Visit the Kill Switch Master List for more information on these and other current known issues: https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/kb/articles/299-kill-switch-master-list
We encourage you to be as honest as possible in letting us know how you feel about the game. The information and answers provided are anonymous, not shared with any third-party, and will not be used for purposes other than survey analysis.
Access the survey HERE!
Why is billy not as popular as he once was?
Comments
-
I used to be a billy main but after the nerf hes just so....clunky and weird to play as. His add ons are terrible and it shows that they don't know how to rework add-ons anymore. His dumb roar is so annoying that my head starts to hurt everytime I go for a rev. Its just another killer that turns away new players because of his high skill mechanic imo. Veteran players don't have a problem with billy.
2 -
He's just less fun to play.
Cooldowns suck and forcing yourself to limit using your power because of one sucks too.
And a lot of addons are either pure garbage (an addon that makes Billy 4.4, who thought that was a good idea?) or just not for me (all the silent addons, stealth is not what Billy's about imo, If I wanted stealth, I'd pick Wraith)
5 -
Former hardcore killer main with over 3k hours on him alone with that being said what made him fun was exactly what they took away and that was zooming around the map.
0 -
It's because if a killer has their ability reduced by 0.1% efficiency it means that they've been gutted and are no longer viable. So people stop playing them in hordes.
I personally prefer for there to be skill involved when using a killer, especially if they have a one hit down attack.
You have no issue with the overheat mechanism because you are already a good hillbilly. The people that are saying that the overheating is too detrimental for him to perform well most likely still play him as they did before he was given the overheating.
They've made it so that he cannot spam his one hit down attack at all times. That's it, he can still cross the map quickly but now at the expense of having his chainsaw overheat and he still has his one hit down ability.
2 -
I've seen rather mean comments here claiming people just suck at him and feel entitled to an overpowered kit.
Old billy was overpowered against underperforming survivors. The truly skilled survivors are impossible to chainsaw at many, many tiles.
This is why among the experienced crowd old Billy was considered very close to the sweet spot one could consider balanced in a game like DBD.
Certain addon combos were too strong, especially for their rarity. I've only ever seen the most biased and ignorant people call for a basekit nerf (overheat and messed up animations).
If they just made charge speed not stack, everything would have been fine imo.
Instead, they struck him with a truckload of -sorry- garbage addons. Nice for memeing, exceptionally bad for gameplay. But he roars now....
I find it unfair to shift the blame on the players only. It's rather telling that a recently reworked character drops in popularity to such a massive degree.
9 -
*Reads the title*
Me: Because people overreacted strongly out of proportion to the changes that were actually made. Hillbilly is honestly no less viable than he was before, and his playstyle has hardly changed at all. I swear to God if somebody says "Because he got gutted"...
*Reads the very first comment*
2 -
the new killers overshadow the original ones, like now i see way less nurses at red ranks; That doesn't indicate how strong she is.
0 -
@Steel_Eyed I tried watching your video but then had to nope out when the roar happened, so while I would like to comment about the video, I can't. Also, I would like to point out that the devs did not, in fact, accomplish the goals they said that they were out to accomplish. Instasaw doesn't exist anymore, and that's the only thing that they accomplished. Did they remove camping made more beneficial because the killer's power is a chainsaw? No. All that they did was train newer killers on how to better hook camp with a chainsaw, and faking a chainsaw into a grab is still just as viable. Did they remove the killer's ability to completely take control of a loop? No. Billy can still do that; it just takes a little longer as he waits a little more between chainsaw uses. Did they buff silent Billy builds? Not really. They honestly nerfed the ingenuity and just said, "you want this effect? Have an add-on that does it, but since what we're doing is dumbing down creativity and it would be too strong, we have to make the add-on an ultra-rare and give it some downsides". No longer having an uncommon option for the chainsaw noise reduction is not cool, not to mention they'd been broken for several patches so I couldn't even use them as I remembered them before he was reworked. Did they buff cross map snipes? It's not really a snipe... and regardless, that's also a no. They did nothing to give Billy with anything less than Ultra-Rare add-ons any help with having opportunities to be sneaky (which in my opinion should be hard to do anyway given Billy's intended design).
