TF2 General Chat & Speculation Station V15 - Buff Pyro plz - Games

Continuing because I really feel the need to emphasize the "human limitations" point here. There are two players who are considered the absolute best Spies in Plat. While they played, that is- both have long since retired. These players are Hei and Acooma, and the latter is generally considered the superior successor. Acooma's aim is... monstrous. Here's one of the most popular videos on his channel. https://youtu.be/E5IDhCvVqpo Holy shit, right? But this is, what, a normal scrim? A match? Let's look at something higher-stakes. Grand Finals. What does veritable Ambassador God Acooma do here? https://youtu.be/L04bzZa0cIY That doesn't look like a fucking Ambassador to me. That also doesn't look like a Spy playing anything resembling suboptimally. But here's where it gets nuts. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/132423/fd5aa59d-ab8b-4533-be4e-fb3417a1e632/Screenshot_20190129-233142.png In most of his games...his accuracy is only 25%-35% on average. That's fucking incredible, don't get me wrong. Especially in TF2, where there's no giant barriers or mechs to pad that accuracy stat with. But would you call 35% accuracy with the current Ambassador enough to justify running it over stock? Even 50? Or 60, which nobody does consistently? Yeah. I didn't think so.

Tell me something then, why does Demo Knight exist? Was Demoman designed to be a melee oriented class? This suggests that there's nothing wrong with changing up a class with how it preforms as far as I can tell. Dead Ringer was meant to get spy past choke points that are often spammed and feigning death believe it or not was always suppose to be apart of Spy's arsenal from the start too. The only reason it wasn't included from the start was because they mentioned they couldn't get it the way they wanted it to be right at the start so they held off. Spy had the ability to feign death in the past entries of Team Fortress. I agree though that the speed boost was never needed in the first place.

Like you're welcome to think that but it still doesn't make the Ambassador viable or better than stock Feel like I've proven that pretty exhaustively

The Ambassador nor the Dead Ringer turned the spy into a Generalist at all...

Demo Knight from what I've been told and seen... Turns Demoman into a Pick Class. You know, the thing that sniper and spy are... I think you need to look up what Generalist actually means too BTW... I don't believe you understand what it actually means.

When you argument steams around the usage of miss information then I have a reason to question if you actually know what you're talking about. If Ambassador and/or Dead Ringer spy was a versital in the game why have I not seen him used nearly as much in higher level play, specifically 6's... If he's a generalist I would presume he'd be a regular right up with Soldier, Medic, Scout and Demoman would he not? The few times I saw Spy actually in 6's, he was usually a Cloak n' Dagger spy that hide in a corner till an opporunity to knife a target was presented... Not running around blasting enemies with Ambassador shots and Dead Ringering away.

my biggest issue with @Contra 's argument is that he factors DPS while Amby is clearly a DPH weapon meant to OHKO enemies. you're the only class that can naturally see the enemy's health and as such you're suposed to be able to finish anything under that tresshold. add invisibility to safely study the enemy and bam, you get your terror weapon. and in tf2 unless you're traveling to a combat area or under medic support chances are that you're already under 75% your health, so a GUARANTEED 102 hit can pretty much kill you, if not cripple you when facing any spy. except of course nobody uses the amby as a pick weapon and instead they use as a DPS one since you can just hold M1 and hope for a headshot and in most casses get it since you're already up close. correct me if i'm wrong but spies are built as burst damage classes. you're not suposed to DPS people to death, you're suposed to engage in 1v1 and OHKO key targets, without gtting hurt in the process.

The issue is that the 102 is far from guaranteed, as you actually have to land the headshot The revolver only takes 0.4 longer seconds to deal an actually fairly guaranteed ~100, and is much more forgiving if you miss If you uncloaked to kill a 100 hp guy and do hit the headshot, you kill them very slightly faster, but with a much larger risk of missing completely (which is the equivalent of missing 2 revolver body shots, because now you have to wait 1 second for the headshot cooldown), which will very likely get you killed So, the risk vs reward is basically terrible. Spy has the ability to only choose encounters he can win, but when you throw in the variable of hitting the headshot, you actually lose that ability, in a sense

stock revolver is pretty much as good as a spy gun should be, and amby being merely slightly better at its best is perfectly ok most stock/unlock relationships don't even go that far i.e. if amby was just absurdly useless, like the loose cannon (doing 50% less DPS than stock in the hands of a robot-tier donkmaster), then that'd be another thing, but an increase in DPS assuming perfect play is honestly not a bad spot in and of itself it doesn't need to be objectively better in every possible situation to be fun to use

Yeah, it is still kind of fun to go for headshots (or maybe frustrating, actually) But right now it's at a state similar to the pre-Blue Moon axtinguisher: Sure, you could go around trying to get the crit on people for satisfaction or whatever, but what's the point when you could get the same effect by just holding m1 on them? Even though it's not useless in a vacuum, it is when you compare it to stock or the l'etranger or whatever

