I'm going to immediately regret this decision.

EDIT: I ran out of room on this post, please refer to the Google doc linked for an organized list. If something I said does not properly convey your or someone else's post, please let me know. These should be the tf2 communities opinions, not mine.

The google Doc has been updated with everything mentioned so far (up to #79) that seems to be worthy of mention. If I have missed something you or someone else posted that should be added, let me know. If you want access to edit the googleDoc, let me know.

My steam ID

I'm gonna give PAPASTAIN's idea a try. Here is a google doc that can help us organize things better.

I would be happy to let others add/edit it, I shouldn't make it public to everyone, however. If you know you deserve to be able to edit it, post or steam message me and I will add you to it.

I just thought I'd add something pretty important:

Valve has said in the past that they vastly prefer problems and not solutions, so I don't think anyone here should specifically give ideas on how to fix the weapons, but rather point out why the weapons are broken.

e.g.:

Bad:
"Wrangler is too strong, the shield should drop instantly whenever the Engineer dies (but still disable the gun for the same amount of time) and the Wrangler should apply damage falloff to the Sentry gun while activated to make the SG do less damage outside of its normal range. Wrangler shield should also affect Mini Sentries for half the effect."

Good:
"Wrangler is too strong, giving a Sentry Gun infinite damage range breaks a lot of maps and the weapon doesn't reward killing the Engineer enough. On top of all of this, Wrangled Mini-Sentries have more health than a stock Level 3 sentry gun yet are much more spammable."

This should also prevent arguments in the thread, generally people can agree on problems WAYYY easier than they can solutions.

What are the guidelines for this thread, just post weapons we think are unbalanced and possible ways for them to become balanced? Problem with this most people here would balance them for competitive while valve still (I assume) balanced their weapons for pub play. But I guess i'll start anyway

Soda Popper
-Can deploy crits at any time by holding hype (possibly intended)

edit: fixed for DarkNecrid idea

I think DarkNecrid had a good idea. List why a weapon is bad or why it is bugged in some way. Try to keep the suggestions to things that are popular opinions in the tf2 community (pub or comp, both are valuable). Keep them as concise as possible. Please keep any extremely personal opinions, and anger, out of it. Quick example:

Beggar's Bazooka
-reload glitch that allows players to avoid the detonation on self downside
-3 rockets are too fast to be defended by any pyro
-medics can be killed instantaneously by a well placed bazooka shot, regardless of what a team does

if it helps, we could probably set up a .txt file of some sort, host it online, have a few notable players be able to edit it, and then just have your post link to it.

OK ANYWAY:

The Saharan Spy is a pretty lopsided effect to work with. While at first, it seems relatively balanced, the problem comes when you use this set along with the Dead Ringer, which doesn't have a cloak blink time and isn't affected, effectively making the negative effect nonexistent.

SOLUTION:

-Remove cloak blink time effect
-Replace with a negative effect that lowers overall cloak time by 30-40%

This allows for every single watch to have a disadvantage to them. Likewise, this balances out the Dead Ringer nicely; You're losing that annoyingly loud cloak, but you better know where you're going when you feign death, because you won't get much time.

Vita-Saw makes the game a lot more prone to stalemates. the -10 hp is relatively insignificant (no new threshold of 2shot/1shot attained except, uh, enforcer without the disguise penalty and direct hit?) compared to shaving off a fifth of the window of time a team has to push forward.

But the concept of being more prone to mistakes, but having the punishment for mistakes be softened, is inherently really dumb and I have no idea to fix it, if it is possible to fix at all.

mini sentries
arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Cow Mangler
Allows for 5 rockets and a minicrit charge shot.

Downsides: In HL: it becomes harder to destroy the minis/regulars and has minor downsides.
In 6s: Has minor downsides.

Fine for HL, but Bad for 6s

Another reason for evaluating the vitasaw has to do with what it does to the medic metagame. Basically, if I want to run ubersaw and the medic on the opposing team elects to run vitasaw, it is generally the case that the enemy medic will inherently have a significant uber advantage over me throughout the match. Any time they die, they get an instant 20% (or less, but 20% is more likely throughout, as medics tend to die in the middle of combat after charging with someone from spawn, thus usually getting at least 20% if not more before dying), which means that dying gets a free 20% charge they wouldn't have otherwise.

What this means, is that if I want to maintain uber parity with the opposing medic I need to 1) Play better and not die as much as the medic (which is still the case if both medics are using stock or ubersaw), 2) use the vitasaw. Seeing as how its very hard to guarantee that your play will be superior to the enemy medics (barring significant skill gaps), the switch to vitasaw is almost universally the correct choice, and your team will yell at you if you don't switch.

