I would like to mention weapons that never get used

Fan of War

-Literally no point at marking to Death anyone, you will have more time killing an unaware enemy rather than marking and then trying to kill
-Changes to make: +25% Switch Speed between Fan of War and Primary/Secondary, Marked Cloaked Spies have Death Skull above their Heads. On 2nd Hit, enemy takes Critical damage, but effect lasts 3 seconds, after that goes back to Mini-Crits.
-Conclusion: Mechanic doesn't change but it is much more viable to mark enemies from behind. Enemy's unawareness and your sneakiness will be rewarded.

Sun on a Stick

-Quite futile to use it without coordination with a Pyro, and even so is still pointless to use, due to the fact that you will do much more damage at close range with a Scattergun rather than with this weapon
-Changes: +10% Fire resistance, Remove damage penalty so that Crit hit can do 105 damage and replace with -25% Swing Speed and also add a Stat: -25% damage vs Non-Burning players.
-Conclusion: You do Scattergun's damage at close range when Enemy is burning, so that there is no downsides to actually melee your Enemy if he's burning, but if he's not, then there is no point using this weapon.

Solemn Vow
-The basic idea behind this weapon is quite nice, but there needs to be 1 small change
-Change: Make the effect of this weapon Passive, so that you don't have to switch to it to see Enemy's health, -75% damage
-Conclusion: Boom, perfect Unlock, your Medic can tell your teammates who to focus, which greatly benefits Medic, apart from Healing,this will greatly increase team play between the Medic and Team.

Dalokohs Bar
-Not much to say, but Imo you should be able to throw it to heal your teammates, but the downside would be that you need to go to Locker to get it back, similar to Razorback mechanic.

Half-Zatoichi
-Nothing is more frustrating than trying to get that kill with this weapon and then suddenly this Soldier comes and steals your kill
-Change: Disables Honor Bound effect on Assist as well
-Conclusion: It's just not fun when you try to kill someone with this weapon and then suddenly someone comes and steals your kill and you're stuck with this weapon.

Deployment: (To LV 3 while Whacking)
Sentry
Jag: 19.49s
Wrench: 19.58s
0.09s Difference (0.5% faster)
Gunslinger: 2.56s

it literally makes no difference

honestly all the engi wrenches are garbage
like the closest one to be useful is the eureka effect but not being able to pick up buildings sux
engi is dumb tho so wahtever

Time to build level 1: 5.5 s
Time to build level 1 with Jag: 4.75 s
13.67% increase

which is significant

i would like to reiterate that you should never ever melee as an engineer

Wow, I've just found a soulmate :')

Engineer wrench discussion
Jag is trash because it makes no difference with speed and if you do end up whacking a Spy, it takes 3 hits and not 2, and if the Spy uses Dead ringer, you can't be lucky without SH and make him leave a trail, there are no random crits anyways so it's not worth using the Jag at all.

Also I really want to see Loch n Load being reverted to what it was before as well, it was perfect back then even with 2 grenades but it's far too overpowered now.

Darwin's Danger Shield should either remove the health bonus or remove the resistances, either or both would work.

It is part of the meta to use the rescue ranger + wrangler combo as an engineer in highlander. The rescue ranger is a bad weapon to kill spies and you often have to use your melee to kill the spy. A jag only does 45 damage, compared to other wrenches which does 65 damage. So, you have to hit a spy three times with the jag to kill the spy and only two times with other wrenches.

The small increase in construction rate does not make much of a difference at all. It is useless during set-up times and you shouldn't be moving your buildings often as an engineer during a game. Whereas, the southern hospitality allows the engineer to counter spies by being able to track spies, which has a much more impact on the engineer's play style than the jag would do.

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I've seen this mentioned before, but there needs to be an option for all projectile weapons to come from center like the original. Its so annoying because it makes it pretty much impossible for someone who uses the original to be as consistent with other projectile weapons.

How has no one mentioned the reserve shooter?

A lot of people want to talk about the Baby Face's Blaster (according to the strawpoll), so let's do a formal post.

Baby Face's Blaster

On Hit: Builds Boost
Run speed increased with Boost
-34% clip size
10% slower move speed on wearer
Boost reduced on air jumps

Forgive my math if this is wrong.

Each mid-air jump costs 25% of maximum boost, or 40 hu/s, which means at 25% filled boost, you will be at the normal scout speed. 25 damage immediately negates the -10% speed.

