been "ugh, jesus christ."
Just remove her and compensate owners with 500 AC All the time and energy spent trying to salvage the absolute failure she is would be better spent elsewhere
skull merchant unfortunately is a casualty of "first impression syndrome." even though her first rework really wasnt THAT bad and she became a relatively fair killer, everyone remembers chess/mid merchant so she never really got a fair chance to shine. but thats the thing with first impressions, that is their fair chance. too bad the devs really fumbled it but cest la vie. not every killer can be a home run.
@@ghostflame9211 Nah her rework was still annoying. She got permanent haste because someone stepped through a drone across the map, had a 10% hinder which is more than UVX (6%) and Wesker at his peak (8%) and on par with Freddy's snares if he uses the meme addon. Broken, deepwound, free tracking, undetectable, free injuries. The devs basically threw a bunch of random status effects and numbers into her kit and called it a day and it was a nightmare trying to play around all of it.
I personally think that’s more a “we refuse to learn how to play against her” rather than “she’s too strong to even play against” Cause honestly she felt fine to me after they stopped the 3 gen issue
Skull merchant needs a whole power rework she was destined to fail because her only useful strategy was 3 genning (on release) and they’ve spent so much time trying to band aid fix her 3 genning capabilities while still keeping her original power of placing drones that lockdown areas. IMO if they want to keep her drone they need to be something she actively has to use instead of a passive set and forget power
she's just a really poorly designed character in every single aspect. She's not really scary, she walks at you like she's on a catwalk and her power is bad. Imo I cant really remember her story but isn't her story about being a manga artist or something? Why does she have drones?
@@SecureBirch410she's an anime/manga fan, she was a business owner that killed other businesses CEOs to take their place to eventually own and sell the company... yeah, skull merchant just sucks in every aspect
As someone who has played her religiously since she released, 3 genning was actually weak and her chase was INSANELY powerful pre-rework. People have no idea how powerful a chase build with 1 single addon called Geographical Readout was. You essentially had a permanent 2% Haste and 15% faster action speed at all times, it was actually crazy. On top of that old Drones went through floors and walls, making areas like Shack actually unsafe for Survivors. Combo that with perks like Fire Up and Bam and I was zooming. It was braindead easy for me to get 4ks, and I would usually get a surprising amount of compliments for not 3 genning and people didn't understand why I was so fast all the time. Pre-Rework Merchant was 100% better at chase than Post-Rework but no one believes me when I say that. The reason she became a 3 genner was for a few reasons. 1. Gen regression perks have always been very strong and a mainstay in every single build. 2. The infamous Chess Merchant guy. That's it. If people actually put in the time to figure out her chase they would realize how busted she actually was.
The annoying part of her was generator monitoring and not drone chasing. What they did is remove her chase ability so she's still annoying to face but also useless. WTF were they thinking while changing her this way? And a rework all the way in 2025? Plus it's not even guaranteed nor has a date so could even be in December of next year. This is almost scamming people who bought her.
@@Imtired0601 that's what I mean her anti loop isn't just useless it doesn't exist anymore. But you can still monitor the map/gens up to a degree. So they kept the annoying part and removed the fun part
@@Tbot_2 you’re literally the first person I’ve ever seen that think drone chases are annoying and endless gens are ok. And no opposite to your entitled and ignorant assumption I play both sides %50-%50 more or less
@@Gothic109she CAN’T monitor areas survivors need to crouch or just stand still, they are able to turn her drones off she doesn’t have any map control at all if you are playing against people that know how to counter drones
The nerf was so incredibly strong that TH-cam started recommending me DBD videos even tho I don't play DBD and I haven't watched DBD videos in like years
@@asteridshydrangea-jt2hf Hopefully bc if that rework goes through the PTB i'll change my main. I'm maining Skull Merchant atm cuz she's fun to play for me and i use her as a chase killer, not with the "chess build"
@@LynnLynsThe "chess build" doesn't even exist anymore, she's a chase based killer that still gets hate because survivors refuse to learn how to counter her, which caused this nerf to go overboard I agree that she needed nerfs, the haste and hindered nerfs I agree with, but removing one scan line from the drones? That's just too much
@@miguelruggiero i agree, the scan line is what makes the bigger hit on her. The haste and hindered are okey, fair, but the scan HURTS a lot And i mentioned the chess build bc i run into some using that build so i assumed that it still existed.
The Zanshin changes were completely unwarranted and should have just been a new base universal Perk instead. Losing what Zanshin used to do is backbreaking.
AMGC7 (aka the Map Guy) is genuinely upset because he can no longer study the maps quickly and has to actually walk to every tile to check their configuration manually 😭😭
People will still complain. If 4 escape (if no one leaves the match), they will still curse you for playing with her. They will lose chases and make little effort to even minimally counter the killer. They will continue to toxically leave the match.
To fix her keep her drones always active. Give her drones two scan lines but make her purple add on basekit. Next make it so that clicking the drone makes it do 1 full rotation. Finally make it so that when a survivor disables a drone a loud noise notification procts and the skull merchant gains haste for 5 seconds. This enables a playstyle that requires the skull merchant to manually scan sweep an area by clicking on the drone. Inadvertantly this would also prevent drone camping gens because the drones lines are stationary until it is pressed by the skull merchant.
her kill rates were inflated by people giving up and killing themselves on hook even though 3 gen merchant the reason why people didn't like her wasn't a thing for a long time. I blame youtubers for this
The devs actually claim that isn't true. They said survivors giving up only added about 2.5% to her kills and that'd she'd still have had the highest kill rate without counting them.
@@erg1947 i dont believe them at all, i play skull merchant a bit and id say 3 out of 5 games i play somebody gives up on the first hook of the game usually resulting in the rest following. that is an insane amount of players instantly giving up, i dont see it remotely that much for any other killer
@@okatori795I think it is. Influencers are the new gods. People just look to them for everything, especially the toxic feminine man children who play this game.
I feel like Skull Merchant was a killer that was dead on arrival (If wording it like that makes sense), her power was pretty broken when she first came out and it seems no matter what the devs do unless they do a complete power rework she'll always be either super weak or just broken OP.
Yep, cos this is a great plan. Keep destroying stuff people have paid for. That isn't gonna create resentment. Im not just talking about this 1 patch. It has been happening consistently for a long time
If you paid for a character that you also can obtain for free via grinding, then it's on you. If she'd been a licensed killer that you can purchase with money only, then it's a different story and more understandable
Youre only half right but if we surely SURELY talking buisness… Id say nerfing her is like this is best before getting to a real work to make her likeable (hopefully) like sure i always shit on her and talk smack about SM mains who are usually more toxic especially to those newbies or casual players BUT i like the idea that she is now an underdog that will hopefully redeem herself if the dev team does this right However back to a buisness understanding without biased opinions Nerfing her might be the way to go due to all the bad rep she has either by her mains or the people who play DBD casually or maybe “seriously” and since people talk and complain they could potentially make “new players” run away and not buy the game due to SM being the cats meow of problematic disasters like common think about the toxicity of both sides SO naturally the “casual” players should get the high ground since they bring in the money and reputation so sacrificing her for now is a smart BUT sad move due to angering people who main her or have bought her which is without a doubt unfair Since we suckers bought her for whatever reason all we can do is hope or write ideas on how to make her great
@LoganHunter82 I get the idea you're going with. However, I wouldn't say that's a rebuttal. If behaviour want to sell skins/characters I wouldn't have said releasing them broken and then making them useless is a good idea. My reasoning is it would destroy trust between the customers and the company.
26:00 I will go 1 step further. With Trapper and Hag the survivors might not see the "trap" which is why it's a "trap". While her drones are big and flying in the air. So they can go for the disarm witouth any issue.
I actually like the static drone addon. Maybe in the reowrk she could get the vecna treatment, but instead of spells, she got like 2-3 gadgets she can use; the radar and drones tagging for information, some kind of cypher wiretrap (from valorant) that works like the stationary drones and can slow people that get in contact with it, some stealth device that could perhaps also remove aura reading of people tagged. That multiple small powers thing tends to be really fun
I just realized: putting down a drone in chase is almost always useless. if it tags the survivor in less than 15 seconds and slows them down 5%, it does something, but probably not much. if it takes longer, you shouldve taken the 5% permanent from bloodlust. thats why it needed to be 10%. otherwise it will almost never be worth using. only the stealth effect hiding your red stain could do something for you, if the loop is mindegameable.
@@dains6623 Cap. People think she's boring because of her (strong) loop denial and having to W key the whole time. This "rework" nerfs her so you can play loops only risking 5% hinder. She's gonna get dunked on by survivors.
