Billy, and: Why he's the worst killer in the game.
The title, of course, is said facetiously. He's the worst killer in the game not because he's bad, but because he's just under Nurse in power, and ONLY because he still hits walls sometimes. Most walls aren't actually an obstacle to a half decent Billy.
This is going to read as salt, and it kind of is. Billy is the one killer I hate to go against more than any other. Clown is a close second. I actually PREFER facing off against Nurse. The reason I hate Billy is simple: There is zero drawback to using his power. None. He can use it for mobility, and he can use it, infinitely, from the beginning of the game to the end. Missing costs him nothing, he can just pull up again and again. In fact, missing is to his advantage. The more he misses the more he charges overdrive.
In what world does it make sense that a killer should be able to infinitely use a power that gives you extreme map control, pressure, and is ALSO an instant down.
"Well, Billy is hard to control!" It took me three games, total, to figure out how to curve around most obstacles. And you can use addons to adjust that control if you really need to. Even Nurse, when she misses, has a cooldown. She can't spam her ability to JUST cross the map, but Billy? Absolutely.
I'd argue he's better than Nurse in overall power in the game, AND he's easier to learn. He's stronger than Blight. The biggest argument against him is that sometimes, occasionally, you can crouch tech him. Hot damn. An inconsistent outplay. Windows? He can hit through those based on ping. Pallets? If you time it perfectly, maybe. Otherwise, he will either hit you, or break the pallet and be revving his engine in less time than if he'd just been chasing you normally.
Billy is nuts and I hate him. Old Billy was weak in the other direction, but at least it required you to THINK about using his power, not just jamming it forever until you eventually get the down.
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He's slow when charging your power so it can be a major hinderance if you aren't using it correctly. They increased the miss cooldown so you cant follow up with an m1 anymore.
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He's not slow enough to matter, especially given the speed buff. You don't ever have to follow up with an m1, you just immediately start revving and go again. Why m1?
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It does matter a lot in loops.
You would m1 because the survivor should be able to make it to a vault or pallet after you miss a sprint. Like the miss cooldown is 2.7 seconds and it takes 2.5 seconds to charge again. If a survivor cant make it to a vault or pallet in time then they are severely out positioned.10 -
I have to ask, and this is not being elitist or 'git gud' or anything, but... how many hours have you actually put into killer, and how much have you played Billy?
The reason I ask is contrary to popular opinion, MMR does actually work quite well, particularly when you are in low-mid tiers of DBD (where the bulk of the player base is) and younfollow the bloodpoint bonuses. The skill of the survivors is important for Billy. I play on console, and even on old Billy I could still chainsaw people down to a decent degree while I was still relatively new to the killer and in lower MMR, and yes this is on crossplay.
After his buffs I got even better at it, but now I'm going up against halfway decent survivors, and even in his current buffed state, Billy is VERY hard, as you'd expect for console... but if you're saying you've genuinely mastered him in 3 games, I would still pit my 150+ games of Billy against that, and I would also pit the experience of all the Billy mains over 8 years that I've talked to over yours.
The fact you say he's so easy to learn leads me to think you haven't really played him vs. good survivors yet, because good survivors they make your life very hard if you dont play close to perfect, and landing hits on Billy is certainly not as easy as you describe.
I will grant you, Hillbilly is very strong, and one of the best killers in the game... but:
- His power is highly telegraphed to Survivors
- He cannot adjust or correct his aim or recover if he misses, which makes him highly predictable and easy to bait/juke.
- Without his Overdrive Billy can't realistically try to land hits at a large number of tiles, due to his slow lumbering speed while charging and the raw time it takes to actually fire up a charge.
- With Overdrive he can land those hits he normally couldn't... but it is so unwieldy the above problems are all amplified.
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You won't miss a sprint in open spaces, so it is kind of irrelevant. Most loops, you can either curve, or mindgame. Vaulting is fine, except for when you hit them through the vault anyways. A pallet is irrelevant for the previous mention - you break it faster and resume revving.
Most Billys I play against have forgone m1s all together, honestly.2 -
This feels like shameless advertising XD
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Into killer? A couple hundred. I do mostly follow the bonus, but I have a special place in my heart for Ghostie, Freddy and non-Thana Legion. Gotta stab, and sometimes you just wanna do the murdering regardless of the bonus.
