Dead Ringer

Damage resistance lasts too long for the amount of damage negated, and basically acts as a get out of jail free card, making it difficult to punish discovered spies.

Force A Nature (because I like this gun)

Knockback and more pellets don't justify the slow reload speed and the impracticality of fighting with the weapon in the air.

Liberty Launcher

An explicit crutch that trades effectiveness for ease of use. Cannot possibly match up to other rocket launchers, and encourages bad play.

Mini Sentry

Extremely difficult to destroy while being built, and knockback interferes too much with players fighting around or against it.

Jarate

A weapon that causes a major impact on the flow of the game regardless of the ability of the player using it.

Degreaser and Flamethrowers

Degreaser is superior to all the other flamethrowers to the point that playing without it is a waste of time. I do not believe that the degreaser needs changed however.

MG and Soldier Melees

Equalizer is superior to all the other melees to the point that playing without it is a waste of time. I do not believe that the escape plan needs changed however.

Most of what you wrote doesn't justify balance reasoning and is more of you wanting new weapons/features, which isn't the purpose of this thread.

dead ringer should deal 100% damage on critical hit instead of letting the spy tank most of the damage
as it stands it can stuff pushes by just standing in front of people even while they kritz, or dead ringer out of crit axes, headshots, backstabs, kritskriegs which shouldnt be the case

For the record, the reasons that the reserve shooter is banned are

1) it often/always registers players on stairs as "airborne" and grants minicrits

and

2) if airblasted into the ground, your character will be registered as "airborne" until you jump and land again, also granting minicrits.

It is decently balanced otherwise (at least for most players). If you have sick shotgun aim, I could see it being OP, especially at places like badlands mid. For most people though, only three shells is a huge disadvantage.

However I'm afraid that this thread is just going to devolve into SPUF-style complaining about weapons which never leads to anything.

Didn't read the thread closely, my bad. edited

Is this really a downside though? Although there are plenty of people who don't want to see a class like pyro, where the class within itself is easy enough as it is, I'm all for making the utility more viable, regardless of exactly how much more. But on the flipside, with your suggestion for the BB, I feel like you're trying to make it easier for pyro just for the class alone.

I get that pyros mainly reflect rockets over stickies, arrows, pipes and whatever else there is, but making something weaker for the sake of a single class isn't the way to balance an item.

Look back at your Wrangler suggestions. Those suggestions balance the weapon in a way that helps everything against it, whereas the BB suggestion only helps the pyro. Sure, in the bigger picture, slower rockets = easier for every class, but the suggestion itself seemed to stem from wanting to help the pyro only.

Let's not forget the fact that the weapon's gimmick is to shoot 2-4 rockets consecutively and quick, though exactly how quickly they should fire after one another can be a fine debate itself. The firing speed can't, however, be made so slow that the pyro can reflect at least 2 of the 3.

If anything, I would suggest that the BB takes longer to load rockets and the rockets not only spread even more the further they go, but fly in more random directions.

The only cons for the BB at the moment are the soldier needing to take time to put in a rocket before firing, self damage from trying to load too many rockets, and poor long range (possibly medium too) splash damage. It's an up close spam weapon with virtually no cons that balance out with the fact that it's basically an up close spam weapon. It's cons only affect longer ranges and potentially the player, which that con itself should be ruled out as it's nothing to talk about.

With an even slower rate to load rockets, the soldier against a pyro would either have to a) fire one rocket instead of 2+ or b) try to leave. If that soldier isn't going to take time to shoot only one rocket, then that pyro is going to tear him a new one. If the soldier tries to back pedal while loading and firing rockets, then his chances of escaping could very well increase enough to matter. This change in the weapon is good in the sense that it not only helps pyros have a better chance of defending themselves against the BB (while not making it completely easy for them to), but it also helps other classes against it.

The weapon itself isn't overpowered but it definitely can use some changes.

tl;dr weapon balances should not cater to helping a single class counter it unless the weapon itself is meant to be against a single class such as the razorback.

According to the cp_badlands_pro thread, the Wrangler allows you to shoot through invisible clipping, which isn't possible with other hitscan weapons.

It also has aim assist, which means you do not need to aim precisely, reducing the skill required to use it.

Sticky Launcher and Minigun come to mind. They are so much better than any other option for their class that virtually nothing else gets played. That sounds like a pretty good definition of 'overpowered' right?
Coincidentally demo and heavy are also two of the most play defining classes in HL. If Valve wants class balance (each class effects the flow of play equally) then this might be a good place to start?

Shortstop - Doesn't shoot bullets where i aim my crosshair, extremely randiomized spread even at mid range.

Dalokohs Bar/Fishcake

The red-headed step child of Heavy secondary unlocks. This is basically a downgrade to the other lunchbox items, because:

- You can't throw it
- You heal only 60 health with it
- Eating it takes as much time as Sandvich/BSS, so some punk spy can still waltz in and shank your ass

I do believe the mechanics of the Fishcake are pretty balanced (since you can eat it nonstop) but not being able to throw it is a bit of a deal breaker. I can imagine flank heavies doing work with it if it had just a little buff. (Like being able to toss it with a balanced recharge time)

i thought that the groundstall issue was "fixed" (or at least fixed for a huge majority of the time -- is this not the case?

