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I don't think Billy's nerf is nearly as bad as the community says.
Before you lynch me, hear me out.
I've been playing Billy for a while now, trying to get better with him, and the overheat mechanic rarely comes into play. I play with no add-ons as well, so I am talking solely about the base overheat.
All that it does is punish you for spamming your saw. Sometimes it can screw you over with curves, but unless you have double engravings you wont always be able to land certain curves anyways since you don't go fast enough. It also punishes using your saw too early and makes you have to actually position yourself before hand. If you watch a lot of the pro mlg billies before the nerf you'll see that they sit there a while. Just revving until they're in the right spot. Sometimes it would go on for a ridiculous amount of time and I think that's mostly what was trying to be prevented. You're on a real timer to land it instead of getting comfortable and doing it whenever its convenient.
Another aspect of it was his unlimited mobility before. You didn't really have to worry about committing to chases because you could always abandon them and go across half the map if you realized you screwed up. In a sort of ironic twist this is the same problem with have with Blight now, but that's not what this post is about. You could say that it isn't technically unlimited due to obstacles and limited pathing. But it also isn't hard to get close, even if you don't zoom all the way into the party.
ANOTHER Another aspect is that it puts pressure into landing your saws. A lot of Billies would put on the crack add-ons and just back rev you to death. Now if you miss its a bigger deal. If you play bad and miss your back revs there's a legitimate punishment. Instead of "oh well I'll just try again" as the survivors 360 in desperation.
It gives him a real punishment for screwing up. It can be argued that the bump time is the punishment, but that alone doesn't deter you from just saw spamming. It does definitely make him harder and more intimidating to learn. And I don't think that it was an entirely necessary change. But it also didn't kill him. A lot of the time when killers get nerfed people overreact and pull the alarm. And this is just another case of that. I understand why people are mad. Billy is one of the most enjoyable killers to play as and against for a lot of people. But he still has a lot of potential to snowball and keep pressure on survivors.
Now is the part where I get called a noob survivor main lol
Comments
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addons or not it doesn't really matter cos majority have little to no value
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Billy’s always had a punishment for screwing up, which is the cooldown for missing his saw. Overheat just limits the mindgame potential. A killer shouldn’t be “punished” for using their power.
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He's a former top 3 killer that sees no play now. That kind of community reaction is typical with overly harsh nerfs.
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Thing is he got absolutely no compensation. His add ons were neutered despite the only change that he need was for charge time to not stack and for a tuning guide nerf
Sure you can still play him but why wouldn’t I just play bubba or blight instead?
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I agree, but Legion is punished for hitting Survivors. I think it's stupid.
Ghostface loses his stalk on Survivors if he melees them.
If a Survivor is wounded and Plague pukes on them; they get a free heal from cleansing.
What I'm trying to say is that allot of Killers are punished for using their powers. Even if it's crap.
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Butchering all of a killer's addons, making the feel of the killer worse, adding unnecessary audio cues to his kit.
Billy can be just as strong as he was before his changes, but strength isn't the only reason people play killers. Even though Nurse is the absolute strongest killer in the game, she still has a small playrate, because she has so many various issues that never get addressed that hurt how it feels to play her.
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Well Legion shouldn’t even be getting punished like that in the first place.
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Finally someone I can agree with on Hillbilly.
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the issue isn't the overheat, it's the way they took the problematic add-ons and then neutered everything instead of just them, and in the process added in this stupid ######### roar that nobody wanted nor asked for, and then glanced at his previously messed up animations and instead of taking the time to fix them, they broke them further.
overheat is just the out-of-date cherry perched atop the cake composed of excrament.
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All they need to do is give him better "gimmick" addons (I view him almost the same as Nurse and her addons--her power is already sufficient for clapping Survivors, so she doesn't need too much in the buff department) and then he'll be golden! I don't use addons on Billy either but I would like his addons to be gimmicky without being dumb.
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The way I see it, it doesn't matter how good or not he isn't. There's a reason no one plays him anymore.
Really depresses me, I loved facing Billy's. I can't really blame nobody for playing him now tho.
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Back in yonder day I used to never M1 as Hillbilly. I exclusively used M2. That's what made him special. If I wanted to M1 I'd play Trapper.
Now I can't play Hillbilly the way I used to like to. My saw is only for travel now. Travel and the space program.
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Probably because that was reason he got reworked in the first place lol
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No actually here's the part where we tell you that you just aren't facing very good survivors if you honestly think it didn't affect him that much
I'm sorry the truth hurts
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He lost some mindgame and bait potential from the saw in chase.
Also feels a lil clunkier if you were used to old billy.
Erroneous cooldowns on powers often feel more clunky to use as they kind of double punish a miss.
Also the roar sounds a bit over the top and I reckon it was an unnecessary addition.
Same ol same ol though they nerf something and half the people just abandon it like its ruined forever. I never see DS anymore either. Haven't played against a billy in a long time.