True, I'm not suggesting I've mastered Billy, I'm suggesting the "mechanical difficulties" were pretty easy to overcome. Skilled survivors should make a killer's life more difficult. The problem, though, is that Billy doesn't really have those difficulties because his chases end in a down, not an injury, and he gets to apply pressure across the map with zerodowntime.
- Telegraphing isn't a huge deal. Part of that is mindgaming. If Billy wins the mindgame, he wins the chase. If he loses the mindgame, he gets to rev and go again.
- Maybe I'm confused here, but most people on Billy have an ample hit box. A strong flick does allow them to re-orient and bring the chainsaw down at an angle. I know I've been hit sideways or around obstacles that ostensibly should have avoided the hit or had him bump. I generally give this to a mix of ping and the weird survivor hitbox pill thing that gives Huntress "curving" hatchets.
- The time to charge isn't that slow, so I'm kind of confused by this assertion. Especially if the Billy is intentionally charging/letting go to bait when his sprint fires. He should have difficulties at some loops. The problem is he doesn't seem to. Therein is my primary complaint.
- Overdrive felt unwieldy the first few times I tried it, but it didn't take terribly long to course correct with it.
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No this is perfect.
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If there was a reward for the most clickbait-y title of a discussion, this one would be high up.
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I'm sorry, the brainrot got me.
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92% isn’t very slow considering he instantly catches up and also insta downs survivors. Huntress moves at 77% which is lusciously slow in comparison.
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Is 92% when charging actually slow though? 8% slower than a survivor isn’t bad at all considering Huntress is 23% slower and is actually literally impossible to land a hatchet at certain loops. And Billy can also cure a lot of loops.
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I agree with you that Huntress can't land hits at certain tiles, but thats true of Billy at base for the same reasons, its all about your effective window to land a hit.
If we treat Hillbilly's chainsaw as a hatchet, you have to remember: -
- A hatchet moves between 3 and 4 times faster than Billy does when you throw it (9.2m/s vs. 25m/s - 40m/s)
- You throw a hatchet AT a survivor in straight line as Huntress, ergo the shortest distance. Billy can't look at the survivor as he throws his "hatchet", he has to look along the side of the current tile, then turn into his hit. This means his "hatchet" also has to travel further.
- In addition you can aim your shot as Huntress and adjust your aim as long as you like until you finally release. Hillbilly's hatchet can't be aimed until it first clears the obstacles, and it can only be aimed for the first 0.75s of it launch. This means the places you can even throw and curve a "hatchet" are limited to near the edges of a tile, and the further away from that edge you start, the smaller that aim window is.
Imagine trying to aim every Huntress hatchet you throw where you're only allowed to aim during your wind up, and aftrr that your sensitivity turns to 0.1. I hope this illustrates why we're not comparing apples to apples here.
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This is kinda my point though, Billy is simple enough to use mechanically, but it's not that simple to catch good survivors. You're probably looking at the region of 800 killer hours before you're likely to start consistently facing survivors that will really start making you work for hits, and the scariest part is, those survivors are still pretty meh.
You have to remember Billy has been mostly the same since his release (barring insta-saw nerfs and overheat/overdrive). Billy at base is basically the same as Billy always was ever since his release. His chainsaw "spammability" that people are suddenly complaining about now has been with the character since day 1... and the Overheat mechanic was so slow to build up it basically didn't matter 98% of the time. There is no argument you have here that is not also applicable to old Billy.
Quite simply, the thing that makes Billy strong now is Overdrive.
Telegraphing isn't a huge deal. Part of that is mindgaming. If Billy wins the mindgame, he wins the chase. If he loses the mindgame, he gets to rev and go again.
Yes but you're missing the point, a good survivor will easily be able to read you and dodge. I can't do this consistently well myself, but I'mnot bad, and I've seen survivors who can, and they can be downright untouchable by even the most solid of Billy players.
Maybe I'm confused here, but most people on Billy have an ample hit box. A strong flick does allow them to re-orient and bring the chainsaw down at an angle.
The scenarios you describe here are likely lag, cause in my experience Hillbilly can't flick and hit downwards, his hitbox is very tight and unforgiving, far more so than any other comparable killer which given how dangerous this ability is, makes sense.
The time to charge isn't that slow, so I'm kind of confused by this assertion. Especially if the Billy is intentionally charging/letting go to bait when his sprint fires. He should have difficulties at some loops.
