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What was the point of billy's nerf?
He used to be a fan favorite, only needing an addon change. People were only complaining about instasaw and tuning guide. Now no one plays him anymore. Is making a fun strong killer bad and unplayed anymore a succesful rework in BHVR's book?
Comments
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He didn’t have any kind of power bar to manage or set number of his power. Not saying I agree with it but it makes sense
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Making this game a cooldown management simulator is extremely boring but it's also something they add more and more of from what i'm seeing on just about every killer. And billy was already getting punished for using his chainsaw poorly by ending up being outpositioned and/or losing distance because you're slower than survivors during chainsaw charging anyways.
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The only killer who doesn’t have it now is wraith but his is more of a toggle on and off situation
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When I started playing not long ago, I really liked Billy a lot. Dashing all across the map with a chainsaw is great. He's really fun to play... in the easy ranks that is.
In higher level play you definitely see the shortcomings of his character more. He's kind of tricky to use his loops. And sadly, his addons are of no help for problematic situations. Barring the Lopro Chain and the addons that improve his steering, I wonder if the person who designed his add-ons even played the character at all.
Make the chainsaw cool better when Flashlighted? Gaining Undetectable during a Chainsaw dash? Making your Terror radius smaller when your Chainsaw is unusable? Or make your chainsaw charge slightly faster... after being stunned by a pallet?!? Not sure how this is supposed to help me?
It feels as if the more interesting killers can be taken in many different play styles with add-ons, but most of Billy's are unusable or require you to put yourself in detrimental situations as the Killer to use them. Normally, you'd use add-ons to avoid bad situations, not to create bad situations for you to be in.
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Mothers helpers are actually pretty good now so long as you have enduring
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they really made the addons look like a parody version of his perks..... same with Nurse
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There was a point to Billy nerf?
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As someone else said, Billy was the only killer left except Wraith and Bubba that didn't have a form of micromanaging with his power. I guess their thought process was "well we have to make it look like we did SOMETHING. Quick, make his sound effects more annoying and grating, and add a bar that fills up when you use the chainsaw!"
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Is there any issue with that? His power was already punishing if used poorly.
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There wasn't an issue, but apparently BHVR thought there was despite saying on record that they were happy with the way Billy worked pre-nerf
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It's definitely a head scratcher. One of the dangers of balancing solely around big data is that the data doesn't tell you why something is happening, just what is happening. I think what happened is the devs saw Billy with a super high kill rate at all levels, and them being rank 25 reached the conclusion that it was a power issue and not an add on issue.
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Well he needed a punishment for missing chainsaws even though he already had one, and rank 20 survivors went down instantly to every chainsaw which they still do
Most importantly Billy was missing the most fun aspects of killer gameplay, i.e. micromanagement and m1ing
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I'll assume youre sarcastic with the last sentence.
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True, but I still don't like the idea of having to run specific perks just to get mileage from an add-on.
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To make Survivors happy. There's absolutely no logic behind it, so it has to be because the other side of the 4V1 equation yelled loud enough.
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if that were actually the case they'd have done the same to bubba... and not the polar opposite.
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If you'd polled all survivors at the time and ask who they'd like gutted out of Billy, Freddy and Spirit I'm pretty sure Billy would be the bottom pick. Also bhvr doesn't require logic behind their decisions, they have statistics.
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That's something I really don't like about addon design lately. You're seeing a lot of killers in addon passes getting new addons that are meant to complement their base perks, or just function as more situational versions of their base perks. #2 is bad because they're generally redundant and #1 is worse because base perks are not basekit and assuming players run native perks only makes sense if you're taking your data from rank 20s.
Addons don't have to be game-changing, but useless addons are just wastes of space, bloodpoints, and potential, and Billy has a lot of useless addons.
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literally no reason, the only thing that needed to be touched were his addons
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The point of it was to discourage camping while revving the chainsaw. Interesting idea, poorly executed. I'd be more than fine if it got straight up removed.
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There wasn't one. Same with Freddy's first nerf 1 week after his release. Same with the Twins nerf from the last patch. Same with Rat Liver's nerf, which luckily never made it past the PTB.
Weird and stupid changes beyond our comprehension.
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There wasn't one.
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There wasn't one, this was probably one of the lowest points in DBD post-ds rework. Butchered one of the few genuinely fun and balanced killers in the game.
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A reminder, because I just had to delete a lot of comments from this thread - there's not one person responsible for changes in DbD, it's a team effort and whilst individuals do have input, the team as a whole makes the decisions. So whilst you are free to discuss the topic - playing the whole "blame game" isn't going to be welcome here.
