Sandviches for (not quite) everyone!

The Sandvich is overpowered. It allows one of the easier classes to play in the game to hide around a corner and heal himself or, worse, heal his team mates while he continues to tank damage and do massive damage in return. But here’s a thought, how would the Sandvich work on other classes?

We’ll start with utility classes and work our way back. Of course, every class can benefit from what is essentially a free health pack, but since you have to taunt to use it, how effective would it be on every class? Spies, who are normally sneaking around in the back, would have plenty of time to hide in a corner and nom on a sandvich, but Medics would really struggle to get a break. Of course, a Medic would still happily swap his silly syringe guns for a recharging health pack and a huge health burst for team mates, but they’d rarely get to use it on themselves. Nor would Medics sacrifice medi guns for some bread and meat. Snipers don’t deserve sandviches though since they’re generally sitting just outside spawn anyway.

Moving on, we come across the only class that would find the Sandvich utterly useless: the Engineer. He may not be a mobile healing monster like Medic, but since he’s more stationary and often tending to a sentry, which is generally close to a dispenser, there’s little need to worry about taking a break to eat a sandvich or three. There’s no need at all since there’s almost always a dispenser nearby to keep an Engineer topped up. On the flip side, since the Sandvich would clearly replace the pistol, it wouldn’t be as overpowered as the Wrangler or the Short Circuit.

Demomen would welcome extra health but the problem with Demomen is that they’d lose out on one of their weapons, both of which are so good they’re technically primary weapons. It wouldn’t work well as a melee weapon either. Whacking people with slices of bread isn’t exactly effective and generally, healing melee weapons like to require you to do something. The Candy Cane makes you kill people. The Amputator requires you to have it as the active weapon. The Kunai wants you to backstab people. Also, as melee weapons are generally supposed to be a last resort should you run out of ammo, having a melee weapon with ‘ammo’ seems counter-intuitive.

Pyros would be very happy with some extra health available to them. Being a close-combat ambush class who’s currently in a bad position, they could do with all the help they can get, and the Sandvich means they can survive more encounters. Of course, they’d lose out on all range, but who needs range when you can degreaxtinguish everything, right? Um…

As for the other attacking classes, things are uncertain. Scouts would probably like the extra health in exchange for losing their pistol, increasing their survival after a fight or perhaps allowing them to protect team makes more easily, but what about Soldier? The Shotgun, the Banners and the Gunboats are all exceedingly good weapons that provide an array of abilities. The Sandvich, which only really heals people, isn’t nearly as useful as a huge damage reduction for rocket jumps, the high damage close range burst of the shotgun or the utility and support of the banners. Both the Concheror and the Battalion’s Backup offer extra health anyway, in the form of regen and extra starting health, so why use the Sandvich?

So it turns out that the Sandvich isn’t great for everyone. Heck, even the classes it is good for, there’s still other, equally good weapons that can be used instead.