The clip size has been the main concern when compared to stock, but in the season of UGC when it was buffed, there were many complaints to the scout being too hard to kill because the speed allows for dodging and survivability in the long run, especially on maps like Upward where a healthpack is never too far (especially considering a maximum speed of 520 hu/s, compared to the scout's normal 400 hu/s). With maps typically having small areas of open fighting (badlands middle, snakewater second, gullywash last), it's very easy for a scout to use his speed to get away from a fight and be a general nuisance that can later resurface, causing severe mindgames.

The downside for jumping is negligible, especially when actively damaging opponents recovers your boost.

Suggestions (any or all of these)

-A temporary speed boost when maximum gauge is reached.
-A more severe speed downside when 0 boost is around (20-30% instead of 10%).
-A significant decrease in maximum speed, because the scout is unnaturally fast.
-Reduce maximum cap time from x2 to x1, so that the nuisance is less viable in playing the objective through backcaps.
-Increase the amount of damage required to reach maximum boost (whether 140 damage or 400 damage).
-Reduce percentage lost from jumps to 20% instead of 25%.
-Reduce jump height when equipped (allows synergy with jump-related weapons like Atomizer and Winger).
-Remove double jump when equipped.

If you have any other suggestions or problems this weapon rises, post it and I'll add it.

Shortstop seems to be completely fucked
I used to play in a pug with a guy running fulltime shortstop
Our team was getting crushed even from long range
For example, from one choke on badlands to the other scout with scattergun can deal basically ~3 damage with one shot
Shortstop scout can do up to 20 as I've noticed, but please correct me if I'm wrong
Damage output seems to be incredible to me

by the way that weapon was made solely for degroot so it would work in pair with the burning pyro axe

That's actually really true, some melee items should be considered when used in degroot, which makes sense for a lot of scout weapons.

Big Earner is useless. Maybe the +30% cloak on stab could be counteracted by a -30% cloak time

Cozy camper is also really bad

I have no clue what they'd do to the vita-saw to make it not broken

Fix the Jag

That's all the broken/bad weps I could think of

Also shortstop is only good at mid range, it's shit at scout v scout because you can only do like 70 max damage and it only has four shots. If it were given a bit more damage, it'd be a straight upgrade to the scattergun

Thanks for the input!

Shortstop feels more like a pistol than a scattergun. There's nothing particularly annoying about its damage close range, just at medium long range, which is why it feels more like a pistol

Can I petition you to add this to some of the criteria for weapon balance?

Specifically the 2 blog posts.

What about this for BFB

Start at 150 base HP and then gradually when you get more speed your HP starts going back to the normal 125 and when you're around the max speed buff you take more damage (mini-crits??)

What if only the Medic can cap in a QF uber, along with a residual cap loss for those that just lost the QF beam, similar to uber fading?

Great changes, no opposition. I would prefer to keep the 3 clip, because 2 is such a cripple, but I'm okay with tweaking damage in cases like this.

Sounds perfect. The biggest issue with the BFB originally was that there are so many spots on maps where you need to jump slightly to take a natural path, and the BFB screwed that up - Upward is a fantastic example. When playing defense on Upward, for BOTH spawns, you need to jump up a ledge in order to get back into spawn easily, or take the long ramp way around. Reducing jump height would make it so that Scouts can no longer 'double jump' in regards to height and distance (as much), but they can still execute a second jump to change direction midair. This would also allow them to still access all the spots achieved with single normal jumps at the cost of 25% speed, while disallowing typical locations that require two jumps (like some rollouts). Trading vertical speed and the ability to dodge with jumping for horizontal speed, without stopping all maneuverability. Great change.

Not really a balance thing but it'd be cool to have the option to enable all projectiles to fire from the center like the Original does. eg: DH/Pipes firing from the center.

If you have left-handed viewmodels, you fire from the left. I doubt there can be a change for this

^^^ It'd be a little hard to implement, but I don't see why it can't be done. The server could check with the client's cvar value whenever a projectile is fired so that this can be a per-client thing, not a per-server thing.

Then there's already a system in place where the server checks for the left handed value. It's even easier, just re-use that code as an override.

Actually, a tradeoff of jumpheight on top of boost reduction (or if the baby face boost was temporary like soda popper) would make it so your movement speed is up but your vertical maneuvering would be damaged, and this would allow a better synergy with winger, pocket boy pistol, atomizer. Something like -15% jump height.

So my 2cents are about the biggest item issues i can think of. Fixing these should not resolve all items issues, but the most obvious ones at the moment.