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wasnt the official response to all the negative Hillbilly changes feedback "oh you'll get used to it over time, its not a big change"?
well then i wonder how much time they were thinking of, cause right now, multiple months later, no one plays billy anymore, everyone still hates the changes and wants them reverted.
but i can guarantee you that wont be happening.
they centered the entire add on rework around this stupid mechanic so its here to stay, no matter the feedback.
that is why we NEED to have more transparency - so huge screw ups like this wont be happening again in the future.
a simple tweet / dev update livestream where they mentioned "hey, we were thinking about adding an overheat to Hillbillys chainsaw - here are our arguments for why we thik its a good idea, whats your take on it?" could have prevented all of this.
but they rather kept it secret and only revealed it to us when any form of feedback was already useless, because they already spend their ressources making it.
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I can accept the fact that they made a terrible Addons and added to overheat. But then why not just make the power easier Billy? His ability is not helping me to catch survivors, they can escape from me by simply clicking the button to the left or right, especially a pullet/window loops it is impossible to go around when Billy moves in a straight line. Devs, make it more manageable and get these stupid new Addons. (Sorry for my english, it's not my native language)
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What do you mean? I absolutely love having my chainsaw melt in my hands after 3 seconds while using Engravings!
A lot of his addons suck. The charge time addons hurt, they gave Spark Plug a requirement to activate and made Primer Bulb turn you into a 110% killer (which is pretty disastrous for a killer who can't use his power at a lot of loops). This is on top of increasing their rarities by two tiers each.
5 of his addons are related to overheat, which shouldn't even exist. One of which requires you to be blinded with a Flashlight to even give you any benefit. Another one requires you to be overheated to get any use out of it.
Iridescent Brick is pretty pointless without the Apex Muffler, Undetectable doesn't really mean that much when you need to use your loud chainsaw to activate it.
The Billy rework was pretty disappointing, to say the least. I still don't know why they decided to nerf him like this.
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I thought almo and mclean are in charge of any balance changes that come in. Almo even says it in a post a while back he was like half the balance team? Idrk how it works but just using what hes said.
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As I said, it's a team. The Design Team as a whole make the decisions, not just one person. Whilst some designers might work on Live Balance they do not have the sole decision making freedom because that's done as a team.
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The community had literally zero input on these changes though. Listening to the players should also be a team effort.
Nobody asked for all of this.
As you can see, everyone (and by that i mean 90+% of people) is still hating the Billy nerf almost a year after and even some big content creators have brought the topic back again.
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Nurse has 4 addons out of her whole kit that are consistently successful.
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You've kinda hit the nail on the head with this one bud.
Outside of their Data, BHVR is completely blind & oblivious.
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You just named 3 of her 4
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He used to be a fan favorite, only needing an addon change.
Well, that's just about all he got. I don't think the overheat was necessarily needed, but it also rarely comes into play unless you're running engravings without gloves. I personally don't like to run engravings because of the longer charge time, so I almost never have to think about chainsaw heat while playing. Besides that the only differences are cosmetic.
You might say, "Well, if you think it comes into play so rarely, why is it a thing in the first place?" To that I'd say that the overheat does discourage some unhealthy play. A Billy can no longer just face camp a hook with his saw up anymore, for example, which is something I did encounter from time to time before. Some element of resource management can also make playing killer feel more engaging for some poeple. I'm not one of them myself, but this is clearly still a factor.
If the threads on the forum are to be believed the cosmetic changes are as big of a deterrent to playing him as his overheat. While many find the overheat unnecessary, you don't find many people on the forum who are actually overheating a lot while playing and feeling limited by that mechanic. Meanwhile, you do find many people saying they don't like his roar or that they think his old animations were better. I'm not trying to belittle those concerns even if I don't share them myself, but they also aren't a nerf to Billy. His add-on changes really were the lion's share of the nerf.
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Idk used to be able to but I dont play her anymore after her change and I dont use addons
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XDN'T
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The nerf to the instasaw and the tuning guide makes a lot of sense,Because I was making it easier for him to play.
But the addition of overheating made him a killer, not fun.
I understand until you make it weaker, but I don't understand until you make it less fun.
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Even after almost year since the Billy nerf, the thread of the Billy nerf is posted within this community. I hope one day this voice will reach the team.
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I wrote up an addon rework recently that I think would make him far more fun and build on his current rework: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/249660/hillbilly-add-on-pass-steel-eyed#latest
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