That's what they said last update, which turned out to be garbage, and we're all still here.

isn't jarate banned in HL though? because if so the DDS could be the next best thing.

e: i was wrong

No, jarate is allowed and heavily used

Let's hope they nerf rescue ranger harder, and that they nerf vaccination, quick fix and add some minor downside to the solemn vow

Why a vaccinator nerf?

Oh, I don't know, maybe because you can render attackers completely helpless in a fraction of the time it takes to build uber?

eh, these changes don't seem to rock the meta all that much. i mean, they've introduced some new viable sidegrades but nothing too crazy imo

My body is ready.

https://puu.sh/wqBHU/5e6759c8c2.jpg

Wow this is like really good. Blizzard-style in talking about the issue, goal for improvement, and changes.

to be fair now we have what's basically a changelist

except for pyro...

edit: doublepost

DR and amby nerfs seem way too harsh, especially since spy is already considered one of the worst classes.

Don't forget that these balances are catered towards pubs and casual. As mentioned by the dev team and others, spy is especially powerful in pubs where there is no communication.

Shouldn't we aspire to some sort of a middle ground where Spy is not too strong in pubs, but viable in comp still? (not full-time ofc)

Obviously we should aspire to get to that stage with every class/weapon/game mechanic. The problem is how do we get there without massively ticking off one side of the player base?

Didn't TF2 Items get killed off by an update a while back?

The mantreads seem pretty dumb, from a roamers perspective. You could easily have two soldiers run it during stalemates and one of them jumps in to distract, and the other plays off the distraction. The first soldier could also go if he just sees a fatty opening. It'd be nice to have sacs be successful to break stalemates, but stalemates are still important for 6s. Double soldier bombs on mids will be dumb because they make scouts either irrelevant, or force them to aggress right after with their soldiers to get the enemy medic, which basically eliminates those fast rounds that are exciting to have and watch. Other than that mids will just be super passive to stop soldiers, which then it basically becomes a spam war.

Is it really worth sacrificing both of your soldiers for a medic bomb? And would Mantreads be worth running full-time over Gunboats/Shotty? I see how it gives you an advantage when bombing because you can dodge better in the air, but otherwise I don't think the advantage is significant enough.

Honestly, this blog post has been the first time I've been mad keen for the next update, in just about 2 years now.

20hp rocketjumps>200% air control

Sorry for double post but some dude on r/tf2 actually tested what a 50% more accurate revolver would be like and it's actually really accurate all things considered
http://imgur.com/gallery/WqxKL
still dumb but at least somebody tested it

I'm talking just as a way to break stalemates, not run fulltime. It'd be like a more effective two man

More effective sure, it probably would be, but losing both soldiers makes you lose so much spam power especially since Demo isn't as crazy at damaging as he used to be.

Pretty much if both of your soldiers fail the two man and their med doesn't pop, you can't get an easy force when they try to walk in with their uber.

Or even if they do pop, they don't have that much spam that can stop them from walking in and taking space before you can uber onto them (You can be forced possibly because scouts are squishy and cannot be dropped in this situation without forcing your team to give up the area for free/if your med and demo are somehow possibly alone that is the freest soldier bomb and force or drop in the game or possibly creating a butterfly situation with ubers).

I feel like two mans should only be soldier and scout.

for the one class with a double jump that cancels all fall damage?

also if they're nerfing spy i hope it's because pyros get worse at spychecking due to a reduced flamethrower cone size for increased range/damage

BTW, I feel more confident in saying that (barring the air control working when not blast jumping), the Manntreads should actually look like very similar to those videos I made.

I tried the opposite, -200% air control, it looks like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlszvlCH4Bk&feature=youtu.be

You can't control your jump at all. Holding W doesn't make you descend, S doesn't make you lose speed/stop in midair, you can't turn, you can't strafe, nothing. You become solely at the whims of where the blast jump takes you.

Pyro update blog released!!!

found this going around on reddit seems like the majority of the people filling it out agree with the majority of the changes being necessary.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeu6hHjy4oYDuTB2qGDDO4_wnJ21e7rIyb5G9SSuFgd0mkJJQ/viewform

Only weapon that's close to be majority against the change atm is the B.A.S.E Jumper largely because most pub players assume people just slowly float to the ground and don't understand you can just spam the shit out of the deployment.

seems like people think more of the weak weapons than the strong ones; Most people want the Bison buffed in the "other weapons" category !

the BASE Jumper results might be because few pubbers actually use soldier or demo. that would explain it

.

I helped a friend of mine writing a feedback email to Valve but here's what I think should change from the blog post.

• DR - not getting cloak from ammo boxes/dispensers is overkill and would make it the worst watch in the game. Increase the current -35% cloak penalty to something like 60% instead, this mostly prevents "double ringing" by decloaking on top of a big ammo box.
  
• Amby - Increase base damage penalty to -20% / Make headshots obey damage rampup and falloff / Change rampup/falloff rates to 125%/75%. Keep the no spread on first shot. Basically the damage numbers at point blank/mid/max range would be 120/96/72 for headshots and 40/32/24 for bodyshots. At close range you can easily head+bodyshot a medic, but at long range you can't double headshot a medic and you can only double headshot a sniper or similar light class. This also makes the gun considerably less useful if you don't headshot.
  
• Pocket Pistol - remove fire rate bonus. I think that's a little overkill in terms of short damage burst, since the pistol is mostly used on low health targets and the health on hit bonus on its own is already very good
  

Everything else is good.

I'm a bit worried with the amby suggestion that the 120 point blank value might be too good, but I guess realistically you won't be sitting on someone's face in games, so the "close range" headshots would be more like 110 or so which I think is decent. In general I think if you headshot someone in a close range fight you deserve it. I also wanted to propose some numbers that were more or less in line with the way Valve codes rampup and falloff in game.

Alternatively make headshots use falloff only instead of both, that's probably fine, but might be more confusing in terms of stats

P.S. I think Valve should really consider a diamondback nerf

P.P.S Ugh I totally forgot about the Mad Milk. It's a bit OP right now and I was thinking it should be a bit like the soldier banners and require you doing damage to build. So um... it's a non-milk substance, right? We all know what that means. The more damage a scout does, the more friggin erect he gets (much like scout mains in-game) and when you get to like 300 or so you well... fill the mad milk bottle. And then you can throw it for the same effect you have now.

Mentioning equip rates and introducing more rng to the game both trigger me but on the whole these changes have a bunch of potential. I like how valve are basically officially telling us that the eviction notice is the baby gru -- while it's a bit lame to have two unlocks that do basically the same thing just to a different extent, this game has so many weapons that it doesn't really matter at this point. Some of these new mechanics are really cool ideas as well.

That said, the gru changes as I understand them will do nothing for their main issue, which is running heavy to mid. As long as you're aware of how long it takes for your health to regenerate and ensure you don't die before that time you can still use them to bring cancer to otherwise arguably the most fun fight of every round. The crit-a-cola changes are also potentially not a harsh enough nerf but it's still better than any of the previous iterations I can recall.

If these balance changes get released with hopefully a few tweaks along with proper matchmaking fixes this game might actually not be dead quite yet.