None of this "Valve will balance weapons" shit will matter if ESEA keeps its policy of only reviewing the whitelist every 2 seasons. 3-6 months to see balance changes is way too slow.

rockets are also way different in how you can surf and play around them

NO guys - rockets, pipes, and the loose cannon are nearly identical. They're all projectiles? What more do you need? If you know a demoman on the other team is using the loose cannon, why are you even trying to push? Idiots. There's always a workaround. Welcome to invite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxxuV66XV7I

I would just like to clarify a couple concepts that are being bandied about:

Randomness - Do keep in mind that when you truly analyze any game randomness exists. Granted random crits versus no random crits is a no brainer. However I have gotten picks and been picked by a "random" pill when on 90-99 health. Does that mean that the randomness of pills is imbalanced? No, of course not it just means that randomness is part of the game and it goes both ways in the sense that it works for you sometimes and works against you other times, so in the grand cosmic sense it probably does balance out. This same reasoning I believe can be applied to cannon balls in that sometimes you can "randomly" kill someone with a spam cannon ball just as you can "randomly" kill someone with pill spam. In short randomness is a not a valid reason for banning a weapon or game mechanic. So what is a valid reason for banning a weapon?

Overpowered/game breaking - I think a valid reason for banning a weapon would be if it becomes required/necessary in order to win or at least be successful at demoman. What I mean by this definition is that the question of whether the Loose cannon should be banned is not an argumentative question but it is a question of data and statistics. Certainly a simple test for whether teams/players who ran the loose cannon were out right more successful than those who ran pills.Of course there are some methodological questions that arise such as how do we quantify loose cannon success? Perhaps it is DPM, Frags, or Win/loss ratio or a combination of those or all of them. That is beside the point and can be worked out later. Of course there are confounding variables like personal play style and team play style. The point however is that if in a competitive context the loose cannon is "significantly" correlated with greater success then it should be banned because it is necessary to run it to win. If it isn't, then it is not over powered and is simply a side grade to the grenade launcher.

I haven't crunched the numbers personally but I have the sense that while people find it annoying to play against it isn't of game breaking proportions.

When the game first game out random crits were enabled and people made mods to turn it off before valve finally added a command to turn it off. Random spread existed. Pipe damage was so random that it could do like 60 dmg or 130 dmg so you could 1 shot unbuffed scouts. You could also one shot medics with a sticky because it could do 150 damage. The list goes on, people complained, and then it was fixed by valve or a 3rd party mod.

When people use the word random to talk about the loose cannon they're essentially using it synonymously with skill-less. Yes, you may hit a random pipe once in a while but it takes skill to hit even a decent percentage of pipes. The loose cannon being random means that skill is less of a factor when playing with it, so yes, a weapon being random is very much so a reason to ban it.

Someone can have comparable dpm with the loose cannon vs pipes, but have an inappropriate impact on the game with one random donk on a medic. You can collect all the data you want, but if the complaint about a weapon is the random factor, then how do you measure if it should be banned via stats?

I would say that Loose Cannon is 50/50 weapon, it has its good and bad sides.

Pros:
-Uber denial
-141 damage with a double donk
-Possibility to jump away from a fight with a charge, for a price of losing health
-Prevent enemies from advancing (without Uber) by knocking them back

Cons:
-Unreliable for 1v1/Close-range fights
-You could've dealt 100 damage to an enemy if you used Stock, instead of 40 (if you failed to double donk him).
-If you're hitting enemies at close range, Cannon rolls back at you or some different angle, which can hurt both you and enemy(ies)
-Knocking off enemies can provide them with an advantage

The last one might sound silly, but it's actually true, I've seen some Demos running Loose Cannon and sometimes when they just knocked back an enemy, he managed to escape. Perfect example is going for the Medic, if you fail to double donk him and deal 141 damage, there is a chance that Medic will use that to escape. So the point is that sometimes going for the pick with LC, can actually accidentally benefit Enemy players, by knocking them far away, allowing them to escape.

Every time Epsilon came up against a strategy they didn't like they lobbied the league to get it banned.

RIP double engi...
RIP double sniper...
RIP double donk?!

I think it is worth being rewarded with extra damage for double donking because it gives a higer skill cieling of timing your shots but atm, you dont even need to time it properly because if you spam enough you will eventually get one. Give it less clip and/or slower reload time to make it high risk high reward, you HAVE to try and aim for double donks or you lose, rather than the current just spam it and if you somehow get a double donk its a great bonus.

Completely breaks viaduct (a map i already hated).

Being randomly dropped while at 140 HP by spam is probably the most frustrating thing in the game. Yeah snipers can do it too but at least they have to aim for it.

I'd say we have better chances showing VALVE what's wrong with the weapon leaving it unbanned than to ban it. It's seriously a bad time to alienate ourselves further more from tf2 pubs.