Reserve shooter : straight upgrade from the stock shotgun given it does the same damage + the airborne targets system

• 25% damage penalty
  
• faster weapon switch removed

Baby Face Blaster : the concept is cool but the current numbers make it way too strong, mostly because it charges way too fast.

• Max boost attained with 400 damage dealt instead of 100
  
• 10% damage penalty

Soda popper : this thing should not reload faster than the FaN

• fix reload speed glitch

Crit-a-Cola : how can an item give a speed boost to the already fastest class in the game? If scouts want to use it then it should make them be REAL glass cannons.

• damage taken increased from 10% to 25%
  
• no longer gives speed boost

Pretty Boy Pocket Pistol : So 210 HP overhealed scout with almost no counterpart? seems legit. I propose a true drawback to balance this one.

• 50% Fire damage vulnerability changed to bullet damage vulnerability

Disciplinary Action : A cool item overall that poses problem only in sixes. I think it should be doable to 'slightly' modify it so using it forces boosted players to be a bit more careful.

• speed boosted players take mini crits for the duration of the boost
  
• no longer boosts multiple teammates

Loch-n-Load : So, it cannot one shot scouts anymore, which is good, but the 3 sized clip makes it still too strong.

• clip size changed to 2 from 3

Natascha : I read the wiki and it seemed that the maximum slowdown effect that was attainable was way too much thus making it completely unfun to fight against

• maximum slowdown is now equal of heavy's walking speed

Dalokohs Bar : this thing is never used to my knowledge, if it gave something else than the sandvich maybe it could have some uses

• the 50 health bonus now affects overheal too
  
• equivalent to a small healthpack instead of a medium one

GRU : The trick is (once again) to make this item not OP in sixes while retaining its impact for highlander.

• speed boost changed from 100% speed to 94% (demoman's speed)

Rescue Ranger : the building pick up mechanic is great, but the amount of damage you can repair from a distance is just way too much and makes sentry nests too strong for fluid pushes to occur

• repairs 50 health instead of 75
  
• building pick up costs 100 metal instead of 130

Wrangler : a 300 health minisentry? a 648 health level 3 gun? ok lol

• shield now absorbs 33% of damage instead of 66%

Short Circuit : it was *somewhat* fine before the buff it got, i think it's a numbers problem. If it rewards more precise timing and can get saturated of projectiles to the point it cannot stop everything it might be fine

• rate of fire increased to 0.75s (similar to airblast)
  
• each shot costs 20 metal no matter what
  
• destruction radius reduced to 50° from 75°

Mini Sentry gun : I would like to see a version of it that still makes it useful while not completely stopping a bomb or a scout, so that the engineer presence with his primary weapon would still be mandatory to hold a position

• no longer fires 50% faster than a lvl 1 sentry gun -> dps should be 50% of lvl 1 sentry gun instead of 75%
  
• no longer rotates 35% faster than a lvl 1 sentry gun

Quick fix : As said previously, in sixes it currently promotes passiveness : the uber builds faster, you don't have to build it (LOL) and on top of that, you get increased heal rate + mobility to avoid or kite anything. It should be made in a way that promotes non uber play and agressivity instead of reliance on ubers.

• No longer builds 25% faster
  
• slow build speed triggered at 120% health or higher instead of 142%

Vaccinator : the concept is ultra cool, however you often face more than 1 damage type, so buffing the item a bit could help. It should also be more of a counter to kritz play IMO, the way it currently works with crit tanking is gimmicky.

• Overheal build rate changed to -33% from -66%
  
• Crit tanking expense for explosions changed from -75% to -25% (allowing a full vaccinator uber to tank 4 explosions instead of 1)

Bazaar bargain : it's glitched :(

• fix charge glitch

Sydney sleeper : It charges faster than regular sniper and yet it doesnt need to be fully charged to apply jarate. That seems a bit odd to me.

• Applies jarate on full charge only

Classic : to please bldsire ofc

• Can fire while jumping
  
• Bodyshot damage penalty removed
  

Darwin's Danger Shield : this item should help sniper be on the frontlines and get the sick quickscopes. It should NOT give that big of an advantage in sniper duels.

• prevents crosshair flickering
  
• still gives +25 max health
  
• 20% bullet vulnerability

Cozy Camper : I had to tweak this because its main mechanic was transfered to the DDS :|

• Health regen increased from 1 HP/s to 2 HP/s
  
• Overall knockback no longer reduced by 20%
  
• damage vulnerability removed
  
• On hit with sniper rifle : tags players through walls for 5 seconds

Razorback : Some people complain about highlander being about snipers way too much. Playing with razorback close to the combo makes you pretty much unkillable by anything else than the other sniper. Adding a penalty to overheals would mean more risks in running it close to the combo and more chances to get killed by regular damage.

