Razputin

This is a rough draft of another balance thread I am making. The previous one I posted here wasn't a big success, mostly because I was being too biased towards my own liking and disliking of weapons, and was too aggressive in my changes. This list is a lot more conservative, and I kept my own "personal grudge" weapons out (mostly LnL and Sydney Sleeper). 1. Simple Changes: 12 weapons These are all small, simple changes that I don't think are too revolutionary -FaN: faster reload In my opinion the FaN is an incredibly fun weapon, and honestly not even that bad. However, it punishes missing to the extreme; against other scouts, unless you kill them in those two shots, you will die without there being much you can do against it. This makes the weapon often very frustrating to use. If the reload would be shortened a bit, the punishment for missing would become less severe and, even though it would still not live up to the power of the Scattergun, it would become a much better alternative. -Soda Popper: Hype is filled with damage instead of movement, and can be activated by pressing M2 Rewarding a Scout for simply running around isn't a good idea. Damage motivates him to do something useful even while charging, and the amount can be tweaked of course (I'd suggest somewhere around 250-300 ish). Moving activation to Mouse2 is simply a matter of simplicity as switching to pistol all the time is fussy. -CaC: no cooldown Seeing as using CaC already has pros and cons, and consuming it takes a second, I think the cooldown really isn't necessary -Guillotine: fix the aim lag This is more of a bug fix than a balance change: when you throw the Guillotine, there is a startup lag. On its own this is fine, however if you turn around during this startup lag, the Guillotine will still go where you were aiming before the startup lag. If this is fixed, the weapon is fine. -Concheror: health regen increase to 40% / 50% The banners in general aren't as good as the shotgun, but still viable and interesting to use. The Concheror's boost however just isn't worth it, even with the faster charge. The amount of increase is tweakable of course: 40% seems a bit low to me, while 50% already sounds too high. -Backburner: 130 degrees crit angle With Flamethrower finally getting its much deserved buff, Backburner became a lot les suseful again, sadly. Seeing as the Spy gets 180 degrees for his backstabs, I think Pyro deserves 130 as well. -Wee Booties: better targeturning Targeturning with the booties currently only works on very high mousespeeds. As for someone who plays at a relatively low speed (19cm per 360) I'd like to see this increased a bit. -Scottish Resistance: faster reload ScoRes already isn't as bad as people pretend it is, especially not after the faster firing buff it got. However, every time I use it I notice how that buff gets nullified a bit when I still have to reload for such a long time: it was added to make it easier to quickly make traps, but with the possibility to have 14 stickies out at the same time you will still be slowed down a lot. -Claidheamh Mòr: charge regen on kill The Claymore lost a lot of its charm after targeturnscripts got removed, and I think this buff would make a lot of sense. Yet again numbers are tweakable, but I'd say make it depend on damage, with about a quarter of the charge filled per kill -Brass Beast: tighter firing cone I love Brass Beast, I run it almost exclusively as Heavy nowadays. The slower spindown and lack of mobility forces you to think before you attack, and not just spindrop into a group of 5 enemies and come out alive. My only gripe with it, is that this often forces me to peck away on enemies from a distance, because I can't get in closer without surviving the attack. Giving the Brass Beast a tighter firing cone would make it more of a long-distance assaulter, which fits its defensive role. -Wrangler: shield down in standby The Wrangler is simply too strong in my opinion. The amount of damage it takes to take it down is ludicrous, and a single wrangling engy can stop several people in their tracks. If the shield went down in standby mode, this would fix two things: first, when the engy goes down, the sentry definately goes down as well, as it is now completely defenseless for 3 seconds, and second, it prevents engies from switching back and forth between Wrangler and Wrench to quickly repair under assault. -Huntsman: can fire arrow when airblasted/splashed This is just a tiny fix: Valve made it impossible for Huntsmen to shoot while in the air, to prevent cornerspam. However, this also means that he is completely defenseless against a pyro who airblasts him into the air or a Soldier who splashes him up. Keep the jump restriction, but remove