Most killers grab female survs by the butt, and I hope they never change that. (For reference, male survs are grabbed from the lower back because they're taller.)
The whole thing kinda upsets me because Skully wasn’t even that strong before, people just give up immediately because of how she used to work like a year ago. She honestly needed good press more than any rework.
And she is kinda boring, that’s true, she needs a more fun design. But it still sucks to ruin the match for all of your teammates because you don’t like the killer. There’s a few killers I don’t like either, but I just play the game the best I can because I’m playing with 4 other people.
They literally just could've removed her haste and made her tracked status-effect temporary, and she'd be perfectly fine. Instead, they completely destroyed her and made her not fun to play as in the least bit. Good job, BVHR...
Kind of funny how hag gets away with the shit people complain about skull merchant doing and doesnt get gutted like this. Though i feel if hag gets any meaningful changes the dev team will all have a collective heart attack and feng min will stop getting skins.
SM is just badly designed from a fundamental level and she is just never going to be liked by the general playerbase because of the former reputation of 'chess merchant' and her chase mechanics with the current live version are frankly snoozeville anyway. This killer is quite literally tainted. They're probably better off deleting her, refunding BP/Aurics and calling it a day. I think people would respect that more over whatever... this is.
No, she shouldn't be. She has an interesting power it just takes five minutes of thought to figure out how the fucking implement it correctly. Giving up and sayings "welp, go fuck yourself anyone who likes her" is somehow a worse option than even this.
You can’t even say that because it would require constant changes and adjustments before coming to the conclusion that “this killer is fundamentally flawed and nothing is gonna fix it”. My guy, she has had 1 rework since launch lol, with next to no balance adjustments since then. You can’t say it’s fundamental when they’ve barely tackled her
she on knight is what tcg players would call "stun decks" or "you cannot play the game simulator", and this design is never fun, neither for the player or the opponent. Like some people do insane outplays or som you wanna do, but your entire design is, go loop, press button, surv needs to hold w, its a hit or hit situation, just prolonged cause she has no chase power. go next loop, press button, again guaranteed hit. 2 gens pop, repeat on next target. Its prob why these killers are the most hated ones in the community. Doesn't help they were released back to back. Day 1 chucky had this same problem, where he was only hold back by map travelsal. Get free hit, wait 40 sec till you get 2. and cause you where slower MS you had no real thing of catching up. Resulting in a sleep fiesta in most games.
I found a Skull-Merchant mod on Garry's mod workshop. I Tested it out and it works surprisingly well. I mean her drones dont really do anything except make a noise when it spots an NPC...but her Melee is a 1 shot kill that hits mutiple targets(or atleast, it 1 shots Combine soldiers). Also I just find it funny to kill Combine Soldiers as Skull-Merchant lmao. Oh and the nextbot part of the mod is cool too. ... Edit: upon further testing, her drones do actually mark targets, I just didnt notice
As much as I hate playing as and against skull merchant, I wanna defend her a little bit because I haven’t gotten her prestiged a lot yet and I know I’m going to hate playing her so much more with the nerf. Boring ass power to play with and with her just being borderline f tier now, she’s just gonna be so much more boring to play as.
My idea of reworking SM: Drones will now be very strong, they will work as zones, but won't work through walls, BUT, they will only work outside the terror radius, so when you plant a drone, it lasts for ~4 seconds (less than now) when undetectable is active , then it immediately turns off because the killer's terror radius appears. Also, I believe that along with this it is necessary to reduce her radius of terror to 24 meters. I believe that SM should be made a more "Distance" killer, because she is too strong in chases.
They are just lazy seriously nurse is an spit in the face for survivers and they dont give a fk but they DC when they are against merchent!@@genghiscan2918
Ngl, they had to remove anything that allowed 3gen skull m., but perhaps they hit her a bit too hard (And buffed Nemesis too much). Perhaps, just giving back the second scanner on the drones would be enough, and because the low battery add-on seems so lovely, using that as a second scanner (as base kit) wouldn't be too problematic. Survivors would have to chose to go through the second fixed scanner or abandon the loop, and would have to chose quickly because the first scanner will continue to rotate, and good S.M. will turn it at the right moment to get the third scan (also lower the timer to 3 to 2 sec to be rescanned).
Removing the ease of power use and making it an investment with payoff. SM's biggest issues are that her power is basically free to use so you just poop out drones mid-chase to completely disable loops, get undetectable which hides your red stain and her haste mechanic cannot be reasonably counterplayed by someone if someone else just gets scanned on the other side of the map. These things could be adressed in a reasonable manner by simplifying the power (no stealth mode, visible scanlines when near, remove haste and focus on hindering the people getting scanned) and preventing the least counterplayable use cases (give drones a boot time before scanlines appear so they don't shut down loops instantly). They could also make her move a bit slower while placing drones to make it less free. Instead they went with removing mechanics and gutting numbers, while a gameplay health nerf is simple enough that I could come up with it from just playing a few matches as her and talking to a few people, but BHVR needs their devs to work on the next DLC that'll come with all the new perks, map variations and bugs ASAP I guess.
i think they tried to make her more interactive in chase with using the rotation mechanic more. it requires more skill than just zoning the survivor to get scanned.
as if this is going to fix anything. people will still DC if they see a Skull Merchant. it does not matter if she becomes the worst killer or the best killer. they should just try to balance her or if thats too difficult rework her completely.
So many aura reading and Zachin is crazy. And they nerfed distortions hard. Distortions should have stayed 3 tokens or at least 2 tokens and they only recharge only during chases.
Man DBD really is the most toxic community. People complaining that SM is the super anti looper and it's boring... like there's no other killers who can anti loop? When I got to rank one survivor before it changed, never saw one SM and to this day have faced maybe three. I would rather see a SM than a nurse, blight and have almost no chance of surviving, but the best part is, survivor players are usually wrong. I played yesterday soloq and watched people get stomped by killers using no perks or add ons. The devs need to stop listening to the community or just the very casual "this is a party game" players because they have zero desire to play the game like it's four people against one. They want dice rolling mario party easy game play.
Have you ever played overwatch?😆Hard agree on skull! Almost every killer tier list I've seen from killer mains have her as mid tier. Some say she's too strong or she's too easy to play. Skull's a m1 killer and they are the easiest to beat so all m1 killers need nerfs? Doesn't make any sense calling her an easy to play killer. Even killers like nurse and sprit for an example has a higher learning curve but after they put a little time in to it, do they not become, "easy"? And then there's some that knows she's not that great so they use her lore or design and boring o play against as an excuse to hate. It's absolutely ridiculous! Her lore? like really🤣
They should just simplify her kit: . Every time a survivor is scanned by a drone, gain 1 stack of Lock-On . Each stack of Lock-On inflicts the survivor with Oblivious for 30 seconds . Raising the radar reveals auras, and slows movement speed slightly
They really did his addons dirty, made it to where the optimal play is to avoid hitting a survivor with your chainsaw through a pallet and instead purposefully miss your power in certain situations.
Billy could still somewhat do things in chase plus he had insta down merchant has lost nearly everything and became trapper with less threatening traps
This nerf proves that survivor mains get WHATEVER they want by whining on Reddit. I better not see anybody dc’ing against SM if this nerf makes it to live.
@@donaldjgumpofficial5754You know how when there is a problem behaviour rather sells you the solution. Like with tunneling of hook( BT, now base kit), Face camping( reassurance), Surv playing for hatch after 3 go down 4 gens left and crawling in corners( ultimate weapon), Entire playerbase having legal cheat( made for this), yeah nurse is the solution to Swf tryhards. Without her and blight high tier would look very very boring and prob would just force a massive surv side nerf, just making solo q even worse while not affecting swf at all. The problem is not us vs them but the 1 vs 4 game Design. Its not balanceable. And never will be, it will always tip to one side.
@@nsreturn1365 No, nurse is not "the solution to Swf tryhards". They're both shit. They could give killers general buffs while nerfing the top killers.
with the haste and hindered nerfs, i think it shouldve been one or the other. Either 5% hindered (instead of 10) and haste OR 10% hindered and no haste. Gutting both of them was overkill
I’ve noticed that’s kinda a running trend with bhvr’s balancing, they always tend to ‘overnerf’ and ‘overbuff’ these things. Remember when Iron Will was nerfed to 80% AND didn’t work when exhausted? They’ve been doing stuff like that a lot
Watching people being happy about this its weird as hell, specially considering that the majority on players would just dc on sight even if chess merchant wasn't a thing anymore This community its absurd
It's honestly sad to see her gutted like this. I'll admit, she's had a rough history, but no killer deserves to be nerfed to the point of uselessness. I can only hope that the rework comes soon and doesn't end up like the Twins rework did...
