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Skill gaps, Learning Curves and Billy

NuclearBurrito
NuclearBurrito Member Posts: 6,807
in General Discussions

Ok so first some definitions. Regardless of what you've heard elsewhere, for the purposes of this thread I will use the following term definitions:

Skill Cap = Killer effectiveness with a high skill player

Skill Floor = Killer effectiveness with a low skill player

Skill Gap = The amount of effort required to go from a high skill player to a low skill player

Tech = The different actions you can do with the Killer.

These 3 things are effected by different things.

In particular. The Skill Cap is effected by the reward for successful play and the amount of available options through various tech. Skill Gap is effected by the precision required to preform the Killers tech and the amount of QoL the Killer has. Skill Floor is effected by the punishment for messing up tech and the reward that can obtained without the use of difficult tech.

In the case of Billy, he had a medium high skill floor and a very high skill cap. I'm not sure what the skill gap is because I don't play billy and thus can't say how much effort is required to master him, but a billy main could tell me.

For the purposes of this thread here is what the Billy changes accomplish:

  1. Increases the difficulty of flicking
  2. Increases the punishment for missing a saw
  3. Decreases the versatility of flicking
  4. Decreases the effectiveness of feathering
  5. Decreases the potential reward for successful chainsaw usage (via-limiting snowball potential)

Change 1 increases the skill gap a bit

Changes 2 and 5 significantly decrease the skill floor

Changes 3, 4 and 5 massively decrease the skill ceiling

Now, changes to the skill floor of a Killer usually aren't THAT big of a deal, since they can by definition be overcome with enough practice. For example a high skill demogorgon player isn't going to care very much if the missed shred cooldown is increased, and a low skill demogorgon player would have wanted to miss less shreds anyways. At worst it would just be very annoying to those players like with the Nurse changes. It still MATTERS, but it wouldn't effect a tier list for example.

Skill cap changes are usually a much bigger deal, since you can't simply use practice to trivialize the change. An increase in the skill cap means Survivors are dealing with a threat stronger than what was possible before, rather than just more threats of an existing level, while a decrease means each Killer can't reach the same level of effectiveness as before no matter what.

That is why we can say the Billy changes are a problem. The skill floor changes are relatively small and the skill gap is basically the same, but it's the skill cap changes that are a big deal. Feathering into a flick is the bread and butter of high skill billy chases, and snowballing by getting several back to back chainsaw downs is what let him be as strong as he is without the usual window and pallet hardcounter tools other high tier Killers have. Nerfing those is the kind of thing that brings a Killer down several tiers, and that's not something you want to happen to what is currently the most balanced Killer in the game.