My take on Billy
There's a common sentiment expressed that survivors who used to like going against Billy and hate going against him now only liked going against him because he was easy to vs. There may be some merit to this argument, but I'd like to propose the converse. People who used to not play Billy and only played him after the buff like him now because he is now easy to play and no longer requires as much skill to achieve great results.
People complain about Billy being too oppressive in chase but for me it's not so much the killer that annoys me but the type of players that gravitate towards current Billy. Pre-buff Billy mains were dedicated masters of their craft who chose to play a difficult killer with a high skill ceiling. Most of them only focused on getting good chases and hitting great curves. Despite people complaining that he used to be weak, I guarantee you that a good Billy main would've still destroyed you. And when they do destroy you, you only feel respect for them. Post-buff Billy attracts the type of players who want to achieve the greatest results for the least amount of skill (this is also shared with Skull Merchant players). That's why you see most of them always run engravings and boots (to make sure they don't get punished for messing up), rev mindlessly to farm overdrive, and run triple/quad slowdowns on an already oppressive killer. When current Billy destroys you, you don't feel like the Billy earned it. In the current state of DBD, it takes significantly more skill for survivors to win against a Billy than it takes to perform well as Billy.
All this is to say that Billy was better for the game when he was gatekept. If I was an OG Billy main, I'd be pissed that the chad population of Billy mains got diluted because BHVR decided to dumb down Billy for casuals. But that's just me.
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good points made. Billy is fine
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Yeah you hit the nail on the head. The issue with Billy now is that even when you outplay him and he misses you there's only like a 0.5 second cooldown before he can m1 you or try to insta down you again so it never feels like you can do much against him even when you do outplay him.
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You are 100% correct. Before the Buffs, Billy-players were just total Gigachads who did not really care too much about winning, most likely even 0 Slowdowns and who just wanted to get some Curves. But even then you can run into some pretty oppressive Billy-players, but this was fine, since they were good, but chilling.
Now that he is buffed, you get the more unpleasent Billy-players, those who stack Slowdown and use the mobility to rush back to the Hook to tunnel. In the end, he got stronger and easier to play, so the result is expected.
Still IMO one of the most enjoyable Killers to go against.
He can get some slight Nerfs IMO. Some things I have considered (as someone who played Billy for a very long time before the buff and even before introducing Overheat):
- Removal of Cooldown Add-Ons —> Those are dumb and were one of the things which should have never existed and I am really unhappy that they brought them back. It makes missing with the Chainsaw too forgiving.
- Cooldown on Overdrive —> Currently a Billy can benefit too much from leaving Chase, because Overdrive generates so quick. A small Cooldown before being able to generate Overdrive after being in Overdrive is warrented IMO. So that he has to spend a few seconds in "base form" (which is still super strong) before getting into Overdrive again.
- Increase of Terror Radius —> At least in Overdrive he should have a larger Terror Radius. Wesker has 40m because his ability allows it to close the gap very quickly. With Billy the Survivor has like 1 second to react when starting to hear the Terror Radius, so 40m Terror Radius at least during Overdrive should be fine.
This just as a sidenote. I dont think Billy is in a bad spot or one of the Killers which is in need for a Nerf, but small Nerfs are warrented.
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Billy is the current flavor of the year busted thing again. Judging from what killers I get the entire Blight population and some Nurses switched to him. Strongest mobility in the game and instadown on demand with no downside whatsover shouldn't be in the same kit even if gatekept. Restoring this insanity is incredible.
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Bit far fetched to say Billy is now easy to play.
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I still want a brown disable overdrive add-on to play as an OG Hillbilly with no overheat/overdrive mechanic whatsoever... would be a nice little easter egg to play him as a he was when he first came out, especially now his add-ons are partial basekit.
Would be a great tool for weeding out the Dork Hillbillys from the Chad Hillbillys.
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why should we gate keep other killers players from selecting the killer? My impression is that a lot of blight players switched to hillbilly because Blight became worse and Billy became better.
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I agree. Billy is extremely strong. I have moved over from a Bubba main, to playing Billy more now. He is just too good to not play him. I don't run slowdown though, aura perks are where it is at. Lethal, Floods, BBQ, and NTH.
