TF2 General Chat & Speculation Station V17 - Ms. Pauling Won't Stop Calling Me - Games

My casual MMR is 1460 and my competitive MMR according to the matchmaking overview tab is 1560 (I'm tier 7 on that but don't play it very much).

ey gamers I'm trying to compile a list of everything that is wrong with the unlocks in TF2, as a way to clear things up and also help out less-knowledgeable players. I believe it's not just random bits of BS as I've gathered alot of feedback from the best players in the game throughout the years, but it's also my general feelings as an overly long term player. This is not supposed to be a in-depth guide with sexy web design. it's a shitty unpolished document text that's kept very short on purpose. let me know what things could use an edit http://www.sigpipe.info/hell-met/unlock.txt

After 10 years of playing TF2, I finally got my first Unusual. I unboxed a Kill-A-Watt A Head Full of Hot Air https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/424942/4f174c58-c68a-4c10-9110-a47aa461e5db/image.png

Is this document supposed to take into account both Casual and Competitive balance at the same time, or is it competitively orientated?

Both. though personally I don't see how something can be broken in pub but not comp or vice versa. Don't see why there can't be top tier players and gameplay in pubs.

Pub players don't think things are a problem because there often is enough manpower/spam/bull/etc. to simply bowl it over wholesale. But that's a fallacy, as that's the solution to everything. Diamondback OP? Random crit detonates the spy using it, he takes a huntsman arrow from across the map and dies stupidly. Vaccinator letting you win against players with better DM? The medic will die to an unlucky bodyshot or stray explosive eventually.

Shortstop : Mid range happy primary for a class balanced around doing business at close range. shove misleads players thinking they shouldn't use ramp up when they can. I want to add here that shove should definitely cancel the Shortstop's reload. Why shouldn't it when you can already interrupt it by shooting? Otherwise you need a bind to toggle auto reload on and off just to use one of the weapons' mechanics. Not fun. Eureka : Despite v1 being rather unpopular, it certainly had its moments. now in shambles after nonsense changes and is no longer being used. revert v1 Kind of debatable, I do find the current Eureka much more fun than when you couldn't move your buildings around, and the upsides and downsides seem fairer. It also receives much more use than v1. Quickfix : Sad excuse of a medigun. mirrorjumps was never asked for and is not a valuable niche. terrible at getting things done and is only redeemed in very specific setups. keeps getting nerfed despite being generally ineffective at pub level. Mirrorjumps are actually very valuable in competitive play, it essentially allows the pocket to save the medic free of cost, completely disregarding terrible positioning. It keeps getting nerfed because it's too defensive ("terrible at getting things done") because of its über (can't go through stickytraps, generally terrible against burst damage), but Valve instead keeps nerfing other stats instead because they think that's how they get the weapon to be used in competitive. Heatmaker : Focus is not really useful or interesting at all. rifles don't reload fast enough to really make significant use of focus outside of gimmick modes such as Mannpower or MvM. Cozy : It is questionable wheter hurt bobs, the only semi-reliable way to deny a skilled sniper, should be made immune from. The selling point of Focus, in my opinion, is that it's a portable Cozy Camper on demand; just get a stray assist from spraying a poor soul with your SMG, and then you can fight Heavies at mid-long range - a range where they can hit you - and press R to completely disregard any viewpunch from hits, meaning you can counter Heavy even harder than before with the weapon. Of course this also applies to Sniper duels too. It suffers from the same problem as other weapons in which you can get punished from others' mistakes if you're in the receiving end. It also makes Cozy completely irrelevant aside from the health regen. It's only very slightly worse than the Sniper Rifle because of this, imo. Enforcer : Probably fine although kinda lackluster and uninteresting. the anti resistance thing is a unwanted buggy mess and should just go. The anti-resistance mechanic was pretty much fixed in Jungle Inferno, now it's a terrific Wrangler shield counter, not to mention one for Vacc and FoS, which are generally regarded as annoying weapons. I think it also goes through the passive damage resistance a sapped Sentry gets. At least considering the power creep Wrangler holds, it makes for an interesting niche/counter weapon (at least it is more interesting than v1). --- I more or less agree with the rest of the document, it's a good piece of info. I still find it bothersome that the TF2 Team claims they don't balance around item usage anymore but they still nerf Dragon's Fury when v1 was completely acceptable, just because 5 pyros were using them at a time because of the update. Why do they even commit to a v1 design if they're just going to change it just as quickly?

