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The sad history of: The Hillbilly
The Hillbilly, once a common species now on the verge of extinction. Once, Hillbilly was a member of the holy trinity, one of the three killers considered a threat despite DBD's many balance issues. How did this poor, poor chainsaw boy go from the top to being overshadowed by so many?
Sit back, relax, and allow me to tell you about Hillbilly's fall from grace.
Original Power
Billy was one of the original three, so his power was simple. You charge a chainsaw for 2.5 seconds. When it's fully charged, you instantly break off into a sprint at 9.2m/s and any survivor in your path is immediately put into the dying state.
Simple power but a lot of use.
Lethality
Obviously, downing a survivor instantly is useful. What Billy would do in loops where you can't simply be at someone's back is "curve."
When Billy's chainsaw sprint starts, he retains his controller sensitivity (Yes, controller sensitivity; don't ask) for around 0.75 seconds before his turn rate is reduced to a crawl. You could use this around corners at the start of your sprint to catch a survivor you would never dream of hitting otherwise.
Utility
Back in the day, pallet break speeds were much slower. As of 6.1.0, a pallet takes 2.34 seconds to break. Originally, they took 3 entire seconds. How much time does it take for Hillbilly to break a pallet he collides with during his chainsaw sprint? I cannot find exact numbers, but I estimate roughly 1.5 seconds.
So, if you were charging your chainsaw as you and the survivor approached the pallet, the survivor was in trouble. Do they drop the pallet knowing you'll just break it immediately? Ideally, they'd stun you. So do they continue running, thinking you'll respect the pallet? There's a back-and-forth on both sides.
Mobility
Before the Ghost Face update, maps were far, far more open than they are now. Heck, until the Doctor, there wasn't a single indoor map. This gave Hillbilly a lot of room to sprint, making him the most mobile killer in the game, bar none. He would hold this title until the introduction of the Blight four years later.
Strong yet fair?
As you might've noticed in the Utility section, Billy's mindgames and playstyle involved a lot of back-and-forths. The Billy had to predict what you were going to do, then execute his plan perfectly, and then deal with whatever else survivors had up their sleeves such as Original Decisive Strike (5-sec stun on your first pick up with 0 conditions), insta-heals, etc.
Billy was difficult yet strong. Unlike Nurse, he was also largely loved by the community. To this day, Hillbilly is widely put on a pedestal, heralded as the sacred cow of killers, and to speak ill of him is blasphemy.
However, there were... issues.
Original Add-ons
Insta-Saw and Crack Billy
I did mention he was one of the original killers. Well, BHVR wasn't very careful with their add-on design back then.
Billy had not one, not three, but four add-ons that all increased his charge time by either 18% or 12%.
Now, you run a 12% add-on and it's no big deal. 2.5 seconds becomes 2.23. Big Whoop.
Run two 18% add-ons, and 2.5 becomes 1.8. That is a problem when the killer also moves very fast after the charge. This monster was known as "Insta-Saw Billy."
A second contentious form of Billy was known as "Crack Billy." Billy has add-ons knowns as the engravings that increase his sprint movement speed but at the cost of a longer charge. If you were to combine these with one of the better charge add-ons, you'd offset the penalty completely.
Over time, Crack Billy has progressively been seen as being strong but ultimately, still had counterplay if you were really good. How much of this is nostalgia talking, I cannot say. My time with him was so early in my dbd career, I didn't even know you could mend yourself in Deep Wound yet.
Insta-saw, however, was seen as an abomination.
Carburetor Tuning Guide
Billy had a lot of other add-ons. Cooldown reduction when he ended his sprint (hit or miss), reducing his bump penalty when he collided with an object mid-sprint, reducing the noise of his chainsaw to throw off how far he is, and so on.
Uh, the tuning guide did all of that. Really. Reduced charge, cooldown, bump penalty, and noise. It didn't affect speed or steering, but steering was largely a gimmick for "Drift King Billy" and speed could be gained by using Engravings.
It was probably the best add-on in the game for the longest time and it was only green. Did I mention add-ons were a bit imbalanced at the time?
The Chainsaw Brother
It's impossible to talk about Billy without bringing up Bubba.
Billy was designed to be a Leatherface knockoff. When Bubba was finally being put into the game, he was... a complete rush job. I've been told, and this could be wrong, he was made in a mere two weeks.
