Yuki did a nice stream talking about this. Not sure if he uploaded it to youtube though? Lansky did the same. Both were pretty good at explaining the benefits of it. (Mobility and less heals needed being the main two points)

yuki did as well a lot and I don't remember mike running shotty much at that particular event

and I think it's also important to point out that, while lansky did so to sacrifice a lot of heals to their scouts, especially b4nny, that mike and yuki primarily seemed to sacrifice heals to their demo (war and termo, respectively)

Its pretty reliant on whether your team can play around it and utilize the extra heals or not. I have the weakest dm on my team so I tried running gunboats and we seemed to do better when I took twice as many heals and babysat the medic.

If anyone can find that yuki stream/video about this topic please share it, it'd be an interesting watch.

shotgun and gunboats are both good.

they have the word gun in them

I think a lot of it has to do with how the roamer likes to play, gunboats pockets is pretty good for followup jumps and cycling heals, i disagree with the "no reason to use shotty on viaduct" thing since shotgun is great for uber cleanups and more specifically cleaning up scouts. It takes a lot of pressure of of the roamer and scouts to make room for the combo too.

wink motherfucking wink

o ye I ran gunboats pocket in like 1 or 2 games I think

those were games I decided to do randy shit tho. one was against mixup in group stage

edit: u guys are right about 40 percent of my play was gunboatd. i would use them for a lot of transition play (where it shines), and shotgun often for last point/slow play

Regards

I like running gunboats as pocket. Gives me a lot more freedom, and I'm generally able to play more aggressively and chase people down etc. If I die I can also rollout back to my teams position faster by pogo jumping and stuff. I think there are some times where a soldier probably should switch off of gunboats for a bit. Such as holding last when you are at a disadvantage... you need every bit of DPS you can get, or in some last push cases where the soldier is going to be tanked and is the main part of the uber.

But yes in addition to having more freedom, you spread the heals out and give more heals to the scouts, which is very important. Keeping scouts buffed accross the point wins mid fights.

As someone mentioned it can cause weaker ubers. I agree. A gunboat pocket should never take a solo uber, and involving a scout in an uber is always great.

The other main disadvantage I see on fulltime gunboat pockets is they might not have the best ability to protect their medic from scouts with no shotty. But with good comms and people watching flanks this shouldn't be much of a problem.

The main reason I don't particularly care for it, is that in an ideal world, your very best scout slayer should be the pocket. Obviously, that's not always the case, so giving up the shotgun isn't that big of a deal. It also chains one of your scouts to the combo - otherwise you'll always be behind in uber so your flank players have to manage themselves more carefully on holds. Above, there are several notable positives pointed out, but I would also bring up, that if you're a team that opts to take lots of non-uber fights, a gunboat pocket can get back to their team with a relatively higher amount of health than normal (due to the reduced damage they'll take rocket jumping). So if you're a pocket who tends to die a lot during ubers, and your team has lots of drawn out fights, gunboats may be quite beneficial.

It also simplifies your life if you're one of the myriad of pockets who doesn't have a particularly good shotgun, because it will draw a scout into your combo, and thus reduce the likelihood that your medic will get ganked by every scout in the world.