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Scott on Billy's Nerf
Comments
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This video was super unhelpful it dosent explain why people stopped playing billy bar assuming a large majority of billy players only played him for his broken add ons which makes no sense. The majority of billy payers are not running instasaw every game.
Many excellent billy players dropped him because overheat was getting in the way of the player consistently hunting for highlights and doing saws that were difficult or borderline impossible.
Players learning billy now have prolonged periods pf power lockout. When a learning billy you should be encouraged to try and use his power often and regularly that is the appeal of the killer. OVERHEAT MAKES NO SENSE. It was a decision forced by a game design philosophy that killers should have a cooldown on there power regardless of the killers power level.
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The statement "Billy is overperforming" is missing context. By all means, the same can be said of Doc and Pig in October 2020 based on the info we had, but not on the data the Devs possess. The individual impact of addons or even Billy's base kit was never disclosed, just the average of the killer as a whole and even is that is subject of skepticism.
- Averages do not provide a full picture, even for the base kit. Billy is a high skill-cap killer with an unforgiving power. Compare his numbers to Nurse's. She had the lowest Kill Rate but a good Nurse will destroy any survivor team. Her Kill Rate is driven down by the large number of players trying to learn her kit. Would you say she deserves a buff bc she is not effective overall? A nerf maybe to cap the performance of experienced Nurse mains? Nothing and she is fine as is? Adjustments to raise her more friendly to new players and lower her skill ceiling? We don't know the full picture.
- One hypothesis is that some of his addons drove Billy over the edge in a similar way to how Scalped Topknot completely changes Oni. That is the general consensus of the community at last, but once again Scott is comparing Billy to the middle of the pack killers that share a similar Kill Rate. He is a killer with tons of skill expression, something that Doc, Pig, etc are quite limited at. IMO, the nerfs were overdone, but if you compare his stats with Nurse, which has a similar steep learning curve, he was performing well.
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i think the overall problem with billy is that the devs are way too cautious with his lethality power as he has an instadown basekit ALONGSIDE mobility.
he should just have 2 chainsaw modes that he can switch between. one which charges faster, has lopro chains built in, but only single hits. the other would just be the regular chainsaw.
that's obviously not a fleshed-out idea and I wouldn't implement that idea as-is, but overall, he should have the option of being able to have a more oppressive chase tool as his current chase is dogshit, or an outpositioning tool which is his insta-down saw.
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I agree with Scott and most others that these nerfs were/are extremely perplexing and it would be interesting to know what the developers were actually thinking because their actions don’t really match up to the reasoning they gave. I’ll echo Scott here - definitely some of the worst balancing I’ve seen in a game.
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Yep 100%
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I played A LOT after nerf for a distant saw montage.
Before nerf I used his chaisaw a lot. I used it every time to cover distance even if it's just 10 meters. When I was close to survivor I was always go for m2 even when I clearly should m1. I was trying to m2 even if survivor is so good at dodging that I have to throw the game for downing him. As old Billy you could use m2 only and survivors would have a lot of fun with you even if you make a 4k on 5 gens. Old Billy was perfetly balanced in terms of fun for both sides.
As new Billy you should manage your heat. You don't use chainsaw if it's not really nessessary. When survivor go for window you don't have a luxury to ######### around anymore, you have to m1. You have to walk to save your chainsaw for hit. If you try to act like old billy you will get overheat several times. Survivors probably would have as much fun as before, but for killer overheat is extremely annoying.
Old billy definitely was powerful but in a good way. You required a skill to perform well. That already was making him balanced.
BHVR nerfed him because he was popular. Not because survivors had a hard time against him. Not because he was overpowered. They just once again made a decision based on statistics.
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Completely agree that was basically how I played old Billy as well, twas a sin to m1 on Billy for me.
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Billy and bubba cant use their chainsaws 16 meters from hooked survivors just like twins. Ez fix to chainsaw camping and removal of overheat mechanic
EDIT
Also remove his roar at the beginning of the chainsaw because it f-up the flick and if you wanna keep it make it so it is after landing a chainsaw hit. Remove the "fatigue" after the chainsaw sprint because there's absolutely no need of it.
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they were disclosed through deduction of both graphs. in 2019, his average killrate at red ranks was 75%. in october 2020, His average kill rate was 70%. The add-on changes impacted his average killrate by 5%. Default base-kit billy did not change, he is still the same. Even if you have problems with overheat mechanic, there is like grey and purple add-on that reduces overheat.
