I was gonna add those blog posts after work comanglia, mobile isn't good for formatting

vanilla + medlocks (minus quickfix/vaccinator)

Just going to add my two cents to the BFB.

Baby Face's Blaster
Current stats with the following changes:

• Max boost acquired after 140 damage, up from 100 damage

100 damage is a little low. It allows a single meatshot to almost fully charge the boost meter. This change would require at least two meatshots, or around 3.5 medium range shots. Additionally, a full pistol clip deals around 180 damage at medium range, and 96 damage at long range, assuming no shots miss (lol). Assuming you only hit 50% of your shots (thanks to spread, and it's probably a lower percentage than this), you would now need around two clips at medium range to get to full boost.

• 20% boost removed on air jumps, down from 25%

Important when considering how gameplay changes with the next change, but it also means that the 140 damage you spent goes to waste a lot less easily. Boost is harder to obtain, and should fall slower. One of the biggest issues with the BFB is how often your speed can change, and how much it can change in those bursts. From a pub focus, it's a little confusing for newer players when their speed keeps drastically changing, and while not a subtle effect by design, it should have a more gradual transition in both ways. From a comp focus, it's really fucking hard to track someone whose speed keeps changing so drastically. Gradual transitions are good in both cases, as long as they aren't too extreme.

• Jump height reduced by 40%

This is the biggest change that I feel really balances the weapon. This makes it so that Scouts that grab the BFB trade vertical maneuverability and positioning for horizontal speed. It's a playstyle change, more of a sidegrade. What 40% does is make it so that a Scout with the BFB can only jump a little higher than a standard class while using up both double jumps and losing 20% of their speed. They can perform small jumps that allow them to get over ledges, which are very big issues on certain maps like Upward (defense spawns), without losing any boost. However, in order to take certain paths that require a full crouch jump, they now need to spend 20% of their boost, and they have to take those jumps slower. It stops them from going to places that only full double jump scouts can accomplish if it's a vertical location, which is part of the downside of the weapon, but they can still cross double jump gaps if they have full boost, which is part of the horizontal improvement that they should have in the first place. The number can be fine tuned after playtesting on major maps, of course, so that all jumps that should be achievable are achievable, but I figured 40% is a nice number because it gives a little wiggle room for you to mess up and still achieve what any class can in terms of single jump height.

Another idea that I had, but had issues:

• Just removing double jump

The Scout's double jump isn't only for climbing over obstacles and ascending to other floors, it's also part of what makes the Scout able to dodge in midair - performing an air jump will completely reset their momentum and change their direction in any way they want. It's too core to the class to remove. The jump height nerf allows them to keep that maneuverability without having the standard height advantage that double jumping gives.

I want to contribute to a couple of other ideas here but I don't have enough time to write any more. I'll definitely check in with this thread later tonight and write up some changes for currently banned weapons.

Shouldve done the maths lol.

To me max damage doable with this should be around 110, that was the point i was trying to make

I wasn't aware of the no debuffs to teammates rules.

Another possible change would be :

No longer gives a speed boost to the soldier.

I mean, he's not whipping himself is he? :D

Can you elaborate why a better cozy camper is silly? This DDS change fixes the idiocy it is now while still having some drawbacks.

Then i propose something less drastic

30% bullet damage vulnerability
that's how you turn an item without any drawbacks into an item with a good plus side (210 hp buffed ffs) and a nasty minus.

You become better against explosives and weaker against hitscan classes.

It could be the other way, good against hitscan and weak against explosives, i don't mind that much.

The idea is to balance the huge plus of the overheal with a damage vulnerability that more or less hard counters you.

Once again, i don't care that much about specific numbers, but more about means of balancing current designs without changing them too much.

As much of a nuisance as a super buffed scout is, the impact that health boost has outside of comp is really helpful for scout. Scouts weakness is his health, and pocket pistol helps fight that disadvantage. However, fire damage is such a rare damage type that it should be tweaked, and I feel blast isn't diverse enough to accommodate that change. Bullet seems the most balanced because if two scouts try to take advantage of the health, they're still going to have the same encounter with one another. Another option could be just an overall damage vulnerability similar to powerjack but not to a 50%vulnerability, maybe 20%

The issue is that regular damage vulnerability with 125/185 HP would be roughly the same as 140/210HP, thus the item would then be useless :(

I feel it'd need a completely different change to make it alright, like no doublejump, jumpheight reduced, or something that makes it harder to dodge with it

or even health from healthpacks/medigun, idk

The best, actually viable (to Valve) nerf I've seen about the mini is limiting its FOV. Instead of having a full 360 degree view it can only look/fire towards its front half, halving its total area of attack and giving scouts/soldiers/pyros/anyone really the ability to flank it without getting smashed. It would seem like a small nerf, but the effects it would have are huge imo.

