they should have just kept the vaccinator where it was at release, where it was useful for anti-kritz and holding last with full uber disadvantage

the uber building change gutted it and the vulnerability to crits was the nail in the coffin

I think it's great and adds more to the element of rock paper sciccors like when the quick fix was introduced

I'm not talking about the vacc specifically, I'm just saying that we don't have to suddenly unban all weapons just because mm is coming out. vacc sucks and can be unbanned without a problem, but when you start to talk about ridiculous weapons like quick fix and gunslinger it seems pretty terrible to me. If gunslinger were allowed I probably literally would stop playing the game. There are a few other weapons that come to mind that completely ruin the game and when they are unbanned it will essentially change the entire game. Like imagine a season where people could use gunslinger, wrangler, quick fix, pomson, and sydney sleeper. Would you want to play in that? I sure as fuck wouldn't.

Consistency between pubs/mm and actual leagues is important but we can't just unban all the shit that everybody knows is OP just because mm is released. Sure once Valve makes efforts to change the weapons we could probably unban them even if it shifts the meta a little because we want consistency, but the way everything is now it would be really bad if we unbanned everything. I'm not trying to say we should just ignore all the people who get into the game for mm, but we can't compromise the integrity of our game as an esport just to get more people. Lowering the skill ceiling will definitely bring in more new players, but is that something we really want? I think that one of the main reasons people like games like TF2/Quake is that they have that really high skill ceiling relative to other kinds of games and it is awesome to watch the best players in the world and strive to be that good one day yourself. Reconsidering our whitelist is fine but I just think that some people might misinterpret what you're saying and try to use your argument to unban really dumb shit and ruin the game.

He's right, it's part of valve building the bridge between matchmaking and tradional formats In comp to leagues with balanced rules and guide lines. This is a huge step and will continue to provide a influx into our own DIY scene. Again and I've mentioned it before we are achieving things on par with early SSMBM days but execeding in amount of time during the stretch of tf2's lengthy life span.

What? Could you be obliged enough to post your source please?

And my opinion is that the weapon is fine as it is now. It is a good twist to use to surprise teams, as the kritz is. However, running it full time (with only one medic) is quite tough.

deetr, you make a good point about reducing the skill ceiling and compromising integrity of the competition for more players. The reason we all love competitive TF2 is because the competition relies on how well you can execute fights, play off your advantages and shore up your defenses. It is more similar to CS:GO than any other game in that regard, the meta revolves around a level of mechanical skill and decision-making, rather than running unlocks to counter other unlocks or running wacky team compositions. Nobody is currently enjoying competitive TF2 because of unlock cheese strats, or triple spy to mid strats, and even the occasional interesting unlock / offclass usage is more of the icing on top than what makes 6v6 such an amazing game for those of us here.

However your argument is falling down when you make these sweeping claims that all of the weapons we currently have banned are shit and would ruin the game as you know it. I highly doubt you've done the testing required to see whether gunslinger post-nerf would actually create this change where you'd want to quit the game. It's not half as bad as you think, but your instant attitude is to reject the weapons rather than keep an open mind.

We have, as clockwork said, a great opportunity to take 6s and compromise the game we've created in order to make it much larger. Let's not kid ourselves, 6s wasn't going anywhere before matchmaking. We were stagnating in terms of size, popularity, sponsorship and interest, despite being a game that lots of people here loved to play and which has great merits.

MM has provided the game a new breath of life, but the cost will be compromising the game we've lovingly created for one which will appeal to more people. In my opinion it's about having a good idea of what we think is crucial to competitive TF2 and should not be altered, and what we can afford to change and see how it works out. Whitelists (given that Valve will be working to balance them) are what I'm most prepared to change quite frankly.

I don't think anyone's arguing for a change wherein everything's unbanned in a single night, since that would obviously end badly. even ETF2L is slowly bringing weapons in season-by-season, that's the best way of going about it to ensure everyone understands each weapon fully (and, worst case scenario, people can have concise, clear evidence of "see, this weapon is awful to deal with, we're waiting on a change from valve"), but eventually leagues are going to have to allow everything, even if that "eventually" isn't for well over a year

I don't know whether that is necessarily true trash, if there is a weapon that's obviously broken or OP then it should be banned until Valve fix it. Hopefully in the future we'll have a relationship with valve that allows us to highlight broken weapons and get them fixed quickly like the R8 etc, but if we don't or they're slow then there's no reason why we should have a 100% open whitelist without applying thought to it.