So, whoop-de-doo for ineffective and harmful re-works.
@WishIcouldmain I hate the music. Nothing against your opinion, but if a change makes it so that extremes are formed and the changes are forced on everyone rather than giving everyone more options and increasing per capita satisfaction, that's a bad change. #rankedchoicevoting
I would be all for having the option to change what music plays for any particular player, however, and I think that would be an awesome change.
I would like to point out that while a number of people hold that as their cause, the majority of the reasons I see for people not playing Billy is because of the roar and animation issues (along with add-ons that stifle emergent creativity, but this I've only extrapolated from the implications commenters have made about add-on changes as opposed to seen written verbatim). Edit: and the message to micromanage coupled with jankiness.
Generalizing the reason people stopped playing Billy as either "he was gutted" or "overreacted strongly" is a mischaracterization. The vast majority of people aren't saying that he's less viable but that he's just notably less enjoyable.
0 -
I only see a few Billys here and there, tho when I do now, they are usually equipped with LoPro Chains.
Maybe players prefer Bubba’s buff over Billy’s nerf since I’m encountering Leatherface frequently.
3 -
Ive played 1 billy in the last month.
2 -
Spoken like a true Billy main of 2020
2 -
How does my comment reflect myself? I said ive played 1 billy in the last month, not that i have played as him.
And i was playing before 2020
Kthxbai
0 -
My bad, I misunderstood what you wrote in a failed attempt to make a lighthearted comment about his vanished presence in the game. I hope I didn´t ruin your day!
0 -
You good, and nah my day is gucci.
0 -
Disagree. The hostage holding at loops cannot be done like before because of the heat mechanic. The hook camping with a pre-revved chainsaw cannot be done like before.
They most certainly buffed silent Billy builds and probably do deserve their ultra rare status. I have to admit I do not use these much myself as I prefer turn speed and have been flirting with engravings.
Otherwise the builds he had are largely availavle except two: instasaw and crack billy. I would like these back personally.
Builds that are still available: silent billy (buffed with multiple different addons), bumper billy, drift king, curve billy. And now he has lopro too (although I’m not a fan).
0 -
He's still basically as food as he used to be
Wait, I thought you were supposed to Play With Your Food D:
0 -
Because he is not worth it. Powers with cooldown are generally boring and they are twice as boring if they didn't use to have cooldown.
0 -
I like the yell but I would still get behind chu chu ngl
0 -
By holding hostage, I took you to mean that if a survivor left the loop, he/she could be instantly downed by a chainsaw backrev of sorts. If a survivor still leaves a loop now, that survivor will still be in imminent danger of a backrev because no Hillbilly will come close enough to overheating (due to micromanagement ugh) that he will not be able to have one rev left for a survivor in the open.
If you mean something other than this, please explain.
Changing silent Billy builds by just giving him an add-on that makes his chainsaw permanently silent outside of the terror radius isn't buffing builds. It's buffing one build, and that build includes Apex Muffler and a perk/add-on that gives him Undetectable. There is no widely accessible gradient anymore. Off-Brand Motor Oil can't be combined with anything to be anything meaningful either. This build isn't available without an ultra rare add-on, and since accessibility (and diversity + emergent gameplay) should be factored into whether something is a buff or not, it's not a buff in the broad sense. Specifically? sure. Broadly? no. This isn't even bringing up the question of whether this was a good thing, which I would argue it's not.
Drift Billy? You overheat if you have too much fun drifting and not enough not-fun waiting for your chainsaw to cool down between runs.
The add-ons that slow down gen speed or inflict mangled? Gone.
The other add-ons either mitigate the downsides imposed by the rework (why have the rework then?) or give effects that are incredibly specific and strange so as to not allow for much of anything interesting to happen at all outside of prepackaged scenarios. Not to mention (and now I'm really going on about what I so dislike lol) that some of the add-ons just make no logical sense. Mother's Helpers? Is the Hillbilly swallowing them or something? The boot series? Is The Hillbilly now wearing multiple sets of boots when he equips more than one boots add-on? WHERE DID YOU PUT THE LOGIC??! (i.e. Hag eats everything or uses her curse to imbue her traps through offerings and Trapper's add-ons all make sense in whatever combo; he uses them like Old Hillbilly did his add-ons).
