I don't think Billy's nerf is nearly as bad as the community says.
Before you lynch me, hear me out.
I've been playing Billy for a while now, trying to get better with him, and the overheat mechanic rarely comes into play. I play with no add-ons as well, so I am talking solely about the base overheat.
All that it does is punish you for spamming your saw. Sometimes it can screw you over with curves, but unless you have double engravings you wont always be able to land certain curves anyways since you don't go fast enough. It also punishes using your saw too early and makes you have to actually position yourself before hand. If you watch a lot of the pro mlg billies before the nerf you'll see that they sit there a while. Just revving until they're in the right spot. Sometimes it would go on for a ridiculous amount of time and I think that's mostly what was trying to be prevented. You're on a real timer to land it instead of getting comfortable and doing it whenever its convenient.
Another aspect of it was his unlimited mobility before. You didn't really have to worry about committing to chases because you could always abandon them and go across half the map if you realized you screwed up. In a sort of ironic twist this is the same problem with have with Blight now, but that's not what this post is about. You could say that it isn't technically unlimited due to obstacles and limited pathing. But it also isn't hard to get close, even if you don't zoom all the way into the party.
ANOTHER Another aspect is that it puts pressure into landing your saws. A lot of Billies would put on the crack add-ons and just back rev you to death. Now if you miss its a bigger deal. If you play bad and miss your back revs there's a legitimate punishment. Instead of "oh well I'll just try again" as the survivors 360 in desperation.
It gives him a real punishment for screwing up. It can be argued that the bump time is the punishment, but that alone doesn't deter you from just saw spamming. It does definitely make him harder and more intimidating to learn. And I don't think that it was an entirely necessary change. But it also didn't kill him. A lot of the time when killers get nerfed people overreact and pull the alarm. And this is just another case of that. I understand why people are mad. Billy is one of the most enjoyable killers to play as and against for a lot of people. But he still has a lot of potential to snowball and keep pressure on survivors.
Now is the part where I get called a noob survivor main lol
Comments
The thing that never changed is that he's always been overrated.
I don't see how he is any clunkier than before. Comparing him to old vs new he feels the exact same to me.
Only thing he's good for is mobility . He's punished to hard for chainsaw misses. He has no add-ons that offer any value other then steering.
He's good in open maps. That's it. No add on plays. To situational and lame. The cooldown isn't a big deal. It's his add-ons that killed him. He basically doesn't have any.
Agree honestly. Most of his add-ons are hinderances or too situational to be useful or fun. Lopro chains are pretty cool at least.
Sorry, I just saw this comment today (don't know why it didn't prompt me for this!).
Anyway, all the things you mentioned about map control and instadowns he still has. The overheat mechanic has not changed that at all. The only thing it changed was to reduce the capacity for mind-games, and even then it was counterable. I agree the add-ons were strong, but were that the case they could have just reduced their effectiveness.
The power itself was changed without having any actual impact on the map pressure or instadowns, the perks (well, Lightborn) has since been buffed, so the only real nerf were add-ons. That's why the change was dumb; the part it targetted was not the main issue some had, and even then not many complained about him! It was all Nurse and Spirit complaints back then.