it from other situations, and we can have the best of both worlds. Hot Topics: 4 These are weapons that get discussed a lot, and often result into flamewars. To prevent derailing the thrad, I'd suggest you guys say if you agree/disagree and why, but we will keep discussion to a minimum. After I've seen the general consensus I can change my ideas accordingly, and maybe discuss them in a different thread. -Homewrecker / Neon Annihliator: Sapper removal removed, and given a different buff. In my opinion, the sapper removal attributes of these two weapons make the Spy's job much too hard. There is the theorycrafting of saying a Spy should lose the 2 versus 1 fight, but in reality it is never just a spy versus those two and there are much more factors to consider: The Spy already had to sneak past several other enemies to get in, and just a tiny brush of fire will ruin his attack completely. -Pomson: Über drain removed, or at least removed against fully charged Medics. The ubercharge is the root of TF2's balance and gameplay, and I am very reluctant in adding weapons that influence it this directly. The amount of work it takes the medic to protect his Uber completely overshadows the effort it takes for an engineer to get a few Pomson shots in. The removal of penetration (huehue) already fixed a lot, but I'm still not completely satisfied. At the very least, I would like it to see that an uber that is already full (but not activated) can no longer be drained from: this is to prevent from an entire uber rush getting ruined by a single pomson shot. -Spycicle: Complete rework, or at least given a proper downside I think the Spycicle was a bad concept to begin with. Even though I am not a big fan of the rock-paper-scissors system, such a direct counter to his own counter was a bad idea, especially seeing as it takes no effort to use: The Ambassador can also be a powerful tool to defend agaisnt pyros, but requires good aim to be effective, while the Spycicle just activates automatically. Seeing as I ubderstand that complere reworks will never happen, I'd at least like to see a proper downside; the ice statues alone are not enough to balance out killfeedless stabs and pyro escape tool together. No idea how to change: 6 These weapons I all feel are in need of a small buff, but I don't play often enough with them to see what needs to happen. It could also be that they are completely fine as is: Scorch Shot Dalokohs Bar Short Circuit Diamondback Big Earner Pain Train Machina No Idea at all: 8 These weapons I honestly do not know, at all, as I never play with them. Do any of these need a buff or nerf? Righteous Bison Manmelter Solemn Vow Bazaar Bargain Hitman's Heatmaker Carbine Shahanshah Enforcer Problem Children: 16 These weapons are all very problematic to me: they have their own flaws that I want to addres properly, and I often don't really know how to change them, so suggestions are very welcome. -Natascha: deathnerfed Natascha is still in the status of deathnerfed, and I think that is a waste. Still, her slowdown is a very frustrating game mechanic, and I don't know how she could ever become a proper weapon again without a complete rework. -Sun on a Stick / Sharpened Volcano Fragment: useless These two were added at the same time and both have the same issue: they serve no purpose whatsoever. They both have their special stats, but they simply don't add anything to the game: The pyro doesn't need a melee that induces burn when it got better alternatives, and the scout doesn't need a melee that does extra damage on a rare occasion, when his primaries outdamage it anyway. Both probably just need to be reworked entirely as I don't see any way how they could stick to their original concept and be useful. -Liberty Launcher: crutch in need of a buff Liberty Launcher is in the odd position as being much less useful than its counterparts while also being the most annoying one. On one hand it needs a buff, on the other hand it is the sole definition of a crutch. Again, I see no way for it to work without a complete rework. -CM5k: everything went wrong forever the Cow Mangler is in a similar spot as the Liberty Launcher, but probably in even worse condition: after it got released, it created a huge shitstorm of complaints, and the end result is a gimped weapon with unintuitive projectiles that still has the core issue that caused all the trouble: the fifth rocket. Removing that attribute however isn't really an option, as the only thing it has left then is the useless charge shot. To make it worse, buffing the charge shot to a point where it would be viable is probably also a very bad idea, as it would promote a lot of blind spam. How Valve could ever fix this mess of a weapon I really don't know.

