balance – Page 4 – The Daily SPUF

Pyro has been reduced to a W+M1 machine

December 23, 2015 Night 0 Comments balance, buff, nerf, phlogistinator, pyro, w+m1

When news of Tough Break broke (mind the pun) I expressed how excited I was. That was mostly due to the plethora of balance changes, some of which many of us have been whining about for years and years (Half-Zatoichi crits, for one.) On first glance it really did seem like a nearly perfect update. In practice, though, you’ll find pubs flooded with Phlog Pyros. That’s because this update destroyed Pyro as we know it. All-Class – Base weapon switch speed changed from 0.67 seconds to 0.5 seconds … Pyro – Pyros like to collect rainbows! Extinguishing a teammate will… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Medic buffs – Good or Bad?

December 22, 2015 Medic 0 Comments balance, buffs, medic, tough break

The Medic is the big game changer of TF2. It’s rare that a pure support class has that position in any video game, but that’s one of TF2’s strong points. Of course, being a game changing person means that making tweaks, changes, buffs, nerfs, anything, can be a huge problem for not just the individual but the entire game. So I was rather surprised when I saw rather unusual changes for Medics in the Tough Break update. But are they good or are they bad? Honestly? Medic didn’t really need anything at all. All of the class’s problems lay within… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Tough Break and its Signs of Things to Come

December 21, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments balance, competitive, demoknight, matchmaking, medic, pyro, tough break, update

The Tough Break update rolled out an extremely healthy list of balance changes to Team Fortress 2. Spanning the entirety of its class roster and with a general trend of making each class’ stock role more defined, it provides some very clear insights regarding the direction Valve is hoping to take TF2 in the coming months. SPUF is ablaze right now with questions attempting to make sense of some of the more extreme alterations, and since I’m stuck on a five-hour plane ride without internet I thought I’d take the time to comment on some things I’ve noticed and make… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Persian Persuader’s Not Looking too Peachy…

December 19, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments balance, demoman, melee, nerf, persian, weapon

The Tough Break update was amazing. I love almost all of the balance changes, especially because pretty much every class was buffed in cool ways. Especially my Medic! Holy crap! Ubercharge on Crossbow and Amputator? I’m so excited, except that part of me that fears a complimentary nerf now that those wholly-unneeded buffs were added. Thank god for the alt-fire addition to the Amputator, by the way, now I don’t have to juggle stupidly around with the taunt menus to use my AoE heals. But this article isn’t about Medic. As great as the majority of changes were, the only… [Continue Reading]

Featured The Competitive Corner

Why the Tomislav is good

December 16, 2015 General_B 0 Comments balance, heavy, loadout, strategy, weapons

Whenever I see people using the Tomislav I ask myself, “why are they using it?” I’m not asking this in a demeaning way, but honestly just want to know which of its “many” upsides they are utilizing. I ask myself this even more in MvM but we’ll cover that later. Some people actually use the silent killer attribute, I guess. Honestly in all my time being the pocket medic to a heavy that uses almost exclusively the Tomislav, we’ve only ever used the Silent attribute once or twice. He might use it while playing by himself but I doubt… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Random Crit Balance

November 27, 2015 Yert 1 Comment analysis, balance, class, crit, critical, crits, melee, pyro, random crits, spy, suggestion

Random crits favor not just the people already doing well, but also certain classes, or more accurately, they don’t favor certain classes. It will never feel fair to drop a hype bar, banner, mmmph, heads, ubercharge, while moving a sentry, while being spychecked, or just die in general to a random crit in general, but some classes get more use out of random crits than others. Information on crits in this article come from the 2009 TF2 Blog Post on the same, and the TF2 Official Wiki entry on crits. Random crits scale from 2% to 12% as a function… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Liberty Liability – Having fun with the Liberty launcher

November 11, 2015 Medic 2 Comments balance, overpowered, soldier, weapon

I’ve always been a bit of a purist. For years, I insisted on using stock weaponry on almost all my classes. I still do for Sniper, Spy and Scout, and I use mostly stock on Demoman, Pyro and Heavy. It took me a long time to finally let go of my trusty Bonesaw in exchange for the Solemn Vow. Soldier though has always been different for me. I’ve never been able to settle on a loadout I actually enjoy, and that includes stock weapons. Now I have. Before I go on about the Liberty Launcher, I want to explain WHY… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Arena Mode needs urgent fixing

November 2, 2015 Medic 0 Comments arena, balance, fight, game, game mode, gamemode, Team Fortress 2

Bundled up with the Invasion update was something almost miraculous. For the first time in goodness how long, Valve added a new Arena map to our already-bulging map list. This is highly unusual because normally maps for unplayed game modes never get added. We generally only see KOTH, Payload or Control Points of some sort, or someone brings out something completely new that gets abandoned soon after. Arena was considered one of those things, but here we are, with a brand spanking new Arena map – Byre. But unfortunately, despite the niceness and simplicity of the map, people are soon… [Continue Reading]

Featured The Competitive Corner

Why ETF2L allowing the Pomson and Short Circuit in Highlander isn’t so insane after all

October 26, 2015 Medic 0 Comments balance, competitive, engineer, Highlander, weapon

With Highlander Season 9 coming around, ETF2L has decided to allow a few new weapons – the Pomson 6000 and the Short Circuit. Now, many people think this is rather strange. These are two weapons that really do shake things up. I’m pretty sure that ETF2L has their reasons and they’ve probably already made them public by now, but I’m a lunatic with his own blog so I’m going to write about my own reasons. Let’s start with the slightly less sane one. Originally, the Short Circuit wasn’t an issue. It was a rather quiet little weapon, hiding away in… [Continue Reading]

Featured The Competitive Corner

The Loose Cannon – OP or simply in need of tweaks?

October 17, 2015 Medic 0 Comments balance, banned, competitive, tweaks, weapon

It’s the start of the new UGC competitive season, and we’ve seen some new weapons come and go. The most prominent weapon though is the Loose Cannon, which has now been banned in Highlander and 4v4, but not in 6v6 in UGC. This is incredibly strange, especially since ETF2L has gone the other way in Highlander, allowing both the Pomson and the Short Circuit. ETF2L seem to have lost their mind, but with how Engineers took a pounding during Gun Mettle and what with the Wrangler, Rescue Ranger and Jag all being so good, perhaps the more insane weapons will… [Continue Reading]