You make it sound a bit punishing for using arrows, but since the crossbow shoots relatively fast and has a passive reload, to me this sacrifice seems worth it really.

Heals/minute don't matter that much.

Situational awareness doesn't seem relevant that often since most of the time you arrow from a spot where you can shoot safely. The chance that you will know more of what's around you when you're just beaming instead of arrowing is pretty small. We're also talking about close range here.

You lose speed that you could've had by not healing a scout, but perhaps that makes the scout more vulnerable because an arrow would've just healed him instantly. Again, an arrow shoots pretty quick so you don't even lose much time/distance. This part is very situational though.

If you sacrifice uber by using arrows then that's your own mistake really. When you're in an uber (or just about to) you shouldn't really be arrowing teammates. Unless you want to heal them up very quick right before the push.

This is just how I experienced it and think about it and I'm not questioning your statement. The things you named just don't seem that important to me, but I'm curious why you think they are ^^

I didn't make it sound like you get punished for using arrows, comanglia asked why the crossbow heals more at close range than the medigun does and I wrote some reasons why. People often forget that its not like medics sit around spamming arrows all day. In open/IM I know I got to get away with doing that, but ever since I have started playing invite I get punished if I do that.

Just for your individual points-
Your heal output does matter???????? I don't even know how to react to this because it's just wrong

If you are beaming somebody you do not need to look at them, you can look at whatever you want to. If you are arrowing somebody you have to look at them to line up the arrow. This is not debatable.

I never claimed anything about hypothetical situations where you lose scout speed, it was just an observation. If you are arrowing somebody you do not have scout speed during that time, this is relevant to decision making as scout speed is a very overpowered tool for medics.

My whole point was that when you have uber you can't just use your crossbow without care. That was the point. It isn't some all powerful gun that you should always use like people imply when theorycrafting about healing/second or whatever.

this has probably already been discussed before, but why don't we have a promod?
even if it was just for its own league or pug group, we could make weapon changes ourselves and test them ourselves to see if any of this "arrows slow down the game" and other stuff is even true. All of this with the added bonus that valve might maybe possibly take the good ideas from the promod changes and put them in the actual game, though I highly doubt it

There's a lot of good things that we can do for this game with a promod so there has to be a good reason why we haven't made one yet right?

This isn't up for debate. If teams focus fire and hit their shots arrows will not save players. Arrows can only heal at max 93 HP/Sec with 150 HP arrows being hit constantly which is incredibly unrealistic. 2 players can easily output more damage than 46-93 hp/sec. My experience in IM was constantly using arrows because players didn't kill fast enough. After having played Invite the difference was apparent- players actually secure frags in a timely fashion and this 'problem' almost completely goes away.

The potential for a medic to arrow somebody DOESN'T undo every other advantage you have over somebody else. That is such a daft and hyperbolic argument. If a med hit an important arrow he did his job, nothing more and nothing less. You aren't going to be able to convince me (and a lot of other people I imagine) that medics should revert back to medigun-only considering that it only further exacerbates the problem of them have to rely completely on their team in order to do literally anything.

I am gonna be real fucking honest right now. All the theorycrafters and people complaining about arrows live in a fantasy world because there are a single digit number of medics per continent that even have good enough crossbow aim to make these hypothetical issues a reality- and all of them play in the top divisions where people complain the least. The only thing I have ever been able to help but feel reading anti-crossbow arguments have been that people who main combat classes get mad when medics do shit, and older medics wish the game was the way they remember it through nostalgia glasses.

buff the crossbow

The problem with the crossbow is that the "flow" of the game has been changed by it too greatly.

The original design intention, in tf2, since the beta when kritz heals were introduced, was that players would engage each other, and then either commit fully to dying for frags and be penalized by a respawn timer, or back up to be healed by their medic. The players who backed up and took a breather would be rewarded for this behavior by receiving more, and faster, heals and not be penalized by a respawn timer.