None of those are emergent builds, which is a big deal, and when you say "available", I have to assume you're agreeing with the devs that these are and should be the only pre-set builds allowed to Hillbilly?
0 -
He was not gutted. His addons do be trash now tho
1 -
Son, no one care about heat limiter, or whatever the.... They broke him when they obliterated the insta-saw, cuz of that is less popular now.
0 -
Miss a double engraving chainsaw, you will see why, I also started to notice that his hitbox is bigger, I hate when landing a saw I have to stare at the floor, I hate the roar, really bad addons, I can't play double engravings anymore so I'm sad about Billy, they should've left him alone like after the PTB fix or pre nerf and only remove insta saw and stuff.
ALostPuppy covered everything that everyone hates about new Billy.
1 -
Just know what my experience is. Everyone else was living in Candyland i guess.
0 -
I never has problems against billy and new billy is just a sad joke to me.
2 -
Oh, well i guess I pale in comparison to your golden luminescence. Tell me great one how many other killers you have slain with your sick juking skills. I bet you go solo and 4e every game too with one hand on your keyboard and the other free hand groping titties while you laugh to yourself about the struggling plebs who aren't as financially secure as yourself. Then you light up a few $100 bills just as you notice you were subconsciously running a Billy around in-game the whole time. His tears powering your resolve. Chainsaw? More liek chainlame. He finally manages a hit but it curves off your perfect Adonis like visage. Try again, chainlame!
0 -
Billy is fine but just boring to play as right now. I just wish it would take more time before you overheat
1 -
I never played Billy much, but I can say that at least to me as a survivor he is super annoying do the grunting sounds he now makes when using the chainsaw and the sound of the chainsaw being too loud. Before, I didn't like to face Billy because of the 1 shot ability he has, now it's purely for the noises.
0 -
Absolutley not. Maybe for some, but some of the best billys i ever seen were addon less or only used white addons. He was actually more fun to plag AGAINST before because you had to make reads on when he was about to saw or not. Felt so much more satisfying to make good reads against him before. But now hes 0 mind game. Roars to let you know when to dodge. ######### for turning, 0 skill when you are suppressed by the game.
I guess they just wanted the OG 3 to be bottom tier. Gj your original ideas are taking a backseat to other peoples ideas. (Liscened Killers)
1 -
I’ve seen nothing BUT Billy since this mid chapter when I play survivor.
He seems to be more popular than ever, in Australia at least.
0 -
Could very well be a regional thing. I versed a whole lot of 1 Billy since his change (red ranks) in EU.
2 -
Probably.
Here in Australia we call red necks, Bogans (pronunced bo-guns or bo-gens).
We have a lot of them. Billy probably resonates well with them.
1 -
Oh dude I SO wanna visit Australia one day. A friends sister went off to live there with her BF and they love it.
0 -
Myself, and probably lots of our population, often forget just how lucky we are. We have a big, beautiful country. Most of our beaches are spectacular. Our cities are (mostly) pretty clean (subjectively speaking when comparing to most of the worlds cities). Nature walks in the bush lands feel like stepping back into prehistoric times. Our tropics are just exquisite.
1 -
Billy is the featured killer in this current Rift chapter, I’m sure he’s seeing more play his week because people are doing his challenge.
1 -
Got tired of reading all the negativity. I like him MORE now. He is more fun to play. I love his music. I stopped playing billy for months before the rework when his animations started bugging out. In my opinion he is in a great place now. His animations are fine. His movement is fine. Overheating never happens unless I back rev a ton.
I think everyone is holding onto their bullsheet opinions from before and haven't given him a chance since. Or maybe they just aren't bothering to take the time to adjust to new billy. Either way I don't care. He is fun, I'm getting 4ks, I'm curving on people's faces, and I don't know what everyone is bitching about. Git gud?
1 -
In other words, he was tinkered with.