Since we are talking about competitive play, its important to note that the vitasaw requires no actual action on your part to net an advantage, where a weapon like the ubersaw requires you to initiate a melee attack, which under most circumstances is quite difficult. Basically, ubersaw is a skill based weapon, but vitasaw is a prisoner's dilemma that forces more skilled players to play more conservatively because their opponents decided to use it.

I think thats the primary problem with the vitasaw: it forces people to play a less fun medic game, because the other player equipped it and is gaining uber advantage just by having it equipped. The -10 health, while meant to balance the weapon, really only acts to further aggravate the medic who was forced to equip it because of metagame issues.

Honestly, there's a lot of weapons with... questionable design decisions. A lot of them are just +stat -stat, with no real reason for use over their vanilla weapons, such as the Winger or the Family Business. They're sort of useless, in the sense that they're not only slightly worse than their vanilla counterparts. It's not even like some not-used-often weapons, where you can find situations to make it useful, because these weapons are pretty clearly not designed for any real situation in mind.

And then you get into the Pomson 6000, which is just... kind of a painful thing to wonder how someone decided to design it. There's zero notable downsides (destroying buildings slightly slower is not a downside in this situation, let's be honest), and there's so many advantages that happen to counter the kind of stuff that's good vs. an engineer, to the point that there is not a single reason to ever use any other primary for the engineer. This is the absolute weirdest thing to me, because they could have made a plain laser rifle similar to the Righteous Bison, and it'd be fine.

While there are a lot of weapons that make you wonder how the stats were made that way, I think this thread should be tailored toward why you would ban it in a "banning weapons" competitive setting. This will (hopefully) help Valve realize faster why we did what we did.

Ah, fair enough. In that aspect, let me explain the Pomson 6000 a bit better in a theoretical 6s setting:

Okay, shit. You just got pushed all the way back to your last point in dustbowl. so, time to go engie! You set up all of your stuff, and you await their push.

Assume for a moment: this team you're playing is really, REALLY good. Fantastic, even. If your primary were just a plain ol' shotgun, they would focus your sentry from below with an uber, making sure their scouts pick off some other players (including you) while it happened, and then win handily.

But you don't have a plain ol' shotgun equipped! You have the Pomson, because you're an awful person. So, in that same situation: they begin to push from below, and because you don't really need to care about accuracy (you got three more to shoot with if you miss one), you fire off some shots.

One of those shots just hit the medic. That team is now in a position in front of a sentry, and they have no uber to push with. They all die, because even if they were to focus the sentry now, they're lit enough to be picked off.

You just caused that. You monster.

looked like fun to contribute

spys===
spycicle
-renders team pyro useless as captain spychecker in events where the spy is cloaking with the knife out, as he can just run for cover and not be lit for another 2 seconds
-HL is a bit loud and heavy, and disabling scream, kill notification and only giving off the sound of freezing ice makes it powerful in making a team scramble entirely

your eternal reward
-while not OP, it is an important part of the Saharan set which is just too good altogether and also gives a buff that is pretty OP (see #6). A quick solution to balancing it would be to replace the eternal reward with the Wanga Prick, an item already in circulation with the same exact effects and then just removing the bonus.

red tape recorder
-unless you're already autoattacking your sentry, a redtape recorder will still get atleast a level off even if you're good which is huge as level 3 sentry is really just the whole base of engi's damage effectiveness due to rockets
-the ability to amplify the amount undone means that if your team can harass effectively what you tape recorder they won't even need to do enough damage to destroy them

sniper=====
cozy camper
-if there sniper is dead you're pretty much free to get uninhibited aim
-having extended health regen and no flinch on sniper allows him to play pretty agressively and get away with it for little cost if someone is spotting

jarate
-having the ability to keep enemies crit amplified for a period of time without anyway to reduce it's effect is too strong
-besides no 2nd slot, very little reason to not use it
-20 second cd, 10 seconds lasting without healing means if you're quick on the draw your enemies can be crit amplified for atleast 25 to 50% of the time
-as being a projectile it's very easy to toss this over long distances without any awful effects as a pyro can't airblast it the same ways away

multiclass====
reserve shooter
-syncs too well with soldier and degreaser pyro in that if you airblast someone/rocket their feet and you know it's going through, the fast switch allows you to punish him immediately with no recourse whatsoever and pretty easily get a second shot
-the minicrit damage itself basically gives 150 to 200% more damage to a shot. at point blank range, this makes damage go from 90 to 135
-said damage ramp makes an airblast into a corner too deadly to allow a timed delay on your shot to try and beat his reflect since you're already so low most likely that it won't take a second shot (or could and kill you anyways)

Gunslinger

The mini sentry builds at full health which means that in order to prevent it from damaging you it's required that you dedicate 2 shots to it at least. It also means that there is no benefit to having quick reactions and shooting the sentry immediately as it is deployed and no reason for the engineer to not just drop it immediately. Often times 3 shots are needed for scouts because of the small hitbox, which means that for just about every class that isn't demoman you are dedicating half your loaded ammo to kill the sentry. Not to mention that it heals as it builds so you /need/ to dedicate two consecutive shots to it which means that the engineer that you are now not damaging /has/ to be killed by your other two shots or you spend time reloading in front of the (now active) mini sentry.

