The damage falloff makes sense, but the inability to headshot at a certain range doesn't. If instead of the point where it just didnt headshot it was instead balanced to do either the 54 that falloff would predict or slightly lower it would make more sense. At the moment, because the amby is no longer effective at range it is pretty much just a revolver with less dps thats harder to hit. The falloff was a good concept, but it should have been used at all ranges.

Competitively, the gun is obsolete. There is no reason to use the ambassador over the revolver or l'etranger. Long range, revolver does more, and close-mid range, revolver is so much more consistent. 2 bodyshots does more than 1 headshot. The only use for the ambassador now is 2 shotting snipers wearing the razorback close range - which the revolver could do in 3 anyway

At point blank, 2 revolver shots accomplish the same thing as a headshot plus some damage. What made the ambassador, in my opinion, better than the revolver was the ranged burst potential. Close ranged bursts weren't the focus but rather skill-indexed downside mitigation because the revolver was always better up close. I have one experience in memory where I thought "this is a little insane," and that was against a top(?) prem spy abusing dr on koth_highpass for a highlander region wars cup, but even then I was fine with it because he was good. The spies of old like acooma and co. used it extremely effectively because they were among the best of the class to ever touch the game. If you're getting destroyed by an amby, its because the spy is owning you. I don't think anyone has ever been double -102'd and thought something along the lines of "wow, what a bad player." The real problem was dr/amby being abused on maps with high ammo pack density. There is no sense in destroying both weapons just because the combo is annoying to play against when it's in capable hands. The amby would have been completely fine, untouched, with the current dr nerf. At the very least, the crit falloff could be at a significantly farther threshold range. I think that if anything at all, the gun should -102 at every range until the current point where it stops critting for 54, and then minicrit from there on. As it stands, there is really no situation where the revolver doesn't out-dps the ambassador.

I can't speak for EU (it's generally said that EU spy meta is gun-heavy) but in NA there isn't a single full-time gun spy in plat currently playing. This sort of goes hand-in-hand with the dr in that while they may be annoying to play against, they aren't really effective. Pre-nerf, the combination of the two was (1) broken in pubs, (2) abusable in HL on maps with high ammo pack density, but at the cost of a less effective playstyle, and (3) untouched in 6s. Now that the dr is removed from the game, it seems silly to also remove one of the most fairly balanced weapons in the game (which has remained untouched for around 8 years). The "if you want to snipe, play sniper" argument falls flat when you recognize that the ambassador is not a sniper rifle. Spies don't play like snipers, even with the amby. If a spy used a sniper playstyle, then that spy would be severely limiting his effectiveness to the detriment of his team. The ambassador cannot 1-shot any class in the game. Every class can walk through the amby sightline and, if headshot, can quickly take a pack or an arrow to mitigate the damage.

Here are some numbers. At long range, the (pre-nerf) amby headshot required 2 more follow-up bodyshots to finish a 125 class without a buff. Take, for example, a sniper being actively healed. With a full buff at 185, the headshot brings him down to 83. The medigun heals at 24hp/s before crit heals. The amby spread/crit recovery is 0.95s. In 1 second, the sniper will be back at 107. In 0.95 seconds, when the amby can headshot again, the sniper will have been healed 22.8hp to a total of ~105hp, enough to tank another headshot. This is not to say the sniper is invulnerable, because the medic will probably take heals off of a full buffed sniper to buff others, but to show how small of a window the spy realistically has to actually get a kill with the second headshot if the sniper is protected (in HL, this means nearly always). Every other class that isn't 125 or the medic, with any amount of buff, will survive a double -102.

The spy is an extremely weak class. In terms of 6s, I guess it's a general sentiment that he should stay weak. I've never personally seen the amby/dr combo used in invite, ever. That fact alone should prove that it's not a powerful playstyle. To my knowledge, the l'etranger is the most frequent spy item in 6s paired with either IW or cnd, meaning these nerfs changed next to nothing about spies in 6s. If the goal is to balance the game around 6s, this update turned an annoying yet weak item combination into an unusable one. In HL, the spy is an extremely weak class that must rely on gunplay to smooth out the inherent inconsistencies with the class. In the absense of a gun, a full time spy rolls a dice with his target every decloak and the winner gets the instakill, though the skill comes from stacking the dice in his favor. In pubs, the amby/dr was broken but mostly because of the dr. I'm not sure what the tf2 team is appealing to with these nerfs other than vague sentiments of "spy should not snipe" which isn't really an argument and affects 6v6 in nearly no way. Anyone running the ambassador right now is shooting themselves in the foot because the revolver both out-dps's and out-ranges the amby.

thanks shotaway

grapesquad or die

while i agree some sort of reduction in effective range was necessary, valve took the classic approach of nerfing a weapon into the dirt because of a relatively small and slightly abusable upside

on the other hand, getting 102’d across the map in a pub by some dickhead spy crouched somewhere was really fucking annoying

I think that the headshot range limit is completely fine since amby shouldn't give spies an advantage in long distance sniper v spy, and amby sniping was retarded. Like others have said I think the dr was the main problem because the mainly long range amby couldn't be locked down if you got close to them which was dumb. I don't however see the logic in nerfing both the dr and amby massively whilst buffing spy's main counter to a rediculous degree. It just seems like a massive shift in the power balance of the classes when it didn't need to be and is probably going to end up being too dramatic a change.

someone with more motivation to do so than me should actually test this, but at first instinct I think with absolutely perfect (inhuman) aim the ambassador barely outdamages the revolver most of the time now

My only opinion is what almost everyone agrees on, that the effective range reduction was way too much. Other than that, it was a good change.

Valve should've just tagged on "No random critical hits" just like how they "balance" a bunch of other weapons in the past. The 102 damage is well deserved. If it's that annoying to players though, I'd be down for a constant 90 damage.

items that have a mechanic where you can crit whenever you want (so long as you meet the requirements, ex. hit a headshot) can't random crit. Sniper primaries (most) can't random crit, knives can't random crit, flare gun can't random crit, amby can't random crit. Some things actually have the tag on it (market gardener), but the base information provided in this game is often either wrong or too vague, and is inconsistent in the way they present it.

Ambassador already has "no random critical hits" and always has.

And say what you want but if you look at it objectively, there are very few weapons that have "no random crits" without it making complete sense why they would. The list of weapons with neither random crits nor situational crits is extremely small, and most of them would be complete bullshit with random crits anyway. Despite what the "we can't remove random crits" pubber crowd would have you believe, valve is actually very good at using the no random crits attribute.

sure, the amby was annoying in pubs but not gamebreaking. It is a skill based weapon. Even though the nerf isn't "that bad", it was still completely unwarranted with the amount of skill the weapon takes and how weak the spy class is in general. It killed any usefulness spy had in hl

i'm just gonna quote this whenever anyone says anything to the effect of "but the ambassador takes skill"

like yeah, so does playing with the mouse upside down, that doesn't actually mean much on its own

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why did they nerf the amby it wasnt overpowered at all and even if it was at least it rewarded skill

because it blurred the line between spy and sniper

Why does spy lose long range capability, but sniper can still instant -150 at point blank? It seems more consistent with this whole separation of roles thing to create ramp up damage for sniper headshots almost like a reverse amby.

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??? the style of play of the two classes is so different even if the spy is just running amby/dr. spy isnt staying with the combo and getting buffed. Sniper isnt going behind and trying to hit headshots. What is your logic here

thanks reddit