Also reserving this post for the collection of posts and the problems they raise.

The two main issues I've heard with any weapon people don't like come from either "Low-skill, High reward" or that the weapon slows the game down. An example for number one being Mini-sentries and an example for number two being the Wrangler.

It seems to me that a lot of hate towards different classes/weapons come from those.

EDIT: There's also the third category of stuff that is just worse than other weapons or are far too niche to use (Scottish Resistance, Eternal Reward, Southern Hospitality, and Family Business all spring to mind)

short circuit needs to be nerfed

FTFY

Weapons with Technical Problems:

Beggar's Bazooka
-The Reload Rate is slightly slower than the firing rate of its stock counterpart, which leads to quickfire rockets.
-In a long-term fight, the beggar's will fire more rockets from just rapidly firing with M1 than a stock rocket launcher would after 4 rockets + 1 reload. This makes it powerful in high ground areas (say, defending badwater's first point from the cliff) because he can stay in the fight longer by spamming his primary attack button and get more rockets off

I would suggest fixing this would be the core of the beggar's reload rate. It shouldn't be able to load another rocket before it finishes the firing animation.

Weapons with Tactical Problems:

Short Circuit
-This weapon cancels out a lot of spam in a short amount of time, and by switching weapons and gaining metal from your dispenser, or picking up a nearby ammo pack, it can last in the long run when dealing with heavy explosives fire with very little support from teammates.
-The firing rate is the problem, as well as the low-ammo cost to use.

It's frustrating to play against as an explosives class because sentries can be tough to deal with when coupled with any team support. A bullet-intensive class can handle a sentry with an uber, but things like pyro airblast can remove threats in close proximity, explosives were the best way to deal with sentries on high ground, around entrances, etc. Short circuit's old firing rate was nice when dealing with active soldier spam or demos in a 1v1 setting, and it generally lost to team-oriented spam with the old firing rate.

Darwin's Danger Shield
-Having low-charged-headshot immunity (surviving with plenty of health to duck around corners or cover) drags out gameplay.
-Playing to charge shots before peaking corners/sightlines is slow-paced and annoying.

Valve announced they didn't want players to have an advantage by owning hats, but the advantage is still prevalent by having the weapon advantage. I can't hope to win a fight against a Darwin's Sniper unless I equip one too, especially if he's on a defensive sightline where he's charged his shot for longer to assure a high-damage shot to pierce the 10% bullet resistance. I would suggest either removing the health buff (or reducing it), so that in a 1v1 scenario, it's still a matter of who shot the head first, rather than a duck-and-cover battle until someone accidentally takes more than 7 damage from other sources.

Baby Face Blaster is ridiculous atm, its a direct upgrade and then if you double jump it temporarily removes your direct upgrade. boo-hoo i jumped and now i cant move at double speed anymore, what a balanced downside. I like the basic idea of it, making scout very powerful on x and z dimensions but trying to make him weaker by limiting his jump, but at the moment it really doesnt punish him for using the y dimension enough at all.

furthermore, i think the short circuit should be changed to something similar to the spycicle, in that you can use it once, it helps you for a short period of time, then curses you for a longer period of time. At the moment you can pretty much use it non-stop without being punished. Also make it so you have to attach the short circuit to the sentry and cant just use it anywhere cos im sick of being charged at by a w m1ing short circuit and not being able to shoot at all for a while.
idea: when attatched to sentry all projectiles are removed from its radius for 4 seconds or so. Removes all your metal after one use so if your sentry was hurt by non-projectiles you cant repair it immideately and you must wait 25 seconds before you can use it again. resupply should not replenish the short circuit, this will just make turtling near spawn extremely easy

Just gonna post some changes to weapons that are quite strong. I think with weapon balance, if it has a really high reward, then it should also have a high risk. (see: kritzkrieg)

Baby Face Blaster

Keep the stats the same, reduce speed to minimum after firing 3 shots.

Razorback

-Ammopacks/dispensers only restore 20% of ammo,

darwins danger shield
-20% slower scope up speed
+10% faster scope down speed

gunslinger
-when mini sentry placed a team colored beam of light fires upwards (to the skybox) for 2 seconds

loose cannon

-15 max hp on wearer
-double donks extra damage has no AOE

The Classic

+ can headshot at anypoint in charge
- unscoped headshots do 15% less damage

The Quickfix

-20% movespeed when not healing
-move speed decreases when healing slow targets
-quickfixed targets capture points at 50% speed

Just a few changes that I've thought about before that would fix some of the more annoying weapons

edit: didn't fully read OP post. whoops!

I feel like a ton of weapons are just poorly thought out and can't be turned into good sidegrades through tweaking.

According to multiple plat Engineers, Southern Hospitality is the best Wrench. I don't really understand it myself, because I think the Jag's extra build speed eclipses everything else.