I talked about the wrangler with engie mains and they agree a good fix would be for the wrangler to multiply the sentry guns healthy by 3 instead of doing the "super armor" thing it does now. This would make it so that wrenching/rescue rangering your sentry would only heal the actual amount instead of 3 times that when its wrangled which would make it much easier to destroy the sentry while still offering the infinite range/higher health upside of the wrangler.

The only way i see the beggar's bazooka getting fixed is if the load speed is lowered a bit. This would take away that incredible mobility boost it gets when you know how to use it properly as well as the spam potential.

Also for the loch just take away the extra shot ffs. Its so fucking good.

EDIT: since the fixing of the bug where minis heal at light speed when building i honestly don't see them as op since it only takes 1 sticky and 1-2 rockets to deal with. scout and pyro are still pretty weak to them but there's a bit you can do to destroy them as those classes if you can use cover to get close enough. When teams are communicating though all it takes is "please destroy the mini" and scout/pyro are useful again.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the change you proposed for the Wrangler complete negate the nerf to the rescue ranger since the shield would instantly fade upon switching weapons?

Pubs with multiple engineers hanging back using the RR on a wrangled sentry, I guess. Irrelevant in competitive play because both HL and 6v6 only allow a max of 1 engie.

Okay you guys have GOT to stop saying that anything that "slows down the game" is bad, for the simple reason that it can be warped around to mean about a million different things. Technically uber can "slow down the game" by making the medic temporarily unkillable, the same way the darwins danger shield "slows down the game" by making it harder to pick the sniper with a headshot.

At one point, it was said jarate slowed down the game because it discouraged teams from pushing once they were doused. And razorback slowed down the game by making the sniper unpickable by spies. Youd think the SMG also slows down the game because its the best answer to a scout trying to rush you down. But for each one of those items, you could make the opposite case, where they speed up the game by offering a unique advantage of the other team. And as we know, finding advantages is how we push.

Also, "slowing down the game" can be GOOD in some ways. Firefights in tf2 can be seen as slower than a game like CS or CoD because they take longer to resolve. But the high ttk of tf2 is what makes it a DM game in the first place. Slowing down fights and dragging them out allows for more tactical decisions to be made. Not exactly a bad thing.

The bigger problem is classes or unlocks that slow down the game by discouraging aggression. And honestly, the Engie class is more guilty of this than any unlock released to date.

can we get a long list of items that
a - need tweaking - items that are a little off balance but not a game breaking concept -> pomson
b - need reworks - items that are badly designed / game breaking -> soda popper / quick fix

just so people looking at suggestions have a place to start

How do you think you can get people to agree on that? This is way too many cooks in the kitchen.

Ummmm, the effect is passive.

It's not that no one uses the Solemn Vow because it's shit. They don't use it because it's banned.

Friendly reminder that if you're going to make suggestions for a weapon, make sure you actually know what the weapon does. I find that sometimes a lot of casters and even invite players on stream will have no clue what a weapon does.

It's interesting that Valve included in their blog post "What if you had to deal with a team full of <class> using <said unlock>?" when literally anything engineer is horrible to deal with on a more-than-2-engineer basis. Examples include:

Mini Sentry Wranglers scattered across a last point (I've dealt with this in badwater last, it's dreadful).
Rescue Ranger Engineers repairing the sentry of an engineer short-circuiting away stickies/rockets (removing the ability to take out a sentry before it can be repaired, how is this balanced).

Uber does not slow down the game, it allows you to push through stalemate-y maps, and chokepoints, without dying.

Ambassador, revolver exist for this reason. 2-3 shots kill, and you usually get the jump on them enough to get those shots off.

This statement makes no sense

The weapons in question are slowing down the game in places outside of DM-fests. In the already stalemate-y parts of competitive play, and even casual play, Short Circuit protects sentries, as does Wrangler, and Darwin's limits frag-ability.

The aforementioned engineer weapons are guilty of this, not necessarily the class itself.

He said in a suggestion to alter the Solemn Vow to not be passive, and to be an active while holding.

You could NOT have missed my point harder.

