weve reached the point in this thread where the question has moved from "what weapons are overpowered" to "what weapons are good"

>You just said to stop arguing about it

I said to stop arguing about a specific thing.

>only to continue the argument right after saying that because you couldn't help yourself having the last word.

That was not continuing the argument. That was creating a rhetorical bedrock for the next phrase. Excuse me if taking things at face value all the time turns out to be a bad way to judge what people are doing.

...and is that a bad thing? If we point out what weapon in a slot is clearly the better one, then we can find out how to balance it from there. Whether that means nerfing that weapon, or buffing the others isn't something I wanted to imply, I simply wanted to get into a different conversation.

On a side note, talking about whether melees' downsides are worth it or not is pretty pointless since it's extremely obvious that most classes in the game have utility unlock melees that aren't considered broken (on the contrary they're considered standard) and their stock melees are considered plain bad. I don't mean that talking about their balance itself is pointless, because just look at the equalizer split and the GRU rebalance for highlander etc; just that the question "Are our standard melees too good?" is already solved.

Speaking of which, is there a way to make heavy more relevant in 6s in a way that doesn't interfere with midfights? I know that if a match is really slow or a map is "small" (like gullywash) taking him out is already viable (and taking him out on defense is a standard tactic), but how can we make him relevant in the main game? He can't spearhead pushes against mobile players like a soldier can, so he's a bad pocket. He has bad mobility and a hard time escaping, so he's a bad roamer/flank. He can't abuse/circumvent terrain advantages like demoman so he's a bad assist/damager during pushes. He's essentially used as a damage sponge during teamfights that are already going on in open areas, like last points and spires (at least, spires that he can get onto easily like process's).

Let's pretend for a moment that it's totally possible to give him an unlock that gives up part of what he's already good for in 6s to put him into another niche. Let's say something that gives him a worthwhile escape mechanism. The fists of steel already have a kind of escape utility but they're annoying at worst and let him be running away for a few extra seconds at best (worst and best for this purpose I mean). They're annoying because they make it harder/more annoying to kill him when he's using them and ineffectual because they don't actually allow him to outrun anything that's fighting him. What if, while having the fists of steel equipped, the heavy had a charge bar that built up as he takes damage, and then he can activate it for a speed boost? As a downside you can make it so that crits penetrate the damage resistance, also fixing the problem of "God DAMN it, my fully charged headshot didn't kill him!" which is one of the annoying problems with the fists of steel and I probably should have mentioned that first instead of here. Anyways, this is just an idea and I'm really sorry for the massive tangential suggestion.

probably don't want to hear it ..but sticky launcher

Problem:
1. The sticky launcher is far too effective at defending close range due to the low arm time and massive damage when in close vicinity. This significantly reduces the major weakness of demoman and lets them deal with enemies without needing to use the pipe launcher close range in many scenarios.
2. With 8 stickies in a clip and low arm time there is no other comparable offensive weapon in the game. From a public game perspective a competent demoman w/ a sticky launcher can single handedly swing large games in ways that no other class can. Even in a more open 6v situation where scouts have room to work against them demoman have to be limited to one primarily due to the crazy damage output of the sticky launcher.

Some possible solutions:
1. stickies begin with reduced splash radius once launched, increasing to current splash radius after sticky is in the world for x seconds (so it still rewards precision up close/afar, but they won't be nukes when used close range or offensively)
2. begin with reduced damage once launched and increase over time to current level.
3. normalize damage over distance somewhat so they aren't nuclear bombs up close
4. slightly increase arm time to reduce viability for certain close-in defense situations
5. Some combination of the above

I'm not saying do all of those things w/ the sticky launcher, but something needs to be done if you want to be honest about it's balance. If making those changes to the sticky launcher it would be nice to reduce the self damage from pipes though.

IIRC valve already nerfed the sticky launcher's combat capabilities in the past. I don't see the point in nerfing the sticky launcher itself, because an intelligent scout and/or soldier can take down a demoman unless they're being hard pocketed by a medic or defended by others (which is a point of teamwork: covering individual weaknesses). Also, changing things like the arming time or splash radius will affect rollouts which is something that should absolutely positively be avoided because they are not part of the "problem".

On the splash radius impacting self jumping- It shouldn't be hard for them to apply normal radius self splash all the time, much like they do with the direct hit. (at least it seems like they do with the direct hit...maybe I'm wrong)

Maybe just make him a bit squishier? Honestly, it's hard to think of any decent nerfs that wouldn't make him immediately less fun to play and watch. Being able to transition between aggressive offense and tricky defense is sort of gig, really, even if that wasn't the intention, and I like that.