Now for all of this, on the other end the engy has done something completely unskilled by just dropping a deployable pistol aimbot. The other ridiculous part being the completely expendable nature of the mini sentry as its 100 metal cost is immediately replenished by any killed enemy. It's damage output is still pretty great for how much range it has as well so dropping it in non-optimal positions still yields ridiculous dividends. The strength of its knockback is also too high as between its high damage output, aimbot nature, and large range it already shuts scouts down pretty hard, but it also manages to do that in a three dimensional nature.

And on top of that the engy gets +25 health.

Dead Ringer

Needs to have a shimmer after a few seconds, cripples explosive classes trying to push narrow corridors as the spy can just get up in their face and they now have an invisible wall preventing them from moving forward.

I believe the reserve shooter to be otherwise fine, due to the fact that the clips being halved severely gimps any sort of backup for a soldier (the pyro, on the other hand, can certainly be argued). However, the reason it's so widely banned is due to an exploit, where minicrits can land on anyone who happens to be going down stairs.

The Ullapool Caber is a pretty infamous item for essentially everyone, from pubs to pros, and the reason's fairly obvious: it covers the few flaws that a demoman is supposed to have, those flaws being:
-when running a vanilla set, his close-range is infinitely more deadly for him than it is for you
-a demoman that runs out of ammo has to rely on a pretty awful melee weapon that can't do much
With the Caber, if a demo runs out of ammunition, he still has a consistent backup where, if he even hits once, he will more than likely get a kill trade.

Vita-saw
-Forces either both medics or neither medic to run it since if one runs it and the other doesn't they will be perpetually behind

Pomson 6000
-almost no downsides to running it
-can't be reflected by pyro (<--- making it reflectable would be a good change)
-promotes spamming down chokes in hopes of hitting a medic

For more context here, the Gunslinger has zero drawbacks for the purposes of the gunslinger engineer (the "offensive" or mobile engineer).

Pros:

+ 25 health buff for the engineer
+ full health upon deployment of the mini-sentry (so you can't quickly shoot it to immediately destroy it when the engineer is caught out)
+ quick deployment
+ 100 metal
+ improved shooting (range, speed of fire) compared to regular sentries
+ small hitbox

Cons:

NOTHING. A mobile engineer can quickly deploy multiple mini-sentries without picking up any metal. And because mini-sentries are deployed with full health, they usually takes multiple rockets/scatterguns (not to mention their tiny hitbox) to be destroyed. In the mean time, the engineer and blast the enemy with their shotgun (and take more damage with their improved health) and immediately drop another once the first is destroyed. Not to mention pyros, scouts, other engineers, even snipers (and spies, but they shouldn't count) can be absolutely shut out of areas by one mini-sentry. It shuts down flanks.

Finally, a wrangled sentry again has no drawbacks and receives full benefits of the (overpowered, in need of a nerf) secondary.

Proposed Solutions:

- Mini-sentries should not deploy with full health. They already deploy quick, and they currently act as both an escape mechanism and an offensive weapon when an engineer uses one. If you catch an engineer out of position, he should not have an escape mechanism that does damage as effectively as a mini-sentry does.

- Mini-sentries should not be allowed to be wrangled. This assumes there isn't a more appropriate wrangler nerf (which there should be, because the pistol is nice and the short circuit promotes awesome plays).

- It should cost 110 metal to deploy (and dispensers should cost 90 metal with a gunslinger, or something). An engineer should have to pick up metal, either from a disposed enemy or an ammo box, to drop another.

- Mini sentries should reload! The other nerfs are more to stop the over-poweredness of an engineer dropping minis as he engages with heavy classes. But a reloading mini is much easier to handle on the flank by classes that are currently shut down by the auto-aiming, auto-firing small-hitbox pistol. A 4-round clip with a 0.50 second reload makes the weapon usable but not something that can effectively shut down entire areas of the map. It also stops engineers from engaging so directly with heavy classes, as the deployment time + the reload time means that a mini sentry isn't going to so quickly murder someone if they focus first on killing the engineer.

i get the feeling you haven't used it at any point recently considering a few months ago they nerfed it and now it takes 3.4 seconds to downgrade a single level.

if you are an alive engineer and can't hit your sentry twice in 3.4s then wtf you doing.

e:

also people really need to stop proposing solutions, valve doesn't care about those. ANYONE can come up with solutions, they want to know what the problems are.