What is undeniable, however, is that Bubba was shoved out the door as quickly as possible so the devs could work on the Nightmare on Elm Street disaster chapter. This resulted in Bubba and Billy sharing almost all of their add-ons, with the exception of Bubba having two unique "Chili" add-ons to increase his acceleration---these also were confirmed by the developers to not even work and were never fixed. He also had his Engravings add-ons known as Beast Marks and Knife Scratches, but otherwise, fulfilled the same role and is still referred to as Engravings in some circles.
So what was Bubba? He charged his saw a little faster than Billy (2 seconds vs 2.5 seconds) but was slowed much more when charging (86.25% vs 92%).
When his bar was full, it did NOT instantly start his chainsaw dash. You had to manually release it, but if you release it too early, he put away the saw immediately unlike Billy whose bar quickly begins to deplete, so you can feather it by tapping the chainsaw button without fear.
When the dash starts, what happens? You start out at 86.25% but quickly built up to 126.5%. This lasted for 7 swings and by my estimations, equals about 3.5 seconds. Did you bump into anything? Did you expect a 3-second bump penalty like Billy? Nope! Enjoy a full 5-second tantrum instead!
In short: he sucked. His faster charge barely made up for the much slower movement, was useless in loops, had no mobility, and was all around a terrible killer.
Patch 4.1.0
This is one of the most hated patches in DBD History. If you ask any player, they will point to this patch as the patch that killed the Hillbilly with the snap of a finger.
Hillbilly was stated by the devs in the notes to be perfectly fine and in a very good place, thus deserving "minimal changes" to his basekit. For the longest time when an update to him was announced, people were happy that his add-ons were going to be getting adjusted, thinking it was going to be an add-on pass.
Was it? Oh boy...
Overheat
Billy was given Overheat. As you rev or sprint with the chainsaw, a bar would fill on the hud. If the bar hit 100%, then your saw was disabled until it cooled off completely. The intent was "to add resource management" to the Hillbilly.
Why you might ask? No idea. They weren't clear on what the real goal of this was or why it was needed.
In its original form in the PTB, it was brutal. Use your saw a few times, and your saw was hotter than the sidewalk on a sunny day. It pretty much killed feathering, greatly reduced his mind-game potential, and made him infinitely more frustrating to play.
For Live, it was tuned down. You could feather and whatnot again. It wasn't a good mechanic, but it was much less invasive than before. What it essentially did was make Billy a lot more difficult to pick up, however, which was largely seen as unneeded for a killer that is widely considered to be the most difficult killer in the game to master.
Overheat did not kill the Hillbilly. What really gutted him were the add-ons.
WHAT ARE THESE?!
All of his cooldown add-ons were removed entirely.
Engravings remained, but the increased charge time also meant it accumulated more heat. Oh wait, they were nerfed too. Charge penalty increased from 12% to 20%, and the speed bonus was reduced from 15/20% to 3/7%.
Think you can use a charge speed add-on? Nope, only one left in the PTB made you 4.4m/s.
Okay, so charge speed is mostly gone, cooldown is completely gone, and sprint speed was nerfed hard. What new tools did he get?
Uh, he's Undetectable for 15 seconds after landing a saw! You know... when you down someone and want to hook them. And uh, they see the downed person's aura so they know where you are. Um... okay, they can't all be winners.
Big Buckle! It reduces your Terror Radius by 8m! Awesome---Oh wait, only while overheated. Which, btw, only lasts 15 seconds.
3 add-ons to deal with overheat. You know, giving a problem so you can grind for a solution.
Ooh, one where you're Undetectable WHILE chainsaw Sprinting. You know, when they will HEAR YOUR SAW unless you're using another one of the new add-ons.
Oh, but I saved the best for last. Mother's Helpers. You move 0.2m/s faster while a flashlight is shining on you. Yeah. Uh... I-I don't have a joke.
Rebalancing
To be completely fair, the devs did take the time to rebalance some of the add-ons.
Mother's Helpers was reworked. It now increased your saw charge speed by 12% (later 18%)... but only for 30 seconds after getting stunned by a pallet.
Black Grease granted you blind immunity after a stun, but was reworked to... make your saw cool off faster while a beamer is on you. Yeah, this got another rework to increase the charge speed by 18% too, but only after you're blinded. (Yes, blinded; not attempted blind, but a successful one)
Engravings were completely reverted. They still increased their heat but now they were usable again. Later on, they were given a buff to decrease the heat accumulated by the chainsaw while revving to offset the additional charge time.
