remove all defensive offclasses that aren't sniper

Why not just make them fun to play and fun to play against?

.

haha yes defensive classes should not be fun in a video game that's crazy talk haha yes

So basically you're saying I haven't proposed enough changes to fix heavy? That's fine, because this post isn't long enough, or really intended, to fully "fix" heavy. I just want opinions on how to make using the Minigun to shoot enemy gamers more fair and interesting

edit: phrasing

minor tweaks can't do anything to make the basic way the heavy works any different. he's a big man with a big gun what shoots a lot of bullets, and the way he should work should be the way one expects: he should be big and slow and do a lot of damage. it should be straightforward at least. same applies to every class. the basic mechanic of the pyro is that he walks straight forward and shoots fire at you, the heavy stands there and shoots lots of bullets, the engineer builds an aimbot gun. all of these are really only useful for the sake of giving unskilled players something to do in casual play, which is fine, but naturally a little annoying to deal with as a more skilled player, and asking for changes is playing with fire i think. all that can be done is some of the variables can be played around with, but the basic mechanics are always gonna be what they are. none of the classes can be "fixed" by small changes, just made more or less frustrating to deal with. i think they've done way too much dicking around with this kind of stuff

heavy is dumb because of arrows and b4nny bind

heavy is fine where it is, if ur team is incapable of pushing last because of a heavy ur doing something wrong

Since people don't seem keen to comment at all on my minigun idea or the nerf and instead prefer conversations of fixing heavy, I'll post a crude, potentially awful changelist to "fix" him.

+The nerf discussed in the OP is gone
-50 max HP (250max->375overheal)
+Crouching while grounded and revved (thus cannot move) grants 22.5% damage resistance (effective health 306max->459overhealed) (This resistance does not apply to critical damage, a fully charged headshot would deal 300 crit dmg+ 122 resisted base damage = 422 dmg which is much higher than 375 max overheal)
+Spinup time from mouse1->boolets is now .5 seconds and Heavy can still jump during this time
-From .5 seconds to .7 seconds of holding mouse1 (the first 3 shots the Minigun will fire after revving), each unit of ammo consumed only fires 1 bullet (-75% damage output), rev up movespeed penalty reduced by 75%, shot spread reduced by (some amount that doesn't invalidate Sniper or Demo or Soldiers jumping)
-From there until 1.00 seconds (the next three shots), each unit of ammo consumed only fires 2 bullets (-50% damage output), rev up movespeed penalty reduced by 50%, shot spread reduced by (less than above but still a good amount)
-Until 1.4 seconds (next 3 shots again), each unit of ammo consumed only fires 3 bullets (-25% damage output), rev up movespeed penalty reduced by 50%, shot spread reduced by (some amount, whatever is balanced for the damage and mobility)
-1.5 seconds and on, the Minigun fires four shots per unit of ammo consumed, functioning identically to the current incarnation in all aspects (you can now no longer jump, have current spread, and you are fully slowed)
-Letting go of mouse1 causes rev speed to slowly decrease, slowly counting backwards in how many shots you will fire per unit ammo when you press mouse1 again, allowing one to stay in any given range by modulating mouse1 (rate requires testing, whatever makes the weapon feel good to use)
-All changes in current effective rate of fire are now visible in how fast the barrels of your Minigun spin graphically as well as a segmented hud gauge
+While at max rate of fire, the Minigun now has slight pushback recoil that allows Heavy to slightly alter his midair trajectory, jump just before max ROF to achieve a roughly scorch shot height vertical hop, and move diagonally backwards marginally faster than forwards. Not useful for stealthy flanks because you have to shoot for almost a second before using the hop

+Heavy's shotgun now gets extra base damage vs soldier and pyro shotty (not rampup like scatter vs shotty) for 110 damage meatshots, but 5 round mags.

+Heavy can heal by picking up his own thrown lunches again, but at a 33% lower healing benefit vs his teammates. Heavy is quite large, a single sandvich doesn't go as far for him as his smaller teammates

That's all I can think of. Idk, it's hard to know if any of this stuff is a good idea without server mods to test

.