I don't have a problem with seeing solutions; it makes you think a little bit more about the problems. I'm doing my best to sum up what people say about the bad parts of each weapon in the OP, without solutions or other text.

It's frustrating to play against the wrangler because the skill required to use it effectively is extremely significantly lower than the skill required to counter it in any situation, directly because of its mechanical attributes. I'm willing to point out some thing which are individually bad for balance in the lack of any flaws with which to counter them:

- Dealing damage is significantly harder, but healing it isn't (especially: stickytraps which could kill a wrangled sentry are trivial to blast away because of the time required to set them)
- The manual aim extends the sentry range past its normal bubble with no form of falloff whatsoever, making it one of the best long range damage (think badwater sightlines) sources in the game

and then i lost my train of thought entirely

On another note one of the ways gang garrison 2 avoids its own sentries being obnoxious is making it so that they cannot fire in the 90 degree cones directly above and blow themselves

Just to be clear on jarate, there are a couple of ways of clearing it faster. Heal beams reduce its duration, and submerging in water eliminates it.

Whoopee, check your formatting on the links. I don't think they are going where they should.

Going to re-word the soda popper one, I don't agree with how it was worded.

these are the weapons stats.

+25% faster reloading speed
+50% firing speed
-66% clip size
No random critical hits
Build 'hype' as you run
When the hype meter is full,
unleash mini-crits!

So, at the buffed fire rate, this weapon fires 50% faster.

This means a few key things. Firing faster pretty much means that there is less time for error in the aim of a player. So essentially, if you can track a player and hold down mouse1 those are two very easy shots to get off.

Continuing with that, not only will you fire two shots very fast, but you reload those two shots at a decently fast rate as well. This negates some of the weapons falloff.

Factor mini-crits in, the weapon will output even more damage at a faster rate then the stock. The falloffs are not a big deal.

To continue with the mini-crits, you are able to put them on any of your weapons. If you pair that with a scouts pistol it is a nightmare. Many of you know what that is like.

These mini-crits can simply be stored to use at any moment on any of your weapons.

Assuming both scouts have near perfect aim in a scout fight, the scout with the soda popper will usually always win. It is either down to him being able to fire his shots faster, win the long fights with the faster reloading, the mini-crits, or a combination of all 3.

http://i.imgur.com/LIEDG6Q.png

"Its raw DPS is only lower for some fractions of a second before reloading, its minicrits massively amplify damage for it OR for the pistol at even medium range, and at the point of reloading it in the middle of a battle if you miss all your shots you literally have an advantage over stock. You don't need to play with it for a week to see that, it's a theoretical direct upgrade because its only downsides in perfect play occur in small windows of time in the first three seconds of a fight. Yes, there are psychological hiccups to using it, but those are actually *because* of the status quo (people aren't used to using it), and getting rid of the status quo would make it more powerful (because there's no tactically counterable downsides)."

Is it too much to ask to change airblast so it doesn't just stop a scout dead in the middle of the air? Airblast would function a lot more logically as a pushing mechanism.

The Eternal Reward isn't the problem. The set is. They need to nerf the set bonus instead of the weapon.

I'm pretty sure that's why it's a soldier and pyro item, and not, say, heavy.

Degreaser isn't inherently unfun to play against. The problem it that it's detrimental to "variety" and the future development of the class because there can never be another primary weapon as good as the degreaser for the pyro. Therefore, all his new weapons must be secondaries and melees. But to make those good enough to be sidegrades to the axtinguisher and flare gun, they have to synergize with the degreaser and crit flaming players or otherwise reward quickswap (reserve shooter).

Basically the entirety of the pyro's past and future unlocks are balanced according to the ridiculous strength of the degreaser to the point where you only see other primaries if it's banned and you never see anyone use a secondary or melee that doesn't autocrit (except powerjack... which is only because it combines with the degreaser to give a buff that the pyro should arguably already have anyway).

The degreaser was banned in a pick/ban pug earlier today because the pyro class is the most one-dimensional of them all right now. Even the sniper has more variety because of the jarate vs SMG choice, the potential for huntsman use, etc. The only way you see depth in the class is by making the phlog allowed and the degreaser banned. I never saw a phlog pyro go unfocused long enough to get the mmmph anyway, but that weapon is another story. With this change, people got to see the differences between w+m1 aggro pyro, stock flamethrower passive/support/antispy pyro, and the too-versatile degreaser pyro that does both at the same time, better than either does its own job.

Why doesn't the Vita Saw just give you health when you get a swipe? Why even bother messing with uber?
I'm pretty sure Vita means "Life".