The Tide Turner nerf is far too harsh.

Under the recent compound backlash that Valve went through after the End of the Line update, I honestly cannot blame them for hastily assembling anything that would resemble new content, regardless of a new mode, unfinished in beta, or even if that new grenade launcher’s model was sitting around in the workshop for at least a year. (Regardless of which, it is still a very pretty launcher.) Among the crowd pleasing game changes, there will be an inevitable trampling of a subset of players who are complained about. I represent the entirety of that subset. Or at least the people… [Continue Reading]

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Flaring Up

Poor Pyro can’t seem to catch a break. Ever since his Team Fortress Classic days people have derided him as underpowered, unbalanced, gimmicky, over-reliant on newb opponents…the insults are as varied as the tools Valve has bestowed upon the poor unintelligible merc. Plenty of people have written opinions on why Pyro is underpowered (here’s mine) and even more people have written theories on how to fix that problem. Before I go into that, I want to try and sum up some fundamentals that are often brought up. Firstly, Pyro’s short-range emphasis is seen as one of his major problems since… [Continue Reading]

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A Shotgun Update

I adore the Team Fortress 2 shotgun. Sturdy, reliable, and intuitive, it’s the only weapon shared by four different classes and until the BASE Jumper was added, the only weapon to occupy different slots on different classes. I consider the shotgun TF2’s tenth signature weapon due to its ubiquity and recognizability. There is a sort of elegance in the fact that Valve has never added any sort of reskin or retexture for the shotgun. Every player since 2007 who’s wanted to make use of its six-clip buckshot backup has used the same simple gun; no golden, festive or botkiller variants… [Continue Reading]

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Why Slows Are Horrible

Pew! Off went my purple splat of slowness. I aimed it perfectly, right between the minions, splitting the purple splat at just the right moment to catch the enemy Ryze. The splat landed, Ryze was slowed and my team mate scooped up the kill. “Nice work, Vel’Koz!” my team mate smiled. Now, slows are really common in a lot of games, particularly MOBAs. And Skyrim, since everyone up north has a frost spell or three. But here in Team Fortress 2, the only slows we have are all hated. Scum of the earth. We scream and swear because of them.… [Continue Reading]

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Simple ways Valve could improve offline mode

The offline bots will always make me smile. They have an earnest determination that really makes it seem like they’re trying their hardest to be the best teammates possible. Not that they’ll ever realize that dream, but good on them for trying. However, as numerous people throughout the years have noted, Valve has restricted them to stock-only for the duration of their existence, and any justifications for this restriction have slowly eroded as TF2 has evolved. Itemtest lets you equip a puppet bot with a number of working unlocks like Bonk! and Mann Vs. Machine bots use unlocks all the time.… [Continue Reading]

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The Changing and the End of Stuff

Hello, my fellow mercenaries! Today, I’m just going to mention a few bits and pieces. I love reading articles from you lot, and I love receiving them. Problem is, I can’t always tell if they’re finished and ready to be published or not. I have a bit of a weird organisation system, in which any articles that are 100% ready to publish, I leave in the Pending section and everything else gets thrown into Drafts. I generally have to edit most articles before they’re finished anyway, since a few of you forget to set your categories or don’t add any… [Continue Reading]

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Remember those bots?

Most people hate the AI-controlled bots, that were based off the AI for the Left 4 Dead AI survivors and infected. It’s not hard to see why, as many servers rely on bots to entertain the few people in the server during quieter times of the day. They’ve become the pawns of those who run servers only to make a profit. Everyone’s favourite teacher of TF2 tricks, AngrySockPuppet, even made a video about how the abuse of bots is making life a misery for people who just want to play a game of Team Fortress 2. These bots came in… [Continue Reading]

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Why Scout Needs a Nailgun

In my article “5 Things I miss From Team Fortress Classic“, I gave the very first spot on the list to its nailgun. Every time I’m stuck as Scout seeing a sentry around a corner, but with no means of dealing with it myself, I wish Valve hadn’t taken my simple and easy way to get rid of that darn thing. The TFC nailgun is most comparable to the TF2 Syringe gun, with a major difference: no gravity falloff on the projectiles, meaning that they fly in a straight line forever like a rocket. This lets you deal basically a… [Continue Reading]

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An Unpopular Position on Itsurblog

With the second itsurblog thread closed, it’s clear to see that there is a major uproar about it. SPUFers, both big-names and the small-names, rise together as one, petitioning for a new subforum and posting up new itsurblogs, either disguised or clearly labeled. However, the few that stand against all of this madness get shut down. I argue for the unpopular position – the position that will certainly cause me some trouble, but such is the way of the minority view. Once a few people thought that the earth rotated around the sun, whereas the majority thought it was the… [Continue Reading]

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Community-Ifiers: A Suggestion

Do you own a Community Weapon? Chances are, probably not. There are only two ways to get one: Be rich and buy a sparkly Lugermorph, or become a respectful upstanding member of the TF2 Community who leaves the game a little better than when he arrived, and wait for Valve to contact you and give you one. The system is as old as the concept of weapon qualities. Back in the day that Vintage weapons outnumbered Unique weapons, Valve implemented this method of rewarding specific members of the community. But I’m starting to think this procedure could use an update.… [Continue Reading]

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