Essentially it's the same idea: If a pyro wants to, he can keep wailing at the sapped sentry until the engineer comes back: he can't remove the sapper, but he can restore the damage it is doing. That way, the Pyro can still save the sentry, but the Spy didn't die in vain and managed to disable the sentry, pyro and engineer for a while.

well that's kind of the point. By making it repair instead of removing sappers, the pyro can stay in his support role without completely screwing over spies in the process. A paralyzed but undamaged sentry is easier to take down by teammates than a damaged but unsapped sentry

The point is mostly that, when you don't get those references, the whole music clip looks like an unorganised mess of chaos that makes no sense at all, despite the fact that it is all delivered relatively straight-faced.In layman's terms, lolsorandom that's awesome

all of my do not want, you meanremember tha ttime you got s shiny when you didnt have pokeballs yetthis is ten times worse

this just in in BW2 the introduction pokémon can be shiny

3 rockets would make the minicrits while rokcetjumping balanced, imo. That way you get two minicrit rockets per jump, while a fourth would've made it too strong.

HNGI've been trying some spy again today (havent played him in like half a year) and my biggest frustration was definitely failed hitreg

And don't get me started on melee hitreg

We should really make the "reply to thread" button more visible

I always like these, they're cute

@binary about the Homewrecker, what do you think about the idea of making it repair sentries with flamer ammo instead of removing sappers? It would still promote the "pet pyro" roll without screwing over spies so severely @dualjay I disagree with some of those ideas -for the winger, minicrits while jumping would promote scouts to hop up and down mindlessly, which is a habit we should definately not motivate -that Atomizer nerf would be much too severe, it is a strong weapon but not that strong. If we would go for a health nerf, give it -15 hp like the Sandman. -The LL idea would be incredibly spammable. Equip gunboats, rocketjump, then spam into a choke, repeat 3 times. You can easily get 4 rockets in with every jump, giving the Soldier 12 spammable rockets with hardly any interruption. Just minicrits while airborne would motivate the same much simpler.

With all the asses in the video, I assumed that the video was actually about "doggy style" sex, only they call it "horse style" in South Korea. Made sense in my mind at least

I know how all the pieces work, but that's the end of it. I've always loved to try and learn chess, though, so I'm definitely up for some games

Thanks for the replies so far guys -Seeing as several of you suggested it, I'll simply change the set hat change to just no longer have the hats, but otherwise stay the same -I really like the idea of the Liberty Launcher being more focussed on divebombing. Something simple, like minicrits while rocketjumping, would already make it a very fun unlock. -My problem with the Gunslinger is mostly that it is so spammable while still locking down an area pretty well: If you get locked down as scout or pyro thanks to a level 3, you know that once it does go down you are free again. However as soon as a minisentry goes down, a new one will be put up, so you can never adapt to what area to avoid. I also really hate it when I take a minisentry out and go for the engie, and he just pops up a new one: as a Scout, I don't have enough ammo to take them both out safely, so I'll either have to kill the Engie and then die to the minisentry, or destroy the minisentry and let the engie escape. Making minisentries go down when the engie dies would fix a lot, without hurting the weapon's function much. -I would prefer not to put a damage weakness or health decrease on the Atomizer, seeing as then it becomes a new Pain Train: a powerful upside that works rarely versus a small downside that you notice all the time. It seems like weapons like that often get ignored. -I kind of dislike "minicrits while jumping" on the Winger, as that would promote Scouts to jump without reason. Most pub scouts already jump way more than is good for them. @Dualjay: many of your ideas are a bit complicated, while I personally prefer to keep unlocks as simple as possible. Some things I wanted to comment on, though: -SoaS and SVF: similar to your idea, I've always liked the suggestion of making the SoaS fire a flare gun bullet with a lot of cooldown. Essentially, the sandman, only it fires a flare instead of a stunball. @O'Malley: -the Soda Popper would function exactly as it would hnow: you cna only activate the minicrits when the charge is full. Activatign whenever might work, but I fear that it would make it too strong seeing as the Soda Popper is already often up for debate. -I like the idea of repairing sentries with the Homewrecker. If a Pyro really wanted to, he could still save a sapstabbed sentry by wailing on it until the engie returns, however, that would mean the Spy essentially took down the engie, the sentry and the pyro for a period of time, which would make it a lot more fair in my eyes. -My favorite idea for the Pomson is still to just let it drain 20% of inactive ammo on hit, as it would not only sap the Spy's cloak, but also really hurt Soldiers and Demos who have to be wary of their ammo at all times. That way, he gets a way to defend himself agains this counters without screwing over Uber build. @Corvette: -Making the Claymore the Demo's Market Gardener would be a good idea as well, that way it is actually useful with both shields and sticks. -Silent Kills removed from the Spycicle is probably the simplest solution, yes. I'm still a bit grumpy about its crutchyness, but it isn't that horrible that it MUST be removed. -I like metal regen with the Short Circuit -Making the Big Earner refilling all cloak on one backstab would be rather broken with the DR, but that's probably more the DR's fault. Increasing it to 50% might work, though, the idea of the knife isn't that bad. -What do you mean with "Focus Band Razorback"? -I agree that the Uber stun on Holiday Punch is a bad thing, but on the other hand it is such a rare situation I don't really mind. The fewer changes I suggest, the bigger the chance Valve listens. EDIT: Jesus Christ why do I have such verbal diarrhea lately