The default weapons are (in my opinion) supposed to be the best all-arounder items, means, for the majority of the situations they should be the most efficient options, unlocks should be viewed as strategic choices or playstyle preference if a player adapts better to them, they should at most be viable sidegrades that are better in particular situations but the standard ones should be the best all-around

Anything that can one shot people at full health (except sniper headshots and backstabs) needs to be nerfed. eg loch n load, direct hit.

It was fixed, but I believe there's still issues with players on stairs.

it is part of the problem though since when used by someone who actually spends time to practice with it you get really dumb shit, not only can the class essentially designed to protect the combo not protect the combo but the combo can't even protect itself against this shit, I mean, a medic can't airstrafe off of it either basically (you die before you get the chance) and often the BB soldier simply flies far too fast with a proper overcharge jump for anyone to reliably airshot the person (except maybe a really good DH user) or hit him with much hitscan.

this really is the main problem with the weapon. a combination of its ROF, overcharge jumping speed, raw damage, etc makes it an absurd bombing item, by far the best in the game, with little counterplay options for most of the classes - if a BB soldier bombs you and you're not a heavy with a full buff you're dead, pretty guaranteed. Unless you stay inside a building 24/7 or something.

I was told that someone whined really hard and they un-fixed it the same way they un-fixed the chargin' targe glitch on degroot keep. The difference is that one of these improved the dynamics of the game while the other one didn't.

I'd easily be totally wrong though because it's third-hand info.

The persian persuader doesn't give you a predictable amount of health from fallen weapons/ammo crates. It used to be too much, now it's too little, and it's always an odd number of health that you gain. Also, you should be able to get ammo from dispensers and the cart, or at least get more health from those things, when you have the persian persuader equipped.

Shield's charge should be able to cancel on m2, because otherwise you have to pull out the melee to cancel the charge

The vaccinator isn't strong enough, only really helps the people you're healing. The medigun can spread around overheal to help the whole team, vaccinator does worse in that situation. On top of that, Vaccinator only is better if the person you are healing is currently taking damage. In all other cases, it's worse.

Quick-Fix has the same problem. If everybody is at full health you are not doing anything but building uber, and the benefit for it is never as good as the medigun's benefit. Mobility helps the medic only in certain edge cases, unless you specifically train for this weapon with your team.

edit: I would love to see a medigun that heals multiple people. Make it happen Valve!

#47 I agree that the vaccinator isn't "good enough", but for different reasons. It's not that it doesn't do well enough what the other mediguns do, it's that its quirk (mini-ubers and resistance on heal) doesn't affect the game's other dynamics enough to make up for it. It's also really shaky ground, because it's annoying as hell to play against a heavy that's being healed by a vaccinator medic (so damage resistance), especially on koth where no mobility doesn't matter, and in pubs. It's a really good pocket weapon until it's uber time, where it's shitty.

On the quick fix: I think that with the "go really fast with your soldiers/demos/scouts" it does have some weird tactical niche in 6s that hasn't been done really well yet because it's so dangerous to change off of a traditional uber gun. It really needs something to mitigate that before it can be used effectively. I know this is anecdotal and shitty because of context, but once I was playing medic in a badwater lobby: they had kritz and were capping the first point and there was no way in hell we would be able to set up on roof in time to stop them from doing ~anything~ that they wanted, so I went quick fix, hoped for the best, and jumped our heavy down in front of their combo and engie with it. Their demo and engie and tele went down because they couldn't kill us fast enough through the quick fix uber (we did die because of it though), so they couldn't set up after their heavy kritzed into us and they didn't get as much done as the demo would've.

I would love to see a third ubercharge on a standard medigun that made a triangle out of the balance there is right now with invuln and kritz. Something that's good for taking out kritz early, but screwed if they get it; and at the same time something that invuln's good at taking out early, but screwed if THESE get it. So it would just make a rock paper scissors out of the existing kritz/uber duality thing, and it would probably be one of the better circular balances in the game because each 1v1 in it has its own tactical balance.

Off the top of my head, I can think of something with a weak AoE heal/buff with some kind of mini-invuln like the quickfix's that's longer than invuln, or some way to instantly heal a member of your team a bunch of health without being near them, or something that gives a "chain lightning" damage effect but not necessarily a damage boost (they've already messed with that idea, with the pyro melee that hits across healing beams). Anything that would downright make it easier to force and invuln to juggle or make it easier to get away from an invuln, without making it much easier to fight against a kritz.

This is just a general suggestion that I think would help balance the Heavy weapons a bit: introduce "cone of fire" as an attribute. I feel all of the Heavy's weapons should have a tighter cone so tracking is more important, raising the skill ceiling of the Heavy and potentially making him fun.

