PumI dont find Lunchboxes being unbalanced to the point where they need to be banned. Sandvich will heal the heavy, yeah, but he is pretty much only seen in last, and when used he never runs back to spawn unless the enemy team has been wiped, he doesnt have the time to eat a sandvich to heal, and switching weapons to throw a sandvich to a teammate probably wont be worth giving up all your positioning and area denial for at least 5 seconds, specially while under fire.
What sells the lunchbox items for me is the fact that they're rechargeable, forcing stalemates to go to a spy/sniper to gain a crucial pick rather than a scout sack/soldier bomb to force an uber because a heavy is good enough at denying bombers as is, why not equip him with a rechargeable healthpack that, mind you, gets fully recharged when you walk over a health kit
Pum Also the chocolate bar is just a worse sandvich, you may attemp a heavy sneaky play while having 350 HP, but its extremelly situational. Also it doesnt increase your overheal cap.
true, but +25 percent health when any class is trying to kill you may be what can get you to the next medium health kit, or the safety of your teammates even
Also if you throw it randomly on a point/area behind a choke, you're also risking that an enemy may take it, specially if you get attacked by suprise.
This one I will agree with you on, but even a heavy at 200 health will take a decent bit of a soldier's ammo to kill unless he has a shotgun on hand or is trying to get kills with the market gardener
The cow mangler is basicly a Rocket launcher with infinite ammo but with a worse reload, I doubt the charge shot would have any use, its very easy to hear from afar, makes the soldier practically immobile for 2-3 seconds, and drains all ammo.
This is why when teams are trying to force the other team while they're trying to push through a choke, that coordinated spam works. Add a minicritting charge shot in there and next thing you know as a pocket, you're looking at a respawn timer and your medic has to uber another class to even have a chance at getting damage on the enemy team since they're almost out of that area by that time
And for the Direct hit, I'm a bit skeptical on it, I feel like it makes bomb denials a bit too easy, and it oneshotting scouts at close range is also quite annoying. I kinda agree on corsa's post above about the DH and it made me ban it.
I see the DH more of as a bad manners sort of weapon, but I will agree with your skepticism about it.
I dont see the problem with the Diamondback, you're missing on the L'Etranger for reliable cloak, and that one crit will almost never matter since after the stab you most likely will either die or escape, you could get an extra kill if you manage to spot a player under 102 hp right after getting the, most likely, medic kill, and also manage to aim your only shot and hit it while being most likely shot by 4-5 men, then the kill imo is deserved. Also you're missing on DPS if being detected and forced onto a 1v1.
I feel like a kunai + C&D + diamondback would be the combo that would make players upset the most, since getting a pick to begin with grants you a very healthy overheal, which you can use to make a getaway with the slight additional resistance that you get when cloaking, but if you do end up in a 1v1 situation you're basically dead in all honesty, so any possibly DPS that you wouldn't have would be pretty much admissible (at least in my opinion).
And finally the Red tape recorder is very glitchy iirc, I remember it keeping buildings unsappable more often than stock, but maybe I'm wrong
If the red tape recorder is still buggy, then I can understand why it wouldn't be allowed. But if the bugs have been removed, then I'll still stand by my original statement that I feel there isn't much that would make it better than the stock sapper