Yeah the no option is pretty restrictive, i don't feel like theres an answer in this that reflects my views..

While in the topic though, popular opinion isn't a good measure of what to do when it comes to difficult decisions. It's good to get an idea of how the community is thinking as a general trend but the reasons behind those opinions can vary a lot.

#159
I didn't explicitly say sack, when we spotted it at GA it was a full team push with uber advantage because we knew they weren't on vacc after seeing them build, the timing was close though

And the other issue I haven't seen mentioned, yeah we could try it out for a season, but is the pre LAN season really the best opportunity to do this? Are we that adamant about this change as a community (we seem to be divided) that it warrants completely changing the meta and forcing all the teams that will compete at i61 to adapt? And what if people really don't like it and then teams switch back to the current whitelist?

Again from an analysts point of view I would love to see how the meta changes and team/players adapt to a more vanilla whitelist, but from a competitor's point of view I'm not sure I would share the same opinion. I'd love to hear what top eu/na/au teams and players have to say regarding this.

It would be pretty nuts to see all how all the current teams adapt back to old whitelist mechanics..

I guess I'm still hoping valve will change some things in the next major patch, i might've missed something but why is it considered so strongly that the crossbow wouldn't be one of the weapons to get changed?

I feel like banning the weapon would also do more harm than good - ideally a weapon as unbalanced as the crossbow would not be in comp at all but it's been in the game so long that I don't think the change would sit well with most of the player base. It should be banned but it's so fundamental in current 6v6 play that if you ban it people will overreact, not just medic mains.

I would argue that there is more potential for using brain power with crossbows.. not only do you have to worry about which heal target is the best within team fights, you need to know when it is best to use the burst heal and when to use medigun - people act like arrows are always better but that isn't the case, the most optimal way of healing is to use both of them together to maximise your heal output, and if you can manage the HP of multiple players at once you will have significantly more impact than other medics, and I feel this is something that ive only seen top prem/invite medics do on occasion.

Its also most efficient if people cycle their heals and have some form of rotation to use buffs most effectively, and this is something that teams need to get better at, not just medics, as this is an aspect of team play that happens to be directly influenced by one class. There is also the fact that if you miss an arrow you will be sacrificing medigun heals for that duration. Basically the optimal type of healing that you are outputting as a medic depends on multiple factors like which classes are fighting, which sources of damage different heal targets are taking, which players are in active fights and which aren't - and this stuff defines when to use crossbows and when to use medigun to play optimally.

People say it makes medic more fun and simplifies the class, but IMO it raises the skill ceiling significantly and adds more depth to not only the decision making of individual medic play, but also to the dynamics of team fights. There are a lot of cases in 90% of medics that this all gets ignored because at lower levels of play it seems like going for arrows is always better, but in high levels of play going for one risky long range arrow could lose you a team fight if you miss it.

All this being said, i do think that crossbow is OP in its current state, but I don't think any proposed changes I've seen would correctly balance it without simplifying these dynamics that it adds. I think perhaps having a fixed arrow base heal of 75 HP, and having that increase not with distance but with critical heals could work. This would also reduce the impact of arrow building as you would gain 5% from each arrow, and you would need to arrow build properly (not as a lot of current teams do it) to actually gain something from it, thus further rewarding coordination.

Edit: this would also mean you could still put out 150hp arrow heals after 5s of the heal target not taking damage, regardless of range, and I feel like that is a fair trade off with heal output - if you and your players can manage their heals and rotations together it would make sense to be rewarded with optimal healing.

smh not saving frags for team movie...

Banners are the key to success. . .

The best alias moursi has ever used: BIGG CUM

I love how this reads, it's like a mic drop

More demos for me to hoard ez...

Not good enough BibleThump

On a real though I respect lowpander for being the only team I can recall that gave a decent attempt at breaking the meta and exploiting some of the actually impactful non standard mechanics in this game, everyone else seems to think it's just a meme but you outplayed a few prem teams this season and it's no coincidence. Keep it up hildog!

Those were two completely different posts? I'm done here, add me on steam if you must

Do you want to check your facts? I've been casting and coaching in prem this season, I've been actively streaming this season, i was recently one of the 6 tftv staff attending GA as well as competing, so if you are implying I fit into the category of being 'washed up' or 'not even following the scene' then you are grossly mistaken and that really highlights ignorance to me, considering that I follow the scene more actively than most prem players and my team won GA over one of this season's playoff teams...

And it wasn't said explicitly but I got that impression pretty strongly, if you say it was due to me being on the awards show and you weren't aware of me being active in the scene then okay I can understand why you might've thought that - but using 'your gang' in that context still implies that you are categorising me without any evidence that I am actually of the same opinion is the others.

And as food for thought, if you need me to point out exact words and lines to justify statements I make then you might be ignoring the very important thing that is context.

I don't know what 'gang' you think there is here, I'm not siding with anyone, i was trying to point out the misunderstanding that you failed to see. I'm not backing up thalash because we both hang out in the Brit mumble and we're super cool buddies and I need to back him up tftv.. in fact I'll agree that his post was an ad hominem attack.

I've not said that I think hildreth shouldn't be an admin, so why are you assuming that I'm of that opinion? Seems to me like you are pigeon holing me just because I'm a Brit and you assume me to be in these circlejerks that you keep bringing up. Well I don't consider myself to be and I'd appreciate if you didn't either.