No clue for what scott is complaining about. The reason why he play rate went down from like 6-7 to like 3% is because billy can't compete vs good teams as the add-on that allowed him to compete were erased/plagued with unreasonable drawbacks. I am sure if those add-on returned and they got rid of the baby mode roar at the start of his sprint that give free information to dodge blind curves, he'd go back to where he was.
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That's thankfully not true.
If that were the case, he'd be saying how OP survivors are for being able to run away.
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The statistics came out in October 2020, but the chainsaw update happened on patch 4.1.0 that happened in December 2020. We still don't know the impact of the changes as new statistics were never disclosed after. Billy needs changes to make his base kit less unforgiving IMO.
Scott is basically complaining the devs stated that Billy was overperforming while the statistics given in October pointed he was middle of the pack alongside Doc and Pig. He once again complains about using statistics as a balancing tool. I explained why that his thought process was mistaken in another response to this thread, you should take a look.
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All they had to do was make the charge addons not stackable, which they clearly are able to do since the Huntress irihead nerf has been released and nerf the tuning guide, it was way too good. Now alot of addons are borderline useless, his POV is messed up and camera animations are messed up. Pretty good job so far.
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Bubba doesnt zone survivors better than Billy did, Bubba has more locations to zone a survivor, but he cant do it infinitely. That's the difference. Infinite zoning vs better zoning.
As for Billy not being able to curve, that's more due to players no longer being able to adjust their mouse sensitivity and due to hitboxes on walls in general being more realistic.
As for sidestepping, no chance. You needed dead hard to sidestep a decent billy because he could do a 360 spin when he came out and still hit you.
And I explained myself plenty. I agree with either nerf. I dont agree with both nerfs being implemented at the same time.
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You didnt read, again. As I stated before. Either of the nerfs would have been okay, both at the same time would not.
"why does he require a sound cue? give me a solid reason that survivors must know what a killer is doing at every single moment."
Counterplay. Strong powers require good counterplay. If there is 0 information between going down and being healthy, there needs to be a cue of some form. In the case of NOED, the killer is visibly faster. In the case of Haunted Grounds, there is a notification. In case of Bubba, he screams too. In case of Huntress, she plays a lot more careful with her hatchets(which is why infantry belt+iri head was so ######### broken).
Just as a killer, you needed cue's for a DS being in the game, which you no longer need now. You need cue's for pallets being dropped across the map, you need cue's for skillchecks being missed. Or are you going to argue that they should turn it back to 2016? When you only heard missed skillchecks and rushed vaults and dropped pallets if you were close enough?
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I have a shitton of hours in the game aswell. I win the majority of my games aswell. Many, MANY killers cannot win games without perks and/or addons. Killers either rely on their addons, or on their perks. A killer with 0 perks and addons should have no chance against a team of survivors with 3 items and 16 meta perks. Yet, Nurse, Billy and Huntress did. Huntress later had a slight adjustment because lockers were made less common and forced her to spend time getting out of her way, so she started to need perks. Nurse got gutted to have only 2 blinks, so she started to need perks. Billy simply needed to follow that pattern.
Did they do it well? No. Can they improve him with the current setup? Definitely. That doesnt take away that Billy needed a nerf with upcoming changes. And I rather have a killer that's used in 60% of games for 4 full years be put on the shelf for a while as they make the game more enjoyable for the entire roster as a whole.
Billy needs to be looked at again, but there is a whole list of killers that are underperforming that need attention. Billy has had full attention for years. The day that Billy gets revisited is going to be a joyous day, we dont have to pressure the devs to fix a killer that only underperforms in high red ranks, when there is killers that barely perform well in green ranks.
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Litsen,we all agree here that billy was nerfed to the ground. If they reverse the nerf to the first one after the ptb,rework(buff) his addons and FIX his animations he will be perfect.
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I mean, the changes after the PTB allowed people to infinitely rev as the heat(with addons) dissipated faster than revving went down. No infinite revving unless you want Billy to move as fast as Stalking Myers while he revs.
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i disagree
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And by the way people didn’t mention all his nerfs,his bumping collision time is 3 times longer,his breaking pallets time is way longer,he lose all his charge when stunned by a pallet and he has a cool down when missing a chainsaw like the twins now. The more i think how much they destroyed hillbilly the more i get angry,they punished all hillbilly players. Honestly the way they treat their playerbase by doing things like this is the worst thing you can do,i truly hope their pockets and the game go down
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"his bumping collision time is 3 times longer" False, he no longer has access to addons that allow him to reduce his bumping collision significantly. Pallet breaking time is equal, it just no longer stacks with perks that break pallets.