• 66% reduced overheal rate

Enforcer : why would this weapon have a different spread than the revolver? I also think of it as the opposite to l'Etranger.

• spread recovery changed from 0.95s to 1.25s (similar to revolver)
  
• -20% cloak duration

There you go. With these changes, every item can somewhat be used, if only situationally.

too much griefing potential

5 classes in highlander have a hitscan weapon as their primary, and the remainder (with exception to demo and possibly medic, depending on whether syringes count as hitscan) can get it as a shotgun. This allows 1 shotting scouts with a scattergun regardless of the health increase. With that, a heavy just has to click on you for a millisecond to kill you. There is no way to even escape minis, or no chance for you if you turn a corner to find a sentry. This even allows the spy to 2 shot you with the stock revolver at close range. This is a horrible idea

This makes the max damage 91. Too heavy of a nerf.

Valve takes measures to make sure you can't give downsides to teammates (without elaborate setup). This breaks that.

Seems just like a better Cozy Camper, which is already kinda silly.

These are things that I noticed which definitely don't work.

There are so many actual good ideas here.

Is it possible for us to grab a Sourcemod plugin and make some of these weapon changes? I would love to test these in a bunch of PUGs, and get in touch with Valve to help pick the best variants.

TF2 could have a resurgence. A gameplay-focused rebranding or promo or something. It would include a surge in player numbers, and if Valve ties matchmaking into that rebranding, TF2 could get really popular again. I don't know I guess I'm just hopeful, but the TF2 team does seem to want to improve the game, and testing weapon rebalances is a really simple but solid way to do it.

In an attempt to do weapon balance based off of these blog posts

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1688
http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=1670

Since engineer has the most weapons that reduce his weaknesses I'll start with him and make more posts later about other classes unless a lot of people think this is retarded.

Pomson 6000
-Remove Uber drain (shouldn't have been added removes or tempers a classes weakness and is horribly unfun)
-Remove cloak drain (shouldn't have been added removes or tempers a classes weakness, and engineer already has multiple weapons to counter his counters)
-revert back to the old damage scale with player penetration, but decrease hit detection i.e. smaller hit box

Frontier Justice
Instead of Crits do Mini Crits
Max of 3 stored Mini Crits
-33% clip size (so a total of 4 shots)
+33% Weapon Switch speed
-10% accuracy

Short Circuit
-Pre-buff stats with -33% lower metal costs.

This is still a direct counter to demo/soldier, but isn't anywhere near as grevious and would have to directly contend with the Wrangler for defensive play, while also not being enough of a shutdown to be used consistently over pistol for aggressive play

Gunslinger
Increase Mini Sentry build cost to 105 Metal.
+15% damage taken from bullets on Sentry

Allows the engineer to still play aggressively but not be able to constantly shit out mini sentries without resupplying for ammo. I'm not fully sure on this one making it 105 might be to much of a nerf to aggressive engineers without doing to much about the actual problem with minis

Wrangler
+0.5s downtime when switching to wrangler (make the weapon less viable in offensive scenarios specifically mini sentries)
+75% firing speed over base (rather than the current 100% increase)

Jag
+20% fire speed (note: this would keep upgrade speed about the same maybe add a small buff specifically to here to make the goal plausible, would repair faster, and upgrade faster)
-Damage repaired per hit: 85 ((stock is 105, current for Jag is 105) (note: so the jag doesn't actually repair faster)
-15HP

Goal I have in mind for the Jag (since it's a pretty bland weapon already) Make full sentry builds more viable in aggressive scenarios without improving the defensive capability engineer is already really good at. The -15HP is to force the engineer to rely more on his buildings rather than his DM ability.

Eureka Effect

With the current stats the weapon is rarely used even in pubs, this weapon is really cool but just simply isn't viable for any form of competition

Upgrade amount per hit: 20 (stock is 25, current for EE is 12) Total hits for upgrade become 10 rather than 16 for EE.
Damage repaired per hit: 85 (stock is 105, current for EE is 50)

Widowmaker
Can't be crit boosted
No Random crits (for pubs)

Rescue Ranger
Repairs 50 per hit (currently 75)
Can not repair buildings being constructed

Panic Attack
I don't have enough experience with or against this weapon to know

Weapons that are currently fine
Southern Hospitality