a new Team Fortress

these are my extremely long tf2 rebalance suggestions, made mostly during 2021-22 when i was playing quite actively. originally i intended this to just be a funy lil' thing i shared with the friends i played with, but as the changes started adding up, it basically morphed into my pretend master's thesis on multiplayer game design (except, y'know, all in lowercase). there's actually still some more work i was planning to do on it, if you can believe that, but i stopped playing tf2 and thus my interest in continuing this montrosity has fallen off. so, i'd decided i'd just drop it in here and call it done. i'm not sure how much the average person can get from this (nothing. the answers nothing), but if you like tf2, this might be interesting. feel free to use the outline to skip around to a section you're interested in.

you may have noticed this has been sitting in the scrapbook for a while.
originally, i was going to release a short story i've been cookin up this month (walk the line), but i haven't worked on it nearly as much as i'd have liked, so it'll have to wait until around christmas. however, i've been trying really hard to have at least SOMETHING i release every month, so this is just sort of an easy thing for november. hopefully i'll have something more substanial to for december!

Opening

This is not meant to be a down to earth, generally agreeable list of changes that I would actually implement into TF2. I think the already existing balance mods from hiGPS, Kingo, and Fsoas do an okay job at that (if a bit hit and miss). Their changes are more conservative and inline with TF2’s existing design.

instead, this is a more of a complete reimagining, overhauling the fundamental foundations of classes and game modes that have existed for over a decade. This is far beyond what would be reasonable for a major update both in feasibility and reception; rather, this is more suitable for a sequel. adding on to this idea, i came up with a new weapon concept for every slot for each class.

If I was in charge of designing a sequel to TF2, this would be my first draft.

Principles

TF2, on the whole, is a very well designed game. I don't want to change for the sake of change, trying to fix what isn’t broken.

Instead, I use this list of principles to justify every decision in this document. You may not agree with these principles, or how I choose to apply them, but these can help you understand my thought process so you atleast know where I'm coming from.

I also realize that drafting up a huge list of complaints like this is highly prone to personal bias, so having a set of principles to guide my changes helps reduce that and maintain a consistent internal logic.

Cost Balancing

• the impact (or power) of something should be determined by its ‘cost’, which can be judged by four factors:

  • EXECUTION: if an action is requires a high degree of dexterity, it should be rewarded accordingly

    • some examples: headshots, direct pipes, chaining rockets

  • RESOURCE: if an action requires time, ammo, ubercharge, metal, or whatever, then it should have a greater impact

    • some examples: building a level 3 sentry, charging an uber

  • RISK: if an action requires you to put yourself more at risk, it's impact should scale accordingly

    • some examples: scattergun meatshots, backstabs, the kritzkrieg

  • SPECIALIZATION: the more situational something is, the more impactful it should be in those specialized situations

    • some examples: the direct hit, rescue ranger, cloak and dagger

Counterplay

• players should have a strong ability to respond to the actions of their opponent

  • ensuring both players always have agency makes things feel fair even if you’re losing, which is vital for making a competitive multiplayer game fun.

Casual vs Competitive Focus

• balancing should be done for both casual and competitive, not just one or the other.

  • I really dislike a lot of the discussions I've seen in the community about the casual vs competitive sides of the game as they usually come with the implication that one side needs to completely push out the other.

  • My stance on this is twofold: both casual 12v12 and competitive 6v6 are played, and that's never going to change. arbitrarily deeming one side more important and completely disregarding the other completely fails to serve the playerbase. The aim should be to make things work well at all levels of play.

  • The counter argument here is that competitive TF2 has different rules than casual, in contrast to most other games like say, csgo, that are functionally the same at all levels. it’s difficult or impossible to make things balanced for both 12v12 and 6v6, so it’d be better just to opt for one. I agree with this to some extent, it's undeniably a tough design problem – but I think it’s a problem that’s both possible and worthwhile to solve.

  • For one, the vast majority of weapons and mechanics work fine in both formats. The RGL 6s ruleset only bans 21 weapons out of 158, and that number is getting smaller as the seasons roll by. it’s not as big a problem as it might seem. Furthermore, I think it’s definitely possible to make these banned unlocks work in both casual and competitive, as long as you remain conscientious of both sides (which valve has really dropped the ball on).

  • and for all the problems that this split brings, consider the benefits! These two sides of the game are mutually beneficial to each other. even in more competitively centered games, everyone starts as a casual, so supporting those newer players will inevitably help the competitive scene. Likewise, the competitive community also benefits the casual end by drawing more people to the game with the exposure and prestige that tournaments bring.

    • There's a reason why super smash bros has been so successful, both casually and competitively, in the fighting game genre which is traditionally very niche.

      • The success of competitive smash, in my mind, is a glaring silver bullet against the idea that TF2 can’t or shouldn’t be competitive. it wasn’t intended to be played competitively, and it requires tweaking to make it suitable for competition, but who cares? It's undeniably a great competitive game, and that doesn’t infringe on the casual experience.

    • There aren't many FPS games that appeal to both sides of the spectrum – most shooters are either notorious for they’re harsh, toxic communities, or are just not deep enough to garner a competitive scene. if TF2 could fill that role better, it could be vastly more successful.

The Ideal Competitive Format

• is unrestricted 6s. here’s why:

  • fast and easy matchmaking:

    • only 6 players, and they don’t have to be playing any specific combination of classes.

    • also makes LAN events & a potential esports scene are more practical. a sponsor only has to pay for 6 people to fly up to a tournament as opposed to 9.

  • fewer players makes each individual kill more impactful

    • this raises the stakes and makes the game more exciting

    • it’s also much more manageable to cast, making 6s is a generally better spectator experience

  • it's an easier jump from casual compared to traditional 6s or Highlanders that have heaps of rules.

  • it leaves the most room for creative strategies with no limitations

    • To clarify, I understand why the competitive community plays with class limits and weapon bans right now. there’s quite a few completely unbalanced items and strategies that would pretty much ensure every game would end in a stalemate.

    • That said, I don't believe it should be the competitive community’s job to patch over all the broken parts of the game. Those should be addressed directly by the developers. One of the main goals of this document is to try and address the causes for class limits and weapon bans so that they aren’t needed anymore.

• why would you only support a single format, rather than both 6s and Highlander?

  • I think it’s possible (and better) to have a single format that everyone can agree on. It might seem strange that I choose a single format as the defacto standard, when I argued that both casual and competitive need to be supported since they will both always be played. shouldn’t 6s and Highlander both be supported for that same reason?

  • my rationale is that Highlander wouldn’t be played competitively if the game’s problems were actually fixed. The reason why people choose Highlander is that it allows specialist classes to be run consistently, and has fewer weapons banned. Of course, i can’t speak for the entire Highlander community so feel free to come to your own conclusion. but the general consensus I gather is that 9v9 class limit 1 really isn’t all that great, but the restrictions imposed by 6s make the game feel really watered down and prevent people from playing TF2 the way they want to. if 6s didn’t have those problems, nobody would be playing Highlander competitively.

  • That said, those criticisms of 6s aren’t unfounded, and I definitely see the benefits of Highlander. That's why I think competition could be made better for everyone by bringing the good parts of Highlander into 6s. That way, the community is unified under one format, and there’s no fragmentation for tournaments, prize money, balancing, and community support.

    • Prolander attempts to strike a balance between traditional 6s and Highlander… I think it has some good ideas, but enforcing a class limit of one is too restrictive. It ultimately has the same problem as Highlander, just to a lesser extent.

Preventing Stalemates

• there should never be stalemates (situations where the optimal play for both teams is to just hold the choke or wait for a pick)

  • related to this, there should be no "defense" classes. Of course, some classes will inevitably be stronger at holding a position, but they should also have other applications beyond just holding ground. Furthermore, their defensive capabilities should always be slightly weaker than the equivalent offensive capabilities of the other team. This helps ensure that the game is always moving forward.

    • The classes are now categorized as power, pick, and support. These terms more accurately describe their actual class role, and are broadly accepted by the community.

Class Identity

• classes should play in a way that is unique to them and refrain from blending together

  • My attitude towards this is that classes can have similar roles, as long as they perform them in different ways. it’s the means that needs to be kept distinct, not the end.

  • For example, one could argue that giving pyro greater mobility and higher burst damage would be bad because it infringes on what the scout was created for. but i think that’s a fairly surface level similarity, it just means they’re both close range pick classes.

  • Think about the other 2 pick classes: spy and sniper. they can both instantly kill a high priority target, yes, but they achieve that in such radically different ways that they feel completely different.

  • The same goes for the previous example. a scout meatshotting a medic and then escaping with a double jump is way different from a pyro flare comboing a medic and then airblasting to cover an escape. Having classes that are vaguely in the same role isn’t something to be concerned about.

Bespoke Weapon Design

• all unlockable weapons should change the way you play in a way that’s different from all the other options in that slot.

  • The entire point of unlockable weapons is to give new ways to play. It's not enough to have weapons that occasionally help or hurt you depending on the situation you’re in. The difference has to be meaningful enough that you actually play around it.

Depth vs Complexity

• changes should aim to maximize depth and minimize complexity.

  • depth is the amount of gameplay variety and skill expression (good), and complexity is the amount of rules and things you have to learn (bad).

    • the complexity that’s especially problematic is that which is frontloaded (something you have to learn it before you can play the game at even a basic level)

      • TF2 generally does a great job at avoiding this. The long list of unlockable weapons might seem fatally complex on paper, but it's quite manageable because you only need to start with 3 stock weapons to start having fun.

    • This is why I often remove a lot of seemingly innocuous stats from weapons. if they don’t add any depth, they aren’t worth the additional complexity.

      • they might not seem that complicated because if you’re experienced, and they sort of aren’t. experienced players know that they don’t matter and just ignore them, and often forget their even there. but a new player reading a weapon’s stats for the first time won’t realize that, so having a bunch of nothing stats just obfuscates what’s actually important.

Minimize Randomness

• TF2 already achieves chaotic casual fun just by having such a massive range of playstyles, skill levels, and people in a given game – not to mention its eccentric art style and the absurd concepts for weapons and gamemodes. Randomness isn't needed to uphold that, it will only irritate experienced players who expect to be rewarded with consistent results for their skills.

Snowballing Drawbacks

• Snowballing weapons must have some downside or limitation even once they are in that positive feedback loop. otherwise, they often become just a straight upgrade in casual for anyone who is good at the class, because they can farm less experienced players to negate the downside.

  • The bazaar bargain, eyelander, and diamondback are all examples of this.

Simple Stock Weapons

• stock weapons should never have unique attributes. i.e, if something applies to the stock rocket launcher, it should apply to all rocket launchers.

  • This is for the sake of accessibility. stock is what new players start with and should therefore be the simplest option. Having a straightforward baseline also makes it easier to learn the unlockable variants later.

the principles below are lower priority and shouldn’t be upheld at the cost of the above principles

Maximize Playstyle Variety

• team composition and weapon loadouts should be as varied as possible in both casual and competitive, within reason.

  • A big part of the skepticism towards the competitive scene (6s especially) comes from the stale meta.

  • I understand and fully agree with the notion that player playing is what makes the game interesting, not the character they control – and competitive TF2 absolutely excels on that front.

  • Nevertheless, I also agree with those who criticize the meta. Even if the player expression is king, character expression is queen and her throne is right next to his. competitive would be even better if there was more variety in team composition and playstyles.

Uphold Weapon Identity

• The stats of a weapon should reflect its theme or ‘identity’ where possible, whether that’s the name and design of the item, or the reputation it’s garnered among the community.

  • I try not to replace a weapon with an entirely new design unless it’s so fundamentally flawed that a rework is necessary.

Universal Changes

Remove Random Crits

• because randomness should be minimized, and they aren't necessary to break stalemates (uber does that much better), and they aren't a very good way to make melee weapons viable beyond utility. basically everything ancle dane said

Remove Stuns & Slows

• because this restricts the movement of the other player so drastically, i feel it doesn't allow for adequate counterplay. even if balanced, it’s just not fun to play against.

  • This is only relevant when it restricts the opponents counterplay, so exceptions can be made for the holiday punch and items that give self inflicted slowness.

Replace Damage Res/Vuln

• all* damage resistances and vulnerabilities are replaced with health changes

  • this makes it easier to gage the difference at a glance without having to pull out a calculator

    • * The exception is general damage resistances that are only sometimes active, like the battalion’s backup charge. it would be really confusing and weird to give a temporary max health boost, so i keep those as is.

  • resistances to specific damage types don't allow for enough counterplay in a casual environment. Every class relies heavily on a single damage type, and relying on teammates to take care of specific targets isn’t fun because it doesn’t give you much agency.

• crit resistance: while not quite as bad as damage resistance, it suffers from the same lack of counterplay. certain classes and loadouts (sniper, demoknight, items like the kritzkrieg, buff banner, flare gun, ext) get completely shut down by crit resistance with little counterplay.

Afterburn Rework

• note that some weapons apply afterburn differently (see the pyro section)

• 🠝) igniting an enemy will deal an instant burst of 30 damage

  • extra general burst damage gives pyro more pick potential. This makes the class more useful outside of defense, instead of encouraging pyro to stay back and slow down the game.

  • This is a nice buff to pyro, as there’s a lot of combos that don’t actually kill and rely on a few extra ticks of afterburn.

• 🠝) medics on fire will have a -50% medigun heal rate debuff (24h/s → 12h/s)

  • allowing the pyro to debuff the enemy medic gives them a way to support the team in large fights despite their inferior damage compared to the other combat classes.

  • There's still counterplay on the medic's end as they can fallback to an extinguishing source, ask their team for one, or use other sources of healing like the crossbow or overdose that aren't affected by the debuff. also, even though medics heal slower, they still build uber at the same rate so it won’t slow down the game.

• ⭯) afterburn damage: 5% of targets current health each tick, clamped between 1 and 12.

  • Here's a graph of how this compares to TF2’s current afterburn.

  • The rationale behind this is that dying to afterburn is pretty annoying, so making the time to kill much longer will alleviate that.

  • but despite the annoyance on the receiving end, afterburn damage really isn’t all that great for the pyro because it doesn’t do enough damage to help them in the fight most of the time. at best, you’ll kill someone after you’re already dead if the fight was really close.

  • This damage rework improves the short term damage to a level that is more useful as chip damage before you engage. For example, if you hit a flare on a full health heavy, they’ll take ~75 damage after just 3 seconds! It also gives pyro a new niche as a great anti overheal class.

• 🠟) removed reduced healing received from mediguns, dispensers, and the payload

  • This is barely noticeable as these sources remove afterburn after ~1 second, but removing this just simplifies things. The reduction to medigun healing stat above is my replacement for this that’s actually impactful.

  • Also, this mechanic is listed as a -20% reduction in the patch notes, but for some reason the actual strength is inversely proportional to the heal rate of the source (explanation). it’s really unintuitive, which is another reason to remove it.

Universal Melee Buff

• all melee's can do the gunslinger 3-hit-crit combo, excluding weapons with that previously had the “no random crits” stat.

  • this should actually work on the 3rd hit every time.

  • melee's are too skewed toward utility instead of offensive damage in my opinion. there's nothing wrong with utility melee's, i just feel that melee should have more value for actually doing damage. That way, the offensive melees can actually be viable, and the damage and swing speed penalties employed by the utility melees are actually impactful.

Remove Spawning Wallhacks

• refers to the outline around teammates that appears when you spawn.

• This is a problem because it can give away disguised spies, and doesn’t really add anything. This video elaborates more on the subject.

Crit Stacking

• the damage bonus from crits now stacks additively:

  • mini crit + mini crit = double mini crit (+70%)

  • crit + mini cirt = ultra crit (+235%)

  • crit + crit = double crit (+500%)

  • This is a very situational buff to items like the kritzkrieg and buff banner that I don't think will be worth it most of the time, but it should open up the potential for some wacky combos.

Resupply Cooldown

• all resupply cabinets have a 15 second cooldown.

  • The last points, in general, are way too difficult to push. part of this is a map design problem for sure, but i do think having such a powerful, easy resource always available is part of the problem. Things like buildings, short circuit blasts, the rescue ranger, jarate, mad milk, and more can all be spammed without the resource costs they are meant to have.

    • This change should get the rescue ranger unbanned. it’s only a problem because you can tank a sentry on last with the infinite metal from the resupply.

Remove Bloom

• remove random bullet spread on shotguns

  • because randomness should be minimized.

  • I wanna make it clear that I think this issue has been pretty overblown in the community on both sides. it really doesn't matter that much since there's so many pellets that the randomness basically evens out the vast majority of the time. it’s only really consistently noticeable at longer range, where the variance in chip damage is so small it doesn’t really matter. When people blame bullet spread, it’s often just because they weren’t being quite as accurate as they could have been.

  • Even still, I don't see how this really adds anything. it's just a slight inconsistency on damage that can screw you over, albeit very rarely.

Remove Projectile Blocking

• teammates should never block projectiles.

  • it feels really unsatisfying, is largely out of your control, and doesn’t really help to reduce spam as the past 15 years have proven.

Switch Speed Fix

• remove the ability to bypass switch speed penalties by rapidly switching between weapons.

  • This makes switch speed penalties always meaningful, rather than an arbitrary knowledge barrier you have to learn about in order to bypass.

Normalize Fall Damage

• fall damage should be 100% consistent (in the game currently it’s random within a certain range)

  • this really isn’t a huge deal at all, but randomness should be minimized and this adds nothing, so it’s removed.

Collision Hull Fix

• collision hulls are now a cylinder shape, with a flat top and bottom rather than a cube.

  • The current collision hulls have a small problem in that they don’t change orientation. This results in some weird quirks, like having a ‘wider’ projectile hitbox depending on the direction you’re being shot from, or not being able to walk as closely along some walls that collide with the corner of the box.

Heavy

the problems with heavy i'd like to address are as follows:

1. lack of skill expression

   • aiming the minigun really isn’t that deep. a 100 hour heavy is going to put out pretty similar damage compared to a 1000 hour one. positioning and game sense are very important on heavy, but they are also important on every single class.

   • I don't buy the argument that positioning on heavy is more complex compared to other classes because he's too slow to reposition. In fact the opposite is often true. Because he is slow, he’s extremely limited in offensive maneuverability and instead has to sit and wait for enemies to come to him. Many holds have a clear best spot to stand as heavy, whereas every other class (even sniper) can and is required to switch up their positioning based on the situation to perform optimally.

2. overly defensive playstyle

   • This is bad because it slows down games. it’s why 6s rulesets basically do everything in their power to prevent a heavy from getting to mid.

3. weakness in high level play

   • being slow in a heavily movement based shooter is a debilitating weakness, but to compensate heavy has worse damage* and pick potential than the other power classes on top of that.

     1. * Of course, heavy players easily have the highest dps, but that’s only really useful against bad players who are out of position. People with good gamesense will know to avoid prolonged exposure to minigun fire, which makes it difficult for heavy to get anything done.

4. lack of playstyle variety

   • This isn’t as bad on heavy as it is for some other classes as there are some alternative strategies and items that really do switch things up. The problem is more that they kinda suck and aren’t really viable.

Class Wide Changes

• 🠝) mini guns deal increasingly more base damage on successive shots: 9 → 14 over 2.5 seconds of fire. Completely missing for 0.315 seconds straight (12 bullets) will reset this, but getting a kill will grant a 0.8 second grace period, giving you time to switch targets.

  • there should be some sort of visual indication on the gun itself or on the bullets to show this damage boost.

  • This should give heavy more room for skill expression, with the potential for a threatening damage output even at mid range, putting heavy on par with the other power classes.

  • However, this requires extremely consistent tracking, so heavy won’t be more powerful at lower skill levels where the class is already pretty strong. it also doesn’t invalidate heavy’s usual counterplay, heavy still has poor burst damage.

• 🠝) 1 of the 4 minigun bullets fired per shot will always be 100% accurate

  • allows heavies to consistently make use of the damage scaling mechanic.

• 🠝) melee damage: 65 → 100

  • it's so difficult to get in melee range with heavy because they’re the slowest class in the game. heavy needs this absurdly high melee damage in order for stock, and melee in general, to be consistently useful. this also helps make buffalo steak heavy viable.

• 🠝) removed reduced minigun damage to level 2 / 3 sentries

  • All this does is make it harder to push with heavy, shoehorning the class into a defensive playstyle which I'm trying to avoid (see the class problems above).

• 🠝) the high noon taunt now uses a hitbox instead of a single hitscan ray, making it much more consistent to hit

  • this is mainly useful for the holiday punch

• ⭯) the sandvich is now heavy’s stock secondary, replacing the shotgun

  • shotgun heavy is fun, and i would like to make it more viable, but i think it’s definitely a more of an alternative playstyle. stock weapons should be more suited toward the typical game plan of the class, and for heavy secondaries, nothing fits that bill better than the sandvich.

  • This does mean that the stock shotgun can no longer be used on heavy. I think this is fine because the family business is essentially a straight upgrade to stock anyways, and I intend to keep it that way.

    • heavy has a hard time getting use out of the shotguns, more so than any of the other classes that have them, because miniguns completely overshadow them in damage at the same range. Using a shotgun does afford you a modicum of increased mobility, but overall it’s definitely not nearly as useful for heavy.

    • Because of this, I think having heavy’s shotgun (the family business) to be straight up better than the other shotguns like it is now is actually pretty reasonable. but since that’s the case, the stock shotgun is completely redundant, so i opted to remove it.

Natascha

• currently banned in 6v6

• 🠝) this weapon mini crits when below 50% ammo

• 🠝) -25% damage → -20%, and now only applies when above 50% ammo

  • The weapon should glow when below half ammo, so that enemies can see when the mini crits are ready.

