Poor Righteous Bison!
Out of all the Dr Grordbort weapons, I think it’s safe to say that the Righteous Bison was considered the most balanced and the most loved. Of course, the Dr Grordbort weapons have always been notorious for being unbalanced messes with tons of unneeded particles and all sorts of nastiness, but you can’t deny it, the Righteous Bison is an unbelievably cool weapon.
The odd thing about the Bison is the fact that it has an unusual role among Soldiers. While a Shotgun is more of a close ranged self-defense mechanism and a close range Medic-protector, the Gunboats are designed for pure mobility and the banners all focus on being supportive of your team, the Righteous Bison offers mid-range spam and a good way of taking out retreating enemies, especially when your rocket launcher is empty. It isn’t a huge niche, but it’s got its own nice little space.
Then in the Meet Your Match update, the Righteous Bison got nerfed. Oh, sorry, ‘bug-fixed’.
Okay, let’s be fair, the unreliable extra damage from hitting people at specific angles may have actually been a bug, despite what the LOADING SCREEN MENU IN-GAME TIPS said. The damage boost from being hit in certain ways may have been frustrating to other players, especially since other penetrating weapons we’ve had, the Pomson and the Machina, haven’t really worked like that (although the Pomson’s Cloak and Uber drains DID originally act the same way the Bison’s damage did). There was clearly something wrong, and I think the TF2 team wanted to standardize the damage output of the Bison and make it all-round more reliable. I can see what the TF Team were getting at.
Problem is, if the TF team had done just that, fixed the bug and perhaps messed with the damage a little to make up for it, that would have been fine. What the TF team did in reality though, there’s no way of looking at it as anything but a nerf.
In exchange for always doing 54 damage on the first person hit at point blank, the Bison now has to deal with a 30% slower projectile, less damage for every person you hit and the fact that after hitting 5 people, the projectile might as well not bother.
The 30% slower projectile is clearly a nerf. There was no reason to change that really.
The damage changes hurt too. The Righteous Bison was never meant to be a point blank weapon, so scaling damage from 54 to 24 is… pitiful. This is coming from a maximum of 80 damage. The Shotgun does 90 damage maximum at point blank and up to 30 damage at medium range and all round now does more damage. And despite the shotgun’s inaccuracy, it has a larger clip size and firing speed so you can get off more shots before reloading. Oh, and there’s also the less damage to buildings that laser weapons seem to have for no reason. Since you won’t often be hitting people at point blank, with the Bison, expect to be doing around 45 damage per hit. On the first person. After that? I wonder why one would bother.
The worst thing though is the damage reduction per enemy hit. I see no need for this to be a thing. The Machina doesn’t suffer from less damage per person hit, and that thing can headshot you (and instantly kill you) through other people. The Bison on the other hand does pitiful damage, so why make it even worse by making it decay into nothing? If you manage to hit more than 3 people in one shot, really, you should be rewarded for that, not punished!
The problem is that the Shotgun is so good, that the Bison can no longer keep up, now that its main niche has been destroyed. You might as well just grab the Mantreads and jump around a bit. It’s not like this problem can’t be solved though, all Valve has to do is remove the damage reduction per player hit, and up the damage a bit.
Until then, rest in peace, you glorious bastard of a gun.