People beg for 2 years for a big update.

Valve Bring us an update.

Everyone rages because of the update.

Damn about time to main demoknight

okay the parachute and black box is fun as shit

Imagine demoman was like it is now since the beginning and the meta game developed for 7 years around it...and then valve released a patch to remove the damage rampup. What would the reaction be? People would be professing the end of comp tf2 as demoman would begin dominating exchanges just putting out stupid amounts of damage...even after people adjusted.
And don't even look at outrage in pubs which would be a joke as demoman can single handedly turn a 20 person pub game.

Change is hard to deal with and many will just keep trying to play the same way they were, and it won't work. Others will adapt and look back in a year and realize this is a good thing and that it actually will end up giving the game more life. Right now the sentiment is that valve is fucking with what you like and are accustomed to, which is understandable. Give it a real chance though, it's a blessing in disguise.

This.
It will be much more difficult now for Scouts to clean up easy kills on low-hp enemies in an aggresive non uber push. Pockets need to compensate for the huge amount of damage that is now missing from the demoman's aggresive sticky spam.
Not sure if this will work out though...

The update would've been fine without the fucking weird decision on how to nerf stickies. Some of the weps might even be (dare I say it)... viable?

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from that video someone posted well aimed stickies do 70 dmg close range. you still 2 shot scouts. the "we need better close range ability" argument is hilarious. you're supposed to get raped when you put yourself in a spot to get bombed/rushed.

start aiming stickies better and your damage will still be around everyone else's. having all the classes putting out similar dpm isn't the worst thing in the world.

#485: yes, everyone will now have to aim to get kills on off uber pushes, and fights will last longer. there will also be a ton more opportunities to push off uber because of the lowered demo dmg.

btw to the EU guys posting in here...you folks rejected unlocks and played vanilla for how long? i get the feeling that any change to the game that you can't cvar/whitelist out is going to upset you. just because you now have to adapt your playstyle from "heal the shit out of the demo at all times" to something new doesn't mean the game's fucked. try having a more open minded approach :)

My rough guesses after watching the open finals last night...

1. Soldier damage is now much more important, the roamer's early damage is now the keystone for your scouts at mids
2. Pockets are going to take the "har har I top damage all the time" spot back full time.
3. Demos are going to have to become pipe experts like it's 2009.
4. Whereas immediately detting was the skill to have in the past, now it's seeing 2 seconds into the future and laying a sticky there or sticky gardening.
5. Most transition fight damage is now going to have to be done with rollers and pipe spam.

I do imagine valve isn't going to keep the change as is. I could see a world where they keep this ramp up effect, but reduce it to 1 second.

I get that valve wanted to weaken the demo a bit, especially his short range defense capabilities, but they've basically made it to the point where he can only fight at the old level at very long range or with pipes. The revolver and pistol can now do more damage than a demo if you're instantly detting lol.

http://www.tfportal.de/gfx/items/large/scottish_resistance_large.png

http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Scottish_Resistance

Adding on an arbitrary timing onto a weapon already with a few other hidden timings is pretty dumb. Makes the skill curve even worse than it is now. They should have probably tied in the reduced damage/splash with air stickies vs ground stickies.

I hope so.

Also to put it into perspective:

Sticky is fired, .92 seconds pass, sticky dets, deals about 66% damage
Sticky is fired, .92 seconds pass, 1.08 more seconds pass, deals 100% damage

There's a 1 second difference between lowest falloff and 100% damage. For Scottish resistance the lowest possible damage is about at 85% with 100% a quarter of a second later.

So a secondary weapon can do the same damage as...another secondary weapon? I'm not going to say that this nerf is what the game necessarily needed, but I think that the sticky launcher being at parity with other secondary weapons isn't the worst thing that could have happened.

Slow reload with the nerf is lame, though.

http://i.imgur.com/RkcBYt3.jpg

also i'm really sorry for demo mains, would like to give you cup for your tears

By very far, the best post i have seen.

Both Platinum, Marmaduke, Marxist and a few other people are making complete sense.

The fact is, if you actually properly aim your stickies, they still do 60-70 damage each. People have got far too used to just spamming a certain area instead of aiming like they should.

If you get caught up on a 1vs1 with a scout, chances are, you put yourself in a bad position, you overextended or you didn't put a trap (stickies after 2 seconds do the same damage as they always did).

After playing a few matches, the game still plays exactly the same, demos just have to be slightly more careful to not be caught out.

