medics primary problem: not tanking me when im in

I wish xbow didnt have passive reload

nerf ubersaw thanks

i always thought it was a bad idea when it was implemented for flares

edit: typo

http://www.teamfortress.tv/38755/whats-the-logic-behind-unbanning-unlocks/?page=2#35
posted Jan 11, 2017 at 5:46 PM EST

It took ya'll that long.

Edit:
Keep wishing for changes, bet Valve will implement them for sure. Even if they did, it's not like they'd manage to balance it well. It's been proven countless amount of times in TF2 and CS:GO. Goddamn glad that they don't balance dota 2.

Other unlocks aren't bad, it's the xbow that's fundamentally flawed. And if u think otherwise so is ur brain.
Just fucking ban it.

This thread again

crossbow will not be banned because needle guns are shite

In case you guys didn't watch the video and only read the guy saying "the crossbow isn't going to be banned even though it's obviously OP", I will give you a better much more accurate summary.

I do not mention at all about wanting to ban the crossbow. It's obviously broken but this mostly stems from the fact from how awful the medics other primaries are. They are almost all virtually worthless. The point of the video is to sway the opinion of instead of making the crossbow into garbage, make the garbage weapons actually mean something. While the crossbow obviously needs a change I do not wish to see that weapon become near useless because of lazy balancing.

Please do not use this as a chance to start a debate as useless as "should the crossbow be banned?" I cannot stop you guys if you really want to actually talk about it, but I hate for my video to be the source of something I completely had no intention in starting.

https://youtu.be/bsC8io4w1sY

My question is why can't we both nerf the bow AND buff needles at the same time? Yeah needles are shit and they do need help, but bringing them up to the absurd level that the bow is at is not the solution.The bow is literally already the best weapon in the game, on the most OP class in the game. So lets give that class 3 more totally game breaking weapons to said class? This doesn't sound like a good solution to me...

I have been saying from day one that we should revert bow to something close to what it was on release with maybe a few minor tweaks, and at the same time buff the firerate/damage of needles while maybe (this is a very big maybe) giving them some additional util, because they are not actually terrible weapons in their current form. They work really well for what they are made for and IMO they compliment the medics general kit and philosophy pretty well, the issue is that obviously the bow is just broken to absolute fuck.

Ohh also remove scout speed.

then your video is supposed to be the source of what, if not a discussion about what the game should be/how to design items and other regular topics?

as pointed in the video with the sf2 example, while buffing is a good balancing tool, it ends up creating another game. Can't speak for you, but I like tf2 as it is, or was.

Real question is who has more hours? Mustardoverlord or Nursey?

Yes

Why are we even worrying about what any of these low hours noobs have to say?

I already mentioned in the video the crossbow still needs a nerf while buffing the other weapons (I recommended to half the healing it currently does to match the damage it does to enemies). I don't like your idea on how to handle the weapons because the syringe guns still suck ass. I like to think I'm pretty good with those weapons and I greatly understand how high the DPS is on those things. It doesn't knock away the fact they have terrible reg, are difficult to aim, and no matter if you nerfed the crossbow to not have passive reload and not build uber, NO ONE would run a syringe gun because the healing is still way better.

I agree on reversing the matching scout speed when healing.

I already said I just don't want this to be a discussion about "if the crossbow should be banned or not." That's all I said. You can talk about anything else you want.

Sure, but my question is WHY do needles need to be made better? The fact that they are hard to use and have kinda shitty stats is, IMO, a good design choice. Med isnt supposed to be able to deal with shit easily and is not supposed to be able to put out good DPS or farm kills, that idea is the antithesis of the class itself, and to say that no one would use needles over the bow if you brought it down to release levels is not really right, because the bow was really bad on release and worse than needles without question.

Like personally what I would do to the bow is;

Min-Max healing of 35-75
No passive reload
Reload time of 3 seconds (up from current 1.5)
No uber build

This keeps it half viable, but it really harms you if you are not good with it and IMO would make needles a safer choice due to the consequences of not being good with the bow.

Invite and high skill meds would probably stick with the bow because healing util is amazing but it would no longer be a must have or must use.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsC8io4w1sY

while this video is fighting game focused, the concepts are demonstrated to make sense with other games in the video and can easily be applied here.

buffing the shitty weapons will in its own way make the equip rate of these "basically stock" weapons go down. recommend watching the video in full

Paulsen had a fantastic idea for nerfing crossbow, I had a pretty similar idea but never really shared it and didn't have as clear of an idea of how it could work unlike Paulsen (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/336554402?t=01h14m39s fantastic conversation from here). He had some other fantastic ideas to go along with it all in the vod. The problem with the crossbow is that the healing is instantaneous. Every other healing item heals at a rate like the Medigun, dispenser etc. This along with lowering the amount it heals for I reckon would make it a much more balanced weapon without being disgustingly overpowered. Having it heal at the same rate a level 1 dispenser heals at might be a good start.

Instead of loosing a 1v1 with a scout cos they got a lucky arrow shot at them, they would only heal a small amount in the time it took you to reload and shoot, while still retaining the ability for them to retreat and re-heal. It would still keep it usable enough for pocket rollouts etc as well.

Obviously the crossbow needs a nerf, too ingrained in the meta to be banned, and needles are just bad so need a buff (dunno how though).

Just my 2c.

Great video though Nursey.

That video was already posted, and it doesn't actually address any of the issues that medic currently has, nor does it actually give good justification as to why needles need a buff, it just says that buffing things usually "feels" better and people don't play perfectly balanced games because they are potentially boring. The first claim in probably true, the second one is more of a joke though because chess fucking exists.

