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

if your argument is that explosivedeer's is invalid because it's pubs/lowest common denominator take a look at how influential demo and sniper are, comparatively, in high-level comp. even in the wonderful land of sniping that is highlander, demo is still getting more kills and dealing more damage. this trend increases greatly in 6s, too.

It's pot, not tea-pot. Tea-pots aren't usually black. I did read your posts. You ignored my initial point. You still are. I take it that means we're done here. It isn't, it's that Sniper deals 150 via quickscoping, which is imo too much, Because Demoman is the one that the team pushes with via uber, and is the focal point of a Highlander's combo. Sniper is still a pick class in that context. Sniper isn't the one getting 20 kills, he's the one sniping the enemy Demo once so that his team can push and cap the point.

But not instantly from across the map, inside the safety of spawn and with no recourse or counterplay other than hoping they miss in the first place. I think y'all are forgetting the point here. Every other class in the game has counterplay. Projectiles and heavy are slow and able to be dodged with movement. Scout is low health and requires closing distance. Pyro and engineer are situational and can be directly outmaneuvered. We spent 4 pages talking about how much spy sucks. Medic isn't a combat class. That just leaves sniper, who doesn't have an exploitable downside by anyone but himself at his prime range. That's antithetical to the design of the game, and is only limited by map design and player skill, both of which are non factors a lot of the time. Especially since even a bad sniper can 150 anyone he wants with enough patience. Hitting body shots isn't terribly hard, and killing people with them completely negate the skill of the target for a laughingly low cost, namely the medic who might have uber. You solve this by giving players more anti sniper guns and tools. Don't nerf sniper beyond bodyshots doing 149. Once the playing field is level in terms of counterplay options, this problem goes away.

Even beyond the examples from pubs, I have explicit text based arguments in my posts. All of which are being ignored to put the examples that I meant to be nothing more than examples and secondary layer support for my main points. I don't know how else to make this clear aside from never posting an image with text again. Certainly seems like the status quo is: An image? Forget the text, lets talk about how stupid this image is.

"playing commando" is an exaggeration intended to refer to snipers that are capable enough to gun down multiple opponents (or a single opponent multiple times) in quick succession, irrespective of where they are. Wherin some are capable enough to turn Sniper into a frontline (or slightly behind frontline) combat class where the term becomes more applicable, generally with a position and/or team that makes them too difficult to approach with flanking routes, and is too necessary to push into to completely avoid. Either i miswrote something or you misread something, because i don't think flinching is an effective balance for sniper at all. The entire crux of my suggestion is that flinching isn't effective enough to suppress snipers. My suggestion is intended to give a more reactionary or proactive counter to sniper than a preventative counter. In the same way a Spy can stab someone on an unaware or otherwise distracted team, and then be chased away or killed after the stab happens is comparable to how i expect snipers to be played and against, taking a critical shot on an unaware team (or have an open season if the team is oblivious), but be shooed or suppressed away after the shot. And in the same way you can hinder spies by guarding/checking flanks or ammo pickups, and keeping your eyes open in general, you can hinder a sniper by preemptively shooting at spots you think a sniper might poke out of, to prevent him from being effective if he does. Sometimes a "blind" sniper killing someone the team did not anticipate is important in moving a match, which is one of the many points of a pick class like sniper. the suggestion is not intended to address the amount of damage any headshot deals, it is intended to address sniper's ability to deal it without consequence. I've explained in other posts that sniper is not defenseless just because aim is not the only relevant factor anymore. He can still fulfill his function, he just has to play slightly differently. And you keep calling it annoying without any qualifier to prevent it from being a subjective statement of sentiment. A more relatable role-based analogy would be that how, like i said above, you can disrupt a Spy's ability to do his job by keeping your eyes open for him, spychecking, and guarding flanks. A spy can still uncloak and backstab you at any time if you're not paying attention to him, but he has a harder time of stabbing you if you're actively trying to avoid being stabbed by him. In the same vein, a Sniper would still have every ability to snipe you if he shot you from a safe position, while you were distracted, or even if you were paying attention but could not currently engage him, but he loses the ease of being able to headshot you if you start shooting at him back to throw off his aim.

You brought it upon yourself. You're the one that posted an unrelated picture of B4nny, who is, again, a competitive player and one of the most skilled players currently playing the game, getting a lot of kills as Demoman. What does that have to do with any argument? Nobody was talking about Demoman, or B4nny. You ignored the initial point to argue something unrelated. Instead of getting upset over how dare people ignore your initial point (which, again, ignored my initial point), try to think it through: Does this screenshot of B4nny doing good in a pub have anything to do with an argument about Sniper doing too much damage?

