Team Fortress 2...

[flynn_thedragon]

...and why part of still sucks badly enough that someone with half a brain should have fixed it by now.

The Demoman: NEEDS DESTRUCTIBLE CHARGES. Seriously. Make it so that fire, bullets, etc will set off his charges. The cheese factor of the sticky bombs is WAY too high, especially considering that if they're in place (especially somewhere you

Comments

[gldm]

The demo's overpowered. I hear talk that at Valve they're not called stickybombs but "winbombs". I can say that as an expert Pyro my K:D ratio is around 1.5:1 with assists. As a medium skilled Demo it's easily 4:1 to 5:1 with assists and usually at least 3:1 without. That's ridiculous.

As for shooting the projectiles? Dunno about that, the Demo's main role is supposed to be laying traps. But I think maybe having 8 of them out at once is a bit much when it takes 1 crit or 2 normal to kill almost anyone though. And Demos charging forward firing stickies like rockets? Umm no. Perhaps his speed should drop to walk with the sticky gun out, which would solve that. Also, what's up with the normal non-sticky grenade doing so much damage? Even when the backburner had me at 225hp I'd get ONE-SHOTTED by NON-CRIT grenades! They do more than 225hp? That's BS!

Medic targets healing constantly is normal and balanced just fine. Running head first into someone getting healed by a medic is not usually going to go in your favor, unless you're very good, very smart, and very lucky. Your best bet is usually try and kill the medic so the teammate behind you can stand a better chance. It's always worth dying if you can take out a medic in exchange. Also, if you're playing pyro? Pop out and set the heavy on fire, then fade back. Wait for him to stop shooting. Come back out with the axetinguisher. 2 hits. Maybe 3 if he had full overheal on him when you started. They go down more often than I do. Any other class? You'll probably get them with the first axe hit if they're on fire, and then you can run the medic down.

Spies are fine. If they're bothering you as an engineer your teammates aren't providing enough spy checking. Also, if they sap stuff, kill them first. You can rebuild from the junk faster than if he kills you and then saps everything and it fades before you get back. Considering how easily engineers can just hide behind a sentry whacking it making it impossible for soldiers, heavies, and virtually anything but a demo or pyro in a good position to kill kinda balances with the spy's ability to sap stuff.

Scouts are fine in terms of speed and jump and capturing. What they need is fewer shots per clip so people stop using them as offensive high damage units. The scattergun has to many chances to do damage before it reloads.

The engineer is fine vs spies. Wrench or shotgun them. They go down fast enough. Just don't get into a stupid sapper/wrench war because you'll lose that. Kill the spy first. If it's a real problem try and get a pyro to hang out with you.

Heavy is mostly fine right now.

Soldier is crap, because he can't ever kill a sentry with an engineer next to it, he's too slow to run past one, in open areas he's sniper bait with his dodgeable shots and in close quarters he's like a slower crappier demo with half the ammo. He needs either more health, or more rockets per clip, or something, because right now they're pretty useless. Why would you play a soldier when a demo is superior in every way except 25 health?

Snipers need to suffer more penalty from being on fire. Sorry but I think zoom should be disabled while they're on fire. Would give that flaregun some purpose. Most snipers wind up in sniper vs sniper wars and never take out the real problem characters, like overpowered demos.

Pyro is ok. I still play it the most. The whining that got the HP on the backburner removed was uncalled for IMHO. Those 50hp would make the difference between being able to circle-strafe a badly placed L3 sentry to death and dying with it still working. Also, to be effective, the pyro needs to get behind the enemy. That's hard to do when you're easily killed with the lower HP. They should have given the backburner a minor rocketjump-like effect to compensate, because now it's just useless. Wow, always crit from behind and never any other way vs crit fairly often from any direction + airblast. Hmm, which should I use? Might as well just toss that weapon out entirely the way it is now.

But yeah, nerf demos plz.

[flynn_thedragon]

Well, I'm at least glad to see that I'm not alone on feeling the Demoman is the most broken of all. :)

Yeah, I would agree that scouts would be more balanced if they had a less useful weapon. I also think being on fire should impair snipers, but it just keeps them from "building up" a shot. Basically, they can aim, but they can't focus.

I never play soldiers, and I think that's why. Rockets should pack a lot more punch that one little poof. You might as well be shooting fireworks. :/

Also, yes, soldiers are much too slow for what you get.

[siraj]

Speaking as a sniper, the duels are a big part of why a lot of us play them. It's FUN to see who has the better reaction time and faster trigger finger. And if we're keeping the other side's snipers occupied, that means that the guy with the intel isn't liable to get pegged as quickly.

[gldm]

Yes I know, teh headsh0tz is fun. Try some Quake3 Instagib RailCTF on unpatched servers where people test their aimbots sometime, I used to still top the score list. But speaking as a 10 year veteran of TF and former defensive coordinator of a major clan, it's less effective for the team overall for snipers to target other snipers. On defense, demos, medics, and heavies are much more significant targets in terms of offensive impact. On offense, engineers, demos, and medics are probably the top 3.

A defending sniper can kill 1 or 2 people in an offensive run. Who's going to do more damage to your base, the sniper or the medic with a full ubercharge running behind a heavy? How about the demos who are keeping your engineers from getting defenses up?

As for offense, snipers have a role here too. A defending sentry in a good spot can slaughter an attacking team, and with the engineer to heal it, only a demoman, ubered pyro (more effective than ubered heavy vs a distant sentry), or spy can take it out. But snipe the engineer from outside sentry range and suddenly a single soldier or even you as a sniper can take it out relatively easily. Snipe the defending pyros before they can get to the map choke points and your spies can get in much easier. Snipe the demos (you can one-shot them anywhere with a full charge) and those impossible stickybomb traps that get them hundreds of points go poof. And if they're using medics to try and hold a line, those are pretty obvious targets. The team without medics doesn't last long in TF, and only 2 classes can really kill a medic before he has a chance to use his ubercharge to save himself - sniper and spy.