I don't know why a spy would need a anti-building revolver. He's got a whole loadout slot exactly vs buildings and all the necessary means to get in range.

I meant it in the opposite way, a weapon can very much be alright in Pubs, but useless in Competitive. For example: Blackbox : Was fine before, mediocre now. single-digit heals are never worth a rocket loss. In pubs medics are often somewhat rare, so the Black Box is incredibly good in those scenarios for people that wanna play Soldier. And even with a medic, the Black Box can be a good "Roamer" weapon that's just pure harassment or spam. Winger : This gun needs a clear goal and is the worst offender for the "+stat -stat" dilemna. Neither the v1 damage or more jumping are needed niches for scout. I'd argue the Winger is one of the most balanced weapons in the game right now, especially compared to it's counterpart, the pistol. It's fine as it is, not everything has to be entirely game changing. You trade more mobility for less damage, which is fine for me. Bonk! : Godmode on demand is never a good idea. too easy to use, not fun to deal with. there is no true counter play against a bonked scout other than a sentry pin into the ceiling. After the nerf in Jungle Inferno the Bonk very much has counterplay now. All you need is a heavy farting into the general direction of the Bonk'd Scout and he'll be an incredibly easy target to kill once you send a Scout or so after him. I'll swoop through the document eventually so this is I suppose kinda a preview of my bad opinions

don't you think having to "send a scout" after an opponent because they click m1 to become invincible is a problem? the slowdown happens after the effect, but during the effect they still got about 8 seconds to run around at 400 u/s and nobody is catching up to that.

it means that playing medieval mode consistently dropped my MMR down to scrub levels.

On the topic of bonk, i think its current state is fine, it just needs a reduced duration of 1-2 seconds so people that aren't scout can catch up to him.

