it was already viable, the only reason it didn't see more use is that wrangler is retardedly fucking overpowered and valve hasn't done shit about it

The SC was already viable, it was the wrangler that needed a nerf not the SC a buff...

SC was a perfect sidegrade as it was, it was only not seeing more use because the wrangler is much more powerful.

edit: ninja'd

It's main and only real purpose was to destroy projectiles. Previous SC + the current Metal Reduction (or even 10. Hell, 18 was pretty good, too) would have been perfect. Why are you even including damage in this, it was never a DPS weapon and never should be.

I've personally never felt the SC was viable in its previous form. It fired to slowly and ate to much metal, if a demo is stickying you from out of sight, his stickies fire faster then the SC does, so you/your sentry will always take damage, and when you try to repair, you don't have the metal for it any more so you're dead anyway. I made a point of really trying to the SC in places the wrangler wasn't all that helpful (more closed in areas, surprise spots, etc) and it never cut it above even having a pistol.

the short circuit was good as it was

engi is supposed to be a support class, denying a few projectiles is supportive enough

denying every fucking projectile almost completely denies attack classes

The Short Circuit buff is more of a buff for MvM purposes.

I am really starting to hate this path they are taking of tweaking essential game mechanics to fit MvM. I get it that besides keys this is they're biggest cashgrab atm, but it was never the main point of the game. I just wanna play some tf2, against real people preferably, not hordes of robots.

I don't think it's as much of an attempt to buff engi, as much as reduce the effectiveness of Demo/Soldier. The two are some of the most powerful pub classes, and tons of noncomp players resent that. This entire update kind of felt like a bunch of indirect nerfs or paradigm shifts for soldier. Gunboats are less effective in pubs because you can get neutered by the SC, shotgun is a lot more attractive because flying scouts, and the buffs to the banners make them look a lot more attractive for players who want to be supportive. If their goal is to make certain classes more effective for full time running, which fits their whole HL positive agenda, this buff is a solid attempt.

The SC itself isn't that powerful as an assault tool, so it's hard to pass judgement on it before it's used in some HL matches. Wrangler is still offensively powerful, and raw tanking + better DPS might still be better than hard denial to projectiles, especially with classes like heavy and spy being fairly common occurrences in HL. Valve is apparently terrified of changing core mechanics of classes 7 years in, so they have to band aid unlocks in an attempt to make classes that are otherwise ineffective (pyro) or so skill less as to be out classes by other classes in high level games (heavy, engi). The actual goal isn't bad, but I'm fairly sure valve don't know enough about HL/6s to actually approach it correctly

new lightning gun on m1
old projectile remover on m2
profit

If another weapon is obviously and literally better at its job than it is then it is DEFINITELY NOT VIABLE. Nobody in their right mind would have used the short circut over the wrangler in comp for any reason other than attempting to dispel kritzes or pushes against something other than their sentry. And that's gimmicky bullshit because it wasn't viable for an engineer to do that thing. Now they probably could get away with that, as gay as it is, but point standing.

i've heard the wrangler been called all kinds of overpowered but every cast i've watched i've never seen teams have a problem facing it. (willing to provide examples) it kind of just serves as a temporary roadblock for an uber that was coming anyway. and this is because wrangler doesn't secure wins, your team does, and it's always been like this for engies, on a good team you prosper and on a bad team you're rushing to set up and being overwhelmed. you can theorycraft and call it potential bullshit but in practice i really have never seen the wrangler impede teams by itself.

i know valve can be a little slow in adjusting weapons (much less so this year, god bless them) and the fact that the wrangler hasn't gone through any changes (they basically reworked the soda popper which is something that hasn't been done for a long time, changing the upside of a weapon) is kind of evident that valve thinks the current wrangler is part of what keeps engie competitive. encounters with a sentry otherwise are pretty binary and most good players have no problem downing one. like it or not it DOES increase engie's skill ceiling, and i know how concerned players are with that phrase.

i'm going to say that fighting soldiers and demos on the flank is a lot like it was before with the new short circuit: if you maintained a good distance you were able to deny all 4 rockets/pipes and shotgun them down during their reload. the fire rate was still faster than rocket/pipe rate then. the increased attack interval doesn't change much, it just makes it easier. people underestimated how powerful it was. having four engies on a pub team m1ing into everyone doesn't help its current reputation, hah

i would love to hear from players who have used it in HL pugs

everyone's problem with the wrangler isnt that it makes sentries unkillable, its that it gives them triple health, and a slight auto aim with infinite range. it takes 7 (8?) stickies to kill a wrangled level 3.
to use the pistol over the wrangler is unheard of, there is 0 reason to use the pistol despite it having over 200 ammo. the new short circuit doesnt really change anything like you said, but now you can 1v1 soldiers and demos at close range and always win.
I really doubt that engies will get close enough to soldiers and demos to really use it in HL but it's still a really annoying thing

Remember that time there was another item that completely obsoleted everything else in its slot?

Remember how it got split into two weapons?

Seriously. Split the wrangler between one that has double fire rate and no shield and one that has the normal fire rate and a shield.

That's how you make other items viable.

Played an HL pug with both engis using the new Short Circuit.

I don't remember wtf our engineer was doing but the other team's engineer just sat by their combo spamming that shit whenever our demo tried to do damage. When a Pyro sits by the combo m2ing, it isn't an absolute guarantee that all projectiles will be nullified. If any of them come in during the cooldown between airblasts, they obviously do damage, and if the Pyro happens to be clipping with a teammate he reflects them into himself, doing a lot of self-dmg. Their engi and his rapid-fire projectile destroyer was basically nullifying almost all of our demo's damage and we were constantly walking into overhealed players.