You're wrong, the splash radius is smaller with DH.

#129 Please read that again.

Since half of the posts regarding pyro are either poorly thought out reactionary posts or based entirely on playing awful players, I thought I'd make a post outlining the issues with pyro as a class and why I'm so strongly against a significant nerf to the class. Before you minus frag immediately, let me note that I'd be fine with removing minicrits on reflects.

So here's the main problem with pyro. His design is to be an adept CQC class like scout, but lacks both the mobility or versatility to take advantage of it. Pyro is seriously a one trick pony. So when it comes to 1v1s, pyro can only rely on baiting someone to get into airblast range to turn the fight in his favor. However, flamethrower DPS falls off considerably at the end of the flame's lifespan. At that range, the pyro's secondary is far more effective. So even in the pre-degreaser days, the pyro had to switch to his secondary to deal any damage whatsoever. The long weapon switch did not allow for the pyro to really capitalize on the mistake of getting into the pyro's range, and as such the other player could easily either get away or finish off the pyro. The degreaser allowed the pyro to essentially fuse both his primary and secondary weapons, finally allowing pyro to punish players for making the mistake of getting within pyro's extremely short range. Yes, most (bad) pub pyros will just use degreaser in conjunction with axetinguisher, but ask just about any high level HL pyro if the risk involved in meleeing someone is worth the reward, and the general consensus is that it isn't in the vast majority of cases. The ability to punish anyone who gets in the pyro's range is the exact reason why pyro is a decent flank class in HL, and taking that away will remove the hardest part of playing pyro in highlander, which is realizing and understanding when the pyro should be on the flank and when he should be on the combo.

I'd also note that the reserve shooter sucks for the same reason the degreaser is great. The versatility is just too much to give up, and reserve shooter is not nearly as versatile as either flare gun or shotgun.

As for the proposed "go back to pre airblast buff" nerf, I'll go through each.

1)25 ammo cost
This one isn't too bad, but realistically a pyro will generally hover around 160-170 ammo. This is the difference between 6 and 8 airblasts, a massive 25% difference compared to (what seems like) 20%. I guess I'd be okay with this, but I don't see why it would be necessary or what it would accomplish. A pyro only needs two or three airblasts to disrupt an uber properly assuming he doesn't W+M2 into an uber like an idiot.

2)Longer cooldown between airblasts
I actually heavily disagree with this one since it removes a very interesting dynamic between pyro and soldier. BECAUSE pyro has the exact same airblast speed as soldier, you develop the concept of Yomi here. Basically, Yomi is predicting your opponent's action and acting appropriately. Yomi works in layers
Layer 0: soldier fires a rocket
Layer 1: pyro airblasts
Layer 2: soldier waits a little bit, then fires a rocket
Layer 3: pyro waits a little bit, then airblasts

Layer 1 beats 0, 2 beats 1, 3 beats 2, and 0 beats 3. Understanding this is crucial to outplaying high level soldiers as a pyro, though I haven't really experienced many soldiers who incorporate this thinking when playing pyros.

3) Minicrits on reflects
This I'm okay with being gone. Reason being that reflects are close range for the most part, and so the 30% damage boost is superfluous most of the time. It only really adds frustration to fighting pyros so I'd be fine with this being gone.

Hopefully that's in-depth enough to ward off more "nerf pyro" posts. This thread is being linked to Valve and I'd really prefer that reactionary posts about weapons are gone.

I'd be more interested in more of an airblast range decrease and pushback decrease when pushing other player units with the degreaser airblast, but keep the airblast reflect range for rockets the same. It encourages close combat, well then you should get in close. This would allow people to keep their quick switching while giving the degreaser a notable performance flaw while using it, which is how all non-stock weapons are supposed to be, getting something for giving something up.

Keep the ammo, keep the mini crits. The ability to push back another player from a considerable range (longer then the actual flame in hammer units) and switch near instantly is the relative problem. You're not giving anything up for using the weapon. Afterburn damage and flame damage are negligible because that is not a pyro's main source of damage, like pointed out again and again.

TL;DR: The degreaser needs some sort of side downgrade that makes sense to counter-act the quickswitch, otherwise there is literally no reason ever to use any other flame-thrower, which Valve does not want.

Also, pyro is the only class that never recommends viable item builds outside of the one-two combo of the degreaser. That in itself is a problem, because that shows there's a weapon monopoly.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Moving on, Soldier secondaries need to be seriously looked at. There is no reason ever to use anything outside of the shotgun or gunboats, and even sometimes not even the shotgun (in highlander). Every other secondary needs a buff to them to compete. Why use any of the banner secondaries when you can jump more? The bison is a pretty powerful weapon too, but the speed of it is what gimps it to not being used over the shotgun.