I'll go through each and provide my viewpoints on the ones I disagree with for the most part. FaN : Baked push. can't be used well in mid-air combat. punts beefy opponents away to safety. unfun to face, unfun to use. Baked knockback isn't fun, but it's still fun to use. The "unfun" aspects are simply the baked pushing mechanic which is really awful on Heavy, who is intended to have built in push resistance when spun up. If they just changed the knockback to be subjected to bullet and/or knockback resistance it'd be fine. Backscatter : The spread downside alone is enough to neuter the scout's worth as an offense class, let alone a -2 clip along with it. benefit is laughable. Main upside is negated by the fact that you can just use a secondary and have free minicrits regardless of where you hit the enemy. It's a great item in concept but the reward is laughable as you said. If it had a higher ramp-up to make the damage more significant, or give it FaN-style firing/reloading, it'd probably be usable. Winger : This gun needs a clear goal and is the worst offender for the "+stat -stat" dilemna. Neither the v1 damage or more jumping are needed niches for scout. I'd argue that this is a useful mobility tool for Scout especially when using the Soda Popper or Atomizer are not feasible. Cleaver : This projectile needs to travel slower since it's extremely fast, thin and nobody can possibly react to this thing. long range spam bonus can also go away. A slower projectile means that it'll have less travel distance unless they purposely modify its airtime, neutering its already niche use. Give it a more noticeable trail and I'd say it's fine. Boston : Fine however I'm very curious if the self hit knockback was truly intended or valve can pull a bison on it anytime they feel like it. This would call into question whether the Detonator, the Scorch Shot, etc. self damage are also intended. Removing these functions would be bad to the game and if not originally intended, the TF Team would be absolutely unwilling to change it given the presence it has now. FanoWar : Fine except for the crits minicrit thing that incites players to keep hitting their foes multiple times when all they need is one smack. revert v1 I don't see how this is an issue. Pre-buff there were Scouts running at me with it and only dealing like 12 damage each hit. Now they at least do comparable damage to a normal melee weapon. Rocketjumper : Will never have a place in the game like the stickyjumper does and is unfortunately a waste of time unless great changes are made. Agreed for the most part - I like how STAR_'s server modified it when it was up. It would allow firing the weapon without reload so long as you still had rockets to use. A popular buff opinion is to give it (and the Sticky Jumper) the same knockback stock has without dealing damage. Bison : Not sure what the beef was with the old one, but i'm equally unsure how different the changed one truly is, even after the fake revert. The old Bison used flame projectiles which is why it could ignite Huntsman arrows. These days I think it's more in-line with other projectiles which makes it have a smaller hitbox? Backburner : Fine, although 3-4 airblasts is still alot. The backburner more often than not overshadows stock. I hardly ever see the Backburner being used and myself have a significantly harder time using it than any other primary for Pyro. Stats-wise it overshadows stock but given that airblast is used primarily to deflect projectiles, it's easy to just spam a Pyro into submission until they run out of ammo. Persian : Fine, however item dependency is dumb. should be as much of an interesting option for conventional demos as it is for "knights". Give it a partial reversion where it reduces primary/secondary ammo by 75% (rather than 80%), then make it so collecting ammo only gives health unless at full health. Still would be outclassed by other swords but would have a niche partial-knight playstyle. Natascha : Slow is unhealthy for the game. It's never worked before and never will. The idea behind the slowing is so other enemies will have an easier time dealing with the target. The only way to make it feasibly work is giving it the MvM Rage mechanic which could be used to push away ubers (or maybe destroy projectiles). Alternatively make it "mark enemies for death" with the duration being dependent from how long they have taken damage. Make it so the minigun itself cannot deal minicrit damage to enemies marked by it so that the benefit is strictly on teammates being able to utilize the focus-fire. Either way would keep the original idea alive to some degree. Pomson : Drains are dumb even though they were nearly made uneffective. gun is not satisfying to use and its projectile feels slow and weak. adds nothing interesting to the game. May need a projectile rework. Fix the Bison so it's usable and then make the Pomson a primary weapon reskin of it. That's all it needs. Southern : Pathetic upside for a pathetic downside. If it had the ability to one-shot sappers it'd still be worthless, which is saying a lot. Eureka : Despite v1 being rather unpopular, it certainly had its moments. now in shambles after nonsense changes and is no longer being used. revert v1 Recall that v1 was being unable to move buildings at all and could only teleport to spawn, v2 was the same as current but requiring 17 hits to upgrade buildings (more than twice what normal build rate is). I'd prefer keeping it as-is and leave it as the niche wrench it is. It's my go-to wrench if I don't need Minis and I anticipate that I will any additional functionality beyond Stock. Blutsaugher : Despite having a considerable downside, the benefit is rather very weak. +3 hp per hit is not a life saver in this game where damage is dealt in significant bursts. recommend increasing health per hit. Weapon wrecks Pyros or anybody planning to follow the Medic if they can track at all, especially through corridors where the Medic can come out of it with more health than he went in with. It's effectively a 25-30% health return on-hit excluding Medics natural regen rate. If any changes are necessary I'd prefer making it heal nothing on-hit but apply the Mad Milk effect so that the Medic will get regen but also be able to support his teammates. It'd be a fair rebalance tool to make it compete with the Crossbow. Overdose : It is unclear why this weapon is a thing, as all syringue guns are already inherently designed to favor retreats. the downside is also rather insignificant. Make the bonus a passive effect - it'd still be bad but it'd be usable. Diamond : Biggest crit storage offender. greatly rewards the player for doing exactly what a spy should/will do. horrible to face. Only needs a single crit to make a huge difference. Agreed for the most part, but what makes it worse than other crit-storage weapons is the fact that the only way others can hide the fact that they have crits is to have another weapon out. Diamondback requires nothing but a disguise so you can come out of it dealing an instant 102 damage. Probably the most unfun Spy weapon to play against because of this.

i still see no particular use on the trend of giving mad milk to syringes. "supporting teammates" by means of spraying someone with a bunch of useless needles is reduntant when you can medigun people and do it more consistenly and overall more effectively. syringes with debuffs are still syringes, most likely one of the weakest ranged weapons next to the smg.

Thats the thing with the Fan O War, people really want to use it like a normal melee except it isn't. It's supposed to be used on bulky patients that aren't aware of you, which isn't far fetched since you're the best flanker class. You hit once then switch to your primary and continue playing normal. The entire premise is it sacrifices bat power for this. Seems perfectly reasonable and logical to me. Cept valve decided to listen to the people that use it wrong so now we get a even bigger incentive for players to use it wrong. there was a time indeed when blut could put up with pyros and heavies but that time's long gone because both players and weapons have significantly improved since the goldrush update.

You're right, but it's mostly an unfortunate side-effect of the power creep the Wrangler (and to some extent, the Homewrecker and the Neon) holds, and the Enforcer can combat such shield effectively. Considering how Engi has such tool, and might also be possibly playing around a Pyro (depends on the type of pub/game), the fact that there is some counterplay related to that weapon is sort of nice, even though it would've been even better if the Wrangler never had a shield to begin with.