They look ugly.I'll wait for some reviews before I buy this, the game itself looks great

So I've been hearing a lot of awful things about this. As far as I understand, all software that gets developed for it needs to be added to the app store, forcing developers to pay up to microsoft?Techies elaborate. Is this all just a storm in a teacup or is microsoft really screwing us over?

playing bass is almost as easy as quoting a post, thoughjust kidding, just kidding

Dayum, this got much wordier than I thought, I'll need to cut it down for the spuf version.I guess I'll rep anyone who gives a constructive reply as a thanks for scimming through all thatEDIT: Made it a bit more comprehensive by bolding the abstracts

[continued] -Phlogistinator: Crutch in need of a buff Just like the Liberty Launcher this weapon is in dire need of a buff while it is on the other hand promoting bad play. Somehow, it needs to become better while also raising the skill roof and ceiling of it. -Minigun / Tomislav / Heatmaker: need higher skill floors The heavy miniguns simply have no skill floor at all for the amount of power they have. On both high and low skilled pubs, you can immediately notice the massive power a heavy adds to a team. Personally, I'd like to see the firing cone tightened, with spindown time increased and damage decreased a tiny bit, so aiming the gun has some challenge to it. -Razorback / Cozy Camper: badly designed These two weapons really have no reason to exist, if you ask me. They promote bad habits for snipers, while at the same time holding them down. The Cozy Camper might be saved simply by removing all the downsides: flinchless aim in exchange for no secondary. It would still be a bad weapon, but at least it wouldn't motivate snipers to stop moving altogether. The Razorback really is just a bad concept altogether, and I don't really see how it could be saved. Some have suggested a merge with the Danger Shield, which at least would make ti a tad more useful. -Atomizer: needs a nerf Atomizer needs a nerf; it gives too many upsides with a proper downside, in an aspect where the Scout didn't need a buff at all. There are two issues with this however: first of all, I have no idea how it could be nerfed without making it useless. Second, and this sounds a bit elitist: many TF2 players are, well, not good enough at the game to understand how powerful it is; it takes some skill to unlock its potential in the first place, and seeing as it doesn't just do too much damage an unfair loss to an Atomizer Scout will quickly be blamed on the primary weapon instead. -Gunslinger: very frustrating The Gunslinger is a very frustrating weapon to fight against. While that sounds very subjective, I know I am not the only person that thinks that way; I often see people complain about Gunslinger engies, and on two of my regular servers it is actually sort of an injoke: "too much fun on this server, we need some Gunslingers". The issue is mostly that it completely locks down Scouts and Pyros from an area, and can be put up incredibly fast again. I don't really know how it should be fixed, although I heard someone suggest that when a Battle engie dies, his Minisentry should get destroyed automatically, which I thought didn't sound too bad. -Dead Ringer: very frustrating I should've probably put this one in the hot topics section... it always sparks a lot of debate. My two cents are, that while it actually is a perfectly fine sidegrade for good spies, it often gets used by bad spies as a crutch: there aren't many situations more frustrating than seeing an obvious spy running straight at you, which then "dies" to a single scatter shot, forcing you to wait for 8 seconds and chase the bastard. And of course, the dreaded situation of igniting a DR Spy, who then proceeds to keep up his shield for the entire duration, forcing you to hold him down with airblast until you can finally and inevitably kill him, wasting your time, ammo, and mood. And to make it worse, I have no idea how to fix it. I've seen many suggestions saying the damage resistance should scale down over time, or it shouldn't block crit damage, but none of those really fix the issue of bad spies using it as a crutch, so they never learn how to use the IW and CnD