Both Billy and Twins are so crazy that I am on an unintended winstreak with them. I just got sick of playing solo survivor and getting frustrated at how strong killers were, that I just started playing them almost exclusively. If you can't beat them, join them!
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he is now easy to play and no longer requires as much skill to achieve great results.
Lol, how is Billy easy to play?
I still consider him same or higher difficulty than Nurse and Blight. Simply because you need to be way more precise with your movement.
the greatest results for the least amount of skill
I really wouldn't pick Billy for this...
That's why you see most of them always run engravings and boots
When I try to use killer I am not confident in, I will try to minimize punishment for missing his power, because I expect it to happen often. Who would have thought?
If I was an OG Billy main, I'd be pissed that the chad population of Billy mains got diluted
Well, I don't remember any Billy player that would be mad.
His skill ceiling is not lower, but his effectiveness for equal skill increased. But it's still a killer you need to waste a lot of hours to master.
I would say his overcharge mechanic increased his skill ceiling instead, because it's much harder to control and good Billy's try to play around that mechanic more.
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But it's still a killer you need to waste a lot of hours to master
Currently, you don't need to master him to 4k left and right.
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I don't need that with any killer... Your point?
I can just use his power only for back revving and map traversal. It's going to be enough for most players and not difficult to do.
But that's simply not even quarter of where his skill ceiling is.
Nurse has higher skill floor, but not really skill ceiling.
Blight has lower both skill floor and ceiling compare to Billy in my opinion.
Like sorry, but the fact you can 4k against bad survivors prove nothing about the killer.
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I start making a list where you quote me with things I did not say.
Where did I say that I wanted to gatekeep players from playing Billy? I only said that once a Killer becomes stronger and easier, more players play him.
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I take it you consider most players bad extremely bad players then?
Thing is; with stacked slowdown map traversal and depleting resources real fast is already enough to 4k against the overwhelming majority. A map that is a dead zone at three gens isn't a map you can win on against a Billy - well, against any killer, really.
Which doesn't mean there's a low skill ceiling or anything. - But if you need to barely hit the skill floor to 3/4k the vast majority of your matches - why even bother? And how is it alright that a Billy who barely hits the skill floor can compete with the top few percent of survs?
I sometimes see the difference; a Billy starts out with his skill-floor-results-guaranteed-appraoch, once everyone is death hook and there are about two or three pallets left on the map, he chills down and tries to actually outplay the pallets. And oh my, the bumps I've seen there. - And I know for a fact that an actually decent Billy can easily get around those pallets.
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While a lot of this is correct, there is a reason why Billy wasn't played that much before his rework. His base kit just felt lacking in so many situations and it always felt like you needed Engravings to even enable the fun part, which is to curve survivors. I have mained him for 2 1/2 years now and I was frustrated by this killer countless times.
You set up the perfect curve, mind gamed the survivor successfully and executed it correctly and still you didn't get the hit because you simply lacked the speed without certain addons. Some loops were pretty much uncurvable because this lack of speed would always save the survivor. Then you made a small mistake, hit a tree branch that wasn't on your screen (even with Shadowborn) and gave that survivor enough time to make it 3-4 loops further. So you left because you couldn't afford to catch up and try again (especially with the risk of having the same thing happen a second time) and then found the next person to repeat the process.
It was bad. Really bad. To top it off, Overheat was always there to tell you, that you used your power too much. Well excuse me for playing this killer for his power and not the fact that he is a very "unique" standard 4.6 m/s, tall M1 killer with nothing else going for him. It didn't really come into play anymore but it was something that always left a bad taste in my mouth.
Billy definitely needed quality of life improvements. Those include better collisions (you should not bump into things that you can't see period), higher base chainsaw speed to make him less addon reliant (no killer should be forced to use some specific addons to be functional), a remove of overheat and reduced penalties for missing and bumping (these simply made him too punishing for most people). I had also mentioned before that his counterplay was often times too easy compared to how hard it was to actually play as him.
