https://twitter.com/KenzieMullican/status/879521719765086208

PogChamp

May be wrong in that, but we know nothing about any other Rewind LAN soon, so it's not really like the teams could start planning now for it. If you can prepare for a LAN you don't even know its gonna happen like Rewind LAN, you could've also prepared for i61.

Also i think at this point is important to well-treat i61 LANs as THE event of the year for TF2, simply for getting the maximum hype and awareness in the community for the event itself. If Rewind LAN was confirmed for being something annual we could be talking about something now, but iirc that's not the case and i think we should be sticking to i61 as the major event of the year and show that we're united enough to show all the top-competition from everywhere in the world at the tournament.

That's just my opinion however.

IMO it's a straight upgrade for Pyro and annoying indeed, but the real problem is that the Soldier can use it, which means it discourages jumping in fights and it's also a direct upgrade for Soldier's stock shotgun.

The current Reserve Shooter makes Pyro simply more annoying and have a chance at killing, but not OP, while the Soldier would benefit the most from that weapon and turn the gameplay into slow waddling soldiers spamming other slow waddling soldiers from afar, scared of jumping because of the Reserve Shooter.

This new Reserve Shooter does not contain anything of what makes the current Reserve Shooter, simply changing it completely and not "rebalancing" it. It also seems to be pretty much a straight upgrade to gunboats in a meta so dominated by Scouts, where having some hitscan on Soldiers seems to be the clearest answer to them.

I think the aperture is okay at giving a better chance at pushing out from balcony, in that sense i think that change does its job solidly and i'm all for it, but it also opens the possibility of a sniper really sitting really far back watching both choke and crater/trash at the same time.

Maybe making it so it's all the same as before but when the attacking team has 2nd, it opens balcony could work?

Since it would help for pushing out and would get rid of the sniper sightline and would allow attackers to move through trash without getting spammed from balcony as some teams did before.