Rynjin

From the Gravel Pit commentary. From the "Ya Appear To Have Trodden On a Mine!" blog post, by Robin Walker.

Yes. I'll try and pull it off the wiki but the wiki is stupid slow right now.

1.) You thought wrong. The Stickybomb Launcher was explicitly designed to be "used on offense like the Rocket Launcher, and defensively to set up traps". 2.) The Grenade Launcher doesn't just require precision and prediction, it also requires your opponent to not predict where you're aiming. GL shots are really easy to dodge, since they don't have the "close enough" factor of the Rocket Launcher. 3.) The Stickybomb Launcher is not an "Easy mode Grenade Launcher" any more than the Rocket launcher is an "Easy mode Shotgun". One is the primary weapon, the other is the secondary. And I swear to god if you respond with "Hurr durr the SL is in Secondary slot hurrr" I will shove a life size replica of the Medigun up your urethra, so help me. 4.) People always go "Oh M1+M2 is so easy" while somehow being blind to the fact that that makes no fucking logical sense since EVERY OTHER CLASS IN THE GAME ONLY USES M1 ANYWAY.

The point is that a COMBAT CLASS is out damaged by a NON COMBAT CLASS. This is not a complex point. It's not hard to see. The Demoman is no longer capable of doing his class role, because it's better served by pretty much any class besides Medic. The weakest direct combatant class in the game is better than him now. That is the point. 6's teams are running Heavies in place of Demomen now though (or that seems to be the proposed solution currently, and has been done a couple of times so far), since they have no real counter any more. Before, Heavies would get wrecked because they were so slow a skilled Demo could annihilate them in many cases. Now, their 450 HP lets them just kinda wade through weak Stickies, and the whole other team needs to focus fire on them.

If the Demo is being outdamaged by a support class, I'd say that's very relevant. He's not. The Spy doesn't do with the Revolver what the Demo does with the Sticky Launcher. They Spy and the Demo are very different. It's the same thing as comparing the Syringe Gun to the Flamethrower. He is. What you're essentially saying is that cross class comparisons are worthless, when they're not. The Demoman has less combat capability right now than a Support class. That is not irrelevant. It's not an invalid comparison. It's simple numbers. And it's not even a small difference based on perfect play on both sides. This isn't a purely hypothetical scenario, it's something that is now hard baked into the system. The Revolver does more damage with a few misses in the bunch than the Stickybomb Launcher does with no misses, each hit doing maximum possible damage. That is something that shouldn't happen, period. Even if you consider the SL to be a Secondary weapon, it should be comparable to the Shotgun. Except the comparison to the Shotgun is EVEN WORSE. At mid range a Shotgun is doing 60 damage a hit (40-50 if you're not perfect, but still good). A comparable damage per hit, but firing off MUCH FASTER, and undodgeable since it's hitscan. That's not something that's going to change with a few weeks of play. That's simple numerical facts.

The problem is that that was fallacical, since it required the Syringe Gun to do perfect maximum damage, which is easier for the Flamethrower to achieve. This is under the assumption that the SL is doing perfectly, but the Revolver still has 2 shots to spare, and could reload and fire 1-2 more shots before the SL's Time to Kill caught up with it. The Revolver, with imperfect play, outpaces perfect play with the SL.

1.08 seconds is a lifetime in this game. A 30 damage difference is the difference between 2 shotting a Scout at mid range, and 3 shotting a Scout at mid range. Assuming PERFECT PLACEMENT. Currently, the Revolver out damages the Stickybomb Launcher. It's not too early to make a value judgement at all.

Also apparently I have been placed on the Purple team.

From what I can tell, the only thing it really affects is ambushes. The Heavy can't just spin up and mow down targets that get the jump on him any more. Open combat he's still a beast though.

Quick I need 72 cents to buy Dead Island Riptide someone buy my trading cards

Well, he WAS used in pubs, quite often. On the bad maps, like Dustbowl, Gold Rush, Hoodoo, etc. where blind spam is actually worthwhile. Corridors too narrow for flanks, only one way into and out of an area, so ambushes are out of the question, and so on. And that's where the complaints come from, because a lot of bads play those maps.

Thankfully, that's not the most common argument. What is? I'm not trying to start a fight or anything, I just haven't been able to find a coherent, commonly used argument. (Admittedly, I haven't really looked at spuf because, well, spuf) That it interferes with a number of other things. The MOST commonly used point is that it buffs Engineers and Heavies, which don't need buffing at all. A step below that is that it slows games down in general. Stalemates are harder to break without his damage output. "Reports" (anecdotal evidence, but still) have come in that Attack/Defense maps end in even more stalemates than usual, and Defense has even more of an advantage on Payload now. Losing one of the power classes means pushes are harder. You're stuck with Soldier and Heavy as your only options, and since Heavies are so slow, PUSHES are slow. This nerf is terrible. The "problem" they wanted to fix was Sticky spamming. I.e. dropping Stickies at your feet and detonating them to get kills. They could have fixed that in any number of ways that makes that tactic less effective, without affecting good players, like removing ramp-up on stickies within X hammer units and so on. Instead they decided to introduce a flat 30 damage decrease across the board.

