I will tie yuki to his chair before I let him run away to cast

Also - I realise its been pointed out already, but I pretty much just read the entirety of this thread in one sitting and the majority of negative comments about this change stem to an argument of "but its going to be harder now!" or "but demo is already weak against scouts".

I'm not going to argue that this patch is bringing demo back to their "intended purpose" of defensive play because thats a crap statement too - the reality is that this change is trying to bring the class (and specifically the sticky launcher) in line with the capabilities of its surrounding classes. Sure, its going to be harder to deal as much damage as demo following the change - but it was harder to rocket jump as many times when they nerfed the gunboats. The role of demo is going to evolve, and honestly I think that people should be more excited about that... as its these changes and evolutions that keeps the game both fresh and competitive. Aren't you guys bored of the way the game is played currently? Don't you get frustrated when you find yourself relying on your demo so much that it paralyses you and is effective a crutch to good play? Maybe its just that we place less emphasis on our demo than other teams, but I seriously feel that this is only going to encourage a faster and more exciting meta for tf2. There are going to be a lot more situations where fighting is a viable choice, and also (contrary to popular belief) I think this is actually going to open up the play a lot more - as teams will be less concerned about playing slow and relying on demos defensive capabilities to choke the game up, the flank play will be increasingly frequent and coordinated as the old suicide around chokes becomes more of the dice roll that it should be.

I think those of you that are arguing so strongly against this change should ask yourself what it is you play tf2 for. Do you play because you love the game? Do you want whats best for the competitive playstyle, or would you rather continue in your comfort zone topping the damage metres and hiding from potentially excellent changes?

Maybe it'll suck... but you may as well get excited about playing the best game you can until it changes. I really hope it (or something like it) sticks around though.

Hellbent if you think that roamer is just going to shift to secondary pocket then I think you haven't thought about it enough. You don't get away with "crazy stuff" just because you have a demo alive - and the fact that demo is now weaker at defending means that EVERY PICK that you get or every point of damage, or every piece of ground that your bomb takes is proportionately better for your team (seeing as it usually comes to the pocket and scouts acting off this, and your demo just kinda backing up the train these days anyway). If the enemy demo is less effective at holding the choke and spamming aggressively, everything you do is more effective. The only impact that this will really have on roamer play (generalising big time) is less focus on demo on mids, and less moronic bomb & repeat around corners and chokes for days at a time... which if you think is a bad thing for the game, then you're already beyond hope. Have to be effective with what you do, otherwise your team will be punished instead of being able to hide behind demo spam (finally...).

I'm not sure if I like how they went about nerfing stickies yet, but the fact that they have nerfed them is good. As they are, and have been for the better part of the game's life - stickies were pretty disgusting - like what plat and others have said, stickies were the only weapon in the game that rewarded slack aim. Any change which emphasises the importance of effective and coordinated individual and team play is a good change imo. Demos are just going to have to adjust to playing a different style, which I honestly think is less of a shift than when gunboats were first introduced to the game.

The meta will evolve, and so will anyone worth playing on a team with. Hopefully like gunboats it evolves for the better (imo) - really the only problem I have with this update is that (just like last year) they leave it way too close to major events.

p.s. Definitely excited for i52 now >:]

Finished one :~D 2 to go :~(

The entire concept of actions becoming instinctivised necessitates experience though radium - and the best way to improve as an individual and as a team is to play consistently with a group of people, and spend time thinking about situations in the game which are challenging.

The problem with your analysis is that you're not only undervaluing the defensive capability of spamming second (do you really think that you can "edge" the point with one scout while spamming out the shutter?) The only way you are going to force them to use while ALSO taking position on second and preferably capping is through muscle, not spam - you need to commit to taking the ground & be willing to trade ubers if its necessary and you really need to prioritise getting the cap, because they aren't going to use early to stop one scout standing on the point (they'll just spam around the corner and pressure the scout off - they are waiting for a favourable block when there are players close to force multi).