  • These upsides are interesting and drastically change how you play. normally ammo management on heavy is only a minor issue, but this design turns the concept on its head by daring you to drain your ammo.

  • This doesn’t really fit the weapon’s old theme, but there’s not really a good way to have a minigun that debuffs enemies because it’s not reasonable to dodge a constant stream of bullets, so there’s not enough counterplay.

• 🠟) removed slow on hit

  • I'm removing all effects like this. It really limits the opponent’s counterplay, and is especially egregious on a mini gun. replaced with the new upsides. This completely removes the mechanical identity of this weapon, but it’s egregious enough that i feel it’s necessary.

• 🠟) removed 20% damage resistance during spin up while below half health

  • I feel this attribute should be unique to a single minigun. it’s a much better fit for the defensive playstyle of the brass beast, so i choose to remove it from this.

BRASS BEAST

• 🠝) damage resistance: 20% → 50%

• ⭯) damage resistance applies even when above half health, but it doesn’t apply after you’re already spun up, only while revving

  • The +20% damage bonus isn’t worth it most of the time, because you’ll take a lot more damage than you’ll dish out from the bonus during your long rev up.

  • It's difficult to compensate for this by revving preemptively because you’re hardly able to move while revved.

  • speeding up the rev time slightly would be one way to buff the weapon, but it’d also kind of under its defensive playstyle and make it more similar to stock, so it’s not the best change.

  • it’s more interesting, i think, to expand on the defensive bonus while revving. it’d solve the issue of taking too much damage before you can even start firing, without taking away from the downsides that are core to the weapon.

  • I do think that it’s better to have the damage resistance not apply after revving though, both for balance, and because I think it encourages extremely stale playstyles where you just never unrev. Playing like a sentry isn’t very dynamic or exciting.

Tomislav

• A generally good idea and well balanced, but it’s too similar to stock. i opted for more exaggerated upsides and downsides.

• 🠝) base damage: 9 → 23 (+250%)

• 🠝) removed -20% slower firing speed (8.33/s → 9.5/s)

• 🠟) bullets per shot: 4 → 1 (effectively a 75% slower firing speed)

  • bear in mind, the single bullet fired for each shot is always perfectly accurate

  • This makes the tomislav play very different from the other miniguns. instead of having slightly lower dps, being slightly more demanding to aim, but slightly better at range, all of those attributes are now ramped up to the extreme.

Huo-Long Heater

• ⭯) the ring of fire now only appears in a single burst after you rev up, rather than repeatedly. it deals 80 damage, and consumes 30 ammo.

  • The ring of fire is pretty superfluous with its current implementation because at the range where enemies get hit by it, heavy already has the highest dps in the game.

  • Burst damage, on the other hand, is actually something heavy struggles with, so having a weapon that helps you out with that is more useful.

  • In addition, this design is much more interesting. The vanilla ring of fire kind of encourages hyper defensive strategies that necessitate that you stay near ammo at all times, whereas this new one encourages more aggressive and dynamic play with ambushes and whatnot.

• ⭯) -10% damage → -15% damage, but only to non burning targets

  • This punishes you for playing like you would with stock and rewards you for using the ring of fire.

★ The Pocket Picnic

• This is a new lunchbox item for the primary slot.

• has 3 charges

• there’s 3 different food items to pick from, which can be cycled through with reload

  • all heal for 150 health

  • all can be thrown to heal teammates for 35% of their max health

    • This is still quite strong for support, because you have 3 of them.

  • apple: is consumed in 1.8s instead of 4.3s

    • good for more aggressive heavies who need to heal up in a pinch.

  • ham: grants mini crits for 4 seconds after eating

    • also really good for aggressive heavies due to the offensive potential. but it’s reigned in by the short duration, heavy’s poor mobility, the lack of a minigun, and the time it takes to eat it.

  • fishcake: healing can overheal

    • again, this is designed for more of a roaming playstyle. This allows you to get overhealed without the need for a medic.

• has a 30 second recharge (for each individual charge)

• This is a really strong utility (both for yourself and your team) that’s designed to make heavy’s alternative playstyles (fat scout & buffalo steak) more viable.

Dalokohs Bar

• 🠝) max health gained: 50 → 80 (+80)

  • An extra 50 health on heavy really isn’t all that great since the class is such a damage sponge. it does let you survive an extra rocket or pipe, but that usually only makes a difference in a 1v1 which heavy rarely engages in. This stronger buff should be enough to make a more noticeable difference against general spam.

  • It also allows fully overhealed dalokah’s heavies to survive a fully charged headshot with the damage increase to 540 (see sniper changes).

Buffalo Steak Sandwich

• Currently banned in 6s

• Terrible for actually punching people, but can be used to get a fast rollout without sacrificing health which is why it's banned.

• Heavy melee is much stronger now with a base 100 damage, which makes the mini crits this grants actually powerful because it’s capable of one-shotting light classes.

• 🠝) removed 20% damage vulnerability while the effect is active

  • Going melee only as one of the slowest classes in the game is already a sufficient enough risk for the reward this weapon offers, so a damage vulnerability on top of that is overkill.

• 🠝) while the effect is active, bunny hopping will increase your base speed by 4% each jump, up to a max of +28% (105% total). this resets once you stop bunny hopping.

• 🠟) removed +23% speed boost while active

  • For this to work offensively, it needs to provide a way to close the gap on enemies since he’s the slowest class in the game.

  • However, giving just a base faster walk speed at no cost is a big problem since it allows heavies to roll out quickly for free. adding a high skill cost to this makes it more balanced and inline with teleporters (resource cost) and the GRU (less impact).

★ The Brick

• A new secondary weapon for heavy.

• I think i got the idea from here

• an slow, arcing projectile that deals 120 damage (no falloff)

  • holding down left click will wind up the throw, making it travel further

  • 120 damage is balanced because heavy doesn’t really have a quick way to deal the last 5 damage to finish off light classes.

• alt fire: drops the brick on the ground for teammates or yourself. It's equivalent to a full ammo pack.

• it has a 14 second recharge after use

• This gives heavy a strong, but limited long range option. Similar to how the cleaver and wrap assassin open up a long range niche for scouts, I hope a weapon like this could fill a similar role.

Warrior’s Spirit

• heavy melees deal a base 100 damage, meaning this thing would deal a base of 130 damage, and 175 on mini crit.

• 🠝) removed 30% damage vulnerability while active

• 🠟) -60 max health (300 → 240)

  • I prefer this to the damage vulnerability while active. It means that normal heavies who want to use this have to make a meaningful sacrifice. a damage vulnerability only while active is mostly irrelevant for them, as they would only take out their melee for a second to kill someone, and then switch off.

The Eviction Notice

• heavy melees deal a base 100 damage, meaning that this weapon now deals 60 damage.

• 🠝) while active, gain a speed boost when taking damage. the duration of the speed is 2% of the damage taken (50dmg = 1s), and does not activate until a minimum of 0.5s of speed has accumulated.

  • To make this work well with automatic weapons, it would probably be a good idea to have the boost not activate until at least 0.5s have accumulated.

  • You’re supposed to be using this to escape, but the current design isn’t very good at that because you first have to run toward your enemies to melee them. this new version doesn’t have that problem

• 🠝) 100% faster deploy and holster speed (0.66s → 0.33s)

  • Allows this to be better in conjunction with a shotgun. you could take it out right before you eat a rocket to get the speed boost, and then switch back to the shotgun while using the speed to strafe.

• ⭯) the health drain doesn’t instantly drain 20 health when switching, but over time it drains at 10h/s instead of 5h/s

  • There's no penalty for quickly switching right as you take damage, but there’s harsh punishment for holding it out any longer than you need to. This fosters more skill expression, since you can switch quickly to minimize the health drain, whereas a drain when switching is unavoidable.

• 🠟) removed speed on hit

  • Replaced with speed boost when taking damage

• 🠟) attack speed: +40% → +0% (0.48s → 0.8s)

  • This weapon is meant to be poor on damage as it’s downside.

  • faster attack speed is actually really strong now because melees always crit on the 3rd consecutive strike, making this nerf very much warranted.

Fists of Steel

• currently banned in 6s

• 🠝) removed +100% damage taken from melee while active

  • This is a really weird and unintuitive stat that only made sense with the old resistance to all ranged damage.

  • Meleeing a heavy person who's using this doesn’t really work. you’re putting yourself at massive risk if they have other teammates around, and they can just switch back to their minigun and kill you. melee range is heavy’s optimal range, and this downside doesn’t really change that.

  • This is replaced with the stat below.

• 🠝) damage resistance while active applies to all damage, not just ranged attacks

  • Having the resistance only apply to ranged attacks isn’t unnecessary anymore. it only makes sense with the old design.

• 🠝) removed -40% healing and -40% max overheal while active

  • I think the intended effect was to prevent fistfuls of steel heavies from being crossbow-tanked forever, but it doesn’t really work because the penalties only apply while active. reducing the damage resistance is a much better way to rain in the sustainability

  • because these stats don’t really change much, it’s simpler to just remove them.

• 🠟) damage resistance while active: 40% → 20%

  • this is really overpowered currently; it grants up to +120 effective health at full health. +60 ehp is much more reasonable.

• 🠟) half of the damage dealt with this weapon is also dealt to yourself

  • makes this weapon poor for melee combat like it’s supposed to in a unique and thematically appropriate way.

Killing Gloves of Boxing

• heavy melees deal a base 100 damage

• 🠟) damage: 100 → 70 (-30)

  • With the new buff to heavy melees, it would be too easy to kill someone and get crits. the slower attack speed doesn’t really matter since you usually only punch one as a finisher anyways.

  • This is still an extra 5 damage compared to the vanilla game, allowing you to oneshot soldiers with a crit, so these have still gotten stronger overall.

Holiday Punch

• This weapon is the biggest exception to the removal of stun mechanics. this rule exists in the first place it usually limits the enemies counterplay drastically, but the holiday punch doesn’t have that problem because…

  • 1) it’s a melee on the slowest class in the game, so it’s more than reasonable to just stay out of melee range.

  • 2) it only deals the stun from behind, so if you’re paying attention you can prevent the stun even if the heavy does sneak up on you.

    • melee crits in casual sort of invalidate this, but that’s more a problem with random crits in general, not the holiday punch.

  • 3) you’re immune to the laugh taunt while in the air, so you can just jump

• All of these make the holiday punch feel very fair to fight, despite it having a stun mechanic.

• indirect buff: the high noon taunt now hits more consistently

• 🠟) -35 damage (100 → 65)

  • Usually, these things are pretty balanced because it makes random crits deal no damage. but with the removal of random crits, the holiday punch now has no real downsides, so this damage penalty is necessary.

★ Bread Bite

• A ‘new’ melee for heavy

• 🠝) 75% of damage done with this weapon is returned to you as healing

• 🠟) damage: 100 → 60

  • This might have a niche use as a finisher, but I see this as mainly being good for buffalo steak loadouts. when combined with the minicrits, you could be healing 61 health per swing.

Demoman

I'd say the demo is in a pretty good place overall, he’s the only class with no weapons banned. but i do have one big gripe:

1. Demoknight is flawed

   • The subclass is simultaneously both bad, but also kind of annoying. sentries and airblast completely shut down demoknight with no recourse. but at the same time, trying to actually kill a demoknight can feel impossible (especially with the eyelander) because they can seemingly escape anything with their tankiness and speed.

Class Wide Changes

• 🠝) sword damage: 65 → 75 (+10)

  • In isolation, this change is sort of overkill, but it makes more sense within the broader context of the demoknight changes. The goal is to drastically increase pick potential, in exchange for a huge sacrifice to survivability which is the annoying aspect of the subclass.

• 🠟) stickies have a 50% larger hurtbox to remove

  • It's pretty slow to remove stickies with most weapons since you need to be really precise. The demo can just keep planting more faster than they can be shot down. This change tips the scales a little, making it easier to push through chokepoints, and encouraging demos to be more tactical and subtle about their trap placement.

Loch-N-Load

• 🠝) +20% damage now applies to everything, not just buildings

  • This gives the loch n load general applicability – like it was before gun metal – without being too broken. The base damage is now 120, so you can’t quit one shot light classes, but the extra damage is still very strong.

  • Having a grenade launcher that’s only better at dealing with sentries is pretty hard to make viable. For normal demos, stickies (and the stock grenade launcher) are already very strong against sentries, so it’s not really necessary. Hybrid knights do struggle with sentries more, but it’s usually better for them to opt for a more generally applicable grenade launcher because they don’t have stickies to cover the weaknesses of their primary. Unless the damage to buildings was dialed up to an unfair level, this weapon’s current design isn’t going to be very appealing to anyone.

Iron Bomber

• Currently this is way too similar to stock, it needs a more unique identity. There's different ways you could interpret the weapon’s theme, but I choose to make this into an aggressive grenade launcher for… well, bombing.

• 🠝) this weapon mini crits while blast jumping

  • this doubles down on this item’s utility for grenade jumping, by rewarding you greatly for bombing into people.

• 🠝) removed 15% smaller explosion radius

  • This stat is basically meaningless – it’s too subtle to make a real difference in almost any situation. replaced with the new downside.

• ⭯) 30% shorter fuse time → -30% self damage (knockback unaffected)

  • Both of these stats help with grenade jumping, but I think reduced self damage is more unambiguously favorable for that purpose. a shorter fuse time also helps a lot with spam, so it partially distracts from this the iron bomber’s identity.

• 🠟) 50% slower reload speed (1.24s / 0.6s → 1.8s / 0.9.s)

  • The iron bomber needs a meaningful downside to have a distinct role compared to stock. One option is to bump up the current explosion radius reduction so that it’s actually impactful, but I feel this would be boring since the loch-n-load has basically the same weakness. i opted for this instead.

Loose Cannon

• This weapon is indirectly nerfed because nothing can inflict slow anymore, so targets hit by the cannon balls can actually air strafe and surf them which adds some counterplay. I don't see this impacting the weapon’s power much though.

• 🠝) double donks have no falloff, dealing 130 damage flat.

  • This fixes double donks sometimes dealing 124 damage, not giving the reward that they should. This weapon is already so situational and challenging, so removing this disappointing fake out aspect would make it feel better to use without buffing it too drastically.

• 🠟) cannot double donk buildings

  • This stat is needed to preserve this weapon’s ineffectiveness against buildings with their new lack of crit resistance

★ Tapdancer

• A new grenade launcher for demoman

• I got the name from a similar idea on /r/TF2weaponideas, but i can’t find it now

• 🠝) pipes bounce off surfaces instead of rolling (like skipping a rock). they can bounce multiple times, losing ~⅓ of the velocity each time.

  • This lets you make shots you couldn’t before. you could skip it on the ground to get some extra distance, or you could bounce it off a wall to hit around a corner. it opens up new possibilities and changes how you play.

• 🠟) 40% slower firing speed (0.6s → 0.84s)

  • This is a significant weakness to balance out the significant perk. it also plays into the bounce mechanic; more time between shots gives you more time to line up a bounce shot.

Chagrin’ Targe

• 🠝) +35 max health

  • replacement for resistances, equivalent to a ~20% damage resistance (or ~17.5% for full demoknight).

• 🠝) immunity to knockback while charging

• 🠝) passive knockback resistance: +75%

  • prevents demoknight from being completely shutdown by airblast and other knockback inflicting weapons, making the subclass much more viable for general use.

• 🠟) all resistances removed

  • replaced with the health boost above.

Splendid Screen

• 🠝) immunity to knockback while charging

• 🠝) passive knockback resistance: +75%

  • Prevents demoknight from being completely shutdown by airblast and other knockback inflicting weapons, making the subclass much more viable for general use.

• 🠟) all resistances removed

  • I choose to have the charge n target as the only shield with any defensive buffs. I feel a boost of even just 1 health would somewhat infringe on the chargin’ targe, since 200 is an important damage threshold.

Tide Turner

• 🠝) damage taken while charging will not reduce the charge duration. rather, taking any single hit that deals more than 80 damage will instantly end the charge.

• 🠝) passive knockback resistance: +75%

  • This makes charging at people a bit more viable, though still much weaker compared to the other shields (no knockback resistance). This is more intended for hybrid knights.

• 🠟) all resistances removed

  • I choose to have the charge n target as the only shield with any defensive buffs. I feel even a boost of 1 health would somewhat infringe on the charging target, since 200 is an important damage threshold.

Bottle

• I decided to keep this the same, rather than buffing it like most other stock melees. because demoman’s secondaries are basically a second primary, i feel demo’s melees should be weaker to compensate (the swords are the exception, because they require a big commitment).

• Furthermore, because Demo is so prone to getting rushed down, he actually gets more use out of his melee than most classes, so a buff isn’t really necessary.

Ullapool Caber

• Changes inspired by bad weapon rehab

• 🠝) explosion damage: 75 → 85

  • Allows the caber to consistently one shot light classes, but not medics which is what got it nerfed. This also makes the caber deal more self damage, which gives it a slightly higher risk to balance this out, and make it comparable to the stock bottle.

    • Consistently being the keyword – i know you can one shot lightclasses if you get the absolute maximum ramp up, but that’s effectively random because that depends on the orientation of the enemy’s collusion hull which is invisible, and impossible to get around in certain corridors.

• 🠝) recharges from ammo packs (1 full pack, 2 medium packs, or 5 small packs)

  • Allows caberknight to be viable since you don’t have to waste a massive portion of your time running back to resupply.

• 🠝) mini crits with shield charges

  • Makes it consistent with other melees, and also helps to make caberknight with the tide turner potentially viable.

• 🠝) this weapon crits while blast jumping, but only when swung directly at an enemy

  • “Direct” as in you melee the enemy, not just hit them with the explosion.

  • Makes this into a market gardener style weapon that’s a bit more unique and fitting for the demo.

  • Making the crit occur only on direct hits is very important. otherwise, you could essentially suicide bomb at people and easily insta kill them just from the explosion. This would be too strong for sacing for the medic in competition. if the crit only occurs if you hit them directly, it’s basically the same as a market garden, which is a strategy that’s allowed.

Eyelander

• Note that swords now deal 80 damage

• 🠟) max health no longer increases with heads

  • In casual (the only place where demoknight is viable), the eyelander is completely busted in the hands of a good demoknight and none of the other swords even come close, so it needs some sort of nerf. removing the health boost is the best fit, because snowballing weapons should have a downside even once snowballed.

Scottmen’s Skullcutter

• 🠝) attacks also strike nearby enemies for half the damage

  • Similar to sweeping edge in minecraft (also this is my friend’s rebalance idea)

  • This gives the skullcutter a unique application that opens up new opportunities.

• 🠟) removed +20% damage

  • When combined buff to swords with the universal buff to swords, this would do 96 base damage which is pretty much impossible to balance, so i deemed a new upside to be necessary

Claidheamh Mor

• Note that swords now deal 80 damage

• 🠝) +25% damage resistance while charging

  • More than negates the health penalty while charging, and allows the weapon to have stronger charges like it’s supposed to, while keeping it weaker when you don’t have charge.

• ⭯) 15% damage vulnerability → -30 max health

  • This is equivalent to a 15% vulnerability at 200 health, or a ~17% vulnerability at 175 health. however, i prefer health changes over damage vulnerabilities

• 🠟) removed +25% charge on melee kills

  • I don't like this because I feel it doesn’t fit with the weapon. Its main upside is making longer, stronger charges, not more frequent ones – that’s the persian persuader’s purpose.

  • Additionally, the stat is somewhat extraneous because it’s not impactful enough to make a real difference most of the time.

Soldier

Soldier has no class-wide problems and also boasts the most playstyle variety out of the cast, so soldier’s in a pretty good spot, bar some specific weapons.

Class Wide Changes

• Note that some shotguns work differently now

• 🠝) chaining rockets will deal 25% less self damage (-65% total)

  • This allows for more aggression and mobility with rocket chaining even without gunboats, opening up more variety for soldier secondaries in comp.

• 🠝) melees now mini crit while rocket jumping

• 🠝) melee base damage: 65 → 85 (115 on minicrit)

  • Soldiers often struggle to get offensive use out of melee (with the exception of the market gardener), so this buff should allow more playstyle variety, and make the damage penalties that the utility melees employ actually mean something.

• 🠟) can no longer equip the half-zatoichi

  • This weapon is pretty awkward on soldiers already, but the universal buffs to both soldiers AND demo’s melee makes it especially weird, as the same weapon would have to have different stats for both classes.

  • i choose to remove it, and replace it with the walking stick made specifically for soldier

Liberty Launcher

• I made this into a combo weapon. I think this design is the best fit, since the reduced damage will push you to use your secondary more for additional damage.

• 🠝) reduced self damage: 25% → 40% (20-35 → 16-27)

  • allows this to serve as a diet gunboats more effectively, which frees up the secondary slot for a shotgun to use as your main source of damage.

• 🠝) +40% faster deploy and holster speed

  • allows this to combo better with a shotgun

• 🠝) knockback is no longer affected by damage penalty

  • allows the liberty launcher to pop people up in the air the same as stock despite the lower damage, making it a better combo weapon

• 🠟) removed +1 clip size

  • The clip size bonus doesn't really fit with a combo centered rocket launcher, as you'll be relying on it less in favor of your secondary which means you won’t need as many rockets anyways.

• 🠟) removed 40% faster projectile speed

  • increased projectile speed also doesn't suit a combo rocket launcher as you'll want to be within shotgun range of enemies anyways, making this stat largely redundant.

Cow Mangler 5000

• banned in 6s

• Downsides are irrelevant in 6s currently. though if engineer was more common in 6s, it would help to balance this thing out a little… although honestly being able to disable sentries might honestly be stronger than normal rockets in a coordinated environment. it needs a new downside that’s always relevant.

• 🠝) removed mini critting when it would normally deal full crits

  • This stat rarely ever comes into play (especially with no random crits), so I removed it to simplify the weapon.

