My one big issue with the weapon is there is no way to know when it is going to det. Rockets, pipes, stickies, even hit scan, does a predictable amount of damage (hit scan has the variability of if they hit the meat or not, but you can at least predict the upper range of damage and work from that). Even rollers blink as they are getting ready to det so you can avoid the explosions even as you are trying to retreat (as long as you pay attention).

But the LC doesn't offer this. Dodge the projectile and, depending on the fuse timer, the explosion might still catch you. Try to push a choke and 9 damage suddenly means that a single shot from the LC is an instant gamble: pop early and gimp your push, or risk the drop in the hopes of maximizing your uber. It is the only damage source that you can't reliably predict as medic, and there can be as much as 100 points of damage difference if you 'guess' wrong.

Add some visual indication of the timer (I think someone suggested that the projectile changes color) and I think the weapon would be fine as is. That one change removes all of the 'randomness' from the weapon.

i dont think that would solve anything since the projectile simply moves too fast?

didn't you argue against this in an earlier post? maybe I'm dumb, but I am a little confused

also... (not in reply to clockwork) the loose cannon is not unlike a sticky trap. Both can basically one shot medics, and both seem to come out of nowhere. A double donk possibility should not be cause to ban the weapon, but to find a strategy that works around it. When a push come through a door, usually a scout checks for a sticky trap for fear of a medic walking through it. Some kind of strategy could be implemented using the same idea of a sort for a push through a choke against the LC.

I need to not get randomly thrown around and more disoriented than a well placed rocket, pipe or sticky. Getting juggled/thrown around by one of those 3 weapons is one thing, but getting sent what feels like a thousand feet and suffering from the knockback effect is another. Why are any weapons with crit capabilities being defended? That question excludes the Kritzkrieg, because that expects you to stay alive long enough, which is fair enough considering the class that uses it.

I'm sure there are people who are great with the weapon and understand it well enough to nearly maximize its potential, but I've yet to see enough people being that good with it to not consider it anything besides random spam with a chance at being unnecessarily annoying.

Clock was being sarcastic

Maybe, but all of TF2 is predicated on speed and mobility, so as long as the visual indication is very noticeable (when I mentioned the previous color change suggestion I meant a really vibrant color when it is about to det) I think that would be enough. As medic you only need a split second to know if you are about to get regular donked or double donked.

Basically, I think the biggest issue with the weapon is that as a medic you literally can't know if you are taking a 40-60 damage hit (which is fairly small, compared to other damage sources) or if you are about to take 141 damage (+ potential fall damage). When I'm pushing a choke, if I have some means of predicting that difference in damage it means that I have more control over when I pop.

The rest of the weapon: burst damage, knock back, spam-ability... sure it is a pain to play against right now because it changes how you have to play, but it is possible to play around it, so I don't think it is worth banning the weapon.

The key difference is that you can check for a sticky trap, and more importantly, you can clear a sticky trap. A double donk can't be checked for as it is fired while you are pushing, and it can't be cleared unless you manage to kill the demo (and you shouldn't be able to do that prior to pushing through a choke unless the demo is really out of position.

I'm not saying you can't play around it. You definitely can. But it is only similar to a sticky trap in regards to the damage potential. It would be more accurate to compare it to a random crit rocket, except this one you can control.

that's still kind of a ridiculous expectation, seeing as how fast the cannonball moves and how big its explosion radius is. if anything the current strat of listening to the demo charge up the ball still works better.

i think the bigger problem with its combination of speed and huge radius and variable det distance is that its effectively impossible to dodge the 40 damage airdets.

Fair point, and I wasn't suggesting that the visual indication would be a tool for dodging the damage completely. The projectile definitely moves to fast for it to be any use in that regard.

I was mostly speaking towards the current 'randomness' of the double donk damage. When you are pushing it is possible to tank 40-60 damage while you are getting through a choke point if the donk was timed wrong. But currently there is no way to know if the donk is going to do 40-60 or 141 so you have to pop if you see the cannonball coming. Some visual indication, even with the limited time to react, would be enough to know if you have to right click or not.

I definitely think that valve needs to tweak the weapon more, but I don't think it is broken enough right now to warrant a ban.

I just read a lot of shit and nobody really seems to address what blaze, clock and seagull said. For example, people are still pretending mid-range consistent damage is a fair trade-off for loosing some already precarious close range 1v1 capability, completely ignoring how demoman is actually played.

Ban it.

how to tell clockwork's sarcasm

Sorry to bump this thread but since the season is starting soon and the straw poll (https://strawpoll.me/5251013/r) was just a bit in favor of banning it, will it actually be possible for it to be banned or will esea not care about our opinion once again like the map vote?

"I'm bad and get destroyed by one weapon please ban"

Not really what i meant as you can see in this thread alot of people are annoyed playing against it and think it is unbalenced and should be banned etc. and i have posted the reasons why i personally think it should be banned, i just want to know if it is possible for it to be banned since the strawpoll was in favor of banning it but im gona edit my post since i guess i wasn't clear.

A single double donk can drop a full HP med, so no.

except it can't

it hasn't been able to since last december

double donk does 141

Alot of times the medic can fly into the air and be forced to pop or drop from fall damage, also sometimes he can just drop if he gets hit by another cannon ball after or before the double donk since nobody really spams 1 at a time

That has happened to me many times.

I have no objection to it being banned, and I'm surprised this discussion hasn't happened more often, let alone sooner. At the same time, it's one of those weapons that's easy to abuse and rewards low skill, and there are numerous weapons like this in the game. This is coming more from a Highlander perspective, but if we're going to ban the Loose Cannon for being an easy weapon to abuse, there are a number of other cases we can make to ban other weapons.

noskill weapon, ban please

I think we need to address each weapon individually. If we go 1 by 1 and just ban out the OP stuff as it comes, it will be much easier to get those weapons banned rather than trying to ban like 20 weapons at once

FREE THE DONKERS

I feel as if the double donk is a little too rewarding for holding down left-click for a certain amount of time.

Comparing it to the stock grenade launcher though, it's fairly random, and not very reliable at short range. Can be very useful in a seriously chokey-map as the double donk can affect multiple people.

As a demo main, I still use pipes since I prefer the constant damage that they can provide. That being said however, having to push a choke where there is at least one sticky trap, and a buffed demo sitting outside it slowly firing off LC and reloading can be incredibly frustrating. While I think the push back mechanism and double donk are interesting mechanics, the big thing for me is the reload speed being identical to that of the grenade launcher, meaning that cannonballs can constantly be filling a choke. I would like a nerf that does one of these three things:

1. Smaller clip size
   
2. Longer reload time
   
3. A reversed charge timer i.e. if it worked like stickies where a cannonball has to be charged to go a meaningful distance, with double donks only being possible after some amount of charge to prevent close-range bullshit.

This would make the weapon less spammy, while still keeping the mechanic.

Loose Cannon will remain unbanned for the upcoming ESEA season. We didn't take a poll but for the record 5/9 invite teams were against banning it.

god dammit b4nny...

is the stupid medigun pickup shit allowed

I like to think every double donk I land is consolation for everytime I get 2-shot in half a second by a scout or soldier.