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old killers nerf to the ground so killer mains have to buy\unlock new killers
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I agree that overheat was exaggerated. His addons remain in need of buffs. Every single purple could use a buff. The two green charge time addons are agitating that they are in the control of the survivors to activate. Then there’s Big Buckle; it’s too restrictive just like Pighouse Gloves.
I agree his basekit is fine. I will disagree that any of his addons are powerful or competitive to the level of the top killers like Spirit or Blight.
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Its not really just the changes too him... Its the fact that they keep reworking maps to somehow have worse collision so you can just bump on a tree branch or wall you were barely turning into. Overall, the whole overheat mechanic wasn't justified and most of his addons being made into a gimmick wasn't either.
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You're right that he's not as bad as everyone says, and the overheat mechanic was justified imo. That being said, his weak/boring add-on set and the incredibly annoying roar make me not want to play him anymore.
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Many played Billy because he was pretty decent. To nerf a killer that don't need nerfs is so stupid and of course people stopped playing him and with MMR also he is useless so that is why we survivors never see him these days. Perhaps he is played in lower ranks idk.
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No.
This is just another stupid oversimplified argument that obviously doesn't take into account how easily counterable he is by survivors with brain cells.
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Adding superheat is the right change. The rest of the changes were unnecessary. Especially the sound of the roar ...
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He's also slowed down to 92% while charging.
BuT yOu jUsT cAn'T sPaM tHe ChAiNsAW bRuH
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As a noob killer main I can back up your position
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I never understood this "punishing for spamming the saw". Any survivor with more than two braincells knows how to counter a Billy who just revs at every opportunity. But maybe the nerf was based on the ones with 0 or 1.
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Not to be rude but if you snowball as billy these days, you either got really lucky or survivors made some serious mistakes.
Overheat limits some mindgames, roar destroyed most of those mindgames, chainsaw overheating sound makes you go deaf for a bit.
If you ever saw an old billy player using busted addons like insta saw or crack billy to backrev then you knew they were not that good.
The point of crack billy was to curve and pull off some amazing stuff.
Billy got no compensation as well, only got shot by bhvr.
If survivors were competent or payed attention then they could've countered old billy even with those addons.
His map collisions are way worse now but that is map dependant rather than him.
Remove M1 as billy, play like how we play, the real billy mains the ones that stayed with him even after the nerf, don't M1 in any way, and tell me he is fine.
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You guys are not good for balancing the game. Your killer main suggestions are...heavily killer sided. No wonder why they don't listen to you.
Had a good laugh though.
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Billy's nerf was unwarranted in its entirety. Revert back plz
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Good pointless response there my dude. Yes I agree some go overboard on their version of "balancing" but most are very sensible and make sense. So by saying all Killer suggestions are heavily Killer Sided show really what you main as and why the game is in such a sorry state.
Besides by the title of the post you can tell this is a rant thread anyway and taking anything seriously in it is sad and laughable.
Thank you have have a great day.
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Thank you for the entertaintment.
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Your welcome my dude the forums are too full of toxic and sadness lately so if I bring even a single survivor some entertainment then my job is done.
#DownWithToxicity #EnbraceTheSilly
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I mean your experience is your own and I don't know how much you played him before his nerf but I put probably around 500 hours into Billy alone before he was nerfed and I basically only played him for a long time, without addons for 90% of my games too and honestly if you wanna know what was nerfed the hardest, it was his fun factor. Billy was by far the most fun killer in the game to me and he didn't feel unfair with just his base kit and most of his addons, but everything they changed chipped away at what made him fun. His addons are mostly useless outside of maybe 4 and only 2 that are actually good, his animation changes made him feel way clunkier, his roar was funny at first but only got more and more annoying with every sprint, his new chainsaw noise gave my tinnitus a field day, and worst of all the overheat mechanic made what was before my favorite aspect of his power ,which was that his freedom and mobility, and put a limit on both.
He's still decently strong and if you enjoy him more power to you but unless they revert almost all his changes except his addons I'll never come back to him or this game.
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Yeah and it's not fun for those killers either last I checked.
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Hes still strong yeah, weaker then before by a decent but for sure though. The biggest problem though and why a lot of the Billy mains I use to talk to, including myself dropped him, is that he's just nowhere near as fun anymore. I don't care about the addon changes I never ran him with addons anyways but the overheat, new animations, and new sounds all served to make him significantly less fun to play and he felt felt way worse and clunkier too..
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Ikr, you can see the sadness in those pages. Killer mains asking for nerfs all the time.
It's so cute and cozy when they all approve the survivor nerfs and discussing the delusional killer buffs around the campfire.
Keep it up.
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Will do my dude. Maybe next we can discuss them just nuking Boons from orbit or actually balancing CoH and basic Boon stats that benefit both Killers and Survivors. But hey that's just me, but hey I have seen some very silly over board Survivor suggestions too.
