I know in early versions of TF2 you could just bhop anywhere and then Valve just made it incredibly harder to bhop without actually removing it from the game

So my Q is... is bhopping with the treads viable? I'm pretty sure hitting hops normally gives you like a 5% boost in speed, can the treads make that number much more significant? From what I could tell when you hit a hop it would give you the boost but not sustain it, so when you hit the ground you would go back to your normal speed so I'm just wondering

To be honest, the new mantreads look very powerful too. Take a look at the videos posted and realize that's at 200% airstrafe, not +200% (300% in total). It's not only the turning, but also the acceleration you get from strafing. Then think about a soldier jumping your medic in last, basically impossible to airshot and almost immune to hitscan knockback. He will land on your medic's head 100% of the time and there's virtually nothing you can do except having your medic inside the spawn doors or killing him before he lands (from ~260 hp). If the weapon really works that way, I'm betting it gets banned after one night of pugs like the parachute.

No, it's at +200%, the attribute mod_air_control is "+%s air control" and I set it to 200.

Granted they will likely make that attribute have a velocity cap when it's implemented, but even then the extra control is very appealing.

The real Mantreads attribute will only work on blast jumps so no. This prototype version just works all the time and I found it interesting enough to have a short blurb about! (but yeah, you can already pseudo b-hop in tf2, you just lose your speed on touching the ground, but single jump speed boosts are still useful rarely.

My bad about the 300%. Even then, and even if there's a meaningful velocity cap -which there shouldn't be, since it'd mean no pogos/speedshots-, it will make soldiers very hard to hit with hitscan, not to mention projectiles.

If you run rocketjumper with this you're basically a 300 hp homing missile that can't be knocked back. I'm all for this.

Running it full time would be way worse than gunboats or even a shotty, so the only real use would be to have a solly die and come back up on mantreads, and I like the idea of having a solly get a item to increase the chance of breaking a stalemate immediately rather than having someone come up on sniper and miss their shots for 6 minutes, buffing well prepared solly bombs is not really an issue imo

I'd have to see how it's actually implemented but I wouldn't be surprised if mantreads pocket became very viable. A soldier with 75% knockback resistance (now including airblast) with what looks like will be insane air control will become a very good Uber target. It will become so much easier to do what you want with an uber which also mitigates the added damage from not running gunboats.
And then consider there are a lot of teams that know how to play around a banner soldier in transitional play already (no active secondary with full damage rjs), I feel like it won't be hard to adapt to this if the air control is good enough.

i think it should be a bit lower than what is in that vid, because its riddiculous, but this idea of more mobility in the air i think is a great way to put scout and soldier on an equal footing. maybe it should be 150. could you imagine airshotting this? it would be insanely difficult. not only this, but with the nerfed stickies this is just another nerf to demo.

Update will make it so that pyro can light stickies on fire. This will balance demo.

Change the ambassador to not headshot at range. I feel like it will be pretty easy to get a sense of what the range is so you won't count on hitting shots, and if you have it reward aim with a minicrit that would be good

The eternal reward should probably not have a faster cloak drain speed, but maybe a slower cloak build speed

The bonk should definitely be able to soak up more damage, or have a faster recharge rate which might get gimmicky. Basically as it is now, you'll just be able to distract for 5 seconds and even if you get out, probably die if they decide to push you

I think you should be able to quickswitch the atomizer. I am not positive on the deploy times, but I think the penalty of not having a scattergun out in that time might be reasonable

For the base jumper, not being able to redeploy is enough to fix it in my opinion

Mantreads will be nuts idk what to think about that. If you have ever joined a surf server and then gone to a private server and rocket jumped, its crazy. I feel like there is no way they would make it so easy to build speed

This crossbow change is good, but I want to see them reduce the healing too maybe

Also razorback - made it balanced in competitive and really really good in pubs thanks valve

GRU is still broken, these changes don't fix it. If anything, I think they make it better

I agree with all other changes

Cool to see an attempt to work on some of the more wonky items we've got in the game lol. The crossbow change is really interesting too.

https://twitter.com/stabbyvideo/status/877485738626920450
:sob:

I can understand why you wouldn't want the spy to be able to kill most things in 0.6 seconds just by having line of sight on them, but if this happens in a controlled environment, the spy is being rewarded for his skill and it is countered by proper positioning. In an uncontrolled environment, the sniper can do the same thing but worse.