The sniper is the most expendable class. He doesn't capture points much. He doesn't do massive damage to many targets and slaughter foes. He doesn't destroy structures. His role is to do precision disruption of the enemy by removing the most vital key elements of their strategy. You could make heavies and sentries vulernable, remove sticky traps and spy checkpoints, and totally control the other team's ability to use ubercharge. But most would rather get to say "Hey I shot the other guy first! Go me!" Congrats. Now you'll respawn and do it again, or he'll do it to you. Meanwhile that did almost nothing for the team's position. Take the shot at something else. Who cares if you die, the odds are probably 50/50 anyway, so if you've got a greater than 50% chance of taking out a non-sniper it's always an overall gain in position even if you die every time.

It's TEAM Fortress. If you want a sniper war, go back to CSS.

[siraj]

I didn't say that the duels were the ONLY reason I played. I'm just as likely to peg the Medic/Heavy combo to risk the kill as I am to take down the opposing sniper.

Usually, when I play, I go after the scouts, medics, spies, demos, heavies, soldiers, snipers, engys and pyros, in that order, unless circumstances change.

Also: I never played CSS. I despised the game and the people that played it. When it was popular here, kids from 12 on up to age 28 adults were getting thrown out of the shops around here because they'd be screaming and cursing up a storm. People like that are the reason it took me so long to get into to FPS's like TF2 in the first place.

[cesarin]

it requires 1 crit and 1 normal to kill ( around 125-150 damage per demo crit )
pipe crits are more rare, and they do around 225 damage.

ps, demos die like fleas if you're a good spy-scout-sniper
while they're loading slowly the stickes = kill them!!!

also... you said the soldier is.. useless... say that to a guy who loves to spam missiles and harras snipers.. AND crit the shit out of some fool..
the soldier crit is the strongest weapon ever.. will send anything flying very far , a heavy will get always die unless fully buffed ( and might die in the next missile anyway.. )

but yeah, awfully slow.. (ps, use rocketjumping to your advantage.. I've used rocket jump to move around buncha snipers and own them out of their "scope" vision

[flynn_thedragon]

All things considered, soldiers are fairly easy targets, and don't really have enough offense to counter it. Yeah, sure, their rockets can do lots of damage...but it's very hard to hit anyone with them (unless you do nothing but play TF2 all day and have an instinct for vectors). Their rockets either need to have a bigger explosion area, or they need to be faster.

I hit targets as a soldier once in a blue moon, and quite frankly, demomen are far better at taking down sentries and pretty much everything else over the soldier.

[gldm]

The rockets are still a bit slow for proper vector prediction and leading. This is because in Q1 the rocket launcher was awesome, and in HL it was complete crap (the normal DM games that is). Then TF1 and TFC inherited the respective characteristics, which is one of the (many) reasons I despised and did not play TFC. In Q1TF on Well6 I could go in the front room and when enemies entered I could rocket bounce them off all 4 shots in a row without letting them touch the ground, and then mid-air them with the grenade I'd primed as soon as they entered the room for a guaranteed kill. Because I played enough such that my vector prediction was just that good. This is why kids who don't have jobs will always dominate at games unless the devs find a way to balance things. It's also why I'm glad they removed grenades, because the learning curve and skill reward on them was too high and would have driven off new players.

Thing is with TF2 rockets being slower to travel and slower to fire, the clip of 4 isn't working too well. It takes all 4 to take down a sentry, and it's such a slow rate that the engineer has more than enough time to repair. It takes 2-3 soldiers working together to take down my sentry if I'm constantly hitting it, whereas for a demo it's a piece of cake, or a sniper who grew a brain could probably do it too. Consider the damage per second factor vs say, a spy sapping (always outdamages eng repair) or a pyro from around a corner or underneath (always outdamages eng repair), or heavy if he can get close enough with uber (outdamages eng repair once he's close). Hell I've even done a runby as a scout, killed the engineer with the scatter gun as I passed, then ducked into a far corner and killed the sentry with my pistol! The soldier is the only offensive class that's useless vs sentries, yet that was supposedly one of his primary roles? That's broken. Either speed up the rockets, try 5-6 per clip, or improve their damage vs structures. Personally I think rockets should do more damage vs structures.

It used to be that engineers didn't babysit because their stuff stood a chance of holding up while they were away. But now that demos and spies have them sitting there full time, the soldier needs a buff to compensate and make him useful again. I'm not saying he should be able to kill sentries from across the map every time, but right now it's impossible for him. Maybe just up his splash vs structures so that even if he can't take out the sentry he can at least take out the dispenser and engineer with repeated shots. I mean the demo can take down a sentry+eng+disp with 4 (FOUR!) stickies, HALF a clip! He has EIGHT TIMES that many when he comes out of a spawn! The soldier has 20 rockets (4 clip 16 reserve), and all 20 can't even kill one structure with a halfway competent engineer there? How the hell does that balance?

[gldm]

Then there's a bug somewhere because I can't count the number of times I came around a corner and there was just a demoman there, and he'd throw one non-sticky which didn't glow, and I'd go *POP!* even though I had 225hp. And I'd check for stickies on the ground first. They'd come out of spawns and hit me with it too. One grenade, direct hit, non-crit, and boom dead. WTF happened there? Have they patched it? I haven't been playing much since Spore came out.

Soldiers are indeed an effective sniper deterrent. I used to play as such back in the day of Q1TF. Constant rockets will usually discourage snipers and per player soldier is more effective at suppressing them vs a single sniper in a sniper duel. He's less likely to kill them, but more likely to keep them from killing teammates.