Hot take: Acooma is/was a Sniper who could disguise and cloak. Hei was better at being a cunt with the Dead Ringer. He was more or less impossible to kill. 100 years ago, during the time of Gun Mettle, when QuickPlay was still a thing, I ran not one but two event_mix (the playlist name) servers. Acooma showed up on one of ours when it was set to Borneo. He was playing defense sniper with a unique Bazaar and shut down 9/10 of the opposing team. There were many screams of "aimbot!" from the attackers. I was in spectate looking at all the plat badges in his profile and told them to chill out. Also, while I understand it's no fun to be hit for 102 damage from an enemy so far away you can barely see them, I'd like to bring up how much less fun it is to be hit for 150. Sniper remains to this day the least fun class to fight against. He was a poor fit in a 2007 game focused around medium to close range encounters. Over a decade later where there are players with 1000s of hours on Sniper who have trained themselves to overcome the class's few weaknesses and land headshots at improbably close distances. This is to say nothing about the ahem, innumerable aimbots out there. Class #8 is the mostly poorly designed in the ENTIRE GAME. This slapfight over the Amby underscores exactly one thing for me: Sniper needs a global fucking nerf. Spy is a mess of mad ideas, not dissimilar to pyro but no one spy can shut down an entire team like a Sniper. I am now convinced that the reason the TF2 team will not address and properly balance Sniper is because a number of Staff members main it and let their own biases get in the way of proper game balance.

Only issue I had at most was that it tip toed in Sniper's Territory at most. He didn't really replace sniper though, which is why I stated he was tip toeing into that territory. The best way to change it would have just capped the distance that headshots would have registered as headshots. Any further past that point it would, at best, do a normal shot damage with no damage fall off perhaps. I'd say give it a reasonable range too... Say from one end of 2fort's bridge to the other. Dead Ringer, I'd also like to see it recharge faster naturally. A Normal full recharge is 20 seconds, I'd reduce it to around 10-15 seconds. This would make the spy more productive, while still having a downtime, thus not being able to be spammed. After that, I'd seriously like to see the decloak sound reduced to at least of that of the Cloak n' Dagger's pitch, which is still louder then Stock. If they want compensation they can remove the movement speed upon triggering the Dead Ringer, which it didn't need in the first place and forgot to remove when they upped the dead ringer's damage resistance to 75% ( I believe that's the precentage it is currently ).

flamethrowers now deal headshot damage.

df now crits on headshot also from the back and the front it's still useless

Do I heal more if I headshot teammates with my medigun?

I think Sniper just needs some mechanic changes. The main issue is that a Sniper should be vulnerable if something is in his face, but good Snipers can work around that. Additionally a lot of classes can't deter sniper at range as effectively as they should be able to. Make the sniper rifle not crit within a certain range, so players don't get headshot when up in a sniper's face where he's supposed to be most vulnerable. This will solve a ton of problems, especially with aimbots, and make closing the distance on a sniper actually effective for low HP classes. Remove the ability to headshot when flinching. Possibly make flinching while scoped more disorienting or longer lasting. Good Snipers can adjust their aim based on the flinch to still land headshots, which negates most classes ability to deter them. This makes using the shotgun slightly more viable on heavy and allows any class to pester Sniper effectively. Since miniguns don't cause flinch at range Snipers can still pick Heavies effectively when they're revved. Tweak Darwin again so it doesn't counter one of the best anti-sniper ranged weapons besides another sniper. Keep the afterburn and flinch, but just make it do no damage. This way the Sniper is still deterred by flares but can still get some use out of wearing it. Sniper still remains a pick class, but can now be countered effectively. Aware players can deter the sniper with peck damage, Scouts and Spies who catch a Sniper unaware aren't fucked by quick headshots, Pyros can effectively neuter a sniper for the duration of afterburn.

The only reason I ever use the abassador over stock is because it looks cool and sounds cool. Besides that I never really use it, stock and l'etranger is what I stick with.

what does it prove other than some humility? if i was good with it then i'd just cry for the revert?

There's a fat guy out front who'd like some words for you. Luckily it takes him a full second to get started.

You have zero proof that any of the current TF2 team members main sniper, so don't throw out unsubstantiated bullshit like this.

can't find the source atm but they have said they have a sniper main on the team who's so good he gets accused of hacking too often which granted I don't think is the reason they're not nerfing sniper, he probably just doesn't register with them as an issue atm. if anything it explains why bazaar bargain has never been useful, guy probably doesn't think there's anything unrealistic about scoring 4 headshot kills to get any use out of it

knowing you, you probably get to complain more.

