rando said that this season was likely his last season in his ESA interview. bdonski is really an unknown but it's also possible for him to pack up since he's been playing for a long time as well

We all want to see comp get bigger but lately we've really been struggling. Finding 8 invite teams this past season was a huge challenge, and next season is certainly going to be an interesting one

Also article on this coming soon :)

pyxelize highlight video PogChamp

inside your scoreboard.res file, alter values of things that end in "_minmode", assuming what's shown in the screenshot is the minmode scoreboard

inside hud files -> resource -> ui -> hudmediccharge.res

the "ChargeMeter" field should be what controls it. To remove it, do one or more of the following:

• change either the "xpos" and/or "ypos" fields to a very large number, 99999 for examples
  
• change the "wide" and "tall" values to 0
  
• change the "visible" and/or "enabled" fields from 1 to 0

shoutouts to saam for holding everything together for the tftv stream (what a champ)

shoutouts to everyone that did analysis and casting (Marmaloo, Marxist, Cornpop, Jarrett, Paddie, and everyone else that I may have forgotten)

shoutouts to both teams for putting on a spectacular grand finals

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theoretically in a world where all is good and we got sufficient dev support, we could experiment with these changes. But that's not the world we live in so I'm not going to expand on it any further

while it's an unpopular opinion, I don't think the crossbow should be outright banned, but I think the waters should be tested through a new whitelist in competitive environments. Give the people a taste of what would be to come and then vote on it.

I actually didn't suggest removing the crossbow at all. I'm more of a candidate to rebalancing it so that the other medic primaries aren't just straight downgrades to it. What I was suggesting was something along the lines of

• Make 75 health the max health that a teammate can be healed with a crossbow bolt
  
• Remove the ubercharge gain on teammate heal and put it on the overdose or some other primary
  
• Remove the passive reload so that firing an arrow becomes more of something that should be used as a weapon and healing tool and rather just a spam weapon that you can fire into a hoard of enemies and not have to think twice about whether or not it was a good thing to do

Arrows provide an interesting depth to medic, but where things have gotten these days, there are so many benefits that if you're not running it, your team may think that you're throwing.

Edit: Also what tino said is entirely correct. Is it nice to have games where you have a low death count as medic? Of course. But there's a fine line between baiting your team and bailing on them at the right time when things are going south.

You know what I'd really like to see? The uber gained on allied crossbow hit put on the overdose, but instead of on hit, you gain ubercharge on kill. That would surely shake up the meta of medic primaries. I remember watching compilation clips of old medics way back who were just amazing with needles and could basically fight their way out of a 1v1. It just seemed surreal to me at the time how someone could be so good with needles.

Also the whole thing of crossbow bolts doing 75 healing minimum when you're basically breathing down a teammates neck is actually ridiculous. I think 75 should be the max because for a lot of classes a long range arrow is basically the same thing as getting a full health pack. I'm not going to lie, hitting those cross map bolts to save a teammate is super satisfying. Lots of medic mains would say the same thing, but it's simply something that makes the current crossbow too good.

you got a better suggestion that will net significant gains for the community in the short term and long term? If so I'm pretty sure everyone would love to hear it.

The whole whitelist thing was really our best attempt at getting more people playing but as kav had pointed out there hasn't been much that's come from it that's good. Many people were pushed to their breaking point with some unlocks (i.e. when the atomizer and base jumper were unbanned for some reason) and there were also many public posts across many divisions that x number of individuals would not play unless some items were banned (aka that very short time where people decided to unban the quick fix).

There's not much that can be done whitelist wise, so the next real thing was map pools, which is more or less at a standstill until the invite grand finals concludes. There are some really good maps that have the potential to replace less popular maps (granary and metalworks) so not a lot can be done there until teams get playing on it in pugs and other competitive environments. It's a slow work in progress but there's at least something there.

shotgun > banners

As far as I'm aware the banners are actually rather hard to coordinate. Maybe if the animations were faster and you didn't lose all of your charge on death they'd be alright I guess but the advantage of simply having another weapon that can eliminate targets is much better than something that changes your teams stats for less than 10 seconds.

Using it mid-fight just isn't that practical and all that has to be done to equalize is to get a pick onto whoever has popped the banner. You'd be much better just reloading rockets and/or getting a med pack or arrow/heal from your medic and getting back into the fight as soon as possible

Finding someone to talk to and have them listen about your situation is a fantastic start. As hayes had said, there's likely some type of resource if you're going to university that can help you deal with these kinds of things.

Personally, I've found that spending time with my roommate's dog can help comfort me when I'm feeling down. I wish I could spend more time with him but it is what it is. If you know of a friend that has some kind of pet that you can play with for a little bit, there's certainly a chance that you'll be able to feel at least a little bit better.

But above all, do not take your own life. There's so much more to look forward to, even if in the short term things do look bleak. I've got 3 exams that I need to do well on to get my GPA up for the end of the semester as well, so I understand at least a little bit of the pressure that you're facing. It's not fun. Anyone that's been in a similar spot knows that. But with the right amount of help, things can get better.

I'll likely be doing more EU write-ups wherever help is needed, so expect more news stuff soon :)

Now if only school gave me more time to write...

https://clips.twitch.tv/TolerantBoredPeachArsonNoSexy

A few things in SKHud that I noticed while playing

1. I'm unable to see the engineer's metal count at all
   
2. The quickswitch menu has a few things cut off (screenshot)
   
3. Slightly less important, but when a sentry is being sapped, the sapper icon overlaps some of the building status. Not sure how much this is my res or if that's just where it's intended to be

edit: I was also running it in minmode just to prevent any confusion

Some guy that I happened to know from high school (he was a freshman and I was either a junior or senior can't remember) happened to be at a winter church event one night and recognized me.

Quick side note, I did band all 4 years of high school (I played trumpet) so during the winter, I had to take care of my lips with chapstick and lots of water since I was top chair and played a lot

Normally I'd be fine with people recognizing me, but this guy could only be classified as a wierdo. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, but he was certainly different. He always looked like he got 2 hours of sleep, stuttered with words a lot, and would go off on the most random tangents at times. I didn't necessarily mind it since there wasn't anyone else that I knew there.

So we're just going along talking about random stuff, and I take out my chapstick since I noticed my lips were feeling a bit cracked. Next thing I know, he stops talking about whatever he was talking about and asks me with a completely straight face if he could use my chapstick. I didn't say anything and just let him realize what he had asked me. After a solid 10 seconds of awkward silence he realized what he had asked and tried to get back onto talking about whatever he was talking about before. I just went along with it so the situation didn't get any more awkward than it already was.

TL:DR - some dude asks me (at a church event) if he can use my chapstick that I had been using for the past few months for marching band things