The crossbow that was updated a while ago to have faster reload time was immediate upgrade imo. It used to be sidegrade to needles on some maps. If a scout is on you and they aren't really bad or weak when they are fighting you, you will die consistently whether you have bow or needles. Like blank said, the burst heals that can come from it, are much more useful to your team if you're using it properly.

All they needed to do was fix the exploit.

preparing myself for the harb post

i can smell it coming

RIP the return of TheFragile.

escape plan is trash now, crossbow damage is even lower...wonder what else valve has in store for us

I'm predicting the basher no longer doing self damage.

they are going to buff stickys

What they did was to appeal combat medics and pubbers, nothing else...

You dont need dpm as medic, if you are using the xbow and you get it out its because you expect a nice burst damage hit to fend off who is chasing you. This made the weapon completely retarded, might as well just use needles.

As someone above said all they had to do was fix the reload bug and they managed to even fuck that up

Edit: I recommend posting on spuf (there are plenty topics about this nerf) to see if they can reconsider.

They said they halved the reload time, but it's actually the same. It was 3s before the first buff.

Arrows have less knock-back than syringes. you want them to be syringes for the knock-back.

so they lower the damage so that makes more combat medics want to use it and passive reload so it reloads with your medi gun out. yaaah
also if a scout is chasing you and he is relatively close which would make sense it would've only done like 35 damage. its really not that big of a deal

the reload speed seems the same to me as it was the other day

might see more meds use needles?

would be nice.

I'd rather continue to use the crossbow for long-range healing of my team and occasional support damage.

To me, using needles means that you expect your team to not perform up to par, and so needles act as a safety net to save yourself, where as the crossbow augments your team's ability to play to win.

That rapid-fire shit was actually pretty fun and challenging. I kinda agree with Harb, but w/e it's not a necessary feature.
I'm also fine with the damage nerf but nerfing its heals was totally unnecessary, I don't even feel like healing somebody unless they're long-range.
I'm gonna write an angry letter to Valve about that, you should too...

p. much this. no idea what valve was thinking with this update. even without the rapidfire glitch i would have kept using it, but with this damage/heal nerf its completely pointless. back to overdose i guess

Well, this has left me unhappy.

we hardly knew thee

this was probably done by someone who didn't know it has rampup. i imagine they looked at it and went "wait a minute THIS CAN TWO SHOT SCOUTS?!" and lowered its damage on a whim without figuring out how the weapon works. it wouldn't be the first time a valve employee changed a stat in tf2 without knowing the hidden details associated with it.

This is the biggest thing. You think they could have fixed the bug and then just let the damage sit for a week?

are people having trouble understanding that medic isnt supposed to be able to dm things? he heals people guys, stop crying that you cant 1v1 anymore

its not quite dm if its long range in tf2

I'm honestly more upset that the heals got nerfed (they did, even if they didn't list it).
Though it's really shitty now that point blank I do 25 damage to whoever I manage to shoot.

Most medics have really high sensitivities, making it super hard to hit shots, I feel like the damage should be high to compensate for that.

How close is close range in this scenario? When does it change from 25? I'm getting the feeling you might be better off ubersawing then anyway.

you are all dumb and wrong apart from blank

I didn't do a ton of testing with it. Just like "this is point blank" and "go really far away from me" with one of my friends to see what the numbers were for sure (with the healing too). I'm pretty sure the damage goes up linearly (I don't know why it'd follow any other form, that's overcomplicate things and be strange). Even then, the max you're going to get out of any form of syringe you'll hit out of whatever can be considered "close range" will be ?35 damage or so since it caps at 50 now where as it used to start at 38 (I've been trying to fix the Wiki page for the Medic to display the right numbers, I've fixed every template for the Medic's primaries, but that one still won't change on the actual Medic's page for some damn reason).
Arguably, at least in 6s, one was better off going for the saw anyway if they were close to a scout at all. I get what you mean though and do agree.

Yes because it behaves more sort of like a syringe machine run than a xbow, the 70-80 long range shots and burst healing are exactly what made it useful amongst the other primaries, it allowed for some really clutch plays if used correctly, now they reduced or nerfed the exact feature that made it stand out among the other primaries only to give it a "better reload time". It has become a bland weapon with little to no tactical advantage over syringes. Its kind of a big deal, I can see myself using the syringes every time now when before I would have used the x-bow in a similar situation

I went from finally loving valve with the passive reload, to hating them again for removing damage :C

RIP Crossbow

Time to get good with needles :/