who said they weren't viable

i've seen the conch used quite a bit

yes

Best used for Last pushes (if you're respawning and your team is capping 2nd) when both medics have uber, fill it up, force enemy medic with your uber, re-push with health and speed buff. That's when I've seen it being used the most. Same goes for last defense.

For me, the big issue is that they're much less useful than the other secondary weapons when they're not fully charged. They're extremely good during stalemates, where you have plenty of time to charge it up and wouldn't be using your secondary weapon anyway, but as soon as you have to fight without the charge, their utility is lesser to shotgun/gunboats.

So, I would never run them to mid, because you can't get the charge in time during the mid fight to make it worth it (usually, at least). However, if you die and you know it's most likely going to be a stalemate, it's completely fine to respawn on it. There is a risk though, because if you get one or two frags and try to break the stalemate without the charge, shotgun/gunboats would've been better.

Just my opinion :)

/

I use banners a lot in inhouse pugs mostly to tilt people and throw but i've never heard of someone saying that the banners are non-viable.

Of course, you need to know how, when and where to use the banner to make the most out of your banner pushes.

For example, some people think that a Backup / Conch buff is like an uber, which it's not and people go in and die because of that.

But overrall for most scenarios it's better to run gunboats or shotgun (assuming your playing pocket).

Banners are extremely good for stalemates and when you're finding that nothing you're doing, suicides, exchanges etc isn't working. If you don't want to take any great risks one of the absolute best ways to break a stalemate between any points is to spam with conch (would probably work with backup too but conch fills faster), go in for a solo exchange and then repush with conch.
You can even go for a suicide as pocket or go back to spawn in a stalemate to do this if the stalemate is long enough, it's a really powerful tool and one that definitely doesn't get used enough, normally only used for last pushes.

the problem with banners, i think, even in stalemates, is as soon as someone sees you using it they will bomb you

Why would you someone bomb you more with a banner that increases your max health or gives you health regen over an unlock that let's you jump more?

just my own experience on teams. People usually call out a banner and try to kill them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How would you counter someone running banner anyway? If they don't do dumb shit they'll probably build that charge eventually, and it's not a big enough threat to justify having to push first (which is always harder to do), but if you just let them get the charge , they'll just force you and repush with the banner. Is this like the booties where you just have to do the same thing?

engi, sniper, sticky traps

Backup is actually banned because it's OP as shit apparently.

Fully buffed scout with backup buff=270~ hp killing machine.

its 249.5 if fully buffed, and yeah this was discovered on viaduct.

That's only if you do it by multiplying the health by 1.35 rather than dividing it by .65, because it's a damage reduction rather than a health buff

some other fun numbers

Fully Bufffed Demo- 400 hp

Fully buffed battalions backup soldier-500 hp

It works fairly well for stalemates - I'm partial to buff banner over conch myself because you can crush any single target with just 1-2 players receiving the banner in the space of 1 second or so.

If you're having trouble pushing lasts just have a soldier come up buff banner and have somebody come up heavy and give it a go ;)

You *can* run them outside of last push scenarios, but, at least in my mind, promotes a kind of passive play I don't typically like to see out of roamers on the rest of the map (since they have to actively try to stay alive so as to build more banner).

The batallion's just does wacky stuff and does the whole kritz negation thing and used to build SUPER fast.