Playing Billy against Grey Talon

What should I do right now?

Matchup overview

• Their structural weakness: Very low health and no damage mitigation — he dies to any committed dive Why this is shown: Grey Talon's weaknesses. Strong evidence
• Their structural weakness: Everything meaningful in his kit has a visible cast tell (charge draw, snare arming, 1.5s owl cast) Why this is shown: Grey Talon's weaknesses. Strong evidence
• Their structural weakness: Airborne during Rain of Arrows means Knockdown counters both his escape and his damage window at once Why this is shown: Grey Talon's weaknesses. Strong evidence

What they do against you

• A tier-3 Charged Shot hits your whole wave and you behind it, from roughly 50m, on a short enough cooldown that you cannot hold the lane through it Why this is shown: Authored from Grey Talon's kit. Strong evidence
• Spirit Snare's Curse silences, disarms and blocks item use — if you step on it you cannot press Dispel Magic, Unstoppable or Warp Stone to get out Why this is shown: Authored from Grey Talon's kit. Strong evidence
• Guided Owl at tier 3 executes anyone under about 22% health anywhere on the map; retreating at low health is not actually safe Why this is shown: Authored from Grey Talon's kit. Strong evidence
• Rain of Arrows plus multishot from directly above means your cover on the ground is worth nothing Why this is shown: Authored from Grey Talon's kit. Strong evidence
• Spirit Snare tier 2's -15% Bullet Resist turns his trap into a damage amp for his entire team's follow-up Why this is shown: Authored from Grey Talon's kit. Strong evidence
• Grey Talon can silence, which means your escape is only real if it is already active. Pre-empt rather than react: if you are walking into a position where the silence lands, your defensive cooldown should be spent getting out of that position, not saved for after. Why this is shown: Silence prevents ability and item use, invalidating reactive defensive cooldowns. Strong evidence

How you counter them

• Dive him — he has the lowest durability in the group and only one escape; Phantom Strike, Haze Smoke Bomb approach, or Abrams charge kills him outright Why this is shown: Authored counterplay against Grey Talon. Strong evidence
• Buy Knockdown specifically for Rain of Arrows: it drops him out of the glide and stuns him, removing his escape and his damage window simultaneously Why this is shown: Authored counterplay against Grey Talon. Strong evidence
• Pre-activate Unstoppable BEFORE approaching a trapped choke, because Spirit Snare's Curse blocks item activation after it lands Why this is shown: Authored counterplay against Grey Talon. Strong evidence
• Strafe laterally against Charged Shot and Guided Owl — both are slow projectiles with travel time, not hitscan Why this is shown: Authored counterplay against Grey Talon. Strong evidence
• Kill him during the roughly 1.5s Guided Owl cast; he is rooted and defenceless for the full duration plus the flight Why this is shown: Authored counterplay against Grey Talon. Strong evidence
• Fight in enclosed interiors and tunnels where his 54m falloff advantage and his vertical glide are both worthless Why this is shown: Authored counterplay against Grey Talon. Strong evidence
• You have an immunity window and Grey Talon has a burst combo, which makes this a timing matchup rather than a damage one. Their combo has a commit point; your window has to cover that point rather than open before it. Using it early is the same as not having it. Why this is shown: Hero with an immunity window facing a burst 2+ opponent. Strategic