Anything that slows HL (an already slow gamemode compared to 6s) down to that fucking pace should be banned asap.

I don't see why they can't make the short circuit briefly disable enemy structures, that would make Highlander Payload so beautiful. Offensive Engineer with Gunslinger and Short Circuit vs. Defensive Engineer with Wrangler and Regular Wrench.

That's the issue here, really - You can say "but pyro can nullify projectile damage toooooo" but pyro can't just hold down M2 to do so (I know, shocking).

i think at this point most people know to target the engie first. there was a small change during the summer that made it so a wrangled sentry drops its shield and activates almost immediately after killing the engie, which everyone took as an almost-buff, but to me it's more incentive to shoot down the engie and be able to clean up quickly. i get that the pistol never gets used, but i also don't think stock has to be dominant in its weapon slot. is there a difference between heavy never having to use a shotgun and this? is it just principle? i think weapons need to be compared to the game at large and not their counterparts.

when people talk about how they don't like the wrangler it's usually a list of its upsides. but that's just how it functions, why is it bad because of that? you can make a case for it being skilless to do well with, but in that sigafoo clip on barnblitz everyone brings up, the heavy/medic end up pressing less total combined buttons than he does.

i think there's a lot of annoying stuff in this game that players have to learn to take in stride, or lessen the impact of through help of their team mates. it's annoying that a single chokepoint gets shut down with minimal effort from a demo, it's annoying to get headshot from miles away (without taking raw skill into account).

most importantly i'd just like to see the short circuit given more time because it could end up being a healthy addition to HL

thanks for replying.

everyone will use the shield one just like everyone uses the escape plan

lol, no?

Ever since the equalizer was split I run pain train very consistently as roamer.

Granted that is not a balanced split for a weapon like the wrangler, it would have to be another kind of balance

It's not healthy. At all. It slows down the game to the point where you need to get a headshot/pick on the Engi on any gamemode (not just PL where that's pretty expected) just to get the game back to it's already way-too-slow state in HL.

Because of the sheer number of players (and constant presence of a Sniper), many pushes in HL boil down to, "Well, let's just build uber and wait for a pick..." even at the highest level. Forcing ANOTHER pick in order to secure ANY hope of your main damage class... well, doing damage, is a shitty idea and will slow down HL even moreso than it already is.

Again, not healthy.

The main point of this game isn't competitive either.

do you think making engie that threatening/important is bad? i was under the impression that what you're describing can be applied to a good sniper too. pyros if positioned well can disrupt whole ubers, and so on. picks are important regardless of who it is simply because of raw manpower, as well.

the main damage class suddenly becoming not so main-damaging is kind of interesting, to say the least

I meant no one uses the Equalizer. The Pain Train was good before the split

#21:
This change doesn't just affect competitive, though. It takes an *extremely* defensive support-ish class, who happens to have an offensive support subrole with the gunslinger, and gives him an offensive AND defensive tool that literally shuts down the game's most powerful (damage-wise) class and effectively shuts down the game's jack of all trades. That is a problem, comp or not. The wrangler is at least OK in the sense that it's harmonious with the class's literal original purpose: spatial control. This is nothing like that. This is a fuck over individual classes at the cost of doing your original job less effectively than if you picked a different option situation. At the current point in time, this is as stupid as the pomson.

valve makes engy have an lg and yall trying to get rid of it? ( ͡ʘ ͜ʖ ͡ʘ)

I fucking love the LG, I just think it shouldn't destroy projectiles like that.

Let's make this clear, I'm not upset that this weapon makes the engineer threatening or important.

In general, HL is a very slow gamemode. In PL you're artificially limited by the speed of the cart, and on 5cp the speed of your heavy/pyro/engi/spy mean that pushing with momentum often isn't possible, especially on larger maps (CP_Croissant I'm looking at you). Like any major tweak to any weapon, this will make changes in the HL metagame.

The most prevalent change that it will have is that you must kill the engineer before the push, otherwise 70% or more of your damage is just... gone. You're essentially pushing one man down.

The difference between the Engineer in this case and the skilled Sniper and well-positioned Pyro is that there are counters to these classes that are not simply "kill the class." While, of course, killing them is a good idea, pushing through a choke away from the Pyro essentially nullifies him as long as you have a player on your team shooting him during the uber. Pushing through an angle not covered by the Sniper is also an easy way to greatly increase your chances of a successful push.

There isn't another counter to an Engineer with Short Circuit aside from killing him. He can sit by the combo with a dispenser and literally deny any and all projectiles for 2 full minutes, and that's if he's dumb and NOT timing his shots.

There is nothing interesting about a Demoman not being a damage dealer. Pushes in HL succeed because Demomen do damage for their team to clean up. Without a Demoman's damage, other classes are forced to put out more damage, which simply isn't going to be possible with the enormous amount of HP spread across 9 overhealed players. This means more pushes will fail simply because Short Circuit exists. Failed pushes mean more stalemates.

Again, stalemates are basically the farthest thing from interesting.

buildings are stupid and anything making the game about killing the buildings (or the guy spamming shit from behind it) is obnoxious as fuck.

The counter to short circuit Engies is hitscan. Hitscan, flames, bison, will still destroy an Engie with the short circuit out. Pushes have to be approached with less of an explosive class mindset if the enemy is running it. Yeah it's "speeding up" in the literal sense of the word but a Concheror Heavy push I can see being pretty brutal. You can flash your Pyro to ensure he airblasts away the Engie so that he can't block shots on the combo with the SC, things like that. And through all this he has no Wrangler. Which is going to be huge no matter the weapon trade-off.

I'm more saying Demoman not being so dominant is interesting. I don't like stalemates either.

Increase range and damage and remove the destroy projectiles part? I would so much rather just LG people than actually try to kill projectiles.