And again, Billy has been a consistently strong killer since release. Ever since his nerf, a lot of killers that were mainly unplayed are being touched and explored right now. Before the Billy nerf, like 80% of my games were against Billy. Nowadays, not a single killer is even close to dominating 60% of the games. Billy's need for attention doesnt really have that much of a priority, he still performs well, he is just a lot more annoying to play.
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Then you're simply entitled.
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I made a post in the Feedback Forum, but my prescription is to undo Patch 4.1.2’s heat dissipation changes and rework Billy’s overheat addons to make more turn speed/silent/charge time addons.
Hillbilly is not far off.
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How much variety there is now? There are 23 killers in the game and red ranks is pretty much only Nurse, Spirit, Deathslinger, Pyramid Head, Huntress, 180 flick Blight and Bubba.
You also have to take into account that there were less killers in general to choose from in the past, now there are more killers than ever and most of them are still not much played.
No one plays Billy and everybody plays Bubba now. Wow! so much more variety indeed!
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You think that’s bad you should have seen 2016-2018 every match was Billy and Nurse they were the only 2 killers being used now we have some variety
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Again, how many killers existed back then?
People played Billy because he was tons of fun and him and Nurse are free with the base game.
If only they had nerfed Billy the right amount and didn't bug his animations, he would still be played a ton simply because most other killers are not as fun.
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Agreed. There’s a connection between the map reworks and Hillbilly’s nerf. My problem is with the addons. I would like more, better addons.
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How much variety after the Billy nerf? 12 killers being used relatively often right now with 23 killers available, aka, roughly 50% of the roster. Before the Billy Nerf? 6 killers being used relatively often with 20 killers available, aka, roughly 25% of the roster. So yes, the variety was upped from 25% to 50%.
2016, the variety was pretty much 100% considering Billy didnt really have pop or ruin available. Trapper and Wraith were pretty equal in strength, with the only difference that Billy didnt have pink addons, and thus was capable of instakilling every single match, where Wraith and Trapper only could do that every 3rd match or so. But Trapper and Wraith still had favor over Billy due to Agitation and Bloodhound. Once people had both those perks on Billy, they only played Billy, at least, for the first 2 months of release.
Then Nurse came out, and the variety dropped to just Billy and Nurse. 50% of the killers used.
Then Myers came out, and at first 3 out of 5 killers were used, untill people realized how powerful Dying Light was and Billy slowly became the main protagonist, 40% of killers used, 60% of the matches being Billy with Ebony/Ivory Mori and Dying Light, the rest being Nurse.
Then Hag came out, who was terrible at release, so Billy and Nurse were still the only ones used, 33% variety.
Then Doc came out next, who, also wasnt that great, annoying, sure, but easily exploited. 2 killers used out of 7 total(28.5% mainly Billy, Nurse second).
Then Huntress came out, finally, the first killer since Billy to truly be able to use the disgusting mechanic that was old Tinkerer. 3 Killers used out of 8 on a regular basis, finally some more variety(37.5%, mainly Billy, Nurse second)
Bubba, 3 out of 9(33.333%, mainly Billy, Nurse second)
Freddy, 3 out of 10(30%, mainly Billy, Nurse second)
Pig, 3 out of 11(27.3%, mainly Billy, Nurse second)
Clown, 3 out of 12(25%, mainly Billy, Nurse second)
Spirit, but Tinkerer has been nerfed, and so people stopped playing huntress, 3 out of 13(23%, mainly Billy, Nurse second)
Legion, 4 out of 14(28.6%, for the first time, people didnt play Nurse as much. mainly Billy, Legion second)
Plague, Legion has been nerfed. 3 out of 15(20%, biggest variety drop since Myers came out, mainly Billy, Nurse second)
Ghostface, 3 out of 16(18.75%%, mainly Billy, Nurse second)
Demogorgon, Freddy has been reworked, 4 out of 17(23.5% mainly Billy, Nurse second)
Oni, Nurse has been reworked and is no longer played outside tournament settings even though she isnt that weak, 4 out of 18(oni filled in Nurse's slot for some time)(22.2%% mainly Billy, Spirit second).
Deathslinger, Doctor was reworked and joined the variety roster, Oni has recieved a slight bug fix that made him slightly harder to play, so ofcourse people dumped him but Caleb took his place, 5 out of 19(26.3%, mainly Billy, Spirit second)
PH, Hag recieved a shadow buff and can now lunge out of traps 7 out of 20(35%, mainly Billy, Spirit second).
Blight, Billy and Bubba got reworked, but Undying has entered the chat thus more killers are being played. 12 out of 21(57% under disgusting mechanics, Spirit first, but not mainly, Freddy second), a lot of survivor sided maps have been reworked too.
