My take on Billy

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.

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.

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.