Where is the loose cannon annoying compared to the grenade launcher?

juggling players, donks sending you flying.

also potentially being able to 1 shot scouts/med

mostly this

Sniper and spy can potentially one shot every class in the game regardless of overcharge. Isn't that kind of the point?

LC is really good on viaduct and a slight upgrade on most midfights, and a decent downgrade everywhere else. On certain areas on maps it gets ridiculously good (spamming out of granary garage into yard, for example) but it's rare to be in those situations for very long.

I'm a huge fan of unlocks, so here are my thoughts on the CEVO whitelist:

I feel like there's a pretty big amount of unlocks that are currently banned that don't have any meaningful impact on the game, but maybe some people could find some niche uses for them.

Examples: Persian Persuader, Holiday Punch, Southern Hospitality, Eureka Effect, Diamondback, Enforcer, Spycicle (might have forgotten some)

There's a few weapons I think most people would argue over but I'd like to see:

1. Liberty Launcher. If a soldier gets really good with directs with it, it'd probably be a cool sidegrade. I'm clueless as to how good this weapon really is though, so I might be completely off.

2. Powerjack. If a team somehow manages to run full time pyro, they'd probably be better off with a scout or soldier. It allows for some creative mid strategies, and if a team wants to spend the time experimenting with those over more standard mids, I think they should be given the option, especially when they would be at a disadvantage afterwards.

I believe the max damage is 131 with a perfect donk so no one shotting meds

edit: yea it's 153, forgot about the mini crit bonus

153 apparently.

I would imagine a team running a Powerjack Pyro to mid has a couple of things in mind: They're trying to counter a good roamer getting in cheap on the medic while trying to be super-aggro or they're trying to Detonator-jump and Backburn the enemy med. The latter is something that may work once in a 1st mid in the 2nd half of a 3-0 game but you'd have to play the Pyro for a couple of mids to lull them into a false sense of security, which may be why you're in a 3-0 hole to begin with.

Pyro surprise plays are fun but unless you get a good setup for it during the mid fight it most likely won't turn out all that well.

They're also spy and sniper. They're not also a demo who has stickies. They're low mobility, low damage off-classes. That said, I'm fine with LC, it can be annoying, but so can just being juggled by rockets.

I could actually see a pyro to mid doing well on maps where double soldier bomb off the bat is the go-to, or if the team you're playing does it. Something like snakewater mid. It allows both your soldiers to jump, and you can leave the pyro back to defend against both soldiers, depending on the angles they take.

The problem is after the mid, you've got a pyro.

Oneshotting with the lc also takes a lot of skill. Skill or luck.

The last two are the two I would probably argue the most against, because, yes, it's just spy, but the Enforcer is pretty much free revolver damage, and Diamondback, since the buff, gives spy crits for doing exactly what he's supposed to without much of a downside. (Yes, ambassador gives you free crits as well, but you have to aim well for them, which is why it's still a fair weapon IMO.)

I also feel a little iffy about the Eureka Effect but there's really only 2 things I can see where it would be gay:

- You cut off half of your walking back and forth to resup for metal
- You can escape from a bad fight for free but why are you pushing out an engie

Also in my experience the powerjack allows for some pretty silly plays that I don't feel have a place in 6s (coming out of kitchen on snake midfight and flanking the enemy team, stopping bombs on gully easily etc).

Going to talk about these weapons.

Persian Persuader: This weapon is amazing. All demos will switch to it while holding last because there's no reason not to, you get a free health pickup+the resupply gives you your ammo back. Also rewards demos being roamer crazy and diving for picks without dying cause of the amount of health you can pick back up from dropped weapons etc.

Eureka Effect: Engineer puts himself out of position to set up a dumb sentry/teleporter spot then goes back to spawn by pressing right-click. Yeah, no thanks.

Diamondback: Already discussed, getting kills and turning them into 102 crits is stupid strong.

Enforcer: Everyone would be using this and run around with spy kritz because it's amazing.

Spycicle: Straight upgrade and silent back kill. Why?

Powerjack: Promotes annoying pyros to be even more annoying! Get to mid as medic and a pyro is air blasting you into a wall while the enemy demo stickies you and roamer jumps you. Who wouldn't run this weapon anyways, for axtinguisher or what? Terrible idea.

The reason not to is that you have to go back to spawn on the push-out. You also only get 20(?) health from a weapon drop. It's not much.