Here's how ignorant and rushed your arguments are. The screenshots aren't of B4nny and link directly back to the user that posted them originally. I definitely don't believe you're reading my posts. Don't let the screenshots enrage you beyond the point of reasoning.

Fair enough. That currently exists though. In a general context, if a team is aware of a Sniper's position, unless there are other matters like teammates (Engineer, Pyro, Medic) around him to protect him, the goal of at least one player will (or should) be to unseat them. I don't think the problem is as much that Sniper's gameplay cycle isn't as reactionary. In your example, if you harass a Sniper, their response between current flinch and your suggested mechanic, either they'll fight back with noscope shots (if their life is in danger), or they'll move to a different position. I don't see how that'll change. Spies, are skill-indexed int hat way - if you, say, backstab somebody, and the enemy team notices, it becomes a game of guessing where the Spy will go, vs guessing where the enemy will think you, the Spy, are going. It's like shooing away a mouse that comes back to bite you again - there are mindgames involved, there are opportunities to just outright kill the Spy with most classes. A few melee hits in the right area solves the problem, but that's on the Spy for not anticipating such a response. It's not the same with Sniper - if you jostle them, you're just harassing them away from a specific area, you aren't putting them in immediate danger. There's a huge difference between a Spy backstabbing a Razorback and setting it off, which does the same mechanic you're suggesting of forcing Sniper out of scope, and your suggestion where an Engineer with a pistol hits you with a stray bullet and you being unscoped because of it. It's annoying, sure, and it nerfs the Sniper, undoubtedly, but I don't feel it's the right direciton. It's annoying because the Sniper's gimmick as a class is long-ranged superiority. Playing as Spy with the Spy-cicle sucks when you get caught and lose it, but get away, you're just waiting for your knife to regenerate. It's not very interesting or engaging gameplay-wise. If you're limited to unscoped shots because somebody hit you with a bullet, your ranged superiority is gone. You become a sitting duck that does 50 damage if you hit your shot accurately. I get what your goal is with the balancing idea, I really do. I just don't think it solves what I view as the problem - the safety of dealing out quick damage at any range, without any counterplay short of avoiding the sightlines. Quickscoping is still there, if you don't see the Sniper there's still no counterplay, and if you see him too late chances are you'll still die. Again, I think it could definitely work well as a unique Sniper Primary - give it some offset to make losing scope when shot balanced, and it could be a fun way to play Sniper. Kind of like the opposite of the Machina, similar to the Classic.

im not b4nny lol

You can try to make stinging, ironic retorts dripping in sarcasm. It's not going to do anything besides make you look silly. Your over-use of bold-faced text and exclamation marks, as well as an egregious ignoring of my main points, suggested you're getting worked up. I'm doing my best to tactfully and carefully choose my words, and remain unbiased. Sorry I got the player wrong, the caption said B4nny, I assumed and that's my bad. I don't think that still disproves my point that it's just a screenshot of a player doing well in a pub as a class that isn't Sniper. If you can articulate why the image is related to anything I said, I'm all ears.

You've yet to respond to any of the text that preceded the screenshots you've elevated to being the most important content in the posts. My punctuation does nothing to share my emotions and heart-felt feelings. Even if the you believe I've poked jabs at you in the hopes you're emotionally effected, I want to remind you that I'm still waiting for proper responses to the text-based arguments I provided BEFORE the screenshots. Repeating your point with no further justification to it than... "It's easy to do" and quite literally pasting the same sentence over and over will not make it right. Its difficult to believe that the person I'm having a conversation with actually cares about the conversation when they blatantly ignore things and misconstrue mere images for the sake of their baseless arguments. I'm not sure if you think I'm mad, or upset about the topic... Are you?