0 -
Old billy,
no overheat
no scream when using chainsaw
chainsaw wasn't impossible to hear anything over and didn't get louder the more you used it
animations for backrev and missed saws weren't hot garbage
addons were extremely strong but enjoyable to use
1 og meme addon
3/19 cooldown addons
3/19 charge speed addons
2/19 turning addons
2/19 speed addons with downsides that can be negated easily for a simple speed up which is great for curving and high skill
Some of his most impactful addons were green rarity and below so you had plenty of chances to get them and didn't spend too much bp using them
New billy
overheat
chainsaw is louder the higher you are on overheat which also gives survivors an indicator of your overheat
screaming whenever you start a sprint to tell survivors if you try to do anything fancy like curve way in advance
New addons are as follows
4/20 only affect the new mechanic that was forced on everyone
2/20 meme addons
2/20 turn rate only addons that weren't gutted
2/20 speed addons with no more easy ways to negate without tons of new downsides or annoying ways to activate
2/20 charge speed with terrible downsides or annoying activation methods also green and purple respectivly
0/20 no cooldown addons
3/20 actually interesting new addons that are fun to use
the rest aren't even note worthy but all in all he has maybe 7 useful addons now as opposed to 10 with old billy which was above average
They basically removed 80% of what people thought was fun about him and slid everyone 3 ok addons for their troubles at too high of rariety to enjoy most of the time
1 -
There are a couple reasons for this.
- The camera... the god forsaken camera. Whoever thought it was a good idea to have his head constantly bobbing must've been on something, because that decision does nothing but cause extreme discomfort to the player.
- His add-ons. Now, yes, some only played him for insta-saw but that's not what I mean. They reworked his add-ons but the ones replacing them are... they're all awful. All of them except maybe 1 or 2. Lopro chains is cool, but... that's pretty much it. The rest are either niche, useless, or meant to counter that damn overheat.
- Overheat. It's stupid and annoying. Billy is a killer that requires a lot of experimentation, so why would they implement a mechanic that discourages such? The excuse given was that the versatility of the power means that they wanted to put a limit on it... because nothing like playing a game knowing that if you make too many mistakes or are trying to learn a new killer, your power will be gone any second. It even discourages certain add-on combos like Double Engravings (for the mad lads), or hell, Engravings with anything but something to lessen the strain of the overheat.
- He's still full of bugs that haven't been addressed.
- There are killers that fulfill his niches better. You want a killer with mobility? Play Blight. Want the ability to insta-down at the start of the game? Play Bubba. Want the potential to snowball with insta-downs? Oni will do just fine. He's simply outclassed by the competition.
So, you have a high-skill ceiling killer with all of these issues and... what's the point? Bubba is easier to use and gives similar results, Blight has better mobility and similarly high skill ceiling (for those into that), and Oni is literally just a better Billy once you get past the early game.
5 -
Id love to only get nurses, billy's and hags so...
0 -
IMHO Billy is the hardest killer for the least reward.
You pick up Billy for the first few times, you can't do anything.
Practice quite a bit, master cornering, master all the maps... you can be about as good as an average player playing an average killer.
Post edited by UMCorian on2 -
For maybe a day...
Learn counters and jukes
But after a week... I don't think I could stand it
0 -
I guess maining Hillbilly is a niche like Otz maining Trapper.
0 -
You know nurse is still by far the strongest killer in the game right. There's nothing wrong with her rework it forces you to use it blinks more carefully and be more precise.
1 -
Search up demonic_freak on twitch, an insanely good Billy who still does engravings.
1 -
Never said she wasn't. Not going to go too far into it because that's not what this thread is about, but yes, there is a LOT wrong with her rework and the ridiculous amount of bugs they introduced along with it that they refuse to even acknowledge.
0 -
Well every one is different 😆
0 -
I miss seeing billy. I haven’t seen him much since his rework. Maybe three times?
1 -
It’s not the killer it’s who’s playing it.
Nurse mains took the hit, adapted and are still just as good as ever.
Billy mains have also taken the hit, adapted and still seem to be able to dominate.
Potatoe killers who had to adjust their play style and increase their ability by skill.................. gave up and played spirit and bubba.
0 -
The Spirit's going to scream "HERE I COME!" when she phases
Freddy is going to be removed and killers will be given a Freddy charm
Deathslinger's gun will no longer have the ability to fire and you'll have to use his M1 ability. His IR will allow you to shoot however and then eventually that will be nerfed.
2 -
stay mad x
0