• 🠟) 15% slower projectile speed (1100HU/s → 935HU/s)

  • This weapon needs a general downside so that it’s not a straight upgrade when there’s not any engineers. A slower projectile speed is a good fit, as the laser weapons typically have slow projectiles, and it changes how you play in all situations.

Beggar’s Bazooka

• 🠝) base projectile deviation: 3° → 1°, it it ramps up +1° for each additional rocket loaded

  • This weapon is already extremely punishing for sustained fire because you have to reload after each shot, so kneecapping its airshot and spam capability is overkill. I still think it’s good to keep some random deviation even for single shots, because it’s interesting, changes how you play, and is core to the weapon’s identity. i just don’t think it should be as severe as it is now.

• 🠝) removed no ammo from dispensers while active

  • This stat is almost completely irrelevant, it’s trivial to just switch weapons to get around it. removed for simplicity.

Air Strike

• banned in Highlander because it's apparently too good with the base jumper. the reworked base jumper should make that a non issue, i don’t think the problem is really with the air strike itself

• 🠝) removed -10% base explosion radius

  • The air strike, while pretty good, is usually a slight downgrade to stock. This tiny buff will help tip the scales ever so slightly, while also simplifying the weapon.

Righteous Bison

• I think the best role for this weapon is as a finisher for enemies that are escaping, and are too far away to hit with rockets. emphasis on the far away part – the shotguns are already a good finisher for close range, so this needs to have a distinct application.

• 🠝) +100% projectile speed

  • This makes it much more reliable at catching out enemies at longer ranges.

• 🠝) rays deal damage 5 times per second instead of 2 times

  • The multi hit aspect of the weapon is very unique, and is well suited to a long range finisher because it makes it more effective against retreating enemies, so I'd like to double down on that.

  • This is effectively a 50% increase in damage when the increased projectile speed is factored in.

• 🠟) now deals 16 damage per hit; no ramp up or falloff

  • It’s hard to determine exactly how much damage this’ll do without actually playing with it, so this number might need to be tweaked. but the intent is that i’d deal 32-48 to standing targets, 16-32 to people running through it, and 64-80 to people retreating. if the person is strafing and only gets clipped by it, that’ll shave off 1 or 2 hits and reduce the damage.

Mantreads

• currently banned in highlander

• i believe the reason these are banned is because there is (was?) a bug where you could equip these with the gunboats at the same time, and get the effects of both. but aside from that, they aren’t actually a problem for comp.

• 🠝) negates all fall damage on wearer (stomp damage unaffected)

  • This greatly helps trolldiers by making their mobility completely free. it won’t exactly make the trolldier viable, but it’s a big bonus.

  • It also gives the mantreads a lot more general applicability for normal loadouts by reducing the damage taken from rocket jumping – albeit not nearly as much as the gunboats.

Battalion’s Backup

• This item needs some kind of nerf i think. it’s pretty broken in casual – the effect is clearly the strongest of all the banners. It's like a vaccinator bubble for your entire team.

• 🠟) 35% damage resistance while active → 25%

  • This is still very strong against spam, making this a great choice for pushing through a choke like it was intended. However, 35% resistance is too good I think, because it messes with a lot of damage thresholds that would normally kill. specifically, quickscopes will now oneshot light classes, and medics will still go down to 2 pipes or direct rockets.

• 🠟) removed critical hit resistance while active

  • I don't agree with crit resistance, and it’s especially bad on this weapon because it affects the entire team. this shouldn’t nerf the battalion’s too harshly – it was never its main purpose. This just removes the more polarizing aspect of it.

Buff Banner

• 🠝) +50% primary ammo on wearer

  • The buff banner isn’t bad, but it is generally considered the weakest banner. This new buff should give it the slight edge it needs to compete with the other two, while fitting the theme of the item by increasing your firepower.

Shovel

• soldier melees now deal a base 85 damage and mini crit while blast jumping. i doubt most people would drop any of the utility melees for this, but i feel this makes the shovel at least serviceable, especially for beginners who don’t know what they’re doing.

Disciplinary Action

• Currently banned in 6s

• In casual, this is fine, about as good as the escape plan. But this thing is a big problem for competition because it allows a team to get a fast heavy rollout at no cost, which is why it’s banned. there’s other options to do this, but they have appropriate downsides. the GRU’s health drain reduces the impact to balance it out, and teleporters have a significant resource cost to build. the disciplinary action is free.

• 🠟) whiplash: hitting this weapon (on an enemy or an ally) reduces your max health by 25, down to a minimum of 100. afterward, the max health is regained at 7mh/s (3.5s recovery per swing).

  • This adds a cost to this weapon that limits its use. This still can allow a heavy to quickly get to mid, but the soldier will be heavily sabotaging themselves to compensate, which balances it out. This nerf also doesn’t affect clutch escapes at low health, which I think is good.

• 🠟) does not mini crit while rocket jumping

  • Maintains this weapon's poor combat potential even with the universal buffs to soldier’s melee.

Equalizer

• ⭯) the damage it deals is equal to your missing health, or a minimum of 10 damage.

  • This makes it situationally powerful. you could potentially do 199 damage in a single swing! However, it’s reigned in by the soldier's lack of agility. running at someone to melee them when you’re at low health is basically suicidal, which offsets the insane reward.

• 🠟) 40% slower swing speed

  • You’re often below 120 health when you resort to melee anyways, so the Equalizer’s upsides will come into play more often than not.

  • This nerf is necessary to balance things out.

Market Gardener

• 🠝) removed 20% slower swing speed

  • This makes it ever so slightly easier to market garden people.

  • In the base game, this stat is basically meaningless in comparison to the stock shovel for regular self defense – the nerfs below accomplish that much better.

• 🠟) damage: 85 → 70 (-15)

  • Gives the market gardener a meaningful weakness compared to stock. However, this is still a buff compared to the vanilla game. I think one shooting other soldiers is a nice buff that the market gardener could use, and it also makes trolldier duels more exciting because both players can definitively one shot each other.

    • I know sometimes the other trolldier will die of fall damage after getting hit, but that’s kind of lame… why doesn’t it just kill!?

• 🠟) -30 damage on each successive hit until holstered (10 minimum damage)

  • Makes it a bigger commitment to go for a market garden, and makes it appropriately terrible for general use compared to stock.

★ Walking Stick

• (todo – probably not worth it, speed boost is weird) A new sword style weapon for soldier, intended to replace the half-zatoichi which is no longer equipable. It's a cane sword that initially looks like an ordinary walking stick before it’s unsheathed.

• 🠝) this weapon has a longer melee range

• 🠝) gain a 10% speed boost while active

  • This weapon is intended to be the best option in a soldier's melee arsenal for longer melee fights, in contrast to the others which are more suited to finishing off weakened enemies in a single hit.

  • Both of these attributes help with this – the longer melee range gives you a big advantage in melee fights, and the small speed bonus increases soldier’s mobility slightly without the need to take out a rocket launcher.

• 🠟) 100% longer deploy and holster time

  • For all of the bonuses, taking this weapon out is a big commitment. This gives the weapon a distinct approach compared to the other melees. you can’t whip it out to finish someone off – you have to make more careful judgements on when it’s worth it to use, and you’ll be rewarded with a much stronger weapon for doing so.

• 🠟) does not mini crit while rocket jumping

  • This weapon isn’t intended for burst damage, so a contradictory bonus like this has no place being on the weapon.

Scout

Scout has a lot of unbalanced weapons (the most weapons banned in competitive!), but the core of the class is all good. No changes.

Baby Face’s Blaster

• From what I can tell, the boost allowing the scout to outrun his own hitbox is a myth (it doesn’t make much sense in the first place, how are rocket jumping soldiers not escaping their hitbox?)

• 🠝) 200% more damage needed to fully decay boost (25 → 75)

  • The current amount is way too low, with even the smallest chip damage depleting the meter to 0. it’s not really possible to dodge all damage, so i don’t think this is fair. 75 damage is more reasonable, while still being low enough so that any strong direct hit fully drains it.

• 🠝) removed -10% base speed

  • This weapon’s entire purpose is horizontal mobility. this shouldn’t be a situational upside – this weapon already nerfs every other aspect of scout.

• ⭯) cannot double jump while active, but double jumping after switching to a different weapon won’t drain boost

  • i think a scout with ultra high horizontal speed and a double jump would be really annoying to fight, so i agree with the decision valve made to limit double jumping.

  • However, the current iteration has a big problem in that you can sometimes accidentally double jump and lose your boost when you are trying to slide off a ramp or whatever. This new system avoids that issue. it does allow double jumping for free when out of combat, but i think that’s fine.

The Shortstop

• 🠝) 40% faster reload (1.52s → 0.912s)

  • The shortstop is really not all that bad in my opinion, but it’s still clearly worse than stock. This is just a general buff that gives it a little something for everyone while playing to its strength in sustained combat.

• 🠟) removed shove

  • The shove is useless in its current form, and I can't think of a way to make it good such that it stays true to the shortstop’s design. The specialty of the shortstop is being able to do better damage from longer range over more sustained periods, but the shove encourages you to do the exact opposite by getting in melee range (or, it would if it wasn’t useless). it’s antithetical to the shortstop’s design, so has no place being on the weapon.

The Back Scatter

• 🠝) damage per pellet: 6 → 7

  • This brings the maximum damage per shot up to 123, or 164 with the mini crit. so the back scatter can now one shot medics, as well as light classes from slightly longer ranges.

  • increasing the damage makes the mini crits from behind more worthwhile, encouraging you to use this for its intended purpose.

• 🠝) removed -20% accuracy

  • This weapon’s reduced clip encourages you to be more precise since you have fewer shots, but the accuracy penalty clashes with that idea which I don't think is good.

• 🠟) 30% slower firing speed: 0.625s → 0.813s

  • Makes the weapon worse for direct, sustained combat, while not affecting ambush situations much. A downside like this suits the weapon well.

Soda Popper

• Currently banned in 6s

• 🠟) -10% damage

  • The soda popper is probably the best scattergun. it boasts higher burst damage and dps compared to stock, on top of the hype mechanic which is incredibly powerful in its own right, and why it’s banned in competitive.

  • Many people do prefer stock because they don’t like the two shot firing pattern. This is valid for sure, but it’s also entirely subjective and doesn’t change the fact that the soda popper is statistically better in almost every situation.

  • Giving it a 10% damage penalty is relatively minor – it definitely won’t kill the weapon. but it’ll reign it in slightly, similar to the other double shot scattergun, the force-a-nature.

Force-A-Nature

• No direct changes, this is a cool weapon. However, it’s been indirectly nerfed as the knockback on enemies will now no longer stun them, meaning that they can air strafe during it. I don't see this really changing its power much, it just makes it less annoying.

Pretty Boy’s Pocket Pistol

• Currently banned in 6s

• 🠟) clip size: 9 → 5

  • Currently, this is about the same as stock in terms of damage due to the faster firing speed, and yet it has its extremely useful healing utility on top of that. but i don’t think it’s really the healing that’s the issue, just the fact that it effectively has no downsides because the damage is comparable to stock.

  • You could argue that having 3 less bullets makes it weaker because it’ll deal less damage over time even with the faster firing speed, and that’s true. However, the superior burst damage that the firing speed grants is more important than damage over time on a finisher like the pistol. Therefore, it’s necessary to make this clip reduction much more harsh to truly make it a meaningful downside in terms of damage.

Flying Guillotine

• Currently banned in 6s

• 🠝) +25 damage (50 → 75)

• 🠝) mini crits blast jumping opponents (101 damage)

• 🠟) removed bleed (effectively -40 damage)

• 🠟) ~100% longer cooldown time (5.1s → 10s)

  • The main thing that makes this thing so strong is that you're able to deal so much damage from a distance at little cost.

  • You could argue that the wrap assassin does basically the same thing, but the cooldown is much longer. This prevents it from being spammed because if you just throw it out around a corner and miss, you won’t have it for when you’re actually fighting someone. there’s a meaningful cost to it. compare this to the guillotine, which recharges so fast you can sometimes use it twice in a single fight.

  • These changes aim to make it less spammy by nerfing the cooldown and chip damage, but increasing the burst damage to compensate.

  • I choose to give it more burst but less overall damage as it makes it more distinct from the wrap assassin, and also makes it less effective for spam.

Mad Milk

• Currently banned in 6s and highlander

• Banned in comp for a similar reason to the jarate: you can soak an entire team in it and basically win the mid fight on the spot. beyond that, it’s also really good in 1v1s since it’s so easy to hit, though it does have a cooldown.

• It's not a huge problem in casual because most scouts use it very selfishly, such as to extinguish themselves, or to splash a single enemy that they’re fighting. where this thing’s strength truly lies is in teamfights, but most casual players don’t have that team support in mind, so it’s a rarity.

• 🠟) recharge time: 20s → 35s

• 🠟) mad milk does not start charged, and does not refill from the resupply cabinet

  • An effect so strong shouldn’t be this spammable. This stat forces you to be more deliberate about when you use it.

• 🠟) 50% smaller slash radius (200hu → 100hu, about the same as a rocket)

  • Mad milk’s vanilla splash radius is almost twice as big as a rocket's (visualization). there's no skill in that, and it makes it trivial* to hit someone with it, and impossible to really dodge. something this impactful should not be so easy to pull off, hence the nerf. this also limits mad milk’s capacity to soak an entire team in 6s and basically win the mid fight on the spot, which is why it's currently banned

    • *) sometimes, mad milk will just decide to not hit people. I'm not entirely sure why. It might be because splash damage in TF2 can’t curve around slopes or edges, so if it’s on an uneven surface it won’t work properly. i suspect this is why many people don’t realize how massive the splash radius is, they often just assume they missed when this happens. obviously this is dumb, and i’m making these changes under the assumption that this would be fixed.

Bonk Atomic Punch

• banned in 6s because it allows you to get to a flanking position to go for the medic for free. The enemy team can’t counter this unless they send 2-3 people to go on a witch hunt for 1 scout while their frontline collapses. but in casual situations where individual picks aren’t so important and there’s lots of sentries, it’s not a problem, though it is a little bad.

• 🠝) consumption time: 1.2s → 0.6s (50% faster)

  • The lack of invulnerability really hurts the bonk’s escape utility, so making it faster to drink should alleviate that.

• 🠝) +66% movement speed while active

  • This makes it better for maneuvering into a flanking position, helping to compensate for the removal of invulnerability.

• 🠝) cannot be targeted by sentries while active

  • allows bonk to retain the ability to bypass sentries despite the lack of invulnerability.

• 🠟) no longer grants invulnerability while active

  • I think allowing people to damage the scout is necessary counterplay for competition, though the other two stats will make that very difficult so that bonk keeps its usefulness.

Crit-A-Cola

• Banned in 6s and Highlander because it makes it too easy to sac for the medic, but it’s a solid concept.

• 🠝) consumption time: 1.2s → 0.6s (50% faster)

  • I don’t think this will change much of anything for the crit a cola, but i’d like to keep the time consistent with the reworked bonk.

• ⭯) now marked for death for the entire duration, instead of +5 seconds after each shot

  • This makes it harder to sac for the medic since you’ll be marked for death before you even start shooting. it also just makes the downside a lot more intuitive, because the marked for death and mini crits durations are now synced.

  • This technically isn’t an objective nerf, because before you could be marked for death even after the mini crits wear off. However, that usually only happens after you’ve killed everyone or died trying, so for all practical purposes, this is a definite downgrade.

Bat

• No direct changes. Due to the universal melee buff, scout’s melee actually becomes pretty strong because it can quickly do the 3 hit crit combo for a total of 175 damage, though it’s very risky. I think this is enough to give the stock melee some value.

Sandman

• nothing can inflict slowing anymore, so this weapon needs an entirely new design.

• I've seen some suggestions that the ball should be marked for death (like the MvM upgrade), but I personally think that would be extremely overpowered in comp. When things are that coordinated, being marked for death means you'll get focused on by the entire enemy team and probably die. you could use it to go for med picks while being very safe, which i think would probably make it banworthy. Furthermore, I think that concept is a little too similar to the fan o’war.

• Instead, I went with a new design that gives speed to the user, sort of an inversion of its current design. I think this fits the weapon’s baseball theme.

• 🠝) removed -15 max health

  • This weapon’s design already brings so much risk to the user, so a health penalty on top of that is overkill. I prefer an offensive penalty (the slower swing speed).

• 🠝) on hit: gain a 3s speed boost

• 🠟) on miss: slowed for 3s

  • Both of these apply when using the melee as well, not just the projectile ball.

  • this reward for hitting the ball to be strong and distinct from the wrap assassin, while still having it be balanced by adding a heavy punishment for missing

• 🠟) 80% slower swing speed (0.5s → 0.9s)

  • This makes it much harder to get the 3 hit crit combo, encouraging you to use this weapon for its utility rather than damage, making it unique from stock.

Sun-On-A-Stick

• (Mostly) ripped from the bad weapon rehab

• 🠝) overheat: build by dealing 300 damage (from any weapon). activating with alt fire will cause the scout to emit flames (like the vanilla huo long heater) around them for 8 seconds – which deals 15 damage per tick + full afterburn

  • Allows scout to inflict afterburn so that this weapon’s main upside can be utilized more consistently.

• 🠝) removed damage penalty (27 → 35, on crit: 81 → 105)

• 🠟) swing speed: -40% (0.5 → 0.7)

  • Replacing the damage penalty with a swing speed nerf makes the crits more impactful (higher burst damage) while maintaining a similar dps. i think this is warranted given the high cost (building heat)

• 🠟) this weapon won’t crit on the 3rd hit

  • Ensures this weapon is worse for direct combat against non burning targets.

Candy Cane

• 🠝) instead of dropping a small health pack, kills now drop a mint that heals 35% of max health (instead of 20%) and can overheal

  • This also affects the small health pack that’s dropped on death

  • Makes the upside more worthwhile to make up for the harsh penalty. However, this is a bit of a double edged sword because it’s also really bad if enemies pick it up, which makes the weapon more interesting.

• ⭯) 40% explosive vulnerability → -25 max health

  • I believe these are roughly equivalent (vanilla version has 75 effective health against explosives, but 125 against everything else). However, I prefer health changes which is why i went with this.

Atomizer

• 🠝) removed -15% damage to players

• 🠟) this weapon doesn’t crit on the 3rd consecutive hit

  • -15% damage doesn’t really affect anything, it’s a difference of 5 damage per swing (or 30 damage for the 3 hit combo) so it isn’t needed. I think this weapon definitely should be worse for combat though, so this new stat should do that.

• 🠟) removed mini crits while airborne

  • This is too insignificant to matter, so it’s better to just remove it.

  • Moreover, it already has a very strong upside with the triple jump, so reduced combat potential should be a more unambiguous weakness.

Sniper

Ah yes, that class everyone hates. I think most of the criticism i’ve seen towards sniper is very exaggerated and misdirected, so i feel it’s necessary to clarify what i think aren’t problems:

1. Sniper is not overpowered

   • Being able to do such high damage quickly and safely from a distance is no doubt powerful (as is being able to turn invisible, or have instantaneous cross the map mobility). But sniper is highly dependent on team support, is very difficult to play (*cough cough, except bodyshots), and is countered by spam, mobility, and coordination.

   • Just because a sniper can hypothetically instantly kill 5/9 classes with inhuman levels of reactions, execution, and awareness doesn’t make the class overpowered. Pretty much every method to determine balance you’ll find will look something like (power÷skill) …so if you remove the skill from the equation for the sake of argument, of course it’s going to look broken.

   • If a sniper is single handedly mowing down your entire team, it’s because they’re a lunatic with hundreds, if not thousands of hours of practice and therefore deserve to get rewarded (or they’re using lmaobox). Any class can become an undefeatable final boss with a skilled enough player, and sniper is no different.

     • If you still doubt this, consider that even in 6v6 leagues, which is comprised of the very best players to ever touch the game, almost no one is running sniper, especially not full time. Many people argue that sniper is only overpowered now because people have gotten better than what valve ever intended, but that argument doesn’t hold much water in my opinion. The other classes have gotten better too.

2. Sniper’s long range presence isn’t inherently unfair / unfun

   • I actually kind of agree with this, but I don't think the range is the issue.

   • Fighting a sniper at long range is fine for the same reason that fighting a sentry as a pyro is fine. because you usually always know where a sentry is, it’s possible to avoid it and exploit limited range. The pyro is at a clear disadvantage, but there’s still counterplay. Likewise, if you have enough information to at least get a rough idea of where a sniper is, you can avoid their sightline and play around them even if you’re at a disadvantage.

     • This is why my changes focus on information rather than sniper’s raw power.

3. Quickscoping doesn’t invalidate sniper’s close range weakness

   • It's very unreliable and difficult (especially with flinching). I sometimes see people say things like “all it takes is one shot for a scout’s flank to be ruined,” as if that’s not one of the hardest and least consistent things in the entire game. I think fsoas put it pretty well.

     • If you doubt this, look at any unedited footage of a sniper, Highlander or casual, and count how many of their kills are actually quickscopes.

4. The only counter to sniper isn’t another sniper

   • Obviously it can be one of the better ones depending on the situation, but the idea that a sniper is untouchable by any other class simply isn’t true. here’s a list of some effective counters:

   • Mobility

     • Strafing, double jumping, jumping with rockets, stickies, or even the detonator makes you much harder to headshot, even for the best snipers. If the sniper’s aim is exceptionally good, your movement will have to match that – getting good at avoiding damage with chaining rockets and unpredictable movement is a core part of the game. It should be expected that it requires 100s of hours of movement practice to counter a sniper with 100s of hours of aim practice.

       • But what if there’s like, 5 people and a sentry watching the sniper?

