The Hillbilly Problem
THIS IS NOT A HILLBILLY HATE OR HIT-PIECE
Since nobody is properly reading this, here's a small sunmary for you so you can stop with bad criticism to shut down discussion:
- I'm not calling for changes or nerfs, besides insta-saw
- I'm not saying Hillbilly is OP
- I'm looking at his skill floor, not celing. Don't mention curves or flicks.
- I do not believe Hillbilly to be this "gold standard of balance".
So, with recent events, it seems that Hillbilly is now in the spotlight for everyone's hate. It was Nurse, then she got re-worked. It was Spirit, then Prayer Beads and Phasing body-blocking was removed.
While both Nurse and Spirit had actual problems, and I know that I personally hate on Hillbilly all the time, but I have a very serious issue to bring up that really is a genuine cause for concern. And that is that for the very little mechanical skill that Hillbilly does actually require, he's WAY to strong. And potentially the single STRONGEST killer in Dead by Daylight.
Hillbilly is a very straight forward killer, you have a chainsaw dash that will destroy pallets in (roughly) a 5th of the time it takes to break them normally, you have an incredibly fast dash ability (faster than a Survivor "Haste" effect) that can be sustained across an entire map and it's all tied to an instant-down ability, that only requires you to hold an activation button. With base killer statistics. And the coolest camera animation for movement.
Nurse is literally slower than Survivors, but her blink ability is very good at shortening a chase and can bypass the map. A small price to pay. She does also have the shortest lunge attack range, and that is actually a problem right now for, what I can assume, is a lot of people.
And yes, I play her. On console no less, but at lower ranks for now as my main account, a low green is getting paired with nothing but high purples. Super frustrating for a stealth killer main.
Spirit has the smaller killer stats, and a fantastic chase power. Being able to traverse the map with great speed and being almost undetectable is quite good, but you have a trade-off of you can't actually see anyone. Only their scratch marks.
Both of these fine ladies who ruled the top ranks are both "M1" killers, and I hate that term since it's only a PC thing. Myers, Oni and Ghostface all have an instant down, but require some sort of interaction and a build up. They sacrifice time chasing or damaging generators in order to get their instant down. Otherwise they're just a basic attacking killer.
Now, a lot of people are going to cry "JUNGLE GYMS!" or "INFINITE LOOPS!", but we can't always use them. Not every Survivor is a running god with map knowledge over every variation of the maps. Some are more easy to mind game out of their hiding spots, or cut off loops.
There is also a concern of the player base for Hillbilly. With that amount of mobility, it's easy to exploit perks like Kindred and Borrowed Time so that they don't proc, while still camping and tunnelling. Nor the concerns of those who actively body-block with the chainsaw revved in order to score a cheap and easy down.
I am NOT saying at all that Hillbilly should be put on the level of Legion or Old Freddy, and I'm NOT saying that we should make killers even worse, but for such a killer who has one of the lower mechanical skills, and is so rewarding compared to Spirit, Nurse or Huntress, there is just no denying that there is a legitimate problem here. We should be rewarding those who are playing higher skill required killers.
Hillbilly is rated "Difficulty: Easy" on his character profile and after playing him for a while now, I believe it.
Make difficult killers great again.
Comments
No, he's mildly better. His power level is similar to what it was, it just makes more sense in practice than it did before.
That's actually exactly what they want. They literally want long cooldowns.
Omfg you are so full of it, you make baseless accusations because you are terrible at the game. You cry about billy because you can not loop. What is this garbage claim about average billy needs to meet good survivors? That is not true at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DggcHI1boFMHere again just for you, the longest chase was 25seconds, these survivors were all potatoes and went down like flies because they are terrible at the game just like you. They almost won, while playing horribly bad and the only thing they are able to do is holding m1.
Otz is by far better than any of these players. So your whole bs claim that you need good survivors in order to win against billy is wrong. They are bad and almost won against a person that plays this game for a living. Stop with your lies, stop with your baseless accusations and asks people how to play instead of asking for balance changes.
Yes NOED on billy, give me a break and actually git gud you rank 15.
Wow some of you are down right disrespectful. Just because the OP has an opinion and they aren’t a red rank doesn’t give you license to act like a —- .
Everyone knows that Hillbilly is easy to maneuver until you are at a strong tile/structure. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t require some skill everybody does.