They said the rework will be the second half of 2025, so she’s soft killswitched for 9+ months. Regardless of feelings on the killer it’s really poor decision making.
The crazy thing about this is that some of the nerf ideas they’re pushing are good, but then some are unnecessary overkill. Get rid of her haste and get rid of hindered, hell, even go through with making the scan lines constantly visible. But they really didn’t need to take one of the scan lines away.
Oh oh... Yesterday the dumpster censorship KI on Instagram delete my post. Other user wrote: No we need another Freddy nerf! and I answerd: Pig! Two seconds later the post was deleted. Brave new world!
@@AaronScotzig I main a killer I've never played before cuz this change is ass. She needed a rework so that her power felt good to play against and as, now the only difference is that skull merchant players will be as miserable as the people complaining about her
Im pissed because instead of making her interesting and fun to play against they took the easy way out and just nerfed her to the ground p.s. i hate playing against her or as her
Brother, Myers can remove people from the game at 4 or 5 gens EASILY with tombstone. Brainless one hit downs and faster vaults are still very good aspects of his kit, on top of being a stealth killer with a reduced TR, compounded with monitor and abuse, and dead rabbit.
@@JakeobE and how many bloodpoint to get tombstone you filthy cry brat survivors? DO YOU FUCKING KNOW IT WILL TAKES A FUCKING WHOLEMATCH TO KILL A SURVIVOR ON HIGH MMR?
Wow, behavior gutting a killer just because of these whiny brat survivors. She needed some minor tweaks, at that point they should’ve just removed her from the damn game.
Calling people brats for wanting to engage against fun killers instead of dull merchant in the game they paid for is wild. Yes they also paid for the game, yes they paid for merchant, but making 80% of the players in a match miserable because you want isn't great from a monetary perspective. Merchant saw one of their biggest reductions in player count to date. This change is a bit overkill, but it's easy to see how the developers came to the conclusion of a nerf of this caliber.
@@NewSirenSongSo where’s this attitude with Blight, Spirit, Nurse, Nemesis, and Billy who can all end chases in seconds with the right timing and practice? Whiny survivors like you hopped on a bandwagon because TH-cam and TikTok had SM criticism trending a year and two reworks ago. Recent SM was effective against noobs and little else with a lot more counter play than most mid tier killers. I’m a survivor main and think this is a completely stupid move and people like you will NEVER be happy. Go get your own opinion instead of the one spoon fed to you by the algorithm.
@@NewSirenSongThe people were brats for disconnecting against her day 1 of her rework despite there not being enough time to judge her changes. It doesn't matter if she gets bear traps and becomes a costume for the trapper, or if she becomes the strongest killer in the game. People will disconnect on principle. I've never had a legit match against a good SM because everyone gives up, and the one time I can remember a match where nobody DC'd was when the SM was so bad she got looped for 4 gens. I genuinely do not understand how to play against her because I'm not allowed to play against her and learn.
@@NewSirenSong the world could have been better without wars if BHVR gave a fuck about killer mains instead of cry baby survivors on reddit, mostly genrush DH+DS combo
I dunno if I am alone with this but I loved the original Skullmerchant if it wasnt for the 3-gen and if those changes make it to live I am kinda looking forward to playing it x:
Congrats BHVR, you just let all the sandbagging social media whiners know that they can bait nerfs out of you by just constantly quitting matches and stirring up internet hate pots. Good job
What I'm taking away from this is actually that the Doctor doesn't get bloodlust when using his ability. Good thing that I learned that today, on the day that I got him, and not 5 months from now. Looking back on a few of my games, that did seem to be the case, and I did kind of notice, but I didn't take note of it because I didn't know that this was a thing.
And thanks to whiny players who don’t like learning slightly different tricks they just outright murdered the killer. Seriously, SM was pretty easy to deal with once you figured out the typical drone uses and placements. Anyone complaining was just lazy no questions asked. Survivor main btw.
@@AaronScotz as a killer main why? By all accounts she was a boring mid tier whose sole sin was being annoying against noobs. At what point does a nerf do ANYTHING for either side?
They saw the endless Skully Build (it was at the begin technically really endless) so the "freddy treatment team" needed to take the duty to pay her attention. Well I hope Hillbilly get a nice nerf to compensate how fun he is :) (Sorry for my broken english, thx for reading!)
@@vybe1307 A nurse is never going to break pallets so it’s literally permanent aura reading. They won’t have to second guess themselves to go through walls so yes this is very much game changing
@@STARLEYMAYHEM but why drop pallets against nurse. theyre always better undropped unless its matchbox/spasmodic. nurse has better aura options than hoping survivors do something already disadvantageous to them
"When you do blah blah there is risk, but this is just bad" Pretty sure ive said the same thing from survivor side about how there is no counterplay for getting trapped because you disabled a drone. A better option would be to trap the player, but give the player a way to remove the trap so they arent stuck being tracked forever. Then the player has a choice and the killer still gets benefits as well.
I'm confused, I thought the whole reason people would DC at the start of a Skull Merchant match was because she was a pain in the ass. Why is everyone suddenly acting like nothing was wrong with her?
No one is saying she was ever designed well, people are saying she should have gotten a proper rework/redesign rather than literally being made obsolete.
Half of the DCers just have PTSD from the first version of skull merchant who could 3gen the best teams in the world. They never bothered to learn the counter play to the new version. Plus, just because a killer is unfun to play against does not justify BHVR nerfing them into the ground and calling it a day. People pay money for these killers, they should be playable.
@@kimberlyterasaki4843 Her kill rate is at 70% (BHVR killrate number), which includes people giving up on first hook. It doesn't help too that 90% of snore merchant players hard tunnel, camp, or slug with knockout at 5 gens. If you paid real money for Snore Merchant, instead of buying her with shards, you played yourself. I refuse to buy her at all.
For real everyone so ready to blame bhvr and blame the killer instead of themselves and act like they is definitely nothing they could have done. Like the people who still cry about soft tunnelling and camping and the people who cry about certain killers instead trying to learn how to actually counter them. Like she is only frustrating at higher levels because they’re better than you and it’s frustrating to lose
i can guarantee if Zanshin makes it to live like this with the butchered distortion too Object is going to be the new meta leading to double wallhack chases and no mindgames
i wish more people were talking about insane zanshin and predator are right now with no counter play. i never ran distortion as is but if that’s the new meta im gonna run the nerfed distortion simply bc all these aura perks are overkill.
@madaddy3371 Thing is killer has so many broken aura perks survivors have 3 counters, one of them shows you regardless, ones been butchered to only work once after every chase (predator alone counters that) and one is a boon which is only a limited area, you can't make really strong aura and only have 3 extremely mediocre counters
"Due to the recent negative backlash adressing the Skull Merchant being compared to The Nightmare in terms of performance, we decided to remove Nightmare's ability to M1 so he can re-gain his worst killer status and not compete with Skull Merchants"
-Dev Team.
"We also nerfed pig at the same time because why not"
-Dev team
"Due to a recent issue in balancing, we are shutting down the live services for the foreseeable future. But when good things come to an end, new things come to take their place, and with that we are excited to reveal our new hockey game"
@@Haeters LoL
Darn...
@@Haetersthats good one xd
They can't kill switch a killer for a year so they decided to nerf skull merchant so hard that nobody wants to play as her anymore
And I guarantee that people will still give up against her
would've been better if they did killswitch her instead of letting people buy a dead killer
Why would they nerf her for a year only to change her later?
Why not leave her as is until the big changes later?
@@BotWhisperer People complain about her all the time so they made her basically dogshit so that people would stop complaining, they're going to rework her in a year or so, so while they're working on reworking her they don't want anyone to complain anymore
@@ardaoguzhan8181 its still so stupid they went down the lazy route and essentially made her to where nobody wants to play her instead of taking a bit more time to rework her properly instead of nerfing her to the ground. I understand she is very frustrating to play against and she broke the game for a bit but they didnt need to do her like that. now she probably will forever have a bad reputation because of everything that is happening.
They'll say she's performing too well soon. Scanning a survivor now hinders the skull merchant and gives the survivors killer instinct on her.
They took her out back and shot her cause next year she's getting a rework so I doubt we will see any more changes until then
@@soulreaver6546 one can only hope.
@@nohface4544nah only survivors have hope (The perk) /j
then in the period you have killer instinct, you can down her and mori her.