         • Yeah, good luck getting past that on your own. But that scenario isn’t indicative of a sniper being overpowered, it’s the entire enemy team that’s stomping yours to protect their sniper and prevent your team from getting an uber push.

   • Flanking and sightline avoidance

     • Most snipers stand in the same spots and watch the same angles every round and are thus very predictable. They are also highly susceptible to tunnel vision when scoped in. traveling through alternative routes to get to the sniper will therefore give you the upper hand.

       • But what if there’s no good flank routes, or the map has super long sightlines?

         • That's indicative of the map sucking rather than a problem with snipers. Maps should aim to support TF2’s gameplay, not the other way around.

   • Spam and harassment

     • Sniper is a light class with no movement options and is vulnerable to flinching. if you’re at mid range, a sniper can be spammed out.

     • Even if your only option is to hit them for 3 damage across the map, the offset to their aim will help you evade their crosshair.

     • Weapons with damage over time like flare guns, the wrap assassin, or the guillotine are especially effective as they essentially put the sniper out of commission for a few seconds.

   • Overheal and coordination

     • If you are certain you’re going to get instantly headshot the moment you turn the corner, then make sure you get a buff from your medic before going in.

     • You can also try to go in with multiple people to push through to the sniper since they are limited to picking off singular targets, though that’s not always possible in casual

     • If you are in a very coordinated environment like competitive, comms can greatly undermine a sniper’s influence. it’s a lot easier to avoid getting headshot if your team is calling where the sniper is looking.

       • But what if my team sucks and can’t do that?

         • That means your team sucks, not that the sniper is an unbeatable obstacle.

Now, I don't think the criticism the sniper has received is totally unwarranted. here’s what i believe are the actual problems with sniper:

1. A lack of counterplay

   • While any class can single handedly dominate a server, a sniper often feels a lot more oppressive than a soldier or scout of similar caliber. but as i’ve covered, sniper isn’t really more powerful. This problem stems from the sniper's lack of counterplay.

   • The main way you can play around a sniper’s sightline is to stay out of it, but this is a pretty flawed interaction. It's usually difficult or impossible to tell where the sniper is looking, so you have to play a guessing game of which corridor you go down, leaving you no agency in the situation. I think valve realized this, and attempted to solve it by adding the dot, but it doesn’t really work because the dot is tiny and isn’t visible at all if there’s not a wall nearby.

   • The sniper might not be overpowered, but I think he is unfair in many situations.

2. A lack of feedback for the opponent

   • There's nothing wrong with instant kill hitscan from a balance perspective, but there’s no denying it feels kind of bad to play against as it is currently. even if you dodge a shot, you can’t really tell if it’s because of your movement or if the sniper just straight up missed. The reward for dodging a sniper’s shot is very intangible, which is why many people falsely believe it to be useless.

3. Body shots are too strong

   • I elaborate more on this in the class changes below, but in short, the high execution barrier sniper is balanced around mostly goes out the window when the area you need to hit gets way, way larger.

Class Wide Changes

• 🠝) +20% headshot damage (150-450 → 180-540)

  • With the changes below, scoping in has a higher execution barrier and risk (laser sight reveals your location), so it seems fair that headshots should have a greater impact. being able to one shot demos and pyros, while still not being able to one shot overhealed light classes seems fair.

• 🠝) rifles will mini crit on unscoped headshots (81 damage)

  • This gives the sniper slightly increased self defense, allowing them to play more actively.

  • I don't think this will undermine the SMG. For one, consistently hitting even unscoped headshots isn’t the easiest, so the SMG is usually better at finishing off low health targets. and even if you can always headshot, the SMG still allows you to deal extra damage between sniper shots during the passive reload, improving your self defense as intended.

• 🠝) removed 0.2s delay on headshots after scoping in

  • this really doesn’t change much. hitting a headshot in this window requires that you predict exactly where the enemies head will be before you even start scoping in, which almost never happens.

  • I'm of the opinion that quickscoping is balanced, and I think allowing insanely skilled snipers to quickscope slightly faster on targets that are moving predictably won’t tip the scales too much.

    • Again, if you doubt this, look at unedited footage of a sniper and count the quickscopes.

• 🠟) rifles have a laser sight (like MvM snipers) when scoped in

  • This video gives you an idea of what this would be like.

    • Although that experiment has the sniper’s vision always visible which I think is really unfair to the sniper, it should definitely be only when scoped in.

  • allowing enemies to see where a sniper is watching makes the interaction more interesting for both sides. enemies have a chance to avoid the sniper's sight completely, so if they choose to engage and die, they still feel like they could have avoided it (similar to a sentry).

  • The sniper also has more options to get around this weakness. They can go for quickscopes, or try to hide their laser on a nearby wall to bait people into thinking they are safe.

• 🠟) -20% body shot damage (50-150 → 40-120) (50 → 40 unscoped)

  • The reason why being able to one shot enemies at long range is balanced by the difficulty of hitting headshots.

  • Body shots take away most of the execution requirement, and the charge time isn't a great enough cost. at long range you’ll be safe from most classes anyways. For this reason, body shots deserve to be heavily nerfed.

Machina

• Banned in 6s and Highlander because it makes it too easy to bodyshot the medic.

• 🠝) +50% faster charge rate (full charge time: 3.3s → 1.6s)

  • this keeps with the theme of a charge centered sniper rifle, while not being annoying since you have to hit headshots to get much benefit out of it (bodyshots deal 120 max)

• 🠝) shots always penetrate players, not just while fully charged

• 🠝) pierces through buildings, just like it does with players

  • The penetration ability is really cool, but it’s so situational that it rarely ever comes into play. making it more versatile should allow you to get more use out of it, changing how you play compared to stock.

  • you could even use it to shut down engineers who are hiding behind their sentry tanking it.

• 🠟) marked for death while scoping in

  • with the machina being a charged centered rifle, it makes sense to me that you should be encouraged to stay on the backlines. This stat makes machina snipers highly vulnerable when caught out while in scope, and quickscoping becomes a bit more risky.

• 🠟) removed +15% damage on full charge

  • This makes the machina really good for bodyshots (the upside is useless for headshots since a fully charged headshot will kill anyways), which I'd like to discourage.

Sydney Sleeper

• it’s banned in 6s because the faster charge makes it too easy to drop the medic with a bodyshot

• 🠝) headshots crit instead of minicrit

  • i think having a rifle that can’t headshot is bad in concept. The only way it can be viable at all is to have a strong benefit for hitting bodyshots (which they don’t currently), but if bodyshots are powerful, this rifle becomes way too easy to use.

• 🠝) jarate duration: 2-5s → 4-12s

  • The jarate effect is currently too short to get much use out of. It's the most interesting attribute of the weapon, and yet it’s currently overshadowed by the increased charge rate. This fixes that.

• 🠝) shooting teammates will extinguish them (shots still pierce teammates)

  • This is apparently a loading tip, but it doesn’t actually happen in game. i don’t see it being super useful, but it’s a fun extra utility

• 🠟) base damage: 50 → 35

  • This means quickscopes deal 126 damage. Being able to quickscope light classes is vital, but requiring charge to oneshot demos, pyros, and especially medics is a big downside that balances out the jarate effect.

• 🠟) removed 25% faster charge rate

  • This makes a lot of sense for a bodyshot centered rifle, but I'd prefer to avoid that. with this new design, it’s unnecessary.

• 🠟) jarate is now only applied on headshots

  • I don't want this to be a bodyshot centered rifle (see above).

Bazaar Bargain

• 🠝) removed 50% slower base charge rate

  • Replaced with reload nerf below

• ⭯) heads now increase base damage (+5 per head), instead of charge rate

  • This allows you to quickscope soldiers after 2 heads, and deal a 252 damage quickscope with 4 heads – or a 114 damage unscoped mini crit headshot.

  • I feel faster charge should be unique to the machina, since it’s the charge focused rifle. increasing damage is unique to the bazaar bargain.

• 🠟) reload time: 1.5s → 2.25s (+50%)

  • Snowballing weapons should still have a relevant downside even once snowballed. I chose reload time because it makes it even harder to deal with multiple enemies which seems appropriate for a high damaging weapon that’s ideal against single high health targets

Hitman’s Heatmaker

• 🠝) gain infinite ammo while in focus

  • This allows focus to still be useful with the new downside

• 🠝) removed -20% damage on bodyshots

  • This stat now applies to every rifle. The main reason this is impactful is because it prevents fully charged body shots from one shooting medics and light classes, so stacking on an additional 20% reduction isn’t a meaningful downside. replaced with the stat below.

• 🠟) reserve ammo: 25 → 12

  • This forces you to be more careful and conservative with your shots, which lives up to the weapon’s name.

  • This downside is also unique among the other rifles.

The Classic

• The classic got a big indirect buff because all rifles can not mini crit on unscoped headshots, allowing the classic to be able to put out passable damage without a full charge. The downside is still significant though – 81 damage quickscopes definitely don’t stack up to 180 damage ones – so I don't think this will erode the classic’s weakness too much.

  • You could argue that this feature should be removed from the classic because it detracts from the weapon’s signature drawback, which is part of what makes it unique and interesting.

  • I think this is acceptable though, because it only moderately reduces the drawback to be more reasonable – uncharged headshot damage is still less than half of what the other rifles can do.

• all rifles also emit a laser sight when scoped in, but this only applies to the classic while hardscoping, so it has a bit of a niche now.

• 🠝) +30% movement speed while charging

  • This is a pretty drastic buff, since this weapon spends so much time charging. This doesn’t completely negate the weapon’s downside. you are still very vulnerable, but it's more manageable (especially against enemy snipers).

• 🠝) can fire in the air

  • This is a really strange downside given that it’s unlisted, and it’s the only rifle that even has it.

  • This prevents you from being unable to fire if you get popped in the air by rockets or airblast.

• 🠝) removed -10% damage on bodyshots

  • With the universal -20% damage on bodyshots, this added 10% becomes redundant as it doesn’t cross any damage thresholds

Huntsmen

• Definitely situational, but genuinely viable in my opinion. I don't think it really needs a buff.

• I think the laser sight on the rifles will really help to give this a niche, and help it combat enemy rifle snipers that usually are a struggle for the huntsmen.

• 🠟) headshot detection fix: if the arrow only hits the bounding box, it will never apply headshot damage

  • You can sometimes hit headshots that you really shouldn’t have. This video shows some weird head shots, and this one explains how the headshot detection works.

Cleaner’s Carbine

• 🠝) firing speed penalty: -25% (59.25dps) → -15% (66.25dps)

  • The cleaner is too weak to really use to defend himself even as a last resort – even melee is often better. this should make it so it's a viable self defense tool while still being distinctly weaker than stock

• ⭯) crickey charges with 2 kills (or 4 assists) instead of 100 damage

  • This makes it easier to build the crickey (generally), and it fits the theme of the weapon better as you’re supposed to be “cleaning” up already injured enemies.

Jarate

• Banned in both 6s and Highlander

• I consider this to be one of the strongest items in the entire game, as long as you use it to support your team instead of just using it selfishly. i think it’s fair to compare this to the buff banner, that item also gives mini crits for your team and that takes 600 damage to charge. This is like if the buff banner charged from resupply or after 20s – the utility is so far above almost anything else in the game. granted, it will only affect the people you splash with it, but given how common it is for players to group up in a choke or on an objective, it’s not uncommon to splash 3-6 people.

• And i want to stress how powerful mini crits are. If you splash 3+ people on the point, your team will basically win the guaranteed teamfight, which is why it’s banned in the competition. In casual, things aren’t so coordinated so it’s not as big an issue, but it’s game breaking in competitive.

• On top of that, it’s also generally a better tool for self defense compared to the smg when paired with the bushwacka, largely invalidating sniper’s close range weakness for trivial effort.

  • i believe jarate is the problem here, not the bushwacka.

• All that said, the concept is good. it’s just way overtuned.

• ⭯) instead of having a cooldown, jarate charges after taking 125 damage (ignoring fall damage)

• 🠟) jarate does not start charged, and does not refill from the resupply cabinet

  • To get jarate quickly, you have to be playing actively on the frontlines, giving enemies a chance to kill you before you get it. This is more inline with other team supporting items like the buff banner.

• 🠟) 50% smaller splash radius

  • Jarate's vanilla splash radius is almost twice as big as a rocket (visualization). there's no skill in that, and it makes it trivial* to hit someone with it, and impossible to really dodge. something this impactful should not be so easy to pull off, hence this nerf. this also limits the jarate's capacity to soak an entire team in 6s and basically win the mid fight on the spot, which is why it's currently banned

    • *) sometimes, jarate will just spontaneously evaporate. I'm not entirely sure why, but I suspect it’s because splash damage in TF2 can’t curve around slopes or edges, so if it’s on an uneven surface it won’t work properly. i think this is why many people don’t realize how massive the splash radius is, they just assume they missed when this happens. Obviously this is dumb, and I'm making these changes under the assumption that this would be fixed.

• 🠟) you can soak yourself in jarate, unless you’re using jarate to extinguish yourself

  • adds a greater execution barrier and risk to using jarate defensively. it'd actually be pretty difficult to hit someone at close range without pissing yourself, which is a necessary cost for an item that's so impactful.

Razorback

• 🠝) while crouching, gain +20% damage resistance

• 🠝) while crouching, gain immunity to flinching

• 🠟) while crouching, rifles cannot charge (and the huntsmen can’t be drawn)

  • There should be an animation with the razorback coming up when the sniper is crouched to indicate that the effect is active.

  • This actually changes how to play. you have to recognize when it’s a good time to crouch and trade mobility for resistance. it’s also a lot more versatile and useful even for good snipers, instead of just being a crutch like the current upside.

  • 20% resistance is significant enough to help against general damage, but won’t save you from a 180 damage sniper headshot, so it should be balanced.

  • Preventing charging while crouched forces the sniper to open themselves up, at least for a bit, if they want to deal maximum damage when watching an area. This forces decision making and is more interesting.

• 🠟) no longer blocks a single backstab attempt

  • This isn’t always a hard counter to spies. it’s sometimes possible to just gun down the sniper if there isn’t a sentry nearby.

  • but for the sniper, it doesn’t change how they play at all, which is the issue i have with it. for good snipers, it’s utterly unnecessary. but for bad snipers, it means they get rewarded for paying zero attention to their surroundings, which isn’t great.

  • An item that passively counters spies when you aren’t looking is a bad in principle, since that’s the only time spy can be effective.

Darwin’s Danger Shield

• 🠝) taking fatal, non critical damage will break the shield, allowing you to survive on 1 health and prevent flinching. the shield can be repaired with ammo packs (2 fulls / 4 mediums / 8 smalls)

  • This encourages you to play more actively. headshots and backstabs, the main things a backline sniper is susceptible to, will still one shot you. you have to be near the frontlines to get much benefit out of it.

  • there’s other secondaries that serve this role as well, but this isn’t a weapon you have to actively use, so it’s appealing if you want to rely solely on your aim with your primary (especially with the flinching protection).

• 🠟) removed 50% fire resistance & afterburn resistance

  • I'm removing all resistances to specific damage types. This particular case is especially egregious as it essentially just shuts down an entire class.

Cozy Camper

• 🠝) health regen doesn’t scale up; it’s always 4hp/s

• 🠝) every 12 seconds, a medium ammo box is dropped near you

  • These are more significant upsides that further reduce the need to reposition when using this.

• 🠟) bonuses will not apply with the user has taken damage in the past 8 seconds

  • I want the cozy camper to heavily push the user into a more defensive playstyle, since you really want to avoid taking damage. This suits the weapon’s intended use, and ensures it’s kept distinct from the other backpacks.

• 🠟) removed 20% knockback resistance

  • This doesn’t really change anything. any amount of knockback is going to completely mess up the precision aiming that sniper requires, so a small reduction is useless. removed for simplicity.

Tribalmen’s Shiv

• Indirect buff: spy cloak no longer halves bleed duration

• 🠝) -50% damage only applies to bleeding targets

• 🠝) +2 seconds of bleed duration (6s, 48 damage → 8s, 64 damage)

  • the intended strategy with this is to hit someone once to inflict the bleeding effect, and then switch to another weapon to deal additional damage (compared to stock, where it’s better to just keep swinging until someone dies)

  • i think this weapon’s design works in concept, the problem is just that the extra bleed damage is too insignificant and situational to ever really be worth it, especially when you factor in random crits.

  • these buffs should fix that.

• 🠟) hitting a target that’s already bleeding won’t reset the duration

  • you’re only supposed to be hitting enemies once with this, so you shouldn’t be rewarded in any meaningful way for successive hits.

Bushwacka

• I didn't nerf this weapon much at all, if anything I'd say it’s even better. this is because i believe jarate to be the problematic part of the jarate bushwacka combo.

• Being a melee on a light class with no movement options, the bushwacka is very high risk, and mini crits usually are pretty uncommon to come by so it’s quite situational. These pitfalls are what allows guaranteed melee crits on a class that’s traditionally weak at close range to be balanced.

• The issue only arises when jarate allows the sniper to get mini crits easily and consistently. when paired with literally anything else, it’s never a problem. i think this is pretty indicative of jarate being overpowered, not the bushwacka.

• 🠝) removed 20% damage vulnerability while active

  • This has been replaced by the stat below, which punishes you more appropriately for misusing jarate.

• 🠟) take crits when you'd normally take mini crits while active

  • makes the jarate bushwacka combo carry a substantial risk, because you’ll instantly die if you accidentally splash yourself.

  • beyond that, it also changes how you play. if you know your opponent has the detonator, the crit-a-cola, the reserve shooter, ext, you have to adapt and use alternative methods to defend yourself

Shahansha

• 🠝) after taking 100 damage, this weapon will mini crit on it’s next swing, or full crit after taking 200 damage.

  • This upside actually changes how you play, as you have to make decisions on when and how to use the crit.

• ⭯) removed old ±20% damage based on health

  • this is balanced, but doesn’t change how you play, so it’s replaced with the new (similar) stats.

• 🠟) 50% slower deploy speed

  • This is a necessary limitation. it gives enemies some time to react before you pull out a melee with a guaranteed crit.

  • It also makes the shahasha a lot weaker as a last resort option without a stored crit, to balance it out.

Spy

Spy is a really creative class that doesn’t really have an equivalent in any other game (except ඞ). however, spy is often considered the weakest class out of the 9, which i believe is due to these issues:

1. Predictability

   • This class is sort of a bag of tricks, but once you have like… 50 hours in the game, you will have seen most of what a spy can do, and it just becomes a matter of paying attention. For this reason, it’s tremendously difficult to get a pick on an experienced player as a spy if they are paying any attention at all (which they will be after you stab them once).

2. Spy checking is too easy

   • a defensive pyro basically prevents a spy from making any plays. disguises aren’t very effective because you can just shoot all your teammates when you know there’s a spy around to reveal them.

3. Limited playstyle variety

   • Many of the spy's weapons don’t change how you play very much (with exception). I'd say Spy is probably in the bottom 3 for variety.

   • This is sort of tied in with problem #1. if spies had more alternative loadouts and thus more ways to trick you, they’d be much less predictable.

Class Wide Changes

• 🠝) +20% damage resistance while disguised

  • This doesn't really affect actual combat sense; you'll just lose your disguise. It just means that tanking damage to pretend you are someone's teammate is more effective, adding more opportunity for trickery which is what spy is all about.

• 🠝) when disguised, you gain a set of decoy items from your disguise that you can toggle to with reload, replacing your actual weapon. decoy items can fire fake bullets/projectiles that deal no damage, and can also fake scoping in, medibeams, airblasting, revving up, ext. with your real weapons out, you’ll run at spy speed regardless of disguise, but with the decoys, you’ll run at the speed of your disguise.

  • Allows the spy to act much more convincingly, which helps trick even experienced players. It also makes the slow disguises like heavy and soldier much more useful since you don’t have to hamper your own speed so harshly. It also allows switching the held weapon without redisguising, which is nice.

  • i’m glad i’m not making this game because this would be a nightmare to program lol

• 🠝) movement speed: 107% → 111%

  • I think it’s important that a spy is faster than a medic's 107% speed. if a spy sneaks behind a medic, they shouldn't be unable to catch the medic and get the backstab just because the medic is running forward totally unaware.

  • This also serves as a good general buff to cloak management, which I'd say a spy would use.

• 🠝) spread recovery time: 1.25s → 1s (-20%)

  • This better matches the timing of the revolver reload animation

• 🠝) revolver spread resets gradually instead of only after 1 second

  • This makes the spread a little less punishing, since it won’t mess up your aim much if you fire 0.01 seconds before the spread resets.

• 🠝) while holding the disguise kit, the spy can click on any specific player, building, ammo box, or health kit to disguise as it

  • This is a fun way to give spy more ways to trick people. i don’t think disguising as buildings or health packs would be particularly effective when playing seriously, but it would be great fun in casual mode.

• 🠝) 100% faster disguise speed (2s / 0.5s → 1s / 0.25s)

  • allowing the spy to switch disguises quickly allows for more trickery (now 0.25s for switching disguises), like running around a corner, changing disguise, and switching direction to make yourself look like a different person.

• 🠝) meters (like mmmph and crickey) no longer charge from disguised spies

  • This attribute makes it too easy to fill up the meter, especially with the added damage resistance to disguises.

  • Additionally, having inconsistent ruling on whether items do or don’t charge from disguise spies is over complicated and unnecessary in my opinion.

• 🠝) invisible spies no longer make footstep sounds

  • This is VERY rarely utilized, but if you’re an absolute lunatic, you can crank up your volume and sometimes catch a spy this way. there’s not really anything the spy can do to counter this, hence it’s removal.

