I agree the nerf is ridiculous. They nerfed the Equalizer into a BALANCED weapon (holy shit right), but no, balance is not a TF2 thing.

type sensitivity in console, hit tab, enter

They nerf everyting and what about the f'cking pomson? >.>

Pretty late response, but what is that hud? Or can I at least get the name of the font?

Someone posted the in-game way, but the command is "hud_combattext_doesnt_block_overhead_text 0".

its not omphud hud (yes that's the real name)

you get as medic 180 24/7 when you have the quikfix

Balancing the equalizer would be cut its damage by half, instead of the normal 66 melee damage it would only do 33, not directly countering its positives with a negative in the same weapon.

If they thought the equalizer would need more balancing (which I think it was good as it was) then they should have done that, not go for the mini crits on an already defenseless and low health target. If you're running around with the stick you already have a huge "kill me" sign, now this is just asking to get fucked... Next thing you know the game will become this

I wrote an e-mail to valve and sent to the tf2 team detailing some of what I think are the main issues with this update. Feel free to reuse it and send it through here or post it on SPUF, the more people do it the more it gets noticed.

seems like you get the 24/7 heals as other classes too. for example i switched off medic and went demo. got overheal to 219 all the time and heals in general without a medic

That is the case oktober it remains with you until you leave the server no matter what class you play.

Haven't we already established that any damage nerfs on the escape plan are useless?

Try a different melee item once in a while...

haha, A+. Thanks man.

I agree with these 2 statements. All other changes so far seem to be good, or in the very least very manageable.

Everybody agrees that the escape plan nerf makes soldier weaker. From valve's perspective, I don't think they care about that. What they care about (apparently) is promoting variety in weapon choices. I'm pretty sure that we would all still want to use the equalizer if it did 33 dmg. At the very least, more would continue use it with dmg nerf than mark for death. So to me, I think even that nerf wouldn't accomplish what valve wants. Another possibility would be to give soldiers other weapons that compete with the equalizer (like the vita saw, hippocratic oath, amputator, and uber saw do for the med [with various restrictions]). But that would doubtless lead to much bitching and moaning.

Perhaps this will encourage more roamers to use the pain train.

They based most of their weapons balance around weapon usage stats.

Ex: 85% of the owners of X weapon use it, while only 15% of the owners of Y weapon use it. So let's nerf weapon X and perhaps buff weapon Y.

But they did it wrong. Pubbers take a lot of notice around damage stats, they usually stay off negative damage stats weapons and stick with damage bonus weapons. (ex: enforcer, brass beast, machina, etc...) While it's not the only thing they look at, a damage stat matters a lot to pub players, I am convinced that if a 50% damage penalty was introduced instead of the marked for death effect, the almost 50% of users would drop by a significant margin, while still keeping the weapon main purpose, which is to be a viable escape plan, not a moving target saying kill me please.

How many pockets do you think are actually going to switch off the Escape Plan after this nerf? It is still insanely effective at rollout, which is most of what makes the Escape Plan such a staple in competitive play.

If you want to talk about properly balancing a weapon, then damage nerfing the Escape Plan is just silly.

Euros did rollouts without the escape plan for years and always managed to get both sollies to 300 to mid. It just allows the medic to be under less pressure while allowing some more creative rollouts for the roamer.

Not that much impact on rollouts as it is in normal play (ex: full team fights), which is where this item is more influential and allows for some clutch escapes. If you have marked for death effect on a low health, retrating soldier, might as well bind the escape plan to kill on console, the case here is, this penalty completly goes against the purpose of the weapon, which is to help you escape, not make you die faster

Do you want a balanced weapon or for the escape plan to stay a staple for every soldier ever? You can't say you want to balance it and then want to make it better than any other melee by changing a pointless damage stat. Pick one. If you do want it to remain a staple, then everything you say makes sense, but you keep talking as if you are properly balancing it by nerfing the damage.

Why doesn't anyone use the whip on rollouts? What if the pocket whips the med the whole time and everyone gets there earlier.

http://puu.sh/3Aq4I.png

That's probably why.

I worded what I meant wrong. I meant they nerfed the Equalizer into a good melee, then they further nerfed it into the threshold of "useful" and "useless".

Its used in highlander pretty much exclusively, unless your playing like attack/defend or something without exhaustive rollouts. Even then, most soldiers would probably default to it.

Are the new Sourcemod and Metamod:Source snapshots up on NFO yet, or do I have to manually install them?

6s banned pretty much most of the unlocks so I don't think Valve give a shit about 6s and its metagame (Wasn't it on EThug stream that someone said the community stab itself on the foot because they whine and banned the DH when they were the one who wanted valve to release a weapon that reward body rocket?)

We should really just have a match with unbanned weapons and see how it pans out, especially with the new patch and weapon fixes. It would really be interesting and fun to watch cow mangler airshots and liberty launcher triples, and quick-fix strategies and such. Which I'm pretty sure is what valve wants from us.

Normally, on a pub, you see a soldier with a liberty launcher, you may think he's either inexperienced or just using a crutch. But say we see IM or invite players use weapons like the scottish resistance or the shortstop, it can lead to entertaining and and very amazing matches to watch, and also unpredictable ones on top of that.
That's generally the vibe valve wants us to have, and less rules and regulations can create new dimensions in playing, and more spectacles for a bigger community to enjoy.

That's a little melodramatic. Even with the nerf, the Escape Plan is far and away still the most useful soldier melee. These same gripes were raised when the GRU got nerfed and some people switched to the Fists of Steel. The thing is, speed with a chance of death trumps slowness every time.

If anything, we ought to complain that Valve hasn't changed other soldier melees enough (Zatoichi anyone?) to actually warrant their use over the Escape Plan. As it stands, it's still an upgrade from the stock shovel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnntfjR_-oE

rip my favourite tf2 video