Well classes like the engineer are awful. Albeit good for defending points (which is why it is used on last points often), it is terrible for taking a point. Unless of course you use the gunslinger which is one of the most bullshit weapons in the game. How is 2 guaranteed 150hp 64dps aimbots supposed to be competetive? It's built around pub play.

We want 6s to be as skill based a format as possible. Heavies and mini sentries are not that. If highlanders goal is to be as pub accessible as possible, that's fine by me.

S11 was the biggest ESEA TF2 season on record. Also, the seasons have a tendency to be big-small-big. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

seasons that start in the summer are always small

infinite the biggest problem i have with your post is that every unlock you argue for takes skill out of the game or are irrelevant, you argue that we dont understand highlander (which is a very fair thing to say) but you certainly have not played enough 6s to know how these classes/unlocks can destroy the 12 man version of tf2

gru? fulltime heavies (especially to mid) in 6s is devastating because of the classes ability to
(a) shut down bombers wayyy to easily
(b) take 2/3 player's focus to kill
(c) slow down the game, promote stalemates
(d) hiding/suprising the enemy as heavy is much more devastating

the idea that people arent playing esea because fulltime heavy isnt viable is laughable

sandwich? heavy isnt beefy enough with 450 hp? lets give him 600 and watch how many people it takes to kill him. one class shouldnt have the power to take two full clips from multiple other classes to kill

wrangler? let me just constantly spam a choke with infinite range from across the map. again i dont think you understand how much fighting sentries sucks in 6s

degreaser? every competent pyro runs this as it turns the class into even more of a 1v1 machine. having talked to grape about him playing pyro, the guy literally says "i just run around and try to force people into 1v1s" as thats all you can do as pyro without an uber, you still have no mobility and no real control over the map

dr? while annoying its hardly gamebreaking and unless youre getting key picks _every_ life having the map control and cleanup power of a scout is always a better pick

all of these unlocks lower the skill ceiling of the game by promoting cheesy, blanket counters to getting outplayed by another team

another thing you fail to mention is how often people are scared of paying money to lose 10 matches a season in esea, while ugc is free and a much mellower league.

the concept of forming a team in a few months and going up against people who have been playing the game for years is pretty scary, so i can't blame them for getting their feet wet in ugc before diving into the gauntlet of esea-open

I thought sandvich was mainly banned because it provided a heal to the rest of the team and also himself instantly before a patch (retarded how you could throw a sandvich on the ground and walk into it when you fell below half).

rofl

please lets compare ugc and esea

you main pyro
obviously your arguing for the class you main and not for any other class

There are tons of new players getting into both leagues and game types. Every game gets this "LDS" when the game stops selling copies. The game mode isn't discouraging new players, its the game engine and the graphics. If you offered someone a copy of CS:GO or CS1.6, which would they chose?

Even if you made the pyro have the DPS of two sentry guns with her flame thrower, no one would use her because pyro is slow as fuck. 6s isn't about firepower, its about mobility and dynamic gameplay. If DPS was the deciding factor, we'd have 2 heavies, 2 engies, 1 demo, and 1 medic instead. 6s is fun because of how its fast-paced, but takes a bit more thought than an arena shooter. Worst part of highlander though is you can't offclass. 6s turns into highlander at last points, but apart from last points, mobility is greater than defensive or offensive capabilities. 6s is actually more permitting of weird strats because you can run 2 of many of the classes, and at least one of all the others. Don't cry -inf, but highlander is more restrictive than 6s in terms of what you can play.

hur hurr theory crafting about league size.

For competitive to thrive, you don't need players. You need SPECTATORS. Would you call kickball a better sport than baseball because it is played more often? Professional baseball is more reliant on skill than kickball is, and one professional game has infinitely more spectators than a kickball game, 0 versus 10s of thousands for an UNPOPULAR team. Even the popular teams in HL don't get more viewers than the unpopular invite games. 6s is more fun to watch, at least in the eyes of everyone I've talked to, and no, none of them play 6s. Highlander has 4 players who are 24/7 going for picks, and its not fun to watch live because you can't see all the important things at once. In 6s you can spectate the spy 100% of the time because there is usually only one pick offclass run at a time. It would be like watching baseball where there are 4 pitchers and 4 batters. It would be so fucking confusing.

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Wow this topic got derailed before I even posted.

And Wrangler honestly isn't that hard to kill, try shooting the 125hp Engineer opposed to the Sentry that can withstand 6 stickies and see what happens.

The comment about shooting the engy is a perfectly viable one. Except for the fact that with a wrangled sentry and a engineer with half decent positioning and teamwork can be very hard to kill. This just highlights the fact that the wrangler makes an already slower comp form slower to play and should just be removed if only for the fact that it unnecessarily slows down the game.

wrangled mini sentries on granary mid catwalk are pretty cool

highlander seems to just be 9 sets of unlocks vs 9 sets of unlocks rather than 9 classes vs 9 classes

If it takes too much focus and ammo don't focus it, A sentry is a sentry, it isn't all powerful when you get kills unless you totally waste your ammo and position yourself retardly, an example would be trading a demoman for a sentry which most teams think is necessary when you can just focus fire other players and get a numbers advantage and co-ordinate together, as long as you don't group up and eat the same damage all at once from a Demo or Soldier.