His charge add ons can be OP depending on the map.
Yes but it doesn't matter how you percieve it. You just use the word so it sounds awful, make it look bad or anything. A killer using his power is not something bad. You can even 360 his whole saw but hey w/e all you have to do is pay attention.
JUST GO. GET OFF MY THREAD AND DO NOT CONTACT ME AGAIN. I AM SICK TO DEATH OF ALL THE ABUSE AND HARASSMENT YOU HAVE BROUGH TO THIS THREAD.
You have brought NOTHING to the conversation at hand. You do nkt deserve to be here. I have tried being reasonable, and now I've had enough.
My opinion and views are different get over it.
"those toolboxes are not brown" lol
You say they’re bad but 2 are rank 1. Chases are short because instasaw.
So you get a genrush team with 2 good toolboxes with add ons, a bad map for Hillbilly, ######### perks....and Hillbilly still wins. Hmm thanks for proving my point.
Otz played horribly that game too. He complains about survivors trying to rush a gen in front of him then goes on to let a survivor lead him away from the gen he’s trying to protect knowing full well they have DS and he will get nothing out of it.
They still had another gen to do, and he could have had NOED still in reserve because I would bet money they didn’t do all the totems.
I’ve played thousands of games. Most Hillbillys will always snowball hard, even if they aren’t even that good at the game. Unless you have 4 good survivors who know how to loop expect a mediocre Hillbilly player to wreck the team.
Meanwhile your average spirit or nurse tends to struggle and only gets kills with the classic camp, tunnel and NOED strategies. They resort to this because they struggle to use these killers.
Which goes back to the original point - Hillbilly is too strong for how easy he is to use.
And Hag.
She's a mechanically simpleish and mentally challenging killer.
If you do more than "Place trap at hook. Stay within range of trap. Down unhooked survivor. Get free kill." then yes. Until all Hags stop placing traps within 5m of a hook, then sure. I can see your point.
The entire point of the videos were missed. They were to show what they do. It's like Clown. Do you need 5000 hours to throw a pallet early to counter his power? No. It's the same with Billy. The videos showed what you do verse him. You don't need 1000's of hours to learn distances, and when or when not to throw pallets. Also, Ardetha isn't that great of a survivor.
Okay. But it in a literal sense isn't. You may, but by the actual standards of the game, being smart isn't abuse.
You can theoretically loop most killers for 5 gens. Somehow doesn’t happen though and killers do just fine.
Survivors make mistakes. You’re literally expecting them to play perfect
Now you can knock off your downright logical viewpoint right now. You're not allowed to make sense.
🤣
You don't need to play perfect against a Billy. Just smart. It's simple, don't greed pallets, and don't position yourself in dead zones consistently and you'll be fine. Survivors can make mistakes verse Billy, just not egregious ones.
At this point, the discussion is a little useless to have, but man I really hope they don't touch Billy just because a very small few cannot play against him.
What's smart about holding 2 buttons to win? How is that skilled? How am I not meant to feel cheated?
How are camping and tunnelling considered toxic by a wide part of the community, but not the devs?
I'm normally on their side for most things, but even they can be wrong.
^majority of commenters to this thread.
Earlier in the thread you confirmed, it is a matchmaking problem as people are in ranks where they do not belong. Now you honestly come back to me with "these survivors are not bad cause they are rank 1"?
Seriously?
Okay so let me educate you about your non existant knowledge on hillbilly. A normal charge takes 2.53 seconds. Otz used a spark plug which reduces the chargetime to 2.48 seconds. And he used "Vegetable Oil" to decrease the cooldown of the chainsaw.
You do not even know what instasaw on billy actually means do you? The lowest you can get it to afaik is 1.9 seconds which still is quite some time compared to "insta". What is insta? A railgun is insta and billy is far from it.
So after educating you a little bit in dbd, you can face the facts. Facts are otz was constantly in a chase, pressured them the whole time, won every chase in less than 30seconds. Yet here you are but they didn't win so billy op, when people play this bad they should lose much much harder and not even get close to a win. Because they belong in yellow ranks.
You have literally no clue what you even talk about. Nobody believes that you have thousands of hours in this game or that you are good. You contradict yourself constantly, sometimes ranking is bad, then again when it fits your narrative it comes down to "oh these people cant be bad they are rank1".