I mean, my "isn't for well over a year" sorta assumes that valve realizes why certain things are banned, under this less-strict whitelist setup, and valve can actually have a discussion with top 6s players for fixing them

obviously, if valve doesn't do this, the problems 6s might have in connecting this gap might be a tad larger in scope, as that means valve just isn't listening to the people they're trying to cater to

I'm not saying this. There are probably many weapons that we can unban and nobody will even use them or they will just be cool niche weapons. I just don't think we should unban guns that are blatantly overpowered (eg wrangler) just because Valve matchmaking allows them.

rock paper scissors is definitely something u dont want especially when it comes to mediguns

One thing that you need to remember is that we want valve to balance all of these weapons for 6v6, highlander, and pubs. Also remember that pubbers are Valve's main source of income.

If you are talking about the quick fix, for the slower paces of highlander and pubs the weapon is totally balanced. But in 6v6 and it's much faster pace, the quick fix's movement abilities, faster healing, and über building rate make it almost a straight upgrade to the stock. The point of all unlocks are to be situational, and the quick fix's best situational use is in 6v6 with its faster pace. This is why it is reasonable for us to have bans in different modes. If we had valve nerf the quick fix, even if it would be viable in 6v6, it would most likely be totally useless in highlander and pubs.

As far as the vaccinator goes, there seems to be a general consensus that it's situational use is holding last at a disadvantage. The point of the weapon is to be a different play style and to minimize damage with faster building ubers while trading off buffs. This weapon's main usefulness is on one target. Yes, your combo will be stronger and more versitile, but your flank will be very weak. Your flank will never be buffed and therefore almost always lose fights. In the normal 6v6 meta, running the vaccinator would be a terrible idea. One idea might be to have a passive flank, and maybe even use your combo to push the flank. The vaccinator should only have a -33% overheal rate. This would allow for more viable places for the vaccinator to be run.

One insane idea would be to change the weapons we think are overpowered in 6v6 within our own config. We could take weapons we consider overpowered and modify them to our liking rather than banning them.

it isnt too good in hl, but i could defs see it being really good in the right hands for 6s

No, we don't want these weapons to be balanced for 6s, highlander and pubs. If there's only 6s in the game officially and pubs, then they should only need to be balanced for 6s. Pubs don't require balance, as evidenced by the past 5 years of TF2.

That's completely illogical to say that they "have to find a compromise where the weapons work in everything". Promod is a very bad idea as well.

I'm not a big fan of highlander either and I would agree that is the best option

No, that's also missing the point. If HL is in the game as an official game-mode then the weapons should be balanced for that too. The more game-modes they officially support, the harder it gets to balance.

Sacking medics to force our kill the med is made useless. Uber advantages are made useless. Pushing with it is basically useless because the uber isn't strong enough to overcome a positional disadvantage while being strong enough to ruin the other team's push into you.

It basically has the same problems as the quick fix. Our are we going to forget that shitfest of a season?

Just like the quick fix there is no conceivable way of fixing the vac without reworking it entirely. It is a convoluted mess of stats performing a poor balancing act.

I really like the weapon, i experimented with it in a few pickups.

But yes, it is horrible to mids, you just cant buff anyone, at least 4 players will come to mid with close to no buff.

But things like both medics die on middle but you still get their 2nd, go vaccinator and surprise them with a quick last push was cool.

Another interesting part people forget is that you give people the bubble for 2.5 seconds, you dont need to keep healing them so they have the bubble, i used this for letting my soldier jump on spire with a 2.5 seconds bubble of blast resistance, he was encountering a soldier on point and just took close to no damage, because he still had the bubble.

After that i thought about another idea, i had both soldiers jump onto point with the blast resistance bubble, the sticky trap on the point didnt kill them AND you can cap while you are "ubered"

I think this medigun has a lot of potential if medics realize how to properly use it and I'm already excited for that time :D

The thing I dislike about it is trying to get a med pick on your own is impossible with all the damage resistance, so for one medic you have to throw a scout and a soldier....

Vacc is really nice to help your team win a spam war but I still don't see it as equal with default/kritz yet. Who knows though, that could change with mm.

the most effective way to use it is to give pocket 70% heals while he builds all game, which makes your scouts and roamer want to kill themselves

I like the vaccinator.
I'm no expert, but my experience is vaccinator forces you to have a different mineset and a different play style. Their combo is stronger, harder to kill, while their flank will usually be unbuffed and weak. The counter to a vac combo is to just focus killing everyone else.
Sure, the medic might take 4 rockets to kill, but you can also be pretty confident that a scout away from combo only has 125 hp. Also the all important med pick isnt a valuable since they arent going to build a kritz/uber that you cant defend against.

I think if the community had an open mind about it, it could find a place within the meta.

It just makes your flank way too weak, and there's no point in having a strong combo if your flank keeps dying and you're always fighting down two. You're flank would have to totally bait your combo to ever survive.

That's the point I'm making though. A lot of people say it's OP because it makes the combo harder to kill, but dont realize that they should be focusing the flank. I think it's interesting that it would change how you have to think in 6s, for better or worse.