This was to a degree because he lacked unpredictability and complexity from a survivor's perspective. You knew what he could do and there were 50 options to counter it at all times. For the killer that meant, that curving as fun as it was, was just a big risk instead of an opportunity. If my chances to get a hit with a curve are incredibly low and the punishment for a missed curve is that high, then why wouldn't I just run after that survivor and try to back revv? Because it isn't fun. But it's also not very fun when the preferable play style is that much weaker and more risky.
If I had to describe old Billy in a single phrase it would be: "A lack of control." While you did have control over your own power, the survivor had complete control over the results and only if they made some big mistakes did that change. Unfortunately there are a handful of loops that now have the opposite issue and basically guarantee you get hit as a survivor. This isn't good either but it can be fixed way easier than before because all of these loops have the same issue: collisions. If I cannot bump into a loop at all, then I can do a U-turn around it, which leaves survivors with no counterplay other than to pre drop the pallet and leave, which isn't fun for either side.
The thing about a good Hillbilly main destroying you is neither right nor wrong. A couple of maps held him back to the point it was basically pointless to even try but on most maps you could win as him. This however fails to aknowledge the real reason why that was. Because most people playing DBD are genuinely not that good at the game (myself included). So if you played Billy on a high level you had a good chance to play against people that were not as good as you and win (partially because you'd lose against those, which prevented your MMR from going up) but that is true for any killer (except maybe Freddy). I cannot tell you how many matches I lost with this killer against survivors that I perceived as pretty mediocre. They didn't need to do anything special because I lacked the power to follow through.
If we absolutely have to nerf Billy at some point (which I don't think is necessary for his base kit), I'd rather they keep him as rewarding as he is but tie Overdrive to getting a chainsaw down instead of just using the chainsaw. I want this killer to be fun for both sides but going back to old Billy isn't the way to achieve that.
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I agree with most of what you said.
I would say they could change lopro, I don't like the addon design, because it can result in lose lose situations... I don't like the idea of tying the overdrive to getting a down, and if so then at least make it so he gains a charge of that that he can use at will for x seconds of durations so he does not just get it in a situation where it does nothing for him.
Overall Billy is fine, he was incredibly hard before and super weak at that, the rework made him indeed stronger but I don't necessarily think his basekit is too strong, he is Allright, I still wish they would give him the more fluent cooldown animation from the old days, I don't like the wobbly current one...
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With LoPro chains, I agree that they should not exist in this form anymore. It was fine when Billy was weak but now it just pushes him over the edge. I think a rework or a hefty nerf are in order. I would be fine with it, if it turned your chainsaw hits into normal hits and disabled Overdrive permanently.
I don't like the idea of tying the overdrive to getting a down, and if so then at least make it so he gains a charge of that that he can use at will for x seconds of durations so he does not just get it in a situation where it does nothing for him.
I fully understand that and if they ever go that route, then of course the killer should be able to activate it at will. Otherwise it would only encourage slugging, which is not the most healthy redesign either.
For the animations, i don't care that much. I have grown used to it and I'm pretty indifferent about it.
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@leowt :
'Most of them only focused on getting good chases and hitting great curves.'
'That's why you see most of them always run engravings and boots (to make sure they don't get punished for messing up)'
False allegations here:
They only focused on SHORT chases & EASY curves.
A Legacy billy can do the same curves, the same chases WITHOUT add-ons. Yes, it is 100% possible. But using add-ons to cheese the chases is sign of laziness and it is hard to respect these NEW Billies playing as perfect beginners.
But we can blame them for that…1 -
yeah I love how they say he’s easy to play now and that his over charge is a buff. The over charge tends to shaft me out of hits (OG billy main with 500k+ hours as him). Billy is fine. I get at least 2 kills on game average these days compared to before where I got 4k almost all the time. Only reason I’m getting so many kills now is because people keep giving up because they don’t want to play against him. If you want to counter Billy than you must use his power against him and force him to M1.
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I can just speak for myself, but I never touched him before because I couldn't live with his clunkyness, they've made him a lot less clunky so now I play him. Same with twins.
They both felt increadible awful to play for me so I never played them, I accept that he isn't too hard to play at the moment, but I don't play him because of that just now .