If we were to follow through with your situation then you need to appreciate that it becomes a different push entirely. There's nothing necessarily wrong with slow pushing into 2nd with equal ubers and taking SOME ground while you have player advantage, but you need to be aware that their spawners will be present for the fight. So to respond to this you're going to have to make sure you have presence in stairs and and eye on low right, while also trying to muscle the point without being forced by spam from potentially 2-3 players and a hostile uber to consider if you take too much damage - which is important because in 2nd if you guys are at a significant health deficit then *most* likely you're going to have an extremely messy uber. Not to mention that during this entire exchange your player in stairs is likely getting pressured, and while its a strong position for a defending soldier there's nothing stopping the other team from wrapping into stairs, while pressuring you off the point with demo/med/scout maybe and jumping 2 soldiers into stairs (you cant have stickies on low right because you'll be using them for damage/to try and zone off the point so you can cap). If you lose that soldier on the flank, or he gets forced out, you're suddenly caught in an awkward situation as you not only have to be wary for a flank play onto your team getting kills/forcing you (even IF you've capped by this point it would be bad for you), you also have to watch for a backcap.

Basically what i was saying earlier is the best-possible outcome. You really just want to be fast, get the cap, and establish some presence with a favourable uber trade and try and capitalise on that.

Also, @ Alleal - not a bad point, but its kinda unnecessary really. The most likely position for their players to come from is in top (at least 2-3 typically) so if you just sit a soldier kinda forward you'll be able to spot the attempt coming pretty efficiently (+ maybe deter it with good spam/or a duel) - you dont want to get caught though

@Radium - pretty much everything I was saying was assuming the suicide forced your uber. The situation changes entirely if both teams have uber.

When you're trying to break down situations like this the most important thing is to always be thinking about what each team is trying to achieve, rather than just jumping straight into what you think they are going to do. So for the attacking team you're trying to take second with as little death as possible so you can a) hold it and b) hopefully get a kill and be able to start taking yard, mid etc.

For the defending team: you have 2 players up, your bomb failed, spawns in x seconds. Ideally you want to bait out the 2nd point as much as possible and try to a) get a kill b) enough damage that they have to back off a little c) delay uber as much as possible to allow for best possible post-uber with spawners and d) not get zoned out of 2nd/die.

Ignore thinking about how many seconds you have etc and just think in general terms (because you will never ever get a perfect push into second, and often the suiciders die at different times etc). Just try and work out how you go about achieving your goals.

I'm going to post a pretty general example of what would be good, you should think about it yourself though first before you read it. I can't stress enough how valuable it is to actually actively engage in thinking about these kinds of situations instead of just rote learning everything.

Yeah kinda - although there are a lot of factors that make this really difficult. The most important of these is a simple timing consideration - say you deal with the suicide at most you only have ~15-20 seconds to set this up and put it in motion (keep in mind that you cant just run your flank in way early because you need presence on the cap for this to be even remotely worth it) which is actually pretty tight in terms of timing a lot of the time.

The fact that they have uber also makes things difficult - the whole idea of their hold is literally that they want to bait the point right, they are trying to make you push and all they want to achieve is killing 1-2 players and (ideally) stopping your team from capping as a bonus. The reason they are going for this is that spawns are really fast, the point is in a natural choke where uber is just so strong, and gran last respawns are really shit (long + it takes you ages to get to the point + spawn is easy to lock off) so if you just throw your flank at them, even if you force, you're basically just handing them last point on a silver platter if they are any good (they use, kill roamer + scout, take stairs with their respawners while pressuring from wherever combo is, collapse on your team if they capped and stayed in/or just cap the point and start rolling on to last all before you spawn if they didnt stay in).

Basically its really dangerous - you REALLY dont want to lose any more than 1 player retaking 2nd if they still have uber, or you'll just collapse under their muscle and lose last before you get spawns.

edit: as for the 4v2 post uber situation its just really not going to happen like that unfortunately if they are any good - uber lasts 8 seconds if its not multi'd around, which is more than enough time for them to either get spawns, or fall back a little until they do get spawns and then just retake 2nd again with player advantage.

