9/21/2011 Beta Update
- Thread starter PMAvers
- Start date
Trotim
aa
- Jul 14, 2009
- 1,195
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yeah because that's how percentages work, which somehow nobody ever seems to get
hey guys let's buff this, primary only has +60% damage bonus so let's add this melee that gives +20% so we're at +80% lolol
I never understood what everyone thought was so bad about the Tomislav. Doesn't the halved firing rate mean it literally has half the DPS of the regular minigun? I'm surprised that being able to surprise people around corners is even enough to make up for that.
I would like to see some weapon with a reduced ammo reserve, though. I don't think we've seen that yet.
EDIT: Actually, I think a reduced ammo reserve would work pretty well with my Bouncing Bonnie concept.
I would like to see some weapon with a reduced ammo reserve, though. I don't think we've seen that yet.
EDIT: Actually, I think a reduced ammo reserve would work pretty well with my Bouncing Bonnie concept.
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I like that your loadout appears on the class selection screen.
Also, I guess medic's got sick of dealing with retarded soldiers switching to the equaliser mid uber. I guess Valve havn't realised that there's no hard counter for shere idiocy.
Also, I guess medic's got sick of dealing with retarded soldiers switching to the equaliser mid uber. I guess Valve havn't realised that there's no hard counter for shere idiocy.
Doctor Paprika
L4: Comfortable Member
- Apr 24, 2011
- 150
- 53
Long post, TLDR version upfront: Tomislav nerf is unnecessary, Reserve Shooter should only belong to Soldier, Widowmaker is now useful but still directionless, Enforcer is still overpowered, and who cares about the Claidheamh Mor
Tomislav
I know it's something close to unwritten Scripture that the Tomislav is massively overpowered, but I think there's a reason Tomislav Heavies haven't been steamrolling every game for the past month: it's not overpowered. Granted, the weapon was more effective at direct combat than it was meant to be (the now infamous increased "effective DPS" where Tomislav beats Minigun if they both start with full health and unspun) so its niche as an ambush weapon was lost in the mix because it was too easy to use for unskilled players. The fast "spin" time essentially made it an unofficial assault rifle, which has always been my main problem with it.
It actually reminds me of the Liberty Launcher and Black Box, i.e. an easier, weaker version of the stock weapon that can make the class more effective in certain situations or in the hands of a novice. For even semi-skilled Heavies, though, the Minigun is still far better, which is why most Heavies on good servers don't seem to touch the Tomislav much. If you can manage to get the drop on your opponents - one of the key skills of playing Heavy - then the silence and fast spin up are somewhat irrelevant and greatly outweighed by the lower fire rate.
So, yeah, long story short, the -50 health nerf is less needed for gameplay than it is to silence the booing crowd of people who think it's overpowered. Most of these people think the Heavy's overpowered overall anyway, so I don't see how nerfing the Tomislav will help much. If you want to fix an overpowered Heavy weapon, start with the GRU or Sandvich, ones that actually do make him an unstoppable juggernaut.
Reserve Shooter
Everybody's already said why this should stay with the Soldier in terms of art style, and while I agree with it wholeheartedly, the main reason the Pyro should keep his creepy Frankenstein hands off this beauty is that the Pyro already has a vast assortment of fast, deadly combos to choose from. Between the Degreaser's quick-switch, the Flare Gun, the Axtinguisher, and the airblast, the Pyro has at least a dozen ways to whip out a Street Figher supermove (Hadouken!) and kill in two seconds without usurping the Soldier's.
The Reserve Shooter is a perfect sidegrade: a weak, highly situational weapon that rewards fast response time (the quick switch isn't that much of a boost, after all) and the skill of rocket juggling, as well as providing Soldiers a fun way to counter each other's rocket jumping tactics. The Pyro requires next to no skill to get someone into the air, just W+M2.
Also, the Reserve Shooter has a time limit on its minicrits to keep the Soldier from getting kills with it unless they've already done damage with a rocket. You can't switch back and forth from Reserve Shooter and Rocket Launcher fast enough to reset the timer. With the Degreaser, though, you could do this easily, even without the Reserve Shooter's own quick-switch bonus. I know it has a three shot magazine, so that would keep this from being too easy to pull off, but Pyros are already built around such fast combos.
Widowmaker
The reduction in metal cost is a much needed fix to an utterly useless weapon, especially considering that the Engineer got nothing in the Uber Update and the Deus Ex gizmos are the closest he'll probably ever get to the Teslaesque electro-guns that everyone and their dog wanted him to have. However, the purpose of the weapon is still unclear: what play style does this metal-as-ammo mechanic appeal to?
The Frontier Justice has a clear purpose, i.e. allowing strategic use of the inevitable destruction of sentry guns, and even the Short Circuit has a niche as a projectile eraser for support Engineers protecting large nests. The Widowmaker simply rewards Engineers who get kills with their shotguns by giving them metal, but since they can't get more than 200 metal anyway, this is hardly different from the stock Shotgun, which doesn't touch the metal at all. I can imagine certain Engineers who might use it as a quick defense weapon (kill a Spy, use metal received to repair field sentry) but it's still muddled.