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Thing is even now Billy can easily play in a way I am going to give him all respect he deserves. Just don't use M1, I will never be mad on Chainsaw only Billy.
We have played against lot of Billy (I see Bamboozle 40% pick rate in my games from my tracking on Nightlight) and he is definitely still one of my favorite killers to play against.
Basically like Bubba, but it's more difficult to bully Billy now. Not really hard with Bubba... He is usually easy 3 escapes.
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I take it you consider most players bad extremely bad players then?
I think average player in DBD is bad. Basically like every other game.
But if you need to barely hit the skill floor to 3/4k the vast majority of your matches - why even bother? And how is it alright that a Billy who barely hits the skill floor can compete with the top few percent of survs?
I can say exactly same for any other killer. Difference is most killers have way lower skill floor and skill ceiling.
If you want to be rewarded for your time investment, Billy is excellent killer for you.
Doesn't matter the killer, if you are good at M1 gameplay, you are going to dominate most lobbies.
But I care about the results of the 1 in 5 games where I have to actually show my skill. If you didn't improve your skill in that killer (because why bother), you are going to lose. Some people are fine with it, I am not.
There is definitely a limit how far you can get with only back revving. I couldn't care less that's enough to win in most lobbies.
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As an ex-Billy main, you've hit the nail on the head. I barely enjoy him anymore post buffs. I am glad however more people get to enjoy him at least.
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nah bubba is super underrated. I almost always get 3ks with him minimum
Nah, saying I only respect Billie’s that M1 is not it. Just force Billy to M1 and you’ll be fine because either way (if he ‘M1s you and your 1 hit down).
yeah old Billy (prior to overheat was peak)
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I mean, isn't it important for Killers in the game to be fun to play as? Because pre-buff Billy definitely wasn't.
I tried many, many times during last year's Anniversary event to complete his 4K challenge in the event tome. But I rarely got more than a 1K and in the end I gave up. He just felt horribly clunky and frustrating and you were constantly being punished for using his chainsaw too much.
I'd be totally fine if BHVR nerfed (or even removed overdrive), so long as he kept everything else that's improved his playability and made him more enjoyable. I almost never saw Billy before his rework and to have a killer be that unpopular is not really a good thing.
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M1 is just not a Chad Billy, that's Casual Billy :D
Just saying what's my experience when we play SWF against Bubba. It gets kinda difficult for him when everyone can reliably do locker tech against him. If someone has headon he is even more sad :D
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I see what you mean by bubba. I think his strength is mostly in end game if bubba didn’t to well early or mid game. That also depends on if the survivors are willing to let at least 1 person die and the end and just get out. However, that’s not usually the case in my experience. I also think bubba is great now but also thought he was fine before they reworked his chainsaw years ago
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Yeah, we fully expect one person to die. There is low chance to rescue against camping Bubba and get everyone out. Usually just more survivors die...
So 3 out of the gate asap and hope last person gets hatch, if they are still alive.
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I don’t know I tend to get at least 2 kills minimum unless I get absolutely shafted but that’s just me. I know it can be different for lots of people
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I love playing vs him
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You're not supposed to last against him forever, even though that's usually what happens. Without Bamboozle, what loop can he easily get you at? Basically nowhere.
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Pretty sure I wouldn't be pissed when my fav killer get a buff and casuals started to play them lot more, I'll be pissed when every survivor starts to complain about every damn thing about the killer and BHVR decide to listen to them, killing it
So, billy never need any nerf at all for sure
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My limited, anecdotal perspective on old Billy was quite different. I hated old Billy because he was too easy to face(boring) and I felt like the people playing him would get really upset and take it out on all of us because they chose to play a terrible killer.
This buff of his has been net neutral if anything in my opinion. New Billy slugs us all because it's too easy and he's crazy strong but that ain't much different than before when Billy would bleed you out because they got upset that you made them bump or you dared to vault a window or because you randomly got sent to Hawkins
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Yeah and that's not fun. If the killer ######### up massively then the survivor should be able to capitalize on it.
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You will and absolutely can capitalize on it, just not indefinitely
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Still not fun
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Fun is certainly not an objective opinion
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