Certain weapons slow down the game in their respective situations. Slowing down the game isn't a bad thing; making it difficult/unfair to win a 1v1 without a weapon is slowing down the game.

Valve is going to see that Engie, Pyro, Heavy, and Spy are barely used in 6s even with a full whitelist, and buff them accordingly. Just warning you.

eh, minigun/sandvich/gru heavy is full-time viable, and so are pomson/SC or wrangler/gunslinger engineers, degreaser/reserveshooter/powerjack pyros, and DR Enforcicles

i HOPE valve will realize, upon seeing the new meta, how fucking stupid it is, and instead change the classes so they are both viable and not retarded

You're gonna have to explain why it's fucking stupid to Valve, you know. What is "preferred" is not going to sway them when tweaking weapons. Herein lies the problem, because so much of what 6s already is is weapons banned for being "annoying" or "breaking class roles" or "encouraging offclasses" or "slowing down the game" which is pretty much as I just said, preference. Which is fine, but ultimately poor reasoning to change most weapons. Especially when, in practice, a lot of the banned weapons are awful, like the Wrap Assassin. Valve is going to BUFF that shit when they see the 0.01% equip rate on it, it's foolish to think otherwise.

Just because those are sort-of good loadouts for those classes (Pomson is pretty awful) doesn't mean Scout, Soldier, and Demo's versatility and strength won't still make them the better choices 95% of the time.

Thinking back to those full whitelist showmatches, the one problematic weapon was the BFB. That's good, we already have solid evidence on why that should be tweaked. Other than that? I don't recall the offclasses or their banned weaponry making ANY impact outside of moments far and few between. The Soldiers always managed to kill the SC Engies, Pyros were basically non-entities, Heavies got focus-fired, and so on.

In short: preference ≠ Valve tweaking a weapon/class

Note that I would actually like to see stock Engie, Pyro, and Heavy tweaked though. I think all the classes could stand to be balanced out at a stock level. Soldier is a good standard but even he's slightly overtuned.

You can also make a case for the SC allowing aggression by being able to push through spam-filled chokes, and Darwin's allowing Snipers to not have to worry about the opposing Sniper for a bit and make picks on other classes, which is the crux of Radman's post. Weapon balance is not so black and white.

All sentries have the same range regardless of level...

I get the feeling most of the people here haven't touched the classes they want to nerf for more than a couple of hours.

A lot of tf2 weapons simply wont work/cant be changed in a way that will make them balanced in 6s yet not useless in pubs/hl

I don't really think that's true. I think most people saying this are saying it from the perspective of the current 6s meta. In Valve's version of 6s I think it can be done.

It all really depends on your tolerance level for balance. ETF2L seems to be doing fine ever since they started relaxing unlock restrictions.

I think the idea is that a lot of the core ideas of weapons are just destructive to our 6s, and no amount of "less powerful" would make them not destructive in our 6s without making them pointless outside of our 6s.

Mm, but this is Valve's 6s. "Heavies to mid" is like an ancient voodoo curse to most 6s players, but Valve will want to encourage it.

I can see the conflict of interest already.

Yes please. These classes actually would be significantly more interesting in 6es if they could actually push easily and didn't cause stalemates as easily.

just give heavy an lg as primary

Think about it from the perspective of valve pubbers, the main users of the comp matchmaking system. They'll be mostly unacquainted with the standard 6s lineup, and of what to expect from a fast paced competitive format. If your only experiences in tf2 were pubs, seeing a variety of classes and weapons at once won't be jarring or un-fun to them but simply the norm. The only difference is that they'll be playing to win and the number of players on each team is reduced.

#81
The current short circuit can allow a free choke-point push, but also completely denies Demoman since all of his weapons are explosives, and it takes very little effort to completely shut down these high damage explosives for his teammates to fight and kill said victim. Using the old short circuit to clear a spam choke would be a cool tactic because it wouldn't be the bullshit weapon it is today.

I see your point about Darwin outside of a 1v1 but it just seems unfair that if an enemy sniper has the weapon and I don't, I can't hope to defeat him if he is the one grabbing picks on my teammates

there's a mild problem (?) with heavy and maybe pyro just being absolutely all encompassing at lower skill levels. A "good" heavy could easily solo games that he would be losing as any other class, especially at a subeagle level of skill. ofc CS has a similar problem where ppl cant use rifles below like SFMC for some reason so maybe valve just doesnt care if silvers get fucking annihilated by boring weapons, but nerfing heavy is probably likely if valve is just going to consider win rates or smethng