I'll ask again, are you going to articulate what the image had to do with my original point, or not? You can make claims that I'm ignoring your points to repeat the same sentence (even though I responded to most of your actual responses multiple times) all you want. PsychoLlama and I are having a fruitful discussion. You are just throwing jabs at me or claiming that I'm ignoring what you said. What does the image of a player doing well in the pub with a class unrelated to Sniper has to do with my original point? Answer me that. Please. I'm begging you. My knees are bent, my head is bowed.

prove it

In a setting where you can get a drop on a sniper, and he isn't skilled enough to quickscope you at that range, then yeah, he'll have the expected behavior of falling back while using his weapons defensively. Its the situations where you can't viably flank or avoid the sniper; where you have to push straight into the sniper in order to reach him, that this suggestion would come into play. With flinching, a sniper can choose to continue holding down a sightline, as the flinch has limited effect; you can still land a Headshot when your view is punched by a flinch, and the chip damage is also negligible, and can be ignored. But being forced to unscope forces the sniper to reposition, since he can't do any sniping while being damaged, thus clearing up that slightline and allowing you to stage the area, or move forward. It forces an at-distance sniper to play like a pick class, rather than an area denial class. The point here isn't necessarily to put them in danger, the point is to lower their ability to utilize their advantages, especially important in the case of sniper where he existing influences map flow. You can use the mindgames you talk abut here to predict where a spy might be moving to while still in cloak, causing him to flicker and ultimately retreat or reposition because he's been found out before doing anything. In this situation also, you're not putting him in any danger, you're simply disrupting his ability to be a threat in that circumstance. And the sniper can also anticipate the "mindgames", as a spy might, to deduce the best spot to snipe from to avoid having to reposition due to supressive fire. And it's annoying as spy also when your target just turns around and backs away from you, preventing you from using your Gimmick Backstab. It's a matter of positioning and game state reading on the part of the sniper, as it is for spy, to be in a position where he can nail someone with his gimmick before someone can counteract it. At least sniper has significantly more options than spy, seeing as his effective range is still not really bounded. If you don't see the spy, there's "still no counterplay" as well. As i said before, you can anticipate where a sniper will be and preemptively suppress those locations, in combination with the already established standard movement tactics to throw their aim off to give you more time in scouting/suppressing their positions if you need to scout deep. And even if you die, your team is still able to clean up for you. Just as your team can chase down and kill a spy that just stabbed you, your team can dump rounds into that sniper's position to prevent him from killing anyone else. Not sure why a sniper would use a weapon that makes himself easier to suppress himself unless that rifle had a very big upside. In which case i think you'd be balancing like the Phlog. A big downside balanced by a big upside, and the resultant is a very unfun weapon to play against when used in its strength setting. The suggestion is designed to be a simple nerf to sniper, so, in this setting, giving him a relevant counterbuff would defeat the purpose. iunno.

Nothing is more satisfying than pulling off a sick sentry bullet jump and market wrenching a soldier in mid air at mach 2.

Fellas. Remember to check your raffles on scrap. tf. Don't be like me a man that misses his prize because he forgot to check the site.

See below: Just another thing you probably looked over because the shiny screenshot caught your attention instead of the long and boring text that preceded the secondary layer to my argument. I even quoted Psycopath in a response after saying he nailed the purpose of the images on the head: Everything you need to know has been laid out in the posts you refuse to look at for more than 2 seconds. Should I resort to repeating / quoting my points and pasting them several times in bold to help you out? Although I think I'd get the boot for spamming cause the arguments and justifications I provided amount to more than just a single "A good Sniper literally has to flick to your head while scoped in and will do 150 damage immediately." sentence that ignores any and all context. You are just throwing jabs at me or claiming that I'm ignoring what you said. I don't know why you think I'm personally attacking you here, and by no means do my posts prevent you from continuing to have a conversation with others on a forum that ... saves the posts? At this point I'm upset that you continue to berate the screenshots as though they were the crux of my argument, and therefore refuse to address anything else I said in the original posts. Even when the justification for these screenshots you so very much desire (to the point of getting on your knees?) has already been provided to you. The post presented more than just a screenshot. I'm repeating this because the derailment from the original post is still overshadowing this. I don't want to argue about who is ignoring what. I want you to pick up the conversation from before it was derailed. Isn't that a reasonable request? Do I need to Dogeza as well?

Yeah I’m not buying the whole “preemptively suppress the sniper’s called location on a map and use movement to throw off his aim”. With what, another sniper? Translating this into gameplay basically means: “peek a sniper sight line and jump around like a moron hoping he misses.” That’s bullshit and will get you killed almost every time unless your team has overrun the sniper’s position due to being that much better, which at that point is no longer his problem alone. Especially when there’s three snipers in casual sitting there waiting for you to do exactly what you described to clean up the easy kill (or a very good one with team comms in competitive). Hoping the sniper misses and bumrushing his team is not counterplay. Bomb mortars are counterplay. Armor, shields, long range slug-throwers, Molotovs, smokes, and jamming devices are all counterplay. Why dont we have any of those for the rest of the classes? You mean to tell me that “jump around and hope he misses” and “don’t enter an area at all” are more fun and interesting gameplay elements than anything I mentioned above? Because thats how it is right now.

but if we put each class in its prime range we might as well say every class is unrivaled and we're all fucked because thats just how it is. if we(you and everyone else doing this) keep making arguments out of ideal scenarios we'll be stuck here bashing our bias for the rest of the thread.

