I don't know if it still does, but I know the bleed effect from the Wrap Assassin can fuck with a lot of people's monitors.

ALSO, the mini sentry can deny a huge amount of area for free. It is easier to spam down than before, but it can still be really annoying, especially as scout. It's a lot of free damage and area denial with no skill necessary. I would prefer it to stay banned.

Everything else is probably fine.

cleaners carbine should definitely be allowed. it is so shit that it does lower damage-per-second than stock even when it has its minicrits so there is no need for it to be banned

Mini sentrys are complete aids, people would run engi gunslinger on viaduct and make viaduct even worse

Why should useless unlocks be allowed?

Can we attempt to come from the standpoint that they should be, just for sake of argument? It's a whole other debate and one that the pro-unlock is winning mostly due to MM probably having an open whitelist.

Allow mini sentries and I guarantee one of the scout spots will be an engineer

Why shouldn't they?

wtf someone might use an underpowered weapon, that would be so gamebreaking!! ban it
??????

I think that's a ridiculous claim to make given how powerful scouts are, and the reason for that mainly stemming from movement ability. Why do you think it would go that way?

Engineer is really stupid and annoying but so is heavy and pyro, doesn't mean they're more effective than a scout.

phlog, panic, tide turner, cleaner's are fine. not sure about brass beast at all

i'm iffy on the wrap assassin since you can't build with it and the bleed from it's ornament doesn't do much but hell no to minis and the flying guillotine

i swear that guillotine did a nice chunk of damage, that shit is super annoying to deal with and it gives scout something to spam chokes with

I think brass beast would be stupid in 6s but I think only a few unlocks in the whole game actually deserve a ban, let's unban all of these imo

Mini sentries just aren't fun to play against and will just slow down the game pointlessly. Not slow it down to a sentry nest level but, you see it going up, you change target to make sure it stays down, then they build it again, then they run away. And everytime that mini comes up (that isn't even doing anything really) takes off time and focus on what the game should be.

Can we have ETF2L cup with almost no unlock bans, or at least said unlocks allowed, just like the Forsaken cup?

If gunslinger would be allowed NOBODY will replace scout with engineer, unless its some pickup or aids mix. And probably wont be used every unless like i said before on viaduct.

Several of these I've seen justified because they're annoying. So I guess it's related to the level of trolling in comp games and how likely these are going to be used just to piss people off.

No whitelist S23!

Flying guillotine does 90 damage in total + aimpunch and bleeding screen effect... it's not useless

tide turner and items like that just promote low skill-high reward gameplay (same reason I thought loose cannon should have been banned) and is generally just an un-fun mechanic to play against, most of these items are really un-interactive in terms of gameplay and counterplay except the panic attack and gunslinger (and I guess scout melee's to a point). the rest mostly just change the amount of damage the weapon does which I don't find personally to be a very interesting mechanic for 6s.

The brass beast has that 20% defense thing and would make pushing gully wash last total butts

Actually brass beast is total shit. The extra damage you put out is negligible compared to being actually able to somewhat dodge and reposition quickly.

Panic Attack and Cleaner's Carbine seem fine to me. Tide Turner I'm not sure about, I don't play demoknight much and I'm really bad with it. I do think that stickies are always better in a serious environment though.

Wrap Assassin is a straight upgrade to the stock Bat if you consider that nobody really uses melee to do damage anyway. So the -70% melee damage is kind of irrelevant. Gives scout a long range option which I think is kind of stupid considering the stock weapons all require you to be fairly close to your target to do good damage.

Guillotine isn't really good without Sandman, still gives scout a long range option on a very short cooldown.
Bleed effects in general are pretty dumb because it just makes the enemy run to healthkits the entire time.

Brass Beast damage reduction when spun up is pretty insane. Fully charged headshot doesn't even kill a buffed heavy. Machina counters this to an extent. Just think about Brass Beast heavy on snakewater last, it's already really good because it's so hard to kill. Could see this getting unbanned and still not being used though simply because people like being more mobile.

Phlog is pretty insane, Scorch Shot is allowed. Really easy to spam and get full charge in a reasonable time.