Last match in pl_frontier there was this guy called hans.middlename.lastname in which he began as "Thanks for joining guys! i was alone fighting 3 people!" (we joined on the last minute of defense and he really was alone vs 3 people). Then he continues "I am not very good, I'm new to this game". I told my friend over on Discord "Oh man, what a sweet story!" Fast forward until the second point of the map. He was using shotgun and fist to kill enemies, I told him "switch to the metraca, I mean minigun" and he does. He goes and tries to kill the enemy with no success. Later I go medic and heal him and announce what type of dangers or actions he needs to do, Hans is like "thanks for teaching me stuff!". Guy was a machine I tell ya'. Dude was glued to the cart when needed or killing reds with his gun when he spotted them. I swear the guy tanked a sentry, a phlog Pyro and a Spy all by himself while he PUSHED the cart. Our match was really close to end, he saw the enemy had a sentry gun on last (the weird walkaway) and he goes "guys we-we need to come together and push as a team!" I replied with a "good idea, hans! C'me here, let me über you" Hans receives an über! "Target the sentry!" I yell and he quickly disposes of it. He creates havok on the enemy but sadly, RED won that skirmish. Finally, we did our last push. He was ballsy, had two snipers focusing him, a Pyro in front and the cart. What did he do? Took care of the Pyro, dodged headshots and decided to push until the end. BUT! A random crit took his life, yet thanks to his efforts we won the round. I had to praise him for his ability and sportmanship. Man I truly love new players, they are eager to learn and if you give them a little bit of space they can turn into monster. B4nny has fritata, we, Chile, have Hans.

I never use the boston basher because melee hitcode is so shit at least half of my melee attacks dust.

The basher is for helping a medic build uber. That's it. Also makes for a good b4nny fail meme. Scout has too damn many bleed weapons as it is. The Cleaver was utterly unfun to fight against for HOW long? It's still annoying, and I see a shit ton of Scouts combining it with the Wrap Assassin for super spammy annoyance. Related, why does the Sniper have the best bleed weapon? Especially in a situation where random crits are off. He's got this disgusting melee that helps him counter the two classes that are supposed to counter HIM (Scout and Spy.) The Shiv is nearly as bad as the Razorback and DDS. It's not as bullshit as Jarate, though of course it pairs great WITH Jarate.

I believe the key factor that makes melee so bad in TF2 is the wind up delay that exists between the click and the actual hit. At some point Valve was aware of this and got rid of it exclusively for the spy knife long ago. Now I'm not saying this fixed all problems, however it was certainly a welcome improvement. This fix should be ported to all melee on all classes. Bleed is no longer a threat to spy since the GM buff that made watches neuter debuff durations.

I think some of it the feedback is just broken or something, there's a specific range where you can "hit" as in it plays the hitsound, but no damage is dealt. And I keep getting that instead of an actual hit. Also the melee is super super weird in how it works because melee attacks don't spawn from your crosshair, so you can hit surfaces you aren't even look at.

to be fair that sweeping effect is from as far as HL1, it's old. It's there so you can't just snipe through a tiny gap between 2 pieces of wall. it's also likely a massive factor for "facestabs". Spy knifes probably should never had this and instead should use a straight line like the heavy's pow taunt.

having a degree of counterplay does not equal complete nullification hitting hit with bleed will still make you easier to track for a few seconds afterward, and in the case of scout especially, that is more than enough time to chase and kill the spy with engineer inflicting bleed, the spy is essentially forced to immediately cloak and retreat to have any chance whatsoever of survival, since the melee hit + bleed will take roughly 80% of his health by itself if he doesn't take care of it immediately the only time the cloak status effect shortening actually comes in handy is when you aren't engaged in combat but still suffering a status effect- ie jarate or afterburn from a player you just killed. in combat, it's just as threatening as it's ever been.

Guess what, kid. I never play these trash maps. I found cheaters twice on Badlands (a group of Snipers and a group of Scouts) and once on Well (a Sniper who was healed by two Medics and defended by his team).