Twins, Blight has recieved a minor amount of love, keeping him in the roster after the Undying nerf, but just barely, more players started picking up Oni, Demo, Pig, Plague and Clown. Especially since they were able to freely test out these killers instead of Billy thanks to Undying(its the only good that Undying has done, give people time to learn more killers once their favorite one was gutted), more maps have been reworked, 14 out of 22(63.6%, Freddy first, Spirit second(yeah, idk what changed, maybe more people realized Spirit is boring to play as AND against)).
Trickster, Clown and Wraith have been reworked, Trapper and Blight have had some QoL, even more maps have been reworked, 15 out of 23(60.8%, highest variety since release. Freddy first, Spirit second)
Trickster-now, Freddy has been nerfed, but plays pretty much the same, even so, people have left him out of the variety roster, Huntress and Demo recieved an addon and/or basekit rework, Hag and PH, for some reason, have disappeared off the variety roster, for now at least. Twins was made less easy to play, but sadly also a lot less fun to play as. 12 out of 23(52.2% variety, Bubba, Huntress and Demo being on roughly equal footing here).
So yes, the Billy nerf forced players to play more killers. The variety has gone up. More issues with killers have been found and since then addressed.
I mean, do you really think Wraith would have recieved a buff if Billy remained the same? Barely anyone played Wraith back then. More variety=better balancing. More issues are found with weaker killers and since there is more data available, there is an easier conclusion to be drawn of what needs to change. I dont mind waiting for Billy to be addressed untill other things have been addressed first. 2020-2022 is probably going to be the era with little to no Billy, after 4 years of being essentially Dead by Billy. Yes, it's a shame he has been gutted this hard, but the overall benefit his nerf has given to other killers? Totally worth it.
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In what world does a developer need to nerf a certain character to understand that another one is weak...
Huntress is super popular, you see her all the time, but they didn't gut her with the recent changes compared to Billy. They just removed some of the busted stuff and even create some new interesting add-ons like the flight speed ones.
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Maybe if the devs made well balanced skill-based characters instead of trash killers that weren't worth paying for, they wouldn't have to ruin their original content to force players into buying new content?
You're a lunatic if you think ruining 1 character to get people who've played them since the beginning to change characters is a good idea.
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I think Billy could really benefit from more turn speed addons, more silent builds, and better drawbacks to chargetime addons.
I also think the 4.1.2 Patch should be reverted. Would you have a problem with those changes? I detailed this in a Feedback thread: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/249660/hillbilly-add-on-pass-steel-eyed#latest
I’d appreciate it if more people took a look and responded to the thoughts within.
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I agree with this opinion. I think the removal of the instasaw is appropriate. However, I don't agree with the other nerfs.
Only a few agree with the Billy nerf, and now they many miss the old Billy within this community. I find him a fun killer to play against plus there's outplay to him. I want to see Billy more😥
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"In what world does a developer need to nerf a certain character to understand that another one is weak"
In a world where players only play 1-3 characters out of a roster of 24. You NEED data to come to a conclusion. You cant simply address whats wrong with a killer if that killer isnt being played.
"Huntress is super popular, you see her all the time, but they didn't gut her with the recent changes compared to Billy."
She wasnt super popular untill after the Billy nerf though. And she didnt really need that much alteration to start with. She doesnt have potentially infinite pressure with her basekit.
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「She wasnt super popular untill after the Billy nerf though」
She was popular before the Billy nerf🙄Huntress was the 3th of killer pick rates by official poll (2019). ※red rank only ⇒ 4th
I wish Billy nerf had been only an add-on like Huntress and Spirit.
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If he was a forum killer he'd be making threads about how killer is impossible and every match is somehow a top 0.5% sweat squad.
I was fine with the add on change but the overheat mechanic reeks of "#########, we need to make it look like we're actually working".
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Although Billy was nerfed a little, it totally pales in comparison to how much survivors were nerfed. You can't nerf survivors for 5 years "non-stop" and expect Billy to remain the same. There is a massive power creep in killers and its reached a point that killers with certain perks are literally like playing a game on god mode. Either survivors need massively buffed (maps, perks) or all killers need nerfed more than Billy was. Billy still needs to be nerfed. If they don't remove slowgen perks, perhaps his chainsaw should only inflict one health state to make it fair. Right now, high mobility killers are broken.
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Wait a minute... But you were against Billy's nerf!
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I mean, I can be 4th in a 100 man marathon if 96 of the participants are barely used.
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