My post above explains it clearer. The technique you're describing is feathering, and the longer he feathers, the longer he spends slower than the survivor. Billy has windows at structures where he can curve, and windows where he can't. If a survivor understands those windows, that feeds into the mind games, and used properly can make it very hard for Billy to hit.
Overdrive felt unwieldy the first few times I tried it, but it didn't take terribly long to course correct with it.
Overdrive is Billy's strongest ability, and when used right, let's him get hits in places he normally can't... this pushes Billy into the top tier he is.
Personally, I don't think Overdrive is necessary for Billy. When he got given it, I didn't complain, and still don't cause I like facing Billy... but it's this powers ability to always grant a instantdown if Hillbilly plays it perfectly that makes Hillbilly the top tier characters he is now.
I see the arguments against it, and see teh arguments for it... and personally I'm on the fence...
However I will fight against anyone saying Billy is OP for any other reason than Overdrive...because if that were true, Billy would have been overpowered with his old recovery add-ons, and he simply wasn't.
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I will admit, I had zero issue with Billy when he had the overheat mechanic. It required Billy to actually make choices about when and how to use his power. Now, he doesn't have to. Since they got rid of overheat, I've had an issue with him, for the main reason of not ever requiring him to play the game outside of his power.
Overdrive doesn't change the math, for me. If they took it away, I would still think Billy is top tier, right next to Nurse. Any time you are able to use a power simultaneously for infinite mobility and instantly cutting a chase in half, you're going to win with it.
(Sorry, I'm not sure how to cut quotes inline here.)
The majority of my hours are on survivor, and I've watched Billy win match after match on the back of never m1ing. And, depending on the Billy, I can run them solidly around a lot of structures. That doesn't change the fact that eventually, he WILL get me. And he WILL get an insta-down. No survivor, no matter the skill, is 'untouchable.' And the pressure that Billy applies because immediately after that he can rocket across the map is immense.
Flicking for Billy is pretty substantial, but it's only to the left or right of his current position. Downward isn't an option, when I say "bring it down at an angle" I just mean that he can swing left or right from his 'stopping' point. He's not like Oni that can flick… kind of insanely. But he can 'miss' and still hit if he turns hard enough at the end of his swing. (Who, I might add, I have ZERO issue with facing, even if the Oni is a master of the flick bug.)
If BHVR came out and turned off Overdrive, I'd still hate Billy, because it costs him nothing to be immaculate. The player skill is required to hit a mechanical threshold, for sure, because if you just keep bumping into everything, that's… not an effective use. But the fact that even if you bump, you just do it again? There needs to be SOMETHING that makes Billy earn his power. Nurse should be the only one at Nurse tier, and again, Billy is kind of right there.
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Oh to do that is this symbol: >
Then hit space and then paste in the quote. 😉
I had zero issue with Billy when he had the overheat mechanic. It required Billy to actually make choices about when and how to use his power.
I think this is primarily where we're disagreeing, because as someone who did play Billy back then I can tell you, you flat ignored the overheat mechanic. It built up too slow to be meaningful, and was the main critique of the ability... it was so little in its impact on how you played, its inclusion was pointless, and when it did come up once in a blue moon as an issue, it was just unnecessarily annoying.
Original Hillbilly didn't have this, and he was the most popular killer for both sides in DBD for literally years. He got nerfed with Overheat because of one broken add-on/perk combination (old tinkerer was busted) that allowed him to basically instant rev his saw... the nerf didn't make sense and was just a weird change noone asked for... old BHVR back in the day was quite weird at times with this kinda stuff.
To get back to the point, the reason why Billy's didn’t use their chainsaw as much before his buff isn't because there is Overheat, it's because landing a hit required you position and time your curve carefully, and on certain tiles it was more risk than it was worth. That is still case now, but now... there is Overdrive.
The reason he always goes for Chainsaws now, is because there is no reason not to. If you go for a hard hit chainsaw and miss, who cares? You're still building Overdrive. You might get lucky and score the longshot hit, but even if you don't, you're still getting Overdrive... and once you get Overdrive, if you play it right, it's almost always a guaranteed hit.
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F in chat for getting caught in 4k.