My point is Wrangler isn't as strong as you make it out to be, I guess people coming in from 6v6 aren't used to facing it so much. That said I wouldn't particularly care if it was banned anymore than I'd care if anything else was banned.

I've been waiting over a year for any substantial proof the wrangler is overpowered and ruins competitive HL. Lots of opinions, but very little actual evidence. If someone could provide demos/videos of actual highlander match play illustrating these opinions that would be one thing. Please, someone who wants wrangler banned show me the video or demo with the actual moments wrangler ruins the game because i'd love to see it and debate it.

Sdogg: Remember when a couple of our top teams challenged you to a round where you showed them how overpowered and unstoppable the wrangler is? Last I heard you sorta disappeared around then and never took up the challenge. I'd love to see it if you are still up for it!

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The buffed heavy with fos can take 630 dmg. Which is only 10 less than what you posted earlier. I'm not saying that's proof that wrangler isn't hard to take down. Just that the hp sink can be approximately matched.
The area denial potential is amazing, but not without hard counters. While I do think that the wrangler has considerable advantages over stock engineer, I don't consider it overpowered when compared to most other unlocks.

But does the heavy have a rocket launcher, minigun, and aim assist when he's holding the FoS?

Again, I'm not saying wrangler isn't badass. It is. It's just not off the walls op as described itt.

Yeah, a heavy that sits in front of other players with the fists of steel out, taking literally all of his medic's heals, and doing jack shit is definitely comparable to an unlock that triples a sentry's hp, increases its rate of fire, and bestows infinite range.

49. Look, I got it you don't like the wrangler. You can keep the snark, and you'll actually come out with a better argument.

I guess I asked for this when I answered sdoggs hypothetical question.

While I'm at it. I find little argument when such hard counters to the wrangler exist: spy sapper, spy backstab, sniper rifle, soldier direct hit, and demo stickeys. All require minimal effort to strategize and employ as a team.

49. Look, I got it you don't like the wrangler. You can keep the snark, and you'll actually come out with a better argument.

I guess I asked for this when I answered sdoggs hypothetical question.

While I'm at it. I find little argument when such hard counters to the wrangler exist: spy sapper, spy backstab, sniper rifle, soldier direct hit, and demo stickeys. All require minimal effort to strategize and employ as a team.

What? LOL I told you I'd face you on any map with any setup you have and you backed down when you found out what team I was on and also that I wanted to get it casted by extv. Get your shit straight friend.

I undid the +frag you gave yourself.

Good morning, what?

Welcome to the circlejerk hein :)

And those aren't all hard counters to a slowly moving heavy as well? Minigun has bullet spread and fall off, rocket launcher has fall off, FoS heavy does not heal 348 hp every .65 seconds, Revved heavy moves a tiny bit faster than a sentry gun. Of course you are able to work through it, because you only encounter wrangled sentries while attacking, and it is inevitable that eventually a pick class will be able to make enough of a change that you can push because no one is perfect. Making a class way more important and way harder to kill without adding any level of skill is not a good idea. The only reason why it is not extremely OP is that you can't push with a wrangled level 3 and you are limited to 1 engie per team. It is game changing, but it isn't possible for it to be OP because there are a few ways to take it down, even though they all rely on mistakes by the other team, not your own skill.

Douglass:

Could you please provide a demo or video of actual highlander match play that illustrates your concern with the wrangler? Let's see some real examples of how it ruins the game because it's pretty easy to write opinionated paragraphs w/o any evidence to support your claim.

Heres a video from two of our top teams which shows the wrangler, while an obstacle, can easily be taken down by coordinated pushes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=estgiicATLc

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Your "team" had a great hold. When you split your defense on the top left with hw/med/scout/demo and let the rest roam near the gun to distract, it worked incredibly well. Also watch the clip where the pyro airblasts us back on all of those ubers because of his placement. Pyros ruin 90% of ubers in this game, wranglers not so much. We had a bigger issue focusing down the Pyro for some reason in order to even get to the gun.

I think you are blindly giving credit to a sentry gun when it was really a very well planned out defense. Seeing as that was the second time we'd been on that map as a team, and your team clearly practiced numerous times, I think we did fairly well....I mean we did 2-0 you and then capped on you fairly quickly r2. Maybe I'm wrong but I think we adapted our offense to that position for r2 and if I remember correctly you didnt hold that position.

Again, I think you guys setup a great defense on the point with a few players doing great work.

Thank you for actually posting something tangible to discuss. Couple points about the "evidence" though.

1. Last points on all Payload maps are notoriously difficult to push.
2. Borneo was a custom map being tested and based upon feedback after games on it, the map author is changing the map to make the last point a little easier to push.
3. The pyro stopped way more ubers than the wrangler. Certainly in the time frame you posted the pyro stopped more of your progress than the wrangler.
4. While it took a coordinated push and a great play by the blue spy, the gun was taken down not only once, but twice during the 8 minute "wrangler" problem.
5. The other team ended up rolling you guys all the way to the spawn and capped the cart. Game was not "ruined" and the best team ended up winning the map.
6. You could not reproduce the same effect in R2 because the other team adjusted.