Billy is a weapon-led close-range bruiser who lives in your face: he closes with Rising Ram, weaves melee into his 30-round clip, and his Blasted passive reloads the whole magazine off a single melee while stacking Wrecked. His win condition is picking a priority target and either isolating one carry or chaining a whole cluster with Chain Gang, which mutes movement abilities in a mobility-heavy meta. He's a 3/5-complexity dive hero for players who want to brawl, not poke.
Early game
Play the lane at range with your Close Range gun until Blasted hits level 2, because that's when your trade pattern comes online. Once it's up, trade with the 1-3-1: light melee, gun burst, light melee, so the clip refills mid-trade and you out-sustain your laner. Do NOT open with heavy melee into a competent opponent, a parry there just kills you. Secure last hits with the gun since your innate wave clear is weak, and pair with a brawly partner like Dynamo, Kelvin, Ivy or Drifter. First buys are Melee Lifesteal and Monster Rounds; add Restorative Shot or Healing Rite if you're getting poked out. Fear ranged kiters like Talon, Vindicta and Geist, and respect parry-happy duelists like Abrams.
Mid game
This is Billy's peak. With Chain Gang up plus a couple of cooldown and charge items you become the best ganker on the map: Rising Ram in, Bashdown, then ult to lock the squishy. After lane, farm the enemy jungle, Blasted sustains you through camps for free. Roam and force picks, and contest the Urn capture circle, where your lifesteal sustain plus the Chain Gang yank are elite for clearing and holding a ring. Rapid Recharge is your first real spike; Spirit Snatch makes Bashdown's shockwave steal resist so you get tankier and hit harder at once.
Late game
Late, Billy is a frontline-ish bruiser but you flank, you don't facecheck. Your tankiness is conditional, it comes from melee lifesteal and Blasted procs, so you're only tanky while you're actually hitting someone. Pop Blasted active before you dive for the weapon empower and max-HP bump, then ult to either delete one carry or scatter-lock a clustered team for your followup. Heavy-melee scaling carries you here: Crushing Fists turns the Bashdown slam into a nuke since it counts as a melee at its third upgrade. Round out with Leech, Frenzy and a survivability item like Colossus or Diviner's Kevlar.
Combos & tricks
Core burst: Rising Ram (it launches the target and you), then Bashdown on the airborne target, then a light melee to proc Blasted for an instant clip refill plus Wrecked, then empty the close-range clip point-blank; re-Ram if it refunded its cooldown. Melee-reload weave: dump 30 rounds, then light-melee chain to reload via Blasted instead of a slow reload, so you never stop DPS, and mixing light melee with the gun dodges parry punishes. Wombo: Chain Gang a clustered team so their dashes are muted, drop Cold Front for AoE slow, yank, then gun cleanup. Heavy-melee scaling: at Bashdown level 3 it's a melee, so Crushing Fists and Melee Charge scale the slam and double-proc Blasted stacks on heavy hits. Escape tech: aim Rising Ram up and jump to rocket onto high ground or out of a gank, it also crosses Paradox's wall without eating the silence.
Rising Ram
Blasted
Chain Gang