Enforcer
Unless they change how it works in conjunction with the Dead Ringer, it wouldn't matter if they quadrupled the cloak time because Spies would still use it as a frontline, no-disguise weapon for taking out enemies from the front. It's not the downside everyone thinks is broken - as it's already pretty bad with a regular cloak - but the huge damage buff that makes the Spy's already powerful Revolver into one of the most accurate, powerful, and reliable primary weapons in the game. To put it another way, the Enforcer is annoying because it removes the need for the Spy to rely on his cloak, disguise, knife, and sapper, since he can get regular kills and destructions with the pistol alone.
Claidheamh Mor
The buff is needed to make this a viable substitute for the Eyelander, but unless you're in Medieval Mode - which is inherently for just goofing around anyway - this is still an inferior choice for a Demoknight than either the regular Eyelander or the Persian Persuader, which refills the charge so fast anyway that the minor one second buff for the Claidhmeah Mor still grants less net charge ability.
Tomislav
I know it's something close to unwritten Scripture that the Tomislav is massively overpowered, but I think there's a reason Tomislav Heavies haven't been steamrolling every game for the past month: it's not overpowered. Granted, the weapon was more effective at direct combat than it was meant to be (the now infamous increased "effective DPS" where Tomislav beats Minigun if they both start with full health and unspun) so its niche as an ambush weapon was lost in the mix because it was too easy to use for unskilled players. The fast "spin" time essentially made it an unofficial assault rifle, which has always been my main problem with it.
It actually reminds me of the Liberty Launcher and Black Box, i.e. an easier, weaker version of the stock weapon that can make the class more effective in certain situations or in the hands of a novice. For even semi-skilled Heavies, though, the Minigun is still far better, which is why most Heavies on good servers don't seem to touch the Tomislav much. If you can manage to get the drop on your opponents - one of the key skills of playing Heavy - then the silence and fast spin up are somewhat irrelevant and greatly outweighed by the lower fire rate.
So, yeah, long story short, the -50 health nerf is less needed for gameplay than it is to silence the booing crowd of people who think it's overpowered. Most of these people think the Heavy's overpowered overall anyway, so I don't see how nerfing the Tomislav will help much. If you want to fix an overpowered Heavy weapon, start with the GRU or Sandvich, ones that actually do make him an unstoppable juggernaut.
Reserve Shooter
Everybody's already said why this should stay with the Soldier in terms of art style, and while I agree with it wholeheartedly, the main reason the Pyro should keep his creepy Frankenstein hands off this beauty is that the Pyro already has a vast assortment of fast, deadly combos to choose from. Between the Degreaser's quick-switch, the Flare Gun, the Axtinguisher, and the airblast, the Pyro has at least a dozen ways to whip out a Street Figher supermove (Hadouken!) and kill in two seconds without usurping the Soldier's.
The Reserve Shooter is a perfect sidegrade: a weak, highly situational weapon that rewards fast response time (the quick switch isn't that much of a boost, after all) and the skill of rocket juggling, as well as providing Soldiers a fun way to counter each other's rocket jumping tactics. The Pyro requires next to no skill to get someone into the air, just W+M2.
Also, the Reserve Shooter has a time limit on its minicrits to keep the Soldier from getting kills with it unless they've already done damage with a rocket. You can't switch back and forth from Reserve Shooter and Rocket Launcher fast enough to reset the timer. With the Degreaser, though, you could do this easily, even without the Reserve Shooter's own quick-switch bonus. I know it has a three shot magazine, so that would keep this from being too easy to pull off, but Pyros are already built around such fast combos.
Widowmaker
The reduction in metal cost is a much needed fix to an utterly useless weapon, especially considering that the Engineer got nothing in the Uber Update and the Deus Ex gizmos are the closest he'll probably ever get to the Teslaesque electro-guns that everyone and their dog wanted him to have. However, the purpose of the weapon is still unclear: what play style does this metal-as-ammo mechanic appeal to?
The Frontier Justice has a clear purpose, i.e. allowing strategic use of the inevitable destruction of sentry guns, and even the Short Circuit has a niche as a projectile eraser for support Engineers protecting large nests. The Widowmaker simply rewards Engineers who get kills with their shotguns by giving them metal, but since they can't get more than 200 metal anyway, this is hardly different from the stock Shotgun, which doesn't touch the metal at all. I can imagine certain Engineers who might use it as a quick defense weapon (kill a Spy, use metal received to repair field sentry) but it's still muddled.
Enforcer
Unless they change how it works in conjunction with the Dead Ringer, it wouldn't matter if they quadrupled the cloak time because Spies would still use it as a frontline, no-disguise weapon for taking out enemies from the front. It's not the downside everyone thinks is broken - as it's already pretty bad with a regular cloak - but the huge damage buff that makes the Spy's already powerful Revolver into one of the most accurate, powerful, and reliable primary weapons in the game. To put it another way, the Enforcer is annoying because it removes the need for the Spy to rely on his cloak, disguise, knife, and sapper, since he can get regular kills and destructions with the pistol alone.