Probably somehow a box-worthy idea, but is there anything inherently wrong with simply making it so Sniper is forced to unscope (with a brief delay on being able to scope in again) if he takes damage while scoped in? I mean flinching exists, and can throw off most new-to-middle tier snipers, but even they can get a lucky shot now and then. And more skilled snipers can time their shots or accommodate their aim to render it a negligible annoyance. I've had skilled snipers that could skill cross-map headshot me while they were on fire and being peppered by a scout's pistol. And chip damage at that range isn't enough to force snipers into cover, even ignoring healing sources. And projectiles can be easily dodged at the ranges where sniper is problematic to deal with. Whereas if they were forced to unscope if they took even stray bullet damage, they'd have to either reposition, or stand there and take fire and be unable to snipe back, rather than "praying he misses" as seems to be the common attitude, allowing people to actually push in to a sniper's sightline, as opposed to avoiding his sight completely or waiting for someone to (hopefully) pick him off. It adds tradeoffs to the better sniper sightlines in that the sniper gets to see more enemies and map area, but is easier to be supressed, favoring tactical or positional skill to be as relevant to a sniper as his mechanical or aiming skill is, encouraging even skilled snipers to play a bit more passively and supportivly, popping in to take a critical shot before backing out, or watching a thin sightline or flank route from behind cover, picking off unaware or distracted players, which could also inherently space him away from teammates and thus make him easier to pick or flank, rather than sitting ontop of a hill and deleting anyone he sees just because he has good enough aim to. Unscoping on damage would also prevent the occasional "I managed to completely and utterly flank this unaware sniper, but he still was able to just turn around and quickscope me" type of complaint, make no-scopes a more relevant source of damage, and inherently make defensive weapons like piss and the SMGs more valuable, since he can't just quickscope immediate threats that are actively engaging him. And having the weakness of supression lets some of the slower or otherwise easier-to-snipe classes be able to play against a sniper by being aware of the map, identifying where snipers are so they can fire some rounds at their location to make them hide or reposition, in addition to simply using alternative routes or working with pick classes, while still giving sniper his balance of being able to pick off the close-range powerhouse classes from a distance. It may also have the effect of mitigating aimbotters, but whatever. Is there something i'm missing?

That would be really silly. Why should every class in the game be able to make Sniper useless at the range he's supposed to have an advantage in? Heavy would suddenly be able to shut down a Sniper if he has line of sight, even across the map. It would make the class unusable near his team as well, and force them to hide if they ever want to kill a single person.

It would be much more feasible if Sniper lost charge when taking damage. That way a Heavy could feasibly stand a chance against a Sniper but a decent Sniper can still get kills.

Along a similar metric how "every class in the game" can make Spy (or in some situations, Pyro and Scout, or even Heavy) useless in thier respective advantageous ranges depending on context. I get the feeling that Sniper, like Spy, should be seen as an opportunist that takes advantage of holes, rather than making them himself. Rather than coming from behind and up close, Sniper can come form any direction and from far away. And in the same way you can address Spy by noticing, and the promptly backing off and engaging him, you can address sniper by noticing, and the promptly harassing. Similar to how a "real life" sniper, a single vulnerable but long range "pick class" plays by finding a good spot to get a critical shot on a critical enemy, rather than gunning everyone down commando style, it'd make sense that a sniper here could play a bit more like that. And similar to how a "real life" sniper could be supressed with high RoF automatic weapons like SAWs or ARs, a big man with a minigun should be able to do the same, given that he is both aware and actively trying to supress said sniper. Sure, a sniper sitting right in the middle of his team might have some problems, but why is he in the middle of his team if he's weak and can be supressed? He should use his range to his advantage, rather than playing like one of the CQ combat classes. Perhaps he can back up and setup to provide supportive fire over his teammates from a safer spot behind them? or maybe he can move to any other more strategic position away from his team such that splash fire doesn't affect him as much?

Sniper's issue isn't that he isn't easy to disrupt, it's that he does too much damage too quickly. Attaching silly mechanics being forced to unscope when taking damage or losing charge isn't going to stop Sniper from killing all but 3 of non-overhealed Classes in the amount of time it takes to press rmb, flick to their head, and press lmb. Sniper's problem is he deals too much damage and he does damage way too fast. That's all there is to it. There's nothing wrong with a majority of his kit otherwise (aka everything except Jarate). If you want to disrupt a Sniper, take the flare gun or detonator or Scorch Shot to him. His goal as a class it to pick other characters from a safe distance, and being forced to rescope every 5 seconds because a stray bullet hit him would just make Cozy Camper the only viable secondary without addressing his actual DPS issues.

Sniper probably has the highest skill/reward ratio of all classes being, well, a fucking sniper. explosive jumping, trimping, surfing, airshots are all impressive and take skill to perfect but the payoff will not be equal to clicking on heads while in the safety of your team. if you removed spy's ability to sap buildings, people would prefer sniper way more to spies, a spy has to get close to the enemy to instantly kill them, who are often times is in their home area where any enemy teammate can show up and ruin the spy's attempt, failure leads almost always to a painful death, with all sorts of ways to track down the spy if he goes invisible, fire/minigun, jarate/milk, any AoE. while a sniper needs only to watch the chokepoint for a victim to show up, miss? Well just scope in again and try again, or at worse, move to a different spot. Sniper will always be the odd-man out.

To be fair, Spy is still insanely useful because of the intel he can gather for coordinated teams, especially in competitive. As useful as a Sniper is, they won't be able to tell you exactly where the enemy team is, what percentage their uber is, et cetera

I remember reading a post somewhere someone suggested that while scoped in, the rifles' base damage is dropped to 25, and would then have to charge up from 25 to 150.