Uhh
Isn't rocket jumping complicated? How about air pogos with stickies? Looks pretty complicated to me. Why is complicated bad? I thought making heavy more complicated would be a veritable necessity to make him more interesting and better skill indexed

Besides, if stuff like the Vaccinator and cp_snowplow aren't "too complicated" for TF2 I don't see how basic stuff like hiding behind your giant metal gun for protection (crouch rev armor), accuracy being higher at lower rates of fire like other weapons, recoil on a giant rapid fire gun, and using longer shells (more powerful but take up more space in a tube mag shotgun, hence more damage and -1 clip size) couldn't be explained as well as anything else in this game

Bruh, the only reason the post was so long is because it's explicitly changing a bunch of things from the current state of the game. Explaining the class from the ground up with these mechanics would still take less time than teaching someone spy or engineer, and the changes I listed would cause far more substitutions of values than addition of fields in that table. Besides, part of the reason that table is so small is because it doesn't inform you about the effects of the nerf I mentioned in the OP. Current heavy is already complicated in asinine poorly explained ways

Lolololo

can you make shooting dudes with big gun a complicated thing

You're comparing emergent (though intended) gameplay to raw weapon stats, which I believe is what ArguedOyster was getting at. I think there's a fair point in keeping general weapon stats simple and letting the gameplay be where the skill shines.

As for the OP, I think heavy is fine either way. The class relies on positioning more than anything still, which I think is fair.

Depends on how high your standard of complicated is but even the mess I posted would at least be a little more challenging than current heavy

He's set up to be so limited and easy in his current form, getting him to be more complicated than now isn't exactly a high bar

But the stats enable the emergent gameplay to exist and be rewarded. You couldn't have a lot of the amazing emergent tech in TF2 without proper stats to make it possible. There is a ton of subtlety to various mechanics like charging stickies that would take a good bit of space to properly describe, more than most of my ideas in fact. Some of the best loved primaries in the game are the more complicated ones, like stickies and the Sniper rifle. Just because Valve won't explain these subtleties in game doesn't mean they aren't there and contributing to your enjoyment of the better skill indexed classes in the game

make him harder to aim

That's basically what I was trying to do by suggesting reduced rate of fire and spread

You’re missing the point. Reducing RoF doesn’t make aiming as Heavy more difficult or more fun to play against, it makes it more inconsistent. Increasing spread doesn’t make Heavy more difficult or more fun to play against, it makes it more inconsistent and reduces range.

The best way I can think of to fix Minigun is to reduce up front damage, and give it a damage boost (and maybe damage resist) that increases with accuracy and decreases with misses and over time. That way you can keep Heavy’s high damage potential without the issue of bad players being able to mow down people because to kill a Scout, they only need 3 bullets to hit out of the 20 they can spray out in 5 seconds. There’s more of an element of counterplay - you can avoid taking damage by hiding or focusing on super evasive movement to reduce their DPS.

Even then, the unavoidable problem is the Minigun just isn’t fun to play against by nature. The Minigun is easy to aim, hard to dodge, and the Heavy is immobile while firing as well. He really just needs something as radical as the Dragon’s Fury, or the Jetpack, that completely changes everything about him. Maybe if Valve are attached to the idea of a Minigun, it could work like a banner or an Overwatch ult and give him a completely different normal primary.

Wut

Reducing rate of fire and REDUCING SPREAD (making it MORE accurate) is what I'm talking about. Not reducing rate of fire and increasing spread, that would be dumb. This would bring his initial damage way down while making heavy drastically more mobile so I'm not sure why you don't like it. The Minigun may not ever be your favorite weapon in the game to play against but that's no reason to just whine about it instead of having a fun little theoretical discussion at how it could be more fun to play against

Ah, whoops.

It doesn't make Heavy more mobile? I don't like it because it doesn't increase the amount of counterplay or make Heavy more nuanced / difficult / skill-indexed. It's still the same Minigun with tweaked numbers. The fundamental problem hasn't changed.

I am literally the only person in this thread to offer a non-joke suggestion, I don't understand why you're upset at me in particular for "just whining about it instead of having a fun little theoretical discussion."

Personally I think that all miniguns should have damage spread like tomislav, with more damage drop off at range but higher base damage. Basically so that you have to be able to track well to do any sort of damage at range, and so that you have to be able to track well but are rewarded with high damage close range.

Maybe a higher fire speed and lower damage to keep DPS the same also, right now you can track really poorly and still hit every bullet.

TLDR: Tighter fire cone, more damage dropoff, higher fire speed with same DPS.