Loch-n-Load is overpowered because it has more range, more speed, and more damage. You can put out ridiculous amounts of damage by spamming pills because LnL has no falloff, and it's easier to aim than stock.

Crit-a-Cola is incredibly strong. You have more speed so you can dodge, more damage so you can shit on everything, and for some reason you take less damage than you deal. It was balanced in its original state, before any of the buffs, because Scout doesn't need extra speed to dodge.

Soda Popper reloads fast enough to break even with the Scattergun, which is silly because it has a special effect. The special effect allows him to go anywhere and win every 1v1, which is also silly.

Pocket PIstol is overpowered because Scout can easily kite flamethrower, flare gun is unreliable outside of airblast range, and 210 Scouts are insanely strong.

Why does Pomson drain Uber and cloak? Why does Engineer get an incredibly easy to use (just spam chokes, also the hitbox is enormous) weapon that screws over his counters (Uber and sapping) for almost no effort?

Vita-Saw reduces the punishment for dying. This is a stupid concept.

Quick-Fix encourages not pushing. The Uber is shitty, but it charges fast and stalemates with Uber because you can't put out enough DPS to outdamage megaheal. The healing is better than other mediguns. So ideally, you'd trade Ubers and slow push with heal advantage. And you counter that by running full time Heavy/Sniper(/pre-nerf Axtinguisher Pyro). Valve really wants that to happen, but looking back at S15 it was the most disgustingly slow and boring metagame ever.

And the Enforcer 2shots light classes. Who thought that was a good idea?

It is because the jag is broken. To build a sentry gun, it takes about 0.75 seconds.
A 1.5 second difference is 32%
0.75 seconds is 16%, 0.75 multiplied by 2 = 1.5
16% times 2 = 32%
If it were a 1.5 second difference, it would be 32% construction rate, but it is not.

Personally, I run the southern hospitality, but I may consider running the jag if Valve fixes the weapon.

pyro weapons
does -300% dmg
no airblast
no fast weapon switching
not stupid anymore

Actually you maintain base scout speed at 66% boost, 1 jump at full reduces you to 75% boost, which is still faster.

Quick-Fix
-No knockback penalties coupled with the ability to cap makes this ridiculously overpowered.
-The insane heal rate makes heavies incredibly tank-y outside of ubers, you either need a sniper headshot or another heavy to fight a heavy-medic combo with quick-fix.

You can rush onto a point with a quick-fix uber and cap unless the entire point is covered in enough stickies to kill you before you regen the health. Sentries do good work to quick-fix ubers damage-wise, but not every point can be protected by a sentry (badlands spire for example). Honestly it should maintain a no-cap policy similar to uber. Kritzkrieg doesn't make you immune to capping because it's still just a medic and heal-target at the normal rates.

Loch-n-Load
-This weapon rivals direct hit in design, but has the advantage of no damage falloff, and still-significant splash.
-2 loch grenades kill all classes under 175 even when they're buffed, and now there's 3 grenades per clip, allowing for insane collateral damage (which is easier with its high projectile speed).

The recent change in damage-ranges for pipes made this weapon a lot more balanced pre-buff, but now with 3 clip the weapon still does a lot of damage despite its splash change. Perhaps loch n load grenades should specifically have a slightly tweaked damage falloff so point blank does 100% damage, long range does 80% or something.

Baby Face's Blaster
-Reduced clip size is outweighed by unnatural speed. It's annoying to shoot at a class that is significantly faster than normally used to, whether a hitscan or projectile class.
-The boost-reduction was buffed too well to compliment scout's dodge-ability.

50% or more reduced per air jump would be more or less adequate to balancing scout's ability to maneuver with this weapon.

how about airblast doesnt completely stun you and make you unable to move
airblasted things shouldnt minicrit, the fact that you are making yourself already take no damage from incoming threats is enough reward without added damage on top

Short circuit: Change it back to the way it was, add switch speed as a bonus

Wrangler: Shield does not come out instantly (maybe ~second till it comes up), shield only doubles health (as opposed to triple), remove shield immediately when sentry is unwrangled.

Gunslinger: Sentries start out at 0 as opposed to 100, like how a normal sentry is. (edit: regen was patched out already my b) Nerf range so it's shorter than a level 1 (right now it has the same range as a level 3 which is dumb)

Rescue ranger: Cannot heal sentries with a wrangler shield around them.

Bam. Pubs are now like 100x more fun.

Didn't valve fix most of these things a while ago?

Crit-a-cola: revert to mini-crits on both sides.
PBPP: Scout can receive a maximum of 75% overheal.
Atomizer: Third jump deals 20.
Sandman: Mark target for death instead of stun.