I honestly feel bad for the devs.
Otz's hoodie motivated me to open dbd just to sit on the main menu and debate if I even want to play.
If the game doesn't convince you to play it, then play something else that does!!
@@notOtzdarva notOtzdarva is Mathieu Cote???
@@gamingmaster6377what?
@@fattlebieldproductions3198 Math is the director of DbD and once said that if u dont feel like playing dbd play smth else for a bit which became a meme
@@tin-slayer-3368 that’s a piece of common sense advice why is that attributed to being a Mathew quote?
I don't wanna say it but, checkmate ?
Is skull merchant tonight's big loser?
Oooof.
Finally such a garbage killer even after the little they changed him abit he was till annoying and now finally he's trash.
@@notOtzdarva Make a “perks per team” debuff for SWF where a perk can only be used by two people at the same time if you are in a premade party
Knightlight, is it you? XD
freddy finally has a girlfriend
Lol
Nah she's too old for Freddy's tastes
@@thestanman1486 crazy work 🤣
@@thestanman1486 good one
Was about to say, need to dust off the old Freddy tier
She is 100% worse than Trapper. Trapper's traps don't broadcast their location, they can cut off some loops in meaningful ways, they injure on first trigger, and you can put them near hooked survivors for sneaky catches. She is a worse trapper with the amount of stealth Demo gets coming out of a portal.
The difference is she doesn't need to find drones around and pick them up. She can recall from anywhere. Also they cover a much bigger area and you don't need to stop entirely for a while with no vision to drop one.
She's absolutely tanked now but I think she still has some ability to actively control areas and deny unhooks for survivors that already have a scan or two
If it wasn't for her stealth, you'd be 100% correct. Not too sure at the moment.
she's trapper with no traps🤣 That's what redgeargaming said and it's so true
She more closer to clown than Trapper. She's like a stealth clown.
Not really sure why you would compare her to something she not.
I get why it takes BHVR so long to rework the Skull Merchant. Every time they have a meeting about her everyone disconnects instantly
😂😂😂
and in case of twins nobody appeared, now it makes sense why it took them 3 years to change 5 lines.
😂😂😂😂
This is why killers should be designed, and not cobbled together from past killer designs that never made it out of internal testing.
Skull merchant really got the Freddy treatment
But very deserved
@@skyram7072 She deserved a rework, not a "Medium Update" gutting down to D tier.
@@skyram7072 Freddy was busted, she's bearly B tier how is it deserved
@@pocketdust2450she deserves to be removed altogether
I honestly think Freddy was treated much better (with gradual nerfs that made sense) and is very much playable despite being boring as hell.
09:48 "Ok, so now I'm gonna run what I think is an average set of add-ons...so now I know where everybody is with my iridescent add-on..."
Yeah, look at ME, the MILLIONAIRE with HUNDREDS of Iridescent add-ons!
Neutering one of your characters until you can properly rework them has to be one of the saddest things in videogame history
League of legends moment
saddest things in videogame history is not getting devil may cry 6
@@papercat5829the reasoning for LOL is different, it’s because of pro play which is still unfortunate, but at least it’s not cause their incompetent when it comes to designing characyers
That title belongs to Silent Hills getting canceled.
Fun fact that Pixel Bush pointed out: due to the Hindered changes, it’s legit worse than Bloodust. You’re honestly better off just not using her drones and getting bloodlust.
This isn’t a rework, this is a murder
cry more noob. She's a brain dead killer that all her mains have the same ham sandwich iq shared amongst all of them. no one cares about you and those troglodytes crying.
Imagine a power that's worse than general gameplay mechanics lol
So basically her entire power now are the random undetectable when setting drones and the passive that makes people DC. Awesome...
@@flemlius3507 maybe her playerbase should've learned how to actually play killer instead of skull merchant LOL. WAAAAAAAAAAAAA i can't just play with my eyes closed and let my drones do 99% of the work. You actually have to play the game now.
@@cdajah6920 Funny, you just described knight and plague, and I think Skull Merchant IS WAY MORE fair than these two.
@@memorydancerNot to mention how a competent (note I say competent not good) Nurse or Blight or even Spirit can clear a match in minutes against the average survivor yet nobody rallies to have them looked at. Only the occasional TH-camr or forum poster during perk review topics.
The ONLY reason SM has been curb stomped is because people are still on the bandwagon from a year and two reworks ago where she was a low mid tier killer that was boring. NOBODY is looking at her as she was since then. Just memes, DC jokes, and never trying to learn her many counters.
9:03 Otz’s opinion on the rework after first game
From chess merchant to tik tak toe merchant.
Freddy isn't the worst killer anymore
Myers imo is worse than Freddy. He's just an M1 killer with a temporary insta down and smaller terror radius. Freddy at least can teleport and has semi-functionable anti-loop.
@AaronScotz Myers add-ons take him to bottom tier to top 5, skull or Freddy with add-ons make them memes
@@springtrapnibba Addons should not define a killer's ranking. Myers is D tier. Worst killer in the game if you're not using tombstone.
@@AaronScotz and a killer being boring shouldn't get them gutted into the worst killer in the game but here we are
@@springtrapnibba Oh no, Skull Merchant got nerfed. Anyway...
9:05 No Otz, shes going to be left on the shelf and forgotten, she's officially not worth picking. EVER
The more people give up on first hook, the more she will be nerfed. Eventually, she will be known as merchant
Actually she will be known as Skull as that will be all that is left of her
@@Grafii2198 this was more funnier than it should of been to me
And finally she will not be known (deleted and scrapped like the garbage she is)
She'll eventually be known as The.
It's depressing, if you ask me...
@@Keithixix Don't think so. If the developers actually thought this killer was good to release they should keep her as a major headache (or at least a tiny one). This character needs a fundamental overhaul on every regard and until that is not there people will kms on sight
When I am in bad changes competition and my opponent is BHVR
It's sad that people think "difficult to balance" means that it should never have existed or should just be gutted. It's better for the game to have more unique powers like Skully and Doctor, than the umpteenth dash mobility killer
Chess merchant attracts the worst of the community for some reason. It's like they know how obnoxious and boring the killer is and go out of their way to make it worse. Most of the chess merchant I've played against (when I didn't immediately give up on hook) just camped, tunneled, slugged everyone for no reason
I thought it was just me but reading comments on TH-cam it would appear it's the same for a lot of players
@@MightandLight skull merchant mains are overly sensitive too. granted, part of me understands because if they continuously get bombarded with questions and have to explain why shes their favorite killer every single day, they will lose it eventually. but sometimes it feels like theyre not yet at that point and theyre just reactive out of anticipation than whats actually happening.
@@MightandLight At this point, I feel that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. With the many patches she’s received since release, plus also all the changes to gen regression, chess merchant hasn’t been an effective playstyle in a long while. Especially compared to other area control killers like Trapper and Hag, or 3gen killers like Knight and Blight. But, because of all the discourse around SM, killer players who want to “dunk on the survs” to feed their ego are sent by the community towards playing Skull Merchant. Plus, there’s also the prophecy on the flipside of the coin, where survivor players DC as soon as they see Skull Merchant instead of playing the game. Cheaters are more likely to play Doctor, that’s not a reflection on the Doctor.
I’m not denying that SM’s kit makes camping and slugging easier. But, she’s hardly the only killer that supports that playstyle, and definitely isn’t the worst offender nowadays.
Cringe merchant is not hard to balance, she is a fundamentally failed design. She is either garbage or SS+ tier monster. It's better if a killler designed to hold lobbies hostage for hour is weak if You ask me.
i mean there has to be a better way to design a zoning killer than what we have with sm. It is just very difficult to have fun against her due to her playstyle, and the nerfs to compensate for that are now going to make it less fun to play AS her. Everything down to even the visual clutter with all the drones just makes it such a pain whenever she's in a match
As a Pig main I just thank the Skull Merchant players for taking this one for the team.
I love how she's actually worse than expected thanks to the invisible scanline bug and the "drones scanline is not visible over 16 meters" not working, the fact the only ""positive"" change they made to her doesnt even work makes me want to merchandise my own skull
The sad thing is even with nerfing skull merchant to oblivion if she actually is or would ever be, survivors will still dc to her no matter what. the damage to the killer has already been done in my opinion so i dont think anything can save her really
They'd still DC because they're entitled.
@@danielmaster8776 They're the reason this is even happening. This continues a trend that started with release Freddy: whine, cry and disconnect enough and daddy BVHR will nerf them for you. Meanwhile, here's a nice combo that will let you do gens in 25 seconds.