Lopro Chains went from a barely worth-mentioning add-on to actually good. You could now continue your chainsaw sprint through a pallet, at the cost of it dealing only a single health state of damage for a few moments afterward. Originally, it removed the ability to insta-down entirely.
But, of course, Billy had to get an obligatory second basekit nerf. Chainsaw cool rate went from 5c/s to 3.5c/s, basically the max time it'd take a saw to cool without fully overheating would be ~20 seconds and it would now take ~28.5 seconds.
Outcry
To put it simply, the community was absolutely livid at these changes.
Everyone agreed that he needed add-on tweaks, for sure. However, there's reworking add-ons and then there's creating worthless add-ons, topped off with making basekit changes no one asked for or wanted.
Hillbilly is one of the hardest killers in the game. This isn't an opinion. It's a fact at this point. Adding a mechanic that makes learning him even harder was unnecessary, and since that (after its PTB Tweaks), largely does nothing to experienced Billys, it makes the entire mechanic seem arbitrary.
An infamous clip from McLean has him stating, "if you overheat your chainsaw, you're doing it on purpose." Obviously, that's not very sensical when taken at face value. If the mechanic is admitted by the developers to be pointless, then it's effectively admittedly the entire endeavor was a waste of development time.
But that's at face value. Watching the entirety of the clip, you would see that even McLean himself dislikes the mechanic, finding that it doesn't really add anything of value in its current form. However, people put time into making the system, balancing it, making the model changes at the chainsaw overheats, etc. Like it or not, it's here to stay. What he did argue is that it's far more likely we'll see improvements to the system instead, which did happen.
Those improvements being the post-PTB tweak, his basekit cooling nerf alongside the buff to Engravings so revving generates less heat.
Did Overheat kill Hillbilly?
No. Not really, no.
Was it needed? No. Does add anything? No. Could you remove it? Yeah. But that's not his biggest issue. Not even close.
Can never catch up
Billy was good but he needed add-ons to keep up. You will get survivors that play super safe and aren't afraid to drop pallets. Billy is completely loop-able, so a good looper can combine this with strong loops to make it nigh-impossible to get a down quickly.
With his new add-ons, he's barely helped at all. The move he has is Lopro and Engravings, the latter of which requiring a lot of experience and skill to use due to the added charge time. He's still decent but he's merely decent despite his extreme difficulty and a far cry from being what he once was.
Neglect and lack of QoL
Playing Hillbilly feels awful.
His camera has an awkward bobbing up and down. It makes you feel slower than you are and is just nauseating ---no, really, I personally used to get physically sick from it.
His animations were changed around the time of the rework and they're just awful. Your weapon is barely on your screen, the camera jerks awkwardly when starting/ending a sprint, the saw isn't very responsive as it'll continue to fill despite letting go of the button thanks to dedicated servers and causing you it instantly start/end a sprint and eat the full 3-second cooldown, there's the general awkwardness of the initial turn sense you'll try to use to curve, etc.
And those are just issues with him directly. We've gotten more indoor maps such as RPD, the older maps have gotten reworked with more trees with branches having their hitbox stick out/low enough that they'll cause you to bump into them, and the loops have awkward pieces of scenery stick out, making it much harder to curve.
Most importantly, there's just no reason to learn him. He has a lot of unfun aspects to him but he was previously forgiven because he was just that strong and fun to play when learned. But if you like going fast, we have Blight who is also much stronger and honestly, more fun to learn to. Want an insta-down? Play Bubba who was reworked in 4.1.0, making their strengths much more comparable while he's much easier to play.
He's been nerfed, buggy, and power crept. He went from being one of the most played killers in the game, period, to being seen as a rarity.
Almost implied disdain
Okay, okay, let me be clear: don't take this part too seriously, but this really doesn't put the devs in the best light. With the new artwork, multiple killers were shown above the four original survivors. Those killers consisted of: Trapper, Wraith, Nurse, Huntress, and Hag.
You might notice, Hillbilly is the only member of the four legacy killers missing. Officially, they wanted to show off as much diversity in the roaster as possible but can't fit everyone. I don't actually believe they hate Hillbilly, but you gotta admit, it's not painting BHVR in a good light here. Doubly so that they replaced him with Hag, a killer that is both unpopular and loathed by the community at large.