But you have the same situation as the sticky launcher with degreaser, in that it's in an extremely brittle place. Any nerf to it would have to be a nudge, otherwise it loses too much power. Airblast push range nerf is one that's would have to be slight, because the pyro's range is already very very short.

I honestly don't think there's much that can be done without making fast quickswitch an inherent ability of the class. It's just perfect for what the pyro needs to be a less shit class. Still a shit class, but just less so.

I think making it so that I can't airblast people who are literally out of flame range would be nice and fair.

Sticky Launcher has viable alternatives though. Scottish Resistance can be used in a way that the Sticky Launcher cannot be. It has a side grade, while hitting it with a downgrade such as primer times which hurts it when not using them as traps.

And it seems like a really cut and dry way to just suggest the degreaser should be the inherent ability of the class. This isn't the beta of TF2, the game's been out for too long to suggest something along the lines of changing the core of the class. If pyro was intended to be a quick switch, then they would've made it that way. But it's not that way. Pyro originally was not intended to do that. It was given a side grade so it could do that.

To just accept that the rest of the items besides the degreaser are shit, is not the point of this and actually goes against what is trying to be done here. Degreaser has no downgrade, it needs one that hurts it in a way that makes other flamethrowers viable. Afterburn and flamethrower damage on a weapon that doesn't use either of those to deal damage mainly, are not downgrades.

You can't argue about the original intent of the class as pyro had no real role when the game was launched. Just spychecking, and that's it. And spies were pretty awful back then, invis watch didn't recover with metal and spy as a class didn't have most of its techniques become well known until the 2009-2010 period.

And the quickswitch is fairly important to keep the pyro's ability to punish people who get into range. The only thing I can really think that can do that job is an incredibly unfun Natasha type flamethrower that slows people with the flame particle.

Playing against air blast in it's current state is really unfun.

If you try to uber into it, you just get indefinitely air blasted into a wall. Even if you manage to kill the Pyro while this is happening, by the time you have done so, you have wasted so much time to do it.

There should definitely be an increase in ammo required for air blast, so you can't just hold down right click for almost the entirety of the uber.

Additionally, knock back needs to be tweaked. If you are fighting a Pyro, you are immobilized by the air blast. You can't air strafe out of it, and it knocks back so far. You basically can't do anything aggression wise until the Pyro is dead. Taking that much movement away from the player is just unfun for the same reason Natasha is. If the knock back had less power and allowed the player to air strafe, it would be much better.

well... it looks like Whoopee_Cushion should add pyro airblast to his list.

The Concheror is garbage but the Backup and Banner are pretty legit.

Some maps are really awful for jumping but great for spamming and you can get a banner fairly easily, like, uh, Barnblitz.

If you pocket your Medic you can get a backup and then milk the shit out of an uber with damage resistance and headshot (+ kritz) immunity.

I think when airblasting players downwards it should simply do nothing instead of knocking them upwards, it's kind of shitty they don't have to aim the direction they want to push me in order to make me airborne, they can reflect a rocket back at someone's feet and make them airborne at the same time

While this is a legitimate issue, nerfing the knockback on the airblast removes a huge support role the pyro holds while simultaneously nerfing the pyro's offensive capabilities.

Pyro is in a very fragile state right now, and anything that isn't a slight nudge is going to have a very adverse effect on the class. :c

As long as we are sending shit to valve:
Shadows through walls
Doors glitchung
Granary red second spawn

Official TF2 Wiki:

Rocket Launcher Attack interval: 0.8 s

Airblast cooldown: 0.75 s

Currently there is NO yomi. This is the result of the standard Valve "overcompensating" way of balancing the game. Once a weapon (or function of said weapon) is deemed OP or UP, Valve tends to overreact and create a new problem on the opposing end of the scale. I agree though, rocket fire rate and airblast fire rate should be the exact same interval. Except with the degreaser. The degreaser should have a slightly slower cooldown, because of the fact that the pyro can out-yomi a soldier or other class by quickly switching to sg or fg when the opposing player is smart enough to not be the first to fire a projectile.

