Billy overheat is too much punishing and don't allow creative use of the chainsaw
Dear developers, I hope you'll read this post.
I'm a hillbilly main with 1400 hours of gameplay, I have a good grasp on his power and his advanced mechanics: flicks, mindgames, hold the saw at 99%, quickly rew the saw at a pallet or a window to catch the survivor out of position etc. I'm rank 1 both sides consistently (My profile https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198079047469 and stats https://dbd.onteh.net.au/playerstats/76561198079047469).
I would like to talk about the new overheat mechanics and why it's too punishing for people that try to use the chainsaw in a creative way, like myself. I understand that a 4 man slug billy is NOT fun to verse, as well as facecamping with the saw at 99%, and the overheat mechanics is a great idea to stop this, but this will give a hard time to good billy players too.
I run billy without add-ons since months and I don't have big issues. I don't 4 man slug, I win most of my games as billy even if I don't play to win. However, if you face good people, the hillbilly base kit is not that great as you might think, because they will give you a very hard time on hitting a chainsaw on them.
To avoid this, I think the overheat mechanics might use some tweaks. Here I explain my ideas.
Now, when rewwing the saw, you lose 10 charges/second (I will use c/s from now on). With this setting, even breaking a pallet with the base charge speed will use up to 33-40% of the charges already (judging roughly from the PTB), which leaves our billy with a very small window to use his saw effectively to down survivors. Even tapping the saw to fake breaking a pallet will consume charges. And you also have to take into account that billy starts the match rewwing his saw right away to find people immediatly, which is the strenght of this killer AND put him in a chase right away, which is the fun part of the game. What I suggest, is to have different steps of consumption rate depending on how much time you are holding your saw:
- 1°STEP: 5 c/s for the firsts 2 seconds of rewwing (which is the equivalent of 10 charges used).
- 2°STEP: between 2 and 3 seconds of rewwing, counsumption rate will rise up to 8 c/s (at 3 seconds we'll have consumed 18 charges).
- 3°STEP: after 3 seconds, 11.71c/s consumption rate. If you wonder how I've got this number, I kept 10 seconds as maximum seconds for rewwing; with 82 charges left, 82c/7s=11.71c/s.
- These steps will reset 0.5 seconds after the chainsaw sprint cooldown (to limit the spam of the chainsaw).
This steps will allow good billys to hold their saw for a bit (let's say 0.5 seconds at max) to aim properly on good survivors that moves fast and know how to juke you properly. Even lagging survivors gives you a hard time on hitting your chainsaw! Instead, if you are an average/beginner billy and you will hold your saw forever before releasing it, or you just release your saw right away, you will get punished by rising your consumption rate. I saw people rewwing their saw FOREVER.
This change, from my point of view, will:
- avoid 4 man slugs, because that requires a massive usage of your saw, which won't be possible anyway.
- avoid facecamps (you can rew your saw for 10 seconds max anyway).
- avoid billyes that keep a survivor at a pallet holding their saw forever because they can't decide when to let it go, but still allow zoning when the billy is good (rew your saw to 100% in front of a pallet to break it, while the survivor is leaving it, is NOT zoning). You can actually consume 4 or 5 chainsaw charges instantly when breaking a pallet, that would reward for good zoning and punish for bad zoning.
- allow creative players to still be creative, giving a challenge to good survivors and not punishing them for just hold their saw for a bit to perform a very cool mindgame/flick or combinations of those.
These are my thoughts on how you could keep the billy properly skill-based, keeping the resource management side and avoiding boring playstyles.
And in the end, a short parenthesis on the add-ons: I'm glad instasaw and crack billy do not exist anymore, and that the "new" crack billy is based on your flicking skills, since you're a 4.4m/s killer. I have only a small idea: The spark plug and the vegetable oil are hystorical hillbilly add-ons, and I think you might keep them (there is nothing wrong in having the same two add-ons for two killers, they both use a chainsaw :D ), but with tweaks:
- Spark Plug (yellow/green add-on): slightly decrease chainsaw charge time. Slightly increase chainsaw overheat rate.
- Vegetable Oil (green add-on): slightly decrease chainsaw sprint cooldown. You can substitute, for example, the add-on "Mother's Helpers", that is not a good add-on (sorry for being direct. The new brown add-ons are much better than Mother's Helpers, that is green).
That's it. I'm glad you've read all the post, thank you very much! Of course, the number are indicative.
See you in the fog!
Comments
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I came from your other post and have to say: Great idea! Although 4man slugs are the fault of survivors misplaying 90% of the time it's still pretty unfun. Your solutuon would be perfect for billy!
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Thanks man :D I appreciate your words!
I agree 4 man slugs is almost always because survivors are playing poorly. I play 50/50 and I had games as killer where I literally thought: "I'm sorry, you are playing too badly. I'm gonna catch the fourth guy and close the game now". It even happened that I said it on stream.
Unfortunately, there are people that enter the match with the mindset of getting a 4 man slug and hook only when all the 4 survs are on the floor, and I totally understand why devs want to stop it, and I agree with them. Honestly, a full slug billy/nurse are usually the most miserable experience you can face (if they are good).
Anyway, they tweaked him, now it looks manageable: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/171729
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