When you introduce the crossbow you ruin that whole arrangement due to the amount of healing it puts out, and the way in which arrows are typically dealt with (hiding behind props somewhere while standing still). It allows for you to re-enter fights much more quickly and also doesn't force you to collapse around your own medic (or health packs) for healing. So you end up with mid-fights that last longer, and scenarios where pushing off of damage alone are much more difficult.

Let me take you back to a time when you could peek badlands choke, and if you hit 2 solid rockets on the other team's pocket or demo (who would be spamming like a dummy from that choke) you could push regardless of the situation because you knew it was going to be at least 10 seconds before that guy could ever do anything productive without risking his life. Now he just stops moving and takes an arrow and all is well. The same occurs frequently with heavies on lasts. The old scenario far more interesting than the current situation where teams never to very rarely push off of somebody just getting hurt badly..

It's not rose colored glasses - it's objectively superior. Damage actually means something, and the game naturally flows between engagement and reorganization, and retreating is part of a wider and deeper thought process than finding a spot to stand still to take an arrow right quick. Preserving the game's flow is why kritz-heals were introduced all those years ago, and for some reason they decided to throw it out the window in a bid to give medic something else to do.

I don't really care either way if the crossbow is banned, nerfed or buffed. It isn't going to stop me from playing the game. From my own prospective I only benefit from any of the proposed outcomes. I do not fear.

i'm a low open medic player and im new to the comp scene, here's what i think;
every fight is played around the crossbow and that's pretty bad, it seems like if as long as yoyr crossbow game is good then it's actually more important than getting uber.

looking at the stats on the wiki it looks like it gives you at a base of 75-150 no matter what class, that's dumb.
it should be two kinds of heals, short range heals and long range heals. short range gives you a small health pack buff while long range gives youed health pack buff

the short range should be the same distance it is from rock to the medium health pack at it is on process
i think this solves the problem with soilders just tanking damage coming back for a quick second and then tanking more damage, but this leaves for those sweet clutch arrows that save your teammate in mid air (those are cool af moments and you should keep em)

also there shouldn't be a passive reload, that's just op

Thanks,
I think we just have different opinions on this.

What I meant here was, if you would miss an arrow it would only be 1 or 2 digits less heals/minute compared to using medi gun. And if you would hit the arrow it would be a bit more. If you just play the rest of the game as usual your heals/minute should be just fine. Heal output totally matters, but not so much in the situation we were talking about.

We're still talking about close range. It's honestly such a small chance that in the time that you arrow someone at close range, which takes like 2 seconds, you die to something that you would've seen if you'd used that medigun. And even if it did happen, arrowing your teammate gives him a good chance to save you.

But that's just 2 seconds of scout speed lost. If it's an important fight then surely you won't arrow him because you need to stay with him,, but you can arrow him at any other time.
About the decision making, that completely depends on the situation and how smart the medic is.

u guys r nerds

https://puu.sh/BzjXj/0d46ece287.png

;)

ill be honest luicrative, you are a fucking retard who lets nostalgia blind him from more interactiive gameplay.

Dont forget the cadmium yellow.

Why not nerf the crossbow by either getting rid of its Uber build rate, or actually making it take a percent or so of Uber when you use it on a player that doesn't have crit heals? I know stuff that messes with Uber charge rate is generally frowned upon, but this trade off makes sense to me. You shouldn't be able to bypass the crit heal mechanic for free.

This would make badly injuring a player during stalemates more meaningful again and make crossbows less spammable, while still keeping the power of the weapon intact.

You nerf crossbow, you nerf soldiers.

Just remove the scout speed buff and call it a day.

add healing dart to a syringe gun that heals like 30-60 hp with xbow recharge speed and ure gucci ive been saying that from the jump

checkout my crossbow frag video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDIcqZAZ8S8

"Because the medigun auto aims and the crossbow doesn't"

Are you implying it takes skill to shoot a teammate that WANTS to be hit? Shooting a demo who just took 230 and decided to simply Hold S doesn't take skill which is precisely why people complain about this. Think about it WHY should a player get rewarded for going down to sub 50HP and start moving in a 100% predictable way while still in a fight?