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did you know that billy is only the worst iller for you and some other people?
every killer has to be practiced in order to consistently play well with them and sometimes the maps are terrible for the killer that you are playing but there is never going to be an exact worst or best in everything for everyone
how good are you at nurse or blight or even the trapper himself?
everybody has their own worst killer and sometimes its the one that's buggy and sometimes that's their best one
all you gotta do is either practice the killer or not play them
do whatever you can do to have fun (except being toxic bc that lessons the fun for the entire community)
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I mean you’re right it definitely has its downsides but there is no doubt even with those downsides he is far and away much stronger and it’s not even close lol AND on top of that he moves at 92% when charging and 115% at base.
Billy’s “Hatchet” can also allow him to cross an entire map in 8 seconds flat along with instantly shredding pallets and instantly downing survivors removing half of an entire chase. With windows and long wall loops being his main weakness. Not to mention overdrive which completely messes with survivors timings and counter play mid chase. Definitely not apples to apples as you said but either Huntress should be faster when holding a hatchet or Billy should be slower when charging imo. Doesn’t make sense for her to be so slow honestly.
You also mentioned a heavily telegraphed attack if I remember right and she has one that is arguably even more telegraphed with her screaming every time she reacts a hatchet and another warning for full power that’s map wide.
I’m not really meaning to make this into a Huntress vs Billy type scenario but if you think about it then both existing how they do currently just doesn’t make much logical sense. If Huntress is considered perfectly balanced as most people I see on here say then Bill definitely needs nerfs for sure. He was at a 67% kill rate before they nerfed overdrive. And Huntress has been sitting at 55% for 6 months now.
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Well, to be fair, I did think Billy getting Overdrive was a bit much personally... I would have preferred Billy go back to OG Billy and get his basekit buffs with the standardised turn fix he got.
However, I have to also admit, that outside of the balance aspects... Overdrive is very intense and fun... so I can definitely see why it was added. Without it, I feel like Billy is mostly fine, rewarding, but with a skill barrier he just can't quite break through to rival the biggest names in the game, and he sits pooling somewhere around B+, which is where I feel killers should roughly fall. I feel Huntress is about the same place, just a little higher… but with Overdrive Billy is getting up there... but I'm not sure exacty where.
My personal main annoyance with Billy now is Overdrive makes him inconsistent at tiles. I don't mind it so much as survivor really cause blue is scary, but it does annoy the stuff out of me playing Billy.
I actually don't really like playing him now because although he was harder on controller before, he is a character that requires practise, muscle memory and a good understanding of his strength and limitations, and that made him rewarding to try to learn. Overdrive makes that all inconsistent, and just makes learning all of that, especially the muscle memory, harder... to the point I don't see much point in trying to learn him.
Whenever overdrive comes up, which is often, I have to basically ignore whatever I learn. Overdrive is great if you've already learned Billy, but when learning Billy, it's just plain annoying how often I'll miss because of it, or land a hit where it wasn't really me aiming well, it was more luck or the survivors mind gaming themselves.
It's one of the main reasons I want an add-on to disable his Overdrive... However I'm aware of the fact I'm a minority in this regard 😅
Post edited by UndeddJester on0 -
Op is spot on and anyone that disagree ofc is ignorant. A billy missing means nothing since he can on your ass again and with 90% of the maps now being deadzones and full of damn clutters everyhere to bump your pinky toe you are going to go down no matter how decent you are.
The nurse point is especially true , she is far more punished for missed blinks specially and 2 story map if you know what to do you can really damage her by making her blink to another floor where she has to still recover and reposition herself wasting alot of her time.
Going slighty off topic this is why toilet killer(unknown) and spam machine(singularity) are another set of bane like billy as their power still gives them hits easily and can close distance no matter how hard and far you try to get away from them.
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Wow usually we do not see eye to eye but I must agree with you on this one at least she is way slower and punished more hatchet misses indeed
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You can turn a good Billy into a M1 killer if you know what you are doing.
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I think Billy is S Tier and one step below Nurse, but I do play on PC which is way less clunky to control. I just think all killers need to be changed to hit their 60% kill rate mark and that’s it honestly. I think it’s best to balance around that number if you could somehow not count giving hatch or giving up on hook as part of the real number.
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Look bro, if a billy chainsaws me, it’s either because i was out of position and give him a free down, or cuz he straight up outplayed me. He is one of the most fair and balanced killers and i absolutely love going against him. I still go “wow” when i get hit by a curved chainsaw and don’t want that to go away
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