Like Marmaduke pointed out, the game will hopefully be slightly faster due to less output damage from the demoman.

And again.. Demomans got far too comfortable with the amount of damage they did in the past, so how many of them actually aim the stickies, and not just throw in a certain area .. 70 damage per sticky is still quite high and manageable.

Valve most likely are not gonna revert, and creating a Promod is honestly a horrible idea, like many said, we are dependent on people from public servers, and a Promod goes agains't everything we have been trying to achieve for a very long time which was to bring them over to Competitive, either by doing events, or catering to them by allowing certain weapons, game modes, what not.

Stop whining and just play the game, the more you play, the more you will realize it's still the same. Adapt for fuck sake!

Are there still invisible players though?

Yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwd0sZz-UgQ#t=75

There are still days left in this update - maybe they're saving the invisible players fix for last!? lol

I think the sticky nerf might actually work better with a root function ramp up than with a linear ramp up. This means that at the start of the two-second period the damage would increase quickly, but at the end of the period it would take much longer to ramp up the damage. This would mean that by the time the sticky is primed, it will do ~50 damage instead of 19 damage, but after that you'll actually have to wait a significant time(allowing the other player to move) to get a nice big hit off on your target.

They could also have raised the base damage(which seems to be 19) to something around the 50 damage mark, which would solve the problem of crit stickies not being able to drop a medic(3 x 50 = 150). Note that a root ramp up would also do this, because by the time the sticky is primed, it would be at 50 damage.

There are many options, but I think the base damage of stickies is just a little bit too low now. If instead of the two-second ramp up, they just slightly reduce the maximum(to around 100-110 damage which I think is currently 138 on a centered direct hit and 120 on a far-end-of-the-model direct hit) and ever so slightly reduce the maximum fall-off damage(to 40-50 instead of I think 60 on player damage now), I think it would be much better. It definitely needs some tweaking, but the concept of slightly nerfing stickies isn't a bad thing, in my opinion. It's just how they did it.

Just wanted to quote this because my mane flame over here is 100% right. It is a change to the meta...a change that is bad for individual demo players but pretty good for tf2 in general. After casting Open finals I asked the players what they thought, all responses including that from boulder (the demo) spoke of a resounding balance. Again, really stinks if you are a demo or your team is just star demo heavy.

Great teams will adapt to this and be just as awesome.

Pubbing isnt fun anymore

Will be patched in 7 years

Alright, the well spoken and experienced individuals have convinced me. Personally, my biggest issue with the nerf is that demos would become entirely obsolete and everyone runs heavy to mid. If as long as the game doesn't shift that drastically, I see nothing but good that can come from this.

that will not happen kace. demo still fastest to mid, can still lock down areas, and still does good damage, just not "holy fucking shit" level damage.

This change is probably for the better anyway.

I used to play high level WoW and every dev cycle people would cry about nerfs to "their class" and spam the forums for days. The people who appreciated the game would keep playing and learn the new ins and outs. Maybe its just more real in TF2 because the community is smaller and you recognize the names of whoever is upset (also the dev cycles are much longer). Dynamism and the ability to adapt is what makes a lot of good players good in the first place.

doing 70 damage with the new stickies is the rough equivalent of like 100+ with the old ones. you dont hit a scout with 110 when theyre dodging around and shit, stickies only do that much damage when the enemy is standing right on top of it. when you lob a sticky at their torso, you dont do 100+ damage, you do more like 60-90. with the new stickies, youll probably do like roughly 40-50. you wont be doing 70+ damage unless they walk right over sticks laying on the floor.

so throw out some defensive stickies and then pull out your pipes and hope that you hit 2 because you put yourself in a position to get rushed by a scout. this is a misplay on the demos end, the scout should be rewarded, not the demo.

let's also not forget that with this new nerf we could see the importance of demo drop significantly in some team's eyes, while others still prioritize them.

could be interesting to see roam style demos on pushes just bombing in and doing as much dmg as possible to open up a push against the defensive demo hoping one of his traps connects to shut the other team down. plus we'll see more pipes so that'll be legit.

God forbid some prediction and aim is necessary to do good damage

Wow you mean you gotta be precise with a weapon in a first-person shooting game so it will be decent now? How could they do that to us.

The show will still go on. I think demo has always been real powerful it's just going to change how teams play now. It was all around the demoman as the main damage class. The power will go back into the scouts/pockets hands or maybe even a heavy. Definitely a weird update though.