a scout with good movement isn't going to eat a rocket from that range, so it's really just free damage for a scout to get on a soldier

I've been out of it for a bit, but scout was still the strongest class when soldiers ran shotguns. Fat slow-moving class with shotgun vs small race-car class with better shotgun...

The demo nerfs let scout get away with more, while taking extra heals. The random medic move-speed buff didn't help either.

Also, a lot of these newer maps are scout paradise. That, and people (overall) have honestly just got better at playing/abusing the class over the years. A couple years ago there were like 4 good invite scouts and the other ones ran in straight lines and didn't air-strafe.

Man all these - frags for the man that beat tyrone on LAN

"the games mascot, the spy"

Yes Scout Is Too Strong And We Have To Get Rid Of Him .

fuck scouts they do too much damage in medium range and they can jump twice what the fuck

if this were to actually happen changing the candy cane's current stats to what marmaduke suggested wouldn't be that bad of an idea

glad to see I tilted ppl in this thread when I was being sarcastic. Very salty indeed

most accurate post in this thread

then scouts can +fwd after mid and force demo/soldiers to cap, also paintrain will make soldiers/demos even weaker

10% bullet vulnerability is pretty minuscule tbh unless your medic is just drawing faces in the sand during fights
the days of pain train demo will always be my favorite

what? it severely nerfs the "we have disad lets have our silent scout run behind and get on point to fuck their push" and would force loud ass rocket jumpers to try to do that shit.

you don't have to run paintrain?

its funner to get killed by scouts while gunboating than it is to not get tanked while playing shottypocket

Put scout in a wheelchair

http://puu.sh/uCxxI/24c1eb4d6f.jpg

thats not the scout. That's Mario, from Super Mario Brothers. Idiot.

edit: omg this wall of text is insane im sorry holy FUCK tldr at the bottom

ive written 4 nerd essays where I focused on how bad people are but thats kinda mean and random so im trying to focus on positive things other than this one note

some of these suggestions are clearly made by people who just have no idea how to play the game or they are trolls there was a guy who said make gunboats the default for rocket jump damage then remove gunboats...

okay anyway

look at the best active players right now (I might miss someone hopefully that doesn't distract from the point that they all main soldier or are amazing at soldier)

Banny
obviously the best if you want to dispute it look at i55 matches where he played 5v6 vs the best europe had to offer and did 400+ dpm every game

Blaze
by far the best roamer currently playing amazing DM/jumps/timing just a smart and good player playing a good class

Yomps
mains scout but hes one of the rare smart scout players so naturally he can play soldier really fucking well

Rando
been around a long time so hes smart and has great dm making him a great soldier

Nursey
she plays a literal fuck ton and has a lot of experience main calling in pugs which can teach you a lot about the game so I feel like shes in a place where she could be really good at soldier/anything if she didn't play medic I could be wrong though since there are people who play a fuckton of pugs and should have learned a lot about the game but didn't I think Nursey is different though

all the best tf2 players play or are good at soldier and none of them would complain that scout is overpowered or that soldier needs buffs because they are good at the game and know that both classes can fill their roles and have impact if you are a good player

I think if you are good at TF2 you would understand how good soldier is and would not want to nerf scout or buff soldier or any of this random shit

ive been trying to write this shit for so long my last point and a lil TL:DR I guess

scout is a great class and it can definitely look overpowered at times but for the most part if you are a good player you will have insane impact and make your class/role look overpowered

its just that soldier is harder to be good at so there arent as many players making it look overpowered

at the end of the day
clockwork once almost got 100 frags vs a top NA team on viaduct as scout
yomps runs in and 2 shots people a lot

but banny on soldier and with only 1 scout on his team did 400+ dpm every single game for an entire lan
blaze has insane impact all the time and with high ping

duwatna had some of the most insane team awareness ive ever seen and he never died even on froyo when he had lansky and b4nny munching on shades beam all day

it felt like I could never kill one of duwatnas teammates without him shooting at least 1 sticky at me and ill never forget the one day he rang for my team and I felt like god I could literally do anything and somehow he would be shooting at the same target with me