The video has many problems with it and does a lot of hand waving of issues to justify its main point, and I mean that's fine, but to look at the video and somehow assume that it is just all correct without him actually justifying anything is kinda stupid. Hell it doesn't even talk about the concept of power creep in a video about balance.

Like fuck, only buffing things is exactly why medic is in such a bad spot right now, all valve has done to medic is buff it and its kit over and over again without actually considering the issues and because of that we have ended up with the scout speed arrow mess we have now. Think of what would have happened if valve decided to just buff the medigun and kritz to the same broken level that the QF used to be at, it would have totally changed the face of the game into something that is no longer TF2, or at least not what TF2 at its core used to be. And sure thats not objectively a bad thing, but to say that power creep isnt an issue that people should be worried about is just silly, especially in a "competitive" (good joke) game. What would CS be like if valve decided to just buff all pistols to the level of the OG R8? What would Dota be like if they ONLY buffed heros? I could go on, but the point is the same. Buffs are not the end all be all of solutions, and he even says in the video that one of the best changes for SF4 was a nerf, but then he immediately hand waves it away with how shitty the SF5 nerf was.

The message of the video SHOULD be "Well thought out game mechanics make for better games", not "Nerfs are bad, we only buff".

Are we looking for a more balanced medic experience or are we looking to make equip stat numbers look neater in graphs?

I don't understand what the point of talking about all these theoretical buffs and nerfs is if we're not going to develop our own promod to test and implement them.

This was pretty much already mentioned but I think a good thing would be if the crossbow did a little bit of healing immediately (like a flat 25hp or 20% of your max health like a small health pack) and then the rest would be applied over several seconds like a lvl2 or lvl3 dispenser healing you. Tino's suggestion earlier was way too extreme because it suggested nerfing the crossbow in every possible way all at once. My idea would still retain the feel of the weapon and keep it quite good but remove some of the most frustrating aspects. Also it shouldn't build uber at all. Everything else is fine as-is if you apply those things I just mentioned. EDIT: Going to rip off another person's idea below and say that if you want another small nerf then have medic do -1HP per second self-heal when the weapon is on you (like blutsauger-light).

What this does not address is some way to make the needleguns more alluring. I love them and I think they're very good at what they do but the crossbow is just too good at what it does. I think buffs to the needleguns should be passive things like, say, +3hp/sec extra regen when it's being held out (like the amputator) or +5 or 10% resistance against a damage type, such as blast damage, when it's held. Blutsauger needs no changes. It's very good if you're going to be an attacking idiot which you generally shouldn't be doing and very bad if you're actually playing medic.

And while I like my ideas I still don't know that I wouldn't only use the crossbow.

Bring back syringes

What do we want to achieve with all these changes? Is our goal to change the crossbow because it's annoying to play against or is our goal to stimulate players to use other primary weapons?

Imo the uber build and passive reload are fine the way it is now. I do agree that max healing should be less and that the reload time should be a bit longer.

If you want change the crossbow because it's annoying to play against, removing the uber build and passive reload doesn't make any sense because it doesn't remove the 'annoying part' of the weapon. It just slows the game down because it takes longer to get uber, and if you want to quickly shoot an arrow to save your roamer or something and you haven't reloaded yet, you just wait 3 seconds and do nothing while both of you are waiting. So before most pushes you have to wait 3 seconds to reload, in case you have to shoot an arrow during a fight.

And if you want to make the other primary weapons better, why? Most scouts only use the scattergun, while all the other primaries are terrible as well. But that's not a problem because the crossbow is way better than the other weapons compared to the scattergun and the other primaries?

.

But this kills the clutch crossbow plays the weapon was first known for :

https://youtu.be/jamuLPfQibU?t=195

This wouldnt be a problem if the time cost of firing such an arrow was higher (= having to reload manually/reloading slower). This way it can still be used to clutch, but can't be spammed every 2 seconds without seriously hurting the heals.

Also why does the bow have so much stored ammo when huntsman is like 12 shots? So much ammo isn't needed and just encourages spam.

Besides this issue, how about making the bow heal a percentage instead of a flat amount? min range = 25%, long range = 75%; this way it would no longer be efficient to crossbow dudes with 10hp standing still 1 meter away instead of fighting/running to a healthpack, while still allowing clutch long range arrows, plus it would be a small nerf to scout (which is needed).

For needles, the overdose speed buff could be passive, but for stock needles, i don't know if they should be changed.

isnt that just outright worse than the crossbow was before anyone but fragile used it?

i feel like the bow warrants a smaller direct nerf and then a passive downside. anything tied to the weapon itself is going to have to be balanced around being more useful than needles. and even a single bolt comes into play often enough that itd have to be absolute garbage to be on par with a weapon that does nothing to support your team.

i think something like the blutsaugers passive healing penalty or a health debuff would actually be an interesting tradeoff on the xbow since youd be trading your own survivability for your teammates.

its not really the same situation since the xbow is very much overtuned for a class thats already in arguably the most valuable spot on the team. and it also grants capabilities to med that are completely off the table otherwise. the only thing keeping the xbow unbanned is that a lot of players like using it or like its impact on the metagame. but with the scattergun its more fundamental to the class, and all his other unlocks pretty much do the same thing with minor tweaks. stuff like knockback with the FaN or minicrits with the backscatter dont really change what a scouts supposed to do or how you fight him.

I might be going a little hard with the changes sure, but its no secret that I fucking hate the thing. Been bitching about it for years at this point.

I just wish they would make the syringe gun more consistent and more like the plasma gun from quake, than the almost invisible bee swarm it is now.