I don’t get it. It seems like an overall ‘meh’ weapon, yet I see it being praised all around.
I have been wrong about many things in this game before, and am very open to reconsider my opinion of it : can anyone explain to me (us) the reasons that make it a good weapon ?
2 Likes
Don’t get me wrong, it has amazing utility with the special attack’s stagger, but other than that it has poor cleave and meh damage ; and I feel it is lacking behind compared to Rapier, A&F or Flail.
It’s not bad, I just don’t understand what makes people think it is better than the 3 mentioned before.
Well, I agree with you… I mean, Billhook is a pure dps weapon with low stagger/crowd control.
Compared with Axe & Falchion, it has a better mobility (infinite dodge counters) but its combos are less “sweep” and more vertical, this means a lower dps toward hordes.
A handful of things:
- 99 dodges
- Good DPS
- Good control
- Good THP return on cleave
- Paired with dodge distance talent on WHC you get…a lot of dodges + distance
- Average stam 6 (or 3 shields)
- Can hook most anything out of attacking except lords, bosses, etc. on weapon special
- Has move tech
- Excellent reach (obvs, it’s a stick with a hook on it)
It’s a little finicky to use on first usage, but super powerful once you get the hang of it (thought it was meh myself at first for a while, too).
10 Likes
Its the swiss army knife of weapons. It has a tool for nearly all situations.
Pushattack + light 3 for hordes and you clear them pretty fast.
Charge combo for elite dps (or boss dps).
Weapon special or weapon special + charge 2 if you need to stagger elites.
Hookrat in a horde? Just hook it back.
You need to kite? Here have 99 dodges with a decent distance.
4 Likes
Push attack, light 3, special attack, light 3 controls hordes better than axe and falchion ever could
Well no, billhook actually have very low stagger for those horizontal attacks. Its little better than falchion stagger in a&f but its way slower.
I guess I’ll just keep playing with it and getting the hang of it 
I just tried this, I didn’t know there was a swiping attack after a push attack or a special attack ; it doesn’t appear in the left click spam sequence of light attacks. This does indeed make it more interesting ; I’ll check it out in game tomorrow.
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Wait I’m pretty sure what you call “light 3” is actually light 2 and the left click spam sequence goes L1 > L2 > L3 > L2 > L3… (or L3 > L2 > L1 > L2 > L1… - L1 and L3 are the stabs and are technically interchangeable (no difference in armory), one is comes more from the center and the other more from the left side.)
The spam left click goes Center stab > swipe > side stab > swipe > side stab > swipe…
Armory says L2 has more cleave, linesmen cleave, and no armor damage, which seems more accurate for the swiping attack.
So basically Push and special start the sequence at L2, which, to come back to the conversation subject, looks indeed promising 
2 Likes
Range : Goes without saying it excels at this. But this is not just a quality of life improvement. This if used correctly allows you kill off elites very easily from a safe position (out of push and swing range) often landing hits from a position they are not able to even start an animation swing from (and thus they just pursue / walk towards you). This range also allows you to hit thru walls in some situations (example: You can melee Deathrattler thru pillars with Billhook and play a fun little game of ring around the pillar)
Ease of use: Its attack chains are simple L1-L2-L3>L2-L3 / H1-H2 / Push attack much like Kruber spear is a great attack, it essentially gives you an extra cleave swing on demand / Special attack , staggers most elites and specials, even chaos warriors great teamwork attack at saving ppl from potential overheads, etc
Heavy attacks (elites): Its a pokey stick, its pretty dang easy to use on the heavy attacks its H1 stab does great damage, is armor piercing and is ridiculously accurate and easy to use. And while H1 is imo better than H2, H2 is not bad either its an straight down overhead which are always great and easy for landing headshots and dispatching elites quickly and more importantly safely
Hordes: While not the best weapon at hordes (I think that goes to rapier) Billhook can defiantly fend for itself, Push attack-L3-repeat will handle most hordes, and if you want to burn down a horde faster you can do Push attack-L1-repeat, to get several cleave swings in a row, and then use the weapons mobility as you recover shields for more push-attack>cleave chains. This weapon really starts to shine once you are comfortable with it in hordes which pretty much requires mixing in push attacks
Movement: Spam Light attacks while holding a direction foward, congrats your faster than normal running now, this small increase is further increased with attack speed buffs (such as swift slaying)
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Sorry, I meant light 2. You are correct about light 1 and light 3 being different attacks even though they essentially share the same profile, but light 3 has the movement bonus.
2 Likes
L1 can also be skipped with the Special Attack, if you have it bound somewhere easy to press.
Mine is on my mouse button, so I just spam special attack > L2 until I finally have to do the Push-Attack combos. Saves a lot of stamina and lets you deal more cleave.
Can also skip to C2 with the Special Attack.
Edit: My main issue is the high versatility along with the sense of power creep on a couple of the newer weapons.
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Yeah, sorry. Heavy 2, Charged 2 :’)
I heard somewhere it also has really good headshot/crit multipliers but I might be thinking of a different weapon.
Push attack -> light 2 is so good for hordes I think stam regen on trinket makes it feel considerably comfier.
Do you mean stagger power or stagger cleave? Because that isn’t true at all for stagger cleave.
If you cannot headshot with it consistently, it’s pretty meh. But that is also true of rapier. If you can headshot consistently, it is his highest dps option on all 3 careers. It is particularly strong on WHC because you can land 2 headshots per swing with the push-stab light attack follow up. And with the stam regen talent, you never have to use another attack string. Also, the cleave allows you to apply flense to multiple enemies per swing. It is also the highest monster damage of any weapon.
On zealot, it is still the highest dps weapon with a decent headshot ratio. It has very high cleave and strong damage. The power and attack speed from zealot make the weapon even stronger because it adds 30% more cleave to an already high-cleave weapon while buffing Bill Hook’s moderate attack speed.
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L1 and L3 are actually different. L1 does not have a move-speed buff while L3 does. That’s why you have to special light light to do the move tech properly. L3 has a mini-lunge attached to it.
As far as proper attack chain, the special + L2 chain is a loss in dps. The optimal attack chain for non-WHC characters is push-stab, light, light, light. This chain has one poke and 3 sweeps. Obviously this is for horde dps. For WHC, the optimal attack chain is Push-stab-light. This is assuming you take cast away.
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Its have same stagger cleave but with linesman, but a&f is faster in attacks and dont need to use push to utilize horizontal attacks. With how you need to utilise pushes i would say CC its mediocre/good for it.
Mostly CC for A&F is easier because its just faster in attacks.
Nah, the push is what provides most of the CC. In addition to the strong stagger cleave. In actual use, A+F control isn’t comparable to Bill Hook. However, Bill Hook’s control isn’t elite. It’s not a T-Spear or Shield by any means. It’s a dps weapon. It does have far better control than Rapier or A+F though.
2 Likes
Billhooks grab ability is dps waste as the heavy will stagger enemies most of the time anyway and is only really useful in very rare scenarios like going up against 1 or 2 monks / zerkers or if you need speed to clutch. It also has some really long animations be it to blocking or just attacking so you tend to hit trade a lot more than say a rapier on whc. Its 99 dodge count is also a bit irrelevant when its dodge distance is kinda garbage.
Its at least an okay weapon to use on zealot who can really make anything work because of his thp generation + attack speed memes. You could make it work on whc and bh if you really wanted to and get roughly the same amount of kills as a rapier. But you’ll usually take a lot more damage over using a rapier unless you play overly defensive in which case you’re just wasting damage potential.
Edit: also not very good at dealing with shields in mass.