Then you destroy the sentry/teleporter. That, or you kill the engineer since the taunt takes time. It'd be unused except for granary (and maybe metalworks but there are multiple viable spots for a gun there so probably not), and even then it wouldn't be that much of an upgrade.

It's strong, sure, but you need to be literally point-blank to 3-shot a med without crits, and you need to get a kill on spy and not instantly die for the ability to be relevant at all.

It's not a kritz thing, it's more of a "this gun just gives you bonus damage for no reason" thing. Also, it's so stupid it's banned in HL, so take that how you will.

Comms are a thing. I'd actually say it's worse because most of the time you'd run a spy is when pushing last, which means there's a decent chance of them having a pyro. If they do have one, I'd rather have stock knife so I don't randomly lose it when going for a pick. If not, the abilities are literally irrelevant.

If you're running pyro to mid, you're gonna get destroyed by scouts. Not a whole lot to say here. How is this hypothetical pyro teleporting in front of the medic?

are you real?

http://teamfortress.tv/thread/16534#23

I may be wrong, but I thought a contributing factor to why the liberty launcher is banned is how absolutely silly LL kritz are. 200+ damage a rocket with each rocket moving 40% faster than stock is pretty frustrating and quite gimmicky.

Eh. Pyros are run when one team has huge uber advantage and the other needs to stall uber. Spies are run when both teams are even ubers and someone sacs and goes spy. I don't think that melting knives will be a factor in 6s.

This can be solved with a pick ban system right?

Pick/ban can be fun, but i think consistency is very important for serious, fast-paced competitive fps games. Knowing what can be expected and practicing for it generally increases the skill ceiling and decreases room for gimmicks.

Pick/ban in tf2 was a terrible idea from the start and everyone pretty much forgot about it after initially talking about it and maybe a few pugs that I didn't play in, but considering that they didn't go on for very long I think I can guess that they didn't turn out all that great.

And tf2 is not comparable with Dota, please don't try to make that comparison.

Hold on though, there is a stark difference between showing a player what they can expect in a match, and making sure a player should only expect one thing.

Both Dota locks players into their choices the moment they make them, and gives them all the information they need to play strategically based off of them. I don't think anyone would argue that they are lowering the skill level or increasing the room for gimmicks (whatever the fuck that actually means anyway).

In some ways it is, in some ways it isn't. I'm gonna reference Dota where I think its relevant.

The thing is with dota though, the heroes are actually balanced around competitive play while tf2 weapons aren't. After the hero draft players on both teams know exactly what heroes they have, what heroes the other team has and what abilities they can/will use given the right situation and you can't suddenly change to a hero that wasn't banned in the middle of a match. In a pick/ban system in tf2 a player can switch to any weapon that isn't banned whenever they want, you don't know what they're going to run and depending on what's allowed and what's banned you have no idea what to expect at any given time. This also brings up the question of how many weapons do you ban? This game has so many different weapons now that a banning phase would take a really long time if you actually want to get a reasonable amount of allowed/banned weapons. The comparison to dota just really doesn't work, the pick/ban system in tf2 just wouldn't be as refined and it wouldn't work near as well as it does in dota because they're two completely different types of games.

Going back onto the Quick-Fix for a moment. I personally love using it in CERTAIN scenarios. I think QF vs Anything is the dumbest thing imaginable (when not my single scenario). I do think, however it should be used only if there is 40 secondish left on a KOTH Map (they have, you dont). Otherwise your going for a play that is as cheesy as Market Gardening as in; it's a Hero Play that rarely ends in success and results in wasted time and wasted uber. I am a fan of it but it is extremely dumb and should be limited to UGC, and maybe unlocked for KOTH on CEVO. (Please get the emphasize on maybe) Sorry couldn't put my ideas in while it was apparent, airplanes are overpowered.

You sometimes see pyro on even ubers on gully and badlands, simply because it's so good on those two lasts.

You should probably test these weapons yourself before suggesting them. I know you're invite, but I don't really think you understand how much these weapons would be used and abused. There's a reason they've been banned and I believe will stay banned.

Well you're right about this part. A pick ban system helps, but until valve (or the competitive community) makes changes to the rules for equipping unlocks, there's always gonna be that problem.

Ah yes, I remember the dreaded kritz spy plays that got the enforcer banned. It was a terrible time for 6s and im so glad its over now.
/s