Farewell, Heavy

[sittingduck]

was on blackmesa few mins ago, the other team(you know who you are) was able ot spawn camp the compleat match with 2 heavys and 3 medics......

 

[HL2master]

Alright, not to sound mad, but this does get annoying everytime a update comes out. All I hear about for two weeks is "how such and such class should be nerfed". Lets face it, scouts had no chance against heavys and soldiers before the update. Now they have a better chance fighting against every class because of the update. The only thing that should be nerfed is the stopping ubers with the ball. thats it. The rest of it is fine. When I use the ball against the heavy, he still sometimes becomes unstunned, and kills me. I wish everyone would stop complaining, because if a spy can take out two scouts using their baseballs and their force of natures, there is no reason to complain. It just requires more skill to kill scouts now.

 

[Jack Burton]

When you record a video of the Sandman actually succeeding, it looks overpowered. What you don't see is the 50 times the scout chucks his ball at you, misses, and then runs after it to find your rocket in his face.

 

[L westminster purcell]

Alright, not to sound mad, but this does get annoying everytime a update comes out. All I hear about for two weeks is "how such and such class should be nerfed". Lets face it, scouts had no chance against heavys and soldiers before the update. Now they have a better chance fighting against every class because of the update. The only thing that should be nerfed is the stopping ubers with the ball. thats it. The rest of it is fine. When I use the ball against the heavy, he still sometimes becomes unstunned, and kills me. I wish everyone would stop complaining, because if a spy can take out two scouts using their baseballs and their force of natures, there is no reason to complain. It just requires more skill to kill scouts now.

though i find scouts even more annoying now than i did previously i agree with hl2master. the only thing about the sandman which definitely should be put to rest is the ability to stun ubered players. the scout update is pretty brutal, though, haha. more scouts than previously seen on my favorite map, warpath, and somehow tons of scouts had the achievements almost immediately it has certainly made being a spy vs a scout trickier, as i tend to get bonked. even if you cloak to escape, if you get pegged with the ball it's all over. two shots from the force-a-nature, and it's curtains. speaking of which, the force-a-nature is pretty brutal as well. really easy to kill enemies with, it seems; certainly drops me quickly enough when i get hit. all in all, the scout update doesn't seem as annoying to me as it did the first few days, although i will say i hate playing against scouts more than ever, haha. fast and deadly.

 

[CatKicka]

You know, I thought the Sandman would be overpowered too, until I started using it. I've only gotten a kill resulting from a stun if A.) The person I stunned was already pretty hurt and I had more than 1 shot in my FAN (I've been murdered while reloading by the recently un-bonked too many times to even hazard a guess), or B.) I'm part of a wave, and get an assist because of it. So they pretty much made the class a great asset to the team IF he's working with the team. Also, as stated before, a tiny strafe will make it completely miss.

And I'm not worried about Heavies leaving in droves. If anything, it's fueling the Heavy/Scout rivalry. Just my two cents.

[ninja edit]: I'll concede the stun time needs some tweaking, but Valve's not going to take the effect away or replace it with something else. It's just not gonna happen.

 

[Overheal]

It can easily be argued though that they need to set both 1) a minimum stun distance and 2) a much greater distance threshold. You dont have to be terribly far away at all to get a full stun on someone.

 

[s3rv0]

When you record a video of the Sandman actually succeeding, it looks overpowered. What you don't see is the 50 times the scout chucks his ball at you, misses, and then runs after it to find your rocket in his face.

THIS! Of course the kill videos make it look amazing, but spy kill videos make the spy look amazing, as well as remarkably easy to play. Anyone who's just tried to pick up spy one day knows that that isn't the case .

And really, you all have to remember that these updates are about half done. Sure, such and such class may seem a bit OP now, but you have to have a little faith in Valve that the upcoming updates will offer corrections to any outstanding game balance issues. If they don't, Valve would probably tweak things like they have many times before so that balance was more or less achieved.

One of the reasons I personally think that scout appears (not is) overpowered is because before it was viciously underpowered. How often did you really see scouts being both useful to their team and holding a decent position on the scoreboard? There may be a few out there who could play the old scout with such finesse and timing as to be considered good with it, but really, one li'l ol' sentry gun changes that pretty darn quick, along with a host of other classes that the scout can't out-DPS (except maybe at uber-close range with the scattergun), out-maneuver (he has maneuverability, but how many kills does just jumping and dodging get you? You have to go on the offensive sometime), or out-live.


IMO: Ban "________ is OP" threads until at least one month after the update is released, giving Valve enough time to change any short-term balance issues. Maybe even ban the threads until such a time as all the updates are officially released, heh. Then we can really view the big picture, instead of arguing over such a narrow and incomplete portion of the game.

And finally, for the record: My only gripe about the update is stunning ubers. The stun for ubers should be removed or drastically reduced; maybe it could be like 1/4 of what the stun would be on a non-ubered person. Anyone who's played this game knows that, especially on popular maps like Goldrush, Dustbowl, and Badwater Basin, ubers are everything on offense. Without them, a few engineers and a barely coordinated defense can block the objective for the entire other team. So, that said, now the pyro can screw ubers up, demo man can as well (with stickies, as he always has been able to), and the scout as well...how much are you going to gimp ubers? Soon the games will never get past the first round or first cap point because the offense is left without good options to break a strong defense.

Unless, of course, Valve has plans down the road to drastically improve some offensive abilities in the remaining classes to update...

 

[Cervani]

The only thing I see that would need revising is the whole uber stun business. Either pause the uber or add some mechanic like diminishing returns. You shouldn't be able to chain stun an uber. I believe Servo made a good point on this.

Yeah a random stun can get annoying, but for every scout that is as good as that one in the video you have 50-100 others that whiff and then die. Then I giggle when I blow you up as a demoman.

 

[? Frisky Dingo ?]

Ive heard that the sandman was banned from an actual competition match....kinda sad to see this and shows how much people are upset about the weapon. Personally I think that this is just REDONKULOUS yeah it can kill you or even stop an uber at times, just not all the time which makes it a good weapon. I dont mind the weapon at all, and dont really like using it to much, id rather have tripple jump.

 

[Thereven]

When you record a video of the Sandman actually succeeding, it looks overpowered. What you don't see is the 50 times the scout chucks his ball at you, misses, and then runs after it to find your rocket in his face.

Dude, have you been spying on me?