I remembered having posted about this in one of the previous threads, and the system by which it determines this is just another aspect I dislike about the nature of match makers to begin with. Not all are built the same but every last one faces the same issues. Based on the match results you can determine the influencing factors on your MMR score, also known as "Result Displayed Rating." Unfortunately its not very encompassing of your overall performance during a match. In fact it only cares about what team you were on and the team's win/loss result. As to why your MMR is "so high" has a lot to do with the lack of casual games you've played. The way it works is the system defaults every new player at a MMR value, I don't know that exact value as I've not bothered to make a new account to check... But I'd assume its in the ball park of 1500 to 2000. The link to the Reddit post showcasing the MMRs is a bit outdated due to a change that was made to the value system. You'll notice MMR scores are much lower than a fair amount posted there. While it may look "high" it actually isn't with respect to what the system does to sort players. We know what the MMR looks to for determining your new MMR after each round, in order to keep track of where our MMR is going we can look to the "Result Displayed Rating Change." By looking at past games and following the trail you'll quickly notice how difficult it is raise your MMR score. Now don't get me wrong! I love a good challenge and putting myself to the grindstone but this MMR system has broken me, to a point where I just completely stopped caring. Especially when I realized what it meant to be defaulting new users with a high MMR ranking. On average you earn less points than you will lose. Because the change is determined by whether your team wins or loses there are some problems with this that should be relatively obvious: not everyone tries their best (apparently its the norm nowadays to "pretend" you suck and this is somehow fun) friendlies the classic "My team lost a round, time to find another server!" which leads to team imbalances that can't be replaced in a timely manner autobalance cheaters! But perhaps the most damning is that as your MMR climbs, so does the frequency in which you encounter new accounts, and chances are... They're on your team! Your MMR change is tied to a pair of dice being tossed. You can heavily sway the average results by "stacking" with friends but lets be honest... You'd have a much better experience playing on a community server or perhaps joining the competitive community to find some people that are not playing TEAM Fortress 2 like its a singleplayer game! Buuuut even stacking has its drawbacks! Often times this can result in some pretty unfavorable experiences. As of late, dead servers are easier to come across when stacking. Queue times can raise pretty high! Not all on the same coast? Too bad! If you're in a 6 man party, and one of them is in Seattle while everyone else is on the east coast... Have fun in LA/Washington! Finding the party of cheaters has never been easier when you're being matched with other parties. Running into the same parties frequently... Wait how is this a bad thing? ... apparently if they roll your team once or twice, its a sign you should stop trying and should immediately disband the party Even with the MMR scores, I'd imagine there is a wait-time threshold that will force severely different MMRs to play against one another. 40 thousand players sounds like a lot, but your region isn't pulling from 40 thousand matches... Most likely a fraction of that. I've been sitting around 1450 for a month or two now going up and down... But as of late the quality of the matches has been awful... There are times where I see my team get absolutely roflstomped but never is there a build up of a desire to do better the next round in voice or text chat. If anything you'll see a player type "shit team" and disconnect a few seconds later... And its just a fucking ghost town from the ones who remain. Somehow trying to pick up the gun someone dropped outside of spawn for a minute or two is more entertaining than the rest of the game.

I mean it's pretty redundant though right you can either kill 125hp with 2 melee swings, or, you can swing the melee twice and then it still doesn't even kill the enemy unless you missed 2 seconds of swings in which case it just about does, I just don't see how that's even good? is it really that good to have the safety mechanic of the bleed finishing something off in case you miss your 2nd noscope? The bleed out timer gets beaten by firing your 2nd shot. Is it even relevant if it pairs well with the jar if 2 hits of either stock weapon already kills both of these classes anyway? I mean with the return being that it's genuine garbage against every other class? I mean it does less dps. The thing doesn't even onehit pyros, demos, or meds when it crits, including full bleed. How is this not just a complete trash weapon? Genuinely asking because I've never even heard of someone complaining about this and I would personally never even consider equipping it because I think it's beyond garbage. Surely it's a bit of a stretch to compare this to the 2 of the most bullshit weapons in the games history? At least we can both agree it's not as bad as jarate though :-D

I'm not sure why you're taking this position when you've clearly said multiple times that trying to melee a spy is suicide. plus Mould nails it on why the shiv is a non issue.

Shiv sucks (but I like the visual design), but the Southern Hospitality additional to it sucking had the annoying anti-counter design. It has a mediocre downside for a mediocre upside, which also screws over Spies.

my stance is that cloak buffs don't nullify the impact of status effects in battle, not that you should be melee'ing a spy that's still pretty dumb if you have any sense of self-preservation

Tenemos que jugar juntos uno de estos dias o/