is that a snake

funny how cow mangler gets unbanned (in esea) but no decision on xbow has been made.

Also, how about an essentials.tf cup without xbow?

idk man it feels like playing without it at this point would feel like a step backwards in the development in the meta. A lot of people would have to relearn somethings and honestly, i can't be arsed to do that. I think the game is at a good stage right now meta wise and it's fun to play for the most part.

It could be slightly nerfed though, along with the scout leash speed thing.

there has been a decision on the crossbow dumbass, thats why it has never been banned lol

Crossbow isnt really an issue here just buff the other primaries

Depends on the scenario.
Pushing into last where the other team has a heavy that's 400+ HP that gets arrowed twice. That's just a waste of fucking time and uber.

Roamer jumping into your team gets shot up into the sky box with 20hp and then gets crossbowed on the way down, yeah I'd say I got outplayed hard by the medic.

Pushing into choke where a demo just det his stickies and had nothing loaded and was to close to the choke and simply pressed the S key for the most predictable movement ever getting arrowed for +110 after taking 240 from 3 rockets and you can't possibly kill him with the next one? That's bullshit especially when considering had the medic been next to the demo healing them full time they would've had ~55 heals in that same time period.

Guess what I'm trying to say here is that the crossbow is dumb specifically because

1. It out paces heals of stock medigun at every range. (especially since you can just switch back to the medigun 0.5s after firing)
2. It rewards players for having braindead movement in combat so their medic can hit easy arrows.
3. It partially negates players terrible positioning

You probably don't get to experience the dumbest parts of the crossbow that often since you're playing in Invite for the most part you're never going to find a demo/soldier to close to choke with barely anything or nothing loaded at all, but in open and occasionally IM that shit happens all the fucking time.

While at this point I'd rather not have the crossbow banned to say/imply it doesn't or ignore the fact the crossbow needs a nerf is just plain wrong.

Finally, Needles don't need to be brought up the crossbows level. Yes they need to be buffed but the crossbow does need a nerf regardless. There is 0 reason why the crossbow should out heal a medigun at close range and all of the best points of crossbow would still exist at half heal rate without being unbalanced as shit, just a -33% on the heal rate would greatly diminish the worst parts of the crossbow.

Also scout leashing is fucking terrible, the only place I think it's OK is rollout to mid.

repost:
The weapon takes little skill and trivializes a lot of skillsets. Examples on top of my head:
Managing your and your teams damage - your entire team gets a free jail card from red health to full in a couple seconds. Pushing on damage is obsolete and playing aggressively is punished.
Managing you and your teams positioning relevant to the medic - get an arrow from 30 meters away = never have to leave/manage health and kits on flank.
Spamming chokepoints or fights with arrows isnt skillful, standing still for arrows isnt skillful, hiding behind cover to get arrowed when you would have died without crossbow isnt skillful.

in absolutely no world should any video game be balanced around the 2nd and 3rd from the top tier of gameplay. like it actually kinda blows my mind that you said the dumbest part of the crossbow doesn't happen that often in invite and continued to think it was a valid argument.

like valve can be stupid and balance based on pubs or be smart and balance based on invite but jesus why would they even care what is happening in open and IM

If we were back in time xbow should be banned but with all the stupid changes now banning it makes soldier fucking Z tier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDfDhg-T6RM

i give you exhibit A

Nerf Crossbow heals. Buff needles a little. Remove Scout leash speed.

These will never happen but let an old Medic dream.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOUPIOEqdlI

ultiduo baloo with xbow makes me want to die

to anyone who say nerf crossbow. who do you want to nerf crossbow? valve? lmao try again sweety!
just ban it tbh

how would we even make syringes good enough to turn arrows into a sidegrade instead of a direct upgrade?
if we make the individual syringes heal, it would just essentially be a medigun that can miss, unless we make the needles heal for a dumb amount, like on par with medigun crit heals. but even then it would still be a worse crossbow because it cant hit people across the map
if we make it into a viable damage weapon, then it would dilute the very purpose of the medic class and would probably only be used to fuck around, similar to the direct hit with soldier
the only thing i can really think of is adding a new gimmick to the the needle gun like plasma climbing from quake 3 or some shit

https://youtu.be/6dmraGw1G_Q

the biggest problem imo is the burst healing. If you got healed over time and additional damage interrupted this, it would be better.

everyone seems to just be stating that crossbow slows down the game but i haven't noticed it
yeah arrowing someone standing still isnt skilful but neither is healing with the medigun and a lot of the time it's not that easy. arrows are like the only thing that makes the least enjoyable class bearable

me like airshots and me have low attention span. plz no remove arrows :c
but tbh id be curious what a season without arrows is like

The reason invite players think 'it isn't a problem' is because the tools exist in game for you to go kill that guy and it's not the fault of the game for your failure. IT WAS JUST YOU. So there's no balance that needs to be done there because otherwise you're just limiting the game for the sake of bad play, which does not result in a good game with fun mechanics and a lot of depth.