@@Seoul_Soldier Exactly. Except it's mommy BHVR, not daddy. They're extremely toxically feminine in their entire mentality, and overprotective of even the weakest of survivor players. "You don't want to improve or struggle or use strategy? That's okay, we'll fix it for you so you don't have to do any of those things." Rinse and repeat that for 8 years, and now good survivors can pretty much do anything they want in a match, knowing they'll all get out anyway.
@@danielmaster8776 I think you gotta be either in middle school or the most delusional person ever lol. Lay off the Andrew Tate bud
@@danielmaster8776boohoo
The fact that this is happening to a killer no one likes is geniunely blinding people to how fucking awful of a way to balance a video game this is. A killer who was already by all accounts except specifically killrate statistics, a number heavily inflated by the amount of people who actively refuse to play against her and either DC or kill themselves on hook, getting turbonerfed into oblivion, almost explicitly to make it so that no one will play her until a big rework comes, is actually one of the stupidest things I've ever seen in game balance, and should not be a precedent the community accepts.
welcome to dead by daylight
Absolutely. The game should absolutely never be balanced purely on feelings. Her numbers were totally fine. It was just the community's refusal to play the game that even made her above dead average. Nobody's going to like playing as or against this either. She needs fundamental changes if she needed anything at all. And given how many people are blindly praising this, I don't see these changes getting rolled back like the proposed Twins changes did.
I wanna see them remove Nurse's ability to attack before blink exhaustion next because I hate playing survivor because of killers like her. Surely this approach would be good for that as well. (sarcasm)
On an honest note, yeah, this is nonsense to coddle the playerbase on a game that is clearly outpacing the dev team in content because money from regular crossover licenses and DLCs is more important than making good art or functional software. They should spend more time on content (like skins) that doesn't require much gameplay design and programming manpower while they fix the current state of the game instead of announcing how they're bloating their workload with FNAF DLC or whatever.
@DopeyDaDober They do know, they stated that they looked at her kill rate while also taking into accounts 1 hooks giveups and DCs, her kill rate was still 70%, while they're balancing for the 62%. Tbh don't care, Skull Merchant is an abomination, should gut her some more with the live release just to be sure she stays dead
can't wait for something similar happen to a popular killer and see the outrage
I feel like no killer has been as much of a long-term disaster as Skully has been. There's never been a point since she's been in the game where people's reaction to her hasn't been "ugh, jesus christ."
Just remove her and compensate owners with 500 AC
All the time and energy spent trying to salvage the absolute failure she is would be better spent elsewhere
skull merchant unfortunately is a casualty of "first impression syndrome." even though her first rework really wasnt THAT bad and she became a relatively fair killer, everyone remembers chess/mid merchant so she never really got a fair chance to shine. but thats the thing with first impressions, that is their fair chance. too bad the devs really fumbled it but cest la vie. not every killer can be a home run.
@@ghostflame9211 Nah her rework was still annoying. She got permanent haste because someone stepped through a drone across the map, had a 10% hinder which is more than UVX (6%) and Wesker at his peak (8%) and on par with Freddy's snares if he uses the meme addon. Broken, deepwound, free tracking, undetectable, free injuries. The devs basically threw a bunch of random status effects and numbers into her kit and called it a day and it was a nightmare trying to play around all of it.
I personally think that’s more a “we refuse to learn how to play against her” rather than “she’s too strong to even play against”
Cause honestly she felt fine to me after they stopped the 3 gen issue
@@ghostflame9211People don't dc against her because she used to be horrible, people dislike the rework as well.
Skull merchant needs a whole power rework she was destined to fail because her only useful strategy was 3 genning (on release) and they’ve spent so much time trying to band aid fix her 3 genning capabilities while still keeping her original power of placing drones that lockdown areas. IMO if they want to keep her drone they need to be something she actively has to use instead of a passive set and forget power
They did her design philosophy way better with the Singularity.
They need to just completely rework her from the ground up.
she's just a really poorly designed character in every single aspect. She's not really scary, she walks at you like she's on a catwalk and her power is bad. Imo I cant really remember her story but isn't her story about being a manga artist or something? Why does she have drones?
@@SecureBirch410she's an anime/manga fan, she was a business owner that killed other businesses CEOs to take their place to eventually own and sell the company... yeah, skull merchant just sucks in every aspect
As someone who has played her religiously since she released, 3 genning was actually weak and her chase was INSANELY powerful pre-rework. People have no idea how powerful a chase build with 1 single addon called Geographical Readout was. You essentially had a permanent 2% Haste and 15% faster action speed at all times, it was actually crazy. On top of that old Drones went through floors and walls, making areas like Shack actually unsafe for Survivors. Combo that with perks like Fire Up and Bam and I was zooming. It was braindead easy for me to get 4ks, and I would usually get a surprising amount of compliments for not 3 genning and people didn't understand why I was so fast all the time. Pre-Rework Merchant was 100% better at chase than Post-Rework but no one believes me when I say that. The reason she became a 3 genner was for a few reasons. 1. Gen regression perks have always been very strong and a mainstay in every single build. 2. The infamous Chess Merchant guy. That's it. If people actually put in the time to figure out her chase they would realize how busted she actually was.
@@Orthane"3 genning was actually weak" I stopped reading there
with just four taps of the nerfed scan line you too can inflict the same amount of hindered as freddy's meme add-on
4:43 so many consecutive grunts from survivor/killer/otz
no nerf is bigger than our beloved but sadly massively reduced pyramid head dump
Don't forget Wesker. His cake also got nerfed
The annoying part of her was generator monitoring and not drone chasing. What they did is remove her chase ability so she's still annoying to face but also useless. WTF were they thinking while changing her this way? And a rework all the way in 2025? Plus it's not even guaranteed nor has a date so could even be in December of next year. This is almost scamming people who bought her.
I agree. But still annoying to face? Please, her anti looping is as good as Freddy's snares now
@@Imtired0601 that's what I mean her anti loop isn't just useless it doesn't exist anymore. But you can still monitor the map/gens up to a degree. So they kept the annoying part and removed the fun part
@@Tbot_2 you’re literally the first person I’ve ever seen that think drone chases are annoying and endless gens are ok. And no opposite to your entitled and ignorant assumption I play both sides %50-%50 more or less
She can't even monitor gens anymore, as long as survivors crouch and stand still.
@@Gothic109she CAN’T monitor areas
survivors need to crouch or just stand still, they are able to turn her drones off
she doesn’t have any map control at all if you are playing against people that know how to counter drones
The nerf was so incredibly strong that TH-cam started recommending me DBD videos even tho I don't play DBD and I haven't watched DBD videos in like years
Don't be surprise with Skull Merchant😂
Bhvr farquad: Skull merchant may die but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
As a new/returning player this is massive, i just started playing her like 3-5 days ago and the nerfs are pretty massive...
At least there's apparently another rework confirmed on the horizon...? :/ Sorry about that.
@@asteridshydrangea-jt2hfin 10 months 💀
No way in hell this reowrk goes through the PTB
@@asteridshydrangea-jt2hf Hopefully bc if that rework goes through the PTB i'll change my main.
I'm maining Skull Merchant atm cuz she's fun to play for me and i use her as a chase killer, not with the "chess build"
@@LynnLynsThe "chess build" doesn't even exist anymore, she's a chase based killer that still gets hate because survivors refuse to learn how to counter her, which caused this nerf to go overboard
I agree that she needed nerfs, the haste and hindered nerfs I agree with, but removing one scan line from the drones? That's just too much
@@miguelruggiero i agree, the scan line is what makes the bigger hit on her.
The haste and hindered are okey, fair, but the scan HURTS a lot
And i mentioned the chess build bc i run into some using that build so i assumed that it still existed.
The Zanshin changes were completely unwarranted and should have just been a new base universal Perk instead. Losing what Zanshin used to do is backbreaking.
AMGC7 (aka the Map Guy) is genuinely upset because he can no longer study the maps quickly and has to actually walk to every tile to check their configuration manually 😭😭
As he should be. They cooked at the wrong stove AND turned it up to high.
People will still complain. If 4 escape (if no one leaves the match), they will still curse you for playing with her. They will lose chases and make little effort to even minimally counter the killer. They will continue to toxically leave the match.
Legit got told to kms in the post-game chat solely for playing SM (after her rework, so no "chess merchant"). They all escaped btw lol.