• ⭯) halved debuff duration while cloaked → debuffs won’t reveal the spy if they have less than ⅔ of their duration remaining

  • This allows you to escape easier after being hit with one of these effects, which I think is fair since fire, jarate, mad milk, etc can be difficult to avoid and usually guarantee death if you get hit by them.

  • however, the effects won’t be shorter, they’ll just visually disappear sooner. I don't think this will hurt too badly, but I don't like how ineffective bleed weapons are against spies.

• 🠟) removed 20% damage resistance while cloaked

  • The cloak is meant for stealth, not taking damage. a spy caught out while invisible should be vulnerable, so i prefer trading this cloak resistance for the disguise resistance above.

  • I do like the reduced debuff duration on cloak though, as cloaking away is basically the spy’s only option once they get hit with one.

• 🠟) hitboxes change to match the disguise

  • Makes headshotting disguised spies more fair.

Ambassador

• 🠝) headshot crits aren't affected by falloff, and will always deal 102 damage

  • This opens up the weapon to be better at longer range assassinations which it is meant to do. mid range headshots are hard to pull off, so i think they deserve to do more damage than they currently do.

  • Additionally, having falloff on headshots doesn't fit with this which is supposed to be able to quickly drop targets that are out of backstab range.

• 🠝) now mini crits (45 damage, no falloff) on headshot past the 1200hu headshot range

  • because the spy can appear from anywhere, i think the capability to drop snipers in just 2 shots from across the map like it was pre nerf was a bit much. Having mini crits seems like a decent compromise, as the spy has to hit at least 3 shots to do the same trick.

• 🠟) spread recovery and headshot cooldown: 0.6s → 1s

  • Makes this weapon’s spread recovery match the reload animation and be consistent with the other revolvers.

  • Moreover, this weapon already has a shorter spread recovery, and I think that stacked with the universal spread buff would be a bit much for a revolver that is supposed to be worse for sustained combat.

Enforcer

• 🠝) sleight of hand: this weapon will mini crit on the 2nd consecutive shot, and will crit on the 3rd consecutive shot onward. however, missing or pausing for too long (0.8s) will lose the crits.

  • This gives the enforcer very impressive damage once you start critting. but this is difficult to pull off, because it requires you to be very consistent (missing at all will really cripple the damage), and it takes time before the crits get rolling.

  • This is extremely effective against sentries because you’ll never miss, and gives this weapon a niche as the best anti sentry revolver.

    • sentries no longer have crit resistance

• 🠝) pierces sapper armor

  • (sapper armor is a 33% resistance sentries have while their being sapped)

  • takes the resistance piercing concept further, and reinforces the weapons new niche as an anti sentry revolver.

• 🠟) firing speed: -20% → -40%

  • a 20% slower firing speed really isn’t all that bad. with the current enforcer, you can use it the same as stock and barely even notice. This weapon needs a huge penalty like this to force you to make use of its upsides.

• 🠟) removed +20% damage on disguise

  • I was hesitant to remove this, given it’s the defining attribute of the weapon, but I don't think this is a good weapon design. the ambassador fulfills the same long range assasination roll in a better, more interesting way, so the enforcer needs to go in a different direction.

Diamondback

• Banned in both 6s and Highlander

• this idea is stolen (partly) from one of my friends

• 🠝) always perfectly accurate

• 🠝) base damage: -15% → +50% (34 → 60)

  • makes this weapon extremely powerful (can 2 shot light classes at close range), but limited by it’s tiny clip

• 🠝) on backstab: gain 2 extra bullets in the clip that can only be fired once (like overheal, but for your clip)

• 🠟) removed stored crits on backstab and building destruction

  • If there's a really oblivious engie on the other team, the spy can get a ton of free crits off them and their buildings, basically turning this situation upside into a guaranteed one.

  • having stored (zero fall off!) crits that you don’t need to hit a headshot for are also way too strong of a reward. gaining some 60 damage bullets is more reasonable.

• 🠟) clip size: 6 → 1

  • This is a severe downside that, unlike the old diamondback’s 15% damage penalty, would actually be detrimental enough to make it unfavorable for normal use.

  • However, it’s not enough to make this completely worthless without extra bullets because it can still deal better burst damage than the other revolvers, and it’s more effective for picking off targets at long range compared to stock.

Deadringer

• there’s a bug where sometimes kill sounds won’t trigger on a deadringer, which is a pretty big giveaway. this should definitely be fixed.

• 🠝) decloak is now the same volume as the stock watch decloak

  • This really helps the believability of feigning your death. The current sound is so loud that enemies can still figure out you deadringered even if you did everything right and initially tricked them.

• 🠝) 100% longer cloak duration (7s → 14s)

  • This helps you fake your death by giving you more time to escape.

  • It's especially necessary because of the removal of the speed boost, as more cloak is needed to traverse the same distance.

• 🠝) the first 3 seconds of cloak are completely invisible; particle effects from fire, the short circuit, ext won’t be applied, and damage sounds will not play.

  • This reduces the chances to accidentally catch out a dead ringer spy with lingering flames or rollers, and it also prevents pyros from tracking the spy through their cloak due to the brief blinking from each flame particle.

• ⭯) now occupies the primary slot rather than the watch slot

  • The deadringer is interesting for its potential to feign your death and genuinely deceive people, but in practice, that’s its least useful application.

  • The deadringer’s actual purpose is to be a get out of jail free card – the resistance and speed it grants heavily overshadows its intended use case because it allows the spy to escape almost any situation. This is far from ideal due to how it largely removes counterplay from the equation, while also being very easy to use.

  • However, it’s not as simple as just nerfing the damage resistance and speed. lacking a standard cloak to get behind enemy lines is a crippling downside; the dead ringer needs those attributes to be viable – at least as a watch.

  • This is why moving it to the primary slot is so important. Because it only has to compete with the revolvers rather than the invis watch, the frustrating aspects of the deadringer can be safely removed without completely killing it.

• 🠟) 75% damage reduction on activation → always survive the hit on at least 1 health

• 🠟) removed the 3 seconds of speed and 65% damage resistance after activation

  • the current deadringer is almost impossible to catch out even if you predict it. The speed and resistance it grants allows the spy to escape almost any situation, which doesn’t leave much room for counterplay.

  • These nerfs should allow the spy to actually be killable after popping.

  • I do feel it’s necessary to guarantee that the spy survives the initial activation hit though. It really helps to fake your death, especially against things like snipers and sticky traps. it shouldn’t be annoying due to how limited though, it’s only a single hit, and it doesn’t actually reduce the damage taken.

• 🠟) 20 second recharge → recharges after 2 kills (or 4 assists)

  • with this change, the deadringer is almost impossible to spam. you’ll only get to use it once or twice per life on average. This limitation pushes you towards thinking carefully about when you pop to actually make your death look plausible so as to get the most out of each charge.

• 🠟) does not recharge from the resupply cabinet (still starts charged on spawn though)

  • I think this is necessary to get you to prevent spam on the last point where the spawn room is close to the frontlines.

★ Projection in Question

• A new (name pending; TODO) primary for spy.

• creates a fake spy.

  • it looks identical to you, including your current disguise

  • it’s health will match yours, and it’s death will be identical to a real kill

  • it will path find towards the point you’re aiming at when you summon it

    • you can click again to redirect it to a different point

    • it’d be cool if the path was visually shown to you, so you can get a better idea of how it’s going to move

  • if cloaked, the hologram will appear to uncloak when it is summoned

    • this is a really unique and fun way to fool your enemies, in a similar but distinct way from the dead wringer. in comparison, it entails a lot less risk since you won’t be left on low health and don’t have to worry about escaping, but it won’t be as convincing and it makes a loud sound when created.

  • after the hologram dies, there’s a 25 second cooldown to create another one

  • when a hologram is created, there’s a loud, distinct electronic sound

    • These are appropriate downsides that add counterplay and punish you for misusing it.

Red Tape Recorder

• I hate to completely gut a weapon like this and replace it, but I can't see the tape recorder ever being anything other than annoying or bad. Its strength is that even if the engineer removes it, it’ll still demolish their buildings – but that doesn’t really afford much counterplay.

• 🠝) removed -100% damage

  • a really crippling downside that doesn’t particularly fit the theme of the weapon.

• ⭯) when a building is destroyed, you rewind, warping back to when you sapped the sentry, and also resetting your health and cloak.

  • This is a unique mechanic that really fits the weapon. it completely changes how you play and how enemies respond to you. you might try to go in for a revolver kill after you use this because you know you’ll be warped back to safety.

  • enemies can also take advantage by waiting at the sapped building to ambush you once you return, so its usefulness depends on the situation.

• 🠟) removed building deleveling while sapping

  • It's a cool idea, but in practice I don't think this works too well. The stock sapper is a lot more exciting: you either completely destroy the building or completely fail. Having this consultation mechanic really only serves to annoy engineers.

★ Grapple Hook

• a “new” secondary for spies.

• functions the same as the one in mann power, except:

  • you can’t use it while cloaked

  • grappling will undisguise you

  • it’s slower than in mannpower (equivalent to 100% speed instead of 111%)

  • you can’t grapple while holding another weapon out. it’s in its own slot.

• The sapper is still a must have in most casual games. However, giving the spy a secondary that isn’t reliant on countering enemy engineers would make the class a lot more versatile, especially in 6s where engineers aren’t often run.

Your Eternal Reward

• 🠝) removed 33% faster cloak drain

  • completely crippling and unnecessary, and doesn’t really fit the weapon. you’re supposed to rely on cloak to get your first stab since you can’t disguise, you shouldn’t be punished for doing so.

• 🠟) removed the ability to disguise with the disguise kit

  • This gives the weapon a more unified vision. you are more obvious when wandering the map, but become harder to detect after a backstab. having the ability to disguise before a backstab, even if it’s extremely limited, dilutes the core concept of the weapon.

Conniver’s Kunai

• This knife is annoying to play against because after the initial stab, there’s little you can do to prevent the spy from escaping or continuing to chain stab your teammates. Many have suggested limiting the overheal to only 180, and while I think that would help somewhat, it doesn’t address the root of the frustration.

• Moreover, having only 70 max health is sometimes unfair, and doesn’t change how you play much despite how harsh it is.

• I hate to completely gut every stat of this weapon and basically remove it from the game, but I don't think there’s any solutions to these problems that stay in line with the knife’s existing design. however, given that there’s already 2 other chainstab knives (the YEAR and big earner), turning this third most egregious one into something else is acceptable.

• Also, you could argue that the dead ringer’s damage resistance is the real problem, because it often negates the kunai’s reduced max health. I definitely agree with this – the dead ringer is a huge part of why the kunai is so despised – but all the problems I listed above still apply. I still think at least part of the problem is with the kunai itself.

• To try and preserve some vein of the knife’s concept, I kept an on backstab effect, and basically just switched the upsides and downsides to affect cloak instead of health.

• 🠝) instantly cloak after a backstab

  • This new upside fits the concept of getting a survivability bonus after cloaking, but in a more fair way because you can’t chainstab without uncloaking, and you can’t tank a ludicrous amount of damage. you’ve invisible, but still vulnerable if the opponent can predict you.

• 🠝) removed -55 max health

  • This stat is certainly detrimental, but I still feel it doesn't actually change how a spy plays in my opinion. you’re vulnerable when caught out whether you have 125 health or 70.

  • I also feel it doesn’t leave enough counterplay for the spy – it brings you into the threshold to get one shot at so many things that you can’t reasonably react to. There's a reason why every light class has 125 health minimum.

• 🠟) 20% faster cloak drain rate

  • This is a significant but manageable downside that plays off the knife’s cloaking upside.

• 🠟) removed health stealing on backstab

  • This doesn’t leave enough counterplay for enemies who pay attention and notice the spy after they get a backstab.

  • it’s also overpowered in casual mode in my opinion, since it can allow a spy to take 500+ damage if there’s enough oblivious players to subsist off of. you need to be good to do this, but i still think it’s pretty egregious.

  • there’s also the additional problem in that this is a snowballing effect that leaves the kunai with no downsides once it’s snowballing

  • replaced with the new upside.

Big Earner

• 🠝) +30% cloak on backstab → restore full cloak

  • The big earner’s extra cloak is pretty underwhelming, and I think a full cloak regen would be more meaningful. especially with the new downside.

• 🠝) removed -25 health

• 🠟) cloak no longer replenishes passively

  • this has the same problems as the kunai’s health penalty

  • -25 health, while impactful, doesn’t change how the spy plays. Yes, you’re more vulnerable when caught out, but a spy is always vulnerable when caught out (except kunai dead ringer), having 100 health doesn’t really change that or push you towards a unique way of playing. it’s balanced, but it’s not interesting.

  • In fact, I think it’s a bit unfair for the spy. Being at 100 health brings you down to threshold where you can be oneshot by rockets and pipes before you can react which doesn’t leave the spy reasonable counterplay. there’s a reason why every light class has a 125 health minimum.

  • replacing the health penalty with a lack of cloak regen avoids all those problems and actually changes how you play. harder to maintain your cloak unless you’re being aggressive and actually living up to the weapon’s name.

Spy-cicle

• 🠝) when melting, nearby teammates will also be extinguished

  • a small extra utility that adds a bit of depth to when you extinguish yourself.

★ Inside Jab

• A new knife

• Not my idea, it’s a community created weapon

• backstabbing plants a bomb inside the target that can be detonated with alt fire, killing them and damaging nearby enemies.

  • the explosion would deal up to 100 splash damage (affected by falloff)

  • multiple bombs can be implanted in someone for added splash damage

  • An incredibly nuanced, unique, and fun concept for a spy knife that opens up tons of new gameplay opportunities.

• backstabs don’t instantly kill the target; the bomb has a 3 second arm time

  • You can’t really trick stab or chain stab with this thing, dramatically changing how you play.

★ Enthusiast’s Timepiece

• a ‘new’ invis watch for spy. It’s suited for a more aggressive gun centric playstyle to fill the void of the deadringer without being annoying.

• 🠝) gain a speed boost while cloaked (and while cloaking / decloaking)

• 🠝) +100% faster decloak speed (2s → 1s)

  • increased evasion is the most fitting way to do a gun spy watch i feel. This grants just that, allowing spy to get into position, and strike quickly.

  • you could even pair this with the kunai to get a near instant 0.4 second decloak.

• 🠟) cloak is split into 3 charges, each 2.5 seconds. you must cloak 1 charge at a time.

• 🠟) -25% total cloak duration (10s → 7.5s)

  • prevents spies that use this from sitting still and waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Now, it’s more of a mobility tool for ambushes or quick escapes, with less emphasis on the traditional stealth playstyle.

Pyro

I really admire Pyro's unique gameplay and combos, but I feel TF2’s implementation of these ideas could be much better. in game currently, pyro has a number of problems:

1. General weakness

   • Pyro is a pick / support hybrid, but really isn’t good enough at either to ever be the best choice. Like anything, it can certainly work in casual mode but it’s rarely optimal, and pyro doesn’t have much use in comp beyond airblasting people off last.

2. Overly defensive playstyle

   • While not as bad as heavy in this respect, pyro’s current airblast centric meta has the potential to slow the game down.

     1. you certainly can play pyro in a more offensive way, but it’s not optimal and falls apart at higher levels of play.

3. Skill expression on pyro isn’t appropriately rewarded

   • Even if you’re somewhat good, it’s often not worth it to go for a difficult flare combo or axtinguisher finish or a reflect if you’re not certain you can hit it, because just holding down the fire button will do the same trick more consistently.

   • I'm not saying those examples I listed never have value compared to w+m1, they certainly do. but it’s not as much or as often as I feel it should be.

Class Wide Changes

• The overarching theme you’ll notice is a shift towards making pyro into a combo class, with reliance on the flamethrower being discouraged. The reason for this is that both functions of pyros primary, while interesting and fun, are annoying in excess.

• there isn’t much depth to just flaming, so it shouldn’t be pyro’s main source of damage. Air blast is pretty technical and fun, but it’s also really annoying sometimes and has the potential to slow the game down, so I opted to limit it. It's the best solution I can think of to problems 2 and 3.

• You could also completely overhaul the flame thrower into the dragon’s fury, but that would be a hard pill to swallow for pyro mains currently and I personally wouldn’t like it.

• note that afterburn, the panic attack, and the reserve shooter work differently now.

• 🠝) pyro melees now drop a small health pack on kill

  • it’s usually not a great idea to use your melee as a finisher since it entails a lot of risk for just to do what w+m1 could have accomplished more consistently. i think this would remain the same even with the +15 damage buff below. This buff is a way to make melee an effective finisher and make the reward worth the risk without giving it an absurd damage increase.

• 🠝) melee damage: 65 → 80

  • This allows pyro’s melee to have useful combat potential beyond the axtinguisher.

• 🠝) airblasting now pushes the pyro backwards (~half of the detonator)

  • Many have suggested that the pyro should have more mobility (like speed buff to 107%). I think this is fair given pyro is so limited by range. They need tools to close the distance if they are to work as a pick class.

  • this buff does just that, but it’s more interesting than just a flat speed boost because it’s a lot more deep. you have to actively decide when using it will be worth the costs; it won’t help pyros w+m1 at people. there’s also more mechanical skill to learn in how to get the optimal distance, or how to combine it with a detonator jump.

• 🠝) flames no longer deal damage based on ‘density’ (since blue moon), instead always dealing the max ramp up.

  • the damage doesn't work properly in game currently

  • Even if all those problems were fixed though, I don't think this mechanic is really good for pyro’s combo oriented design because it punishes you for switching weapons rather than continuing to apply flames. This makes more sense with the concept of pyro in the base game, but it’s out of place with this overhauled vision of the class.

• 🠝) the first flame particle emitted will travel 30% faster (and further), with a 0.1 second cooldown

  • This allows you to ‘poke’ enemies from longer ranges to set them up for a combo, or repeatedly tap the fire button to zone out certain enemies. This added a little bit more depth while bolstering pyro’s potential as a pick class.

• 🠝) flame particles now inherit the user’s velocity directly, like pre jungle inferno

  • This introduces more depth to flame manipulation, allowing you to bend how they travel based on your movement, which can help with axtinguisher combos or combos against fire resistant targets.

• ⭯) extinguishing teammates heals the teammate 50% of the damage they took from afterburn, instead of healing the pyro 20 health

  • Healing the teammate instead of the pyro is a lot more intuitive, and also enhances pyro’s supportive capabilities.

  • I think healing 50% of the afterburn damage rather than a flat 20 health is better because it means pyro can extinguish people much more efficiently than a medic can, giving pyro a supportive niche.

  • It also adds some depth into extinguish priority (it’s better to extinguish those who have been on fire for longer), which raises the skill ceiling a little.

• 🠟) overheat: flaming for too long (20%/s, 5s total) will overheat the flamethrower and force a 3s cooldown, during which you can’t flame or airblast. when not flaming, the heat will dissipate at 13.3%/s (7.5s total). additionally, airblasting will instantly reduce heat by 30% (1.5s).

  • there should be a visual indication of this, with the flamethrower getting redder as it heats up or something

  • These changes punish pyros for relying solely on flames. w+m1 isn’t exactly overpowered, it’s very easily countered. However, I'd say it’s pretty strong for how little skill it requires. it also somewhat invalidates going for the more advanced techniques because just using flames is so much more consistent, which isn’t ideal. For these reasons, a limitation is warranted.

  • The overheating mechanic also limits pyro’s capacity to constantly spy check the entire game, while still keeping flames as a very powerful spy counter. This is good, because a paranoid pyro that’s constantly spy checking is often impossible for a spy to work around. The overheat mechanic ensures there’s windows of downtime for a spy to strike, even if the pyro is extremely vigilant.

  • This also adds a ton of depth in managing your heat. For example…

    • tap firing to spy check as efficiently as possible

    • intentionally overheating to cool down faster than just letting it dissipate

    • deciding when it is or isn’t worth it to airblast to cool down

    • integrating airblast into your combos to help mitigate heat

• 🠟) airblast cooldown on miss: 0.75s → 1.2s

  • The intent is to make airblast less spammable, without diminishing the reward for restrained use of it. I feel this change is necessary because it’s sometimes too easy to get airblasts just by spamming, and because airblast has the potential to slow down games in excess.

• 🠟) airblast no longer reduces the air control of enemies

  • The way in which airblast essentially locks your movement until you hit the ground again doesn’t afford enough counterplay, so this nerf is deemed necessary.

  • explosives like rockets can launch you upward in a similar way, but the key difference is that rockets can be effectively surfed because they don’t prevent air strafing. you have some options, which makes it fair – that’s what airblast is missing right now.

• 🠟) the airblast hitbox is slightly smaller, so that you can’t airblast things directly behind or besides you. the box should also rotate based on where you’re looking instead of having a static orientation

  • airblast hitbox visualization

  • This makes airblast a bit more fair, but it doesn’t change much in terms of the execution requirement.

  • i actually much prefer the cube hitbox to a cone, because it makes reflect jumping much more consistent.

  • making the box rotate makes the distance at which projectiles can be reflected consistent, compared to how it is right now where it’s harder to reflect at certain angles.

Backburner

• 🠝) removed airblast penalty

  • replaced with ammo penalty.

• ⭯) flames crit from behind → ignite damage will crit from behind (90 damage)

  • having increased burst damage rather than a constant stream of crits is much better suited to an ambush playstyle.

  • Additionally, the back detection can sometimes be janky and annoying, because turning 90 degrees for a split second can cause you to take a bunch of damage. having a single crit at the start (like the spy knives and the backscatter) fixes this.

• 🠟) max ammo: 200 → 125

  • This makes the backburner unsustainable in long fights, as an ambush centered weapon should be. I prefer this to an airblast penalty as it also affects all pyros, instead of harshly punishing pyros who try to airblast.