Dead ringer only desperately needs the speed boost removed, whilst being able to spam it with ammo packs is annoying, there is some degree of planning and skill involved to do it. Make it require more skill by removing the speed boost, rather than giving spies a get out of jail free card.

i think the dude just loves attention. he's made like 3 AMAs on reddit

I do kind of feel for spy players, spy is the black sheep of TF2 since his play style of so unlike any other class and doesn't exactly belong in a game that is mostly about DM.

Spy was doomed from his inception since a class that relies on awareness and surprise is always gonna be disproportionately better against low skill players, which means its hard to buff him without making him too strong in pubs.

nah it will probably be the best option for pockets full time

You can't really counter an ambassador spy with positioning in most cases. He can just move invisibly away from your chosen positions. A sniper is completely different since the sniper can only be in certain places and therefore you can plan around sight lines.

Most people are suggesting headshot cooldown instead as an alternate nerf, I don't really see why. The idea is to nerf the weapon for long range only, that would nerf the weapon at all ranges

Tack volvo.

In a controlled environment at the level where spies reliably hit those shots, you'll know the spots that spies will go to and you'll have a rough idea of where the spy is. Its the same concept as not peaking a sniper sightline.

Also, by uncontrolled environment i meant something that wasn't entirely competitive like a pub or a lobby, In a pub its pretty easy to kill things as sniper from a stupid position.

After sleeping and thinking about these weapon changes for a bit these are the things that stuck with me.

Ambassador
seems to undercut skill, will need to play test to really understand it

Your Eternal Reward
I feel like this "Increased cloak drain rate by 50%" change will continue to make this knife irrelevant
I believe this means with stock revolver/invis watch cloak lasts for 6.67s (instead of 10s) and for l'etranger/invis watch 9.33s (instead of 14s) I guess it could be viable if ran with the l'etranger

Pretty Boy’s Pocket Pistol
downside doesn't seem large enough, even ignoring health regain the pocket pistol is going to be the go to pistol for quick cleanup with the faster fire rate. 9 shots is more than enough, probably not going to be a huge difference but scout is already pretty powerful. May need an addition ~-10% damage done.

Base Jumper
Weapon is still irrelevant for competition and more so now, but the pub player in me thanks you so much.

Man Treads
Really cool, looking forward to seeing some use out of this weapon

Darwin Danger Shield
THANK YOU, probably going to be a go to secondary for a lot of snipers now (assuming it keeps +25hp)

Razorback
Overall good change, feel like extra health gain on health pack pickup would be a good edition to it as well. Not sure how the -100% overheal penalty will work with building uber. May have the unintended side effect of healing the sniper more if it constantly builds uber at max speed without taking damage.

All Miniguns
Thank fuck finally.

Rescue Ranger
a step in the right direction but it also needs a slight healing nerf for buildings perhaps have a "healing falloff" the further the engineer is away the less healing is done to buildings.

A good way to nerf the ambassador at range would be to make the crit from a headshot not ignore damage fall-off and instead just be x3 damage, meaning it would do 51 (17x3) damage at max range but still 80-100 at short-mid range. This would fix valve's wish to make spy less of a sniper while not making long-range shots rely on any kind of random spread.

I came up with this and posted it on the previous page.. .

The darwins danger shield still gives you 150 health and 225 with overheal. How is that not an insta pick in the sniper secondery slot?

The ambassador should just get a longer cooldown between headshots. If you start to mess with different damage across different ranges you will end up not knowing right away that you where hit by an amby headshot and in a way it becomes more annoying than it already is.

I think you should still be able to pick up ammo to extend the deadringer cloak, but ones you uncloak there should be a 10-15 second cooldown before you get a new one. That way good map knowledge and positioning is still rewarded, but you fix the spam ability of the deadringer that made it so annoying.

That has always been the case, sniper just has a lot of strong secondaries. Jarate, Cozy Camper are both really good, and the Razorback was definitely king for HL when it was unbanned probably won't be with the proposed changes but not 100% sure on that.

I thought that "new design" implied everything else gets scrapped about the old one, including the +25 health.

oh boy if that's the case the Darwin Danger Shield is worthless without the bonus HP and only buffs against pyro.

Imagine if the +200% air control meant you'd have air control while jumping, it'd allow pockets to bhop to mid like a maniac alongside the escape plan

This update will make or break comp 6s, I hope things turn out for the better