Yes the "bad perks", discordance is a great perk on billy, bbq as well, bitter murmur is meh, and zenshin just not mine. These survivors died because they were terrible at everything but holding m1. They still almost got the win, stop complaining about otz, the survivors were horrible. Potato trash who only differ from the usual garbage you find in solo q in the regard that they at least do gens and against every other killer aside from maybe nurse/oni they wouldve walked away with a win as they are not that mobile.
Do you really want dbd to become 100% escape rate for braindead monkeys? I don't!
Again stop with the lies, you dont need 4 good survivors to win against a billy. All you need to know is how to loop and how not to die in 30sec.
To add on to this - survivors do NOT have to play perfectly against ANY killer in ANY situation. SURVIVORS have the easiest position in the game. Period.
Survivors can make mistake after mistake after yet more mistakes, and STILL recover and escape. Killer has a limit to how many mistakes they can make, and even more, they may not even be able to recover from say...going into the wrong door during a chase. @ClickyClicky Do NOT talk about mistakes vs. perfect gameplay. You're crippling your own argument.
You realize you can apply that exact same button comment to survivors, correct?
At the end of the day, survivor can be hard, but killer does take more actual skill to play. You can't deny it simply because there are more aspects playing as killer. Billy is one of the killers who does take more actual skill to be very good with. And at the end of the day, if you go down to his saw, it is 95% of the time your misplay.
I don't know why you think you should be able to make egregious errors and be away scott free with it against a killer who has a power meant to capitalize on your errors. It's like complaining about Doctor being able to stop loops.
This thread has NOTHING to do with survivor skill! This has NOTHING to do with perks!
This has NOTHING to do with ANYTHING that you have ever mentioned on here!
I have stated time and time again that IF Billy is to be the centre of balance, then more than half the killers in the game need major buffs. Stop twisting my words and going off topic, or find some actual survivor bait to harass.
No offense, but you did this to yourself when you named the thread "The Hillbilly Problem". Hillbilly isn't a problem. Other killers lack of potential to murderize people is the problem.
I agree. We shouldn't be focusing on the killers who are low priority. We should be talking about the ones who are in need of some changes.
I stated that. It was a simple and catchy title. I also planned for this to become a full series. If it was any other killer, the title would have been the same anyway.
It's not my fault that people don't want to read an article if the title is considered "clickbait" by them.
Survivor and Killer are basically playing two separate games. I don't think that comparing the two on THAT side of things is fair.
Precisely. And killers are the ones playing the more difficult game. Killer gameplay has far more facets to it than survivor gameplay does. I'm not trying to sound biased, but that's really the reality of it.
I've done that with The Clown Problem and I plan on doing it for others such as Pig or Demogorgon.
I got a good joke based on that title but I know people gonna report me because of this is the ######### dbd fourm lol
Anyway Hillybilly has long been held the perfect example of balance in DBD. But times have changed, we must nerf him to where the balance really should be! In favor of the Dweets. GGEZ
They play a skill game, as opposed to atmospheric horror.
You can't really call this a horror game anymore. It wears off extremely quickly after you play for roughly 20 hours. I'm personally glad the game is more skill based, but I wouldn't mind more jump scares here and there.
............ or we just buff every other killer.
Nice. Clown is certainly in need of a few changes. Poor guy almost has no power.
@PigMainClaudette
Props for a thoughtful and well-written article! I saw where you made one about the clown the other day as well. I’m not going to take a stance one way or another on these killers, simply because I don’t really have an opinion on them. Never played as or against them to any great extent. As for my Hag and Shape, well.... 😏
But anyway, there are so many squabbling posts out here: “I think this”. “Well I think you’re dumb”. “That’s cuz you’re a toxic ____ main”.
I think it’s refreshing to see one with actual thought, reasoning, and evidence. Not to mention proper grammar and spelling!
We need more like you bud. Kudos!
He did once upon a time. People did what I said to do to other killers too: Give him time, learn how to play against him, and we'll see his true strength. We did and now look at him.
Why am I twisting your words and where? I responded to the person that I quoted and not you.
You can not have it the way you want, you want to talk about an issue that you have with billy and that is fine but survivor skill has to be taken into account. I am telling you, you can improve. Ask for help how to and there are more than enough people willing to help you.