Thankfully, that's not the most common argument.

This doesn't just hurt Comp players. This hurts anyone who is halfway decent at this game. It won't affect the usual Valve server dreck, because even the weakened SL will stomp over them since they're too dumb to WASD, and remain too dumb to WASD for the 2 seconds required for the Stickies to reach max again. Who it WILL hurt are the people the game should be balancing FOR. The mid skill players, on high level pubs. In catering to the LCD, they've not changed anything for the people they're catering to, and fucked over everyone else in the process. And it IS for profit. In attempting to cater to these people, you keep them on slightly longer. Maybe ensure they buy something else from the store. Because you know who doesn't make Valve money? The established players. The people who've been supporting the game for years now. They're simply outnumbered by the newbies, and so are irrelevant to Valve's plans for the game at this point. TF2 is nothing but a cash grab now. There's a big difference between including a ton of content in the game and balancing it to improve the game, and including a ton of content and "balancing" it to placate people who are terrible. This isn't "Fox Only, Final Destination" it's "I liked playing Snake, he was balanced and fun. But they made all of his attacks deal 1/3 less damage because a lot of the Mario players were complaining, and they outnumber me".

It's not about catering to the minority, it's about NOT catering to the people who want to make the game WORSE. No negative changes should be made to a game just so you can make money. That's shit companies like Activision do, releasing more powerful weapons as DLC, nerfing other stuff in the game so DLC items are better by comparison, and so on. Valve could choose to be better than that. Right now, they still are, but that slope is looking awfully damn slippery right now.

The class categories have been meaningless from day 1. They never intended for him to be full defense, at all. Saying they're "putting demo back into the place they originally meant him to have" is an outright LIE. If this is what they were doing, they'd be buffing the Pyro into a true Offensive class at the same time, and reverting the Heavy's spin up speed to pre-buff status to make him less useful on offense. That's not what they're doing. They're listening to the largest number of people bitching about something, and making changes based on that and item usage statistics. That's their entire thought process. This is not some grand design to change the paradigm of the game, they're making changes to cater to their cash cow customers who play a few games, buy Premium, bitch on the forums a bit, and leave.

The difference being that 2 of those 3 were unlocks (and therefore optional), and the third was introduced fairly early in the game's life cycle, and honestly didn't do all that much to change Engineer playstyles. "Just adapt" to such a massive nerf is a dumb thing to say. They've basically removed one of every Demoman player's limbs. Will they be in a working state eventually? Maybe. Will they ever be in a GOOD shape again? No, probably not. There's only so much you can adapt to a missing leg, after all.

There's no POINT in adapting at this late stage in the game. If Valve are going to make big sweeping changes to a class' role in the game based on the whims of Joe Schmo the W+M1 Pyro, playing the game as anything other than a silly hat simulator that also has guns is pointless.

I figure we have a 50/50 shot of Gigolo being serious or just channeling all of SPUF's stupid for his own amusement, which I'd enjoy if it was about anything other than this particular brand of stupid. Peace out. Enjoy your bread and conga lines.

As we all know, slots determine how and how much weapons are supposed to be used. Medics should be using their Needle Gun more often. The funniest part is that the swapping of the slots was a relatively recent thing. Up until 2 or 3 years ago the SL was in the Primary SLOT as well, being the Primary in nomine as well as de facto. The devs state in the commentary that it was designed to be the primary, used on offense as the RL, and on defense for traps. That is the intended design of the weapon, back from when the game had competent people working on it. You're grasping at the same stupid, fallacious straws a lot of the idiots on SPUF grab for because they don't have anything worthwhile. If you don't have anything better, that I haven't seen a hundred times before, you may as well not bother replying.

Except the SL from the start was the main weapon. It was being used in its explicitly intended manner. But people are allergic to facts on this subject for some reason.

You don't need Matrix powers to dodge a projectile that moves in a predictable straight curve. The only conclusion I can come to here is that you think dodging is impossible. I must only then imagine you find a projectile reflecting Pyro to require supernatural powers as well. They must be gods among men indeed. Just for giggles, let's assume your original point (doesn't matter if the primary was nerfed, you still have the secondary). What would you think of doing the same to the Soldier? Let's cut a flat 30 damage off the base of each rocket. It's fine because the Soldier still has the Shotgun?

It's also not hard for your opponent to predict and dodge a grenade. And unlike a rocket, "close enough" doesn't cut it.

Don't be that guy. You're not that dumb.

The Grenade Launcher does not serve as an effective primary for a power class. The best damned Demos in the world (Ex. B4nny) can hit a whopping 60% of their pipes on a good day, and even then the damage spread is a crapshoot, meaning you could kill that Pyro or Demoman in two shots...or you could do it in 3. Compare/contrast the Rocket Launcher or Scattergun. I shouldn't even have to post these numbers at this point. They're easier to hit, and they outdamage the GL. It isn't a primary. It was never meant to BE a primary.