Trading

• Roughly 1.5s of Guided Owl cast plus the entire owl flight — he is rooted, looking elsewhere, and cannot defend himself Why this is shown: Grey Talon's vulnerability windows. Strong evidence
• The whole Rain of Arrows glide against any hitscan hero or against Knockdown — he cannot change direction Why this is shown: Grey Talon's vulnerability windows. Strong evidence
• While drawing Charged Shot, where he is slowed and committed to a firing line Why this is shown: Grey Talon's vulnerability windows. Strong evidence
• The moment after Spirit Snare is placed and before it arms — the trap does nothing during the arming delay Why this is shown: Grey Talon's vulnerability windows. Strong evidence
• Reload windows: at roughly 1.67 shots per second, a missed arrow is a long dead interval where he has no output at all Why this is shown: Grey Talon's vulnerability windows. Strong evidence
• Grey Talon beats you at range, so your win condition is arrival, not attrition. Do not chip. Spend the early game reaching a position where your first engagement is already inside your range, and accept losing the poke exchange to get there. Why this is shown: Range asymmetry: melee/close hero versus long-range opponent. Strong evidence
• Your trades against Grey Talon changed on 09-16-2026: dashes and light melees no longer pause gun cycle time. Your damage output and your repositioning are no longer competing for the same seconds, which is the single biggest gain for a long-cycle weapon in this patch. Practically, that means you can now dodge the opening of their burst and keep your cycle running, so the correct trade against a burst hero is no longer stand-and-shoot — it is move-and-shoot, and it costs you nothing to do it. Why this is shown: 09-16-2026: dashes and light melees no longer pause gun cycle time. Verified
• Being stunned by Grey Talon now pauses your reload rather than restarting it, as of 09-16-2026. That quietly changes when it is safe to reload in this matchup: a reload caught by their stun resumes where it left off instead of costing you the whole cycle, so the old rule of never reloading inside their engagement range is too conservative now. The compensating change is that parrying also pauses your reload, so a defensive parry no longer buys you free reload time. Why this is shown: 09-16-2026: being stunned pauses reload instead of restarting it; parrying also pauses reload. Verified

Laning

• What they want in lane: Charged Shot pierces the wave, so he farms and pokes with the same button from outside his opponent's range Why this is shown: Grey Talon's laning strengths. Strong evidence
• What they want in lane: Bow falloff runs to about 54m — he can contest soul orbs and harass from positions most laners simply cannot answer Why this is shown: Grey Talon's laning strengths. Strong evidence
• What you can take from them in lane: Lowest durability tier in the roster — any successful gap-close in lane is lethal Why this is shown: Grey Talon's laning weaknesses. Strong evidence
• What you can take from them in lane: Bow is a slow projectile with travel time; a strafing target is genuinely hard to hit, so his lane damage depends on aim rather than being guaranteed Why this is shown: Grey Talon's laning weaknesses. Strong evidence
• Your lever: The melee-reload loop from Blasted means he never has to stop shooting to reload in an extended lane trade Why this is shown: Billy's laning strengths. Strong evidence
• You have to close distance to do anything and Grey Talon exists to stop that, so the lane is about approach geometry. Move between cover on their reload or their cooldown rather than in a straight line, and treat every open crossing as something you only do with a purpose. Trading chip damage at their range is a losing exchange you never have to accept. Why this is shown: Close-range hero versus long-range poke; range asymmetry in laning. Strong evidence
• Grey Talon's chip damage is not primarily about your health bar in lane — it is about your map access. Every point of damage they land resets a 3-second zipline lockout, so a hero who can touch you once every two seconds has effectively removed the zipline from your game. Plan rotations from behind cover with a clean gap, and when you intend to leave lane, leave before you are being shot at rather than because you are. Why this is shown: Taking enemy hero damage blocks zipline attachment for 3 seconds; enemy rangedPoke 3. Strong evidence

Mid game

• Their spike — Charged Shot tier 3: The charge delay drops by about 3s, turning his setpiece poke into a repeatable ranged attack Why this is shown: Grey Talon's power spike timeline. Strong evidence
• Their spike — Spirit Snare tier 2: -15% Bullet Resist for 10s makes his trap a team-wide damage amp on top of the Curse lockdown Why this is shown: Grey Talon's power spike timeline. Strong evidence
• Their spike — ult unlock: Guided Owl gives him cross-map pick potential and a stun for his team to fight around Why this is shown: Grey Talon's power spike timeline. Strong evidence
• Their spike — Guided Owl tier 3: The sub-22% execute plus permanent Spirit Power per kill makes his ult a self-scaling snowball Why this is shown: Grey Talon's power spike timeline. Strong evidence
• Your spike — Bashdown T2 (+1 charge, +2m radius): Two charges turn his anti-air pull and knockup from a single interrupt into continuous area control Why this is shown: Billy's power spike timeline. Strong evidence
• Your spike — Blasted T2: The Bashdown charge refund plus +7% wrecked amplification ties his damage engine to his CC and roughly doubles his effective output in a sustained brawl Why this is shown: Billy's power spike timeline. Strong evidence
• Your kit is built around lockdown and that is worth less on the Mid Boss than on Grey Talon — it carries 35% Debuff Resist as of 03-06-2026, so your disables run roughly two-thirds as long on it. Plan the take around damage and positioning rather than a CC chain, and spend the chain on Grey Talon if they contest. The payoff is worth the trip: 3,000 souls plus 50 per minute, two permanent buffs each, and a Rejuvenator crystal giving up to three single-use revives that return a player at full health after 3 seconds, for 3 minutes. Why this is shown: Mid Boss has 35% Debuff Resist (03-06-2026); reward is 3,000 souls +50/min, two buffs, and Rejuvenator revive credits. Verified

