4 Responses

1. BaconLegs Said,

   Perhaps the targe is encouraging more alternative class play?
   Think about it!
   Natascha and Sasha chew out a targe demo faster than a spy on fire.
   Pyros can airblast him out of the way for others to take care of, puff and sting, or shotgun him after nullifying his charge.
   Snipers can take one out easy, they almost always run straight at someone.
   And now scouts can be helpful with the FaN(God rest our souls), stopping these targe demos in their tracks, and ending them in two shots with their lower health due to the eyelander.

   I’m not sure if this is a good thing, but it definitely seems to be what Valve is doing.

   Posted on January 5th, 2010 at 1:53 pm

2. BaconLegs Said,

   I don’t really play any comp, so sorry to post again, but…
   I forgot engineers! A well placed level 1 can take out a targe demo easy! And his pistol chew’s ‘em out faster than you can say “Creamed gravy.”
   Hell pretty much anything with bullets or knockback or situational crits renders a targe demo nearly useless.
   The jump glitch on Turbine has been around forever, remarkably it’s not all that well known. I use it in pubs all the time as engie, and heavies can make the jump, so sollies probably can too, though it’s far more difficult for those two.
   With respect to the DH, I agree with removing the minicrits, you can minicrit on a slope, too!
   Buff banners in progress should be unavailable for uber, but healable, like someone with the intel.
   I’ve found that every unlock save the current sandman is useful. Goddamn thing doesn’t even stop ‘em shooting, just makes people look silly.
   Backburner is like a group backstab, though incredibly difficult to time or space, though it doesn’t seem a viable choice in comp play.
   All that sticky airborne stuff you described is possible, though incredibly damaging and seemingly useless.
   The detonation bubble for the ScoRes is annoying when you are trying to retreat with stickies, or have laid several traps, as you have to keep away from all of them to detonate anything. I love the damn thing, though. It’s great if you know how to really use the Grenade Launcher, and sticky spam is still possible if you do that.

   Posted on January 5th, 2010 at 3:51 pm

3. midu2 Said,

   I really don’t agree that the targe does anything to make a demoman less of a demoman. I think that Valve wanted the unlocks to lead to some alternative play styles for people who are bored with the existing play styles. Do you really think that real life snipers use a wooden bow & arrow to snipe?

   I personally find the demoman to be really fun to play again after getting bored with the run of the mill layout. I don’t think the sword & board demo is overpowered because I think everyone on the podcast agrees that stickies are preferable for competitive play. If people are getting owned by sword & board demos right now on pubs, maybe they can hope to get some tips from you in the future about how to take them down more easily with each class :)

   Valve made the nade launcher the demoman’s primary weapon, which suggests to me that the core demo attribute *is* the nade launcher. I think they didn’t mean to design the sticky launcher as the primary and wanted to find a way to create a style of demo play that removed the stickies. Now if you leave a demo with a pipe launcher and no stickies, it doesn’t really make sense in my opinion not to give him a melee upgrade. I don’t imagine that they would have gone with replacing the sticky launcher with a shotgun, bazooka, bow & arrow, etc.

   If someone is throwing nades around the map, there’s a true demoman at work in my opinion regardless of whether he also has a sword & targe. Unlike the standard demoman, I actually use the nade launcher for the majority of my attacks… the way Valve probably intended the demoman to fight on a regular basis seeing how that is the primary weapon. Maybe they wanted melee to be important from the beginning with these unlocks, but I really think they wanted to find a way to make the primary a true primary once again.

   I think some people dislike certain sword & board demos because they give other demos a bad name by going *melee only* on a server that *is not* melee only. A demoman who does not use nades is not a credit to his team; he’s a waste of a class. Now if a demoman with sword & board uses nades to set up easier sword kills (yes, you can still set demo traps), that’s a much more respectable and useful play style in my opinion (again, not for competitive). Thanks to the sword & board demo unlocks, I can now happily say that my aiming skills with nades have increased a lot. I know you aren’t crazy about getting one shotted with nades, but my view is that it takes as much skill to hit a fast moving targe at range with an arcing grenade shot than it does to shoot someone in the head with a sniper rifle or stab them in the back. The fact that some pyros use only w+m1 is similar to the fact that some demos use only w+m1 and the targe charge. We shouldn’t discount class setups because people make poor tactical choices; it should be based on value to the team given the situation. The sword is a situational weapon that provides benefits when used wisely (sort of like how the ubersaw is a situational weapon that accentuates the medic’s primary), and people will learn this more and more as they gain skill with the nades.

   I would like to hear you comment in the future about demomen that use the targe with the bottle on pubs. Is this a pointless waste of time, or does the extra initial health and potential for crits make the bottle a valid alternative on servers with crits enabled? I know your podcast is about competitive TF2, but I know that you often discuss TF2 from a more general perspective after listening to most of the episodes. Someone on a pub killed me with a bottle charge & claimed that the bottle is mightier than the sword. I proceeded to hunt him down and kill him so I could tell him that the nade is mightier than the bottle lol. If you were forced to play with the targe on a server with crits, would you choose the sword or bottle?

   Posted on January 6th, 2010 at 8:00 pm

4. midu2 Said,

   Also, I don’t believe that you mentioned an additional change to the buff banner. Only the damage that you personally inflict upon enemies contributes to the 850 damage needed to max out the rage meter.

   Use this tip to figure out which team is using the buff banner if you can’t see who is using it:
   red sounds like rwoooouuuuuuu (sounds more like “red” in a way). Blue sounds like bwooooo-bwooooo (sounds more like “blue blue” in a way). Red’s sound can be thought of as having one part, and blue’s sound is two parts. The TF2 Wiki page for the buff banner has the actual audio clips, perhaps you could include them in your next podcast: http://tf2wiki.net/wiki/Buff_Banner

   Posted on January 6th, 2010 at 8:18 pm