"Also you sacrifice heals/minute if you miss"

If you switch to medigun between shots you can maintain 33% more HP/s healed while missing 50% of minimum heal arrows, and again your target is almost always someone who wants to be hit.

"awareness while arrowing people"

Largely situational but it is a fair point, don't particularly see how this really calls for the crossbow to do 75 heals minimum though.

"scout speed if you had a beam on a scout"

This can be a fairly substantial trade off but only in specific situations where you're literally 1/5th of second from getting juggled, otherwise it would be dumb of a medic to not arrow a scout as a scout is best equipped to deal with the classes that could do that.

"potentially your uber (or uber targets)"

This is a great point but then again if you have uber and can make teammates invulnerable it doesn't matter what kind of heals the crossbow does per second cause you're dealing with invulnerable players.

The burst heal of the mechanic of the crossbow is to good at close range long range it's also a bit to good but is less of an issue. As for the loss of ubercharge gain, it won't fix the root issue of the crossbow which existed before that mechanic was added to the crossbow in the first place.

Not sure if you're responding to me still here but I don't recall having said the crossbow slows down the game recently at least. In terms of round by round play yeah it might be slower but between fights I'm pretty sure is alot faster. I agree with what you said here "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."

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

Uh no. You balance weapons across the board in favor of the highest level of play not SOLELY on the highest level of play.

You probably didn't realize this but you actually proved my point on Invite players and more generally players who've played pretty much only 6s recently being blind to what it's like to play at lower skill levels or not in 6s at all.

"switching to a % based heal mechanic would probly be good. maybe like 37% minimum up to 75% at max."

I'd bet the majority of players who read this considered only the main 6s classes and forgot about this.

https://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/2/25/Av_robinwalker_heavy_uber.jpg

"37% minimum up to 75% at max."

So Heavy would now get ~125HP to ~225HP per arrow. So with a heavy a medic could maintain a HP/s of 87 with switching to medigun and assuming the arrow heals 125. 87HP/s is 21% more heals than max crit heals, sounds awesome right?

There are dozens of things in the game that could/should be buffed or nerfed that would be nearly or entirely inconsequential to invite or affect basically only Invite.

A crossbow that does 50 to 100 heals while players are in combat would be way more inline with a balanced game and make missing an arrow consequential rather than having to miss 2 arrows in a row. They should add a crit heal mechanic to the arrow that allows it to do it's current healing but after players have been out of combat for ~5s, and since arrows have travel time a roamer that's in the max heal range would probably still get more than 100HP per arrow anyway.

There you go -33% heals +add crit heals that occur 2x faster than stock but cap the HP gain at 75 to 150 depending on range. Medics still have a crossbow that's still better than medigun provided it hits but isn't insane. Medics still have viable burst heals. Medics still have an option to heal at range. Medics can still quickly bring up a full team to max health outside of combat. Finally Medics would still have a crossbow that could give a soldier who just bombed the enemy combo +100 giving them the opportunity to get that last rocket in, yeah it decreases the margin of error for the soldier should that happen but that's what SKILL is about.

hahah typing essays and discussing everytime something needs to be reworked but it doesnt change a thing haha lmao

ur retarded

wtf even goin on man its an item bro take it easy

agreed, fuck this retard

http://capeodd.com/wp-content/uploads/cute-monkey.gif

im sure valve are just itching to implement more balance changes !!

what if u could shoot ur needles on the floor that heal ur teammates when they walk on them and give bad guys aids lol

make the syringe gun heal with every dart you hit

immortal

https://twitter.com/shadetf2/status/983798996589334531?s=20

medic needs a smoke screen