We talk a little about this kinda stuff here (also @ 19 mins)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ5ZPOCWNS8&feature=youtu.be&t=16m45s

But to answer your question specifically its really important to understand the dynamics of attacking 2nd with player advantage (or equal ubers player advantage - because if they all sack and you guys hold uber and don't die it will be easy). If you have uber disadvantage and but you are like 5v2 or 6v2 obviously there are two main obstacles you will have to overcome to cap the point:

1) They have uber

2) Their spawns

Really overcoming these things relies mostly on efficiently dealing with their suicide. If you can consistently prevent their bomb from forcing your med, or are willing to sacrifice your uber to keep all of your players alive and healthy then you will be in a much better position to capitalise on the massive player advantage that they are feeding you. When you're actually pushing into second it will change a bit depending on what class they left with the medic - which will typically be a demo or the pocket (or a heavy... I guess). If its a demo obviously you have to be wary of stickies but it should realistically be easier to force & then compromise (i.e. get away from/waste) the inevitable uber. If its a pocket then you have more options, probably one of the better ones is putting early pressure on their combo - e.g. as a roamer you could sit close in top when the suicide is comign and either pick a duel on a player that wants to bomb (if you're confident - you shouldnt really die if you dont overcommit) or wait it out and jump into second from top during their suicide/literally just after to force their med OR weasel your way into stairs and start applying pressure through your presence on the flank (e.g. show yourself moving up through into right yard so they have to pull back from the point - scouts *can* do this kinda thing too - but again make sure you're dealing with the suicide effectively).

On that note I think dropdown is really a terrible idea in this situation. You waste so much potential effectiveness going dropdown unless you get absolutely perfect timing and your team is super fast to capitalise on their bomb (e.g. sticky trap on the door kills 3 or w/e), if you want to put pressure on their spawners you're infinitely more useful being an active presence in pressuring their combo out (or being something to shoot at in the uber) getting a small amount of captime, then just pushing into right yard and putting pressure on them directly/go camp on the window or something. Taking second is SO much about point presence its ridiculous - even with uber advantage (they've probably popped already though!) it can be hard to take 2nd from a team with an established defence, so really you guys just want to be super fast in pressuring the point and then maintain a good 2nd hold like you would in any other situation depending on what happened during the retake.

tl;dr (im procrastinating) - be fast, dont die (unless you're trading up for kills/lots of position), kite the uber a bit, and just work at it. Its a difficult push to counter, I remember when we started doing it back in ~2010? or 2011 (idk yuki will correct me) we used to just literally sit at last for 4+ minutes last time constantly throwing 3-4 players because its so strong against teams that arent a) used to dealing with it effectively, or b) confident in their ability to push and make decisions quickly

Good luck :~)

Gran 2nd:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B15jUZPoJ3A

First part of granary is up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHpC8THgYbE&list=UUS-kDJnwuexGTdMdqSnivjQ

Thanks again to dy!

I see your point Kenneth, and your reasoning, but the reality is that if i52 doesn't happen and GXL does then we won't be attending... at least not the way we are now. I'll be in Moscow until the 11th of October, and its super unlikely that the team will want to play without me (particularly some of us), not to mention them finding the time & effort to actually organise the trip.

It's pretty much i52 or bust for us, but that doesn't mean that the community should feel pigeon holed into accommodating us either - if GXL is going to work better for everyone else, then there's no "obligation" to do i52 instead just so we can come.

Either way, the community needs to work out what they want soon - or it will be too late for us in either scenario - as I can't really justify organising i52 if there's unlikely to be a strong American team there as well.

Comp is about to start - going to try stream it on : http://www.twitch.tv/aprawria/ - dropping a few frames so might be a bit laggy so we'll see how it goes :~)

Hey,

So there's a bit of an event on over here this weekend with a fair few decent lan teams + us in attendance, with some prizes put up by Team Immunity. Should be starting at around 5pm AEST on Saturday the 12th and finishing up around midnight the same night.

At the moment we don't have a cast, and I'm working on hopefully getting a seperate switch so one of our guys can stream the event. In saying that though - if there's anyone out there that would like to run a bit of an independent cast/steam as a chance to cover some decent tf2 without competition hit me up either in this thread or on steam :] (http://steamcommunity.com/id/aporia/).

Either way I might look into putting together a bit of a lan vid afterwards if we can't find anything live.

Thanks!

Huge thanks for running it all again this year to everyone involved. I'm a bit disappointed I didn't get to tune it at all today while I was at uni, but breaking 100k for any charity event is a massive deal - and doing it through a 36 hour tf2 spectacle is even more impressive.

At risk of sounding a little corny, it really warms my heart to see both the effort that has gone into maintaining this event, and the response that its received from this community, and the gaming community at large.