@@jackk.4670I mean
@@jackk.4670Deserved
@@jackk.4670I wonder why
To fix her keep her drones always active. Give her drones two scan lines but make her purple add on basekit. Next make it so that clicking the drone makes it do 1 full rotation. Finally make it so that when a survivor disables a drone a loud noise notification procts and the skull merchant gains haste for 5 seconds. This enables a playstyle that requires the skull merchant to manually scan sweep an area by clicking on the drone. Inadvertantly this would also prevent drone camping gens because the drones lines are stationary until it is pressed by the skull merchant.
her kill rates were inflated by people giving up and killing themselves on hook even though 3 gen merchant the reason why people didn't like her wasn't a thing for a long time. I blame youtubers for this
The devs actually claim that isn't true. They said survivors giving up only added about 2.5% to her kills and that'd she'd still have had the highest kill rate without counting them.
I do not think youtuber influence is that big in dbd
@@erg1947 i dont believe them at all, i play skull merchant a bit and id say 3 out of 5 games i play somebody gives up on the first hook of the game usually resulting in the rest following. that is an insane amount of players instantly giving up, i dont see it remotely that much for any other killer
@@okatori795I think it is. Influencers are the new gods. People just look to them for everything, especially the toxic feminine man children who play this game.
@@erg1947that's bullshit and impossible to measure
I feel like Skull Merchant was a killer that was dead on arrival (If wording it like that makes sense), her power was pretty broken when she first came out and it seems no matter what the devs do unless they do a complete power rework she'll always be either super weak or just broken OP.
Yep, cos this is a great plan. Keep destroying stuff people have paid for. That isn't gonna create resentment. Im not just talking about this 1 patch. It has been happening consistently for a long time
If you paid for a character that you also can obtain for free via grinding, then it's on you. If she'd been a licensed killer that you can purchase with money only, then it's a different story and more understandable
just because you purchased an in-game character, that does NOT mean they can just never change her. Get over yourself.
Youre only half right but if we surely SURELY talking buisness… Id say nerfing her is like this is best before getting to a real work to make her likeable (hopefully) like sure i always shit on her and talk smack about SM mains who are usually more toxic especially to those newbies or casual players BUT i like the idea that she is now an underdog that will hopefully redeem herself if the dev team does this right
However back to a buisness understanding without biased opinions
Nerfing her might be the way to go due to all the bad rep she has either by her mains or the people who play DBD casually or maybe “seriously” and since people talk and complain they could potentially make “new players” run away and not buy the game due to SM being the cats meow of problematic disasters like common think about the toxicity of both sides SO naturally the “casual” players should get the high ground since they bring in the money and reputation so sacrificing her for now is a smart BUT sad move due to angering people who main her or have bought her which is without a doubt unfair
Since we suckers bought her for whatever reason all we can do is hope or write ideas on how to make her great
@@WutTheDeuceGaming didn't say it was. Don't be stupid
@LoganHunter82 I get the idea you're going with. However, I wouldn't say that's a rebuttal. If behaviour want to sell skins/characters I wouldn't have said releasing them broken and then making them useless is a good idea. My reasoning is it would destroy trust between the customers and the company.
26:00 I will go 1 step further. With Trapper and Hag the survivors might not see the "trap" which is why it's a "trap". While her drones are big and flying in the air. So they can go for the disarm witouth any issue.
I actually like the static drone addon. Maybe in the reowrk she could get the vecna treatment, but instead of spells, she got like 2-3 gadgets she can use; the radar and drones tagging for information, some kind of cypher wiretrap (from valorant) that works like the stationary drones and can slow people that get in contact with it, some stealth device that could perhaps also remove aura reading of people tagged. That multiple small powers thing tends to be really fun
Next update: “Because the kill rate is too high on the unknown, we have decided to remove the stealth aspect of Skull merchant.”
I just realized: putting down a drone in chase is almost always useless. if it tags the survivor in less than 15 seconds and slows them down 5%, it does something, but probably not much. if it takes longer, you shouldve taken the 5% permanent from bloodlust.
thats why it needed to be 10%. otherwise it will almost never be worth using. only the stealth effect hiding your red stain could do something for you, if the loop is mindegameable.
Hi Otz, it's friends... or maybe just a convincing hologram?
Also Skully hanging out with Freddy in F tier now 😭
Skull merchant: They nerfed me!?
Freddy: First time?
No matter what they do to her most people will dc/give up 💀
The sad reality
her problem is the gameplay design being boring, it was never about her being strong
yup bhvr and the community will find that out when they release her rework. nothing will change.
@@dains6623 Cap. People think she's boring because of her (strong) loop denial and having to W key the whole time. This "rework" nerfs her so you can play loops only risking 5% hinder. She's gonna get dunked on by survivors.
@@mitchsz I've literally heard every single killer at some point is boring and that's why people dc vs them. That's a bad excuse
11:08 WHY IS SKULL MERCHANT GRABBING HER LIKE THAT
Seggs update teaser
Most killers grab female survs by the butt, and I hope they never change that. (For reference, male survs are grabbed from the lower back because they're taller.)
The whole thing kinda upsets me because Skully wasn’t even that strong before, people just give up immediately because of how she used to work like a year ago. She honestly needed good press more than any rework.
And she is kinda boring, that’s true, she needs a more fun design. But it still sucks to ruin the match for all of your teammates because you don’t like the killer. There’s a few killers I don’t like either, but I just play the game the best I can because I’m playing with 4 other people.
No, people hate the reworked one too. It's so odd to claim people quit because a killer used to be trash to face.
She is just super boring. Other boring killers don’t even compare to how boring she is.
once the change goes through her icon on the main screen is just gonna be a Spirit Halloween store
They literally just could've removed her haste and made her tracked status-effect temporary, and she'd be perfectly fine. Instead, they completely destroyed her and made her not fun to play as in the least bit. Good job, BVHR...
Kind of funny how hag gets away with the shit people complain about skull merchant doing and doesnt get gutted like this. Though i feel if hag gets any meaningful changes the dev team will all have a collective heart attack and feng min will stop getting skins.
SM is just badly designed from a fundamental level and she is just never going to be liked by the general playerbase because of the former reputation of 'chess merchant' and her chase mechanics with the current live version are frankly snoozeville anyway. This killer is quite literally tainted. They're probably better off deleting her, refunding BP/Aurics and calling it a day. I think people would respect that more over whatever... this is.
Yes. She should be scrapped and her whole concept should just be recycled and used in a more fun way in a future killer.
@@leechee5596that makes no sense
No, she shouldn't be. She has an interesting power it just takes five minutes of thought to figure out how the fucking implement it correctly. Giving up and sayings "welp, go fuck yourself anyone who likes her" is somehow a worse option than even this.
You can’t even say that because it would require constant changes and adjustments before coming to the conclusion that “this killer is fundamentally flawed and nothing is gonna fix it”. My guy, she has had 1 rework since launch lol, with next to no balance adjustments since then. You can’t say it’s fundamental when they’ve barely tackled her
she on knight is what tcg players would call "stun decks" or "you cannot play the game simulator", and this design is never fun, neither for the player or the opponent. Like some people do insane outplays or som you wanna do, but your entire design is, go loop, press button, surv needs to hold w, its a hit or hit situation, just prolonged cause she has no chase power. go next loop, press button, again guaranteed hit. 2 gens pop, repeat on next target. Its prob why these killers are the most hated ones in the community. Doesn't help they were released back to back. Day 1 chucky had this same problem, where he was only hold back by map travelsal. Get free hit, wait 40 sec till you get 2. and cause you where slower MS you had no real thing of catching up. Resulting in a sleep fiesta in most games.
I found a Skull-Merchant mod on Garry's mod workshop. I Tested it out and it works surprisingly well. I mean her drones dont really do anything except make a noise when it spots an NPC...but her Melee is a 1 shot kill that hits mutiple targets(or atleast, it 1 shots Combine soldiers). Also I just find it funny to kill Combine Soldiers as Skull-Merchant lmao.
Oh and the nextbot part of the mod is cool too.
...
Edit: upon further testing, her drones do actually mark targets, I just didnt notice
As much as I hate playing as and against skull merchant, I wanna defend her a little bit because I haven’t gotten her prestiged a lot yet and I know I’m going to hate playing her so much more with the nerf. Boring ass power to play with and with her just being borderline f tier now, she’s just gonna be so much more boring to play as.
My idea of reworking SM: Drones will now be very strong, they will work as zones, but won't work through walls, BUT, they will only work outside the terror radius, so when you plant a drone, it lasts for ~4 seconds (less than now) when undetectable is active , then it immediately turns off because the killer's terror radius appears. Also, I believe that along with this it is necessary to reduce her radius of terror to 24 meters. I believe that SM should be made a more "Distance" killer, because she is too strong in chases.