#49 Don't forget making him do more dps at long range... Making him have more knockback and damage in general when he's aiming well... etc...

they'd need to compensate by lowering the damage of bullets to match, coz you would instantly regret this idea if they didn't do that.

it would have to be a big damage nerf too, cause with current damage values a heavy would do 180 damage per second at long range.

please no

Picking up kits to remove it and lowering the duration would also help, as it currently stands there's water you can submerge yourself in on so few maps that it isn't a reliable nerf at all.

Edit: should also add that the ridiculously large radius on the explosion makes it actually difficult to miss with and despite healing reducing the duration it isn't feasible for a single medic to be able to quickly remove jarate from 3 players. Similar to mad milk the effect is so crippling on a pushing team that they are forced to back-up which means that they essentially are limited to a 10 second push window which is easily made up for by team-mates until jarate cools down again. Gives sniper way too much control over pushing teams for little difficulty and no downside.

I think there's a pretty good sense of weapons that need nerds (generally from the UGC banlist etc.) So what i'm going to do is look in my inventory, and list all the weapons I rarely or actually never use that may need buffs of some sort:

Scout:

Primary:
Soda Popper (Rarely used- generally to give my pistol crits)
Short Stop
Force of Nature (Just MVM)
Baby Face's Blaster (MVM)

Secondary:
Crit-a-cola
Winger

Melee:
Fan o'War (MVM)
Sun on a Stick

Sniper:

Secondary:
Cozy Camper (better alternatives available)

Melee:
Shahanshah

Soldier:

Secondary:
Mantreads
Reserve Shooter
Righteous Bison
Concheror
Batallion's Backup

Demo:

Primary:
Loch n Load
Loose Canon

Secondary:
Scottish Resistance

Melee:
Claidheamh Mor
Scotman's Skullcutter

Medic:

Secondary:
Vaccinator
Quick-Fix (Rarely)

Pyro:

Primary:
Stock

Melee:
Third Degree
Sharpened Volcano Fragment
Neon Annihilator

I do not play heavy or spy enough to feel qualified to talk about those items.

One simple solution to make more of these items feasible would simply be to allow banning stock weapons in the pick/ban system. Each class has many viable alternatives to the stock items, and they would all see a lot more use if they were allowed. Otherwise, simply buffing these alternatives would provide some incentive at the least to say, "Oh i'll use the Scottish Resistance today instead of the stock sticky launcher.

Banning stock items seems like a horrible idea, as you could literally ban every classes options on a slot then. What exactly would stop someone from banning medi-gun/kritz/vaccinator/quick fix and depriving the other team of a functioning medic?

Beyond horrible, what if a player loses item server connection and gets stuck with banned stock weapons? Hello civilian class.

Their team would also lose the option of having a medic with any healing guns as well. In addition, people are experimenting with set number of bans per class. It all depends on the combination of items. The biggest problem right now honestly though is that stock weapons in most cases tend to be great if not the best option anyways. So if buffing other items is not a possibility, then perhaps allowing people to ban stock will encourage the use of other items.

Still an awful idea, even in games that allow people to ban things it is never possible to just ban an entire option. I hate bringing up DotA examples because 99% of people who bring them up are clueless about actual balance, but if you could ban every carry in the hero pool then the entire draft phase would be wildly different. Allowing players to always have a stock option is fine because it has formed the back-bone of class balance for literally 5 and a half years. Suddenly throwing that out and /forcing/ people to use unlocks is not good for competition at any level.

You're forgetting (or not understanding) that these bans apply to both teams. If one team bans 3 medic unlockables, then neither team can use them

I also think it should be illegal to ban the last item in a slot. If Quick-fix, medigun, and kritzkrieg are banned, then each medic is forced to run vaccinator. At this point, the vaccinator cannot be banned by either team.

Back to the topic:
Cozy Camper doesn't do enough. It's just barely not worse than having nothing in the secondary slot at all, and way worse than having jarate in the second slot.

Enforcer needs to not have a weapon speed nerf. The weapon speed nerf doesn't do anything to most competitive spies, so the weapon acts as a plain old buff most duels.

Pomson's primary problem is that the crappy little particle effect isn't enough to indicate that the most important resource is being drained from you, there should be some gigantic sound/visual effect when it causes a medic to lose uber. (sorry for the solution)

The backburner specializes the pyro too much still, and yet still not enough. I feel like the backburner gives the pyro a better roaming option slightly, but it doesn't feel like it's so much better for flanking than degreaser/axtinguisher that it would ever really be an upgrade when you're losing so much versatility by using it.

Pretty Boy's Pocket Pistol
-Allows a scout to be buffed to 225 health with overheal, which is much harder to kill than a scout with the standard 185 overheal (3 direct rockets or full ramp-up scattergun hits at 225 vs 2 at 185)
-No fall damage allows scouts to bomb in after camping in high-up perches without being injured
-Very little effective downside vs the default pistol, as the lower dps is negligible and scouts can easily dodge flamethrowers

Could we please leave opinions like this out of our discussions, cause it's obvious that nobody has done the experimentation over a long period of time necessary to prove that in the long run banning such things is unhealthy for the metagame. Please refrain from such obscene speculation.