Phlogistinator

• One thing that hasn't changed is the crits – I feel that with the introduction of the overheat mechanic, the phlog already has a big limitation slapped on it, so a further nerf isn’t really necessary. not to mention it’s the most iconic part of the weapon, so changing it would be quite contentious.

• 🠝) no air blast → air blast replaced with energy burst that can only delete projectiles

  • While much less useful than airblast, this at least allows phlog pyros to defend themselves while they approach to get into flamethrower range. This makes phlog pyros much less reliant on having a dedicated pocket medic, and adds more skill expression.

  • The phlog taunt is now activated with reload.

• 🠟) overheal drains 500% faster while active (15s → 3s for full drain)

  • draining overheal means the pyro has to put themself at risk to run at people with the guaranteed crits, which ensures there’s adequate counterplay even if they have a dedicated pocket medic.

Degreaser

• 🠝) removed -80% afterburn damage

  • This looks bad, but in practice it’s kind of a nothing stat. especially with the rework, you’re almost never going to finish someone off with afterburn, so this damage penalty is pretty meaningless. replaced with the overheat penalty that’s more impactful.

• 🠝) removed increased airblast cost (25 → 20)

  • This stat does also basically nothing, 8 airblasts instead of 10 almost never matters. removed for simplicity.

• ⭯) swapped deploy and holster speed. now: 60% faster holster, 30% faster deploy

  • This means two things: it’s better for combo pyro, and it’s slower to switch to the degreaser to airblast. I like this, because it gives projectile classes windows of opportunity to safely attack when the pyro pulls out their secondary, adding counterplay.

• 🠟) this weapon overheats 50% faster: 5s → 2.5s (cooling speed unaffected)

  • see class wide changes

  • This forces you to rely on your secondary more and utilize the switch speed, which is what the weapon is clearly intended for.

  • it also really limits your spy checking, which i think is a necessary downside. pyro is a combo class, so faster switch speed is extremely valuable.

Dragon’s Fury

• 🠝) never overheats

  • this maintaines the dragon’s fury’s focus on raw damage. all of the rational for overheal on the other flamethrowers doesn’t apply to the dragon’s fury.

Gas Passer

• this weapon is only banned in Highlander because of an exploit that lets you throw it through specific walls, so it’s considered mechanically broken and therefore banworthy. It’s not actually good.

• This weapon’s concept as a supportive teamplay item, similar to mad milk, doesn’t really work on pyro. unlike scout and sniper, pyro lives and dies on the damage or utility from their secondary to be effective in combat. without that, pyro is forced into a risk averse play style that’s very boring and relatively weak.

• This is why i choose to make the gas passer more of a combo weapon for the pyro themself rather than a supportive team tool.

• Indirect buff: enemies hit by the gas now count as wet

• 🠝) enemies soaked in gas take +100% ignition damage (30 → 60)

  • see afterburn rework

  • This allows the pyro to follow up on their own gas, unlocking some interesting synergy. when combined with a backburner crit, it could deal 180 damage which is pretty insane.

• 🠝) charge rate: 750 damage / 60s → 100 damage

• 🠝) now starts charged on spawn (still doesn’t refill from the resupply cabinet)

  • Pyro is a lot more reliant on they’re secondary compared to other classes, so making the gas have a high uptime is essential.

• 🠟) enemies soaked in gas won’t be ignited from non fire damage

  • This stat would be way too powerful now because of the 60 ignite damage and the significantly faster charge.

  • This team support element makes a lot of sense for the gas passer’s old design, but with the focus being shifted toward a combo weapon, it’s not needed (see explanation at the top).

• 🠟) -70% smaller base splash radius, but it enlarges to the current radius if you hit an enemy directly with the gas can

  • because of the faster charge, the gas passer is much more spamable now which could get pretty annoying. The vanilla splash radius would also make comboing with the neon annihilator too easy, so this nerf is needed.

• 🠟) charge progress resets on death

  • more of a formality. it’s so disposable now that it doesn’t really matter, but it makes it consistent with other meter based weapons.

Scorch Shot

• Changes are heavily inspired by the bad weapon balance mod

• 🠝) flares can bounce again if they hit an enemy again on the way down

  • This allows the scorch shot to potentially do some pretty serious damage – but it’s situational. it’s only better if you hit directly and the target(s) doesn’t move out of the way.

  • There's some new combo potential with airblast since you could push enemies into your flare’s bounce, which I think would be really flashy and fun.

• 🠟) removed stun and knockback

  • every stun effect has been removed

  • the slowness that’s inflicted on hit completely removes you’re ability to dodge the bouncing flare – or the pyro’s follow up attacks – which is pretty egregious in terms of counterplay

  • The knockback is fine to play against, but it’s seldom ever useful. with the new focus on the bouncing flare especially, it’s really only going to mess up your combos more than anything.

• 🠟) flares bounce up when first hitting a surface instead of instantly exploding

  • This gives the weapon a niche in area denial with ‘flare traps’ unlocking a very distinct playstyle from the detonator.

  • it also gives enemies the ability to actually dodge the splash. giving what other weapons only deal minor chip damage for afterburn is one of the biggest reasons this thing is so effective when spammed.

  • The current scorch shot makes applying afterburn essentially free, which is too strong and leaves little options for the enemy to deal with it.

Thermal Thruster

• 🠝) removed slower deploy and holster speed

  • The slow switch speed makes the thermal thruster a lot more situational than it needs to be. it already has a massive downside in that you’re giving up a damaging secondary, which is a big deal for pyro.

  • The sluggishness is also very clunky to work with, which really detracts from the fun factor.

• 🠝) recharge time: 15s → 12s

  • because pyro is such a combo centric class, secondaries need to have a high uptime. The thermal thruster doesn’t struggle with that too much, but I think it could stand to recharge a bit faster, especially given how situational it is.

• 🠝) +50% knockback taken while equipped now only applies while flying

  • This makes the downside something that can be worked around, making it less annoying, while still giving enemies a way to prevent the pyro from bombing in.

• 🠝) marked for death while flying

  • I think it’s necessary to give enemies some way to stuff a bombing pyro, or prevent a pyro from easily escaping. Making the jump have a slow delay is an okay way to do that – but it feels really clunky and unsatisfying to play with. This upside doesn’t have that problem.

Mannmelter

• 🠝) can now extinguish enemies to gain a crit

  • This keeps the upside situational, but no longer reliant on the enemy team having a pyro. it also adds a lot of depth to the weapon, since you’ll be rewarded greatly for extinguish setups.

• 🠟) removed 50% faster projectile speed

  • This stat is fairly useless since flares are already so fast and only really serves to mess up your aim if you use the other flare guns. removing this simplifies the weapon while not greatly affecting its strength.

  • Also, I feel this doesn’t really fit well; energy weapons typically have slower projectiles.

Detonator

• 🠝) removed +50% self damage (knockback unaffected)

  • For pyro to work as a pick class, this mobility from detonator jumping is needed as a gap closer to compensate for pyro's limited range. However, putting yourself down to ~140 health before you engage is too punishing. It also makes detonator jumping mostly useless for speeding up your rollout since the self damage just isn’t worth it most of the time.

  • Reducing the damage allows pyro to get more use out of this fun mechanic, and also opens up more offensive potential for the class.

  • Also, the reason why knockback isn’t affected is because it’s apparently calculated using the base damage – which really makes me wonder why valve added this stat in the first place but… whatever.

Flare Gun

• 🠝) 50% faster deploy speed

  • makes flashy flare combos more effective. This gives pyro a niche in that they can drop light classes faster with the degreaser than other combat classes. I think this is warranted given how unforgiving the flare gun is if you miss.

Fire Axe

• pyro's base melee damage is now 80, and they all grant a small health pack on kill

• I feel these universal changes are enough to make stock at least a serviceable option. The axtinguisher is a more damaging finisher, but it’s slower and more risky, so I think stock still has some advantages.

Axtinguisher

• Pyro's base melee damage is now 80, meaning this would be a mini crit for 108 (with the damage penalty removed). i’d say this is fair, it puts it about on par with a flare combo (a bit easier with a greater reward, but a lot more risky)

• 🠝) crits when hitting an enemy just as they’re ignited

  • I'm not sure how short the window should be – maybe 0.25s?

  • This legitimizes highly skillful and flashy combos that are currently only relegated to frag montages, making this an actually effective strategy. It's a high risk though. pulling it off consistently is extremely difficult (especially on good players), and you’re likely to get yourself going for it.

• 🠝) 33% damage penalty only applies to non burning targets

• 🠟) removed bonus damage based on afterburn duration

  • Having the damage based on afterburn duration is cool on paper. but in actual gameplay, makes it difficult to precisely judge how much damage it’ll do, and is needlessly complex. i prefer it to be just a flat 108 damage.

  • There's also the problem where once you build up enough afterburn where you’ll do significant damage with this, the enemy is probably already close to dead, so it’s not needed against anything short of a heavy (which you won’t be able to get in melee distance of anyways). I think it’ll be much more effective as a burst damage option.

Sharpened Volcano Fragment

• Pyro's base melee damage is now 80, meaning this now deals a base of 65 (rounded).

• 🠝) mini crits non burning targets

  • makes this weapon a sort of a reverse axtinguisher, where you use it to start your combo instead of to finish it. this would deal a total of 118 damage (with the +30 added ignite damage)

• 🠝) deals special afterburn that causes the target to take 50% extra fire damage, and has an infinite duration.

  • it should be visually different, like having the flames appear more white.

  • The 50% extra fire damage will increase the afterburn damage slightly, but it’s not really useful without comboing it with your other weapons.

• 🠟) while active, you are set on fire with (normal) afterburn, damaging you

  • This adds a bit of skill to the weapon. you really want to minimize the time you’re holding it out.

• 🠟) does not drop a small health pack on kill

  • this isn’t meant to be used as a finisher, so you shouldn’t be rewarded for using it as such.

Third Degree

• pyro melees now deal a base of 80 damage

• 🠝) high voltage: enemies to nearby enemies connected by medi beams, water, or status effects (gas passer, marked for death, banners, ext), are also damaged

  • Having the damage be connected by all kinds of things instead of just medi beams fixes the issue of the upside being too situational to be useful. a particle effect would also make this weapon’s attributes a lot more visually clear.

  • This also combines extremely well with the gas passer.

• 🠝) crits if 3 or more targets are connected

  • This allows for those magic moments where you can take down an entire combo with a single strike, without the need for random crits.

• 🠟) -35 damage (80 → 45), but only on unconnected enemies

  • used to be the only objective straight upgrade in the game. This damage penalty is significant enough to make it unfavorable for ordinary use, forcing you to utilize the voltage mechanic.

• 🠟) “removed” hitting players connected by medi beams

  • a formality. this still happens, it’s just handled by the new voltage mechanic.

Neon Annihilator

• pyro melees now deal 80 base damage

• 🠝) removes the target’s overheal, and deals it as additional damage

  • Pyro sharking is fun, but critting wet players is way too situational to work as the main upside. admittedly this stat is also quite situational, but not nearly to the same degree; there’s overhealed players in basically every game. at the very least, this stat will give this weapon a use beyond the 2fort sewers.

• 🠝) crits enemies soaked by the gas passer

  • it’s really unintuitive that this doesn’t happen, so this is an obvious change to make. I doubt this combo would be particularly effective in serious games, but it makes for a funny and interesting strategy.

• 🠟) can no longer remove sappers

  • I don't like this, I think it just infringes on the main specialty of the homewrecker.

• 🠟) -30% swing speed

  • When combined with the 20% damage penalty, this weapon is significantly worse when you aren’t utilizing its extremely powerful upsides, balancing the weapon and forcing you to change how you play.

Hot Hand

• Pyro melees now deal 80 base damage, meaning that this thing does 30 damage (rounded) instead of 28. incredible…

• 🠝) speed boost duration: 1s → 6s

  • speed on hit is a genuinely useful upside, it’s just so short with the current version that it’s essentially useless.

Homewrecker

• pyro melees now deal 80 base damage, so this would do 240 to buildings and 56 to players.

• 🠝) +75% knockback resistance while active

  • allows the pyro to use this weapon against sentries a bit more easily, and gives it some utility against heavies and knockback weapons, while still keeping it pretty situational. The hiGPS balance mod also does this same thing.

• 🠝) +100% damage to buildings → crits buildings (+200%)

  • buildings no longer have crit resistance

  • Even with the knockback resistance, it’s still pretty hard to close the distance on a sentry, so the upside will be difficult to utilize unless you’re ubered.. for that reason, i think it’s fair to go all in on the bonus and allow it to one shot buildings. that might allow a pyro to compete with soldiers and demos in terms of sentry busting, but only in specific situations.

• 🠟) sappers no longer count as buildings, meaning they take two hits to destroy

  • I feel this weapon is too strong against spies. Pyro is already a very effective spy counter, but at least a spy can usually wait for moments where the pyro is distracted to go in for the sap. This weapon negates a lot of that, since the pyro can instantly remove it.

  • This nerf makes it much tougher to remove the sapper in time, which makes it more reasonable for a spy to actually take down a sentry while a pybro is watching.

Back Scratcher

• pyro melees now deal 80 base damage

• 🠝) health packs can overheal

  • This weapon has an interesting design, but its upsides aren’t quite enough to be worth it in most situations. The powerjack also helps roamer pyros arguably even more, without sandbagging their healing from other sources. This buff should tip the scales in favor of the back scratcher for roaming, as it essentially replaces the need for a medic.

• 🠟) +20% damage (80 → 96) → +10 damage (80 → 90)

  • a 96 damage pyro melee would be a little ridiculous, since unlike heavy, pyro is fast enough to close the distance on enemies pretty effectively and has airblast to throw off enemy movement.

  • a nerf of 6 damage may not seem like a lot, but that’s enough to prevent it from one shot mini critting light classes, and puts it just 2 damage above the current backscratcher, which hasn’t proven to be problematic.

Powerjack

• pyro melees now deal 80 base damage

• it’s clearly the best option for the slot, but it’s also fun and not game breaking or annoying to play against, so i don’t wanna nerf it too harshly. Instead, I went with buffing up pyro’s other melees, which also encourages combos.

• 🠟) 20% damage vulnerability while active → marked for death while active

  • the same downside, but harsher, and more visible to enemies. This item is still very strong, but the pyro has to be more careful about when they take it out.

• 🠟) removed +25 health on kill

  • 25 health is too little to really make a difference in most situations, so removing it just simplifies the weapon without nerfing it too harshly.

  • it’s also been made even more redundant, because pyro melees give a small health pack on kill anyways.

Engineer

engineer has two major problems:

1. Overly defensive focus

   • this is bad because it slows down games

2. Too slow to adapt

   • setting up buildings generally takes too long to keep up in faster paced modes like 5cp, even when using the unlocks that are specifically designed to do that as fast as possible.

   • maps where the spawns change frequently are especially bad for engineers.

Class Wide Changes

• 🠝) buildings can be hauled while they are constructing

• 🠝) building redeploy speed: 100% faster → 200% faster

  • Both of these changes allow the engineer to play more creatively and aggressively (less punishment for moving buildings), raising the engie's skill ceiling and helping the class keep up in more dynamic game modes that require more active playstyles. It makes engineering more generally applicable without taking away from the specialties that make the class unique.

  • you could also just increase the base construction speed or something, but i think these changes are much more interesting and add more depth.

• 🠝) level 3 teleporter recharge: 3s → 0.5s

  • The teleporter is often said to be engie’s most impactful building, but honestly I think their strength is kind of overblown.

  • if a bunch of people die at once, they can’t all reenter the fight together via the teleporter which is a huge limitation, especially given how players respawn in waves. This new level 3 teleporter wouldn’t have that problem, allowing engineers to better support their team much better.

  • Also, I feel the final teleporter upgrade is somewhat superfluous as it’s only a 2 second difference from level 2 - 3. This fixes that.

• ⭯) dispensers heal in bursts instead of continuously (40 / 60 / 80 based on level) every 4 seconds. (the time between bursts is independent to each player)

  • I see this as a buff (although it’s technically not), as you could run by a dispenser and instantly get the health boost, similar to health packs, instead of having to wait around. I think this allows the engineer to support their team a lot better.

  • However, the overall heal rate is still the same, so it still won’t have a chance of outdoing a medic or anything crazy like that.

• 🠟) buildings no longer have crit immunity

  • This gives more options to destroy buildings which adds more counterplay and helps to balance out the above buffs. I see no reason why the kritzkrieg or buff banner should be useless against sentries - it’s arbitrary and unnecessarily restrictive.

    • An interesting quirk of this is that it allows pyros to flare punch buildings, similar to enemy pyros. I don't see this being very impactful as sentries usually zone pyros out.

    • Another oddity is that sappers are also buildings, and thus can be one shot with a crit wrench swing – but again, it’s extremely niche.

• 🠟) sentries have an added 0.15 second delay before they start shooting

  • enables you to maybe not instantly die if you turn a corner and there's a sentry you didn't know was there, and makes corner peeking the gun a little easier and less tedious.

• 🠟) the panic attack is no longer equipable

  • This weapon’s concept doesn’t really vibe with engineers – it’s pretty poor as a primary weapon. Right now it can sort of work, but especially after it's reworked, it’s almost always better to use stock.

  • I don't think there’s a way to make it work on an engineer without compromising its identity, so just cutting it from his arsenal is the best option.

Pomson 6000

• 🠝) 80% faster projectile speed

• 🠝) 25% faster reload speed

  • makes this not suck to the point of being worse than the rescue ranger for combat.

• 🠝) penetrates through players, dealing mini crits

  • This is a unique upside that helps out is low damage output (especially at mid to long range) to help make it usable.

• 🠟) does not grain uber or cloak

  • because this slows down the game, and is absolutely zero fun to play against.

Widowmaker

• 🠝) max damage per shot: 90 → 105 (per pellet base damage: 6 → 7)

  • This weapon severely cripple’s your ability to sustain your buildings and perform your class role, and the benefits it provides are a bit more situational than I think most people realize. How often do you really use more than 6 shots in a single fight? it’s just not worth the gamble the vast majority of the time.

  • This damage buff makes it on par with the scattergun, which should help to offset the risk.

• 🠝) shooting disguised spies will restore metal

  • This weapon is already so risky to spy check with, so such a harsh punishment for catching out a spy in spite of that isn’t warranted.

• 🠟) removed +10% damage to sentry’s target

  • This stat is both extremely insignificant, and a poor choice for the widowmaker. the weapon forces you to shift resources away from your buildings towards your own combat potential, so giving a bonus in conjunction with your sentry doesn’t really fit.

Wrangler

• Banned in 6s

• Heavily inspired by uncle dane’s suggestions, with some modification

• 🠝) sentry firing speed: +100% (minis) / +67% (level 1) / +50% (level 2+) → +150% (all)

  • Because the aim assist has been removed (see below), I think having an even stronger damage increase is deserved since it really demands a lot of the engineer.

  • Having different firing speed bonuses for different sentry levels is unnecessary and overcomplicated, so having a consistent bonus just streamlines things.

• 🠝) removed delay to reactivate auto aim

  • With these weapon’s new focus on the offensive potential, having this long delay isn’t really necessary, and it prevents the engine from using the wrangler in conjunction with their other weapons.

• 🠝) 80% less self damage from sentries (knockback is identical)

  • makes sentry jumping more viable since it now doesn’t remove half of the engie’s health. this is balanced because it still has a high cost (building a sentry) and is very risky (engie is weaker when alone, and has to leave their buildings at risk)

• 🠟) removed sentry shield (66% resistance) while active

  • making your sentry have up to 651 effective health is extremely powerful, and would need a massive cost to the engineer to make it balanced. Currently, the only cost is that you need to aim your gun, but that is pretty insignificant compared to tripling the durability of your sentry, especially considering the generous aim assist.

  • Even if it was balanced, I'm not sure it would be healthy for the game as it requires a massive effort to destroy and slows down matches significantly.

  • I also agree with uncle dane that this doesn't really fit the theme of the weapon.

• 🠟) removed sentry aim assist

  • doubling your sentries damage for the cost of manual aiming should require the engie to actually aim. This aim assist is so generous that it removes most of the execution barrier, so this change should increase the skill ceiling for this weapon significantly.

  • Also, this would let you manually aim the rockets at the people's feet to combo them, which is a cool silver lining and further adds to the skill ceiling.

Short CIrcuit

• Banned in both 6s and highlander

• 🠝) energy ball cost: 65 → 25

  • I've given these weapons a significant execution cost, so it’s more than fair to reduce the resource cost to compensate.

• 🠟) 80% smaller energy ball size

  • Airblast is fair because it requires precise timing, which gives the opponent some counterplay (you can space out your shots to throw off the pyro's timing). The short circuit swapping the timing requirement for a metal cost removes most of that counterplay – there’s not much you can do to bypass an engie who manages their metal effectively.

  • It's also pretty overpowered when you can get unlimited metal from the payload, allowing the engie to spam it.

  • making the energy ball smaller gives the short circuit, like airblast, counterplay. projectile classes can shoot the projectile at a weird angle to avoid the energy ball.

• 🠟) removed primary fire. the energy ball now is the primary fire

  • The primary fire is currently too weak to be of any use. However, I feel it can’t really be buffed, because it would largely invalidate the pistol’s self defense role. To keep the weapon’s identity more cohesive, I think just removing the primary fire is the best course of action.

★ Texas Instrument

• A new secondary for engineers. designed to kinda fill the void from the removal of the wrangler’s shield, while actually being balanced.

• can boost a selected building by pointing at it

  • increases the building’s speed (firing speed / heal & ammo rate / recharge time) by 40% for 15 seconds

  • grants the building a shield (like the wrangler) with 20% damage resistance

  • boosting a building costs 150 metal

Jag

• 🠝) building construction rate: +30% → +50%

  • As shown by this clip, the jag’s faster speed is honestly mostly placebo – the difference only comes out to a couple seconds. granted, this isn’t nothing, but it’s not impactful enough to distinguish it from the stock wrench.

