The Scotsman’s New Skullcutter

On Smissmas 2014 Valve made my dream come true. The Scotsman’s Skullcutter became elevated from the dregs of poorly-optimized demoknights and Trolldemos to one of the best melee weapons for Demomen who treat their melee weapon like an emergency weapon instead of an intergral part of their loadout.

Is it overpowered? Maybe. That’s a hard statement to make, what with the state of Demoman’s melee at the moment. The Ullapool Caber and Half-Zatoichi are pretty kickass weapons that fill the same role after all. And while the Skullcutter lacks the crippling downsides inherent in those two weapons, it also doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Except for longer melee range, a damage bonus and random crits on top of it, its every stat just serves to make it decent at melee combat. In practice it kinda feels like I’m using a more reliable Bottle.

So, even though I’m sure not everyone will agree with me, I don’t see the new Skullcutter as a bad thing. It looks overpowered on paper, especially with the range bonus canceling out the slowing speed, but at the end of the day its just a melee weapon. Pyro continues to have the Backscratcher and Soldier continues to have the Escape Plan and the world hasn’t imploded yet because melee is really not a big deal.

Not to mention its a melee weapon that doesn’t work well on Demoknight! That’s a feat I’d be willing to see more of.