#1 is better since med is likely to take fall damage and someone with spam can force them after (a sac shouldn't be a solo play unless it has to be) so like 30-50hp med after sac.

Best play is to sync bomb since the med will shit themselves at 150hp instead of being able to rely on any mechanical outplay. Likely dropping cus of it too.

Cus they make the game more fun by changing it to make people able to play in more areas and not get so severely punished for drifting too far from the medic.

Something like banners that force building them on last, or loch n load sniping people from across a map are not diverse strategies.

There's plenty of other weapons that if people start using and get good with them, people will want them banned too (e.g. loose cannon, direct hit, beggars bazooka).

Then there's more weapons that are busted but are just annoying or they don't feel oppressive (e.g. wrap assassin, winger, solemn vow).

Spies in my games already instant kill from the front, so does that mean this weapon can also instant kill from the back? Maybe a bit too strong...

Personally I would include movement and positioning in DM. Split game skill into 3 categories of deathmatch, knowledge, and teamplay.

Deathmatch is the "execution". Knowledge is "knowing what to do". Teamplay is "Knowing what your teammates do and supporting each other".

All three are used in every play, like imagine a small fight occurs on granary second, 2v2 flank attempts a backcap as rest of combo push into mid 4v2.

Teamplay is the flank on both teams knowing what each will do, and the relative combos also knowing what their flanks are doing. "Do we trade uber as the mid defense? Are the flank winning the 2v2? Are the combo coming back or trusting their flank?"

Knowledge is just knowing the answers to these questions and reacting accordingly. "Yes we trade because we are getting the backcap because they are winning the fight" or "Combo is coming back, we must set up on mid and buy time behind them for spawners since our flank will die soon".

Deathmatch is how these are executed. Winning your fights, hitting your shots and being in the correct position to do these things. Standing on high ground and shooting down making shots easier to hit is good deathmatch. Players who have bad aim but stand in good spots will have better DM than someone who has good aim but stands in bad spots.

This is pretty overly simplified since all three feed into each other seemlessly but the question kinda wants an objective answer and likely all three are equally important for any individual player.

down at like #350 baby, just ahead of where you should be.

get off my badlands appreciation thread

Main reason it came into peoples radars was for attacking badlands last, since correctly placed stickies on point was the only proper defense for that point however since that map has, for some unknown reason, not attempted to be played in ETF2L for many season noone really knows why it is banned.

While it still does a lot on many maps for last attacks and choke busts for the same reasons the efficiency really does not come close to that one situation where it pretty much auto wins the cap with a scout rushing the clear cap point.

https://clips.twitch.tv/LongEnticingKiwiWholeWheat-80SEIPzWyv3VIva3

Throw em out, throw em out into the cold. Don't give em their coat. No coats. No coats! Confiscate their coats!

What Sigma wrote is actually really good and may make people see it a bit clearer, but it seems no real testing done for their side and it is just known values being used (which could have changed in 10 years but seem not to). https://www.teamfortress.tv/post/47865/details-on-uber-splitting

They considered it a break in the beam as well (which imo is a really nice way to put it). My main points were to understand what the wiki says, see how long a flash actually is by timing it and to test how the flash drains the uber in real time. Sigma stated it to be an increased in rate of consumption (I agree) but some players I would talk to would consider it as a block being taken out of the uber.

The fact they missed data is really important, it means that we don't know what was specifically tested. I decided to do one more test that was actually overlooked and it is whether this "reduction of the increased drain from reflashing a currently flashing player" has a linear decrease in time or not. This would determine if all flashes are equal or if a quick reflash loses less or more uber than expected.

This is incredibly hard to test but after several trials, decided to use the 3 flashes that occur as a player are flickering to determine timings, testing at a reflash on the first, second, and third and after complete faded. If done correctly with a linear reading you would expect each flicker to last 0.33s, so ubers of lengths 7.33, 7.16 and 7s. If it had a curved relationship you would expect ubercharge to last something like 7.4s, 7.1, and 7. or 7.3, 7.2, 7.1.

My results averaging 7.38, 7.15, 7.03 and 6.91 show roughly a linear relationship so all flashes tend to be equal, but it should also be noted that reflashing a player instantly should be counted as a single flash rather than two.

TL;DR

Ubers are hard to time and flashes are tricky.

Each flash reduces uber by 0.5s
A flash onto a "flashing" player reduces the reduction of uber.
Considering flashes as "a break in the beam" rather than a new player being ubered is important as the same player can be "flashed" during a supposed solo uber.
I guarantee some of these points are why people mis-time trades so often. Something that seems really good isn't as good as it seems.

Let me know any interesting points of discussion, or even if you agree with the data, feel free to time for yourself.

A tl:dr provided in first comment.

As a medic main in 6s I have never had a satisfactory answer for this question. People parrot the wiki or they say their own side but none of them felt correct to my own feelings, so I decided to sit and time many ubers to give my own "data-backed" answer since I honestly did not know the answer to the question. and instead relied on the feeling that each flash reduced uber by an equal amount, independant of who got flashed.

Overall the intuitive answers I received from others as well as my own understanding worked well in judging how it worked for clean gameplay purposes. The fading invulnerablity of uber or what most people know as the "flash", being a portion of the uber shared to multiple people so it fades faster is an understood point, and counting how often that happens is what most people intuitively do to determine a better or worse uber.

The wiki under the "activation" section reads:

With a single patient, an activated charge lasts 8 seconds, draining the meter at a rate of 12.5 points per second. The Medic is free to move his healing beam to another player, which will give the effects of the charge to the new patient, but the total ÜberCharge duration decreases by half a second for every second that another player is being ÜberCharged.