The weapon would work fine with a few tweaks that people already have suggested, my own suggestion would be applying the quickie bomb launcher mechanic in it. Nerf it's current base damage and have it do much less on long range donks, but retain the double donk damage close range(explosive damage charges up as the charge meter goes up).

Besides, it's always fun to hear the double donk sound effect on stream.

that is working well with picking up uber

I hate it so much. It has no place in 6's. Highlander... maybe.

I've nicknamed it the cancer canon. Some people are better at timing the double donks than others, but sometimes it just comes down to pure luck. The 141 damage + stunning a player is ridiculous. I don't feel like a weapon that takes less skill to do damage, should be rewarded with some-what random high damage output. I've also seen it just completely destroy an uber push due to the pocket getting double donked twice in a row and not being able to move.

There are other far less silly weapons that are banned in ESEA. Like the quicky bomb launcher. I'd much rather see that thing unbanned, and the cancer canon banned.

Don't call it the cancer cannon c'mon man lmao

The knockback aspect of the weapon doesn't phase me. I will agree that it does too much damage, however. 124 at best, make it a sidegrade in the same way they've (kind of) done with the loch n load

can we please legalize the flying guillotine? i think it very fairly rewards skill with crits!!!

Its a pretty fucking stupid weapon, but it isn't unbeatable. Just really annoying and frustrating to play against.

How?

Ban = showing valve we don't like it = there's some issue with the weapon = eventual nerf or rework
No ban = not showing valve we don't like it = for all they know it's fine = no change

Valve doesn't browse tftv or anything, banning weapons would be dumb if we had direct communication with valve and never needed to ban things, but weapon bans are our only surefire way of highlighting "this weapon is a problem" (and doubles as a temporary solution to it too).

I'm not necessarily saying the loose cannon deserves to be banned, but avoiding bans entirely to try and show what's wrong with items is the opposite of what you'd want to do.

Probably because as great as his post is it has nothing to do with how balanced the Loose Cannon is

I'm a sub open demo and I can still hit double donks pretty consistently. It's not hard at all to hold your mouse down for a second while you line up your shot.

Does anyone else think valve isn't stupid and will likely have some class/weapon restrictions? Like we already know its 6v6 and 9v9 so we know they are looking closely at how we play.
I can't anticipate either A) them not restricting certain things or B) them releasing a MASSIVE balancing patch for weapons for matchmaking.
I highly doubt we're going to be seeing "3 bonk scouts healed by 2 quickfix medics" or other crazy shit. Even though valve wants us to use all their classes and weapons they also know how to maintain and balance a great competitive game (ie: dota 2, CSGO) Loose cannon needs to be banned until its balance is changed, just like anything else that is too powerful or disrupts the flow of the game.

Let's ban, pyro, engie, heavy, sniper, spy and the Loose cannon, yeah.
Fuck having to think, we can click people. Considering I haven't seen the over-centralization of the metagame like quickfix, I fail to see how it's ban-able. Sure, it's obnoxious and something you have to play around, like pyro, heavy, engie and sniper, but unlike those classes, it can be ran all the time and only changes the playstyle a little bit.
Demo remains a mid-long range class capable of killing meds with 1 click while being vulnerable to getting rushed by 4/6 of the players on any given team. Somehow the oversight that stickies remain a persistent threat to meds remains out of the discussion entirely. That being said only 1-2 demos used this playstyle when it first came out, in spite of the obvious advantages it gives to demomen. It's a weapon that makes a demo more capable of playing in proper position while still dealing plenty of damage. Banning it is an emotional response, not a game-balance response. I'm sure I'll see some hyperbolic sarcastic arguments slung my way, but the weapon is fine for the most part. It definitely could use some refining, but if it doesn't happen, it's still not worth banning.

don't forget the famous cp_standin

I 100% seriously do believe that Valve is naive enough to not restrict classes and weapons at all. enigma said that they said they were not going to restrict classes iirc and going by how Valve deals with overpowered weapons in general I believe they will just leave them in and then eventually nerf them either way too much to the point where they are unusable (see Tomislav, CSGO Deagle, Baby Face's Blaster) or nowhere near enough (see Tec 9, Pomson, Gunslinger). I think they will either leave the Loose Cannon in or make it completely unusable.

CSGO has been not at all balanced at almost all points in its lifecycle and from what I hear from DOTA2 players that game isn't well balanced either (although it might just be dota players bitching way too much)

Allow the Machina pls.

This unlock is just a good response to the sticky nerf. When your offensive capabities are nerfed, it's now more effective to stay passive with your medic. And loose cannon is a better weapon when spamming from long range.

Buff stickies and you may see aggressive demomen making a comeback and using pipes instead.

E: Or nerf scouts so demomen can play more aggressively.

I got a face full of Loose Cannon all night last night in lobbies. I'm hoping they don't ban it so I can stop playing medic. That shit is a joke.

yes please

What do you think the odds are of Valve doing something like this and not breaking it horrendously so it does outrageous damage on every hit for at least three patches?