Now those are funny.
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Regardless of how overexaggerated or not the nerfs are the devs themselves said when they were announced that Billy was in a good spot so these nerfs were 100% unnecessary and in no way should have gone live.
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I enjoy playing him, and my thoughts are that it's not necessarily the nerf itself that was the issue, but moreover the fact he didn't even need to be nerfed in the first place. By the devs words themselves, they said he was exactly where they wanted him to be, whilst in the same patch note they altered him.
This still remains one of my top 2 illogical and astounding alterations within the game. The change restricted some of the mindgaming a Hillbilly could do that was also extremely counterable. Even with a great Hillbilly player, it was still punishable if they screwed up, and it was very possible, even at that level. I'm more empathic than most towards BHVR than a lot on this forum, but even I cannot excuse the dumbness of that decision.
He still is a good killer, but all the change did was reduce the number of killers willing to be played at the then-red ranks.
But hey, we got new music, so that was good right? .. Right?
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Saying he was roughtly were they wanted him was simply to acknowledge the ludicrous notion that people used to spout that he was the most balanced killer in the game. You know the killer who had complete map control, an instadown, really good addons, decent default perks and barely any kind of cooldown. That apparently was balanced. How could new killers compete without having the same?
The cooldown brought him into line with other killers. They did over-nerf his addons though.
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His movement is jank, his fov is jank, his animations are jank and his audio is annoying and ear piercing.
They destroyed him in so many ways.
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I never understood that. People used to call him the 'golden standard of balance for all killers'. Completely bonkers if you ask me, he destroyed my team in every single game he was in. I was fairly okay at looping him myself, but all it took was one person on the team to be bad at going against him and you had no chance of escaping because of the sheer pressure his mobility provided. Try finishing the last gen with only three people still alive in solo queue against an instadown killer who could be everywhere in a matter of seconds.
I remember those days well, he was my most hated killer in the game because solo queue didn't stand a chance. Overreaction by the Billy players or not, I'm glad he's gone.
Edit: forgot to mention he has an instadown on top of his mobility.
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Any killer with 2 or more brain cells can do well with this killer. Perhaps killers with 0-1 are those who write here
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Show me your high tier Billy gameplay please, because I find him hard as hell to do well with. Maybe I can learn a bit from you.
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I agree with you, the over-heat mechanic doesn't really affect him. Sure the insta-chainsaw was a major nerf but then again, it was needed.
However, with the massive buff to Leatherface, it's hard to use Billy and not wish you were playing Leatherface instead.
I still love Billy though.
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Just play Igor lol
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Sometimes a nerf does more damage than what is reflected numerically.
Billy is still viable, but like Slinger his nerf made him a lot more clunky to play.
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Billy's nerf was twofold. They did a ton of things to reduce his QoL (that drunken FOV, just why) and absolutely murdered his addons, and even now, they're really reluctant to make any of them good - every once in a while they give a drip of decency to his absolute worst addons and make them simply bad instead.
But this also came at a time where a lot of similar killers to Billy entered the fray - Oni, Blight, and also Bubba more or less doing a switcheroo with Billy on how good they feel to play. Oni is Billy if he doesn't have his power available from the start, but everything else is better, smoother, more forgiving, and easier to use. Bubba is instadowns made easy. And Blight utterly corners the market on oppressive mobility.
Billy's camp is derelict these days because there's extremely little reason to play him; he got a lot more annoying and less rewarding to play while several more appealing options popped up out of the ether, either easier to use or with higher-yield skill ceilings.
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I'm not saying the nerf wasn't necessary, but the hillbillies I meet currently make me sad because I often use my chainsaw only for movement. With the add-on nerfs and animation changes, the chainsaw is too difficult to hit, and the risk of missing is too great. I have to wonder if there wasn't a better adjustment.
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How is he easily counterable by Survivors now? That aspect of him never changed.
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Changing for the sake of change is the biggest problem I had with the change
It didn't add anything of value and gave him a bunch of crummy addons
The big thing people complained about with Billy was his charge addons, otherwise he was already a pretty honest killer, easy to learn hard to master. But then BHVR did their thing as always, even admitting he was in a good spot BUT....
It not so much the overall change I had a problem with, but it was a lot of the reasoning and poor decisions behind the various changes.
No, it really doesn't affect his gameplay to much, and there is still a charge addon though it does make his walk speed slower, the fact that the addon type still exists, means the developers still missed what people were actually complaining about. And saw an old killer that needed to be updated for "More engaging gameplay" or probably something else stupid like that.
It's just sad really. And does not set a good track record for what BHVR will do in the future, as we have already seen a few other times prior.
But I have been playing Billy since the very start and I don't plan on dropping him anytime soon, he's just to fun and people want to face the guy because he's good a time.
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