Your point about malicious activity has to do with the people that play the game and NOT how the game functions.
So not really a good comparison but yes that is a huge problem if someone is cheating

All weapons, whitelists, etc... should be balanced for the highest level of play. I don't see a good reason not to balance things with that mentality.

i really don't agree with the whole syringe guns should heal idea. with the crossbow its a single bolt so you have a decent idea of how much hp your opponent just got if he gets arrowed, but with healing syringes you'd have little to no idea.

there's also the point that someone else made that if you're gonna sit there syringe gunning your teammate you may as well just beam them because the whole point of arrows are long range/burst heals which needles wouldnt be able to do lol

u got any clips of this cheater or u just gonna say ohhh everybody knows hes a cheater watch his demos

"The tools exist in game" is a true statement but just because the tools exist doesn't mean something isn't unbalanced. The tools exist to counter every aspect of basically every weapon in the game. That doesn't mean some of them aren't unbalanced. You could run pyro to deal with jarate, mad milk and cow mangler charge shots, but that doesn't necessarily mean any of those things are balanced. You could just outplay a Vaccinator medic team doesn't mean the vaccinator is well balanced.

My argument isn't ban crossbow I agree with the statement that the game is better overall having the crossbow my argument is the crossbow is to good at a singular specific aspect of the game. It makes no sense that the crossbow can do double the heal rate of the medigun at close range.

The actual statistics

Medigun without crit heals
24HP/s

Medigun with full crit heals
72HP/s

Crossbow without switching to Medigun between reload and assuming minimum health gain of +75
75/1.6 = 46.875
~46HP/s Now you could also account for some arrow travel time and latency assuming nonLAN conditions. You're still looking at 40+ HP/s unless you have really horrible ping

Crossbow with switching to medigun between reloads and assuming minimum health gain of +75
(75 + 24*0.6) / 1.6 = 55.875
~55HP/s

Why should the crossbow by itself have a higher heal rate at close range than the medigun in combat conditions? A -33% heal rate on the cross bow would STILL be better than medigun at close range (50/1.6 = 31.25HP/s and if you combined it with the medigun for 0.6 between weapon switching you would get 40.25HP/s) but wouldn't cause nearly as many issues as people have been complaining about. Shit the max heals could probably stay the same and you would probably see a lot less complaints. Ideally Valve would make it -50% at least for the minimum heals and have it correspond with crit heal mechanics.

Also my comparison to Malicious Activity wasn't meant to be as a comparison of game balance but to be a comparison to something Invite players/teams wouldn't notice as much because they can overcome it alot easier than other players/teams. Another similar comparison would be the blindness certain wealthy people have to how unfair certain aspects of the American Legal system is to poor people or White people not understanding racism against Black people. i.e. You wouldn't know cause you probably never experienced/seen it.

what? you always always balance a competitive game around the highest level of play.

crossbow is the only thing keeping roamer afloat. if anything, remove the damage from it (or m1 shoots heal bolt, m2 shoots damage) because whiffing a heal arrow to have it do 70 damage instead is pretty stupid.

switching to a % based heal mechanic would probly be good. maybe like 37% minimum up to 75% at max. this keeps the 75-150 heal range for soldiers, but doesnt allow scouts to get healed for 60% of their hp from point blank range, and also makes arrows better spent on soldiers (much like health packs) because they get more value from them.

imagine how sick it would be to be demo on sunshine mid and just fuckking die

In general, balancing around the highest level of play is the right thing to do, but if you can do some balance around low level play without negatively impacting the other then I don't see why you wouldn't do that. It's like Valve nerfing the phlog; in competitive play, even at lower levels, it made zero difference, but it made a lot of pubbers happy and helps keep them playing the game.

doesnt getting outplayed mean u could realistically do something about it?
what are u supposed to do to prevent a medic from hitting a parity arrow on the guy ur team is focusing

but the main problem with removing arrows is that it mostly fucks over soldiers
u cant really propose any nerfs because valve is mostly lost on whats going on in their own game
keep it in unless changes are made to the weapon cuz the meta revolves around this stupid broken

also my dumb theory is that that offclassing would get more popular cuz soldier would suck more ass and that would just be aids

If a team is focusing a player and hitting their shots then arrows wont save them. If a single player is fighting somebody and an arrow changes how the fight plays out then that player shouldn't be mad because they took what was in essence a 2v1. People also tend to think about medics hitting cross map arrows as them getting punished rather than a medic (and his teammate by proxy) being rewarded for hitting a good shot which is just really backwards and dumb.

Because the medigun auto aims and the crossbow doesn't. Also you sacrifice heals/minute if you miss, situational awareness while arrowing people, scout speed if you had a beam on a scout, and potentially your uber (or uber targets) if you switch away from your medigun.

I actually just don't get this idea that people have that its not ok for the crossbow to burst heal. Medic without the capacity to burst heal would be much weaker, and I would prefer if it was balanced so that you just didn't get uber from crossbow healing, because that would add more interesting trade offs to using it.

The arguments about the crossbow slowing down the game are just plain wrong- for every push that can't happen off of damage there is a push that happens because a team was able to be healed up fast enough to go push. Arrows actually give med a limited amount of agency in the game and help to make them relevant in more situations. Playing medic as a 24 hp/second uber bot is a snoozefest. I see people asking "would medics actually quit playing medic if they didnt have a crossbow" and the answer for me at least is yes. I am already not a fan of playing medic in general because it shafts your ability to have influence on the game when playing against better teams; I only really got into it because I liked playing ultiduo and hitting arrows/surfs.