As survivor my most hated killer to go against was trapper. You would find me ranting,yelling and so on about those ######### traps but you know I dealt with it and stopped to run from one trap into the next (its been quite some time).
Do you think other people didnt face problems in the game? Skill floor exists for both sides, my first billy game was horrible, I dropped the killler and went back to bubba. Guess what I improved as player over time with all killers and picked him up again and learned how to play and got gud.
NO
I should be able to win every game as survivor. Killer was fun but that was the old ways, now killers are NPCs for my entertainment.
Nah but the balancing is stupid tho, they gave two outfits but not a buff. And legion? Im actually turning on the game for the first time in a few weeks rn
Thanks, mate.
I've tried to be as impartial as I can, play both sides with some regularity, when matchmaking works as intended, and try to leave my bias at the door. Where it belongs.
Hopefully I can do more of these without getting the same level of hate as I am on this one. I'm caught between Pig, Ghostface/Wraith or Bubba as my next one. Clown was a lot more well received, but not many people seem to be as interested.
So it was bait. You baited people...and now you're upset with the reaction you had to of known you were going to get? aka 90% negative and satirical, because the title basically halted any chance you had of being taken seriously.
No. I didn't bait anyone. If people have interpreted it that way then it's a "them" problem.
I didn't rant about him at all.
I analysed, probably over-analysed and shared my findings, gave examples and reasoning behind my thoughts, and even a small, simple solution to a symptomatic problem within the game.
I'll complain about Hag and her camping traps until the dying days of the game, but when I do The Hag Problem, I'm going to write it from a neutral perspective, or as much of one as I can. Like I did with this one.
Really?
It was a simple and catchy title.
Clickbait is still a form of bait. Plus, you literally said a few posts ago that this thread wasn't to make light of a hillbilly problem and more to make light of a problem with other killers.
Definitely smells like bait.
I disagree. His power is almost entirely countered by just throwing a pallet early. By the time you burn through all the pallets, the majority, if not all of the gens will be done. I think he needs something else to help him.
Edit: Are you saying yes that he once did need a buff and now doesn't, or are you saying he does need one? If it's the latter, just ignore my comment, lol
You know I'm bad with words. It's a HILLBILLY problem because the "centre of balance" is in the top 3 in terms of power. A problem that can be fixed in one of two ways, and one that will inflame the community.
Well, for my 2 cents: Bubba.
He’s got some serious problems and is in need of both nerfs and buffs. Honestly, he just needs the Freddy/Doctor rework treatment.
This one maybe too easy for one of your articles, considering the multitude of issues to address. Actually, that may make for a complex, interesting read. Not to mention the fact that EVERYONE has an opinion about Bubba!
What if I said survivor objective, all the pallets and loops is too powerful for how EZ they are?
There's a very bad balance problem if most Spirits and Nurses are having camp and tunnel to get kills. They require a lot more effort and determination when compared to survivors. Giving really good survivors 12 chances to live is not a walk in the park..
I said this after Nurse was nerfed: survivors can have a party on discord, laugh, little focus on the objective, whilst the Nurse is sweating and playing like navy seals with her cooldown and still lose. That's not even remotely fair.
Billy don't need to be touched, not even his addons. Keep him fun.
Here's my perspective on that part:
If billy is the gold standard. What the average killer should be and he is in the top 3 indicates MOST killers simply under-perform.
If the majority agrees that he is where the killers should be at and killers like the doctor are being brought up to try to make doctor Billy's equal then I think that with the anecdotal evidence shown by the devs its simply that most killer under perform.
Also from a 2/2 average KR have to be ABOVE 50%(You have to average 0k/4ks into it + depip/death squads almost always getting a 3-4 escape) but at or below 65%.
62.5% should be the sweet spot IMO 62.5 is evenly likely between 2/3k(which means skill dictates if 1k-3k as survivors who out skill a killer generally get a 3 escape) and given 0k/4k exist its the more realistic average %.
I don't find Hillbilly's or Nurse's kill-bot playstyle all that fun actually. I prefer the unseen predator approach of my Pig gameplay. Hell, I even find using Billy's HAMMER more fun than his damn chainsaw.
His charge add-ons need looking at in the same way that Legion's blades did. I'm fine with all his other add-ons.
I don't want Hillbilly changed either. I want improvements to the rest of the roster.
Your entitlement is showing.
Not at all. Nice attempt at derailing conversation by the way.