Now we need the fair nerfs for Blight, Spirit, Nurse and Survivors since everyone hates playing against them as well.
Despite survivors hating playing against those 3, none of them have that rate of survivors giving up. Just Skull Merchant.
They are just lazy
seriously nurse is an spit in the face for survivers and they dont give a fk but they DC when they are against merchent!@@genghiscan2918
@genghiscan2918 this is because it's fun to juke a blight, nurse and spirit
There is no fun to be had when against a Skully
Who ? Don’t make it into something it’s not skull merchant was boring for both sides
survivors should get a stamina bar
cant believe Twins may actually have a higher pick rate than Skull Merchant soon
Lmao the surv at 19:00 telling otz to "git gud" after he got a 2k
Pay attention to the vid, they're his mods and friends, they're memeing
Yooo you got 1M subs man! Congratulations otz, you genuinely deserve it seeing as you’re one of the most dedicated content creators❤️
“Gonna play perkless skull merchant”
Has 4 perks equipped
The nerf is so bad that he had to have perks to make her ”perkless” /j
Ngl, they had to remove anything that allowed 3gen skull m., but perhaps they hit her a bit too hard (And buffed Nemesis too much).
Perhaps, just giving back the second scanner on the drones would be enough, and because the low battery add-on seems so lovely, using that as a second scanner (as base kit) wouldn't be too problematic.
Survivors would have to chose to go through the second fixed scanner or abandon the loop, and would have to chose quickly because the first scanner will continue to rotate, and good S.M. will turn it at the right moment to get the third scan (also lower the timer to 3 to 2 sec to be rescanned).
It seems the general sentiment is that SM is not fun to play against. Curious what would improve that for people?
Nothing, her problems are in the core mechanics of the power, it would need a full remake and they'll never do that
Removing the ease of power use and making it an investment with payoff. SM's biggest issues are that her power is basically free to use so you just poop out drones mid-chase to completely disable loops, get undetectable which hides your red stain and her haste mechanic cannot be reasonably counterplayed by someone if someone else just gets scanned on the other side of the map.
These things could be adressed in a reasonable manner by simplifying the power (no stealth mode, visible scanlines when near, remove haste and focus on hindering the people getting scanned) and preventing the least counterplayable use cases (give drones a boot time before scanlines appear so they don't shut down loops instantly). They could also make her move a bit slower while placing drones to make it less free.
Instead they went with removing mechanics and gutting numbers, while a gameplay health nerf is simple enough that I could come up with it from just playing a few matches as her and talking to a few people, but BHVR needs their devs to work on the next DLC that'll come with all the new perks, map variations and bugs ASAP I guess.
she gets removed from the game lol
Deleting her and refunding people
i think they tried to make her more interactive in chase with using the rotation mechanic more. it requires more skill than just zoning the survivor to get scanned.
as if this is going to fix anything. people will still DC if they see a Skull Merchant. it does not matter if she becomes the worst killer or the best killer. they should just try to balance her or if thats too difficult rework her completely.
They did balance her, she was mostly fine before this PTB with the exception of Hex Merchant being a solo queue stomper.
So many aura reading and Zachin is crazy. And they nerfed distortions hard. Distortions should have stayed 3 tokens or at least 2 tokens and they only recharge only during chases.
Man DBD really is the most toxic community. People complaining that SM is the super anti looper and it's boring... like there's no other killers who can anti loop? When I got to rank one survivor before it changed, never saw one SM and to this day have faced maybe three. I would rather see a SM than a nurse, blight and have almost no chance of surviving, but the best part is, survivor players are usually wrong. I played yesterday soloq and watched people get stomped by killers using no perks or add ons. The devs need to stop listening to the community or just the very casual "this is a party game" players because they have zero desire to play the game like it's four people against one. They want dice rolling mario party easy game play.
Have you ever played overwatch?😆Hard agree on skull! Almost every killer tier list I've seen from killer mains have her as mid tier. Some say she's too strong or she's too easy to play. Skull's a m1 killer and they are the easiest to beat so all m1 killers need nerfs? Doesn't make any sense calling her an easy to play killer. Even killers like nurse and sprit for an example has a higher learning curve but after they put a little time in to it, do they not become, "easy"? And then there's some that knows she's not that great so they use her lore or design and boring o play against as an excuse to hate. It's absolutely ridiculous! Her lore? like really🤣
nurse and blight need to get the skull merchant treatment. they have no right being such a hard carry
Blight is actually fun to play again and fun to duke him. If you are good enough. Merchant is just lame.
They should just simplify her kit:
. Every time a survivor is scanned by a drone, gain 1 stack of Lock-On
. Each stack of Lock-On inflicts the survivor with Oblivious for 30 seconds
. Raising the radar reveals auras, and slows movement speed slightly
Her kit was just overload i agree with you make it simple and just stronger but easy to counter
Her kit isn't complicated to begin with.
billy nerf is up there
They really did his addons dirty, made it to where the optimal play is to avoid hitting a survivor with your chainsaw through a pallet and instead purposefully miss your power in certain situations.
This billy nerf or the previous one?
@@LiterallyPaulGeorge the one that happened a long time ago
Billy could still somewhat do things in chase plus he had insta down merchant has lost nearly everything and became trapper with less threatening traps
He may have been weak but he wasn’t the worst killer in the game.
They need to remove the cooldown of her drones and make it so you can place up to 2 drones near each other to compensate for this devastating nerf.
This nerf proves that survivor mains get WHATEVER they want by whining on Reddit. I better not see anybody dc’ing against SM if this nerf makes it to live.
Bullshit. The most problematic killer for 7 years hasn't been meaningfully changed.
us vs them so old
@@donaldjgumpofficial5754You know how when there is a problem behaviour rather sells you the solution. Like with tunneling of hook( BT, now base kit), Face camping( reassurance), Surv playing for hatch after 3 go down 4 gens left and crawling in corners( ultimate weapon), Entire playerbase having legal cheat( made for this), yeah nurse is the solution to Swf tryhards. Without her and blight high tier would look very very boring and prob would just force a massive surv side nerf, just making solo q even worse while not affecting swf at all. The problem is not us vs them but the 1 vs 4 game Design. Its not balanceable. And never will be, it will always tip to one side.
@@nsreturn1365 No, nurse is not "the solution to Swf tryhards". They're both shit. They could give killers general buffs while nerfing the top killers.
one of the best decisions bhvr made in awhile 😂
Low Power Mode looks really interesting as proper anti-loop, or detection in high-traffic areas, but it needs some more upside.
This Skull Merchant nerf and Legion's first "rework" are both pretty terrible.
the 3 skull merchant mains willl be absoulutely devastated
with the haste and hindered nerfs, i think it shouldve been one or the other. Either 5% hindered (instead of 10) and haste OR 10% hindered and no haste. Gutting both of them was overkill
I’ve noticed that’s kinda a running trend with bhvr’s balancing, they always tend to ‘overnerf’ and ‘overbuff’ these things. Remember when Iron Will was nerfed to 80% AND didn’t work when exhausted? They’ve been doing stuff like that a lot
2:48 i think someone is paranoid about blast mine ;D
Watching people being happy about this its weird as hell, specially considering that the majority on players would just dc on sight even if chess merchant wasn't a thing anymore
This community its absurd
Very absurd
If chess merchant mains are struggling then I'm happy. Simple as that
@@MightandLightchess merchant isn't even possible since months ago
Chess Merchant isn't the only problem. The killer herself is horrible to face for survivors. People won't dc if she's useless.
Chess merchant is literally not possible anymore what is everyone talking about?
"We see the Nurse is still dominating high level play, so we decided to nerf Pi....ah, we mean Skull Merchant" - The Dev Team, probably.
It's honestly sad to see her gutted like this. I'll admit, she's had a rough history, but no killer deserves to be nerfed to the point of uselessness. I can only hope that the rework comes soon and doesn't end up like the Twins rework did...
Some killers were a mistake. This is the result of shitting one out every quarter. Most of them are horrible to face and/or incredibly derivative.
They said the rework will be the second half of 2025, so she’s soft killswitched for 9+ months. Regardless of feelings on the killer it’s really poor decision making.
Freddy got as bad treatment. His nerf was insane.
The crazy thing about this is that some of the nerf ideas they’re pushing are good, but then some are unnecessary overkill. Get rid of her haste and get rid of hindered, hell, even go through with making the scan lines constantly visible. But they really didn’t need to take one of the scan lines away.
I hate Skull merchant but even so I would never want her to get this nerfed this hard. We should really just nerf pig again.
