A Weapon of Formerly Infinite Jest – In Memory of the Sticky Bomb Launcher

Alas, poor Sticky Jumper! I knew him, SPUF: a weapon
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: it hath
borne me through the sky a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rims at
it. Here lie those rounded bombs that I have exploded I know
not how oft. Where be your explosions now? your
grenades? your cabers? your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set enemy snipers on a roar? Not one
now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
Now get you to the old SPUF, and tell those there, let
them paint the skies with stickies, to this favour they must
come; make them laugh at that.

Written by aabicus for Jump Day, September 2017

Ah, the Sticky Jumper. Oh how we miss you. One of the more harmless weapons in the game, utterly torn apart and destroyed. And for what?

For nothing.

The Sticky Jumper is a Sticky Bomb launcher primary for the Demoman that shoots bombs that deal no damage, but all of the knockback of a normal sticky bomb. The idea was that you can just practice your sticky jumping without worrying about blowing yourself up. Originally, like its Soldier counterpart, the Rocket Jumper, it dealt no damage but made players more susceptible to incoming damage, originally in the form of “-50% health” and later in the form of “+100% damage taken”. Apart from the damage, the Sticky Jumper was pretty much identical to the normal Sticky Bomb Launcher, and the Rocket Jumper was pretty much identical to the Rocket Launcher

In fact, originally, the Sticky Jumper didn’t even have its own model! It used the normal Sticky Bomb Launcher model, as well as the same bombs. Which not only caused some confusion among players who spent ages destroying decoy stickies, but also caused quite a few scenarios where one would forget to change their loadout and spend a few minutes trying to work out why no one was dying. Like the old “Newbie using a Kritzkrieg” scenario but way funnier.

Eventually though, the Jumper weapons got some buffs and changes, as well as unique orange textures. The extra damage taken from other sources was removed and the Jumpers were literally just 0 damage versions. Because you no longer died instantly to other sources of damage, a couple of niche playstyles began to form.

The Rocket Jumper’s Trolldier loadout, using the Mantreads and Market Gardener, was by far the most common, but a smaller but more powerful loadout did slowly appear for Demoman – the ubermobile grenadier. The Sticky Jumper would be used to leap around the map while one’s grenade launcher – generally the Loose Cannon or Loch N Load – would become a Demoman’s main damage source. These Demomen became expert flag carriers as well due to their insane mobility.

How? Because Jumper Demomen were capable of using up to 8 sticky bombs to jump around.

It was a truly unique playstyle, sacrificing sheer strength for mobility, but also requiring a good amount of skill to land grenades, as one needed to make up for the lost damage. Despite the 2012 patch that removed the ability for Sticky and Rocket Jumpers to carry the intelligence, the loadout was still pretty popular due to just how mobile one could be.

That was, until the nerf came.

16th September was the dreaded day.

Updated The Sticky Jumper to only allow 2 active stickybombs at a time.

The Sticky Jumper lost the ability to place more than two stickies at a time. Any other sticky placed after the first two would cause one of the former stickies to explode. The ability to do massive jumps, the ability to place emergency stickies for quick escapes, the ability to leap around like a lunatic, all gone.

While the Rocket Jumper remained untouched, the Sticky Jumper fell by the sidelines, its niche damaged and tattered. A nerf to a weapon that overall gimped its user, that required huge amounts of skill in other areas to use effectively.

Sure, you can still use the Sticky Jumper today. There’s a lot of things you can’t do with it now. But the possibilities it had are all gone now.

Rest in peace, Sticky Jumper.