The injustice of it all
What I can say without a doubt is that compared to other killers, Hillbilly was treated unfairly.
Huntress came afterward. She had a similar issue to Billy in that she had add-ons that were outdated and/or downright unfair. She also has more basekit issues, like the ability to infinitely hold up a hatchet and either zone a survivor into a corner or just camp a hooked survivor. What did she get? Just an add-on pass, just what the community asked for previously.
Was this an example of them just learning from Hillbilly? Maybe, but this trend continued.
Spirit was an infinitely more problematic killer with extremely powerful add-ons. She stood still, you wouldn't know if she was phasing or not, and you literally just had to guess. What did she get? A small basekit nerf in the form of directional audio, and a rework of most of her greens while keeping her strongest add-ons intact (MDR and Amulet).
Nurse? Sure, she got an add-on pass but despite being loathed by the community at the time of her last nerf, she barely got a slap on the wrist with her attacks going from Basic to Special.
What about Blight? He's in a similar situation to Old Billy where his add-ons are nuclear while his basekit is loved. While we're still waiting on the add-on pass, surely they devs are aware and improving the situation, right? Hardly, he's only gotten better. Adrenaline Vial was buffed 20 times, Summoning Stone was buffed (tbf, it was terrible before and only okay now), and C21 stacks with Lethal Pursuer. All the while, he has his outright broken add-ons such as C33 and Alch Ring.
It just doesn't feel fair. Billy wasn't just given the short end of the stick. BHVR took that stick and started hitting him with it. For a character whose backstory is defined by being unloved and mistreated by his family, it's poetic in a tragic way that Hillbilly feels neglected and mistreated by the developers.
Comments
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Hillbilly is just that type of character in video games that takes ages to learn and master on the top level with result of being okay at best.
He is too punishing for any mistakes, most of his addons aren't great and that overheat was just a cherry on top.
Why would you spend learning XXX+ hours to just perform worse than other chracters with far less effort and more power and fun? (Unless you LOVE billy).
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All I really want for Billy is to not randomly turn left or right when I start running with my chainsaw. Let's say I'm behind a survivor and I begin to charge my chainsaw. It's really damn hard to hit them because your chainsaw can turn left or right completely randomly. I don't even know why this is a thing.
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Mate i will wait for the anime.
But hope you have a good day.
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I couldn't have said it better myself, this is a really great post going over hillbilly and his history. I'll always love billy, despite him being extremely hard to learn, and despite me being horrible at playing him. So I almost always eat up hillbilly content, i had a really fun time reading it!
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They should have reverted his power nerfs a long time ago.
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This would not change anything. I mean, if we talk about Power Nerfs, I would only mention the Overheat here. And this barely does anything, you have to mess up a lot to even notice Overheat.
When it comes to Add Ons, Hillbilly never needed Chargetime Add Ons or Cooldown Add Ons in the first place. Yes, some Add Ons can clearly be buffed, but he also has some which are fine as they are.
And even if you would remove Overheat and buff some Add Ons, he will not be more popular. One of the reasons why he is not played that much anymore is his FOV. You basically need Shadowborn to feel like "old Billy" and not everyone wants to do that.
But the bigger thing is his huge Chainsaw-Hitbox and the reworked Maps. While the Chainsaw-Hitbox makes hitting Survivors easier (I am wondering if they added this to remove Ghost-Saws..), it certainly does not help with curving. Furthermore, the reworked Maps are basically Hillbilly-cryptonite. You have so much stuff at basic Loops which makes curving worse, sometimes a box is there, sometimes a little twig comes out of the Wall.
And that the reworked Maps are filled with clutter (just look at Red Forest) does not help Hillbilly either, because you cannot sprint from one end of the Map to the other that easily anymore.
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It's called curving and that's the part that makes people wanna play hillbilly over leather face or blight or did since maps keep getting worse and worse for him.
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Easily the most ridiculous thing they've done with a killer. I've been playing him a lot lately, but I just don't think I can do it anymore. It's so frustrating to play Billy. Half the maps in the game make him super unfun at that this point. The map designers are *obsessed* with filling the new maps with random clutter that each has massive collision zones. Like they have alarms set on their phones every 15 minutes to add a random bush with map-wide collision to whatever it is they're working on. And they do that every 15 minutes for 3 months.
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