Finally someone who gets it. Pig is still playable to this day. It's totally unacceptable
Oh oh... Yesterday the dumpster censorship KI on Instagram delete my post.
Other user wrote: No we need another Freddy nerf! and I answerd: Pig!
Two seconds later the post was deleted. Brave new world!
cannot wait for a second rendition of the Twins "rework" to happen if they ever get round to trying to fix her
I have lost complete faith in the developers.
Found the Skull Merchant main.
@@AaronScotzig I main a killer I've never played before cuz this change is ass. She needed a rework so that her power felt good to play against and as, now the only difference is that skull merchant players will be as miserable as the people complaining about her
They cooked
@@gremlinwc8996 She deserved this treatment. Most HATED killer by a LARGE MARGAIN. She can rot in bottom D tier with Freddy. Good riddance.
@@sava-sd9eb They really cooked. W nerf
Third round chat was like "Project T cancelled????" Every third message
Im pissed because instead of making her interesting and fun to play against they took the easy way out and just nerfed her to the ground
p.s. i hate playing against her or as her
Myers finally has some good company, happy to see he's not alone :)
Brother, Myers can remove people from the game at 4 or 5 gens EASILY with tombstone. Brainless one hit downs and faster vaults are still very good aspects of his kit, on top of being a stealth killer with a reduced TR, compounded with monitor and abuse, and dead rabbit.
@@JakeobEhe relies on add ons to be good, that doesn't mean he's good overall
@@JakeobE and how many bloodpoint to get tombstone you filthy cry brat survivors? DO YOU FUCKING KNOW IT WILL TAKES A FUCKING WHOLEMATCH TO KILL A SURVIVOR ON HIGH MMR?
If he has addons to make him good, then that DOES mean he is good overall
There was a time if you told me the twins are going to be far stronger than the skull merchant I would laugh at you.
The twins have been a high A tier killer for ages, what are you talking about
Are u slow
? This comment is very much incorrect
this isn't a nerf this is a COLD BLOODED MURDER I want my auric cells back
Wow, behavior gutting a killer just because of these whiny brat survivors. She needed some minor tweaks, at that point they should’ve just removed her from the damn game.
Calling people brats for wanting to engage against fun killers instead of dull merchant in the game they paid for is wild. Yes they also paid for the game, yes they paid for merchant, but making 80% of the players in a match miserable because you want isn't great from a monetary perspective. Merchant saw one of their biggest reductions in player count to date. This change is a bit overkill, but it's easy to see how the developers came to the conclusion of a nerf of this caliber.
@@NewSirenSongSo where’s this attitude with Blight, Spirit, Nurse, Nemesis, and Billy who can all end chases in seconds with the right timing and practice?
Whiny survivors like you hopped on a bandwagon because TH-cam and TikTok had SM criticism trending a year and two reworks ago. Recent SM was effective against noobs and little else with a lot more counter play than most mid tier killers.
I’m a survivor main and think this is a completely stupid move and people like you will NEVER be happy. Go get your own opinion instead of the one spoon fed to you by the algorithm.
I hope they do
@@NewSirenSongThe people were brats for disconnecting against her day 1 of her rework despite there not being enough time to judge her changes. It doesn't matter if she gets bear traps and becomes a costume for the trapper, or if she becomes the strongest killer in the game. People will disconnect on principle.
I've never had a legit match against a good SM because everyone gives up, and the one time I can remember a match where nobody DC'd was when the SM was so bad she got looped for 4 gens. I genuinely do not understand how to play against her because I'm not allowed to play against her and learn.
@@NewSirenSong the world could have been better without wars if BHVR gave a fuck about killer mains instead of cry baby survivors on reddit, mostly genrush DH+DS combo
I dunno if I am alone with this but I loved the original Skullmerchant if it wasnt for the 3-gen and if those changes make it to live I am kinda looking forward to playing it x:
Congrats BHVR, you just let all the sandbagging social media whiners know that they can bait nerfs out of you by just constantly quitting matches and stirring up internet hate pots. Good job
I cant wait to use the new predator to aggressively tunnel out one survivor at the start of the match. Thanks BHVR!!!
Yeah don’t know what they were thinking on that one
Hey otz I just wanna say thank for the legion builds on your website I went from 1k or no kills too 3k and 4ks 😁
What I'm taking away from this is actually that the Doctor doesn't get bloodlust when using his ability. Good thing that I learned that today, on the day that I got him, and not 5 months from now.
Looking back on a few of my games, that did seem to be the case, and I did kind of notice, but I didn't take note of it because I didn't know that this was a thing.
And thanks to whiny players who don’t like learning slightly different tricks they just outright murdered the killer.
Seriously, SM was pretty easy to deal with once you figured out the typical drone uses and placements. Anyone complaining was just lazy no questions asked.
Survivor main btw.
nah, Skull Merchant's nerf was deserved. It was overkill, but honestly, GOOD RIDDANCE.
Killer main, btw
@@AaronScotz as a killer main why? By all accounts she was a boring mid tier whose sole sin was being annoying against noobs.
At what point does a nerf do ANYTHING for either side?
@@Scooby-Doo_Villain It makes no one want to play her. No one playing her is a BIG W. Oh no, Skull Merchant got nerfed. Anyway...
@@AaronScotz ah right, so you get your opinions from TikTok….a year ago pre rework. Good to know.
I've seen some people talk about this. Perhaps she isn't as agonizing to play against but she is still very unpopular nonetheless.
They saw the endless Skully Build (it was at the begin technically really endless) so the "freddy treatment team" needed to take the duty to pay her attention. Well I hope Hillbilly get a nice nerf to compensate how fun he is :) (Sorry for my broken english, thx for reading!)
Is it just me or nurse with zashin tactics is quite literally gonna be broken?
dropping a pallet against her gets you hit anyway unless it stuns so it doesnt change much
@@vybe1307 A nurse is never going to break pallets so it’s literally permanent aura reading. They won’t have to second guess themselves to go through walls so yes this is very much game changing
@@STARLEYMAYHEM but why drop pallets against nurse. theyre always better undropped unless its matchbox/spasmodic. nurse has better aura options than hoping survivors do something already disadvantageous to them
@@vybe1307 A lot of players drop pallets against nurse
@@STARLEYMAYHEMthose players have bigger problems than the new Zanshin LOL
"When you do blah blah there is risk, but this is just bad" Pretty sure ive said the same thing from survivor side about how there is no counterplay for getting trapped because you disabled a drone. A better option would be to trap the player, but give the player a way to remove the trap so they arent stuck being tracked forever. Then the player has a choice and the killer still gets benefits as well.
I'm confused, I thought the whole reason people would DC at the start of a Skull Merchant match was because she was a pain in the ass. Why is everyone suddenly acting like nothing was wrong with her?
Otz and his chat/comment sections are mostly killer mains, which falls in line with their mantra of "your fun is not any of my concern"
No one is saying she was ever designed well, people are saying she should have gotten a proper rework/redesign rather than literally being made obsolete.
@@HoneyDog Exactly
Half of the DCers just have PTSD from the first version of skull merchant who could 3gen the best teams in the world. They never bothered to learn the counter play to the new version. Plus, just because a killer is unfun to play against does not justify BHVR nerfing them into the ground and calling it a day. People pay money for these killers, they should be playable.
@@kimberlyterasaki4843 Her kill rate is at 70% (BHVR killrate number), which includes people giving up on first hook. It doesn't help too that 90% of snore merchant players hard tunnel, camp, or slug with knockout at 5 gens.
If you paid real money for Snore Merchant, instead of buying her with shards, you played yourself. I refuse to buy her at all.
I love the Frank Stone reference with Renato.
For real everyone so ready to blame bhvr and blame the killer instead of themselves and act like they is definitely nothing they could have done. Like the people who still cry about soft tunnelling and camping and the people who cry about certain killers instead trying to learn how to actually counter them. Like she is only frustrating at higher levels because they’re better than you and it’s frustrating to lose
i can guarantee if Zanshin makes it to live like this with the butchered distortion too Object is going to be the new meta leading to double wallhack chases and no mindgames
i wish more people were talking about insane zanshin and predator are right now with no counter play. i never ran distortion as is but if that’s the new meta im gonna run the nerfed distortion simply bc all these aura perks are overkill.
@madaddy3371 Thing is killer has so many broken aura perks survivors have 3 counters, one of them shows you regardless, ones been butchered to only work once after every chase (predator alone counters that) and one is a boon which is only a limited area, you can't make really strong aura and only have 3 extremely mediocre counters