There are ways to make the airblast fights more interesting though. How about a cooldown meter on your airblast: the sooner your airblast, the more ammo you consume (thus enabling you to airblast faster than 0.8s, at the cost of a LOT of ammo). Or how about a charge meter (like the sticky launcher) to determine the strength of your airblast, which is also linked to ammo consumption? Maybe the strength of the airblast also influences the damage of a reflected projectile? This increases the yomi depth. "Easy" fast reflects will keep the pyro unharmed, but won't do much damage to the enemy that fired the projectile. Well timed and charged airblasts can do big amounts of damage, even surpassing that of mini crits.

The current state of the airblast physics are ridiculous. It seems perfectly possible to airblast people slightly around corners (where map geometry blocks a direct line between the middle of the pyro player model and the enemy player model) which seems unfair to me. I also agree with making the blast range closer to the actual flaming range.

The fact that the airblast completely stuns you is indeed silly and the opposite of fun to play against. I agree that the airblast should work more like a normal explosion in terms of physics and mechanics, eg, you should be able to airstrafe out of it. Jumping while getting airblasted should work the same as rocket/sticky surfing. Also, pyros can airblast projectiles they're not even looking at, because the airblast hitbox is so wide? Pyros can airblast rockets that are not even aimed at them? I have experienced rocket jumping only to be killed by a mini crit deflected rocket.

Sorry Valve for coming up with "solutions" :P

I don't feel the two can honestly be compared. Air Blast is a core class mechanic (every Pyro primary but the Phlog has it, unlike Natascha being the only minigun having a type of movement control). Furthermore, Natascha slows you to a crawl allowing the Heavy to essentially make up for the lost damage because it takes you longer to get to cover (and lets not forget lag compensation and how it affect hitscan weapons).

Pyro, on the other hand, has to get in his required CQC range first; secondly, air blast is exactly for controlling enemy movement. Once you let a Pyro grab you with his air blast, the inevitable stream of fire followed by either a flare or axe to your face is a given. If you just avoid engaging a Pyro at close quarters and feeding him easy reflects, his only way of dealing good damage is hitting you with multiple flares. You'd better be damn good at weapon heckling otherwise, or you'll likely lose a shotgun duel.

Didn't they patch something to fix "ground stalling?" FWIW, as a Pyro, I think being able to lock a person in place on the ground is 100% worse than juggling them in the air. It makes crit flares or Axtinguishes significantly cheaper ammo-wise. You only need 21 primary ammo instead of a potential 41 (or 61 if you're having a really bad day).

Assuming you are reflecting at a slight down angle, you'l likely send the other player backwards if the ground is even from my experience. This would reduce the damage to them by a slight amount, which is obviously not the most desirable situation. Something I think I might wanna test out a bit though...

Bad bad bad. I think it's unfair to have Pyro reflect slower than Soldier can shoot. It's equally unfair Pyro can simply spam 2 air blasts in a row without thinking for 2 reflects. These numbers should be the same - right now I don't see how that extra .05s can suddenly make consecutive reflects significantly more difficult, if not impossible. Definitely something that's needing a close examining and fix.

Damn, poor Pyro, what'd he do to draw this much vitriol?

.05 seconds is nothing. If the pyro was to spam airblast as a soldier spammed his clip, the difference would only be .1 seconds. And seeing as how pyro doesnt just have to aim the rocket like the soldier did, but he needs to react fast enough to actually reflect the rocket as well, it doesnt seem unfair at all.

Minicrit reflects MIGHT be work rethinking, because a good close range reflect tends to end fights too fast, but the reflecting mechanic as a whole doesnt need a straight nerf.

i've actually gotten reflects I wouldn't have because of the extra 0.05 seconds before
just because people are saying it literally doesn't matter: yes it does, without it I would have needed to backpedal to land the second airblasts

Can you faggots stop using the term yomi, none of you play fighting games at a decent level.

I don't know how it became FACT in the highlander community that pyro is "the worst 1v1" class in the game when the exact opposite is true. This stuff about "Getting into a pyro's" range and having to "properly" punish people for it is bullshit. The flamethrower and airblast's range is and has been ridiculous for quite a long time and because of FULL CRITS ON FLARES the pyro is pretty much guaranteed a kill on anyone it can set on fire and airblast. Keep in mind that setting someone on fire and airblasting them isn't particularly difficult given that sections of maps will cordon off in such a way that a pyro is pretty much within airblast range if you happen to be in the same zip code as him.

