Tutorials are important to new players. When I started playing TF2 in 2012 I had to rely on my friend who got me into it to explain a lot of things. I would have figured it out on my own but it would have taken a lot more time and for some players that could be the difference between getting into it or putting it down and forgetting about it

The vita-saw is going to be the weapon for shitty situations as medic. If you know you're gonna die, instead of kill binding you go for a swing or two so you recover uber when you spawn

It's interesting that they purposefully avoided to mention Pyro at all in this thread. I wonder if this means they have something big prepared for him

As far as these changes most of them look quite good. I don't like the ambassador (should be a slight damage falloff on headshots imo) and the GRU change seems like a step in the wrong direction (if you have a medic healing you the new downside means nothing, this is basically how the GRU were when they came out)

edit - I read the GRU wrong. It actually reduces your max health pool while it's out? That's... strange. But interesting.

edit - the pocket pistol looks crazy good, remove increased fire rate IMO

tf2 should have a tutorial that doesn't tell soldiers to switch to their melee weapon at point blank

I agree, but I wouldn't blame HL on this. I think "class mains" will exist in any class or hero-based game. See Overwatch: it has 20+ heroes and hero switching as a crucial part of gameplay, and yet you have players running Symmetra only in ranked. Or more notably, the Mercy mains which most high level players complain to no end about.

People enjoy games differently and not everyone who plays TF2 is going to have the same interest on the different classes. And I've always defended that HL should exist for players who aren't interested in playing the generalists, and therefore aren't welcome in 6s... think about it - if HL didn't exist at all you'd see a lot more engie and pyro mains fumbling in ETF2L open or UGC steel sweating their balls off trying to make their class work. And it would make the lower levels less fun for people trying to play the meta.

Incidentally I also don't like the idea of 7s replacing HL because it opens room for some specialists but kind of shuts the door on others, in particular spy is situational, engie is only really good for defence and pyro is a mistake of nature. It's not as good of a comp gamemode as 6s and it doesn't have a "every X main is welcome" like HL.

ugh I'm glad that the solution for this isn't simple, because I spent like half an hour trying to do it and was ready to declare all my maths classes a waste.

I'm not sure how useful it is to talk about engineer balance when it seems unlikely that Valve will touch him any time soon, but I'll throw an opinion I've had about engie for a long time

I wish that engie had been designed and balanced around the minisentry rather than level 3. A minisentry engie can use it to soft hold a position while still being active with the shotgun and pistol, and I think that sort of gameplay fits a first person shooter more than building a level 3 gun and wrenching it until it goes down.

If 7s replaces HL sigafoo can say that he finally killed off pyro mains, so I guess that's good?

New maps are cool and I don't mind skins and contracts, but what we really need is balance changes and a MM rework. I'll be a little annoyed if they split the update and we have to wait several more months for the stuff that really matters

https://youtu.be/mhnEz1Ewdp4

Yeah, it did feel like the NBA was interested in stopping an eventual Warriors 4-0 to make the show more entertaining. As an European I'm not surprised that the Americans see their sports as half competition and half entertainment, after all you're the country who made pro wrestling big.

That said I hope showstopper will win the series

5'8, the Portuguese aren't exactly tall so I don't feel bad about it

He would have to be idling on many games at the same time to get a number that high. There's only 336 hours in two weeks

Can we keep it on pyro with those stats? I wouldn't mind getting less self damage off reflect jumps...

• Flame mojo will be fixed and range will be overall increased (oh god)
  
• Airblast will lose the stunlock entirely
  
• Flame particles will be made smaller to require more aim but their travel path will make aiming really weird
  
• Reserve shooter will be nerfed but still OP
  
• New secondary for pyro turns out to be inferior to the shotgun like everything else
  
• matchmaking will get improvements on the technical side but still have no class limits
  
• some good nerfs to OP weapons will happen but one random weapon will be buffed to OP-ness for no reason, taking bets on which one