Positioning

• Fight Grey Talon under cover — indoors, under walkways, inside stairwells. Taking away the vertical axis removes most of their kit's value before you spend a single item slot on it. Why this is shown: Reasoned from air-mobility kits requiring open vertical space. Strategic
• Grey Talon wins by choosing where the fight happens. Take your position before the zoning goes down, not after — once the area is committed you are fighting on their terms, and walking in to contest it is exactly the mistake the kit is built to farm. Why this is shown: Zone-control kits convert space into damage; positioning must precede the cast. Strategic

Build adjustments

• Grey Talon fights from the air, which is exactly what Knockdown exists for: it applies +100% gravity to an airborne target (raised from +50% in March 2026) and its stun scales with altitude, up to about +1.5s at 30m. The higher they commit, the harder the punish — and Debuff Resist will not shorten that stun for them. Why this is shown: Knockdown airborne gravity and altitude-scaled stun, 6 March 2026 change. Verified
• With no self-sustain of your own, Grey Talon's chip damage compounds across a lane. Regeneration or lifesteal early is worth more here than it looks on paper, because it converts their poke from permanent attrition into something you reset between waves. Why this is shown: Hero sustain 0-1 versus a long-range poke opponent. Strategic
• Knockdown (spirit T3) — Grey Talon gives this team real air mobility. The consensus answer to flying and airborne heroes and to channelled aerial ultimates — buy it whenever an enemy fights from the sky. Why this is shown: Answers: enemy-air-mobility, enemy-long-range-poke, enemy-mobility, enemy-backline-threat. Verified
• Phantom Strike (vitality T4) — Grey Talon gives this team real air mobility. Buy to catch flying or long-range heroes who otherwise never enter your range, and to disarm a gun carry mid-burst. Why this is shown: Answers: enemy-air-mobility, enemy-long-range-poke, enemy-mobility, enemy-backline-threat. Verified
• Debuff Reducer (vitality T2) — Grey Talon gives this team real stuns and hard cc. The standard early buy when the enemy team chains crowd control; it is also the component for Spellbreaker and Unstoppable. Why this is shown: Answers: enemy-hard-cc, enemy-silence, enemy-slow. Verified

Common mistakes

• The instinct here is to buy Dispel Magic as your answer to Grey Talon and then find it greyed out at the exact moment you need it. Dispel Magic cannot be cast while you are stunned or asleep, and it cannot remove a stun at all — it purges what comes with the stun, not the stun itself. Against Grey Talon the item you actually want is the pre-cast kind (Unstoppable, which also cannot be activated once you are already stunned) or the automatic kind (Indomitable, which cleanses the next hard CC with no input from you). Why this is shown: Dispel Magic cannot be used while stunned or asleep and cannot purge stuns; Unstoppable has the same activation restriction. Verified
• The losing pattern against Grey Talon is deciding to leave, walking to the zipline and finding you cannot attach. Any damage from an enemy hero or objective blocks zipline attachment for 3 seconds, and Grey Talon has the chip range to keep that 3-second timer rolling indefinitely. Break line of sight first, wait out the lockout, then attach — do not walk to the rope while still taking fire. Why this is shown: Zipline attachment is blocked for 3s after taking enemy hero or objective damage; enemy rangedPoke 2+. Verified

Analyse this against your whole enemy team

A single matchup only tells you part of the story — which enemy to actually focus, and what to buy, depends on the other five. Open the tool with this matchup pre-loaded and add the rest.