Gunslinger is different now, but still really strong. I actually think it got buffed. You can hit mini sentries now to make them build faster. You can also repair them. Minis completely destroy scouts if positioned correctly, they always need help of a projectile class to kill it. And even if they destroy it, the engi can just build a new one pretty much instantly.

would be fine with all of these except gunslinger, fuck mini sentries

brass beast sounds potentially dumb but worth trying out

actually that is spamfests wet dream and he'd probably do it full time outside of mids lol

a demoknight with good pipes can be more effective then you think
loose cannon makes it a lot better

Flying Guillotine:

Does 50 base + 40 bleed (long range does 68+54) and recharges in 6s. Way too easy to just spam down long corridors or through chokes to basically win fights against enemies with no medic around. Essentially it would turn flank fights to having your scouts throw their cleaver until they hit something and then walking in. There is no reason to allow a weapon that is basically luck based dominate the flank.

As for the alternatives, the pistol is terrible and even with the best aim you still aren't going to get over 30% of your shots hit, i.e. you usually aren't going to do more than 50dmg at a time. The winger is even worse damage wise, yet most scouts use it for the jump height which really is only useful when out of a fight to save time. If there is a scout secondary that should be allowed it is the pocket pistol, since after the nerf it is terrible. All other scout secondaries are banned for good reason.

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Wrap Assassin:

15 base + 40 bleed, recharge in 15s. A weaker version of the guillotine but the same argument applies. There should be no "free" damage allowed in a truly competitive game, you should need to do something skillful to do damage and both the guillotine and wrap are not skillful. Ignoring the plea to skill argument, 50dmg on the flank is still usually enough to open it up for some prodding that otherwise would have required coordinated play by more than just the scout on the team.

As for unlocks everything is relatively useless except for the atomizer, basher, and sandman. Atomizer is obviously never going to be unbanned and the same goes for the sandman. (As an aside, the cleaver does an arguably better job than the sandman at securing kills.) With the escape plan change, there really isn't a need for scouts to build uber now and the jumps that you can do with the basher fall into the same problem as the winger, you really can't do them in a fight, they only save time.

Like the secondary slot above, there is a banned weapon that really shouldn't be: the candy cane. The candy cane could drop medium packs and I don't think scouts would run it because of its downside. A pipe or close range rocket is a 1 shot without a buff. Honestly people keep looking for a way to stop the scout dominance that they have right now and forcing them all to run the candy cane would be a pretty effective (and silly) nerf.

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Brass Beast

A heavy that walks away from the point is basically awarding the enemy team the capture, so your purported downside is one that already exists. However, the spin time and almost complete removal of mobility when spun up makes it bad enough that the only way to play with it is to stand still and not move, which effectively turns you into a sentry gun that takes up a spot on your team. Nobody (seriously) complains about sentries so there should be no complaints about this weapon. For an example, if you run brass beast on badlands last and hold on the upper platforms, the enemy team would be able to cap the point before you were able to get to the ground and either rev up to kill or step on the point. Against robots it is great, but against actual humans the movement reduction and spin time are terrible.

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Tide Turner

In 6s worse than the targe, but nonetheless an incredibly frustrating to play against weapon. This is one of those items you will get endless complaints about but nothing that really impacts the game so it will probably fall onto the league admins to make a ruling one way or another.

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Gunslinger

This item is extremely controversial, hell there are even a good number of HL people who want it gone from their format. But like you said, any kind of coordination is easily able to take out a sentry. This is one of the few weapons that I would want to see brand new testing done before being allowed. There are good arguments on both side of the coin and I'd rather not have a season destroyed due to allowing it over a convincing argument. A "forced engie" cup, where every team actually tries (unlike the all unlocks cup), really is the only way I see getting a community acceptable answer on this weapon.

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Panic Attack, Phlog, and Carbine should all be allowed.

Other items that you didn't list but should probably be allowed with little to no testing: Persian Persuader (demo gets no ammo), Fists of Steel, Cozy Camper,

Items that are 70/30 to 50/50 allowed and probably need a bit of testing before allowing: Base jumper, Pomson 6000, and Short Circuit

Desca was innovating panic attack, don't unban it.

@Sto the cozy camper is allowed and ask any 6s sniper who has started using it, it's really fucking good and really fucking stupid to play against

#29, not allowed in ETF2L and over in ESEA I really haven't seen the cozy camper hurt the game that badly. Sure it removes the ability to aim punch but I don't think it makes playing against a sniper any more unfun.

I do, however, agree that there isn't another unlock that is vying for time over the camper so the ban argument in NA is fairly valid.