Problem is that for most classes, prime range doesn't include half the map.

mixing it up with 2fort. turb is the one where you got room to move around and do nice plays 2fort is the one with 2x2 player wide rooms and corridors.

My argument was that Sniper has ideal scenarios in literally every context except up close against Spies or Scouts. I don't think that's healthy when the class also has the objectively highest DPS of any class, skill ceiling aside. Fix one or the other, and the class is balanced.

Aaaa more loretalk Based off of what's happened so far in the comics, what do you think will happen to the TF world at large? Both the leaders of BLU and RED are dead, and they - plus Mann Co. - currently are under Gray Gravel Company. However, GGC's boss is also dead, with only possible inheritors being Olivia Mann (disregarding all the technicalities that Gray had made Olivia the CEO) - and we have zero clue on what she's been up to. However, is it really likely that Administrator, Saxton Hale and/or TF2 Team will let this stand? Administrator's not gonna live long either with only one goal in mind, but there's Miss Pauling who may - or may not - take up the mantle, but what would her role entail with all the aforementioned? Will there be a pover wacuum as various companies spring up and the mercenary world turns into one free-for-all match? Sure, this is kind of pointless speculation, but it's something.

sniper's problem isn't the damage. it's the terror that comes from exposing yourself when you know they're looking because they have quite literal infinite range, no fall off and all classes just can't really retaliate without sacrifices like trying to get past an entire enemy force via explosive jumps or such stupid play. or the classic "ill just stay behind this wall and get nothing done then xd"

You seem to be implying that my suggested change to mitigate sniper's area-denying power is to not change sniper at all, and to just simply use the "pray to gaben" or the monkeyjump strat we've all heard a million times, if i'm reading this correctly. That is not what i'm suggesting. I am suggesting that flinching on damage be replaced by unscope (and delay for rescope) on damage, so that in the circumstances where you are forced to peek/push a sniper sightline, actually shooting the sniper will cause them to retreat or reposition as they can no longer scope in, rather then shrug off the flinch and continue sniping. This way, you don't need to pray or monkeyjump to cross or close a sniper sightline. the "preemptively suppress the sniper’s called location on a map " line you take form the quote is in reference to if you suspect a sniper may create a sightline where he currently does not have one. Shooting at the space you think a sniper will pop out, with unscoping, would dissuade a sniper from popping out, because even if he does, he won't be able to do anything if he takes damage. and "and use movement to throw off his aim" refers to situations where you enter a suspected sniper sightline but haven't spotted the sniper (which is likely to happen if you deep scout, which is the context i discuss this in the quote). Using Monkeyjump at this point, in this situation is not intended to be a counter to sniper, it is intended to be a stalling mechanism to buy you more scouting time, or as a last-resort attempt to escape a sightline that you can't adequately suppress.

Valve definately had some sort of big upheavel in mind for the end of the comic. Remember, it was supposed to be six issues and bimonthy, putting it at about when the Love and War update came out. And the movie that cam with that update is said to be the pilot of the rumored Adult Swim TF show...Perhaps the comic was originally meant to change the setting from the game to the show? https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/239377/559870db-dbba-4b4a-8e35-f4d7041470b3/giphy.gif

I still don't get how you people percieve maps because you keep implying every map on tf2 has the sightlines of orange_cp. or that tf2 is built around sniper, ignoring basically everything else that happens in a match. or why every single argument is built around the concept that snipers just casually click on you, gleefully ignoring the actual high skill requirement involved in landing a headshot and shutting down anything not attacking you. because when you guys say "sniper's prime range is outside everyone else's" and "its half of the map" it also means that everyone else's prime is right at sniper's door, in the other half of the map where he's basically fucked and no ammount of quickscope will save you.

yes well, the sniper is gonna have a team to cover his few true weaknesses.

so we both agree that stablishing arguments based on 1v1 scenarios is dumb? cool, glad we finally reached a middle ground.

1vs1 is actually the scenario where all classes equally would have the most chance to stand up to a sniper, so uh i guess.