Mm, but this is Valve's 6s. "Heavies to mid" is like an ancient voodoo curse to most 6s players, but Valve will want to encourage it.

I can see the conflict of interest already.

I don't really think that's true. I think most people saying this are saying it from the perspective of the current 6s meta. In Valve's version of 6s I think it can be done.

It all really depends on your tolerance level for balance. ETF2L seems to be doing fine ever since they started relaxing unlock restrictions.

You can also make a case for the SC allowing aggression by being able to push through spam-filled chokes, and Darwin's allowing Snipers to not have to worry about the opposing Sniper for a bit and make picks on other classes, which is the crux of Radman's post. Weapon balance is not so black and white.

All sentries have the same range regardless of level...

I get the feeling most of the people here haven't touched the classes they want to nerf for more than a couple of hours.

You're gonna have to explain why it's fucking stupid to Valve, you know. What is "preferred" is not going to sway them when tweaking weapons. Herein lies the problem, because so much of what 6s already is is weapons banned for being "annoying" or "breaking class roles" or "encouraging offclasses" or "slowing down the game" which is pretty much as I just said, preference. Which is fine, but ultimately poor reasoning to change most weapons. Especially when, in practice, a lot of the banned weapons are awful, like the Wrap Assassin. Valve is going to BUFF that shit when they see the 0.01% equip rate on it, it's foolish to think otherwise.

Just because those are sort-of good loadouts for those classes (Pomson is pretty awful) doesn't mean Scout, Soldier, and Demo's versatility and strength won't still make them the better choices 95% of the time.

Thinking back to those full whitelist showmatches, the one problematic weapon was the BFB. That's good, we already have solid evidence on why that should be tweaked. Other than that? I don't recall the offclasses or their banned weaponry making ANY impact outside of moments far and few between. The Soldiers always managed to kill the SC Engies, Pyros were basically non-entities, Heavies got focus-fired, and so on.

In short: preference ≠ Valve tweaking a weapon/class

Note that I would actually like to see stock Engie, Pyro, and Heavy tweaked though. I think all the classes could stand to be balanced out at a stock level. Soldier is a good standard but even he's slightly overtuned.

Valve is going to see that Engie, Pyro, Heavy, and Spy are barely used in 6s even with a full whitelist, and buff them accordingly. Just warning you.

101-133 damage taken is being slightly hurt? And this is assuming you have no buff

http://puu.sh/f9pbt/adfbf1dcb1.png

Isn't "just dodge" the other side of the same coin?

for most players and on most pub maps he's not though, and that's where valve balances. they definitely throw bones to competitive but pub balance is their main interest.

if scout is now that overpowering consider changing the scout limit?

time for that promod yet? you can give demo 12 stickies and consistent 130 damage shots.

every time valve changes the game you can bank on someone calling it now too passive or unfun or random or blah blah blah

you have to put in a thimble-sized amount of effort to change up your demo game and you STILL complain and pine for the old days and make up dramatic excuses to cover for how shit you are. holy shit.

you can't fool yourself into thinking demo was only changed because of "stupid SPUF pubbers", stickies have been the most complained about weapon since fucking release. old and new players ALL recognize how strong it is. and it got away with the safest nerf possible.

lol6s

Well, everyone yacked about the radius ramp-up for 6 months without really understanding what that entailed. You reap what you sow.

That too

The problem with extremely high skill ceilings, where the end goal is being better than everything else, is that good players will recognize that potential and practice over and over until they reach godlike levels and end up invalidating other options. Technical barriers are never a problem to dedicated players. As an example Melee Fox is hard to pick up but invalidates lots of characters and multiple stages are banned due to his power. He has a very tough learning curve but players learned, because he's the best and they want to win.

Basically, just because something takes skill (and/or is fun for the user), doesn't always mean it's good for the game.

It might suck to lose an option you previously had (and I blame Valve for waiting so long for another Sticky nerf because 2009 was the last time it was tweaked) but did Demoman really need it? Maybe more Demos will jump at mids now instead of hanging back to charge stickies? Dunno. I think you can still hit good numbers from sticky sniping.

I'm kind of arguing that Demo doesn't need something extra he can do when he already has some of the best tools in the game. And like I said the option still presents itself during Kritz or building demolition.

All I know is I want to let the changes sit for a good while.