This line, along with the following table are what players tend to use to determine how flash timings work:

https://i.gyazo.com/821e71fa9af0dd09041464daceb5b834.png

Personally I understand this to mean two things:

1. When you flash a player you lose 0.5 seconds of uber from the 8 seconds.
2. This occurs when you flash any player whether they have been ubered already or not.

We reach the conclusion of #2 by extrapolating the table timings.
0 recipients = Solo uber on medic of 8 seconds
1 recipient = Solo uber on one player of 8 seconds.
2 recipients = Both players consistently ubered for 5.33 seconds. If you only flashed once, then the uber length would be 7.5s as only half a second is lost based on the previous line of information. So this means that this timing is for both players to be constantly ubered.
3 recipients = All 3 players consistently ubered for 4 seconds.
etc.

This is how I understood the wiki, but due to it's lack of explanation it is confusing. The wiki does not explicitly state if the recipients are the same people being flashed or not. In other words, does ubering 2 players constantly in 7 flashes result in a same length uber as 3 players in 7 flashes? Is each "recipient" an individual flash? My understanding could be misunderstood and my timings could be off massively by a few seconds every uber.

The wiki also lacks a lot of critical information to actually help players to understand how to flash players. How long is a flash? Does the full duration of a flash need to occur to drain the extra half second of uber? What is a recipient? When does the extra half second of drain occur?

I've sat and done a test of multiple ubers in order to determine the answer to some of these. I classified a "recipient" of the uber to be someone who recieved the uber at any point (ignoring the medic who used uber). I classified a "flash" as a break in the beam. A regular flash waiting for the uber to fade before reflashing (if applicable) and a "quick flash" as an instant re-flash (if applicable).

My data is rough and there are more tests than just these ones but these were all that were recorded. Time is from pressing M2 (bound to timer start) to when I see a 0% on my hud (high possibility of human error):

https://i.gyazo.com/ae2fcdf8251978bddaccff9abf4642c7.png

The top table represents regular flashes. I tried to keep the full flash before rehealing the same person, as in the uber flash had faded before they got ubered again. This resulted in fairly expected results based on the wiki's information of 0.5 seconds of drain per flash.

The second table shows quick flashes. These are ones where I would spam click to get the flash as quick as possible onto the next (or same) person. This became a necessary thing to test as my initial timings were not nearly as consistent as I would have liked, and many results were completely innacurate when testing, which I now know was due to re-flashing too quickly rather than counting errors due to the similarity of results between the two tables.

Based on these results and my testing, I determined that:
1. The wiki timings are likely correct for my understandings of them.
2. A flash is 1 second long (requires further testing) from the moment the heal beam disconnects to the point of vulnerability.
3. If this full second does not occur then less of the 0.5s drain will occur. This is likely linear (e.g. if you reflashed after 0.2s then the uber would only go down by 0.1s total to result in a 7.9s uber) but the exact relationship cannot be stated. In other words, the rate of uber consumption increases upon a flash rather than a chunk of 0.5s being taken from the uber.
4. The increase drain rate occurs at the disconnection of the heal beam. This means that if you uber without a target and then start healing someone it will not reduce the duration of the uber the same as a flash would. This is why a flash must be known as a break in the heal beam rather than the gifting of a player invincibility.

Some examples:

If you consider a flash as to how most of the community does, you will see the problems this causes when counting uber durations. You can notice that a player flashing everyone once but then holding uber on the last individual will have flashed 5 people, 4 times for about 6 seconds of uber duration, whereas another individual flashing 2 players, 4 times between them will also have this duration, if not less due to reflashing the same player, making ubers incredibly deceiving. However, if you ignore the number of people ubered and instead only focus on the breaks in the heal beam, you notice that both teams have 4 breaks in the beam, resulting in an even length uber trade.

This is also important for medics to understand when to back up from an uber. If you take a solo uber and then the person you are solo-ing jumps away 1s before the uber ends, the uber will finish and start to fade within 0.5s shortening the time you thought you had left exactly the same as if you flashed a new player. This also means that any breaks in the beam during a solo decrease the duration of the solo uber. If the player being solo'd at any point was vulnerable, then it would be the same as flashing a brand new player into the uber.

The final point to note is that an uber spam flashed between two individuals 20 times will last the same duration as an uber carefully flashed 5 times to keep both members ubered for the 5.33s time. This is a logical step from point #3 above in which the rate of consumption goes back to normal if the player had the uber flash on them is now in the uber again.

Ubers are difficult to get right, and a team that can use uber trades to their advantage will be head and shoulders above one that can't. For example, if you wanted a solo scout trade into the enemy team, who should the scout shoot and who should the opposing medic flash? If you go too far in to force a flash it is possible your medic will be disconnected and therefore force a flash of their own, resulting in a same length trade, even though you forced a flash. The scout running in should also not be concerned with doing damage towards the end of the enemy uber, as then they will in essence receive a "free" flash as the last 0.5s of ubercharge can be used to flash another teammate for 1s.

I don't play runsescape but still watch a bit on youtube. If you are a fan of challenges then I'd recommend watching through both Jcw and he box jonge doing a max cape any% speedrun race over the course of the last year was pretty cool.

Mostly agree with all 3 of these but the last one isn't really something the current team can push for, if high level players want to apply and be unbiased then they can but noone really wants to since they would rather play.

I would still limit snipers from HL when playing in lower divs because people don't know how to play around it and it takes a long time to learn. It's also hilariously unfun for all other 11 people on the server. Shit like engy, heavy, pyro or spy is insane that it's limited.

Leak what wicc did for a 2 year ban pls, if it was truly bad enough then it doesn't matter if their mentally unstable friends forgave them since they could end up doing it again to someone else if there would be no repercussions.

(from the pastebin)

https://logs.tf/2491744

Leth offclassing attempting to carry 5 dead weights years before fondling flicks balls at rcadia, holy moly.