Wait, what if valve implemented the sticky nerf in pubs only?

If they really want to nerf demo they could give him fewer stickies or a slower fire rate or something, but at least let it do some sort of damage

its was pretty dumb that kritz demo was shit

^ and yeah people talked about that but it was agreed that a bigger divide in the community and in the game types was undesireable

You would think that if the class was actually overpowered, then it'd be a lot more obvious and there would be more people in agreement. Every time this stupid "debate" happens, it's only less than a handful of people constantly trying to prove a point that doesn't exist.

TF2 is a teamwork focused game. That should be obvious 7 years in. If you honestly believe demo is overpowered, then you must not be playing with much teamwork.

Man, there would be a lot more incentive to give a shit about these nerf/buff discussions if anything useful came from it other than figuring out who does and doesn't have any clue how the game works.

Demo is balanced in the current 6s meta because 6s is the community's attempt at contriving a balanced version of tf2 without straying too much from the original game (pubs). This is why valve will never (and shouldn't ever) balance the game around comp: the "true" form of the game is what's played in pubs, and we should adjust the format for any major changes.

Hence demo can be balanced in 6s like the queen is in chess, but in pubs where you can have 8 queens it's not so fair. A 9 class system is inherently a nightmare to balance because you have to find 9 different important niches, one for each class to fill, and make all classes relevant.

Demo makes other classes such as soldier irrelevant (assuming a medic is on the team/gunboats notwithstanding) because he can fill the same mobile damage role but overall more effectively. The "glass cannon" argument doesn't really work because he has a significant amounof health and enough pipes to kill/hold off an assailant until his team kills them for overextending. As such demo is currently just a damage machine, which we have taken into account with class limits.

In the end a demo nerf isn't super pressing for 6s because his strength isn't unbalanced (both teams have one) and also have lots of offensive classes (no defensive bias). In HL it's more important because while both teams still only have one demo, he can be more easily protected because of the addition of pyro and heavy. In pubs, where valve should balance around, demo is ridiculous because it makes other classes redundant and if a pub team were to work together it would be almost impossible to push a last against 2 meds and a stack of demos (huge defensive bias).

At least read the post directly above yours before posting.

but he's not wrong

why would you play soldier in 12v12 if you could just be demo instead

keep in mind the players are bad so you can consistently hit pipes

"why would you play soldier in 12v12 if you could just be demo instead"

I don't know. Maybe I would because I like soldier better? That seems like a fair enough reason.

Another reason could be simply because a class is only as good as the person playing it and the people that person is playing with and against. You can throw base stats at me all you want. "Demo is capable of dealing this much damage this quickly because of this weapon's damage parameters!" This doesn't mean shit if the person behind the wheel is worse than those they are against, making these stats irrelevant, or if said person is better than those they are playing against, also making these stats irrelevant.

I can walk into a pub right now on soldier and I guarantee that I will outplay more of the demos on the other team than they will me. Why? Because I'm better than the average demo pub player, even more so the average pub player in general. Does this mean soldier is overpowered? Well, why play demo in 12v12 when you could just play soldier?

I should probably throw in the whole concept of "class gimmicks". You know, the thing that makes this game what it is. Class gimmicks and a player's in/ability to play any of the given classes, most of the time, prevents these classes from truly being over/underpowered, or "in need" of a nerf or buff.

I mean, you have all of these different factors that come into play when figuring out how balanced each class is. Some of these factors are things like: class gimmicks, the weapons used, a player's skill, maps, the endless amount of possible situations, and hell, even possible situations that can be produced within other possible situations. There are so many factors.

The point I'm making here is that if a class was actually overpowered, it would be obvious as shit.

um
idk if ur an idiot
but you literally just told me demo is not OP because people don't want to play demo 24/7
u shouldnt bring class preference into a balance discussion ever because by that logic spy and sniper are OP as fuck because most pubbies love sniper and spy and play them a ton

like that logic only works if u play highlander where the actual effectiveness of classes has no bearing on whether the class is used
demo is the only class that can stop an engi stack or heavy stack by himself
he can also reasonably take out all the other classes solo
if you're better than everyone else, there isn't a reason to play anything but demo if you want to win
because demo has the highest potential frag and damage output of any class if you're good enough at it

this is his core problem
if you're trying to win, demo is going to give you the most mileage unless you're playing against high level scouts
until engi and heavy are incapable of stopping pubs from moving, demo's nature cannot be changed without breaking the game, but to pretend he isn't the most powerful class in high player count games is just dumb

A little late in responding to this one, especially in a demo focused thread.

That said, the thing about sniper is in TF2 you can't deal with him at range. The only way to balance him with current mechanics is making it impossible for him to get ridiculous sightlines and map makers often fail at this. It takes a long time to make a sniper work on a TF2 map. Basically every other FPS allows you to actually kill a sniper at range, but they have an advantage. In TF2 you can only tickle him with some damage if he refuses to move at all.

Thats a fair point I will admit and I should have considered that.

But I do think that sniper is fairly balanced considering there are classes which can counter the sniper, especially in HL, as there is another sniper, and a spy. Plus the possibility of flanking the sniper from either the soldier or scout.

But I do see how the problem of balancing his sightlines is an issue, but there are still relatively effective checks and balances which I feel don't break it but there could be some more subtle balancing done.

"I don't know. Maybe I would because I like soldier better? That seems like a fair enough reason." - this was a general reason why maybe you would rather play a class other than demo. It was unnecessary to the topic and sort of passive aggressive. I'm sorry.

The entirety of the post after that does not revolve around that, though. It revolves around the entire idea of a class only being as good as the players playing it are, the players playing against them and the situations at any given time. Base stats only means so much and comparing them to stats of other weapons is a bit redundant considering.

what so because a good soldier is worth more than a bad demo, demo isn't overpowered? I don't see what you're saying. Just because you can beat a solitary demo using the other classes and good teamwork doesn't mean he's not overpowered. Teamwork will always lessen balance issues but it doesn't mean they're not there.

also I don't know what you're talking about #95, #93 didn't counteract anything I said in that post

by the definition of "overpowered", yes.

no im pretty sure youre wrong

OR you can use team based co-ordination to kill priority targets instead of complaining that one class is better than another

that only applies if there are class limits

(arbitrary) class limits are part of the reason valve feels the game is difficult to approach and not worth encouraging on a competitive level

as it is, 2 high level demos is a better use of players than 2 high level soldiers, or scouts, or anything really

I don't think demo is OP, at all. At least not anymore. If you want to see an overpowered demo then look at the first 6 months of the game's launch. Allowing only one demo and the various nerfs over the years, the class is fine.

This is probably some variant of the appeal to tradition fallacy, idk I'm no logician.

I usually don't like posting on these, and I'm not sure if this idea is even good, but maybe reduce demos health instead of his damage so that he can do what he does, but has to actually think more about what he is doing that usual. Maybe put him on either 125 or 150, and that way he can get 1 shot headshot aswell(Of course make sticky self damage less so he can still rollout). And of course pubstomping would be harder aswell.

Reducing the number of stickies available in a single clip is a reasonable first step. Anything else that I've seen would most likely require changing a shitload of other stuff in the game to keep it from breaking.

I don't think anyone believes beyond a doubt that demo isn't a bit stronger than at least the other mobile classes. The contention is what kind of problem that is, and if it even is one. I think almost all the arguments on both sides for about the past page have been fucking ridiculous, chill out.

Yeah I just fiddled around with the blast radius and the best bet if that were to ever change is to have it only identical to the radius of rockets while airborne.