properly. As I've seen some people on the Spy forum put it: the DR was a good idea being executed badly, and is probably in its least awful form right now. Lazy unlocks: 5 These weapons are a special kind of the "no idea" tier: They're simply incredibly bland, and add absolutely nothing significant to the game. They either need something interesting added to them, or get a rework entirely. Winger Skullcutter Family Business Warrior's Spirit Overdose Set Hats: I am always very wary of "pay to win" models in free games, and I've always been proud of Valve to not fall into that model with TF2. Whenever I think about that though, the set hats always come to mind; while it is doable for a new player to get the weapons he wants, the set hats still go for over a ref, which is quite a lot for a new player. On top of that, I don't like how they restrict you into loadouts, and many of the set bonuses are actually very badly designed. Something that I would like to see, is moving some of the more important set effects to a weapon in the set, and removing the ones that are unnecessary: -Milkman: Either removed, or moved to the Shortstop The Scout really doesn't need the extra health he gets from the Milkman set, and if you ask me it could be removed entirely. However, if people really want to keep it, it can only be moved to the Shortstop, in which case the Shortstop would need a serious nerf of course. -Tank Buster: Removed, or moved to the Black Box The Tank Buster set made no sense whatsoever, and can easily be removed. Alternatively, it could be put on the Black Box for a small nerf, but it really isn't necessary -Gas Jockey: Moved to Powerjack, or a completely new melee The Gas Jockey set is in my opinion the best designed set effect. Obviously, it can't be put on the Degreaser, but I think it would fit fine on the powerjack. Rynjin however thought that the Powerjack would become too powerful then, and if more people feel that way, it could just as well become a new unlock entirely. -Croc-o-Style: Removed The croc set was awfully designed, and should definately be removed. -Saharan Spy: moved to Your Eternal Reward Saharan Spy is my second favorite set effect, as it is very skill indexed and can reward good spies with an interesting bonus. YER is already considered to be fairly useless without the set effect, so combining them would fix a lot of issues -the hatless sets: probably left alone Next to the Set hats, there are also the hatless sets. Many of those are rather unnecessary, probably because Valve got scared of the shitstorm the hat sets created. Even though set effects like Hibernating Bear have absolutely no reason to exist, they don't hurt anyone either, so they can just as well be left alone. Funsies: 6 This is a small addition to clarify why I don't buff certain weapons that could definately be considered underpowered. I feel that these weapons shouldn't be touched, because even though they aren't that strong, they are incredibly fun to use, and I fear that buffing them could possibly break them, especially since many of them have very wacky effects that would be broken on any "serious" weapon: BFB Beggar's Bazooka Manthreads Market Gardener Eviction Notice Holiday Punch Weapons that I consider fine as is (added for good measure): 74 Scatter, Shortstop, Pistol, Bonk, Milk, Pocket Pistol, Bat, Sandman, Candy Cane, Basher, FoW, Wrap Assassin, Rocket Launcher, Original, DH, Black Box, Rjumper, Shotgun, Buff Banner, Battalion's Backup, Gunboats, Reserve Shooter, Shovel, Equalizer, Half-Zatoichi, Disciplinary Action, Escape Plan, Flamethrower, Degreaser, Flare Gun, Detonator, Fire Axe, Axetinguisher, Backscratcher, Third Degree, GL, LnL, SL, Targe, Sjumper, Screen, Bottle, Caber, Persuader, Sandvich, Buffalo Steak, Fists, KGB, GRU, FoS, Frontier Justice, Widowmaker, Wrench, SH, Jag, Eureka Effect, Syringe Gun, Blutsauger, Crossbow, Uber, Kritz, Quick-Fix, Bonesaw, Ubersaw, Vita-Saw, Amputator, Sniper Rifle, Sleeper, SMG, Jarate, Danger Shield, Kukri, Shiv, Bushwacka, Revolver, Ambassador, L'Etranger, Knife, Kunai, IW, CnD

Disregard those guys, say hello to fathom! For all your reflect airshot needsunless fathom is in fact one of your EMT friends

Good thing you got rid of it

3 here and 13 there, not bad