  • exaggerating the upside should make it more significant, making the jag more interesting.

• 🠟) repair rate: -20% → -40%

  • The jag is meant to be worse at keeping buildings up, but that currently only applies to sappers; it usually takes the same number of hits to repair most things.

  • granted, the jag is slightly worse at dealing with damage over time, but this isn't a significant enough downside – the jag is only worse if there’s a competent spy on the enemy team. This repair nerf is always relevant, and serves as a heavy tradeoff compared to stock.

• 🠟) -33% damage now applies to players, not just sappers, and is rounded to 40

  • This barely changes anything, only lowering the already pitiful damage to players (52 → 40). However, having two different damage penalties is a little clunky, so combining them just makes the description a lot more streamlined.

Southern Hospitality

• In its current form, it’s boring and too similar to stock. I think what they were going for is a more defensive wrench (counters spies, but weak to pyros if you’re roaming), but the downsides and upsides are too inconsequential to make a huge difference for either playstyle.

• 🠝) +250% dispenser range

  • there should probably be a little circle on the ground to indicate the radius.

  • A lot of people have suggested this stat, and I quite like it. It's a good way to make this wrench better at defending in a way that’s supportive, and doesn’t slow the game down. it also really fits with the weapon’s theme of “hospitality”

• 🠝) removed 20% fire vulnerability

  • This is more or less a nothing stat. engineers can usually just zone pyros out with their sentry. even if they get hit by a flare or something, 20% isn’t a huge difference. removed for simplicity, and replaced with the more impactful downside below.

• 🠟) movement speed on user: -12% (300hu/s → 264hu/s)

  • This is the same speed as a demoman. it limits the engineer’s ability to move around the map, and fits the solitary play style this wrench is meant for.

★ Industrial Might

• A new wrench for engineers.

• Sentry is replaced with factory

  • factories spawn MvM bots for your team

  • bots are constructed every 9 / 6 / 3 seconds (based on level), up to a maximum of 2 / 3 / 4 bots at once.

  • The factory will build classes in a preset order (the same as the class list), and always with a stock loadout.

  • One bot will always stay behind to guard the factory. The rest will wait until a full squad of 1 / 2 / 3 bots is ready, and then will proceed to the objective together.

  • bots are unable to cap objectives, they can only guard them.

• This wrench offers a completely different playstyle to senties. factories are much more prone to getting rushed down, and require constant attention, but can potentially have great offensive potential if not dealt with.

★ Handy Pardner

• A new PDA. i didn’t come up with this idea, this is basically the engiepads mod. This video demonstrates how they would work, and this video shows some in-game applications from the balance mod.

• ⭯) teleporter entrance → speed pad

  • grants a 3 second speed boost to teammates that walk over it.

  • has a cooldown of 1.5s / 0.5s / 0s (based on level).

• ⭯) teleporter exit → jump pad

  • grants a massive boost to jump height to teammates standing on it, which increases even further if you are crouching.

  • it has a cooldown of 1.5s / 0.5s / 0s (based on level)

• The two pads aren’t linked like teleporters are. so healing / sapping one won’t affect the other, and their cooldowns are independent of one another.

  • I feel this is vital to making engineers work better in a more aggressive class without encroaching on his signature defensive capabilities. It's a great option for situations where teleporters usually aren’t very useful, like 5cp or last point holds. It also opens up a ton of interesting gameplay possibilities.

  • One difference from the balance mod is that you must have both a speed pad and a jump pad. I feel a 2nd speed pad would be more versatile and useful than a jump pad the vast majority of the time. without this restriction, many would just never use the jump pad, which would be a shame. requiring use of both a speed and jump pad forces the engineer to be more creative.

Medic

Medic is mostly good, and has an okay-ish playstyle variety (the mediguns are very distinct), and ubercharge is great for the flow of the game. however there’s one major problem:

1. Medic’s meta is stale: the primary and melee slots pretty much have 1 definitive option

Class Wide Changes

• 🠝) melee kills now heal the medic for 2x the overkill damage, which can overheal

  • this allows melee damage to help medic’s survivability in a meaningful way, and it makes damage penalties on utility melees more significant (less damage = less healing & reduced survivability)

• 🠝) syringe projectiles fall 50% slower

• 🠝) syringe guns now reload passively

  • gives the syringe guns extra general applicability with less commitment and increased range, similar to the crossbow.

• 🠝) syringe gun base damage: 10 → 15

• 🠝) +100% firing speed (9.5/s → 19/s) (0.26s per burst)

• ⭯) syringe guns now shoot in a single burst of 5 before reloading.

  • much less overall dps, but with much greater burst damage. This is better suited to medicine, because you should be on your medigun most of the time doing your class’ primary function, only briefly switching to your primary. Having a weapon with a constant rate of fire like the current syringe guns basically forces them to be either bad (no utility, poor self defense) or overpowered (medic can defend themselves caught out alone).

  • Having this limited burst fire makes it bad for 1v1 engagements where it’s the only source of damage, so alone medic is still easy pickings. However, the increased burst damage makes it a decent additional source of damage alongside your team, like for finishing off injured targets.

  • it’s also good to go for a few popshots to buff up your regen (see below stat)

• ⭯) base regen rate: 3h/s → 1/hs. however, it can scale up to 5h/s by dealing 200 damage (+0.02h/s per 1 damage). this regen bonus degrades at a rate of 0.16h/s² (25s total)

  • This makes damaging weapons a lot more useful for survivability (without making medic’s combat potential too strong), since they can boost regen.

  • It also opens up an interesting risk reward dynamic, where injured medics might want to try and take risks to deal damage in order to regenerate faster.

• 🠟) mediguns can’t overheal other medics

  • key word: mediguns. you can now use the overdose for this purpose

  • This doesn’t really affect casual so much because the medics will usually spread out, but in competitive, 2 medics is a really powerful strategy that I think needs to be honed in.

  • Furthermore, I feel that having 2 medics makes the game a little less exciting, because it makes the med pick into just a med pick, not nearly as impactful. so i’d like to discourage that in competitive, or at least relegate it to more of a situational tactic.

• 🠟) uber build rate is halved when healing patients that any overheal, rather than only those above 142.5% health.

  • This mechanic is really important for encouraging medics to help the team rather than just the one friend they're on call with. but sometimes, it isn’t as effective a deterrent as it should be. if you’re in combat, your patient will probably be below 142.5% health anyways, so the penalty won’t affect you very much.

  • Also, the quickfix can completely ignore this penalty because of its reduced maximum overheal. this change prevents that.

    • I could apply this change just to the quickfix, but that feels a little clunky to me. how do you write the stat text for that in a way that a new player could understand? besides, pocketing is sort of a problem in general, so I feel making this a universal change is warranted.

Syringe Gun

• no direct changes, but syringe guns and regen have been reworked, see class wide changes. This makes the syringe gun’s higher damage genuinely useful, as it can serve as an effective finisher against injured enemies, and can bolster the medic’s regen rate more effectively than the other primaries.

Blutsauger

• note that syringe guns are reworked, see class wide changes

• 🠝) healing on hit: 3 → 12

  • I'd say heal on hit is a pretty good way to have a survivability syringe gun, but because there’s fewer syringes being shot, it needs to be increased. with this, the medic could heal a max of 60 health in a burst. That might sound like a lot, but that’s only if all 5 syringes hit with max ramp up, so typically you’d be healing ~40, which I'd say is fair.

• 🠝) removed penalty to passive healing

  • it’s kind of a nothing stat as you’ll be on your medigun most of the time anyways, and it doesn’t fit the weapon’s theme of survivability.

• 🠟) 400% longer reload time (1.3s → 5.2s)

  • This severely limits its damage output. so you’re trading self defense and increased regen (see class wide changes) for instant healing.

  • syringe guns now reload passively, so this isn’t as bad as it seems.

Overdose

• note that syringe guns are reworked, see class wide changes

• 🠝) syringes heal teammates for 12 health per syringe (affected by ramp up and falloff), which can overheal

  • This is a decent sidegrade to the crossbow. The healing isn’t as strong and is more hampered by range, but unlike the crossbow, it can overheal.

  • This is also the only way a medic can overhear another medic.

• 🠟) removed speed boost based on ubercharge while active

  • I don't like this upside in concept, since if it was buffed to be on par with the crossbow, it would allow medic to escape too easily without an added risk like the escape plan.

  • I also feel it doesn’t fit the theme of the weapon particularly well, so it’s replaced with an entirely new upside.

• 🠟) base damage: 13 → 7 (-42%)

  • gives it a significant downside compared to stock. The vanilla damage penalty is barely noticeable.

Crusader’s Crossbow

• 🠟) heals disguised spies

  • spy checking is now delegated to syringe guns, as that gives them a unique way to enhance medic's survivability while keeping medic weak in a 1v1 scenario. The crossbow isn't really meant for spy checking anyways and has so many other things going for it, so this is a relatively minor nerf.

Vaccinator

• Banned in 6s

• For casual, this is the single strongest item in the game in my opinion. It's also very unfun to fight casually and competitive, which i suspect would be the case even if it was more balanced. It's really frustrating to pick classes, as an ambush from them can be completely nullified by a bubble that took 6-8s to charge. In addition, it also tends to slow the game down because it’s really good for survivability, but poor for actually pushing.

• On the flip side however, I actually really like the multiple ubers this has. as overpowered as it is, you need to be good to get much use out of it. The vaccinator demands a lot of improvisation and awareness out of medicine, raising the skill ceiling drastically, which is great.

• Basically, this needs an entirely reworked design that’s balanced and fun to fight while keeping the multiple ubers. I really like Theory Y’s idea to shift to more offensive ubers as it does just that, so I stole it and made some minor modifications.

• 🠝) +60% uber duration (2.5s → 4s)

  • This also allows vaccinator medics to build up big pushes more effectively (max 16s duration with all 4 bubbles) which is good because it suits the reworked ubers and helps power through strongholds to break stalemates like the other mediguns.

• ⭯) bullet resistance → shield bubble: 35% damage resistance

  • this is low enough that the medic and their pocket will actually be killable.

  • i chose to discard the crit resistance because I'm not a fan of it in general.

• ⭯) blast resistance → speed bubble: +20% movement speed

  • allows for interesting plays, and opens up a lot of ubersaw potential, but there’s quite a lot of risk to this as you and your pocket will still be somewhat vulnerable.

• ⭯) fire resistance → haste bubble: +40% firing speed AND +40% switch speed. automatic weapons will get the firing speed increase, the rest will get the reload speed increase.

  • This is a good offensive bubble because it doesn’t infringe on what the kritzkrieg does, and is useful to all classes.

• 🠟) removed 66% faster uber build rate (6s per bubble → 10s)

  • making bubbles last slightly longer but charge slightly slower punishes the medic more harshly for misusing them, and helps to balance out the increased duration (as Theory Y points out, this keeps the uptime almost the same).

  • it also makes tracking uber of a vaccinator medic more possible since it has the same build rate as stock, and pops bubbles less frequently.

• 🠟) removed passive resistance to the currently selected damage type

  • this wouldn’t make sense with the reworked ubers obviously, but it’s also a pretty egregious stat in my eyes because it undermines the entire playstyle of the vaccinator. Having many fast charging, but significantly weaker ubers means you have to make quick decisions and pop ubers more liberally to be effective. This passive resistance that reduces the need to pop bubbles completely contradicts that.

  • Additionally, the actual effect this has is usually negligible (except against quickscopes, but those deal increased damage now so they’d still be able to kill anyways). This stat is therefore redundant.

Quick-Fix

• This is a difficult weapon to fix. it’s clearly the worst medigun in casual while simultaneously being banned in 6s for very good reason.

• Currently, you can build uber at max rate with this even while pocketing a single player because of the overheal penalty, but uber now builds slower on any overheating so this no longer happens.

• 🠝) no flashing penalty; this medigun instantly switches heal targets

  • This is designed to buff the quickfix specifically in 12v12 where it is too weak. it’s more effective the more players there are. you’ll also be healing up targets to full fast – so you’ll be switching targets more often, meaning you can benefit a lot from this buff.

• 🠝) 10% faster build rate → 50% faster (36s → 20s)

  • I believe having the quick fix charge faster than the other mediguns is crucial to giving it a more active playstyle. you can’t wait around for the enemy medic’s uber because it’s much stronger. instead, you have to use your pop first to try and catch them out and press your advantage before they get theirs.

  • This also helps it out in casual comparison to 6s, because there’s more players to build off of, allowing you to exploit the faster buildrate more.

• 🠟) -50% ubercharge duration (8s → 4s)

  • this is to compensate for the faster build rate (see above)

• 🠟) can only follow blast jumping teammates when above half health

  • In casual, this is great fun. but it’s a big problem for competition because it gives the medic an escape tool at basically zero cost. In a coordinated environment, a teammate will always be there to allow the medic to escape.

  • This should fix that, while not really affecting casualness as medics can usually only use this to jump into a fight, not to escape.

Bonesaw

• no direct changes, but medic melees now heal on kill, and regeneration is reworked to scale with damage. both of these make the bonesaw’s higher damage a lot more useful for survivability.

• I still doubt these changes would lead experienced medics to opt for the bonesaw, but it atleast makes it serviceable, especially for new players.

Vita-Saw

• note that medic melees now heal on kill, and regeneration is reworked to scale with damage

• Even ignoring how horribly it's balanced, this weapon's whole design of making dying as a medic less punishing is unhealthy for the game as it makes the medic pick easier and less important, which is just less exciting. This needs a complete rework.

• ⭯) organs are consumed during uber to increase the duration by 25% (+2s, or +1s on vacc), with a visual effect to indicate the longer uber to enemies.

  • This boosts medic’s uber, but in a different way from the ubersaw (frequency vs duration) that changes how you play. This is a much better utility because it’s fun to use (even stronger ubers, and doesn’t require you to die), and it makes the game more exciting (higher risk/reward).

• 🠟) 50% slower swing speed

  • This makes exploiting bad players to get a 2nd or 3rd swing much more difficult, while not affecting the time for a single swing much. I think this is fair, since the usual risk that keeps this balanced doesn’t really apply when you’re fighting a gibus spy with 10 hours in the game.

Uber-Saw

• this weapon is indirectly nerfed because you won’t gain uber from disguised spies

• 🠟) swing speed: -20% → -50%

  • This makes exploiting bad players to get a 2nd or 3rd swing much more difficult, while not affecting the time for a single swing much. I think this is more than fair. The usual risk that keeps this balanced doesn’t really apply when you’re fighting a gibus spy with 10 hours in the game, and good players won’t give you an opportunity for more than 1 swing anyways.

• 🠟) does not heal on kill

  • This forces medic to make a sacrifice to survivability (similar to the vitasaw’s health penalty), which reinforces the high risk high reward playstyle of the weapon.

Amputator

• note that medic melees deal 75 damage and heal on kill (see class wide changes)

• 🠝) +42% healing from taunt: 105 (23.8hp/s) → 150 (34hp/s)

  • The taunt is a really unique strategy, and it deserves to be more practical.

  • i prefer strengthening the healing as opposed to allowing the taunt to be canceled like some others have suggested. keeping the action high risk is more interesting and keeps the game moving forward.

  • in most situations, you can actually heal people faster with stock and the crossbow, which a large part of what makes the taunt almost never a good option. increasing the heal rate should alleviate this.

• 🠟) removed faster regen rate while active

• 🠟) damage: 60 → 40 (-20% → -47.6%)

  • This weapon needs a significant sacrifice to survivability to balance out the huge potential impact of the taunt heal.

Solemn Vow

• note that medic melees heal on kill (see class wide changes)

• 🠝) now reveals meters for any item that isn’t a medigun (banners, mmmph, heads, cloak, ext).

  • This provides the medic with information that’s useful (the theme of the weapon) without eliminating the need for uber tracking.

• 🠝) removed 10% slower swing speed

  • this isn’t even noticeable. replaced with the damage penalty.

• 🠟) can no longer see uber of enemy medics

  • Currently, this weapon mostly eliminates the need for uber tracking which is really important in comp, making an otherwise interesting weapon a boring crutch.

• 🠟) damage: 75 → 30

  • This is so low that it offers no survivability benefit to the medic, which is an appropriate downside.

★ Inverse Inject

• A new melee for medic that opens up some interesting combat potential

• 🠝) hitting an enemy will debuff them for 15 seconds. healing they recieve during the duration will instead damage them. it also allows them to be targeted by mediguns.

  • This opens up some interesting combat potential for medic, allowing you to turn your supportive capability into damage. granted, the stock medigun will only deal 24 dps which isn’t crazy, but when the effect is combined with a quickfix uber, the overdose, crusader's crossbow, or even the amputator, there’s some potential there.

  • but this is very risky since you have to get a melee swing off first. Not to mention, engaging in combat as a medic is generally ill advised. so it’s definitely a very situational, but fun, unlock.

• 🠟) damage: 65 → 15

  • an appropriate downside that compliments the weapon’s debuff very nicely. you are supposed to kill enemies with healing, not by doing damage directly.

Multi-class Weapons

Panic Attack

• balanced, but too similar to stock. it needs to change how you play more.

• 🠝) this weapon reloads passively while stowed

• 🠝) 35% faster reload speed (1s → 0.65s)

  • leans into the idea of a combo shotgun that the faster switch speed seems to imply – you don’t have to spend time reloading.

• 🠝) removed increasing spread on successive shots

  • this doesn’t really affect much of anything. at the range where the spread will make a real difference, a shotgun is only going to be dealing chip damage anyways, so the penalty is negligible.

  • not to mention, it’s so quick to reset the spread. even just the time you take to line up a shot is often enough.

  • The replacement downside below is a very extreme, but effective way to disincentive prolonged use.

• 🠟) -5 clip size

  • This ramps the idea of successive shots becoming less effective up to 11: it’s literally incapable of sustained fire. It also makes it radically different from stock. it has superior damage and speed, but doesn’t stand on its own.

Reserve Shooter

• It’s banned in 6s and Highlander because it’s way too strong at denying bombs, which slows down games.

• 🠝) now mini crits enemies after they’ve been airblasted out of the air. so airblasting someone off the ground won’t work – you have to either airblast them away after they explosive jump, or airblast them twice.

  • This gives the reserve shooter better use on pyro by allowing them to combo with airblast, but to a limited degree. I think this is a fair compromise between the glory days of pre jungle inferno and the game currently.

• 🠟) now only crits enemies launched airborne by you or your team, not those who are rocket jumping. hitting an airshot rocket also counts.

  • This heavily nerfs the reserve shooter’s capacity to deny bombs, which should get it unbanned. but it’s still pretty good for most soldiers who use it as a combo tool.

B.A.S.E Jumper

• It’s banned in 6s because it can allow a soldier or demo to hover over mid indefinitely, allowing them to spam down safely, outside the effective range of the standard 6s comp. in casual though, it’s generally just kinda bad – a competent sniper basically forces you to switch loadouts.

• 🠝) no longer halts horizontal momentum after deployment

  • This gives it some application for interesting rocket jumps, allowing a skilled user to fly more quickly and offset its weakness against hitscan. I believe this would be fair since your movement path will still be very predictable (low air control).

• 🠝) demoknight can now deploy the base jumper while charging

  • makes this item actually useful for demoknights. i doubt you could do anything too crazy with it to surpass the booties but it'd be another fun option.

• 🠝) can be redeployed while in the air 0.8s after dropping

  • This allows you to throw off the timing of people trying to shoot you out of the sky, and adds some counterplay to the sniper matchup.

• 🠟) taking 50 damage or flying into a wall at high speed will cause the parachute to fail, and be unable to be redeployed until you hit the ground again.

  • there should probably be a hud element that indicates the remaining health of the parachute.

  • This prevents hovering over mid and spamming down in 6s, as someone who does this can get focused down and shot out of the sky, even with a pistol.

  • it also hones in the buff to horizontal speed, as you have to be careful not to hit any walls if you're trying to gain a lot of speed to use with this.

Pain Train

• I don't think this really changes how you play, at least not enough. There's also a big problem in that this thing is completely useless on defense. This is only an issue for attack defense now since payload has been reworked, but it’s still something I'd like to address.

• ⭯) +1 cap rate → gain a speed boost while near objectives

  • I believe this is a tad stronger than the old upside, but most importantly, it’s not exclusive to offense.

• ⭯) 10% bullet vulnerability → -15 max health

  • equivalent to a ~10% damage vulnerability to all sources. i wanted to make it a little bit harsher to encourage you to utilize the upside.

  • a max health reduction is more quantifiable

Learning Experience

Many have observed how TF2 can be deceptively hard to get better at if you're new. The in-game resources for learning are very lackluster, forcing a reliance on community created guides that you won’t know about until you’re already deep into the game. Additionally, the game’s wide array of unlockable items massively amplifies the amount of things a new player has to learn; thus making the game a lot less accessible than it could be. The following changes are my solutions to those problems.