fuck I wrote another wall of text

ACTUAL TL DR:
if you are a good player you will make your class look overpowered
everyone is good at scout because its easy
soldier is harder to be good at so it doesnt have as many players making it look op
demo is easy but I guess people just kinda suck at it so it doesnt look op very often
and medic is medic its easy as well but somehow only shade and nursey are good at it

i get them mixed up all the time, they're both from games with no esport support

I switched to shotgun pocket to specifically shutdown scouts that was my original intent-- so I will disagree with this point, part of what I felt made me effective running shotgun was my ability to jump a scout and kill them with the shotgun, I only ever did this with good hp though. Soldiers with gunboats struggle to finish scouts when they jump them because typically you have to hit a really good direct rocket on them when you pop them up and usually those 2 seconds of airtime is more than enough for the scout to kill that soldier.

Mastering good quick-switching between shotgun and rockets can really make you have so much impact in a game and really hard to deal with. After that LAN the amount of feedback I received from my opponents (scouts namely) who were surprised and taken off-guard by my shotgun and aggression (this is key, the days of waddlebot are over shotgun or not) was pretty innumerable and it's pretty telling of what you can do if you play shotgun pocket. The style though, in my honest opinion completely relies on good aim and good knowledge of how heals work in the game. You have to be meticulous about the fights you commit to and a lot smarter with how you posture yourself in team fights. There is simply less room for error in that regard.

Would you say that the weapon switch speed buff made your style of shotgun pocket more viable (in regards to the quickswitching you mentioned)? I remember for a long time when pockets just defaulted to shotgun, a lot of people who should have known better basically only took out their shotguns when they didn't have any rockets loaded. Would you be willing to expand on how you posture yourself differently in team fights on shotgun, or is that some FROYO Paddie secret sauce?

the only thing i know for sure about scout is that i made an lft for it every season and never got a single tryout that wasnt soldier

i think i misunderstood what you meant

@cheesy that's some ad hominem ass bullshit dude holy fuck. that entire essay was pretty awful and honestly a waste of time for any sort of discussion.

i'm not arguing scout is overpowered, but there's no real arguing that it's currently the strongest 6's class, most well rounded, and least nerfed/touched class. there's been a series of nerfs (or in medics case buffs) to other classes that have done nothing but make the class stronger.

i think you drank too much broking kool aid bro.

its not hard to see that scout has become the dominant class, theres no real argument to it regardless of whether or not you think soldiers are good

TLDR: Scout's abilities make it appear more successful than it is, and the majority of Scout's successes come from the coordination and ability of the soldier/demo/medic of the scout's team.

Personally I believe that Scout is often referred to as the dominant class because scout in the current meta plays well off of the work of other teammates. Certainly the scout is very good in 1v1s but to be completely honest, this game does not always rely on 1v1s, and that is kind of a good thing. In the big team fights, even though scout does not do splash damage, scout is still versatile and viable because of the ability of scouts to "clean-up" on the damage output of soldiers and demos. I think it seems almost unfair to base whether or not scout is balanced on the ability of these damage output classes to last against a scout in every 1v1 situation.

Another important aspect is the "bombing" or "sacking" of soldiers into the combo. Yes scouts are great at denying a bomb from a soldier but I almost feel like that is the point. If a soldier was able to bomb effectively every time it would almost make it too difficult for a team to ever hold aggressively and would just encourage the meta to rely solely on a push from the offensive team, which isn't the best imo, I would rather see either team with the ability to push.

I actually would be interested in seeing the effects of slightly nerfing the damage spread of scouts at mid to long range, but again I do not think it will or should make much difference. I think the current meta does a great job at glorifying scouts but that comes from people looking at logs or at clips of frag videos and forgetting that soldiers and demos play a big role in laying down damage and securing chokes/winning big fights.

I do not think there is anything wrong with scout inherently winning 1v1s against other classes. I like the idea of a balanced meta/game not every aspect being balanced. Besides, scouts can just be more fluid if you really want to avoid a 1v1 scout v soldier to help out your soldier tbh.