Claidheamh Mor
The buff is needed to make this a viable substitute for the Eyelander, but unless you're in Medieval Mode - which is inherently for just goofing around anyway - this is still an inferior choice for a Demoknight than either the regular Eyelander or the Persian Persuader, which refills the charge so fast anyway that the minor one second buff for the Claidhmeah Mor still grants less net charge ability.
Took 'em long enough. Now if they could just fix the hitboxes so the crits weren't such a crapshoot, we'd be in business. (I like how he has to redundantly specify that plus 10% is a bonus.)
And the new class select screen looks a-like this-a:
When you go to the loadout, you can pick one of the four presets, and whatever selections you make get applied to that preset. Then you can pick one in the class selection screen. Also mousing over the classes makes a little noise, and you have to click "GO!" before it takes you to the game.
EDIT: The visuals of the characters wielding the alternate primary are buggy as hell, though. The frame of him holding the shortstop (which is a still frame by the way) seemed to appear for whichever preset it felt like, although it did give me the correct weapons when I started the game for real.
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Retroid
L5: Dapper Member
- Aug 25, 2009
- 206
- 22
Awesome, I tend to mess around with character loadout almost every game depending on the situation. Say if there's no Medics and lots of enemy Pyros I'll switch out the axtingusher for the rake etc...
And I'm loving the BB nerf, that was retarded! Ah it's all good!
And I'm loving the BB nerf, that was retarded! Ah it's all good!
Jeremy
L11: Posh Member
- Oct 24, 2010
- 829
- 299
The Reserve Shooter for the Pyro is just.. eh..
It's good because it encourages use of the airblast, which may be annoying, but far less so than W+M1.
On the other hand, it doesn't really fit the Pyro in terms of artstyle, and it'll only be really effective with the degreaser, and of very little use with anything else.
It's good because it encourages use of the airblast, which may be annoying, but far less so than W+M1.
On the other hand, it doesn't really fit the Pyro in terms of artstyle, and it'll only be really effective with the degreaser, and of very little use with anything else.
IMO, the reserve shooter doesn't fit the soldier in terms of artstyle, so eh. But getting upset about the artstyle now is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, a tad.
Doctor Paprika
L4: Comfortable Member
- Apr 24, 2011
- 150
- 53
The 10% damage bonus on the Backburner is hardly what's annoying about it, so that nerf is pointless. It's the guaranteed full crits if the Pyro manages to get behind you, a mechanic intended for ambushing but really amounts only to circle-strafing.
Now, I'm not saying the Backburner is overpowered. With the massive airblast cost and lack of a quick-switch, it's a great sidegrade. It's true that it's not as difficult to use as the combocentric Degreaser, but that doesn't mean it's the cheap noob weapon everyone says it is when they get killed by it.
What needs work on the Pyro is the stock Flamethrower and Axe, which I only really see used by players whose loadouts aren't working. The only real advantage they have is reliability: the Flamethrower has efficient airblasting and afterburn damage, and the axe delivers solid damage even if you've run out of ammo for the flamethrower.
The problem is that the Pyro has a lower skill ceiling than other classes when it comes to using combos effectively, which is why W+M1 rage has largely been replaced by Puff-n-Sting rage. The stock weapons offer no advantages to skilled players over any of the available unlocks, and nerfing the unlocks is a thoughtless way of trying to encourage more varied use.
The Pyro is really the only class whose stock loadout is barely used by skilled players (consider how effective skilled players are with the Scattergun, Rocket Launcher, Stickybomb Launcher, Minigun, and Sniper Rifle compared to their replacements). Nerfing the Backburner is the wrong way to balance the class, and giving him the Reserve Shooter, as I said before, is just making the problem worse.
Now, I'm not saying the Backburner is overpowered. With the massive airblast cost and lack of a quick-switch, it's a great sidegrade. It's true that it's not as difficult to use as the combocentric Degreaser, but that doesn't mean it's the cheap noob weapon everyone says it is when they get killed by it.
What needs work on the Pyro is the stock Flamethrower and Axe, which I only really see used by players whose loadouts aren't working. The only real advantage they have is reliability: the Flamethrower has efficient airblasting and afterburn damage, and the axe delivers solid damage even if you've run out of ammo for the flamethrower.
The problem is that the Pyro has a lower skill ceiling than other classes when it comes to using combos effectively, which is why W+M1 rage has largely been replaced by Puff-n-Sting rage. The stock weapons offer no advantages to skilled players over any of the available unlocks, and nerfing the unlocks is a thoughtless way of trying to encourage more varied use.
The Pyro is really the only class whose stock loadout is barely used by skilled players (consider how effective skilled players are with the Scattergun, Rocket Launcher, Stickybomb Launcher, Minigun, and Sniper Rifle compared to their replacements). Nerfing the Backburner is the wrong way to balance the class, and giving him the Reserve Shooter, as I said before, is just making the problem worse.
At this point encouraging M2 is the last thing we want. I'd rather be killed by a moron than a moron who thinks puff and stung is an Olympic event