Boot Camp

• there’s 9 different tutorials, one for each class

• First stage:

  • a tutorial for those who just started playing the game

  • if this is the first one you’ve selected, it will be a ‘simple’ version that teaches the basic controls (how to move, look around, switch your weapons, ext), while subsequent ones will skip past it

    • the basic controls section should be quick to get through if you’re already familiar with FPS games

  • explains the functions of the class’ stock weapons by shooting at targets that don’t fight back

  • has you fight some easy bots using the knowledge you’ve learned

    • you can actually die, but not much progress will be lost

• Second stage:

  • takes place on an existing, with a scripted scenario that more closely resembles an actual TF2 match

    • heavy:

      • attack defend / defense

      • team: 1 medic, 1 engineer, 1 pyro, 1 soldier

        • the medic always pockets you

      • enemies: 3 soldiers, 1 demo, 2 scouts, 1 spy, 1 sniper

        • it should be basically impossible to survive unless you’re protecting your medic

    • demoman:

      • payload / defense

        • you should be forced to utilize sticky traps

      • team: 3 scouts, 1 heavy, 1 sniper

      • enemies: 1 soldier, 1 scout, 1 pyro, 1 engineer, 1 heavy

    • soldier:

      • payload / offense

      • team: 1 scout, 1 pyros, 1 spy

      • enemies: 1 engineers, 2 heavies, 1 demo

        • the bot always a sentry nest on each point

          • teaches you how to spam out a sentry, and how to capitalize on a spy sap

    • scout:

      • 5cp

      • team: 1 medic, 1 soldier, 1 pyro

      • enemies: 1 medic, 1 scout, 1 soldier, 1 engineer

        • the engineer always builds a sentry nest on last that essentially requires an ubercharge to push through

          • teaches you to target enemy medics to gain uber advantage

    • sniper:

      • king of the hill

      • team: 2 soldiers, 1 pyro, 1 heavy, 1 demo

      • enemies: 1 medic, 1 soldier, 1 scout, 1 sniper, 1 spy

        • teaches you to target the medic to gain advantage

        • gets you into sniper duel – though it should be pretty easy

        • teaches you to build awareness to spies

    • spy:

      • attack defend / offense

      • team: 1 pyros, 1 soldier, 1 heavy

        • impossible for your team to push past a sentry unless you sap it

      • enemies: 1 engineer, 1 medic, 1 pyro

        • forces you to sap engineer buildings

        • teaches you how to avoid pyros (the AI should be pretty dumb so that it’s not too difficult)

        • teaches you to target medics for advantage

    • pyro:

      • attack defend / defense

      • team: 1 medic, 1 engineer, 1 sniper

      • enemy: 4 spies, 1 soldiers, 1 demo

        • teaches you to spy check and protect your team

        • gives you opportunity to practice airblast against projectile classes

    • engineer:

      • payload / defense

      • team: 1 pyro, 1 sniper, 1 heavy

      • enemy: 1 spy, 1 medic, 1 demo, 1 scout

        • teaches you how to deal with spies

        • teaches you how to fall back after an uberpush

    • medic:

      • attack defend / offense

      • team: 1 soldier, 1 demo, 1 heavy

      • enemy: 2 engineers, 1 spy, 1 sniper, 1 scout

        • the engineer’s force you to build uber, teaching you survivability

        • all the pick classes are present, forcing you to learn how to survive against them

★ Welcome Mat

• A new mode, intended to be a good entry point to multiplayer.

  • Highly inspired by the mode in Garden Warfare of the same name

• Can only be played by accounts below level 8.

  • a new player can still skip right to casual at any time, but they will be guided towards this mode

• Only stock items are allowed

  • you also won’t get random item drops in this mode

• Only 5 maps, one for each casual gamemode.

• Gives warnings about team composition on the class selection screen

  • should have at least 1 medic

  • should have at least 3 power classes

  • should have at least 1 pick class

  • should have no more than 3 of a single class

Item Progression Rework

• random item drops will give you the more straightforward unlocks when you’re new:

  • items should be in 3 tiers of complexity:

    • beginner: always has a chance to drop

    • intermediate: only level 8+

    • advanced: only level 15+

    • list of item tiers

      • all of the additional items i’ve added would probably be in the advanced tier, since they are all pretty complicated.

  • This makes it easier for new players to start using the unlockables they do get. it also allows for the progression of ideas by ordering the unlocks. For example, it's a lot easier to understand the scorch shot and detonator if you’ve unlocked the flare gun first.

  • these tiers wouldn’t be visible in any way.

• specific items can be acquired by completing missions, allowing you to bypass the random drop system completely

• you’ll be more likely to acquire items for the class you were playing

• you’ll never get duplicates until you have everything

  • maybe the drop rate should be slightly reduced to counterbalance this

★ Missions

• These are single player maps built into the game.

• features unique gameplay scenarios, many of which teach a specific unlockable weapon (or gameplay mechanic) and will then reward you with it afterward

  • parkour courses

  • stealth heists

  • boss battles

  • survival missions

  • combat arenas

    • they will usually force you into a preset class and loadout, but more advanced missions might give you some options

• missions are divided into 4 tiers:

  • beginner: always available

  • intermediate: level 8+ only

  • advanced: level 15+ only

  • expert: level 25+ only

    • Some of these expert missions won’t really be tutorials at all, just pure gameplay. the ones that are will teach an advanced mechanic (bhoping, chaining rockets, airblast combos, ext)

    • instead of rewarding an item, they’ll unlock a contract that requires you to make use of the mechanic you learned.

    • expert missions won’t be accessible until you’ve unlocked the items that are used in it

Casual

Core Game Modes

• payload

• control points

• attack defend

• king of the hill

• ★ steel (idk what to name it)

• capture the flag

  • is now an alternative mode

Alternative Game Modes

• capture the flag

• medieval mode

• ★ knockout

• ★ juggernaut

• ★ class wars

• ★ duels

• ★ deathmatch

Auto Balance

• auto balance will never occur unless there’s a disparity of 3 or more players. Otherwise, the matchmaking system will attempt to balance the teams by adding new players to the team that’s down.

  • For most people, getting switched teams in the middle of a game is pretty undesirable, so I feel it should be reserved for extreme cases.

• players will have the option to join the opposing team if it has fewer players

  • This essentially lets people volunteer for autobalance, allowing those who don't mind the switch so much to take the place of people who would be annoyed by it.

• players who are in a party will never be auto balanced, unless there’s no one else available

  • This prevents parties from being separated.

• auto balance will prioritize those who have less time in the current match. so if you’ve just joined, you are more likely to get auto balanced than someone who has been playing the entire round.

  • getting auto balanced at the start of a game usually isn’t a big deal because you’re not invested in the game yet, so most people don’t mind it so much

  • This also helps to prevent the scenario of getting auto balanced to the losing team right before the game ends.

Competitive

The goal is to have it be like a subset of casual. so there won’t be anything you aren’t already familiar with

Ruleset

• 6v6, no class limits or weapon bans weapon bans

  • explanation

• all casual game modes

  • all of them (except koth) have been reworked to be better suited for comp

• fewer maps – some don’t really work well in 6v6

  • longer maps like swiftwater should be cut

• the enforced graphics upgrade is removed

  • this is completely unnecessary for competitive integrity, and it walks out a lot of people from playing competitive

Ranking & Matchmaking

• Instead of having 13 ranks, it’s there’s now numerical levels that progress infinitely, with each game moving you up or down a single level.

• Players split into 5 different divisions based on rank:

  • Wood (1-20)

  • Copper (21-40)

  • Iron (41-60)

  • Platinum (61-80)

  • Australium (81-100)

  • Challenger I (101-120)

  • Challenger II (121-140)

    • challenger divisions will endlessly repeat every 20 levels

• You can only be matched with players who are in the same division as you. Ideally, the system will try to put you with players who are as close in level as possible, but that may not always be possible.

Abandonments

• Abandons won’t kick everyone out of the match before the game has actually started – instead, if you pause and look for a new person. Once the lobby is up to 12 players, it’ll require everyone to prepare to start the game again, and those who fail to do so within 60 seconds will be kicked.

• Abandonments mid match:

  • The abandoner will be sent down 6 levels, and they’ll be required to wait 3+ hours before they can queue for competition again.

  • For everyone else, the game will pause and the matchmaking system will look for a new player to fill the gap. once the new player joins, the game will only resume once everyone has readied up

    • Additionally, all players will be moved back to the previous point or their spawn room, with ubercharge and the like reset, but objective progress for the round will remain as is.

      • So for example if your team is attacking last on 5cp, the defending team will be moved to their spawn room, and the attacking team will be moved to 4th.

    • This ‘reset’ aims to minimize the impact of the abandoner by as much as possible.

Party Queue

• You can queue up for competitive in a party

• You’ll be queued based on the median rank of all players in the party

• You don’t need a full party – the matchmaking system will ensure that both teams have the same number and size of party

  • so if you’re in a 3 person party for instance, you’ll be queued with and against other parties of 3, to keep it fair

  • this should be prompted to the you the first time you open the competitive menu

Unranked Practice

• When you play competitively, you can tick a box that says ‘play unranked,’ which can allow you to queue for 6s without ranks being affected. obviously when doing this you’ll only be queued with other players who are also playing unranked AND who are in the same division as you

  • Allowing people to practice 6s without ranked is important to making competitive accessible. Removing the stakes makes it a lot less daunting to try out.

Accessing Competitive

• To play competitive, you must be at least casual level 15 and must have a premium account

  • Having a requirement of level 15 instead of level 3 helps to prevent smurfing

  • There’s no point to having a competitive pass. I think requiring players to spend some money before playing is a good idea to limit smurfing, but it’s better to let players spend that money on a hat or something they actually care about.

  • When you first start playing competitively, you’ll start at 1/3th of your casual level, but no further than level 20.

    • For example:

      • Casual level 15 → comp level 5

      • Casual level 50 → comp level 17

      • Casual level 999 → comp level 20

    • If someone has played a lot of casual, they are probably pretty skilled already and should be sent out of the wood division quicker. This reduces the amount of steamrolls that would otherwise occur in wood division.

Mann vs Machine

Will be completely reworked – the gameplay is quite flawed in my opinion. I'm confident that if random drops from missions were removed, a huge majority of the player base would stop playing.

Payload

Payload is the staple casual mode – usually hailed as the best, and it also sees play in Highlander. However, I'm not convinced it’s always ideal. especially for 6s, it has some issues:

• Pushing the cart is boring.

  • It’s lot slower than the other objectives, and it really limits the ability of offense to stretch their advantage because some players have to stay behind to babysit the cart

  • This particularly affects scout, see b4nny in Highlander

• Defense is encouraged to essentially stalemate the game

  • Situations where neither team can push forward are boring whether it’s the stated objective or not – defense having little incentive to push the cart makes the gameplay much less dynamic and strategic.

• Payload is very static compared to other competitive modes

  • You’re either always attacking or always defending. there’s less decisions to make on when to hold back or to push forward, and therefore less depth – not good for a competitive mode.

Cart Rework

• instead of moving at a constant speed of 50 / 70 / 90hu/s, the cart accelerates at 5hu/s² per person (no 3 person cap) up to a max speed of 150hu/s. after being unattended for 5 seconds, the cart decelerates at 3hu/s² (50s to stop from max speed)

  • This allows the attacking team to make headway without having to leave people at the cart at all times, allowing them to be more aggressive.

  • making the max speed higher is necessary to compensate for the time it takes to accelerate.

• The cart can now be pushed by the defenders – but it no longer rolls back on its own. defenders push the cart at half the speed of attackers (2.5hu/s² per person)

  • this might seem broken, but keep in mind that if the cart has already accelerated, it’s going to take a long time to slow down

  • This encourages the defense to be more aggressive and push up as far as possible. This makes the optimal defense more dynamic and interesting compared to building 6 sentries last.

  • the cart still can’t be rolled back past checkpoints.

Control Points

5CP is a very strategic mode due to its back and forth nature, and is the standard for competition as a result. However, its glaring issue is that it’s often very prone to stalemates, where after winning the midfight, neither team has any incentive to push. these changes are heavily inspired by Construction Zombie’s comment on this video

Scoring Rework

• capping mid grants 1 point

• capping last grant's 2 points

• the first team to 4 points wins

  • This making timeouts give half the reward greatly incentises the winning team to try and push all the way to last, as the reward greatly offsets the risk.

Timer Rework

• the timer doesn’t start until mid is captured

• each time mid changes hands, the time is reset to 4 minutes

• capping 4th will reward an additional 2 minutes

  • This is a reasonable amount of time to push – a 10 minute timer that resets every point barely creates any urgency. That's just asking both teams to wait around for 10 minutes to try and sac for an important pick, which is boring.

  • This stricter timer means you don’t have all day to just sit and wait for a med pick, it’s now or never. This pushes teams to make more risky plays, and keeps the game fast paced and exciting.

• capping any point other than mid won’t reset the timer

  • only resetting the timer on mid prevents the winning team from purposely giving up 4th to stall for twice as long.

• the time given by mid will reduce by 1 minute each recap (5 min → 4 min → 3 min → ext)

  • The reduced time on mid recap prevents the game from going on forever in the event that mid continuously changes hands.

Attack Defend

(TODO) pretty decent mode, but it doesn’t have the back and forth dynamic, you’re either attacking or defending, which is less strategic. cp_steel is a really interesting concept, but it’s really confusing for new players and should probably be its own mode so it’s more easily understood.

Capture The Flag

removed from the core casual rotation. It's very prone to stalemates, and also splits up teams (some classes attack, others defend) which makes the game worse (less teamwork). basically everything ancle dane said. while i do think the gamemode is fundamentally pretty flawed, there’s some changes that can improve it.

i understand that a lot of people enjoy ctf because of the endless nature of it, giving an opportunity to just mess around. The deathmatch gamemode serves that purpose.

Also, I do think a lot of the problems in ctf are indicative of the really bad maps, where the intel room is behind the spawn room. if every map was on the same level as landfall, the mode would be a lot better.

Flag Returning

• your team's dropped flag will now instantly return to base on touch, rather than forcing your entire team to defend it for 60 seconds.

  • This allows you to spend less time defending your flag, reducing the chances of the game stalling out.

Three Rounds

• capping will instantly win the round, and the game is now a best of 3.

  • This gives more opportunities for comebacks. if a team starts getting spawn camped, it’ll only win a single round rather than the entire game.

Medieval Mode

not exactly the deepest TF2 experience ever, but i think it’s fun. I do think with some additions (and more than 1 map), it could be a little more fun though.

Engineer Buff

• engineer doesn’t really have a purpose in medieval mode, which i think is a shame. allowing him to actually perform his class role would fix that.

• 🠝) can build a ballista in place of a sentry

  • fires bolts every 1.5s

  • bolts travel at 1500hu/s (same as loch n load) and have a slight arc

    • ballistas don’t lead their shots, so it’s relatively easy to dodge

  • deals 40 / 60 / 80 damage (with up to 50% falloff and 25% ramp up)

  • has 80 / 120 / 160 health

  • costs 200 metal to build, and 200 to upgrade

• 🠝) can build a basket in place of a dispenser

  • functions the exact same as a dispenser, just reskinned

  • has 50 / 80 / 110 health

  • costs 100 metal to build, and 100 to upgrade

• 🠝) can build a catapult in place of a teleporter

  • stepping on the bucket will launch you a significant distance, and deal damage to enemies you stomp on (same as mantreads)

    • the distance should be high enough to get over the wall

  • has 150 / 180 / 210 health

  • costs 200 metal to build and 200 to upgrade

  • there’s a 10 / 7.5 / 5 second recharge per person

Item Whitelist

• + jarate

  • In the vanilla game, it’d be completely overpowered (which is why I think they disallow it), but with the nerf it’s received it should be fine.

• + pocket picnic

  • The other lunchbox items are allowed, so this should be too.

  • makes heavy pretty strong, probably even on par with demoknight

• + enthusiast’s timepiece

  • The other invis watches are allowed, so this should be too.

  • should be balanced.

• + inverse inject

  • fits, and shouldn’t break the game.

• + bread bite

  • fits okay enough, and shouldn’t be broken

• + brick

  • fits well enough, and shouldn’t be too overpowered

  • might have a niche use, but i can’t see it beating out the buffalo steak

• + walking stick

  • fits well enough, and shouldn’t be too overpowered

★ Knockout

A new alternative gamemode. Heavily inspired by Diabotical, which has the same mode. It's sort of a replacement for arena mode.

Rules

• the round is won when you get a team wipe (everyone is dead at once)

• when players die, they will leave a hologram (like MvM) and will respawn where they were

  • Unlike MvM, they can’t be revived by medics – you have to wait it out.

• The respawn time starts at 10 seconds, but each player’s respawn increases by another 10 seconds each time they are killed.

  • there’s no respawn waves like in regular TF2, it’s independent to each player

• there’s no spawn rooms

• after 5 minutes, a battle royale style circle will start closing in toward the center of the map, damaging those who are outside of it

  • this is necessary to prevent games from going on forever (especially with spies)

• you cannot change class or loadout once the round starts

★ Juggernaut

A new alternative game mode based of the community mode vs saxton hale

Rules

• each game is a single round, 12 mercenaries vs 1 robot juggernaut

• no respawning; the game ends once everyone on one team is killed

• The juggernaut is a robot version of a regular class.

  • they’re max health is 150% higher for each mercenary player

    • 12 players = 18x max health

  • they are larger, though not as big as giant robots in MvM

    • they need to be small enough to fit through doorways

  • health packs heal them in proportion to their class’ normal base health

  • if playing as a medic, reviving fallen mercenaries will reprogram them and switch them to your team as a robot

    • this is needed, as otherwise medic would be useless as a juggernaut

    • medic juggernauts also start with 100% ubercharge

      • This is needed to snowball the momentum from the first kill, otherwise the bot would just instantly get obliterated by the 11 other mercs.

    • reprogrammed robots will have retain their class’ normal health and will be normal sized

  • there’s a 1% chance every round to spawn as saxton hale

    • 400 base health

    • 115% movement speed

    • 200% jump height

    • 75% resistance to knockback

    • can only use melee, deals 200 damage

    • crouching for 0.8s and then jumping will do a super jump (8x height)

• fallen mercenary players can be revived by medics like in MvM, but the time to revive will double each death.

• after 15 minutes, a battle royale style circle will start closing in toward the center of the map, damaging those outside of it

★ Class Wars

a new alternative gamemode, based on the community mode of the same name.

Rules

• Each team can only be made up of a single class, which is chosen at random.

  • After each round, the losing team’s class will change.

• can be played on any of the maps casually.

★ Duels

a new alternative game mode, based on the MGE mod.

Rules

• duels servers are made up of a number of different arenas, you’ll choose one to join

  • most are 1v1, with some 2v2 arenas

  • you’ll spawn in a safe lobby area where you can walk around and see all the arenas.

• in each arena, 1v1 or 2v2 duels take place – first to 20 wins

• the cloak and dagger is not allowed

  • This is useless in a duel outside of stalling, so it’s banned.

★ Deathmatch

a new alternative game mode, designed to better fill the need that hightower / 2fort servers do currently.

Rules

• there’s no objectives, the point is just to practice or hang out

• takes place on ctf and 5cp maps, or maybe even on custom maps

• respawn time is always 3 seconds (no respawn waves)

Quality of Life

Now obviously it would be great if tf3 was on a new, more optimized and graphically impressive engine, and if every bug was fixed, so I'm not going to go over those since they go without saying.

Better Options Menu

• the ‘options’ and ‘advanced options’ should be unified under a single menu.

• the options should be searchable

• the default options are quite poor

  • default fov should be 90, not 60

    • the view models should probably also be smaller

  • hit numbers should add up, not be individual

  • the default network settings should be improved

  • hit and kill sounds should be enabled by default

Gameplay Improvements

• splash damage should curve around corners and uneven surfaces (explanation).

• the deadringer should always play a killsound.

• When looking at a friendly engineer’s teleporter, the exit should be highlighted so that you can get a better idea of exactly where it will take you.

  • this would work a lot better than the arrow that appears currently.

• allow teammates to see the metal of friendly engineers when looking at them.

  • allows you to play with to work better with your engineer’s by allowing you to see when they need metal, or when you can take the ammo pack for yourself.

• picking up ammo while charging with the persian persuader should always extend the charge duration without the need to hold right click.

  • This is a really cool mechanic that I don't think you’d ever find out about without watching solarlight. Having to hold the right click doesn’t add anything, so I see no downside to making this more accessible.

  • it might be a good idea to make holding right click prevent the charge extension; you might want to do this when there’s ammo boxes in front of your target that would prevent you from critting them.

• it would be neat if there was an option to enable a speed value on your hud like in quake…

Usability Improvements

• on spy, the viewmodel’s cloak visual should match the actual cloak timing exactly.

  • Currently, the cloak animation on the viewmodel happens slightly faster than on the spy’s actual model in the world, so it can look like you’re invisible from 1st person when you’re not.

• the vaccinator should have control options to bind specific bubbles to specific hotkeys instead of a cycle system

  • This is a lot better once you’re experienced, many vacc players have to use clunky macros or scripts to get this effect currently.

• there should be a subtle visual indication for when you are bhopping

  • It's a bit difficult to learn this technique due to the lack of feedback.

  • There is a sound for when you’re bhopping with the rocket jumper, but it’s quiet, and it’s only for one class.

• all revolver crosshairs get bigger after the first shot (similar to the ambassador) to indicate that it’s no longer perfectly accurate

  • This change makes the mechanics of revolver spread more clear for new players.

  • it would be good if the panic attack had a similar effect

• on weapons with a passive reload, the reload animation shouldn’t stop when you switch to a different weapon and then switch back

  • This makes it difficult to tell when the weapon is able to fire because it’ll just be held normally after switching when it’s actually still reloading.

  • This is most noticeable with the flare guns or the crusader's crossbow.

• The syringe projectiles should have a subtle trail behind them.

  • When firing, it’s honestly difficult to even tell how close you are because the syringes are so hard to see – I think it’s part of what makes them feel so unwieldy.

• the engineer binds for taking out a building blueprint with a single key should be available in the controls menu, without the need for .cfg files.

• there should be an option to allow bonk atomic punch to be usable while in 1st person.

  • going into 3rd person is cool, but it can feel a bit unwieldy and sometimes makes it difficult to be precise with your movement.

NonGMOTrash
november 30th, 2023