Scouts are prissy little babies who get whatever they want

You know what? I don’t hate Spy. He works hard to do his job, with so much threatening to screw him over. Even when Spy is strong, he has plenty of weaknesses. I don’t actually hate Sniper the most either. He’s got a good personality. He has somewhat defined weaknesses. I brought the bastard back to life. He’s somewhat bearable. But Scout? Fuck him.

Actually, no, don’t fuck him. Scout doesn’t deserve to lose his virginity. Plus, rule 34 messes with Scout enough as it is. But Scout is so fricking hateful. In fact, the only similar character I hate as much is Tracer from Overwatch, but that’s only because her voice is an insult to my very existence, what with being from a line of Cockney women. I’ve gone over many of the reasons why I hate Scout before, but this reason is a somewhat more recent one.

My problem with Scout is that he always gets what he wants, to the point that he dominates everything.

Competitive-wise, with the nerf to Demomen, Scouts rule supreme. Yes, having amazing teamwork will net you victory in the end, which is why Froyotech are just so good, but in such big, open maps with so few players, Scouts pick and choose their fights with ease. They are so good at 1v1ing and cleaning up that it’s incredibly easy to have a good Scout finish everyone off. Pocket Soldiers are forced to carry shotguns rather than any other weapon purely because it’s the only efficient way to fend off a Scout trying to kill your Medic and Demoman, who are almost completely defenseless to them.

If you get into a 1v1 fight with any other assassin class (Pyros, Snipers, Spies), there’s room to escape, assuming equal skill. A fight with a Scout will leave you dead. They can stick to you so easily and pump you full of lead.

Thing is, Scouts don’t actually have weaknesses apart from sentry guns and spam. But when you think about it, doesn’t everyone have a weakness to sentry guns and spam? Scouts have low health, but they have speed, mobility and a collection of high powered weapons and utility items to make up for that. They may need to get into close range, but so do Spies and Pyros, and Scouts don’t need to get into melee range most of the time, risk having their cover blown by an errant bullet or particle or lumber around with flame particles that have no real correlation to what actually causes the damage. Hitscan is instant. Scout is instant.

It’s not just that Scouts dominate competitive. If there is someone going around stomping your entire team in a pub, it’s either a Demoman/Soldier/Heavy with a Medic rammed up their ass, or a Scout. But the former classes all tend to rely on their Kritzing butt buddies to supply kills and keep them topped up. A good Scout will kill you, run to the nearest health kit and be back by the time you’ve respawned. Bonus points if he uses Crit-a-Cola. Thankfully in pubs, there are plenty of Engineers around to keep Scout populations down, but the higher the skill ladder you climb, the less Engineers there are and the more Demomen and Medics there are. Less predators, more prey.

Then we come to Mann VS Machine. Scouts dominate here as well. Scout is the only class that can collect money in a large radius AND gain health from it, making Spies completely useless and reducing Pyros to knock-back/reflecting machines. While you can play without a Soldier or a Heavy, or even a Medic or Engineer depending on the mission, you need a Scout no matter what, because otherwise you have no money for upgrades.

As enemies as well, Scouts still dominate. Waves upon waves of Scouts will annoy the heck out of you. Giant Scout Bots are one of the biggest threats to ANY MVM mission. Even the ferocity of bots like Sergeant Crits mean little to the giant Scouts that will run past your defenses, your sentries, your everything and deploy a bomb before you can even scream “get that prick!” down the microphone.

This Scout power appears even in offline mode. The two hardest AI bots? Scouts and Snipers. Snipers are legal aimbots, but Scouts are even better with their pistols. They have perfect accuracy with their pistols and can and will snipe you from across the map with 10 damage pot shots. Scout bots can’t even jump.

There’s more though. Scout’s enemies constantly get nerfed. Weapons like the Liberty Launcher, Loose Cannon and Loch N Load, anything with a faster projectile speed, get nerfed or banned because they hurt everyone, but they hurt Scouts the most. Engineers got heavily nerfed. Demomen and Demoknights got nerfed and rebalanced. Heavies got nerfed. All these classes are closely tied to Scouts.

You might argue that Scouts got nerfed a bit as well. Except it took Valve so long to do so. The Baby Face’s Blaster and the Pretty Boy’s Pocket Pistol both needed nerfs for so long. Crit-a-Cola is still unnerfed. The Soda Popper and Atomizer make Scouts even more mobile for very little downside. For the longest time, Scout didn’t really have bad weapons, he just had weapons that greatly outclassed everything else.

Scout even dominates outside of the game itself. He always gets the new weapons first. He always gets the expensive stuff. He always gets the best cosmetics. He always gets the big parts in videos and comics. He gets everything. And if he doesn’t? He bitches and whines until he does.

And I’m sick and tired of it.