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Skull Merchant isn’t the first killer to experience the peaks and valleys of Dead by Daylight‘s power curve. Once a dominant presence in the kill stats thanks to her 3-gen potential and unenviable talent for making other players disconnect, Adriana is now a shell of her former self. If you’re one of the legion (not that Legion) of players who hates facing her in the Trials, you may see her heavy nerfs as cause for celebration. They’re not, but the reason might not be obvious. Here’s why Behaviour (understandably) broke Skull Merchant and why DbD‘s black sheep needs a buff for the good of all players.
3-Gen Infamy
To understand Adriana’s nerfs and their problematic implications, we need to understand what made her OP. Skull Merchant rose to infamy during the 3-gen meta when killers could use over-tuned kicking perks like Nemesis‘s Eruption to hold the final generators in a permanent chokehold. No one did so better than Skull Merchant. Between her drone surveillance, proxy camping, and the right build, breaking a 3-gen was almost impossible. The anti-3-gen mechanic (limiting the number of possible regression events) helped, but her rework was the final nail.
Her initial rework nerfed the 3-gen playstyle, but the resulting killer was difficult to understand. With the new combo of Haste, Undetectable, and Hindered, a talented Merchant could get hits that felt unfair and unfun. It didn’t matter that she was weaker than S-tier killers like Nurse and Blight. Even survivors who understood the changes to her power sometimes rage quit at the mere sight of Adriana in a Trial. Loading into a killer match only to see survivors walk up and point at the nearest hook as if to say “I’d rather die now than play against the character you picked” feels awful and happens often.
Breaking the Merchant
The September 2024 update nerfed Adriana into the ground, basement, and water table. It cut the Hindered penalty in half, removed the Haste from Claw Trapped survivors, and reduced the number of drone scan lines from two to one. This obliterated Skull Merchant’s competitive potential and her fun. In a poetic twist, she is now equally miserable to play as and against. It appears that Behaviour intentionally over-nerfed Skull Merchant to pacify its agitated community, even if doing so meant ruining the playability of a character that some people paid real money for.
The problematic implication of these nerfs is that Behaviour is comfortable leaving characters in a borderline unplayable state for months. Dead by Daylight isn’t in early access: it’s a live-service game that’s been out since 2016. The devs have finite time, energy, and resources, but it may be time for an official Operation Health. We need a chapter devoted to fixing what’s here rather than introducing anything new. While a black sheep like Skull Merchant isn’t for everyone, her players deserve better.