As it currently stands pyro has the most brainless 1v1 ability, the most brainless uber defense ability, and the highest skill floor because the class is now designed to manufacture crits at every turn even when "pyro mains" accept that shit like mini-crit reflects is completely unnecessary for the class. The mechanic was fine when the airblast cooldown was higher because it forced the pyro to back-up if he wanted to reflect every rocket as opposed to the current state of "He can walk forward into you and if he gets a reflect you die, and you have no air mobility when being pushed, and he's now easily within ignition range, and he can kill you faster than you can shotgun him"

And seriously "CQC range" sounds retarded and is retarded because that CQ stands for "close quarters" and if you've ever looked at a pyros range from an aerial view it defies "close" pretty handedly.

edited for clarification

Do you just scream and shout slurs at everyone you talk to, or

You're really just yelling mindlessly and superciliously. For one, the idea that we don't understand yomi because we don't play fighting games is ludicrous and, quite frankly, misguided. It's not exclusive to fighting games, and applies to any game that has first order optimal move, a counter to that move, a counter to that counter, and a counter to that. All four are present, which enables yomi to be present. It's predicting your opponent's move, and acting accordingly. It's that simple. Unless you'd like to elaborate on how this isn't yomi, in which case I'm all ears and looking forward to your infinite wisdom.

I don't know if you've played HL in the past, or even played pyro really, but pyro is extremely helpless if he doesn't have the support of his team and the enemy isn't in range. Generally, for me to be able to take on most classes in a 1v1 I have to bait them to follow me and surprise them. I'd also like to note that I love how you make the implication that the flare gun is overpowered due to crits. Flare gun is a 100% sidegrade to shotgun, at the expense of some versatility you get midrange+ damage. If you've been airblasted and are on fire, the pyro's choice of secondary generally isn't going to make a difference in the outcome of the battle. I really don't understand why it's difficult to believe that pyro is easily dealt with, there's a reason he isn't run almost at all in 6s. Is it the easiest DM? Probably only second to heavy, but DM isn't what makes pyro difficult to play in competitive modes.

Can you please make proper arguments rather than overly vague, reactionary comments with little thought put into it? You aren't really saying anything that adds to the discussion.

(A quick comment on Pyro - the problem is that he has a bunch of very stupid weapons and what Valve really needs to do is to tweak gameplay mechanics - fire damage, movement speed, etc. They've tried to "fix" pyro with unbalanced weapons)

Let's talk about Bonk! Atomic Punch. I meant to put this up a couple days ago but I haven't had the time. I'm mainly going to be talking about 6v6 because I don't follow Highlander all that much so feel free to comment or correct me.

It's a pretty interesting weapon when it comes to 6v6 competitive TF2 because it was used to great affect by X6 during Season 8 and has been banned since. It was actually quite the controversy between the soldier mains vs scouts mains. (If you ban Bonk you have to ban Equalizer! It allows the soldier to escape when he shouldn't too!) I'm sure you can find some old casts on Extv or somewhere else where it's used.

As for actually gameplay it's a pretty interesting weapon. It's practically the only scout weapon that actually let's the scout, scout. Atomizer, FAN, and Boston Basher contribute somewhat with the extra jump but not nearly on the level that Bonk does. The problem is that it encourages stupid behavior.

TF2 Wiki:
- 8 seconds of invulnerability.
- 22 seconds recharge time.
- 1.2 seconds consumption time.

Pros:
- Allows a scout to overextend and be caught out but live anyways because he has Bonk. Encourages all aim, no brain sense of mentality. meatshot 8)
- Can reload all 6 scattergun shots
- Can pick up health kits
- There is no way to tell how long the scout has been under the effects of Bonk. This leads to a scout being able to wait 4-5 seconds around a corner and then charging at the enemy medic while the other team can't really do anything. Especially when a team is holding their last control point a scout can do this and then come up sniper, heavy, etc. (and you guys think a Taggerung bomb is boring. hehehe)
- Can check for Sticky Traps with no risk.
- Player goes into Thirdperson.
- Can distract sentries which is very prevalent in highlander and sort of trivializes Level 3 Sentries even more.
-Possibly even more, it's a pretty

Cons:
- It's not Mad Milk. (Which is another subject altogether)
- It's not Pretty Boy's Pocket Pistol (Honestly if you just remove the +15 HP it's probably balanced but let's focus on Bonk today)
- You may potentially lose some 1v1s because you don't have a pistol. But you can always try and use Bonk and escape.

That's about it though, there really aren't that many drawbacks. I'm not quite sure about how Bonk needs to be balanced but I think a good step would be disallow reloading and picking up health kits. Then after that maybe increasing the consumption time. Maybe someone else can comment but I think those three things would be a good first step towards balancing the weapon.

I plan on doing a similar thing for Jarate and the Syndney Sleeper as well. I'll probably post something beginning of next week. (Can anyone confirm that the sleeper still applies Jarate even if you are ubered?)