Change reserve shooter to only hit targets knocked airborne by explosions.

Stock flame thrower: Increase starting+max ammo to 300. (others remain the same)

Ullapool Caber: Can't be crit boosted.

Pomson: Now bison reskin.
Wrangler: Split into two weapons. One shields and disables your gun. The other doubles the fire rate and lets you aim it.
Short circuit: revert to pre-buff.
Gunslinger: Change to: No random Critical Hits. Teleporters cost 100 metal to build. Dispensers and Teleporters start at Level 2. +65 max health. Can't build sentries.
Jag: Change to +15% swing speed.

Quick-Fix: Can't cap while ubered.

Darwin's Danger Shield: Bullet resistance does not apply to headshots.
Razorback: -50% health from healers.
Jarate: Health kits cure jarate.

Enforcer: can't see enemy health. (Probably insufficient but eh)
Spy-cicle: increase cooldown.

Health regen while building was fixed 2 years ago almost, the rest has been untouched.

So, Valve is going to remove mini-sentries from the game?

Not sure if you did not read my previous post about the jag, but the construction rate of the jag is +15.79% rounded to +16%. If you want Valve to change the jag from +30% construction rate to +16% (15.79% rounded), the construction rate of a sentry gun will go from 0.75 seconds to 0.375 seconds. This is a HUGE downgrade if you want to use the jag.

Agreed.

I'd also like us to agree upon what problems exist for weapons, rather than what changes should be made. In the old thread it was mentioned that suggesting solutions wasn't as effective as suggesting problems. Highly-agreed-upon problems will be added to #2

Yeah. You want a combat engi? Here, have 180 (or so) health. You don't have to care about your buildings since they take less work to build, but you still help. Play on the flank.

Every engi main I've shown this to has emphatically said "yes please".

This lets you upgrade your buildings faster.

The system used in Valve matchmaking will apparently be 6v6 with no item bans.

With that in mind, I think we should consider some of the weapons that are generally considered balanced in pubs/hl/etc, but bannably broken in 6s for various reasons.

Going by http://whitelist.tf/esea_6v6_s18 this list includes:

The powerjack, battalion's backup, disciplinary action, solemn vow, phlog, mad milk, flying guillotine, bonk, wrap assassin, back scatter, candy cane, cow mangler, air strike (?), tide turner, persian persuader, almost every heavy unlock, widowmaker, frontier justice, eureka effect, hitman's heatmaker, sydney sleeper, jarate, cleaner's carbine, diamondback, and probably more.

None of these items are banned in highlander, and most of them haven't been mentioned yet in this thread. They're also (probably) harder to fix than the more blatantly imbalanced items.

[Scout]
-Soda Popper:
Best DPS of any scattergun, plus the ability to jump 6 times which is not fair in 1v1s with projectile classes.
-Baby Faced Blaster:
Moving that fast is an unfair exchange for only two less clip size.

-Bonk Atomic Punch:
Broken at its core, any weapon that gives temporary invisibility on spawn just isn't fair or fun to fight.
-Crit-a-Cola:
Broken at its core, any weapon that gives temporary crits on spawn just isn't fair or fun to fight.
-Mad Milk:
-Pretty Boy's Pocket Pistol:
A weapon that is unfair because it grants 15 health where you can either just suck it up, or have someone go pyro to punish it, but scout directly counters pyro so I don't think it is fair for scout to make people go onto a class that is countered by them in order to counter a weapon.
-Flying Guillotine:
Does too much damage

-Atomizer:
Anything in exchange for a third/more jumps is ALWAYS too good
-Sandman:
Stunning opponents on blind chokepoints like process is just unfair

Okay, I understand now. Though with this change, it will change the play styles of all engineers and it will render the wrangler useless as a combat engineer, which is very much part of the meta of an engineer in highlander.

Okay, I don't think I explained the jag well enough. As of right now, the jag's stats says it has a 30%+ faster construction rate. However, when hitting a building, the construction rate of the building increases only by 15.79% and not the 30% that was intended for the jag to do.

Delete tinkertown

I'mma try a different approach to the discussion so we can knock these out one at a time rather than have a lot of problems listed for a lot of weapons. We'll discuss a new topic every page or so and I'll add the problems to #2

http://strawpoll.me/4271233

What should we discuss first?

EDIT: I'll base the next items of discussion on the ranking from this poll, then we'll move forward from there

EDIT2: LOL 2 gunslingers woops.

Is the Soda Popper considered a problem in HL? Just curious. It always seemed to me to be a good way for Scouts to participate without getting mulched anytime there's more than one dude around. Idk much about HL though.

the reload glitch makes it completely broken

Who the fuck cares? It still builds faster. The Southern Hospitality is worthless because its upside is for hitting things (especially Spies), which you should never do (especially to Spies).